Hasegawa Tohaku and the Wind of Noto

The Painter’s Origins, the Earthquake’s Echo, and the Spirit of Japanese Art

Last month, I traveled around the Noto Peninsula in Hokuriku, a region where the traces of the earthquake remain deeply visible, but another purpose of my visit there was to attend the exhibition of my beloved painter, Hasegawa Tohaku.

After the earthquake on January 1, 2024, the Nanao Art Museum in Noto had been forced to close for a long period, but it reopened on September 20, and the “Hasegawa Tohaku Exhibition,” commemorating both the 30th anniversary of the museum’s founding and the hope for post-earthquake recovery, is being held until the 16th of next week. Nanao City, located on the southeastern side of the Noto Peninsula, serves as the gateway to the peninsula. Surrounded by steep mountains that make access difficult, Nanao has made faster progress in recovery compared to Wajima in the northern area, which remains largely unrecovered, because access from cities like Toyama is much easier.

It is this very Nanao that is the birthplace of Hasegawa Tohaku, the painter who lived through the turbulent times from the Sengoku period to the early Edo period. Born in 1539 and passing in 1610, Tohaku is said to have worked mainly as a Buddhist painter (ebbusshi) in his twenties. The term ebbusshi refers to monks or temple-affiliated professional painters who specialized in Buddhist paintings or coloring statues. At temples in Nanao, Tohaku’s works from this period remain under the name Nobuharu, and though they suffered damage in the recent earthquake, they have somehow survived and been preserved.