:05*,4,010

Perspectives on the
Japanese Visual Arts,
18682000

EDITED BY J . THOMAS RIMER

Since Meiji
PerspectivesontheJapaneseVisualArts,
18682000

edi t ed by
J.Thomas Rimer

t r a nsl at ions by
Toshiko McCallum

University of Hawaii Press

Honolulu
 2012 University of Hawaii Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 126 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Since Meiji : perspectives on the Japanese visual arts, 18682000 / edited by
J. Thomas Rimer ; translations by Toshiko McCallum.
p.cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8248-3441-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8248-3582-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Art, Japanese1868 I. Rimer, J. Thomas. II. McCallum, Toshiko M.
(Toshiko Miyabayashi).
N7354.5.S56 2011
709.520903dc23
2011026061

Publication of the volume was supported by a grant from the Kajima Foundation.

University of Hawaii Press books are printed on acid-free

paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Council on Library Resources.

Designed by Mardee Melton

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc.
For Alexandra Munroe
Who continues to do so much to allow the greater
public to experience modern Japanese art
 Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction
J. Thomas Rimer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

I. Painting and the Allied Arts: From Meiji to the Present

1. Western-Style Painting: Four Stages of Acceptance
Emiko Yamanashi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji: Rhetoric and Reality
Ellen P. Conant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period
Gennifer Weisenfeld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga: Seeing Japans War Documentary
Painting as a Public Monument
Mayu Tsuruya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands: Japanese Painting
in War and Defeat, 19371952
Bert Winther-Tamaki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum: An Institutional
Observation of the Vanguard 1960s
Reiko Tomii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells:
Transforming Contemporary Japanese Art, One Body
at a Time
Eric C. Shiner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
viii|Contents

II. Japanese Art of the Period in Its Cultural Context

8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan
Michael F. Marra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism
John Clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
10. Japanese Art Criticism: The First Fifty Years
Mikiko Hirayama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

III. Individual Forms of Expression

11. Sculpture
Shji Tanaka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese?
The Expression of Japanese Cultural Identity through
Architectural Practice from 1850 to the Present
Jonathan M. Reynolds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
13. The Modern Japanese Garden
Toshio Watanabe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
14. Japanese Prints 18682008
Lawrence Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts: The New Craft
and Mingei Movements
Chiaki Ajioka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868
Stephen Addiss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation: The Cultural and
Aesthetic Transformations of Fashion in Modern Japan
Audrey Yoshiko Seo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
Plates follow pages 150, 326, and 470
 Preface

This volume was first planned to serve as the third volume in a projected series of three on
the history of Japanese art, under the general editorship of Professor Samuel Morse, with
the assistance of Quitman Phillips and myself. It is the first to be published.
The subject of Japanese art and its shifting parameters after the beginning of the Meiji
period is an extremely complex one, and the subject can be approached from a number
of angles. In the end, seventeen authors, from both the scholarly and the museum fields,
enthusiastically agreed to make their own contributions to this volume, and the narra-
tive they present can in many ways be regarded as a mirror in which so much of Japanese
cultural, social, and even political history of the period can find reflection. Many other
points of view could theoretically be incorporated as well, and it is with regret that given
the length of the present volume, it was not possible to include the contributions originally
planned for Brenda Jordan on Kawanabe Kysai and his Western enthusiasts, or Ryichi
Kanekos essay on the development of Japanese photography. Fortunately both of these
scholars have written eloquently on these subjects elsewhere.
It is a pleasure for me to thank so many friends and colleagues for the many efforts
they have undertaken to help bring this book about. First of all, I owe a special debt of
thanks to Mrs. Toshiko McCallum, whose translations and considerable editorial assis-
tance have done so much to make this book a reality. Ms. Maggie Assad provided expert
editorial skills in preparing the manuscript. I would like to thank as well Professors Ken-
dall Brown, Kathy Harper, and Donald McCallum for a number of cogent and thoughtful
suggestions and insights that have materially improved the manuscript.
In addition to the generous assistance from the Kajima Foundation, there have been
a number of sources helping to provide funds toward this publication. The Clark Center
for Japanese Art in Hanford, California, contributed funds to underwrite the translations
of articles originally written in Japanese, and the Paul I. and Hisako Terasaki Center for
Japanese Studies at UCLA contributed funds toward the editing of the individual essays.
Finally, I want to offer special thanks for the efforts made by our editor at the Univer-
sity of Hawaii Press, Patricia Crosby, who has been unstinting both in her enthusiasm and
her efforts to see this complex project through. Drew Bryan, our scrupulous copy editor,
Susan Stone, who prepared the index, Lori Paximadis, who corrected the proofs, and Cheri
Dunn and other members of the staff of the University of Hawaii Press have also been also
extremely helpful.
x|Preface

A Note on Japanese Names

In the body of the text, Japanese names are presented in the usual way, family name first,
followed by personal name. Contributing authors to this volume, however, have their
names listed in Western fashion, personal name followed by family name.
 Introduction
J. Thomas Rimer

When the project to create this volume was first conceived some years ago at the sug-
gestion of Samuel Morse, it seemed difficult to imagine that there would soon be such a
growth of interest, both among scholars and in the general public, in the arts of Japan in
the twentieth century. When I first began my own research in this field in 1987, at the time
I was helping to organize an exhibition titled Paris in Japan, there was virtually nothing
written in English that could provide any extended analysis on the subject of modern
Japanese painting or, indeed, on any of the other visual arts (always with the exception
of prints, which have sustained a more or less continuous interest from collectors in the
United States and Europe). Since that time, beginning with Alexandra Munroes catalogue
on the postwar avant-garde, Scream Against the Sky, the exhibition of which was held in
various locations in 1994 and 1995, and the catalogue compiled by Ellen Conant, myself,
and others on the subject of modern Japanese-style painting (Nihonga), held at the St.
Louis Museum of Art in 1995, a whole new group of younger scholars has now begun to
examine one aspect or another of the remarkable explosion that characterizes virtually
every area of the Japanese visual arts since the 1880s. Superior research outside Japan is
now being undertaken not only in this country but elsewhere, as the writings of John Clark
and Chiaki Ajioka in Australia, Toshio Watanabe in England, Michael Lucken in France,
and Doris Croissant in Germany make clear.
Examined from our contemporary vantage point, this prior lack of interest may seem
hard to understand, particularly given the long-standing scholarly and public interest in
the Japanese arts of earlier periods. But there were, and to some extent still are, reasons for
this relative neglect. To briefly explicate some of them here may help suggest some of the
directions that future efforts in this field of study might undertake.
First of all (and as always, with the exception of prints), there have been very few works
of Japanese art created during the first half of the twentieth century or even later that have
found their way into the collections of American or European museums. With the excep-
tion, for example, of one significant painting of Leonard Foujita that can be seen in Chi-
cago, and a number of his works in Paris and elsewhere in France, there are very few works
of Japanese painting, sculpture, or calligraphy created between the late nineteenth century
and the contemporary period that can actually be seen and studied firsthand. For any
kind of extended viewing, a trip to Japan is necessary, and even then many museums with
relevant holdings only place on display a small selection of them at any one time. It thus
2|Introduction

comes as no surprise that art lovers with an interest in Japan may still remain virtually
ignorant of the range and accomplishment of the Japanese visual arts during this period.
Indeed, until recently, many history books on Japanese art ended with the coming of the
Meiji period in 1868. Penelope Masons 1993 History of Japanese Art was the first study, to
my knowledge, that attempted to integrate the modern period; even so, the author stops
her analysis before World War II.
Secondly, Japanese documentation, and the scholarship that makes relevant data
available to researchers outside Japan, was until relatively recently focused almost entirely
on earlier periods of Japanese cultural and artistic history. In looking for serious works
of scholarship in the Japanese language on Meiji and post-Meiji Japanese art, I was told
by respected Japanese colleagues, even as late as the early 1980s, that modern art was
not yet considered to be a proper scholarly subject and that the phenomenon was best
left to be discussed by general cultural historians, critics, and journalists. The present
generation of younger Japanese scholars, however, has proven that older premise a false
one; Sat Dshin and others, following in the steps of such precursors as Harada Minoru
and Kawakita Michiaki (both scholars working at least partially in the museum world),
have opened up this period to extended and serious inquiry, producing studies and docu-
ments that provide depth and resonance to our growing understanding of this rich period
of creativity.
Thirdly, we need to examine how our own unexamined presumptions about what con-
stitutes merit and creativity in the visual arts may color our judgment. It seems to me that
up until at least the 1970s (when I was helping to prepare Paris in Japan), the general art-
loving public in this country considered what is usually termed high modernism to be the
most important contribution to the arts around the world in the postwar period. Judged by
those austere standards, much twentieth-century Japanese painting and sculpture seemed
overly derivative and seemed not to possess the kind of unique authenticity then deemed
necessary for a contemporary work of art to be taken seriously. With the subsequent shift
of attitudes into what is often termed the postmodern era, however, the challenge of using
borrowed or shared ideas, and the creative possibilities to be found in observing a judi-
cious, eclectic mixing of styles and themes, now seemed to take on genuine virtues of
their own. Thus it now became increasingly possible for twentieth-century Japanese art to
appear genuinely skillful and attractive to Western observers, ironically for many of the
very reasons that hitherto had caused it to be ignored.
Finally, one can observe that in the first years of our present century, Japanese con-
temporary art has come to be considered very much a part of world art, and accepted as
such. We, as spectators, are therefore at a different phase in our shifting potential apprecia-
tion and understanding of Japans contribution to the entire corpus of contemporary art
around the world. Looking backwards in time from these present successes and the consid-
erable international prestige of contemporary Japanese art, we can quite naturally become
interested in understanding the historical process by which this present level of universally
acknowledged accomplishment has been achieved. Thus those earlier works, created using
imported Western styles and ideals as referents, created in the Meiji period and after can
now be seen, and judged, as specific and successful examples of works that can be placed
on a cultural and historical continuum, representing a visual manifestation of the process
by which Japan came to join a larger world after such a long period of seclusion during the
 Introduction|3

preceding Tokugawa period. In that context, therefore, the beauty of, say, a work of sculp-
ture by Ogiwara Morie, or a painting by Fujishima Takeji, can now be studied and placed
on a more reasonable and sensible scale of merit. And, after all, when confronted with a
Matisse, what American painter of that period could measure up? Yet we, as Americans,
can deeply appreciate the angular experiments of, say, a Marsden Harley, just as the Japa-
nese can genuinely enjoy the sensual colors and flair of an Umehara Ryzabur.
All the authors who contributed their enthusiasm and knowledge to the present vol-
ume have, each in his or her own way, helped to elucidate one or more elements that can
eventually contribute to the future construction of a true history of Japanese art since
Meiji. The moment to do so, however, at least looking from my vantage point as a cultural
historian, has still not arrived.

k k k

In Dore Astons stimulating study About Rothko, she observes that as a painter, the Ameri-
can artist Mark Rothko refused to subscribe to any mechanical or theoretical schemes
capable of reducing a work of art to the confines of a particular theoretical scheme. In that
context, she cites Nietzsche, whose work had long interested the artist.

The will to system: in a philosophy, morally speaking, a subtle corruption, a disease

of the character; morally speaking, his will to pose as more stupid than he is, more
stupid, that means: stronger, simpler, more commanding, less educated, more master-
ful, more tyrannical.1

The desire to create a theoretical model into which the history of Japanese art since
the beginning of the Meiji period in 1868 can be placed is understandable, yet at this point
such a desire may well represent a subtle corruption, since any system would of necessity
impose itself on a mass of complex historical and artistic facts, a relatively large number
of which as yet remain too little researched and understood. The time to write that history
may come, but before then, much more needs to be known. Working down from a larger
theory or theories to the specific facts, and so to a unified interpretation, may, at some later
time, come to be highly useful. But too many of those specifics remain elusive. If art his-
torians knew as much about the arts of Japan during the last century as they do, say, about
painting in France in the nineteenth century, or about the construction of cathedrals in
medieval Europe, then the creation of larger theories that might encompass the Japanese
visual arts since 1868 would seem an imperative. Yet, as those who read the essays in this
collection will observe, there remains still too much crucial information as yet undiscov-
ered, and too many central artistic figures to examine, to permit the creation of a general
system of understanding at this time.
The only scholar known to me who has attempted to take on some of these larger
questions in a responsible fashion is John Clark, in his ambitious 1998 Modern Asian Art,
a study that, incidentally, provides a wealth of detail of great potential interest to readers
interested in Japanese art since Meiji. Yet here as well, Clark spends considerable intel-
lectual energy opening up a wide range of concerns and subjects but wisely demurs from
offering any final word on them.
4|Introduction

Those who contributed to this present volume were given no suggestions or instruc-
tions concerning what particular intellectual or theoretical framework they should use in
approaching their individual topics. Few have set out to impose any larger design on their
material. They are working from the bottom up.
Then, too, there are certain prior predispositions of mind and eye of which we, as
Western viewers of this art, need to remain aware. Perhaps the most obvious of these is
that we, by the very nature of our own history, culture, and personal backgrounds, must
always remain, wittingly or unwittingly, comparatists. When we look, say, at a painting by
Umehara Ryzabur, our response is shaped and colored by the fact that we have already
in our visual repositories certain images of the paintings of Renoir and other European
artists of the period with whom Umehara himself was quite familiar. Because of these
prior dispositions, we must continually make a series of decisions as to how such already
assimilated visual knowledge on our part can or should guide our response.
The Japanese response to the same work of art, depending on the period, may vary as
well, depending on when the work was first visible to the public. In the 1920s, for exam-
ple, a work of Umehara may have been startling; by 2000, Japanese art historians and the
educated public alike had become able, through a vastly increased exposure to West-
ern art, to make a more just assessment, from their point of view, of what the artist had
accomplished.
The unfiltered use of Western art categoriesmodernism, avant-garde, post-
modern, and other similar termswhen applied to the Japanese visual arts in this period
must therefore also be subject to similar cautions. As Gennifer Weisenfeld suggests in her
essay, while the Japanese often came to use such terms themselves, they used them to pro-
vide systems of negotiation within Japanese culture; their meanings and significance were
established and understood in those particular contexts. No simple transfers of terminolo-
gies are appropriate or even truly possible. Therefore, in setting out to examine the pos-
sibilities of any yet-to-be-constructed master narrative of the developments of Japanese art
since the beginning of the Meiji period, we must proceed by looking closely at the myriad,
sometimes apparently conflicting, analyses available. With the opening of the country to
the West in 1868, a whole stable of new artistic and cultural forces were let loose, and their
deeper significance, both artistically and culturally, is only now becoming relatively clear
after a period of well more than a hundred years.
These cautions may seem obvious. For scholars and viewers alike, it would seem appar-
ent that any sense of Western centrality or cultural superiority, one way or the other, must
be avoided. Yet the subtle temptation to fall back on our own unacknowledged perceptions
is always there.

