Tami Koume's paintings now on Exhibition in Japan
 
   I think many of the list members know the name,
Tami Koume (Tamijuro Kume). He was a Japanese
painter loved by Pound.
   On July 8, 1922, from Paris, Pound wrote to his
English teacher at U. of Penn., Prof. Felix E. Schellings,
"am having a show of Koume's paintings in this studio
 on Tuesday $B!D (Blarge canvases, some of them $B!D (B"
(_Selected Letters_, p.179).
   Now at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura in Japan,
Koume's eight paintings are on exhibition. Many of them
owned by his family are exhibited publicly for the first time.
One of them, titled "Off England" is classified as vorticist
painting.
   Until recently, Koume was a forgotten painter in Japan.
He was rediscovered in 1980's by Shiro Tsunoda, then
Prof. of English at Obirin Univ. and a researcher of Pound.
He did biographical study of Koume by interviewing with
his family. After Tsunoda's study, detailed study from the
view point of art history was done by Toshiharu Omuka,
Prof. of art history at Tsukuba University.
   Until now, very small number of his paintings are known.
So information about his paintings are needed for further
study.
   According to Omuka's study, Koume's paintings were
exhibited at Kingore Gallery of the fifth avenue, New York,
in February 1921. So there's some possibility that his
paintings might be found outside of Japan, too.
   "Tami's dream", once owned by Pound, also is of great
interest. Pound wrote, in the Cantos LXXVI , "the hidden
nest, Tami's dream, the great Ovid / bound in thick board,
the bas relief of Ixotta". Things here he wrote are his
loved things at Olga Rudge's house in Venice as Mary de
Rachewiltz wrote in _Discretions_ .
    Rachewiltz wrote about Koume's painting as follows.
   "The wall along the stairs leading to the top room was
taken up completely by a gray opaque canvas into which
I read nothingness ; chaos, the universe or the torso of
a giant, crucified. Tami Koume's Super-artificial-growing-
creation, whispering : " We are now standing at the critical
moment of humanity. We must be saved by something."
(p.22)
  She wrote ,"his big canvas in Venice torn to pieces
during the war". But according to note in _A Companion_
(p.401), Tami's dream was sequestered as alien enemy
property during WWII and disapeared." So, there's some
possibility, though very little, that Tami's dream might be
found again.
 
  Hideo Nogami
  studying Ezra Pound nonprofessionally in Japan
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