These Powerful Paintings Show Why van Gogh Fell in Love With Japan—and Why Japan Fell in Love With van Gogh
A new exhibition examines how the Dutch artist drew inspiration from Japanese art. It also explores how he influenced 20th- and 21st-century Japanese painters and photographers
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A Japanese museum is hosting its first-ever exhibition dedicated to Vincent van Gogh, which explores the Dutch painter’s influence on Japanese artists. Titled “A Renewal of Passion: The Impact of van Gogh,” the show also spotlights how Japanese art inspired van Gogh during his lifetime.
Located some 60 miles west of Tokyo, the Pola Museum of Art has three original van Gogh oil paintings in its collections—more than any other Japanese museum, reports the Art Newspaper’s Martin Bailey. All three were painted in France between 1888 and 1890: The Gleize Bridge Over the Vigueirat Canal, Clumps of Grass and Flower Vase With Thistles.
The exhibition also includes three additional van Gogh paintings that are on loan from other Japanese collections, including the Morohashi Museum of Modern Art’s Peasant Woman (1885).
Born in the Netherlands in 1853, van Gogh spent his early career working for an art dealer before devoting his life to painting in 1880. He first encountered Japanese ukiyo-e prints—colorful woodblock prints like The Great Wave (1831)—while working in Antwerp in 1885, according to the New York Times’ Nina Siegal. But the following year, he moved to Paris, where he began developing his signature Post-Impressionist style that would make him famous. During those years, Japanese art also became a bigger influence on his style.
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“Very few artists in the Netherlands studied Japanese art,” per the Van Gogh Museum. “In Paris, by contrast, it was all the rage. So it was there that Vincent discovered the impact Japanese art was having on Europe, when he decided to modernize his own art.”
Soon after he settled in the city, van Gogh purchased more than 600 Japanese woodcut prints from the German art dealer Siegfried Bing. After unsuccessfully trying to resell the prints, he hung them on the walls of his studios.
“It’s hard to imagine what his works would have looked like without this source of inspiration,” Nienke Bakker, who co-curated an exhibition on van Gogh’s Japanese influences in 2018, told the Times. “It really helped him to find the style that we all know.”
Artistic inspiration went both ways. By the 1910s—several decades after van Gogh died by suicide in 1890—Japanese artists and writers found an appreciation for the Dutch painter, per the Art Newspaper.
Since Japan’s late Meiji era (1868-1912), van Gogh’s “intensely personal and passionate approach to art, and unwavering dedication of his life to it, have deeply moved those involved in the arts and left an impact on many areas of culture and society,” according to a statement from the Pola Museum.
One of the early Japanese artists to find inspiration in van Gogh’s work was Kishida Ryusei. The exhibition features Kishida’s 1912 self-portrait, which “[echoes] van Gogh’s energetic brushwork and strong coloring,” per the Art Newspaper. Another featured work, Japanese painter Nakamura Tsune’s Sunflowers (1923), is a homage to one of the Dutch artist’s most famous floral subjects.
Also on display is a 1923 painting by Japanese artist Maeta Kanji depicting the headstones of van Gogh and his brother, Theo, which stand side by side in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. Maeta traveled to Europe to paint the graves from life./https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/09/8b/098bf430-7d0c-4c12-979b-82ad637d1527/screenshot_2025-06-10_at_105329am.jpeg)
The exhibition also spotlights contemporary Japanese artists, such as painter Kuwakubo Toru. Like van Gogh, Kuwakubo uses impasto, a technique involving thickly laid oil paints. His 2015 piece Vincent Willem van Gogh’s Studio displays a city waterfront scattered with van Gogh artworks.
Meanwhile, photographer Morimura Yasumasa creates self-portraits that merge his own face with historical images and iconic paintings. Morimura’s first piece in this series, made in 1985, was an interpretation of van Gogh’s Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear and Pipe (1889). The Dutch artist painted the original after cutting off part of his own ear during a period of mental illness.
After van Gogh’s mental health deteriorated, his passion for Japan decreased. “The nature of his admiration had changed,” Bakker told the Times. “It has become integrated into his style, but it’s no longer his artistic model.”
“A Renewal of Passion: The Impact of van Gogh” is on view at the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, Japan, through November 30, 2025.