k k k

For those approaching the subject of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japanese art
for the first time, a few historical matters may be useful to keep in mind. A number of these
points are well explicated in the individual essays that follow, but it might be well to men-
tion some of them now. Here are four.
In the first place, Japanese culture has always been, at least in some respects, cosmopol-
itan. With the coming of Buddhism to Japan in around the sixth century, Chinese culture
 Introduction|5

(either transmitted directly or via Korea) became a reference point for sophisticated Japa-
nese. Continental forms of architecture had arrived in Japan by the Hakuh and Nara peri-
ods (646794 CE). Chinese poetry and painting, as it became increasingly better known
and appreciated, began to suggest new avenues of expression from indigenous artists. By
the Heian period (7941185 CE), the works of literature and art created, it might be argued,
were genuinely Japanese, while still paying a certain homage to continental sources.
The fascination with other cultures and the desire to incorporate new motifs and ideas
continued on through all subsequent periods. By the time of the Tokugawa shoguns in
the 1600s and after, there was, in addition to the continuing interest in China, a certain
tentative knowledge of Western art and literature, examples of which had arrived in Japan
during the preceding century through the efforts of Portuguese traders and Catholic mis-
sionaries; these contacts, of course, were reduced when the country was closed off in the
1630s. Chinese art and literature continued to provide the dominant comparative perspec-
tive until the latter half of the nineteenth century.
The opening of Japan to the West in 1868 and the decision made by those governing
the country to come to terms with Western culture meant that, slowly but surely, the axis
of interest would turn from China to Europe (and, particularly after the Pacific War, to
America). That shift represents the first of the changes that came to Japanese culture in the
latter part of the nineteenth century.
A second shift came about because, after the fall of the Shogunate, the establishment
of a parliament, politics, and the possibilities for some participation by ordinary citizens
in civic life came to represent enduring factors in the development of so many aspects
of Japanese culture. The possibility of political and cultural choices allowed for alterna-
tive choices, which in turn led to competing loyalties and commitments in every field of
endeavor, including the arts. Dramas with political content were now seen on the stage,
and competing beliefs about the purposes and opportunities for the visual arts eventually
led to a wide range of diversely committed styles, which ranged from paintings and prints
that drew on what were now considered classical themes drawn from earlier Chinese and
Japanese models to works drawing their inspiration from a wide range of Western sources,
ranging from French Impressionism to European proletarian art.
This burgeoning desire among many artists and intellectuals to join a larger cultural
and intellectual world produced another significant set of fresh divisions in Japanese cul-
ture. After being cut off for virtually two centuries from significant artistic contact with
the West, Japanese writers and artists now came to embrace new ideas from Europe that,
had the country remained open to the currents of world culture (as Japan had been before
the early seventeenth century), would have been introduced slowly and with a certain cir-
cumspection, as had Chinese conceptions in earlier times. But this new explosion seems
to have quickly produced what seems in retrospect to have been a kind of schizophrenic
division in the arts. In literature, for example, some writers, even now, continue to write
poetry in the traditional formsthirty-one-syllable waka and seventeen-syllable haiku.
Others, inspired by the example of such Western poets as Goethe, Baudelaire, and Edgar
Allan Poe, began by the end of the nineteenth century to compose long poems in Japanese.
(Long poems were composed by Japanese authors in earlier periods, but the linguistic
medium employed was generally classical Chinese.) In the theater, some writers continued
to compose for the Kabuki stage while others modeled a new kind of spoken drama based
6|Introduction

on the examples of Chekhov and Ibsen. And in painting, certain artists chose to continue
to retain certain traditional techniques in the development of a neoclassical Nihonga tradi-
tion, while others adopted oil painting techniques from Europe to create fresh styles in a
new medium. These two parallel tracks and traditions of creativity were to continue until
well after the Pacific War, when such distinctions gradually grew less significant. These
kinds of parallel artistic universes suggest that even though Japan (unlike most of the rest
of Asia in the late nineteenth century) was not colonized, her artistic responses to the rapid
shifts imposed by the West on her larger cultural and political spheres were mirrored in a
series of sometimes contradictory responses that often resembled those of Asian countries
directly colonized by Europeans.
Indeed, in the Japanese case, even those works of art created with classical princi-
ples in mind nevertheless revealed the growing presence of powerful influences from the
Western example. In that sense, the Japanese visual arts gradually became part of a larger
world, whether that world was willingly embraced or even partially rejected. The ground
had shifted.
Another set of changes, mentioned in one way or another by several of the contributors
to this volume, involves shifts in patronage. In the early nineteenth century, many artists
generally derived their financial support from a variety of sources, from wealthy daimy
and other local and national figures of authority to the larger print-buying public. With
the collapse of the Shogunate came the rise of a new political class, now made up of gifted
former samurai and commoners who had little prior contact with the arts patronized by
the court, the aristocracy, or other important figures. Prior sources of support came to be
replaced, at least in some cases, by the state, as well as by powerful merchants and others
who rose financially in the new society. An interest in the arts was soon to become an
indispensable part of what might be expected of citizens of the new middle class. Muse-
ums, art exhibitions, galleries, and a whole host of new kinds of organizations arose to pro-
vide the structures necessary to sustain the creation of contemporary Japanese visual arts.
Finally, there was also a measurable shift in the self-image among many of those who
created these works of art. Although all generalizations are dangerous, it can be remarked
that until the 1870s many professional artists looked at themselves as part of a group or
school, and they took their reputation and their fame, if such developed, from their par-
ticipation in that group. Again, this system began to loosen with shifts in patronage, and
artists began to conceive of themselves more as individual creators, with their own par-
ticular visions to explore.
Several of the chapters in this volume note the seminal importance and influence of
an essay written in 1910 by the gifted sculptor and poet Takamura Ktar (18831956),
titled The Green Sun, in which he expressed his conviction that the artists highest duty
was to pursue a personal vision, and furthermore that spectators must grant the artist that
privilege. Takamuras essay remained influential, perhaps in particular because he studied
both in the United States and in France with Rodin. Yet such attitudes were already in the
air among artistic circles even before the turn of the twentieth century, and the concept
of the artistwhether poet, architect, painter, novelist, or dramatistwas to become
increasingly central.

k k k
 Introduction|7

If at least in my view, no definitive history of the visual arts in this period can at this point
yet be created, it is also true that a number of central issues can be identified that can help
in turn suggest the larger significance of the myriad of artistic activities undertaken as the
generations continued. Perhaps rather than defining these issues as such, it might be
more useful to cast them in terms of polarities, conflations of views and attitudes that con-
tinued to shift back and forth, sometimes taking first one direction, then another. These
related and interlocking polarities, or sets of dynamics, of which I here identify four, have
continued to function within a larger framework, one that in turn served to provide mean-
ing and significance to many of the various individual movements.
The first and most important of these, it seems to me, is the polarity expressed in the
tension between the national and the international. These shifting attitudes are closely
connected to social and political events as well. The pull toward nationalism, and the
search for some essence of Japanese culture, became prevalent in times of tension and in
particular in times of war. Such tendencies can be observed late in the nineteenth century.
When, for example, after a first powerful flush of interest in the visual arts of Europe, a
growing understanding by the political elite of the political situation in Japan during the
period when most of her neighbors were becoming colonized by the Western powers may
have helped cause a countermovement, an effort to pull back from an indiscriminate urge
for Westernization. In the case of the visual arts, this tendency can be seen most notably, as
several authors in this volume point out, in the closing in 1883 of the Technical Art School
(Kbu Bijutsu Gakk), founded in 1876, less than a decade after the beginning of the Meiji
period, which offered government-sponsored training in the techniques of Western paint-
ing and sculpture. As Japans government achieved its goal of convincing Western nations
that she was a modern country worthy of respect, notably through Japans victories in the
Sino-Japanese War (18941895) and the Russo-Japanese War (19041905), renewed over-
tures toward absorbing relevant developments in the European arts began to come to the
fore again, an enthusiasm that was only dampened as the war with China began in earnest
beginning in the early 1930s. The war years brought in turn a surge of nationalism, which
was again soon set aside in the postwar years. Yet even now, in the political sphere at least,
such attitudes continue to show an occasional tendency to reassert themselves as Japan
continues to puzzle over its role in the larger contemporary world.
Allied to this is a related phenomenon, which can be observed in so many aspects of
the Japanese arts, that involves a felt need to seek approbation overseas in order to secure
validation for a work of art within Japan itself. Perhaps the most widely known example
of this tendency concerns the now famous film of Kurosawa Akira, his 1950 film
Rashmon. The film received little attention in Japan until it won the coveted Golden Lion
award at the Venice Film Festival in 1951, which catapulted the film and its director to
fame in Japan. There are a number of occasions in history of the visual arts in postwar
Japan, notably in architecture and avant-garde art, where foreign approbation has quickly
spurred domestic success.
A second tendency, also related to the first, concerns a growing self-consciousness
by artists and the public alike concerning the older traditions of Japanese art, allied to
a fresh quest to understand to what extent these forms and traditions might continue to
show relevance in changing times. As noted above, some artists consciously set out to
remake (but by no means abandon) older traditions, in creating works in the Nihonga
8|Introduction

tradition, while others vigorously opposed this tendency. And it can certainly be observed
that an exposure to the work and ideals of such figures as William Morris and others
in the English Arts and Crafts movement by Japanese artists and intellectuals brought
about a virtual revolution in an understanding of the role and artistic value of the crafts of
pre-Meiji Japan. Lacquer, pottery, fabrics, basketry, and many other similar art forms car-
ried on by artisans through the centuries now seemed to reveal a real beauty and signifi-
cance that remained largely outside the purview of art until a growing sense of the need
seen by Japanese intellectuals to define the contours of a national tradition. The concept
of what might constitute Japanese art, and therefore Japanese tradition, was therefore
changed and enlarged.
A growing historical consciousness of the importance to the Japanese tradition of
religious art, notably in the areas of sculpture and architecture, also became apparent.
Buddhist art, and religious sculpture in particular, now seemed to represent an important
element in defining the high level of artistic accomplishments sustained in earlier peri-
ods. Yet by the end of the Tokugawa period, ironically, far less religious art was produced
that could be regarded as truly spiritual or artistically arresting. Since 1868, however, a
number of attempts, some successful, have been undertaken to create images of religious
significance that could nevertheless be appreciated as works of art in terms of Japanese
contemporary taste, itself by now increasingly formed by exposure to international cur-
rents. Certain Buddhist themes remained important at the turn of the twentieth century,
both in the Nihonga tradition (fig. I.1) and yga traditions (see fig. 10.1) as well as in the
work of such monk-artists as Nantemb Tj (18391925) (fig. I.2), and a number of print
artists as well (fig. I.3). Many of these images still resonate with both the Japanese and the
international public.

Figure I.1. Hishida Shuns, Smile to a Flower, 1897. Color on silk, 571 1071 inches. Tokyo
National Museum.
Figure I.2.
Nantemb Tj,
Procession of
Monks, 1924. Ink
on paper, each
51 113 inches.
Many-an
Collection.
Figure I.3. Munakata Shik,
The Buddhist Disciple Subodai,
1939. 1023 mm 396 mm.
Private collection.
 Introduction|11

A third set of shifting priorities during this period involves a complex set of exchanges
whereby Japanese visual artists readily accepted information and inspiration from abroad
while at the same time providing both training and inspiration concerning the practice
of the arts in contemporary Japan to other countries and cultures, in both Asia and the
West. Again, using a spectrum based on the past 120 years or so, it might be observed that
during the earlier part of this period, Japanese artists and the intelligentsia were receiving
more information, and a wider variety of stimuli, concerning European art than they were
providing to artists and intellectuals in other countries in return. (Of course it should be
noted that older forms of Japanese art, notably woodblock prints, became well known and
highly influential in helping such artists as Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, and others achieve
a new sense of direction in their own creative work.)
Specifically, it can be pointed out that while, for example, Japanese painters and
printmakers were inspired by their fresh exposure to examples of Western art, the work
of these same artists often served as models that could help create movements toward a
fresh contemporary art in many other countries in Asia. At the same timethe end of
the nineteenth centuryartists in those countries sought to bring their own work into
the same international sphere in which the Japanese were already beginning to find suc-
cess as they mastered new techniques. Aspiring artists in the Japanese colonies (Korea
and Taiwan) benefited from the establishment by Japans colonial governments of indig-
enous national exhibitions and academies like those in Japan, where the techniques of
contemporary yga and Nihonga were taught, either by Japanese instructors or those
trained by them.2 Well-known and respected Japanese artists were often sent as judges
for such exhibitions. In addition, many young artists from Asian countries made the
trip to Tokyo and Kyoto to pursue their studies. The Korean painter O Chi-ho (1905
1982), for instance, studied with Fujishima Takeji at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and
returned to Korea to create a fresh style of Korean landscape painting (fig. I.4). The artist
Li Meishu (19021983), after some early training in Taiwan, studied with Okada
Sabursuke at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and on his return was soon winning prizes
in Taipei (fig. I.5).
A more thorough study of details of this complex process of exchange, which also
involved during various periods such areas as Manchuria, China, Vietnam, and even
Indonesia, is now being undertaken by scholars in various countries. As they trace the
development of an international style in the context of their own individual artistic tra-
ditions, the role of Japans importance to the development of the visual arts in Asia for
the last hundred years or more will become even more apparent. China had served as
the inspiration for artists in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and other civilizations until the
mid-nineteenth century; since then, and increasingly, Japan became the conduit through
which currents of contemporary art around the world reached artists in much of the rest
of Asia.
In general terms, it can probably be said that Japans artists began to have a noticeable
effect on their Western counterparts from the 1950s or 1960s onwards.3 By 2000, a painter
such as Murakami Takashi (born 1962) had achieved worldwide fame, and it was a Japa-
nese architect, Taniguchi Yoshio (born 1937), who was chosen to design the new building
in Manhattan for the Museum of Modern Art. Fifty years before, no one could have imag-
ined what we now take for granted. Watching this flow of inspiration and knowledge shift
Figure I.4. O Chi-ho, A House
Facing the South, 1939. Oil on
canvas. 79 cm 91 cm. National
Museum of Contemporary Art,
Keachon.

