One Hundred Years of Beatitude surveys varied highlights of the Sydney L. Moss gallery’s idiosyncratic taste across aspects of mostly Edo period painting, calligraphy, sculpture, lacquer, netsuke and the smoking paraphernalia of ‘tonkotsu’ and ‘tabakoire’. It contains an unmistakable flavour of the Chinese influence and especially of a Confucian content in Japanese art, in both literary and socio-political regards. The survey begins with twenty-plus paintings and calligraphies.
 
The most important focus of the book is that on Ogawa Haritsu (1663–1747) alternatively known as Ritsuõ, a poet, painter, sculptor, ceramicist, metalworker and printmaker, but best known both in the West and Japan as a lacquerer and inlayer. Illustrated and discussed here is the most remarkable group of paintings, sculptures and lacquer-inlay works viewed together since the contents of Tsugaru Castle were dispersed in the early 20th century. Four essays discuss Ritsuõ in some depth, one of those extensively illustrated, another the first English translation of Professor Akio Haino’s long ‘Nihon no Bijutsu’ essay on the artist. Scattered among the introductory essays will be found translations of all Ritsuõ’s known haiku.
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