Rather unfortunately, the byobu (folding screen) is a form of art long dead in the realm of Japanese aesthetics. In the days of Korin and Sotatsu, Eitoku and Tohaku and even Jakuchu, the byobu was one of the most important canvasses upon which these exceptional artists would display their prowess with the brush. Unfortunately, such traditions are now virtually extinct, for the leading Japanese art circles and societies today disallow the entering of the byobu format in their public competitions of Nihonga (Japanese painting). Instead, they prefer that Japanese paintings be submitted on Western-style canvasses, and not painted on Japanese paper/scrolls/screens.

I've always considered this conception to be mad and rather oxymoronic. Is this not Japanese painting we are trying to promote and foster? Why assimilate into a Western format? In particular, the Japanese folding screen is unique in that although it exhibits a flat 2-dimensional painting as its subject matter, the screen itself is 3-dimensional. This juxtaposition between the "super-flat" paintings of traditional Japanese painting and the physical, even sculptural nature of the screen is what makes the byobu an emblematic item in not only Japanese aesthetics but within the Japanese psyche itself. Do we see the screen in 2-D, or 3-D, or both? This ambiguity, it appears, is so inherently Japanese.

Fusako Fukami was a leading Nitten-based artist in Japanese painting that used Washi paper along with traditional lacquering and enamelling techniques. Although her career started off to great success and witnessed the accumulation of various awards, she quit the Nitten right at the height of her blossoming career due to great disillusionment with the system and its members/jurors. Since, she has never exhibited a single byobu, and would simply create the works for her own enjoyment whilst running a quaint bookstore (built inside a 150 year-old kura building) in the small town of Asuke, Aichi Prefecture.

But she had always dreamt of a day when she could show to the world her original byobu, brimming with life, creativity, and abundance in traditional techniques. Her paintings are often abstract, and even call to mind the aesthetics of artists such as de Kooning, Miro and the Gutai School. Byobu or not, her works exhibit a style not often seen in today's contemporary Japanese art scene. The byobu has died out due to changing lifestyles. Yet the contemporary nature of Fukami's works will fit well within any modern home. We hope you will feel the same. From eastern skies,