Figure I.5. Li Meishu, Girl

at Rest, 1935. 162 130 cm.
Collection of the artists
family.
 Introduction|13

back and forth during these decades represents still another way to chart the historical
shifts, and growing influence, of the Japanese visual arts since Meiji.
A fourth dynamic that can be observed during this period concerns the development
of an ever more receptive audience in Japan for various kinds of Japanese art created dur-
ing this period. At the beginning of the Meiji era, the kinds of class distinctions so impor-
tant in Tokugawa culture were still largely in place. Popular art, notably certain crafts
and woodblock prints, were appreciated by ordinary citizens, particularly in such urban
areas as Edo and Osaka, while the important schools and styles of painting at the time
Kano, Tosa, the literati style, etc.were highly valued by connoisseurs and patrons but
were not generally available for viewing and study by any larger public. By the middle of
the Meiji period, however, a number of changes, many based on a new grasp of European
precedents, helped to develop potentials for a broader audience. In the late nineteenth cen-
tury, national museums created in Nara, Kyoto, and Tokyo through the efforts of political
and cultural leaders, built on the European model, helped create a sense that a superior
national artistic patrimony did exist, as well as confirming convictions by government
officials that examples of this patrimony should be made available to the population at
large. These institutions helped work a profound transformation in the thinking of the
growing middle-class Japanese public as to the significance of the visual arts in helping
give significance to various aspects of the national culture.
On the other hand, these museums did little to promote the contemporary Japanese
visual arts, a role largely left to galleries, a few private museums, and exhibitions held in
large gallery spaces in department stores and the like. These venues, however, were widely
attractive and often influential in shaping public taste.
The growth in the availability of education, and the increasing urbanization of the
population, coincided with the development of a popular press; well before the end of the
nineteenth century, newspapers, magazines, and journals became more widely available,
and frequent writing on the visual arts made it possible for the work of an artist or an
architect to be increasingly known and more widely appreciated. And while it might be
said that many of the journalists who first wrote on Japanese contemporary visual arts had
little background or training, as Mikiko Hirayama points out in her chapter, there soon
developed a coterie of spokespersons with more and more of the requisite background and
prestige to serve as tastemakers for their readers.
The Japanese government, however, was not indifferent to the importance of contem-
porary Japanese art. By setting up a national exhibition system under the sponsorship of
the Ministry of Education, titled the Mombusho Bijutsu Tenrankai (usually referred to as
Bunten), a conception based on the example of the famous French yearly Salon, officials
allowed for a range of contemporary art to be widely viewed and judged. The first Bunten
exhibition was held in 1907. Those artists who did not subscribe to the rules laid down for
Bunten would often go on, as did French artists in their Salon des refuss, to set up inde-
pendent groups that, through publicity in the press, could also make their mark with the
general public. And a growing fascination for the visual arts, at least in the urban areas,
quickly became apparent. According to the statistics, more than 161,000 persons visited
the 1912 Bunten, a remarkable change from less than fifty years before, when there were no
extensive public exhibitions held at all. Continuations and new variations on these organi-
zations carry on even today, and they continue to attract large and appreciative audiences.
14|Introduction

And this ever-growing public for Japanese visual arts was of critical importance during
this whole period, since such a sustained enthusiasm on the part of the public ensured that
these various art formspainting, sculpture, printmaking, and so forthwould continue
to be practiced with vigor.

k k k

It might be argued, based on the observations mentioned above, that the historical out-
lines of Japanese art since Meiji have indeed been well understood. I would hasten to point
out, however, that much research is still to be undertaken, certainly among scholars out-
side of Japan.
I might point out, for example, that there do not yet exist in English sufficient studies
in depth of important individual artists, with a few highly useful exceptions. Suppose,
for example, that in American art, we had no studies of, say, Winslow Homer, Edward
Hopper, Jackson Pollock, or Mark Rothko. How might it be possible to construct a
larger view of American art without studies of this kind to use as building blocks to
make it possible to ground theoretical arguments in the specific accomplishments of the
period? And while there are adequate illustrated descriptive treatments in the Japanese
language of individual artists, there are, to best of my knowledge, few if any in either
English or Japanese that contain thorough analytical studies of their works.4 Nor does
there yet exist in Japanese, as far as I know, a published true catalogue raisonn for any of
the major figures of the period. Assuredly some, if not most, of these efforts must be
undertaken by Japanese scholars, who have access to materials hard to come by outside of
Japan. Yet to the best of my knowledge, these studies have not yet been accomplished. So
perhaps it is not so surprising in the end that that the articulation of any kind of authentic
intertwining relationship between general theory and specific example remains difficult
to manage.
Then, too, there are whole areas of inquiry that still need to be opened up for exam-
ination in order to construct such a history. I notice, for example, in looking over the
research that has been done on postwar Japanese art, that a number of probing treat-
ments of Japanese avant-garde painting, photography, sculpture, etc., have been published,
yet there is very little available, at least in English, that can document in any relevant
depth the more mainstream efforts of artists during the same period. Yga, Nihonga,
and representative sculpture did not vanish after 1950; indeed, as Burt Winther-Tamaki
suggests, a number of major figures during the postwar period call for extended treat-
ment to gain a fuller picture of the range of artistic accomplishment during the five or six
decades involved.
The essays that make up this volume, therefore, can best be seen as first probes into the
visual arts created during these complex social, political, and artistic decades. They may
not provide the last word on their respective subjects, but they open up, in one area after
another, a new possibility for readers outside Japan to find, in one volume, a sense of the
excitement generated as the Japanese arts found their way into a wider world, as well as
some indication of the wide range of artistic expression that followed.
 Introduction|15

Notes

1. See Dore Ashton, About Rothko (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 173. She
gives no citation for the location of the Nietzsche quotation.
2. For details on Asian artists involved with Japan during the colonial period, see essays
in Marlene J. Mayo, J. Thomas Rimer, and H. Eleanor Kerkham, eds., War, Occupation, and
Creativity: Japan and East Asia 19201960 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001).
3. This change occurred with the rise of what Reiko Tomii has identified as international
contemporaneity in the 1960s, a phenomenon that can be observed in other areas as well,
notably in drama written during the same period. See her compelling article International
Contemporaneity in the 1960s: Discoursing on Art in Japan and Beyond, Nichibunken Japan
Review 21 (2009): pp. 123147.
4. Three English-language studies immediately come to mind that do, in fact, provide
such a depth of information. Elizabeth de Sabato Swinton, The Graphic Art of Onchi Kshir
(New York: Garland Publishing, 1986): Phyllis Birnbaum, Glory in a Line: A Life of Fujitathe
Artist Caught between Two Worlds (New York: Faber and Faber, 2007); and Alicia Volk, In
Pursuit of Universality: Yorozu Tetsugor and Japanese Modern Art (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2009).
PARTI

Painting and the Allied Arts:

From Meiji to the Present
 Emiko Yamanashi

1 Western-Style Painting
Four Stages of Acceptance

The history of oil painting in Japan can be divided into four stages, which took place in a
chronological order determined by Japans shifting relationship with the West.
First, let me provide a brief overview of these four periods.
The first stage might well be said to have taken place in about the middle of the eigh-
teenth century, when a number of painters of the Satake clan in Akita began creating
works using Western perspective. It is commonly believed that one of the most masterful
of the painters in this so-called Akita Ranga school, Odano Naotake (17491780) studied
these Western techniques with Hiraga Gennai (17281779), who was one of the most active
participants in the field of Western studies in the seventeenth century. During this first
stage, artists were able to study Western methods of painting only through books imported
from Holland, China, and Korea. Among the first group of painters who attempted this
Westernized style were such well-known figures as Shiba Kokan (17481818) (fig. 1.1),
Ad Denzen (17481822), painters from the so-called Nagasaki school such as Kawa-
hara Keiga (1786?), Kawakami Togai (18271881), and other members of the department
of painting, the gagaku-kyoku, of the Institute for Western Studies1 sponsored by the
Bakufu in Edo.
The second stage took place at the end of the Edo period, before the beginning of
the Meiji period in 1868. At this stage, painters were able to study with Western artists
who actually visited Japan. For example, Takahashi Yuichi (18281894), now considered
the most important pioneer of Japanese oil painting, began his career as a student in the
gagaku-kyoku, mentioned above. We know from the biography of Takahashi2 that at first
he was able to study Western methods of painting only through books available to him
at the institute. In 1866, however, he began to learn the techniques of oil painting from
Charles Wirgman (18231891), who had been sent to Japan to work as an illustrator for the
British journal The Illustrated London News. Although Wirgman was not a professional oil
painter, Takahashi was eventually able to paint such powerful and evocative works as his
Salmon and Beancakes based on what he learned from this British artist.3
During this second stage, one of the most important steps taken was the opening of
the Technical Art School (Kbu Bijutsu Gakk) in 1876.4 The school was founded under
the auspices of It Hirobumi (18141909), at that time minister of industry and technol-
ogy and soon to be Japans first prime minister, with a motto to increase production and
industry. Three artists from Italy were invited to teach at the school. Antonio Fontanesi
20|Emiko Yamanashi

Figure 1.1. Shiba Kokan, The Coopers, late eighteenth century. Colors on silk. 47 60 cm. Private collection.

(18181882) taught in the Department of Painting, Vincenzo Ragusa (18411927) in the

Department of Sculpture, and Giovanni Cappelletti (1835?1887) in the Department of
Architecture. Important painters such as Asai Ch (18561907), Koyama Shtar (1857
1916), and Matsuoka Hisashi (18621944), among others, studied at the school and so took
on important roles in the history of oil painting in Japan during the 1880s and after.
The third stage began with painters who themselves went to Europe without any prior
training in Western art before their departure. Among painters in this category are impor-
tant figures such as Kunisawa Shinkur (18471877), who went to Great Britain in 1870,
Kawamura Kiyoo (18521934), who went first to the United States in 1871, then to Paris
in 1873, and remained in Italy from 1875 to 1881,5 and, most important of all, Kuroda
Seiki (18661924), who went to Paris for a lengthy stay in 1884.6 These artists undertook
a number of significant activities after they returned to Japan. Kunisawa, for example,
studied in London with John Wilcome and founded a private school in Tokyo for teaching
Western-style painting in 1874 entitled the Shgid. Kawamura Kiyoo was first employed
by Tokugawa Iesato, who would have become the sixteenth shogun had the regime con-
tinued. Kawamura studied with the painters Horase de Callias (?1921) and Martin Rico
Ortega (18331908) in Italy, returning to Japan in 1881.
 1. Western-Style Painting | 21

Kuroda, however, was to continue on to become one of the most influential painters in
the entire Meiji period. Kuroda originally went to Paris to study law and had no training
whatsoever in Western painting, or indeed of art at any professional level, before leav-
ing for Europe. After spending some time in France, however, he changed his specialty.
It was important for Kurodas development as an artist that he was able to learn Western
art from the beginning in France, without having gotten into any prior habits in Japan of
rendering shapes on paper or canvas. Another noted painter of the period, Kume Keiichir
(18661934), who went to Paris to study art at roughly the same time, wrote in his article
about his friend that Kuroda was successful in studying Western art at his school in Paris
because he did not, as did Kume, have to give up habits learned in prior studies in Tokyo
before traveling to Europe.7
The fourth and most significant stage took place after Kurodas return from Paris. At
this point, most of the painters who went to Europe had had previous training under Japa-
nese painters who themselves had received some European training and experience. Unlike
the painters in the third stage, the painters in the fourth stage were sufficiently prepared to
face the realities of the contemporary art scene in Europe, since they now had a certain level
of knowledge as to how to come to terms with Western traditions of painting and knew, in
terms of the contemporary art scene in Japan, what should still be learned from the West.
Most of the painters active in the 1900s and after can be included in this group. Among them,
perhaps the most significant figures are Wada Eisaku (18741959),8 Okada Sabursuke
(19691939),9 Kanokogi Takeshir (18741941),10 and Mitsutani Kunishiro (18741936).
In this chapter, I would like to provide a general overview of Japanese oil painting
from 1860 to 1910, using these four stages to indicate some of the most significant prob-
lems encountered.

