NEW YORK, NY Exceptional works of art from pre-modern Japan will be on view in a joint exhibition held by the Japanese Art Dealers Association this March during Asia Week. Held for three days only, from March 15 through 17, at the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion/Ukrainian Institute at 2 E. 79th Street, the exhibition is organized by members of JADA, a trade group of six leading dealers in Japanese art.

“Over the past few years and throughout the fall of 2008, institutions and collectors of Japanese art have been actively pursuing and acquiring exceptional works,” said Leighton Longhi, president of JADA. “Our field experienced a wrenching adjustment in 1991 as a result of the bubble in Japanese financial markets but has not been affected since by wild speculation or by the recent shifts in the financial environment. We are confident in our strong and stable market and look forward to exhibiting some wonderful, eye-opening works of art in March 2009.”

Arts of Japan: An Exhibition by the Japanese Art Dealers Association will include 24-foot long pairs of screens, hanging scrolls, sculptures, prints and ceramics. Among the highlights of the exhibition are an exceptionally fine printing of Katsushika Hokusai’s color woodblock print, South Wind, Clear Dawn, better known as Red Fuji, from the artist’s series, Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji. The image is perhaps the second-best known image of Japanese art in the West, after Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, of the same series.

Early works include a rare, 11th century wooden seated Bosatsu (Bodhisattva) that stands 25.5 centimeters tall. The serene figure (its pose commonly seen in yoga classes) is a god of enlightenment and wisdom in the Buddhist tradition.

A pair of large gold screens, attributed to Kano Jinnojo and dating from the Momoyama period (early 17th century) depict battles of Ichinotani and Yashima from “The Tales of Heike.” The narrative is a seminal medieval Japanese epic that was a rich source of later literature and dramas, and the screens capture one of the historical battles between the Heike and Genji families that continued for years.

Arts of Japan will be held during New York’s annual Asia Week, which includes sales at auction houses, art fairs and dealer exhibitions held here by galleries from overseas in the Fuller Building and other venues. The joint exhibition, JADA’s third in six years, continues the organizations mission of promoting high standards of scholarship and connoisseurship in the many fields of Japanese art.