Most people outside of Japan demonstrate their wealth and success by living in ever-larger spaces and by accumulating more and more stuff to fill them. Contrast walls covered with paintings and every level surface cluttered with objects to the traditional Japanese ideal of an empty room in which artworks join furnishings just for a particular chapter in life's drama — and are then put away again.
With the exception of decorated sliding doors already in situ, paintings in the form of hanging scrolls or folding screens were brought out of storage to briefly echo a mood or season. One feels there is something to be learned here.
Even a taste for grandeur could be satisfied temporarily by the magnificent painted screens that can be seen in "BIOMBO — Japan Heritage as Legend of Gold," the current exhibition at the new Suntory Museum in Tokyo Midtown. The organizers have employed the Portuguese/Spanish word biombo (a transliteration of byobu: a folding screen, or wind-block) to underscore the historic importance of screen paintings as diplomatic gifts. (Although guessing the meaning of the rest of the title, "Japan Heritage as Legend of Gold," requires some creative imagination).