Hirohito to Harvard

With a wave of his straw hat, gracious, gangling Director George Harold Edgell, of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts stepped into the gondola of a police motor-cycle at Cunard's Pier in East Boston last month and went popping through the Sumner Tunnel to Huntington Avenue and the Museum. Behind him in two bunting-draped trucks rumbled the most valuable collection of Japanese art ever to have left Japan. It was the nucleus of an exhibition which opened this week, and which should rival in importance London's great Chinese art exhibition of last winter.

When Professor Edgell, dean of Harvard's Faculty of Architecture and an outstanding authority on Sienese painting, finally broke his longtime connection with Harvard University to take over a full-time job as Director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, he realized that the Museum, which cannot compete with New York's Metropolitan in most departments, had acquired during the past 50 years the finest collection of Oriental art in the U. S. The section of Japanese art was particularly strong and the Curator of Asiatic Art, Kojiro Tomita, was one of the greatest authorities on Japanese art in the U. S. The Museum did not have space to exhibit more than a quarter of its Oriental collection.

Thinking of ways to call Boston's attention to all this, Curator Tomita and Director Edgell hit upon the notion of borrowing a lot more Japanese Art and giving a big show in conjunction with Harvard's Tercentenary. President Count Kentaro Kaneko (Class of 1878) of the Harvard Club of Tokyo collaborated enthusiastically. So did the Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, the Society for International Cultural Relations. Curator Tomita, who knows all the first-rank collectors in Japan, went to Tokyo in April. Director Edgell arrived in May, charmed the Japanese by laying flowers on the tomb of Professor Ernest Fenollosa, who gave the Museum of Fine Arts some of its earliest and best Japanese items, turned Buddhist, went to Japan to die.

Messrs. Edgell and Tomita knew their project was a success when Emperor Hirohito let it be known that he was willing to lend several of his own personal pieces to Boston, would permit the exporting of a certain number of "National Treasures" from state museums. A deluge of offers followed. Director Edgell, whose personal knowledge of Japanese art is rudimentary, left the selection to his associate Mr. Tomita, spent 26 days drinking tea and saki with Japanese wrestlers, silk tycoons, bankers, enjoyed himself immensely.

One hundred and thirty-eight different objects were finally selected, packed in special cases by Yamanaka & Co.'s two most expert packers, shipped to Boston on the Katsuragi Mam. A large proportion of the objects were uninsured. "Money does not interest us," the wealthy owners insisted. "What we want is to get our things back, uninjured."

As experts in Boston carefully lifted them from their cotton padded cradles last week, Museum authorities cried their delight over the following objects:

P: Two light wooden masks, the personal property of the Emperor, used by the gigaku temple dancers in the 7th Century.

P: An ink scroll in caricature dating from the 12th Century shows Buddhist priests in the shape of monkeys, frogs and squirrels dressed in leaves and carrying lily pads for umbrellas.

P: A skillful 1 5th Century ink painting by Artist Sesshu, of Fukurokuju. the whiskery little dwarf who represents prosperity and happiness in Japanese mythology. Artist Sesshu, considered by many Orientalists the greatest painter Japanese art has yet produced, is represented by seven other works in the Boston show. Also on exhibit are examples by his best known contemporaries, Jasoku and Shubun.

P: A 5 1/2-ft. 17th Century screen painted in color on a gold ground showing the old military sport of shooting at dogs from horseback.

P: A 7th Century darkened gilt bronze of Miroku Bosatsu, Messiah of the Buddhist faith.

P: A dignified, exquisitely painted Century scroll of the almond-eyed God Amida Nyorai in robes of pale yellow. In Buddhist mythology Amida is precisely known as The Buddha of the Pure Land of Bliss in the Western Quarter of Heaven.

Japanese paintings are fragile things, deteriorate when exposed too long to the light. Therefore the pictures will be hung in relays, changed every few days during the seven weeks of the exhibition. Connoisseurs will have to visit the museum three or four times to get the exhibition's full flavor.

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