"Digital Archive of Kampo Arai's Diary and Sketches in India" is now open to the public.

"Digital Archive of Kampo Arai's Diary and Sketches in India" (https://kampo.aa-ken.jp/) is now open to the public.

Japanese painter Arai Kampo stayed in India for a year and a half from late 1916 at the invitation of Rabindranath Tagore. This digital archive reproduces his India diary and links it with 870 sketches, drawings, postcards with illustrations, and related materials. It was compiled as a collaborative research project with Mr. Kawai Tsutomu, Secretary General of the Kampo Tagore Society, with related materials provided by the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts and the Arai Kampo Memorial Museum, Sakura City Museum, and supported by 2024 IRC project of the ILCAA and Core Project-Anthropology. We hope that, through the exchange between Kampo and Indian artists, you will gain a deeper appreciation of the pre-war cultural interactions between India and Japan, as well as the passion that fueled the Indian art movement during the British colonial period.