The First Stage: Book Learning

For painters in the first and second stages, the most important elements for what they
understood to be the traditions of Western painting were the representation of nature and
the illusion of three-dimensional space. For example, Takahashi Yuichi was surprised at
the masterful representation of nature he found in Western lithographs he first saw in the
Kaei period (18481853), and this encounter helped him decide to take up the study of
Western painting. He wrote in his biography that everything was true to nature in these
lithographs. As mentioned above, there was already an interest among Japanese artists
in Western methods of painting, beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century; by
the middle of the nineteenth century, ordinary people had become accustomed to seeing
such representations. Indeed, there were even popular public tearooms displaying unusual
things that would attract customers, such as shika jaya (tearooms with deer), tori jaya (tea-
rooms with birds), and abura-e jaya (rooms with oil paintings). This suggests that lifelike
scenes and a trueness to nature had become qualities appreciated by ordinary people. It is
noted in an account by Kimura Ki (18941979),11 that Takahashi Yuichis painting Salmon
(see Plate 1), now an Important Cultural Property and hung in the museum of the Tokyo
University of Fine Arts, was displayed in the temporary structure erected for a misemono,
a kind of peep show of unusual items, on the Ginza during the 1870s.12
22|Emiko Yamanashi

The Second Stage: Studying with Western Artists in Japan

Students of the Technical Art School were able to pursue in technical terms the creation of
three-dimensional illusion and accurate representations of nature. As we know from the
documents that state the purpose of founding the school, the institution was founded to
help hundreds of Japanese traditional industries and to learn Western methods of paint-
ing in order to reach the level of Western art movements in the near future.13
In the contract between Fontanesi and the Japanese government, we learn that Fonta-
nesi was asked to teach Western methods of painting such as linear perspective, shading,
and the creation of three-dimensional illusionism. This kind of curriculum was based on
established European methods of training. At first, students were expected to copy small
images of landscapes that Fontanesi himself depicted in pencil, after which they were to
sketch gypsum figures of human busts and actual landscapes. After these stages, they were
to begin to learn to use the medium of oil paint.14 Fontanesi adopted these teaching meth-
ods, but at the same time he urged his students to listen to the voices and songs of nature
and encouraged them to seek to represent their own aesthetic tastes in their paintings. In
the notes taken by Fuji Masaz (18531916), one of the students in the school,15 we read that
Fontanesi taught his students not to depict both a pretty woman and lovely flowers in the
same painting, since the viewer would be confused as to how to focus on the main subject.
Fontanesi encouraged his students to make precise sketches from nature and to eliminate
motifs based merely on their own aesthetic tastes when completing a work. From examin-
ing the paintings by his students created during the period, it seems clear that at first they
followed their teachers ideas but later developed their own ways of capturing nature. For
instance, a sketch of Yamashita Rin (18571939) appears to be made from nature but is in
fact a copy made from an image created by Fontanesi.
Although Fontanesi was successful in training his students, he decided to return to
Italy in 1878 because of illness. His replacement, a teacher by the name of Ferletti, did not
satisfy the students; eleven, including several who were to become well-known artists in
later decades, among them Asai Ch (fig. 1.2), Koyama Shtar, Matsuoka Hisashi, and
Takahashi Genkichi, left the school in November and founded their own Association of
Eleven (Jichi Kai) to continue developing their skills through their own efforts.
Early in the 1880s, these movements toward Westernization began to weaken from
their primacy in the 1870s, which had, after all, produced the government-sponsored
Technical Art School, with its entirely European-style curriculum. Influenced by Ernest
Fenollosa (18531908), an American enthusiast for the Japanese arts, particularly by his
1882 lecture Bijitsu shinsetsu (An explanation of the truth of art),16 a movement by more
conservative forces to keep certain aspects of the Japanese tradition alive became increas-
ingly powerful. In his lecture, Fenollosa emphasized the importance of maintaining the
traditions of Japanese painting, especially those of the Kano School, and questioned the
value of Westernized art. In the midst of such conservative forces, the Technical Arts
School was closed in 1883, and works created in Westernized modes were eliminated from
such important public exhibitions as the first and second Domestic Exhibition of Painting
(Naikoku kaiga kyshinkai) in 1882 and 1884. Those artists interested in creating painting
or sculpture in the Western manner had to continue working despite the cold winds that
thwarted their enthusiasm and their will.
 1. Western-Style Painting | 23

Figure 1.2. Asai Ch, Harvest, 1890. Oil on canvas. 69.5 100.0 cm. Tokyo University of the Arts.

Differences between the First and Second Stages

As Takahashi Yuichi wrote in his autobiographical memoir, one difference between the
first and second stages was that artists in the first stage could only gather abstract informa-
tion from books; they could not actually see the brushes, palette, and other items central to
the work of artists working oils. They could not comprehend the proper methods for using
oil pigments or the technique of a painting knife, so it is not surprising that there were no
masterful painters of this kind in the first years of contact. By studying their works that
remain, it is clear that their interests focused on learning Western techniques of layout and
perspective. Working as they did within the intellectual and artistic framework on Edo-
period conceptions of shoga (painting and calligraphy), there were relatively few changes
in the manner in which the art of painting was defined or evaluated. For example, the
genre of landscapesansui, mountain and waterwas still considered the highest form of
subject matter, thus continuing a long and venerated tradition.
The artists in the second stage, however, were able for the first time to actually see
these Western materials used for painting; not only did they see them, but they learned
to use them. They also began to learn fresh ideas, unusual for them, as to the definition
of painting and the standards by which individual works should be judged. In that sense,
then, there was a deepening in the understanding of Western-style painting from the first
stage to the second.
24|Emiko Yamanashi

The 1880s and 1890s: The Rise of History Painting

At the end of the 1880s, history painting began to flourish in the Western-style painting
circles in Japan. One reason for this was the establishment in 1889 of Japans new constitu-
tion and, in a sense, a formal beginning of a new sense of Japanese history itself. The cre-
ation of a coherent narrative of Japans past during the Meiji period could only be under-
taken after the successful institutionalization of various political and social issues, since
all narratives of history need an assigned and approved social and political background.
Since the historical narrative developed from an orthodoxy that required the continua-
tion of the power and centrality of the imperial family, new heroes from Japanese history
emerged in the Meiji period. Yga, or Western-style oil painting, was deemed an effective
medium with which to represent these historical figures in a lifelike manner. A number
of artists were active in drawing illustrations for history textbooks used in elementary
or junior high schools. When the third Domestic Industrial Exposition was held in 1890,
many works depicting such historical narratives were exhibited in the art section, and

Figure 1.3. Honda Kinkichir,

Celestial in Feather Robes, 1890.
Oil on canvas. 127 89 cm.
Hyogo Prefectural Museum
of Art, Kobe.
 1. Western-Style Painting | 25

some of them won prizes, such as the Celestial in Feather Robes of Honda Kinkichir
(18501921) (fig. 1.3), and the rendering of Sakuma Bungo (18681914) of The Message
from the Usa Hachiman Shrine to the Empress.17
At this time, an argument arose as to the value of such historical paintings.18 Toyama
Masakazu (18481900) was a noted scholar who studied both chemistry and philosophy
in England and America at the University of Michigan and eventually became president of
Tokyo Imperial University. In a celebrated lecture, he argued that history paintings were
not appropriate for the development of modern Japanese painting and emphasized instead
the importance of genre painting to depict ordinary life. He expressed his belief that such
paintings were not attractive to viewers, since the painters who created them did not seem
to believe in those figures or in the historical facts concerning them. In response, the noted
doctor, writer, and intellectual Mori gai (18621922) opposed these views and stated his
conviction that paintings must be judged and appreciated not by their subject matter but
by their style and the means of expression used in their creation.19 Hayashi Tadamasa
(18531906), an important art dealer living in Paris who did much to introduce the French
and other Europeans to traditional Japanese art, also took part in the debate, stating his
conviction that contemporary Japanese oil painters did not have the requisite skill to cre-
ate effective historical canvases.20
So although these paintings were not always well accepted, the creation of them in
the 1890s should be recognized as representing an important step in the acceptance of
Western painting, which had as its goal among the Japanese artists a natural and realistic
representation of nature.

The Third Stage: Kuroda Seiki and the Development

of Painting after His Return from Paris
In 1893, Kuroda Seiki returned to Tokyo after a stay of nine years in Paris. He originally
went to France to study law, but he changed his specialty to painting around 1887. Although
Kuroda had originally started his preparations to enter law school, he made friends with
several artists who had come to Paris to study, as well as the by now famous dealer in Japa-
nese art, Hayashi Tadamasa, mentioned above, whose celebrated antique store was near
the Paris Opera. The painter Kume Keiichir, who had come to Paris to study art, played
a particularly important role in encouraging Kuroda, as they became close friends and
shared an apartment together. On one occasion, the painter Fuji Masaz, also mentioned
above, asked Kuroda, whose French was excellent, to come with him to visit the studio of
the famous artist and teacher Raphal Collin (19501916),21 with whom Fuji was studying,
to serve as an interpreter. Through such encounters, Kuroda began to know something of
the lives of artists in Paris and developed a lively interest in art. Concerning the change in
his course of study, Kuroda wrote to his father-in-law:

At the beginning, I evaluated painting as a less important issue in society, and so

when I originally studied painting with Mr. Hosoda in Japan, I gave up very quickly.
It was because I was so eager to gain fame in the world of politics that I was convinced
that only politicians, or political candidates, were true human beings. But I came to
26|Emiko Yamanashi

realize after deep consideration that art could be as important as politics if it were
pursued to the very highest level. Moreover, the life of an artist could be more enjoy-
able than that of a politician, since artists work very closely with nature. So I believe
it would be more satisfying to spend my life on art.22

Kuroda began his studies with Raphal Collin, joining Fuji and Kume, and so received a
training based on the established principles of French academic art. He began with char-
coal drawing of gypsum busts, then made charcoal drawings of nude figures, and finally
learned to paint in oils, often visiting the Louvre to copy paintings of the old masters he
found there. By 1891 he was able to exhibit his work titled Femme (Woman reading) at
the Salon des Artists Franaises in 1891 and his Le Lever (Morning toilette) (fig. 1.4) at the
Salon de la Societ Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1893.
After returning to Japan, Kurodas work and example brought changes to Japanese
painting in several respects. Generally speaking, he took on the role not only of making
stylistic changes to then prevalent ideas of subject matter, composition, and the use of
color, but of establishing the social and cultural importance of the concept of bijutsu (fine
arts) in Japan.

Figure 1.4. Kuroda Seiki, Morning Toilette, 1893.

Oil on canvas. 178.5 98 cm. Destroyed by fire
in World War II.
 1. Western-Style Painting | 27

One of the influential ideas backed by Kuroda concerned an emphasis, based on the
training he himself had received in Paris, on the importance of grand scale painting
(ksga), which aimed at creating a Japanese version of the kind of large-scale historical
composition then appreciated in official circles in Europe.23 Kuroda attempted such a work
himself with his Telling an Ancient Romance (fig. 1.5, destroyed during the Pacific War),
which he worked on from 1896 to 1898. From the drawings and sketches that remain, it
is clear that in his mind, ksga must involve a historical narrative as its subject, and he
planned for groups of people posing in a landscape. For Kuroda, the subject matter for
such a painting should express eternal values such as love, peace, or courage, and, in this
context, the depicted human figures in the painting are best portrayed in the nude, since
clothing invariably reflects a particular historical and cultural background. Such logic
remained one of the strongest reasons Kuroda emphasized the importance for artists of
studying the nude figure.
Kuroda had to struggle with contemporary social values in advocating the study of the
nude figure, since there was a strong public opposition to paintings of nude figures.24 One
of the reasons for this opposition against paintings of nudes, ironically, involved the kind
of social strictures established by the Meiji government that would permit Japan to appear
to Europeans and Americans as a modern nation-state.25 Following Japanese percep-
tions of European morality, behind which was perceived to lay a strong Christian context,
the Meiji government in 1873 prohibited nudity in public. As many Westerners who came
to Japan in the 1860s and 1870s pointed out, there seemed to be no restrictions on nudity
or partial nudity: men found it comfortable to roll up the ends of their kimonos to their
hips, young mothers gave milk to their babies in public, and there were many communal

Figure 1.5. Kuroda Seiki, Telling an Ancient Romance, 1898. Oil on canvas. 189 307 cm. Destroyed by
fire in World War II.
28|Emiko Yamanashi

baths in which men and women shared the same tubs. Some Westerners admired this
natural ease, since they took Japan to be some kind of paradise before the expulsion of
Adam and Eve. But most Westerners took such behavior as the savage custom of an unde-
veloped country. It was to prevent such impressions of savagery that the Meiji government
passed the law in 1873, which soon led the public to a conviction that being naked in public
was somehow wrong, an attitude that caused difficulty in the acceptance of nude painting.
When Kurodas Le Lever, which, as noted earlier, had been accepted for the Salon in 1893,
was exhibited at the Fine Arts Pavilion of the Fourth Domestic Industrial Exposition held
in Kyoto in 1895, a number of complaints arose; the public felt uncomfortable with a nude
painting in a pavilion dedicated to the fine arts and asked for its removal. Kuroda was
surprised at the differences in audiences in the West and in Japan, expressing his feelings
in a letter written to a friend.

It is amusing to see what is happening about my nude painting. Even policemen come
to make research on this issue. There has been a great deal of response to my work
in the past two days. But if nude paintings are forbidden to be shown in public, this
would be unfortunate, since this means that the Japanese people will not be able to
study the human nude in the future. How could it be possible to look at all paintings
of the nude simply as erotic images? According to the universal principles of aesthet-
ics, and keeping in mind the future of Japanese art, studying the nude is not only
not wrong, it is very necessary. How can we say that Japan is an artistic nation if we
continue to depict human figures as wooden dolls? In short, people who argue about
nude paintings demonstrate merely that such painting is strange to them, since they
are not accustomed to seeing such works. How silly they are! For what, and for whom,
is art created?26

In the end, the painting was not removed from the pavilion, since the jury responsible for
the exposition issued a statement saying that in their view there was no compelling reason
to do so.
In 1896, Kuroda became an instructor in the newly established section of Western-style
painting in the Tokyo Art School. In the same year, with a group of like-minded artists who
also took in students, he began a group named the White Horse Society (Hakubakai). In
both, Kuroda introduced a class designed to train students in sketching live, nude models.
Along with these changes, Kuroda was also active in helping to establish a high social
position for the fine arts. As the first teacher of Western-style painting at the Tokyo Art
School, Kuroda was influential in raising the social position of oil painting, which, as
noted above, had fallen from favor because of conservative movements in the art world
that began in the 1880s. The White Horse Society stimulated those artists belonging to the
Meiji Art Association (Meiji bijutsu kai), and such enthusiasm led to the establishment of
the Pacific Art Association (Taiheiy ga kai) in 1902.27
Kuroda was also active in promoting the opening of the first yearly government-spon-
sored exhibition, the so-called Bunten, which began its activities in 1907. There were three
divisions in these exhibitions: Japanese-style painting (Nihonga), painting in Western style
(seiyga), and sculpture (chokoku).28 The definition of these three areas established at that
time has persisted until today. During the first decade of these exhibitions, the White
 1. Western-Style Painting | 29

Horse Society and the Pacific Art Association remained the two most influential groups of
participating painters. Kuroda himself was on the jury of the Bunten from the first exhibi-
tion in 1907 to his death in 1924. The Bunten was established using the French Salon as its
model, and these exhibitions played an important role in helping to support the continua-
tion of the spirit of academism in the Japanese art world. All these changes Kuroda helped
bring about came as a result of his experiences in France as an art student.

