Image: Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama
The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama will present ‘Shinji Yamamuro’s Potato Prints〈Kamakura Natural History〉 / Collection: In Everyday Life’ at its Kamakura Annex from 30 May to 27 September 2026. The exhibition will bring together more than five decades of potato-print works by Shinji Yamamuro with a selection from the museum’s collection focused on familiar subjects and the experience of everyday life.
Born in Yokohama in 1939 and now based in Kamakura, Yamamuro began making woodcuts while a student and encountered potato-printing in the 1970s. He has continued to develop the technique independently for more than 50 years. Because a potato block is a perishable object that can be used for only several hours, his prints are built up through careful layering. Plants, insects and birds encountered in Kamakura form the subject matter of many of the works.
The Yamamuro presentation takes its theme from Jules Renard’s ‘Natural History’, first published in 1896, and includes works from the artist’s ‘Kamakura Natural History’ series. The exhibition will also show stamp-like prints, handwritten illustrated books, and books for which Yamamuro was responsible for binding, illustration or design. His activity extends into bookmaking and collaborations with poets and writers, including work produced under the name Shinjusan Kobo.
A central feature will be ‘The Words of Fukumi Shimura: Hyakuyōbako’, a new work comprising 100 pieces created in 2026. The work draws on writing by Fukumi Shimura, the textile artist and essayist born in 1924, with words and images printed by Yamamuro on 10-centimetre-square sheets of paper. Some of the sheets incorporate threads and fabric fragments provided by Shimura. The museum describes the series as a meeting of Yamamuro’s potato prints with Shimura’s words, thread and cloth.
The accompanying collection display, ‘In Everyday Life’, will include works by Seiji Chokai, who lived from 1902 to 1972, and Saburo Aso, who lived from 1913 to 2000. Their sketches and drawings address subjects including family and flowers. Aso’s ‘Pansies’ (1944), an oil painting on board from the museum’s collection, is among the works identified for the presentation. The collection section is intended to be viewed alongside Yamamuro’s prints as a group of works grounded in close observation of ordinary things.
The museum will also hold three potato-print workshops, led by Yamamuro, at the Kamakura Annex Café on 24 June, 21 July and 23 September, each from 2 to 4 p.m. Each workshop will involve making a potato block and experimenting with multicolour printing; places are limited to 10 and advance registration is required. Gallery talks by the museum’s curators are scheduled for 11 August and 5 September, from 2 to 2:30 p.m., in the Kamakura Annex exhibition room. The exhibition runs daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with admission until 4:30 p.m., and is closed on Mondays except 20 July and 21 September.
