ー IN 1945, NANKOKU HIDAI WROTE THE FIRST ABSTRACT WORK IN THE HISTORY OF CALLIGRAPHY . HIS ART OF LINE IMPACTED ON THE WORLD. HIS WORKS WERE COLLECTED BY SUCH PUBLIC MUSEUM AS MOMA. THIS SITE INTRODUCES THE WHOLE ACTIVITY OF NANKOKU. ー
Elise and Nankoku at the Earlham College, November 23, 1964.
On January 28, 2023, Elise Grilli's son Peter Grilli unexpectedly participated in the "HIDAI NANKOKU" exhibition at √k Contemporary online. Peter Grilli is the eldest son of Elise Grilli, an art journalist for The Japan Times who made a great contribution to Nankoku's first visit to the United States in 1959. During the online class from Kyoto University of the Arts held on January 28th for the "HIDAI NANKOKU" exhibition, we received a surprise email from Peter Grilli, who lives in Boston, USA., saying that he was watching the class. Both Peter and Kazuko (Nankoku’s daughter) remembered their exchange from over 40 years ago as if it were yesterday, and this online reunion was a valuable and meaningful opportunity.
Attached to the email from Peter were copies of Elise Grilli's critical articles in the Japan Times about the 1955 Avant-Garde Calligraphy exhibition, Nankoku's 1961 solo exhibition, and the 1962 article.
Elise’s articles No.1 and No.3 were reported in the Japanese Nankoku Report Vol.24 with the original newspaper’s copies and translations in Japanese. We introduced Article No.2 into the Japanese Nankoku Report Vol.23.
“Nippon Times” is the most prominent daily English newspaper in Japan, first published in 1897, and its publisher was called The Japan Times Company. Elise Grilli's husband, Marcel Grilli, worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Washington, D.C. during World War II, and in 1945 was transferred to the Occupation Forces as a civil officer in Tokyo. Marcel wrote the music column for The Japan Times, and later invited Marian Anderson, an American black German lieder-singer, to Japan, becoming a pioneer of diversity in the classical music genre.
Elise lived in Japan from 1947, where she was art critic for The Japan Times and contributed greatly to the Japanese art scene, writing extensively on Japanese and Oriental art. Marcel and Elise had two children, a son, Peter, who served as president of the Japan Society of Boston, and a daughter, Diana, who became a lawyer in Los Angeles.
