"The Soul of a Tree: George Nakashima," a comprehensive retrospective show of furniture is set to open a tour of Japanese cities.

Coordinated by the Brain Trust, Inc. of Tokyo, the show features 80 works from both American and Japanese collectors. It will open Wednesday, March 24, at the Odakyu Museum in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and travel to the Museum of Modem Art in Toyama, the Hokkaido Asahikawa Museum of Art, and the Daimaru Museum in Osaka, closing Sept. 13.

Included will be 35 pieces from the "Full Circle" exhibition, which opened in New York in May 1989 at the American Craft Museum. Also included will be a chair designed by Nakashima in 1936 when at the Antonin Raymond office in Tokyo, and significant pieces from the eight Tokyo shows sponsored by Odakyu Hale in Shinjuku since 1968.

Nakashima was born in Spokane, Wash., on May 24, 1905, and passed away June 15, 1990. An Eagle Scout, he received a degree in architecture after changing from forestry at the University of Washington and a diploma from the Ecole Americaine des Beaux Arts, Fontainebleau in 1929. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a master's degree in Architecture in 1930.

Nakashima was one of the first disciples of Sir Aurobindo in Pondicherry, 1937-39. He was interned in Minidoka, Idaho, during World War U in 1942 to 43.

The artist in wood has and received among other numerous awards, the Third Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Emperor and Government of Japan in 1983 and Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus from the University of Washington one week before his death in 1990, as the exhibition "Full Circle prophetically came to an end.

He fulfilled the first part of his vision by designing and building the first monumental American walnut "Altar for Peace" in 1986. It is now installed at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City.

Plans are m progress for making and installing a second "Peace Table" at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, a third in Auroville, India, and perhaps a fourth in Nagasaki, Japan. Work at the Nakashima Studio in New Hope is being carried on by nearly all those who worked there before Nakashima's passing, under the guidance of his daughter Mira Nakashima-Yarnall as designer, son Kevin and wife Marion.

A limited number of Nakashima designs are also produced at the Sakura Factory in Takamatsu, Japan, under the direction of Shinichi Nagami.

Derek Ostergard, director of the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts and author of the book, "Full Circle," published in 1989, wrote the English text for the Brain Trust catalogue.

Mira Nakashima Yarnall who assisted in the preparation of nearly all the Tokyo shows, was instrumental in obtaining loans and information for the "Full Circle" show as well as the current one, "Soul of the Tree," for which she wrote a portion of the text and catalogue entries, which were translated into Japanese. Color Photography is by George Ermi and others.

The current exposition is intended as a tribute to the achievements of a man known to the world primarily as a furniture designer, and is a living manifestation of the close relationship he had to his motherland Japan and the Minguren Group of Craftsmen in Takamatsu, who alone received permission to reproduce his designs in Japan.

It will place Japanese-made pieces alongside American-made ones, tracing parallel and divergent paths of design development. embodying the personalities of wood and craftsmen from both sides of the world, demonstrating the far-reaching influence of a man considered Japanese in America and American in Japan.

It will also, perhaps, according to the family, demonstrate the theory of the "Unknown Craftsman" whereby the work itself identifies its maker more than "design" or "signatures."

It will also show that the spirit of a great man like George Nakashima lives on through his work, continued by those whose spiritual kinship lives on beyond time, and in the souls of trees.

Credits: "The Soul of a Tree: George Nakashima" is patronized by the Embassy of the United States of America.

The Odakyu Museum show, Tokyo, is organized by Asahi Shimbun; in Toyama by The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Asahi Shimbun and Tulip TV; in Hokkaido by The Hokkaido Asahikawa Museum of Art and Asabi Shimbun; At the Daimaru Museum, Urneda-Osaka by Asahi Shimbun.

The shows are done with the cooperation of George Nakashima, Woodworker, S.A. of New Hope and Sakura Seisakusho ofTakamatsu.