Career
Curriculum vitae in brief
Yoko Mori is Professor Emerita of Art History at Meiji University, Tokyo, and a foreign associate of the Royal Academy of Archaeology of Belgium. She was the first president of the Japanese Society of Paremiology, founded in 2009. Professor Mori's particular expertise lies in a Flemish painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525/30-1569) and his dynasty. She was the general commissioner of the exhibition, “The World of Bruegel in Black and White” in 2010 in Japan and the main author of the catalogue. Comparing Bruegel's proverb paintings with the proverbial illustrations of old Japanese art is another major focus of her research. Her Bruegel research focuses on the moral message, literature, folklore, and daily life of Bruegel's time as well his pictorial sources.
Dr. Yoko Mori
(Photo by Naohiro Tsutsuguchi, Shinchosha)
Comparative study of illustrated proverbs between Bruegel and Japanese artists
(see her English-language articles, 2003 and 2015)
- Fig. 1. Utagawa Yoshiume,
“A Married Couple of Fleas”
- Fig. 3. Kawanabe Kyosai,
“She sits on her husband”
- Fig. 5. Kuwagata Keisai,
“To catch a sea bream with a shrimp”
- Fig. 2. Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
“She can bind the devil on the pillow”
- Fig. 4. Jan Borchmans,
“She can bind the devil on the pillow”
- Fig. 6. Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
“A sprat to catch a mackerel”
- Fig. 1. Late Edo period, Tokyo, Meiji University
- Fig. 2. Detail from The Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559, Berlin, Staatliche Museen
- Fig. 3. Kyosai Hyakuzu, 1863-66, Warabi, Kawanabe Kyosai Memorial Museum
- Fig. 4. Misericord, c.1510-1520~1525, Aarschot, Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk
- Fig. 5. Gengaen, 1808, Tokyo, Geijutsu Daigaku
- Fig. 6. Detail from The Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559, Berlin, Staatliche Museen
- (Photos from Yoko Mori, Buryugeru no Sekai, Shinchosha, 2017, p. 41. http://www.shinchosha.co.jp/book/602274/)
Education
- B.A. Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan
- Independent Study/Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
- M.A. Bryn Mawr College, Department of Art History,
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA - Scholarship/Belgian Government
- PhD. International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan
Dissertation: “Flemish Children's Games in the Sixteenth Century: Iconographical Studies of Bruegel's Children's Games”
Employment
- Associate Professor, Tokyo Polytechnic University (until 1983)
- Professor, Meiji University (until 2007)
- Guest Lecturer, Keio University (until 2010)
- Guest Lecturer, Nihon University College of Art (until 2017)