TAHARA, Aichi >> Donald Keene, who introduced the charms of Japanese literature to the world, in his later years published a book about Watanabe Kazan (1793-1841).

A painter in the late Edo period (1603-1867) and a retainer of the Tahara clan, which presided over present-­day Tahara, Aichi prefecture, Kazan tragically ended his life amid pressure over his Western ideas at the time the country was about to open its borders to the outside world after 300 years of isolation.

What attracted Keene to Kazan?

The Donald Keene and Watanabe Kazan exhibition being held at the Tahara Municipal Museum gives some answers.

The museum, located at the ruins of Tahara Castle, opened in 1993, and the special exhibition celebrates the 30th anniversary of the museum. Keene served as the museum’s honorary director from 2017 to 2019, when he passed away.

Kazan showed his talent as a painter in the pursuit of realism. He painted many portraits that captured the individuality of people in a realistic manner, as well as works that depicted everyday scenes of common people in the Edo period. His works are highly valued to this day.

Kazan was also interested in Western knowledge, including practical skills, during Japan’s period of seclusion. He compared Western studies with China’s import, Confucianism, which at the time was the standard of learning for the samurai class. He believed that if one was obsessed with conceptual studies over the practical, one was a “frog in a well” and that national defense was at risk.

Such thinking was regarded as criticism of the Tokugawa shogunate, and Kazan was arrested in 1839 and put under house arrest at his clan estate in Tahara, far from the family residence in Edo — present-­day Tokyo — where he had been born and raised. In 1841, Kazan died by suicide at Tahara.

Keene, who died at the age of 96, wrote a series of reviews about Kazan in magazines, followed by the publication of a book titled “Watanabe Kazan” in English in 2006 and in Japanese the following year. However, his encounter with Kazan goes back half a century earlier.

According to Keene’s book, his interest traced back to two illustrations in “The Western World and Japan,” published in 1949 by the British diplomat and historian George Sansom. One of the illustrations, drawn by Kazan, depicted Kazan with his hands tied behind his back while being interrogated by two samurai. Keene wrote that the work showed how harshly Kazan had been treated after his arrest for being too partial to the West.

The book’s descriptions are arranged alongside the works by Kazan and are notated with Keene’s opinions. For example, next to the “Isso-hyakutai Zu” drawings that depict the lives of Edo people, including a goldfish merchant, Keene praises the work, saying that he could think of no other pieces that so vividly and effectively illustrate the lives of the people in the capital in that era.

“I think Keene-san was very sympathetic toward Kazan,” said Yosuke Kimura, a curator. Kimura quotes Junichiro Tanizaki, an iconic writer from the late Meiji (1868-1912) into the Showa (1926-89) eras, who wrote that Keene studied and introduced Japanese literature with a firm foundation and knowledge of Western civilization.

“Kazan was an honor student who was educated in Confucianism and studied with some of the leading Confucian scholars of his time. With this as his base, he started studying Western knowledge,” Kimura said. “I think Keene-san saw himself in Kazan.”

For more information, visit taharamuseum.gr.jp.