The question of "Tokyo" as metropolis and the rest of Japan as "regional" must be addressed in any consideration of the modernization of Japan which has taken place since the Meiji period. However, the status of research and the methods used to address this issue are by no means unified across various academic disciplines, such as political history, economic history, social history, and cultural history. Within one of these disciplines, modern art historical studies are focused either on Tokyo as center, or on regional topics, each independent of the other, and rarely with any discussion approaching both locales from a mutual or reciprocal viewpoint. For example, there are artists who traveled to Tokyo for their studies, there pursued careers as painters, and finally returned to their home towns where they continued to work as painters. What kind of meaning can we find in the various settings for works produced during a career that included a round trip from country to town. To examine these questions, we must turn to a consideration of the artist's "place."
      With this understanding of the issues at hand, this paper considers Aoki Shigeru (1882-1911) as an example of such question. A great deal of research has been conducted on Aoki since Kawakita Michiaki's critical biography of the painter (Aoki Shigeru—Shôgai to geijutsu [Aoki Shigeru: Life and arts], Yotokusha, 1948). Through the many retrospective exhibitions that have been held of Aoki's work, the historical significance of Kawakita's evaluation of the artist has been established. As is clarified by these various studies, Aoki displayed his Paradise under the Sea in the 1907 Tokyo-fu Kangyo Exhibition. Then he received news that his father was near death, and he returned to his hometown of Kurume, Fukuoka prefecture. This was his final departure from Tokyo; Aoki died at the young age of 29 without ever returning to Tokyo. After his return to Kurume, Aoki's life was summed up as that of a "wanderer" as seen in Kawakita's comment, "He quarreled with his family, left the family home and adopted a wandering lifestyle." (Aoki Shigeru Ryakunenpu in Kawakita Michiaki, Aoki Shigeru, The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 1972).
      Since August 2001, the author has made three visits to the sites of Aoki's "wanderings", namely Kurume, Saga, Ogi, Karatsu and Fukuoka. In addition to tracing the steps of his travels, and confirming the scenes and nature that the painter depicted, the author considered what degree of influence these towns and scenes would have had on the painter. More than anything else, the author confirmed that rather than shiftless, unplanned meanderings conjured by the term "wanderings," in fact, Aoki moved within a human network of friends and acquaintances on his travels. Further, the author was able to confirm that Aoki was aware of Tokyo on these travels, wearing a sign on his back that said "Tokyo" as he painted and talked with those he encountered. It also must be indicated that those around him welcomed him as a "Tokyo" painter. The works created in each of these "places" raised his standing as a painter, and were taken up as goods for sale in the art market of the day and thus themselves took on a wandering lifestyle. On the other hand, there are also works which seem to have disappeared into the sands of time unseen. This paper will focus on these vanished works, and will seek to reexamine connoisseurship issues and the formation of valuations for problematic works by Aoki.