Image: Okura Museum of Art, Tokyo
Okura Museum of Art in Tokyo has presented a catalogue for ‘Koishi, kogareta Indo sôshoku’, an exhibition devoted to Indian textiles known in Japan by the name sarasa. The museum’s notice says the exhibition ran from 8 August to 22 October 2023 and focused on cloth from India that spread to many countries, introducing the appeal of Indian textiles in different regional forms.
The museum describes the exhibition as a collection show assembled from the holdings of Hatanaka Mitsuyoshi, identified in the notice as both a painter and a researcher of Indian art. The catalogue is priced at 2,300 yen, including tax. The announcement frames the project as an opportunity to look closely at a textile tradition that circulated widely beyond its place of origin and developed varied local expressions.
Indian textiles have long occupied a significant place in the histories of trade, fashion and collecting, and the term sarasa has been used in Japan for patterned imported cloth. The Okura Museum of Art’s exhibition title, rendered in Japanese as ‘Koishi, kogareta Indo sôshoku’, signals an emphasis on fascination and longing, while the accompanying text points to the breadth of the material on view rather than a single type of fabric or design.
According to the museum’s post, the exhibition introduced the charms of Indian cloth by region, suggesting that the display traced differences across local textile traditions rather than treating Indian fabric as a uniform category. The source material does not provide a fuller checklist of objects, curatorial structure or interpretive sections, but it makes clear that the show was built around Hatanaka’s collection and presented as a survey of Indian dyeing and weaving traditions.
Okura Museum of Art, known in Japanese as Okura Shukokan, is based in Tokyo. In this instance, the museum’s communication is centered on the publication of the exhibition catalogue, which serves both as a record of the 2023 presentation and as a way to extend access to the material after the exhibition period ended on 22 October 2023.
The notice gives only the essential exhibition details: ‘Koishi, kogareta Indo sôshoku’ ran from 8 August to 22 October 2023 at Okura Museum of Art in Tokyo, and the related catalogue is available for 2,300 yen.