The Fourth Stage: The Generation following Kuroda

The year 1900 was a notable one in the history of Japanese art, since many artists went to
Paris because of the Exposition Universelle de Paris. These artists belong to a fourth stage of
the acceptance of Western-style art in Japan; they underwent artistic training under Japa-
nese instructors who had themselves studied in Europe. Among them were Wada Eisaku
(see Plate 2) and Okada Sabursuke, both of whom studied with Kuroda and belonged to
the White Horse Society, as well as Kanokogi Takeshir (18741941) (fig. 1.6), Mitsutani
Kunishir (18741936), and Nakamura Fusetsu (18661943), who studied with Koyama
Shtar and Asai Ch. Interestingly enough, the students of Kuroda studied with Raphal
Collin at the Acadmie Colarossi, and the students of Koyama studied with Jean-Paul
Laurens at the Acadmie Julian.
As is well known, the so-called Art Nouveau style was flourishing at the 1900 Paris
Exposition. It is also recognized that Art Nouveau had something in common with Japanese
traditional painting in terms of its two-dimensionality, decorative quality, and an empha-
sis on linear expression. The artists who studied in France around 1900 noted these new
directions in European painting and brought this new information back to the art world in
Japan. But, on the other hand, those painters who were sent to Paris had to take the respon-
sibility as well for contributing to the firm establishment of academism in the art world. As
can be seen in the work of Wada, Okada, and Kanokogi, their styles were based on those
employed in the French salon painting of the late nineteenth century, even though certain
new elements of decorativeness and a two-dimensional quality did enter into their styles.
It was in 1912 that a truly new stylistic movement opposing the older academic style
occurred in Japan. New European movements such as post-impressionism and fauvism
were introduced from Europe through illustrations in periodicals and books, and, of
course, by those artists who had studied in Europe. Such journals as Bijutsu shinp, Mizue,
and Shirakaba began to be published, and through them European old masters such as
Jan Van Eyck, Durer, and Rembrandt were introduced, along with the new movements.
There were some younger painters, such as Kishida Rysei (18911929) (fig. 1.7) and his
friends, who took a strong interest in the old classic arts of Europe. Many new groups,
with differing points of view, were now established, among them the Second Division
Group (Nikakai), in which Yamashita Shintar (18811966) (fig. 1.8) and Ishii Hakutei
(18821958) were active, along with the oil painting department of the Japan Art Institute
(Inten) and the Association of Spring Sun (Shunykai), where such artists as Kosugi Misei
(18811964) and Morita Tsunetomo (18811933) were influential. Kishidas group, called
the Grass and Earth Society (Sdsha) played an important role as well. By 1912, a whole
new and richly diverse era had opened in the world of Japanese oil painting.
Figure 1.6. Kanokogi Takeshir, Portrait of a Woman, 19011903. Oil on canvas. 73 45.7 cm. Kyoto
Institute of Technology, Kyoto.
Figure 1.7. Kishida Rysei, Still Life (Three Red Apples, Cup, Can, Spoon), 1920. Oil on canvas. 36.5
44 cm. Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki.

Figure 1.8. Yamashita Shintar, Offer-

ing, 1915. Oil on canvas. 55 45.7 cm.
Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo.
32|Emiko Yamanashi

Notes

1. For information on these artists, the exhibition catalogue Shajitsu no keifu-yfu hygen
no genry (The heritage of natural representation: Origins of Westernization), published by the
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, in 19851986, is helpful.
2. The biography is available in a modern edition, Takahashi Yuichi rireki: Takahashi
Yuichi yuga shiry, edited by Aoki Shigeru and published by Chkrosha bijutsu shuppan in
1984.
3. For detailed information on Takahashi Yuichi, see Hijikata Teiichi, Takahashi Yuichi
(Tokyo: Kodansha, 1972), and the catalogue for an exhibition on the artist held at the Museum
of Modern Art in Kamakura in 1994 titled Takahashi Yuichi.
4. See Aoki Shigeru, Fontanesi to kbu bijutsu gakk (Tokyo: Shinbundo, 1978), and the
exhibition catalogue Fontanesi, Ragusa to Meiji zenki no bijutsu, held at the Museum of Mod-
ern Art in Tokyo in 1977, and another similar exhibition held at the Teien Museum in 1977.
5. For information on Kawamura, see Miwa Hideo, Kawamura Kiyoo kenky (Tokyo:
Chkronsha bijutsu shuppan, 1994), and the catalogue for an exhibition of his work shown
at the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum in 1994 titled Kawamura Kiyoo.
6. There is an extensive bibliography of Kuroda. See, among others, Kumamoto Kenjir,
Kuroda Seiki (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shimbunsha, 1966), as well as Kumamotos edited multivol-
ume Kuroda Seiki nikki (Tokyo: Chkronsha bijutsu shuppan, 1966) and Kurodas Kaiga no
shorai (Tokyo: Chkronsha bijutsu shuppan, 1982).
7. For details on Kume and his career, see his Hogan bijutsu ron (Tokyo: Chkron
bijutsu shuppan, 1984), and his Kume Keiichir nikki (The diary of Kume Keiichir) (Tokyo:
Chkron bijutsu shuppan, 1990).
8. For Wada, see the exhibition catalogue of his works shown at the Shizuoka Prefectural
Museum in 1998.
9. Details on Okadas career can be found in the catalogue for an exposition of his works
held at the Saga Prefectural Museum in 1993.
10. See the catalogue for an exhibition of his works held at the Mie Prefectural Museum
in 1990 and another held at the Fuchu Municipal Museum of Art in 2001.
11. Kimura was a writer and critic, born in Okayama Prefecture, and a graduate of
Waseda University. He worked as the editor of Ikubun-kan and Shunju-sha while publishing
various articles and translations. He composed works of fiction and also did research in vari-
ous aspects of Meiji culture and literature.
12. For details, see Kinoshita Naoyuki, Bijjitsu to iu misemono (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1993).
13. See the exhibition catalogue Antonio Fontanesi and Japanese Modern Art, published
by the Teien Museum, Tokyo, in 1997, p. 148.
14. These details can also be found in the 1997 Teien catalogue mentioned in note 13.
15. These notes can be found in Komamoto Kenjir, Meiji shoki raicho Irtaria Bijutuka no
kenky (Tokyo: Yashio shoten, 1942).
16. For an account of Fenollosa and the contents of the lecture, see J. Thomas Rimer,
Hegel in Tokyo, in Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation,
ed. Michael Marra (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002).
17. For details on these paintings, see Takashina Shji, History Painting in the Meiji
 1. Western-Style Painting | 33

Era, in Challenging Past and Present: the Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art,
ed. Ellen Conant (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006).
18. See various entries in Nakamura Yoshikazu, Nihon kindai bijutsu rons shi (Tokyo:
Kyruru-do, 1982).
19. For additional details, see J. Thomas Rimer, Mori gais Phantom Partner, in Chal-
lenging Past and Present: the Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art, ed. Ellen
Conant (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006).
20. For details on Hayashi and his contributions, see the catalogue for the exhibition
Hayashi Tadamasa no me, held at the Takaoka Municipal Museum of Art in 1996.
21. For details on Collin, see the catalogue on the exhibition on Collin held at the Station
Gallery, Tokyo, and elsewhere in Japan in 1999.
22. From a letter to Kurodas father-in-law, written on April 8, 1887. See Kuroda Seiki
nikki [The diary of Kuroda Seiki] (Tokyo: Chkron bijutsu shuppan, 1966).
23. For a useful discussion of ksga, see Takashina Shji, Kuroda Seiki, in Kindai
Bijutsushi-ron (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1972).
24. For various issues involved in the argument of nudity in art, see Nakamura Yoshikazu,
Nihon kindai bijutsu rons shi (Tokyo: Kyrydo, 1982).
25. See Tano Yasunori, Kyokuto Asia no rataizo, in Kataru genzai katarareru kako, ed.
National Research Institute of Cultural Properties (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1997).
26. From a letter addressed to Kume Keiichiro and Goda Kiyoshi, dated March 28, 1895,
found in Kuroda Seiki, Kaiga no shorai, p. 273.
27. For details on these groups and their importance, see the exhibition catalogue for Mo
hitotsu no Meiji bijutsu, held at the Fuchu Municipal Museum and elsewhere in 2003.
28. For the history of Bunten, see the five-volume history of Bunten, Nittenshi hensan
Iinkai, ed., Nittenshi, 1980.
 Ellen P. Conant

2 JapanesePaintingfromEdotoMeiji
Rhetoric and Reality

Although the extensive research on Meiji painting produced during the past quarter-
century reveals the rhetoric of Ernest F. Fenollosa (18531908) and his erstwhile pupil and
colleague, Okakura Kakuz, pen-name Tenshin (18621913), to be at variance with our
current apprehension of reality, their views continue to dominate the prevailing narrative
regarding the development of modern Japanese art.1 Art historians still subscribe, in vary-
ing degrees, to their premises that (1) Japanese art declined during the waning decades of
the Edo era, resulting in a dilution of traditional values and skills, (2) the Meiji govern-
ments indiscriminate policies of Westernization and their official espousal of Western art
threatened the survival of the traditional arts, (3) the plight of their two progenitors, Kan
Hgai (18281888) and Hashimoto Gah (18351908), exemplified the vicissitudes expe-
rienced by artists of that generation during the transition from Edo to Meiji, and (4) their
efforts to resuscitate and renovate the traditional arts, culminating in the establishment of
the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, rescued Meiji painting from excessive Westernization and
sterile academicism.
Indeed, Victoria Weston maintains:

As the story of modern Japanese painting is commonly told, it began with Fenol-
losa and Okakura and their campaign to turn Japanese art from its fascination with
Westernization back to the appreciation and expression of qualities that, though con-
temporary, were intrinsically Japanese. . . . Their campaign polemicized the field to
create two villains: Westernization and stagnation. Always, they were the stewards of
Japanese painting, overseeing its regeneration as a modern national painting.2

Weston further claims that Okakuras rhetoric . . . helped shape how Japanese art history
was taught in the West. Okakura molded his explanation of the trends in Meiji art to sup-
port and enhance the position of the Japan Art Institute,3 which under the leadership of
his principal disciple, Yokoyama Taikan (18681955), became, by virtue of longevity, the
dominant Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) organization of the Taish (19121925) and
Shwa (19251989) eras.4
This chapter will contest each of these issues and, by surveying the career of more
than a dozen artists regarded as the leading painters of that period, demonstrate that not
only did these painters successfully negotiate the Meiji Restoration, but that in varying
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 35

ways they actually anticipated and implemented the stylistic and ideological premises of
Fenollosa and Okakura. Furthermore, it was they and their pupils, rather than the iconic
painters and disciples of Fenollosa and Okakura, who were responsible for what is gener-
ally regarded as the later efflorescence of modern Japanese painting.

Historic Background

Specialists in Edo painting and prints have been primarily interested in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, which culminated in a galaxy of luminaries who flourished in
the last quarter of the eighteenth century. By contrast, even the ablest of their pupils have
received far less attention, while most members of the succeeding generation, regardless
of their contemporary renown, are consigned to an art history oblivion that encompasses
the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century. This half-century lacuna has been
construed as indicative of the degradation of Japanese painting posited by Fenollosa and
Okakura to justify their role as the resuscitators and renovators of Japanese painting.
The remarkable creativity and innovation evident in the field of painting and prints
during the last quarter of the eighteenth century was accompanied by technical advances in
various other mediumsmetal, cloisonn, ceramics, and particularly the yzen method of
textile dyingthat made possible more complex compositions and pictorial motifs beyond
the capacity of most artisans. Many entrepreneurs consequently sent their ablest crafts-
men to study with prominent painters, from whom they also commissioned new designs,
thereby enlarging the painters scope and opportunities.5
Artists also continued to act as tutors to wealthy, educated members of various social
strata who wished to master painting as an accomplishment (gein) or skill (gijutsu). There
were, in addition, many artists regarded as amateur in the sense that they earned their
livelihood by other means.6 Japanese painters, moreover, dating back to the three Ami
(SanAmi), also served as keepers, connoisseurs, and authenticators of shogunal and pri-
vate collections. These duties subsequently devolved to members of other schools, par-
ticularly the official Kan academies. Painters were also influenced by efforts of National
Learning Scholars (Kokugakusha) and antiquarians to recover and reinterpret their artis-
tic past while eagerly absorbing and adapting new influences from China and the West
that reached them primarily via Nagasaki.7 These varied roles did not cease with the Meiji
Restoration but were adapted to meet the evolving needs of the Meiji era.
Furthermore, the decision of the imperial court to have the Kyoto palace rebuilt after
the fire of 1788 in the manner of the Heian dairi and to engage the leading contemporary
painters to decorate all but the two major ceremonial structures enabled the new schools
of Kyoto painting to secure the patronage of all segments of society well in advance of the
Meiji Restoration. These artists also pioneered the establishment in the 1790s of biannual
art exhibitions (Higashiyama Shunj Tenkan) that led to a close correlation between the
artists favored by the court and those favored by the Kyoto public. This was reflected in the
artists selected and the commissions awarded for the decoration of the palace when it was
again rebuilt in 1855 after having been destroyed by fire the previous year.8
While artists in Edo were indirectly the beneficiaries of these developments, they con-
fronted very different circumstances. By the onset of the nineteenth century the four main
36|Ellen P. Conant

schools of Kan painters attached to the Shogunate were becoming increasingly sterile
despite the efforts of some of their members to find new and more vital means of expres-
sion.9 Many of their more adventurous pupils joined the ranks of the popular ukiyo-e and
literati schools or established themselves as independent machi eshi (town painters). Expo-
nents of the Maruyama-Shij and Rinpa schools also flourished. Hence the Kan artists
attached to the bakufu and the han faced stiff competition throughout the country.

