To reacquaint Calcutta with its Japanese connection, a gallery on the country has been set up in four rooms of Jorasanko Thakurbari. The chief minister will inaugurate the gallery on Wednesday.

“Mitsubishi had given Rs 22 lakh to Rabindra Bharati University (RBU) in 2001-02 to set up a gallery that would illustrate the growth of the Indo-Japanese relationship. We added Rs 8 lakh to the grant to set up the gallery at Jorasanko,” said RBU registrar Santosh Ghorai.

On being asked why it took so long to set up the gallery, Ghorai said: “This is not a question of just decorating a room and throwing it open. That would take five minutes. This involves research and rare expertise.”

Items displayed have been gathered from various collections, including those of the RBU and Visva-Bharati. Okakura Kakuzo’s grandson provided material on the friendship between him and Rabindranath Tagore (Kakuzo was a scholar, writer and founder of a fine arts academy in Japan).

Tagore visited Japan six times. His first visit in 1916 had inspired the famous Japan Yatrir Diary. Japanese artists and scholars had been visiting Jorasanko from long before that.

The gallery will display paintings by the likes of Kampo Arai, Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunso, who not only influenced Indian artists but also gave contemporary Japanese art an Indian touch.

Japan Yatrir Diary and other related works of Tagore and his correspondence with Okakura and Yone Noguchi can be viewed in a touchscreen kiosk in the gallery.

“Whatever we found during our research will be made available to those interested,” promised the registrar. Visitors to the gallery will learn of Tagore’s admiration for Japanese culture and tradition, as well as his disapproval of the imperialistic trend in Japan.

“We have not displayed any original artefact, painting or manuscript to avoid security problems,” added Ghorai.