Lectures
The Chester Beatty’s Nara ehon collection
Synopsis
This year, 2025, marks the 25th anniversary of the Chester Beatty’s relocation to Dublin Castle. The museum houses internationally recognised collections of manuscripts, rare books, and art collected by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875–1968) from Asia, Europe, and North Africa. Amongst the Japanese collection, illustrated manuscripts called Nara ehon have attracted Japanese art historians, scholars of Japanese literature and the public alike.
Nara ehon, a term coined in the Meiji era, refers to lavishly hand-painted literature either in booklet or scroll format produced from the 16th to 18th centuries. They cover a wealth of narratives from classics such as The Tales of Ise and The Tale of Genji to mediaeval fictions derived from legends, folklore, religious beliefs and librettos. Accompanying illustration enriches the story hand in hand with the scribed words. This lecture overviews the Chester Beatty’s Nara ehon collection and discusses the development of its collection.
Brief Biography
Dr Ai Fukunaga is the Curator of East Asian Collections at the Chester Beatty, Dublin. She studied art history at the International Christian University, Gakushuin University, and SOAS, University of London, where she received her Ph.D. in 2021. Her research interests include the transnational cultural exchange in creating, using, and collecting Asian objects in the pre-modern to modern periods. She previously served as the Ishibashi Foundation Assistant Curator for Japanese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she was involved in the reopening of the Japanese arts galleries and the exhibition Toshiko Takaezu: Shaping Abstraction (2023–2024). Her recent publications include ‘Toshiko Takaezu and Japanese Ceramics, 1955–56’, co-authored with Nonie Gadsden in Glenn Adamson et.al. eds, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within (Yale University Press, 2024), ‘A Historiography of Japanese Ceramics in Chinese Style: Japanese and Western Scholarship’ in Clare Pollard ed, Kindred Spirits: 100 Japanese Ceramics in Chinese Style The Shen Zhai Collection (Arnoldsche, 2024), and ‘Meisho wo tsukuru: Meijiki Kyoto no Miyako hoteru’ in Ido Misato ed, Meisho no tanjō: ‘na’ wo ataerareta fūkei (Shibunkaku shuppan, 2025). Dr Fukunaga curated the exhibition Zodiac Netsuke: Animals of the Japanese Zodiac in Miniature at the Chester Beatty (December 2024–March 2025).
Lecture Date
Monday, December 15, 2025