John Lennon once visited the shop of an art dealer born in Yonezawa.
I had read something like this in a newspaper before. When I looked into it again, I found that the dealer was a man named Kimura Tosuke.
In this post, I write about Kimura Tosuke, who left Yonezawa for Tokyo and spent his life collecting the beauty of ordinary Japanese people, and about John Lennon's visit to his shop.
Kimura Tosuke, an art dealer born in Yonezawa
Kimura Tosuke was born in 1901 in Montomachi, Yonezawa. He left the Yonezawa commercial school, went to Tokyo with hopes of becoming a writer, and later turned to dealing in art.
In 1932 he founded his art business, Hagurodo, and in 1936 he opened its shop in Yushima, Tokyo. It began as a shop selling the simple folk crafts of the Tohoku region.
Kimura collected hand-painted ukiyo-e, Otsu-e folk paintings, doro-e, and Western-style paintings from the end of the Edo period to the early Meiji era. He was friends with many cultural figures, including Yanagi Soetsu and Yoshikawa Eiji.
He also supported unconventional painters before they were known, such as Hasegawa Toshiyuki and Saito Shinichi, and introduced the work of the calligrapher Miyajima Eishi, also from Yonezawa.
John and Yoko arrive at Hagurodo
In January 1971, John Lennon and Yoko Ono visited Japan privately. During that trip, they turned up unannounced at Hagurodo in Yushima and said they wanted to see ukiyo-e.
At first, Kimura did not know who his visitors were. He invited them to his home so they could take their time with his finest pieces. On that visit, John bought many works, including calligraphy by the haiku poets Matsuo Basho and Kobayashi Issa and the monk Ryokan, and Zen paintings by Hakuin and Sengai. He was especially moved by a poem strip inscribed with one of Basho’s haiku. Hagurodo’s profile on Art Index also notes that the couple bought works by Soga Shohaku.
Kimura later said that, in more than 50 years in the business, John was the first customer who understood what made his best pieces special without needing any explanation.
In Japan, he reflected, there is a tendency to value art favored by the nobility, but the art he dealt in was the art of ordinary people — and the person who responded to it most keenly was a former Beatle.
Tears at the Kabukiza
Hearing that the couple had some time to spare, Kimura took them to the Kabukiza theater.
He assumed it would be hard for a first-time visitor to follow, and was surprised to see tears running down John's cheeks, with Yoko gently wiping them away.
John could not have understood the story or the details, Kimura thought. What he saw in his own mind mattered more to him than what was happening on stage.
What reaches us without explanation
We may not understand the words or the story. Still, standing before a painting or a stage, our hearts are moved.
In the paintings by unnamed people that a Yonezawa-born dealer collected, John Lennon sensed something. I think something reached his heart before any explanation could.
When I paint, I also treasure what can be felt without explanation. I hope that when people see my paintings on their walls, they feel something before any words.
A man from Yamagata, where I live, went to Tokyo and kept looking at the beauty of Japan — and John Lennon met that eye. It is a story that makes me happy.
Related reading
- The Uesugi Yozan of Yonezawa whom President Kennedy admired
- Anniversary paintings — Yamagata ranks second in Japan for long-established companies
Sources
nippon.com (John Lennon at 80: Zen, Haiku, and His Ties to Japan, 2020)
Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties archive (Kimura Tosuke, Yearbook of Japanese Art 1993) — in Japanese
Yonezawa Nippo (Kimura Tosuke) — in Japanese
Art Index (Hagurodo Kimura Tosuke) — in Japanese
Bunshun Online (from Aoki Fukiko, John Lennon: Unmei o tadoru, 2025) — in Japanese
