A Closer Look
After Hokusai:
A cloisonné-enamel panel by Kawade Shibataro (1856-1921) for the Ando Jubei company, depicting Raijin, the God of Thunder & Lightning, very likely exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1900

This massive and impressively-crafted panel—based on an ink painting by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)—showcases the superlative standards achieved at the Ando Jubei enamel workshop in Nagoya during Kawade Shibataro’s tenure as chief craftsman, says Suzannah Yip, Head of Japanese Art in London.
Take a closer look at this exceptional artwork, offered in Fine Japanese Art on 16 May at Bonhams New Bond Street.
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The Ando Jubei workshop
From 1891, Ando’s pieces became increasingly highly regarded at the Imperial household. By the end of the decade, the workshop successfully explored radically innovative techniques like the musen (‘wireless’) method pioneered by Namikawa Sosuke.
Under Kawade’s guidance, the workshop flourished, introducing new techniques like moriage, plique-à-jour, and repoussé, alongside an expanded palette of vibrant colours, and gained international recognition through extensive exhibitions worldwide.
After a Hokusai masterpiece
In a departure from more conventional glossy finishes, the workshop’s chief craftsman Kawade opted for a matt enamel appearance for this remarkable exhibition-quality hanging panel (left), perhaps to echo the atmospheric quality of Hokusai’s original ink painting which was the source for this panel’s design (right).
The celebrated Hokusai painting was purchased by the illustrious collector Charles Lang Freer (1814-1919) from Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908), the influential Bostonian scholar and collector, and later bequeathed to the Freer Gallery of Art in 1920.

Kawade pushed the boundaries of a markedly different medium to demonstrate that his faithful enamelled reproduction could also achieve the same kind of powerful visual impact as Hokusai’s painted masterpiece.
He adeptly captures the Thunder God’s muscular physique, facial expression—blending weariness with whimsy—and skilfully replicates the dark cloud engulfing the deity— spreading and curling as it rains splashes of black ink.
Very likely exhibited at the Paris Exhibition, 1900
The unique combination of the panel’s sheer size, exceptional execution, deliberate Hokusai imagery, contemporaneous elaborately-carved frame, and not least the names of both Ando and Kawade painted on the back, strongly suggest that this is indeed the same ‘Spirit of Thunder’ panel by Kawade Shibataro which was exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1900.
“Our two illustrations will serve, we venture to hope, to show the wonderful diversity of treatment of which the great Japanese artist Kawadé is capable. It is difficult to realise that the two works are by the same hand. The ‘Landscape with figures’ illustrated above, has all the serenity and quite beauty of one of the works of our great English landscape painters. But who have we to give us such a conception as that of the ‘Spirit of Thunder’, by the same artist?”