Image: Museum of Modern Art, Saitama
The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama has opened an English page for its special exhibition ‘Komura Settai in Perspective: A Secret Sense of Beauty,’ which runs from July 11 to September 23, 2026. The museum describes the project as a survey of book design, illustration, stage design and original paintings by Settai Komura, presenting what it calls a quiet, refined world of beauty.
The exhibition is organized at MOMAS in Saitama, Japan, and is structured around Komura’s wide-ranging creative activity. According to the museum, it is divided into eight chapters and traces roughly 25 years of his career. The show brings together approximately 700 works and archival materials, displayed in two rotations, with different selections in the first and second exhibition periods.
Among the featured works are ‘Nihonbashi,’ the book design for the Izumi Kyoka novel that the museum identifies as Komura’s debut as a book designer, as well as preparatory drawings and original illustrations for Kanji Kunieda’s novels ‘Osen’ and ‘Oden Jigoku.’ The museum notes that original illustrations for the serialized newspaper novels ‘Sankai Hyobanki’ and ‘Edo Yakusha’ are also included, and says the whereabouts of these works were only identified in recent years. It adds that these pieces are being shown outside their home institutions for the first time in this exhibition.
The display also places Komura within the artistic and literary circles that shaped his work. Materials related to Izumi Kyoka appear alongside works by artists and writers who admired him, including Kiyokata Kaburaki and Ton Satomi. The exhibition further includes works by Eikyu Matsuoka, whose art the museum says strongly influenced Komura’s nihonga, as well as ‘Junikagetsu Zu Renpuku’ and ‘Kusamakura Emaki,’ collaborative works by Matsuoka and his pupils that are being shown for the first time in a solo exhibition devoted to Komura.
The museum says the exhibition is intended to be the largest presentation of Komura’s work to date. It also highlights the breadth of his practice through examples of original paintings, book designs, original illustrations and materials related to stage design. Works shown in the first period, from July 11 to August 16, include ‘Green Willow,’ a 1924 painting on silk from the museum’s collection, and a 1934 stage-setting plan for ‘Keiko ōgi.’ The second period, from August 18 to September 23, includes ‘Begonia’ from around 1905, ‘Butterflies’ from 1925, and ‘Osen’ from around 1941.
The exhibition’s public schedule includes a film screening on August 9, lectures on August 16, August 30, September 5 and September 20, slide lectures by the curators on August 22 and August 29, and gallery talks on July 12, July 26, August 23 and September 6. The museum also lists ‘Museum College 2026: The World of Settai Komura,’ a public lecture series jointly organized with the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Saitama University. The exhibition catalogue, titled ‘Komura Settai in Perspective: A Secret Sense of Beauty,’ is available in the museum shop, with texts in Japanese and partly in English.
