There are times when I suddenly feel like drawing a dragon.

"...There aren't any good dragons around these days."
My murmur was overheard

"Well then, let's draw dragons and hold a 'Dragon Exhibition'!"
The master opened my oldest drawer again.

So, let's visit our dear dragons.
Starting with Nikko, we went to Kyoto, Nara, Shikoku, Kyushu, Yamaguchi, Okayama, Gifu, and so on.
Dragon Pilgrimage Journey

Returning to childhood, dreams expand and unravel
I enjoyed playing with the dragon for the first time in a while.

Ken Matsubara

Matsubara Ken has followed the path of a painter under the tutelage of Inoue Mitsutsuna.
He paints a mixture of concrete and abstract elements, and his three-dimensional expressions inspired by sound have long been his original style.

In 2022, his representative work, the 12-panel folding screen "Two Rivers, White Road, Chaos," which was exhibited at the Ippodo New York exhibition, was added to the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
The museum boasts one of the largest collections of Japanese art in the United States, and in September 2023 it will be hosting a special exhibition titled "Chaos," featuring only the "Nikawa Shirado Screen." Matsubara Ken has earned worldwide recognition as a painter.

He says that as a child he would often walk alone along mountain paths to see the stone statue of Acala on Mt. Oiwayama.
When I was told that the stone Buddha was a close friend of the young boy Kenbo, I felt like I understood the religious expression, deep sensitivity and profound depth of Matsubara Ken's paintings.

Matsubara Ken had been painting abstract paintings for a long time, but after being asked by Hayashiya Seizo to paint Mount Fuji, he began to paint figurative paintings as well.
The concrete representations of Mount Fuji, the pine trees, and the wisteria are also beautiful and profound.
Since the zodiac sign for Reiwa 6 is the dragon, I asked him to draw a dragon two years ago.
I didn't know that when the young boy Kenbo had white paper he would just draw dragons.

Dragons are imaginary creatures that were introduced from China in ancient times and appear in Japanese mythology, Buddhism, and folk tales, and many legends have been passed down about them.
Dragons, which live in the water and fly freely in the sky, are the object of human admiration, and because they appear with thunder and lightning and bring heavy rain, they are also connected to rain-making beliefs.

Matsubara Ken says he saw a dragon at Shomyo Falls in winter.
After Ippodo decided on this project, he traveled all over Japan in search of paintings and sculptures of dragons for temples, and the magnificent dragon painted by Matsubara Ken will appear in Ginza.
And in the near future, the dragon he paints will surely fly across the ceiling of a famous temple's lecture hall.
It will definitely come. It will definitely come.

◇ Inoue Mitsutsuna (1899-1981): Painter. His fusion of Western and Eastern styles was recognized by Isamu Noguchi, Robert Oppenheimer, Ben Shahn, and others.