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Paper short abstract

This paper examines Tsuneko Kondō Kawase’s role as a mediator of Slovene-Japanese exchange, focusing on her activities in the Slovenian art scene of the 1950s and her connections with Slovene artists through correspondence and other archival materials.

Paper long abstract

Tsuneko Kondō Kawase (1893–1963) was a prominent figure in presenting and transmitting Japanese culture in Slovenia and played an important role in fostering early Slovene-Japanese cultural dialogue before formal frameworks for such exchange were established. Particularly significant were her lectures offering insights into the lives of Japanese women, customs, and traditions; her broad involvement in women’s organizations in Slovenia and beyond; and her role in caring for and preserving the Skušek Collection before it became public, now recognized as the largest collection of East Asian artifacts in Slovenia.

This presentation aims to uncover yet another, less-explored dimension of her activity within the Slovenian cultural milieu, focusing on her involvement in the Slovenian artistic scene of the 1950s. During this period, she served as a mediator between Slovenian and Japanese artists, most notably Bojan Golija (1932–2014), a Slovenian graphic artist and art educator who traveled to Japan in 1957 for a six-month study program. As one of the first postwar Yugoslav students to do so, he was deeply influenced by Japanese aesthetics and pedagogical approaches to graphic art. The analysis will examine documents that testify to their relationship, primarily their correspondence preserved in the archive of the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum, as well as documents and photographs from Golija’s personal archive.