Lynn Matsuoka has worked intimately and behind the scenes with sumo, Kabuki theater, Bunraku (puppet theater), geisha and closer to home, hula. When Matsuoka sketches the action of her subject, she does so in a single breath without thought or
Lynn Matsuoka has worked intimately and behind the scenes with sumo, Kabuki theater, Bunraku (puppet theater), geisha and closer to home, hula. When Matsuoka sketches the action of her subject, she does so in a single breath without thought or hesitation.
“I wasn’t doing that initially. I took a class called drawing and thinking from Jack Potter,” she said, about the teacher she credits for her awakening. “He taught me how to move into drawing without thinking.”
Matsuoka was born and raised in New York and studied music and art at Temple University in Philadelphia. She divides her time between the Hamptons, Hawai‘i and Japan. Tomorrow she’ll be on Kaua‘i for an artist’s reception at the Ship Store Gallery in Kapa‘a.
Matsuoka moved to Japan in 1973 to work as a fashion illustrator. It wasn’t long before she discovered sumo and began her long relationship with some of the top stables where the sumotori trained. The rigorous life of a sumotori requires they live in a heya (stable). The heya is a group of sumotori under the tutelage of sumo elders.
“The first few years in Japan I’d be at the sumotori stables daily. “I was a foreigner and it was really rough,” she said. “My only desire was to have the drawing faithfully record the person in front of me.”
After three to four years applying Jack Potter’s skills, one day she looked up from her pad and thought, “this is amazing.”
“I was just hanging on to the pencil to keep it from falling on the floor,” she said. “It comes through me. I am not the one doing the drawing.”
That day she sat studying sumotori practice shivering to the point of nearly dropping her pencil, Matsuoka surprised even herself.
“I just did it. I was watching practice and it was like tracing him by touching him with my fingers. You know, the way a blind person might touch a face.”
Immediately after, she thought, “That is more him than he is.”
“That was when I became the artist I am. Drawing comes from another place — and you have to get in touch with that place.”
This transformation may have happened in a split second, but her effortless style is built on years of daily rigor.
Matsuoka worked as a sumo commentator for the world-wide telecast of the tournaments in English out of Japan for 15 years, and as an ambassador for the sport for 35 years. “Sumo is the only thing I’m an expert on,” she said. “I’m not even a sports fan. I’m a people fan and my commentary reflects that.”
While other commentators focused on statistics, play-by-play action or opinions, Matsuoka did her research before the competition began. “What I’d do is make these yummy, sexy American-style chocolate chip cookies. I’d take them to practice in the morning and say, here have some cookies. Then I’d not talk about sumo.”
Matsuoka would make small talk about anything but sumo. “I’d ask how are the cookies or are they as good as last week? I could read these guys like a book.”
She’d take the temperature of the competitors by examining their mental fitness. “If you’re head wasn’t in the right place you weren’t going to win.”
Recently she retired from commentating. “For all the work I’ve done for the sport, I’ve never received a thank you in any form,” Matsuoka said.
Some of this she attributes to cultural differences. “My commentary is in English and they just don’t care and most don’t seem to value the artwork, though it shows them in their best light.”
Her biggest concern though is for the purity of the sport itself. She described her art as the preservation of a culture. Her drawings defy expectation with surprising juxtaposition of brute power with the delicate, as in her oil pastel and graphite sketch of two sumotori wrestling among day lilies.
Matsuoka will sketch a scene in just minutes, and then go in later to add color. The simplicity of Matsuoka’s sketches leave room for the viewer to enter.
For years she worked as a reportage artist, having documented the Watergate hearings for CBS and ABC and more recently, the Court of Enquiry at Pearl Harbor when the “USS Greenville” hit and sank the “Ehime Maru.” She is hailed for her raw ability to quickly sketch a scene with accuracy and detail.
It wasn’t until she moved to Japan that she subconsciously honed this talent though. “I don’t think,” said Matsuoka. “It all comes from the gut.”
“Once the great grand champion Chiyonofuji pointed it out — he said ‘It’s a good thing you put those geta (wooden clogs) in the picture.’”
“When he put his hand over the geta, the whole thing went gray,” said Matsuoka. “I just put them in on instinct.”
That was 1989, 16 years after Matsuoka had moved to Japan. Matsuoka’s sleeping sumotori is of Yokozuna Chiyonofuji, the 58th grand champion.
“I don’t engineer these things,” said Matsuoka. “I take elements in the area and put them in as it feels right. I am grabbing what feels like it belongs there.”
The sensation of being the instrument rather then a separate entity may have crystallized while shivering on that tatami by the dohyo, but Matsuoka had a glimpse of it while playing violin as a young girl. “It was like I was flying through the air,” she said.
She described the experience as a moment when she was doing something to the best of her ability without feeling as though she were trying.
A good deal of her unfinished work sells even in its incomplete state. While in her Tokyo studio she said, “People would look at something in my portfolios and say, ‘I want to buy this,’ and I’d say, ‘Okay, I’ll finish that for you.’ And they’d say, no, I want it the way it is.’”
“I sold a lot of my work out of the portfolio unfinished,” she said. “They want the incomplete circle. I’ve seen it over and over again, people who think they have no experience with art, have sensibilities they don’t even realize.”
Even those who may not wish to go further into acquiring the cultural outlook of a Japanese person, necessary for deeper understanding of sumo, will be able to appreciate Matsuoka’s representations. Her style has been compared to the French painter Degas. She shares his mastery in the depiction of movement and the human form.
Matsuoka has license to enter where few have and then to translate what she has seen into energetic drawings. She works in oil pastels and graphite on paper, quickly sketching a scene and then using color to emphasize light and dark.
“I want people to see it the way I have seen it. I try to record the beauty and the essence, the clothing and what’s symbolic.”
Sumo is considered by some the last vestige of the samurai warrior. “I’m trying to preserve that,” she said. “It’s a fight for survival to preserve something that is in danger of fading.”
“There is a code to sumo,” she said.
Sumo is a centuries old sport that includes elements of Shinto ritual, Confucianism and court pageantry of the Heian Period.
Shingitai is a word that describes three defining elements that define the way of sumo: shin means spirit; gi means technical expertise; and tai is for the physical body. “They don’t all adhere as closely to that anymore,” said Matsuoka. “I’d like to see them come back. I’m on their side. If sumo is important then my work is important.”
When Matsuoka began working in sumo in 1973 she met one of the greatest grand champions. “He told me as I sat next to him at practice that it was my responsibility to get sumo out there. I didn’t have to take that as my responsibility but I did.”
Matsuoka is working on a book. “I need a publisher who understands the importance of this and can reproduce the artwork well.”
• Pam Woolway, lifestyle writer, can be reached at 245-3681, ext. 257 or pwoolway@kauaipubco.com.
Artist’s reception and opening
When: 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday Who: Lynn Matsuoka Where: Ship Store Galleries Coconut Marketplace, Kapa‘a
Artist available for portraits.
Contact the gallery at 822-4999
or Lynn at 808-479-5966
