What surprises me in Japan is this!

It is a fact that Japan is a close neighbor. It took off from Beijing and landed in Osaka before it was hot.

Although they are close neighbors, it took me a long time to come here, mainly because I vaguely realized that Japan and China had a very unpleasant past after all, and they never admitted their mistakes. But every time I listen to a friend who has been to Japan, I get rave reviews. My daughter didn't have many opportunities to travel with us this time. I wanted to go to Japan, which finally made my two-week trip to Japan.

I'm not worried about a two-week trip at all. My wife and daughter planned all this. I have made up my mind about everything from plane tickets to hotels to where to go every day. I am a dedicated experiencer. The experience of these two weeks greatly exceeded my expectations, leaving me a deep impression, even a little surprised.

However, what surprised me most in Japan was not the toilet lid and rice cooker, but its museum culture, which I felt most deeply when I saw the exhibition in Tokyo.

I have been to many exhibition halls and art galleries all over the world, and I have also visited special exhibitions, but I have never seen a special exhibition like Tokyo. Their careful planning and ingenious layout surprised me, even amazed me!

During a few days in Tokyo, we saw the special exhibition "Northern Zhai and Western Paintings" at the Western Art Museum. I saw the special exhibition "Van Gogh and Japan" in Tokyo Art Museum. I saw the exhibition Tadao Ando: Challenge in the New National Art Museum, and everything amazed me.

Let's start with the North House and the Western Art Exhibition. Kitazawa is a very famous painter in Japan. He has a way of drawing waves, which is his original creation and his signature, and is well-known in Japan. He also drew some sketches of Japanese landscape figures. In Japan, I feel that he should be equivalent to Qi Baishi's well-known position in China.

If it is an exhibition of Qi Baishi's paintings, everyone can imagine what it looks like. It is enough to take out the painting of the old man Baishi and explain the creative background with some words.

But this exhibition in Beizhai is completely different. His paintings are the main line, and some elements are extracted from the paintings, and the paintings of western artists are exhibited together with the works of Beizhai. In order to make it easy for the audience to identify, the paintings of the North House are represented by blue signs, and the paintings of western painters are represented by white signs, which are clear at a glance.

The choice of contrast between eastern and western paintings is also quite interesting. For example, this may be a white painting of the North House. These Japanese men wear crotch cloth background with their hands at their waist. The clothes next to it are degas's masterpiece. Several ballerinas, wearing dance skirts, with their skirts spread out and their bodies slightly tilted, looked like Japanese men wearing crotch cloth when they saw their backs and their hands behind their waists. Seeing this, visitors can't help but smile and secretly admire the planner's high level and wide knowledge!

In this way, looking at the past with a pair of suihiji, the contrast between Japanese culture and western culture is presented to the visitors interestingly.

This exhibition seems to make Beizhai shoulder the heavy responsibility of comparing eastern and western art with oriental painting school. Western paintings used for comparison are all from art galleries or private goods all over the world, while western authors are famous, including Monet, Van Gogh and Degas. This is a masterpiece of the Western Art Museum. Although the name of the museum is western, the exhibition is also Japanese!

I watched the special exhibition of Van Gogh and Japan in Tokyo Art Museum, and learned anecdotes about Van Gogh that I didn't know before.

I never thought that Van Gogh, a Dutch artist who was crazy about the world, had such a deep relationship with Japan. In the last period of his life, he lived in France, but he was greatly influenced by the Japanese ukiyo-e painting style, and even almost completely copied a picture of "based on flowers" in the May Japanese album 1886 of Paris Pictorial. It depicts the image of a female geisha wearing a Japanese kimono and many thick hairpins. Ironically, the orientation of Van Gogh's paintings is completely opposite to that of the original works of Japanese masters. Through audio navigation, I know that Paris Pictorial has mirrored this painting when it was printed in Japanese, so Van Gogh's painting was based on Paris Pictorial, and Paris Pictorial also mirrored the original. The origin of Van Gogh and Japanese painting can be seen.

This exhibition is not only Van Gogh's paintings, but also the corresponding Japanese Ukiyo-e paintings, showing the influence of Japanese art on Van Gogh. The exhibition also introduces Van Gogh's life experiences in recent years, including his treatment after he went crazy. Also let me know that when Van Gogh moved to arles, a small town in arles, he felt that arles was just like Japanese. He hopes to establish an artist alliance there, where artists live together like family members and help each other. He found an artistic confidant, the famous Gauguin, who lived alone. This is the great friendship of "two lunatics" commented by later generations. This introduction helped me understand the film beloved van Gogh that I just watched recently.

After watching the exhibition, I did some extended reading. It turns out that van Gogh's reputation is abroad and has something to do with Japan. Historically, some Japanese buyers bought Van Gogh's works in the international market at amazing prices. Van Gogh's painting style was influenced by Japanese painting, but it became a whole, and later it influenced many Japanese artists in turn, which is really inextricably linked with Japan.

The third special exhibition we saw in Tokyo was the architectural design exhibition. If I hadn't experienced it personally, I would never have imagined an architectural design exhibition like this.

Tadao Ando is the name of this designer. After the exhibition, I think he is really a designer worthy of Japanese pride.

