Page 54 - BSAM 2018 Q2

Top left;. Interior view of Sansui-en, Kasahara’s stone shop in Tokyo.
Top right; Kasahara kept a series of notebooks in his research on Suiseki. He was a wealth of information about Japanese stone appreciation and he experienced firsthand the boom in stone appreciation
in the later half of the 1900s. He was acquainted with all of the leading personalities in Japanese Suiseki.
Middle; Kasahara talking
with Igor Carino from Italy with Hiromi Nakaoji serving
as translator. Kasahara enjoyed meeting with stone enthusiasts and talking about Japanese Suiseki. He would hold a stone and slowly turn it in his hands as he evaluated its qualities.
who said that things incomplete (what is incomplete) reminds of us of true beauty. In more recent years, the overall quality of stones displays at the major exhibi- tions continued to improve.
According to Kasahara, the diverse types of stones that were displayed in the 1960s included man-made, partially enhanced, and polished stones. He noted that some of the organizers of the exhibitions began to advocate the use of only natural stones and that bottom-cut stones should be eliminated at the time of judging. If this was followed, then there would be a shortage of good stones for display. Thus, bottom cut and other altered stones including polished ones were accepted in NSA exhibitions. Some of the exhibit organizers promoted modifying bottom cut stones to make them smooth, to look more natural and to avoid sharp edges. He noted that there was a debate among collectors about displaying both altered stones with completed natural ones. Some individuals did not want to display their natural stones together with enhanced stones. Kasahara said that in today’s exhibi- tions, the organizers allow people to show man-made, enhanced and natural stones together. Although, there is a desire to displays stones that appear natural.
Another trend Kasahara noticed was the more prevalent use of daiza in western Japan at the beginning of Showa era in 1929; while suibans were used more frequently in eastern Japan. He noticed that people in western Japan began to use suibans more often. Suibans were used by people with more experience and knowledge of Suiseki. He noted that use of a suiban was more difficult to display correctly than to display a stone in a hand carved wood daiza. In his Notes on Suiseki, Kasahara wrote “There are many ways of displaying stones, and naturally, the display is different from one person to another. There is no need to follow one way to display stones.”
Early in his career, he experienced the rapid growth of the number of people actively involved in Suiseki, the peak years of popularity, and then in the slow but steady decline in membership in the 1990s and beyond. Despite this, he remained optimistic about the future of Suiseki in Japan. He eagerly supported the efforts the new NSA leadership—Kobayashi Kunio and Morimae Seiji—in their efforts to establish the new Japan Suiseki Exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in 2014. He felt that the original Suiseki hobby will have a resurgence. Kasahara encouraged his faithful customers to participated in this new higher profile exhibition in an established art museum.
Kasahara Manabu passed away suddenly in early October, 2017 before this article was completed. While his presence in his shop, at the Meihenten and the Japan Suiseki Exhibitions will be sorely missed, the legacy he left behind, a re-structured NSA and many well informed and passionate stone collectors, will continue on.
52 | BCI | April/May/June 2018