Transition from Edo to Meiji

The arrival of Perry accelerated internal pressures for a restoration of imperial rule.
Vying daimy forces guarding the Imperial Palace inadvertently ignited a fire in 1864
that devastated the center of Kyoto. No effort was spared to rebuild the city, which had
become a focus of national attention as the court and Shogunate vied for control of
the country. Although it was assumed that the subsequent departure of the court and
the shift of the capital to Tokyo following the Restoration in 1868 left Kyoto bereft, the
loss was offset by local efforts to bolster the traditional crafts and assist both craftsmen
and connoisseurs to industrialize and develop both domestic and foreign markets. As
part of an aggressive modernization program, the industrial development section of
the Kyoto government initiated in 1871 biannual expositions that featured both tradi-
tional and contemporary arts. Municipal authorities also responded favorably to artists
requests in 1880 to establish an art school that encompassed all the major painting cir-
cles, including Western-style art.10 Yet such was the continuing strength of the private
juku of the major artists that despite scholarships and military draft deferments, the
school had difficulty recruiting pupils. Because of the continuity of both populace and
patronage and the significant role that craft entrepreneurs and merchants played in the
governance of Kyoto, the Kyoto artists experienced greater stability than their counter-
parts elsewhere in the country, which may account for their being more receptive to for-
mal innovation.11 Kyoto was moreover the beneficiary of the Meiji governments efforts to
position Kyoto as the cultural capital, thereby bolstering the efforts of Kyoto officials to
foster a tourist industry.12
Both the personal and professional lives of Edo artists, however, were severely dis-
rupted by the Shogunates cancellation in 1862 of the sankin ktai, a policy requiring
daimy to maintain residences in Edo and to leave members of their family as hostages
when they returned to their han. So great was the exodus of daimyo retinues and their
provisioners that Tokyo did not regain a comparable level of population until the mid-
1880s, and that population was of a very different background.13 Following the fall of the
Shogunate and the subsequent abolition of the han, many Kan artists attached to the
bakufu and the daimy lost their status and sinecure and had difficulty securing substitute
sources of income and patronage in either Tokyo or their former han.14 The absence of
meaningful references to these calamitous circumstances in their biographical accounts
suggests that these narratives are not based on contemporary sources but rather on the
reminiscences of family and associates who neither recalled nor comprehended the impact
of these events. It is important to bear in mind, nonetheless, that the official underpin-
nings of Edo painting remained intact up to the time of the Restoration.
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 37

Government Support of Western Art

The decision of the bakufu in 1856 to include the study and subsequent teaching of Western
art in the program of the Institute of Foreign Studies (Bansho Shirabesho) was not based
on aesthetic values but on the premise that it provided skills essential for the countrys
industrialization and national security. There was also a concurrent interest in reproduc-
tive technologies such as photography, lithography, engraving, and printing presses; their
possible utilization was explored, both independently and cooperatively, by artists, entre-
preneurs, and government officials.15 To further develop requisite skills, the newly created
Ministry of Education in 1872 included pencil drawing in the curriculum of government
elementary schools. Since only a limited number of students received such training before
the course was changed to brush drawing in 1889, this program can scarcely have had the
deleterious effects implied by Fenollosa, Okakura, and subsequent critics.16
The establishment in 1876 of the Technical Art School (Kbu Bijutsu Gakk), devoted
solely to the study of Western art, was similarly viewed as a further abandonment of the
traditional arts. Cursory accounts of this short-lived institution fail to convey that this
much-maligned venture admirably served the pragmatic goals of its instigator, the first
minister of public works, It Hirobumi (18411909). He believed that knowledge of West-
ern painting, sculpture, and architecture was integral to the erection and decoration of
Western-style structures needed to house the new technologies and institutions being
developed and implemented by the government, without recourse to foreign expertise.17
With the assistance of the Italian minister plenipotentiary Conte Alessandro F dOstiani
(18251905), Ito secured the services of an Italian painter, Antonio Fontanesi (18181882),
a sculptor, Vincenzo Ragusa (18411927), and an architect, Giovanni Vincenzo Cappel-
letti (1835?1887), to train Japanese students in European academic art, which had not
been included in the curriculum of the Imperial College of Engineering (Kobu Daigaku).18
Unfortunately Itos departure left the art school institutionally stillborn.
The director of the college, Henry Dyer (18481919), had reluctantly conceded that
conditions in Japan necessitated the inclusion of a course in architecture, but he was
unwilling to accommodate an auxiliary art academy staffed by Italians. Itos successor,
Yamao Yz (18371917) shared Dyers views and hastily engaged a young British archi-
tect, Josiah Conder (18521920), whose background and training was more amenable to
Dyer.19 The Technical Art School accordingly was placed directly under the management
of the Department of Engineering. Its stated mandate was to supplement the distinctive
skills of Japanese craftsmen by teaching them modern European techniques, both of
design and execution. The failure to meld the two schools deprived science, engineering,
and particularly architecture students of vital training in the arts and left the art school
rudderless in a ministry whose needs it was not authorized to meet.20
A total of 101 students attended the Technical Art School during its brief existence
from November 1876 to January 1883. More than half of the 56 students in the painting
course had received prior training in Western art from early Japanese exponents, as well as
foreign employees and residentsample indication that the Meiji government was neither
the sole nor possibly the primary impetus for the study of Western art.21 They flocked to
the Technical Art School because it offered them an opportunity to study with more quali-
fied foreign teachers and to access painting supplies otherwise difficult to obtain on the
38|Ellen P. Conant

Japanese market. The dozen pupils bent upon becoming painters withdrew when Fonta-
nesis successor failed to meet their expectations. By contrast, there were not enough quali-
fied candidates for the sculpture course, so the 46 chosen had to be awarded government
subsidies. The sculpture program ended with the expiration of Ragusas second three-year
contract on June 28, 1882, and when painting instructor Achille San Giovannis contract
terminated on January 23, 1883, the Technical Art School ceased to exist because the Min-
istry of Education refused to assume administrative responsibility.22
The minister of finance, kuma Shigenobu (18381922), had sought as early as 1880,
for reasons of economy, to transfer the Imperial College of Engineering and the Technical
Art School to the Ministry of Education, where the latter would have been a counterpart
to the Tokyo Music School (Ongaku Torishirabe).23 This was a requisite step in the gradual
dismantling of the Ministry of Public Works, which was disbanded on December 22, 1885.
The Imperial College of Engineering then came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry
of Education and was reconstituted in March 1886 as the College of Engineering of the
Tokyo Imperial University (Teikoku Daigaku Kka Daigaku).24 Why the Ministry of Edu-
cation rejected the Technical Art School remains uncertain, as does the identity of min-
istry officials who had the rank and authority to formulate and implement policy, which
both Fenollosa and Okakura lacked at that juncture. It was not due, as is often assumed,
to dissension or competition amongst the artists themselves, but rather to the concerted
efforts of some Ministry of Education officials to marginalize the study of Western art and
to exclude it from the curriculum of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, promulgated in 1887,
that engendered an ideological division of painting circles and the further categorization
of art on the basis of media, format, and subject matter. Why this East/West divide was less
rampant in the field of architecture, music, and literature is a subject of crucial relevance
that is beyond the scope of this chapter.

The First Generation of Meiji Masters

Since most studies of Meiji painting commence with, and concentrate on, the careers of
the second generation of Meiji masters,25 this chapter will focus instead on the activities of
the first generation of Meiji artistswho are the chronological cohort of Fenollosas and
Okakuras iconic painters, Kan Hgai and Hashimoto Gahbecause information about
them is more relevant, more difficult to access, and more likely to be inadequate. Most
accounts scant the maternal, and often the paternal, antecedents of the artists, making it
difficult to draw distinctions, recommended by John Clark, based on their social and pro-
fessional milieu.26 Their background is further obscured by continued credence for much
that is patently apocryphal. The problem is compounded by the artists need, in the modern
era, to create personae and their pupils, contemporaries, and critics incentive to sub-
stantiate and amplify those personae. The historical record is further conditioned by the
artists physical longevity, contemporary status, and the accomplishments of their pupils.
While the majority of this generation were born in the second quarter of the nine-
teenth century, there were a few far older, such as Kikuchi Ysai (17881878) and Shiokawa
Bunrin (18081877), who were major figures through the first decade of Meiji, and Shibata
Zeshin (18071891), who remained active through the second decade. All these artists were
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 39

trained in the tenets of their respective schools and/or teachers and were mature, estab-
lished artists by the time of the Restoration.27 Their responses to the challenges and oppor-
tunities of the Bakumatsu and early Meiji were affected by their personal circumstances,
physical location, professional affiliations, and the evolving policies of the Meiji govern-
ment. While the transition from Edo to Meiji affected the old and new capitals differently,
as related above, a sufficient number of artists studied and worked in both areas and else-
where so as to render geographical distinctions subordinate to our generational grouping.
The son of a minor government official, Kikuchi Ysai was born and lived in Edo. An
independent artist since the age of twenty-one, he augmented his basic training with a
minor Kan master by diligent study of other major styles, including yamato-e, Maruyama-
Shij, literati painting of Tani Bunch, as well as Western art, based on examples secured
from officials in Nagasaki, to form an eclectic style and historic repertoire that anticipated
the stylistic and thematic premises of Okakura Tenshin. Although tales abound of the
disinterest of Japanese in early Meiji in their historical and cultural past, Kikuchi Ysais
eminence was based on his authoritative knowledge of ancient customs and practices and
his encyclopedic depiction of historical and legendary figures embodied in a woodblock
series known as Former Worthies and Old Customs (Zenken kojitsu) published from 1836
to 1868 in a total of twenty volumes.28 This compendium of historical representations was a
major source of subject matter for all manner of Meiji artists, as were his many paintings of
historical themes, such as The Mongol Invasion (fig. 2.1),29 dating from 1862, which formed
the basis for improvisation by later artists. Particularly noteworthy is the treatment of
the same subject executed in 1900 by his prominent pupil, Matsumoto Fko (18401923),
who, following the expulsion of Okakura in 1898, was for some two decades an influential
teacher at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. However, there are no discernible stylistic dif-
ferences that distinguish Fkos painting as Nihonga. These two renderings of the same
subject aptly illustrate J. Thomas Rimers observation that

while there has always been in the Japanese tradition a certain room for a fresh and
new vision, those for whom this art was created were meant to derive one important
part of their aestheticand by extension, moralpleasure through their observa-
tions of the use, reuse, and new use of those conventions of style and content deemed
by artist and patron alike as appropriate to the particular occasion for which a par-
ticular work was created.30

That Ysai numbered among his pupils such diverse painters as Fko and Watanabe Seitei
(18511918) and print artists Suzuki Kason (18601919) and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839
1892) testifies to the versatility of his training.
Shibata Zeshins (18071891) career belies the distinction between fine arts (bijutsu)
and crafts (kogei) drawn by scholars based upon the coinage of terminology resulting
from Japans participation in the Vienna Exposition of 1873. The son of an Edo tobacco-
nist, Zeshin was trained both as a lacquer artist and painter, first in his birthplace, Edo,
and then in Kyoto. Apprenticed at the age of eleven to a gold-lacquer craftsman, he studied
painting from age fifteen with the Maruyama-Shij artist Suzuki Nanrei (17751844) in
Edo, and then with the Kyoto painter Okamoto Toyohiko (17731845), who was also the
teacher of Shiokawa Bunrin. Although best known and often classified as a lacquer artist
40|Ellen P. Conant

whose inro, writing boxes, and lacquer paintings were highly esteemed by his contempo-
raries and continue to be avidly sought after by Western collectors, he was also an innova-
tive painter.31 Four Elegant Pastimes (see Plate 3), is one of four pairs of screens based on
a creative evocation of the famed Hikone Screen32 of early Edo that are on a par with the
Rinpa schools recreation of Heian subjects and styles, as are many of his lacquer works. He
was also a pioneer collector of Buddhist sculpture, one of the first to regard religious icons
as secular art objects. Both Ysai and Zeshin demonstrate a resilient reliance on tradition
coupled with a resourceful exploration of new interpretations that was commendable for
such aged artists.
Several notable members of this first generation of Meiji painters in Kyoto were heirs to
their respective schools, which had come to function much like guilds, thereby demonstrat-
ing the continuity and increasing versatility of Kyoto painting circles. Following the death
of Yokoyama Seiki (17931865), Shiokawa Bunrin (18081877) became head of the Shij
school, which was perhaps the most popular and numerous in Kyoto. The son of a samurai
family who were attendants of Rengekin, more commonly known as Sanjusangend, one

Figure 2.1.Kikuchi Ysai (17881878),

The Mongol Invasion, 1862. Hanging scroll,
ink and color on silk, 161.2 83.2 cm.
Shizuoka Kenritsu Bijutsukan, Shizuoka.
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 41

of the ten temples whose chief abbot was an imperial prince (monzeki), Bunrin entered the
service of Prince Takatsukasa, an art aficionado who encouraged the youth to pursue his
interest in painting and arranged for him to study with Okamoto Toyohiko (17731845).
Bunrin was an innovative artist who found stimulating new ideas in Ming-Ching
painting as well as in Western art. He is distinguished for his preoccupation with the eva-
nescent effects of light and atmosphere in transforming the shape and substance of form,
that is, the dematerialization of nature, evident in his pair of screens in the Freer Gallery
of Art (fig. 2.2) and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. He is also noted for his many paintings
of fireflies, firework sparklers, and night scenes, which paralleled the interests of West-
ern contemporaries such as Whistler.33 His paintings had a profound effect on succeeding
Meiji artists, anticipating and possibly influencing the late Meiji mr-tai (hazy) paintings
of Tenshins disciples.34 He was also instrumental in founding in 1868 the first art orga-
nization of the Meiji era, named Cloudlike Society (Joun-sha), to supplant the defunct
Higashiyama Shunj Tenkan, thereby providing continuity and close working ties with
local officials that were beneficial to the development of the arts in Kyoto.