This designer is still alive now, and he is over 70 years old. His most proud design and production are three churches, namely the church of light, the church of water and the church of forest. Among them, the church of light left a deep impression on me in particular. He himself should be very satisfied with this work, so he used it as the background of the whole exhibition poster.

The church of light is because of a clever design. He made a cross with light. It is the outdoor light that enters the church through the gap between four square concrete blocks, which makes people in the church feel the magic of the light pen and depicts the suffering and grand spirit of Jesus.

This is also the largest exhibition. The design of the church of light is completely in accordance with the original ratio of one to one, and it is built outside the exhibition hall with the same cement material, so that we can feel his ingenuity when we are not in Osaka.

The exhibition of this church of light is in the middle of the whole exhibition, not at the beginning. To be honest, people like me didn't know anything about Ando before. When I first saw the exhibition, I was a little confused.

Is this person so powerful? What special exhibition is there to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the opening of the New National Art Museum? This doubt also comes from the planning of the exhibition. At first, he talked about the house he designed.

The house he designed for his guests is not very comfortable and convenient to live in, because his idea is that human beings must still get in touch with nature in their lives. So the house is very inconvenient from the point of view of living. From the living room to the living room, you have to pass an open-air patio.

The guest asked him, "What if it's cold?"

Ando would say, "Then put on more clothes."

The guest asked again, "What if it rains often?"

Ando added, "Then you have to take an umbrella!"

These are all the things I learned during my audio tour in China, which can especially help me, a foreigner, to understand the design ideas of this Japanese designer.

Looking at it, I gradually feel that Ando is a very powerful designer.

He has many masterpieces all over the world. Projects under construction, including the ruins of the Paris Stock Exchange Center and the museum to be rebuilt; The customs building in Venice, Italy, will be renovated and revived after being abandoned 150 years, and the task has also been given to him. And the genius museum he built in Beijing, and so on. He is really a world-class design master.

In fact, during my two-week trip, I visited many museums besides three special exhibitions in Tokyo. I visited the Chinese Character Museum in Kyoto, and saw the exhibitions of Nara National Museum and County Museum in Nara, which was also quite good.

It is easy to understand that people have to queue up to see the exhibition, but in the process of watching the exhibition, I was deeply impressed by the sight of people queuing.

Before I went to Japan, I heard that the order in Japan was particularly good. A friend who has lived in New Zealand for a long time said that he took his children to Japan. It turns out that children are very naughty and honest when they see the order in Japan.

As far as I can see, in fact, the phenomenon of queuing can be seen everywhere. The most common phenomenon is queuing outside restaurants, which is no special difference from our country, but it is very new for me to watch an exhibition and be willing to queue for a long time.

That day in Ueno Park, we were going to see an exhibition. After passing through a garden green space in the center of the park, I saw many people waiting in line. On closer inspection, the opposite direction is an art gallery. I'm curious about what exhibition can attract so many people to queue up for a close look. It's a horror art exhibition.

I don't know what the big move is, but there are so many people waiting in line anyway. As a courageous person, I quickly walked from the head to the end of the queue, which actually took more than three minutes. At the end of the line, there was a staff member holding a big sign with a big number, 200. It means that it takes 200 minutes from the end of the queue to the ticket office where tickets can be bought, which is more than three hours.

It's winter in Tokyo. It's not cold, but 3 degrees is not warm. In the cold air, it takes more than three hours to queue up and it's almost 4 pm to buy tickets, but there are still so many people waiting in line and there is no anxious expression on their faces. It seems that it is normal to wait in line for such a long time to see an exhibition.

I don't know if such a queue can be alleviated by better booking, but such a long queue does let me see the unique scenery of Japan, probably because of the lack of resources in the island country, and I have to accept and wait all my life.

Let's go back to the exhibition! One of the shocking sources of Japanese special exhibitions is comparison. The object of comparison is the domestic special exhibition I have seen.

I just came back from Japan and found that the China Art Museum is holding a special exhibition called "Beauty in a New Era". There are so many good works, and they are all well-known works, such as Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, Wu Guanzhong, Wu Changshuo, Li Keran and so on. This fascinates me. Almost fifty years old, it's the first time I've seen the masterpieces of so many famous teachers in China!

The work is really good. I don't know if it was planned. Maybe I just finished watching the exhibition in Japan, but I think this exhibition is a bit sloppy. Everyone's masterpieces are simply and rudely piled on the wall without any mechanism. Apart from the biographies of every famous artist, there is not even any introduction about every work, and there is no audio tour of the whole process. You know, what role does an audio guide have for a foreigner to understand the art of China! I remember. I've been talking about confidence recently. Cultural and artistic self-confidence may be reflected in the performance of "you don't understand me, you deserve it".

Of course, this special exhibition of China Art Exhibition has one advantage compared with Japanese exhibitions, that is, there is no admission fee. However, if it's just a short board of ticket revenue, I'd rather collect some tickets for our special exhibition in China Art Museum and make it as shocking as the Japanese art exhibition!

Unexpectedly, what impressed me most in Japan was not the food, the scenery, the rice cooker or even the toilet lid, but the special exhibition of the art museum. This is quite different from my previous expectations, but after the shock, I gained a lot. Japan's crimes against China have not diminished in my mind, but this trip to Japan has made me see a Japan that I never expected and surprised me through my own eyes.