"Digital Archive of Kampo Arai's Diary and Sketches in India" is now open to the public.

Japanese painter Arai Kampo spent a year and a half in India from late 1916, invited by the poet Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-Western recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. During his stay, Kampo fostered connections with modern Indian artists, created reproductions of the Ajanta Cave murals, and documented cultural artifacts across India.

This digital archive presents his diary from that period, alongside approximately 870 items including sketches, drawings, illustrated postcards, and related materials. The archive was developed as a collaborative research project with Mr. Kawai Tsutomu, Secretary General of the Kampo Tagore Society. Related materials were provided by the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, and the Arai Kampo Memorial Museum, Sakura City Museum. The project was supported by Information Resource Center of ILCAA (IRC) and the TUFS Field Science Commons (TUFiSCo) at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

We hope that this archive, highlighting the artistic exchange between Arai Kampo and Indian artists, will offer deeper insights into prewar cultural interactions between India and Japan, as well as the creative fervor behind the Indian art movement during the British colonial period.

●Website (In Japanese)