I thought a lot about adjectives before starting this preview of an upcoming exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, first and foremost because the show¡¯s English title ¡ª ¡°Ayashii: Decadent and Grotesque Images of Beauty in Modern Japanese Art¡± ¡ª begins with an untranslated Japanese descriptor. ¡°Ayashii¡± is a common enough word in Japan, used in conversation to mean ¡°suspicious¡± or ¡°dodgy,¡± but by no stretch of the imagination has it made it into international usage. Why, then, I asked curator Reiko Nakamura, did the museum opt to use it in the English title?
¡°Even in Japanese, ¡®ayashii¡¯ is hard to pin down,¡± she allows. ¡°This one word carries so many nuances, depending on context or how you write it. If you use one character, it can mean ¡®alluring.¡¯ With another, it is more like ¡®mystical.¡¯ In the end, we decided it was impossible to sum it up with a single English word, and instead invite visitors to form their own conclusions as they view the works.¡±
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