Stretching 16 kilometers between Izumo and Matsue, Lake Shinji is the seventh-largest lake in Japan and one of the most famous natural features of Shimane Prefecture. It is also renowned nationally as one of Japan’s best 100 sunset spots and internationally recognized as a waterway of global importance under the Ramsar Convention. Whether you…
Katsushika Hokusai’s “Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji: Clear Weather with Southern Breeze,” from around 1830 to 1834 (Provided by the Shimane Art Museum)
MATSUE The Shimane Art Museum here will close for a year from May 25 to strengthen the building’s resistance against earthquakes, but that is not stopping it from showing off its incredible ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
The prefectural museum boasts 3,000 or so ukiyo-e works, and they can be viewed on a special website (https://shimane-art-museum-ukiyoe.jp/).
The works are mainly from two collections: one put together by Matsue-born industrialist Jiro Shinjo (1901-1996), and another by Seiji Nagata (1951-2018), a researcher on master ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai. Nagata hailed from Tsuwano, also in Shimane Prefecture.