Figure 2.2.Shiokawa Bunrin (18081877), Summer and Winter Landscape, autumn 1860. Pair of six-
fold screens, ink and color on paper, 159.8 348.4 cm each. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institu-
tion, Washington, D.C. Purchase funds provided by the bequest of Edith Ehrman, F1978.1, F1978.2.
42|Ellen P. Conant

A younger member of the same generational cohort, Kno Bairei (18441895), suc-
ceeded Bunrin as the last head of the Shij school in Kyoto.35 The youngest son of one of
the six main moneylenders in Kyoto, Bairei was for more than a decade a pupil of Naka-
jima Raish (17961871), then head of the Maruyama school in Kyoto. Hence he was a
fully trained artist when he elected, shortly before the death of Raish, to enter the studio
of Bunrin. An able artist and excellent teacher, Bairei maintained the largest private juku
in Kyoto and attracted the most promising pupils, many of whom became important art-
ists and craftsmen of the succeeding generation, notably Taniguchi Kky (18541915),
Kikuchi Hbun (18621918), Takeuchi Seih (18641942), Tsuji Kak (18701931), and the
potter Kiyomizu Rokubei V. (18751959). He also published numerous illustrated books
that served as sources of design, which enjoyed wide circulation, further earning him the
gratitude and financial support of prominent entrepreneurs. He was a founding member
of the Kyoto-Prefecture Painting School and the Kyoto Art Association (Kyoto Bijutsu
Kykai), established in 1890.
Another pupil of Raish for the same extended period was Kawabata Gyokush
(18421913),36 the son of a Kyoto lacquer artist. He went to Edo in 1866 at the invitation
of his fathers patrons, the Mitsui, and other prominent merchants, who enabled him to
flourish as an artist and teacher during the demise of the Shogunate and the first decade of
Meiji. He aggressively sought to expand his repertoire and representational skills by study-
ing Western art with Charles Wirgman (18321891), correspondent-illustrator for the Lon-
don Illustrated News, and with local Western-style (yga) artists such as Kawakami Tgai
(18271881). His private juku was so successful that Okakura soon engaged him to teach
at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he and another Kyoto artist, Kose Shseki (1843
1919),37 supplemented a faculty composed primarily of a coterie of Kan artists associated
with Okakura and Fenollosa. Unlike most of the faculty members that withdrew with
Okakura when he was ousted in 1898, Gyokush continued to teach at Tokyo School of
Fine Arts throughout the remainder of the Meiji era and was regarded as an accomplished
and influential Nihonga painter.
Mori Kansai (18141894) became the dominant Maruyama master in Kyoto follow-
ing the deaths of Mori Ipp (17981871) and Nakajima Raish (17961871).38 He was born
in Hagi to a family in the service of prominent Chsh samurai. A pupil and adopted
son-in-law of the Osaka painter Mori Tetsuzan (17751841), Kansai was seemingly more
esteemed for his participation in Chshs struggle to topple the Shogunate than for his
highly traditional paintings. By virtue of seniority and the importance of the Maruyama
school, he assumed the leadership of the Cloudlike Society following the death of Bunrin
and was a moderating figure in Kyoto art circles. Among his few pupils were two of the
leading artists of the next generation, Nomura Bunkyo (18541911), who later taught at
the Peers School in Tokyo, and Yamamoto Shunkyo (18711933), who remained in Kyoto.
Neither succeeded him in the sense that by the mid-1890s the traditional school designa-
tion had given way to the juku of individual artists who both vied with, and taught at,
government art schools.
The adopted son and heir of Kishi Renzan (18051859), Kishi Chikud (18261897)
was one of the most accomplished artists of early Meiji.39 Homely, erratic, and with few
pupils, possibly due to an undiagnosed ailment, Chikud was, like his Kishi forebears
Ganku (1749/561838), Gantai (17821865), and Renzanadept in the representation of
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 43

animals, particularly tigers. He spared no effort to achieve ever greater fidelity by studying
the actual animals in a traveling circus, and by securing both photographs and reproduc-
tions of Western representations of animals. His penetrating observation of nature and
skill at composition is evident in his many screens, ranging from panoramic landscapes to
close-up renderings of single subjects. One of the earliest masterpieces of Meiji painting is
his pair of eight-fold screens, tsu Karasaki (fig. 2.3; see also Plate 4), depicting two vari-
ants of the traditional Eight Views of Omithe snow-covered harbor at Otsu at dawn
and the pine tree at Karasaki in the chill light of dusk.40 They are still in the possession of
the Chis Corporation, the heirs of the original patron, the noted textile dealer Nishimura
Sozaemon.41 Chikuds collaboration in early Meiji with the youthful master of Chis,
the eighth Nishimura Sozaemon, led to the creation of new textile designs and techni-
cal innovations that enriched the work of both the painter and the textile entrepreneur.
Chikuds late landscape, Moon Emerging from Maruyama (c. 1897),42 expertly portrays
the evanescent effects of nature so skillfully explored by Bunrin. The popularity of such
works may have prompted Okakura to challenge his pupils to seek new means of rendering
the transitory aspects of nature in works that came to be known as mr-tai (hazy style).43

Figure 2.3. Kishi Chikud (18281897), Otsu Karasaki, details of each screen, c. 1876. Pair of eight-fold
screens, ink, color, gofun, and gold on silk. 158.0 422.0 cm each. Chis Corporation, Kyoto.
44|Ellen P. Conant

Mochizuki Gyokusen (18341913)44 was heir to another of the new schools of Kyoto
painting founded in the eighteenth century. His ability to infuse traditional themes and
techniques with a new vigor and fresh approach gained him wide patronage. He also
assisted Kyoto officials to establish courses designed to train former members of the gay
quarters and other marginal occupations for more acceptable employment in the craft
industries. Members of the Hara school also flourished.45
Much as had the founders of Kyotos leading schools a century earlier, Suzuki
Hyakunen (18251891) established his own school by combining his basic training in
Kishi and Shij painting with an eclectic amalgamation of various Japanese and Chinese
styles to create a new synthesis. A strong personality and an effective teacher, he quickly
gained prominence and numbered among his pupils many important painters, particu-
larly Imao Keinen (18451924), whose suave manner and technical elegance brought him
early recognition, his son Suzuki Shnen (18491918), and Kubota Beisen (18521906). All
these artists experimented with and absorbed, to varying degrees, elements of Western
art as had their forebears, but the few Kyoto artists intent on mastering Western painting,
such as Tamura Sritsu (18461918) and Koyama Sanz (18601927), had to go to Tokyo
and Yokohama for further training.46
Three Edo artistsKawakami Tgai (18271881), Takahashi Yuichi (18281894), and
Goseda Hry (18271892)trained in a variety of traditional styles, chose to devote their
careers to the mastery of Western art. Tgai was a commoner, the son of a landowner
family in Nagano, who at the age of sixteen came to Edo. There he became a pupil of
nishi Chinnen (17921851), who was versed in both Maruyama and literati painting.47
His adoption by an influential samurai family facilitated his appointment in 1856 to the
Institute for Western Studies (Bansho Shirabesho), where he was assigned the following
year to undertake the study of Western drawing and painting. He had both the tenacity of
purpose and technical diligence to master, with only the aid of an English text and mate-
rials of his own making, Western methods of drawing and painting in a facsimile of oil
paint, which he began to teach in 1861 to members of the newly established Painting Divi-
sion. He was affiliated thereafter with various military institutions, and in addition opened
a private school in 1869 named the Chk Dokuga-kan, where he trained such promis-
ing young Western-style painters as Nakamaru Seijr (18411896), Kawamura Kiyo-o
(18521934), Koyama Shtar (18571916), and Matsuoka Hisashi (18621944). He also
published an early instructional text for use in elementary schools that was based upon
an English drawing manual and other foreign sources that became more plentiful in early
Meiji. Most of his activity as a Western-style artist was of a technical nature, particularly
cartography, yet many of his extant oeuvre are literati paintings that were popular in early
Meiji, evidence that he also continued to function as a traditional painter, as did most of
the first generation of so-called yga artists.
Takahashi Yuichi was both his pupil and colleague.48 A sickly child, unable to con-
tinue the family profession of teaching archery and fencing, Yuichi began at about the age
of ten to study painting with minor Kan artists. Little is known of his life prior to the
1860s when, fascinated by the realism of some Western engravings that he chanced to see,
he gained entry to the Foreign Studies Center (Kaiseisho), where he studied with Tgai.49
He also sought foreign tutelage from Anna Schoyer, an American amateur artist briefly
resident in Yokohama, and Antonio Fontanesi at the Technical Art School. For Yuichi,
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 45

Figure 2.4. Takahashi Yuichi

(18281894), Kusanoki at the
Nyirin Temple, cartoon, 1892.
Ink and color on paper, 66.0
91.8 cm. Tokyo National
Museum.

Figure 2.5. Takahashi Yuichi

(18281894), Kusanoki at the
Nyirin Temple, 1892. Oil
on canvas, 62.5 99.0 cm.
Museum of the Imperial
Collections, Sannomaru
Shzkan, Tokyo.

Western art was part of an ongoing discourse on the role of mimesis in Chinese and Japa-
nese painting.50 His obsession with fidelity lends poignancy to his incisive rendering of
dried salmon, cakes of tofu, the bust of a geisha, a standing portrait of the Meiji emperor,
and various other subjects. His dual training is evident in his cartoon, executed in ink and
light color, for the oil painting Kusanoki at the Nyirin Temple (figs. 2.4 and 2.5), 1892.
Although the private school he established in 1873, Tenkai Gakusha, played an impor-
tant role in providing training in Western art, particularly after the closure of the Techni-
cal Art School, his activity as an exponent of a new realism did not provide him a viable
income in his later years.51
Goseda Hry (18271892), likewise the son of a low-ranking samurai, was born in
the clan mansion in Edo. He atypically began his training under the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa
Kuniyoshi (17971861) and, after traveling around western Japan from 1843 to 1848, spent
the next three years studying at the Kajibashi Kan atelier with Kan (Higuchi?) Tangetsu
(18211896). He then established a studio in Edo that included his progenyson, adopted
son, daughter, and son-in-lawand a diverse assortment of pupils including, after 1861,
46|Ellen P. Conant

more than a dozen of Kuniyoshis disciples. He began to frequent Yokohama soon after its
establishment and, through his many contacts there, persuaded the correspondent of the
Illustrated London News, Charles Wirgman (1832?1891), to accept his son Yoshimatsu as
a pupil, and he too may have studied with him. In 1868 he moved from Asakusa to Yoko-
hama52 and worked closely with photographers, print artists, and publishers to explore
new technologies and to devise new modes and means of expression, such as photographic
paintings on silk, which probably were as exotic to his native as to his foreign clientele. The
oldest known example is Portrait of an Elderly Foreign Woman (Seiy rfujin zo) (fig. 2.6).53
He nonetheless succeeded in securing adequate private support, exhibition awards, and
occasional official commissions, including a portrait of the Meiji emperor, uncommonly
portrayed in traditional garb.
Fenollosa not only inveighed against the development of yga, but he also failed to
comprehend the cultural content and aesthetic qualities of literati painting. The leading
literati artists in Kyoto in early Meiji were probably Nakanishi Kseki (18071884), Tani-
guchi Aizan (18161899), and Tanomura Chokuny (18141907), who, by virtue of his
samurai ancestry, was appointed director of the Kyoto Prefecture Painting School (Kyoto-
fu Gagakk), founded in 1880. However, it was Tomioka Tessai (18361924), who chose to
function primarily as a scholar through most of Meiji, that emerges in late Meiji and Taish
era, with brilliant works such as A Panorama of the West Lake at Hangchow (fig. 2.7), 1924,
as one of the consummate artists of modern Japan.54 As Christine Guth demonstrates, he
drew upon literati painting traditions to create a powerful new means of dynamic expres-
sion and thereby gained for literati art, despite the deprecation of Fenollosa and Okakura,
its canonization as a distinctly and distinguished Japanese form of artistic expression.55

Figure 2.6. Goseda Hry (18271892),

Seiy rfujin zo (Portrait of an elderly for-
eign woman), c. 18601867. Photographic
painting, color on silk, 57.4 48.6 cm.
Kawagawa Kenritsu Rekishi Hakubutsu-
kan, Yokohama.
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 47

Two other prominent members of this gen-

eration, Araki Kanp (18311915) and Taki Katei
(18301901), were beneficiaries of the abiding
popularity of literati painting in Tokyo. Born and
reared in Edo, Kanp studied with and subse-
quently was adopted by an Edo literati artist, Araki
Kankai (17891860), whose work reflected both the
literati and kanga (Chinese-style painting) train-
ing of his teacher, Katagiri Tin (17441807).56 He
also explored the tenets of Western art with Togai
and Kunisawa Shinkur (18471877), which he
used to invigorate his traditional training. Begin-
ning at Vienna in 1873, he frequently won awards
at national and international exhibitions and main-
tained a thriving private juku, and his elaborate
portrayal of birds and flowers came to epitomize the
taste of the Imperial Household. After Okakuras
expulsion, he became a professor at the Tokyo
School of Fine Arts and later served with him as
a juror of the national salon, Bunten, established
in 1907. His heir, Araki Juppo (18721944), was a
major painter of the next generation.
Taki Katei is said to be the son of lower samu-
rai, born and reared in Edo.57 He displayed such
marked artistic talent that he was sent at about the
age of seven to study with a minor literati artist,
after which he too became a pupil of Araki Kankai
and other literati artists. When he was twenty-one
he spent six months in Nagasaki studying with S(?)
(Hidaka?) Tetsu (17911871) and frequenting the
Chinese artists resident there. He spent the follow-
ing decade traveling about Japan before settling in
Edo. He too won awards at Vienna and other major
expositions, but it was through his membership in
the Meiji Art Society (Meiji Bijutsu Kai) and par-
ticipation in their exhibitions that he, Araki Kanp,
and other literati artists gained official recognition,
industrialists patronage, and Imperial Household
commissions and awards. Although versed in a
wide range of literati styles, he is best known for
Figure 2.7. Tomioka Tessai (1837
the detailed, decorative works of his later years. He 1924), A Panorama of the West Lake
also published many illustrated books and manu- at Hangchow, 1924. Hanging scroll,
als. While none of his four children succeeded him ink and light color on paper, 141.2
as artists, his eldest son Seiichi became the first pro- 39.0 cm. Sakamoto Kojo, Kiyoshi
fessor of art history at Tokyo University in 1914. Kjin Seichji, Takarazuka.
48|Ellen P. Conant

