Official
Café Musée H (Cafe Muse Ash)
Muse Yozo Hamaguchi / Yamasa Collection
I received a marble soy sauce ice set at Café Musée H (Cafe Musée Ash) in Kaki shell-cho, Chuo-ku.
Café Musée H (Cafe Musée Ash) is a small cafe attached to the Musé Yozo Hamaguchi Yamasa Collection, a private museum that introduces the works of copperplate painter Yozo Hamaguchi.
As you can see from the name of the museum, Yamasa soy sauce is used for the soy sauce ice we received this time.
Yamasa Soy Sauce Co., Ltd.'s black honey-style soy sauce is mixed with vanilla ice cream, and has a rich flavor and mellow taste. It was delicious with seasonal ice sakura ice and fragrant espresso.
When you enter the museum, you can get a discount of 150 yen.
Muse Yozo Hamaguchi / Yamasa Collection
This museum stores and displays the works of Yozo Hamaguchi, and was opened by Yamasa Soy Sauce Co., Ltd. in November 1998.
We talked to Shimosawa Nozomi, assistant curator of the museum and public relations.
Yozo Hamaguchi is a printmaker who pioneered a unique copperplate engraving technique called color mezotint, and is listed as a "pioneer of color mezotint" in the encyclopedia "Encyclopedia Britannica" as a "pioneer of color mezotint". This is a method of damaging a flat copper plate like a mirror horizontally and horizontally to create a cloth-like ground. Contrary to woodblock prints, when printing with a press, the damaged area will be colored. In order to express velvet-like black, the copper plate must be finely chopped over a long distance until the surface has smooth irregularities on the entire surface.
Mezotint was originally a printing technology used to replicate oil paintings in West. When photography technology was invented in the 19th century, it almost faded, but in the 20th century, it is now fascinated by this black, and printmakers revive it as an artistic expression. One of them is Yozo Hamaguchi. He developed a color mesotint technique that creates and prints four-color plates, red, blue, yellow, and black, without getting tired of the monochrome world. "
Yozo Hamaguchi was founded for 360 years and was born as the third son of Gihei Hamaguchi, the 10th president of Yamasa soy sauce. Father Gibei was a Nanga collector, who also studied Nanga himself. Looking back, the 5th generation Hamaguchi Iho was a southern painter who was active in the late Edo period, and the Hamaguchi family was also a family that produced many people who excelled in art. In addition, the place where this museum and the cafe are located is the Hakozaki JCT of the Metropolitan Expressway in front of you, but before it was reclaimed for the construction of the expressway, the Hakozaki River flows and unloads goods (Kakigara Riverside) It is said that it was a warehouse of Yamasa soy sauce on the riverbank) and is being renovated and used.
As a remnant of the warehouse, there is an iron ramp between the museum and the cafe, but it was placed to make it easier for transportation equipment to pass, and the spiral staircase from the first floor of gallery space to the basement was previously unloaded at this position, and the architect Edward Suzuki designed it based on his history as a warehouse.
It is a wonderful place where you can relax a little while visiting Suitengu, having dinner and meeting at the Royal Park Hotel, and returning from T-CAT.
Currently, we are holding an exhibition of two people entitled "Yozo Hamaguchi, Bruno Matton Exhibition: One Door". Events and workshops will be held in conjunction with the exhibition.
