Honda Shōryū (b. 1951)

Born in Iriki Town, Kagoshima Prefecture, Kyushu, Honda Shōryū is a graduate of the Oita Prefecture Bamboo Training Institute and he trained under Kadota Nikō, a well-known artist. He was awarded the Oita Prefectural Governor’s Prize in the Western Japan Crafts Association Exhibition in 1981 and 1986. From the late 1980s onwards, his works have been regularly selected for the Japan Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition. In 2000 he was admitted to the prestigious Japan Fine Arts Exhibition (Nitten) and he has since shown there ten times. He was a finalist in the Cotsen Bamboo Awards in 2000, 2002 and 2004. In 2003, he won the ‘Newcomer’ Award at the 42nd Japan Contemporary Arts and Crafts Exhibition. His work has featured in The Next Generation exhibition at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2007; Japanese Bamboo Art: The Abbey Collection, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2017; and Fendre l’Air, L’art du bamboo au Japan, at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris in 2018. Some of his abstract sculptures are distinguished by the use of the sensuji or ‘thousand line’ technique using multiple strips of stained bamboo. His works are in the collections of institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Art and Design, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca; Beppu City Bamboo Craft Centre, Beppu.