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The exhibition “Jūra-Yura” of Kodo Chijiiwa photographs at the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art in Kaunas (Lithuania) took place for just a few months, from 29 June to 17 September 2023 and featured Kodo Chijiiwa, a contemporary Japanease photographer, presented to the Lithuanian audience for the first time.

Kodo Chijiiwa was born in 1976, in Saga (Japan). In 2008, after having worked as an assistant of Iris Janke, Kodo held his first solo exhibition and worked as a freelance photographer in Berlin. Since then, he has participated in various exhibitions of photographic art, and has also established Yakushima Photography Festival (YPF) together with a French photographer Antonin Borgeaud as a co-founder, and Cleo Charuet as an art director in 2015.

The idea and initiative of the project came from Yolita René-Šegždaitė, an independent curator, who is engaged in different European exhibition projects, mainly in France. She noticed the works of Kodo Chijiiwa in the exhibition in France and took an interest in his creative resemblance to M. K. Čiurlionis (1875–1911), one of Lithuania’s most famous artists. That is why it was particularly important to hold an exhibition in the museum that showcases the creative legacy of M. K. Čiurlionis, which is highly significant for the cultural identity of Lithuania.

Despite the fact that Kodo Chijiiwa and M. K. Čiurlionis are separated by more than a century and belong to different cultures, they share a similar sense of nature and the same sea topic. This exhibition was an opportunity to demonstrate a sensitive dialogue between a famous Lithuanian artist and a contemporary Japanese photographer and different countries through the focus on the sea and the water as a very important natural element at various levels and with deep symbolic meaning. This dialogue between the artists and the countries was also highlighted by the use of homonyms in two languages in the title of the exhibition.

This project and exhibition not only presented an interesting and valuable work of a contemporary Japanese photographic artist, but also revealed cultural similarities between Lithuania and Japan, their attitude and close relationship with nature. The views from a remote island covered with ancient cedar-tree forests provided opportunities to communicate about Yakushima Island’s nature heritage, to transmit knowledge about its environment in Lithuania and more widely in Europe.

Kodo Chijiiwa’s 45 meditative photographs, seascapes from the shores of Yakushima Island, a video specially prepared by the artist featuring coastal views of Yakushima Island, with sounds of the island recorded on a soundtrack – the sound of the rain, the crashing waves, the sound of the water, the wind, showing the elements of Yakushima Island’s nature: cedar-tree sprig, coral, fern sprig, granite rock and even a smell of Yakushima cedar from a diffuser created a mesmerizing narrative and a distinctive journey along the remote Japanese island, but at the same time, it was an inner journey of a human being through the close states of nature, the recognizable experience. The visual material of the exhibition was supplemented not only by the curator’s Yolita René-Šegždaitė texts, the artist’s thoughts, but also by insightful quotes about the sea by M. K. Čiurlionis, Yukio Mishima and Hojoki.

Exhibition was opened by the speech of his excellence Tetsu Ozaki, the Ambassador of Japan in Lithuania. On the opening day of the exhibition, artist Kodo Chijiiwa and curator Yolita René-Šegždaitė made several special tours for the Ambassador of Japan in Lithuania and other guests attending the event. For those interested in photography and professionals, it was a valuable experience to hear the artist himself reviewing his works and explaining the specifics of creative process and from a technical point of view.

Within a few months, the exhibition was visited by 19,396 visitors and received very positive responses on social media, moreover, people commented on the therapeutic relaxing effect of the exhibition, the images, the sound, the theme of the exhibition seemed to accelerate a deeper sense of self. During a special event – an art therapy session for senior people at the exhibition, people were inspired not only to create the drawings but also tried Japanese haiku.

As an accompaniment to the exhibition, a catalogue has been published. It presents in detail and compares the symbols of visual motifs of the works, recognizable in the works of both Kodo Chijiiwa and M. K. Čiurlionis, as well as the similarities in the conception of these motifs in Japan and Lithuania. The catalogue has been prepared in three languages – Lithuanian, English and Japanese, which will, of course, add to the accessibility of this exhibition.

The artist donated several photographs to museum, contributing to the collection of photographs and the eastern art at National M. K. Čiurlionis Museum Art, in a gesture that establishes the true potential for future projects.

On the one hand, this project was carried out as a separate project, but it will surely continue a long-standing cooperation between the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art and Japanese artists, which started since the restoration of Lithuania’s independence, by introducing Japanese art and culture to Lithuania, mostly contemporary Japanese art, often in joint exhibitions, combining Japanese and Lithuanian works. This time the project was thus the embodiment of a beautiful cooperation between different countries and revealed the connections which lie beyond the images, distances or cultural boundaries, which hopefully will continue with new presentations of Japanese artists in Kaunas.