A hanging scroll of Shki and Oni before a Pine Tree by Taki Katei and Kawanabe
Kysai reflects the close intermingling of artists in Tokyo.58 Despite his irreverence, intem-
perance, and sheer insouciance, Kawanabe Kysais (18311889) versatility, technical vir-
tuosity, and antiquarian knowledge gained him a wide following among Japanese and
foreign residents and visitors. Their interest and that of his Japanese associates, abetted
by the efforts of his great-granddaughter, has provided uncommonly detailed biographi-
cal material.59 Kysai was reared in Edo and at the tender age of six began to study with
Utagawa Kuniyoshi (17971861). He then was sent to study with minor Kan masters,
attended the Surugadai Kan studio from 1841 to 1849, after which he worked as an official
Kan painter until 1852, when he elected to become an independent artist. His copious
oeuvre encompasses a wide range of formats, subjects, and styles that display his capacity
to enhance traditional themes and means of representation with new insights and inter-
pretations. Despite his independent status, Kysai maintained close ties to both his ukiyo-e
and Kan masters. He was, moreover, a devout Buddhist, as reflected in his many paint-
ings and prints of Buddhist subjects, notably his painting of The Bodhisattva Kannon (fig.
2.8), which is thought to date from after 1885.
Although Kysai and the other members of his chronological cohort, as demonstrated
above, were inventive and successful artists who had anticipated and achieved all that
Fenollosa and Okakura sought to inculcate, John Clark refers to Kysai as a painter in a
range of traditional techniques before the rise of the category Nihonga,60 thereby raising
questions regarding the meaning of this term and its applicability to works other than
those associated with Okakura and Fenollosa, their protg, pupils, and members of the
Japan Art Institute. Clark fails to distinguish what categorically differentiates Kysais The
Bodhisattva Kannon from Hgais Kannon as Compassionate Mother (Hibo kannon) (fig.
2.9), dating from 1888, which is considered the iconic work of Meiji Nihonga and one of
the few Meiji paintings designated an Important Cultural Property.61 While little atten-
tion has been given until lately to the Buddhist paintings by first-generation Meiji artists,62
the reputation of Hgais Kannon as Compassionate Mother has been carefully cultivated.
Although not publicly exhibited in Japan until 1910, a collotype reproduction appeared in
the first issue of Kokka, a tapestry copy was exhibited at the Fourth National Industrial
Exposition held in Kyoto in 1895, and an embroidered reproduction was considered a tech-
nical marvel at the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910. An earlier version dating from 1883,
discussed below, in the possession of the Freer Gallery of Art since 1902, is not available
for loan.

Fenollosa, Okakura, and Their Protgs

Who was Kan Hgai and how did he become the progenitor and embodiment of Nihonga?
He had attracted scant attention prior to his encounter with Fenollosa, and much of the
biographical account that has since evolved is, according to Hiroko T. McDermott, a post-
humous fabrication.63 While versions vary considerably, he is generally acknowledged to be
the eldest son and pupil of a Kan painter in the service of Chsh han. He attended the
Kobiki-ch Kan atelier in Edo from 1846 to 1852 and was then employed at the han resi-
dence in Edo until 1857, when he returned to Chsh. In 1860, he assisted his master, Kan
Figure 2.8. Kawanabe Kysai (18311889),
The Bodhisattva Kannon, after 1885. Hanging
scroll, ink, color, and gold on silk, 117.0 50.6 cm.
The Japan Ukiyo-e Museum, Matsumoto City,
Nagano Prefecture.

Figure 2.9. Kan Hgai (18281888), Kannon

as Compassionate Mother (Hibo Kannon), 1888.
Panel, ink and color on silk, 195.8 86.1 cm.
Art Museum, Tokyo National University of
Fine Arts and Music.
50|Ellen P. Conant

Shsenin Tadanobu (18231880), decorate the ceiling of one of the great halls in Edo Castle,
and again returned to Chsh, where he took part in local and military activities until after
the Restoration, when, like most Kan artists, he was left without master or employment.
Why his career and that of his colleague, Hashimoto Gah, then took such an adverse
turn is inexplicable. After failing at various business enterprises, in 1877 Hgai went to
Tokyo, where, despite belonging to one of the most influential domains, he failed to secure
a government position and was implausibly reduced to decorating ceramics and lacquer,
no examples of which have as yet materialized. With the help of his Kobiki-ch colleague,
Hashimoto Gah, he received commissions from the Shimazu, former rulers of Satsuma,
and was one of several artists engaged in 1881 to decorate the new residence of his former
master. Depending on the source, it is the paintings that he exhibited at the first Domestic
Painting Competitive Exhibition (Naikoku kaiga kyshinkai) held in 1882, or at the second
in 1884, that first attracted the attention of Fenollosa.64
Murakata Akiko maintains that it was at the latter exhibition that Fenollosa praised
Hgais Colt and Cherry Blossoms as a great horse painting unequalled since the golden
age of the Tosa school.65 Fenollosa therefore could have played no part in the creation
in 1883 of an earlier version of the Kannon as Compassionate Mother shown at the Sec-
ond Exposition of Japanese Art (Pari Nihon bijutsu jrankai) held in Paris in 1884. It was
acquired, along with other unsold works, by Siegfried Bing to defray his expenses. When
Fenollosa first visited Paris in 1887 he bought the painting from Bing, and in 1902, when
he needed funds to remodel his new home in Mobile, Alabama, he offered to sell the Kan-
non and three paintings by Hashimoto Gah to the noted collector Charles Lang Freer
(18541919). The accompanying letter reveals Fenollosa to have been ill-informed regard-
ing the artists background and both the source and subject of the painting.66 The wall label
accompanying the display of the Kannon as Compassionate Mother at the Freer Gallery in
2006 nonetheless cites Fenollosas statement that [i]f Japanese art lives to the future as a
distinct movement, it will be chiefly through the influence of these two men. If not, they
will remain its final word.67
Gahs career is even more unfathomable. He began to study art at the age of seven
under his father, an adopted son-in-law of the Kobiki-ch Kan and an official painter
for the Kawagoe clan. From the age of twelve to twenty-two, Gah was a prized pupil of
Kan Shsenin Tadanobu and was, during the last decade of the Shogunate, a full-fledged
member of the academy. Given his training, skill, and exemplary credentials, it is surpris-
ing that he should have been reduced soon after the Restoration to painting sumi-e (ink
painting) export fans and carving bridges for shamisen (samisen). In 1871 he secured a
drafting position at the Naval Academy and little is known of the intervening years before
1884, when he too became acquainted with Okakura and Fenollosa. Only after the death
of Hgai in 1888, when Gah is designated to replace him as the prospective head teacher
at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, does he come into his own. Gah, however, remained
uncertain of Okakuras loyalty and he furthermore had difficulty maintaining a leader-
ship role among a younger, more enterprising, and competitive faculty. The landscapes he
painted under Fenollosas and Okakuras aegis were deemed bizarre by contemporary
critics and remain distinct from his earlier and particularly later work, when he appears
to have distanced himself from Okakura. One cannot help but wonder whether Hgai and
Gah would now be regarded as leading artists of their generation if they had never met
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 51

Fenollosa and Okakura. Hence to what extent is their current renown attributable to their
artistic accomplishments as distinct from the rhetoric of Fenollosa and Okakura?

Fenollosa and Okakura

Did Fenollosa and Okakura play as crucial a role in the development of modern Japanese
paintings as their writings have led historians to ascribe to them? Amidst the reams of
hagiographic accounts of their careers, a few bald facts are not amiss. Fenollosas career
took many fortuitous turns. After his fathers suicide in early 1878, his family executor,
having ascertained that his future prospects as a painter were slight, had the clout to secure
Fenollosa an appointment as professor of philosophy at Tokyo University, even though
he had abandoned his graduate studies two years earlier, had forfeited his scholarship,
and had no advanced degrees or experience.68 Since philosophical studies at Harvard were
then at their nadir, Fenollosa was ill-prepared to compete every two years for renewal of
his contract with better qualified foreign scholars, Japanese returning from study abroad
with advanced degrees, and a government determined to reduce the number of foreign
employees.69
Fenollosas position at Tokyo University and with the Ministry of Education provided
him the means to resume his prior preoccupation with painting. Whether by chance or
choice, Fenollosa chose to rely on the tutelage and connoisseurship of a member of the
Museum Bureau (Hakubutsu Kyoku), Kan Eitoku Tachinobu (18141891), the nominal
head of the defunct Nakabashi Kan atelier, who bestowed upon him the purely symbolic
sobriquet of Kan Eitan Masanobu.70 This association brought him into close contact with
other Nakabashi and Kobiki-ch Kantrained artists who dominated the membership
of the Painting Appreciation Society (Kanga-kai), which Fenollosa helped to establish in
1884. The greater dislocation experienced by these artists may have made them more ame-
nable to foreign guidance and assistance, but their narrow academic training did not make
them better able to achieve the new synthesis of East and West that Fenollosa envisioned,
as is evident from their subsequent careers and the many examples of their work in the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.71 Moreover, Fenollosas brusque dismissal of literati paint-
ing, his persistent efforts to thwart the development of yga, and his critical evaluation of
Hokusai strained his relations with both Japanese and foreign artists, critics, and collec-
tors.72 When his affiliation with Tokyo University was terminated in 1886, Fenollosa opted,
of necessity, to make Japanese art his profession and, since he had no private means, his
source of livelihood. It is essential to bear this in mind when reviewing his subsequent
activities and writings.73
Given Fenollosas reputation as a connoisseur and authority on Japanese art, his
career-long inability to discern creativity in Euro-American art is all the more disconcert-
ing. Fenollosas visit to the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876 afforded him an opportunity
to view the largest and most important exhibition of art held thus far in the United States.
The small landscape by a minor Dutch painter, J. W. Bilders (18111890), which he most
favored, betrays, by whatever standards applicable then and now, a want of critical judg-
ment for someone who then aspired to be a painter.74 His assertion that the greatest, most
original picture exhibited at the Chicago Exposition of 1893 was an allegory, Vanity, by a
52|Ellen P. Conant

minor French academician, Alfred Pierre Agache (18431915), was even more incongru-
ous75 given his years of study and experience and his current position as curator of Japa-
nese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The painting that he declared the most bril-
liant and perhaps the most prophetic at the Salon of 1908, just prior to his demise, reveals
that his judgment remained at variance with contemporary and subsequent evaluations.76
Mary McNeil Fenollosas account of their visit to the Kawasaki collection in Kobe
confirms that Fenollosa was no better able to judge authenticity than his Japanese counter-
parts.77 When Okakura examined more than five thousand paintings in the collection of
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1904, he let it be known that he was finding forgeries
and forgeries and expressed contempt for his former mentor, Fenollosa.78 Given the many
shortcomings in the manuscript for his posthumous publication Epochs of Chinese and
Japanese Art, Fenollosa cannot be held wholly responsible for the many errors, inadequa-
cies, and dubious illustrations that mar his magnum opus.79
The Fenollosa-Weld Collection in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts remains a conun-
drum. It is not indicative of his taste in that it was conceived from the outset as a com-
mercial venture modeled on the profitable sale by William Anderson (18421900) of his
collection of paintings to the British Museum in 1881 and his concomitant appointment as
keeper.80 Fenollosa accordingly assembled a retrospective collection that included paintings
by literati artists whose work he decried, and with the assistance of William Sturgis Bigelow
(18501926), he was able to sell the collection to Charles Goddard Weld (18571911) on
the assurance that it would be presented to the museum. When Fenollosas contract with
the Ministry of Education and Imperial Household was not renewed in 1890, he accepted a
temporary appointment as curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, that obligated him
to catalogue his collection and that of Bigelow. Unfortunately Fenollosa left no records when
he departed following his divorce and remarriage in 1895, and since the collection is only
now belatedly being catalogued, due principally to the initiative of the former curator Joe
Earle and his assistant Anne Nishimura Morse, no meaningful evaluation is as yet possible.81
The recent flurry of articles translating and interpreting the Japanese text, in the
absence of the English original, of what is regarded as a major speech Fenollosa gave in
1882 known as Bijutsu shinsetsu (An explanation of the truth of art) ignore its raison
dtre, namely the adroit use of Fenollosa to lend Western affirmation to the arbitrary
decision of key Ministry of Education officials to foreclose the Technical Art School.82 In
an excellent article titled Hegel in Tokyo, J. Thomas Rimer acutely situates this speech
and stresses the need to evaluate the role played during these years by Fenollosa.83 The
notion that Fenollosas speech could have led to the closure of the Technical Art School
is indicative of the distorted notions still current regarding the role of foreign employees
(oyatoi) during the Meiji era. There is also an ethnocentric failure to appreciate the savvy
and resourcefulness of leading Meiji officials.84 An incisive examination of the motives and
goals of senior Ministry of Education bureaucrats responsible for art policy and programs
during the Meiji era is sorely needed.
Leslie Pincus observation that Okakura was one of the first major figures in mod-
ern Japan to discover in cultural theory an adequate substitute for politics best encap-
sulates his career. Reluctant to test his talents as an artist, writer, or politician, he was,
throughout his career in Japan, a middling Ministry of Education bureaucrat. Abroad he
exploited the exoticism, romanticism, and ethnocentricity of his benefactors, who thereby
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 53

were diminished in his esteem. Okakuras colorful career as director of the Tokyo School
of Fine Arts stemmed from his determination to transform what was essentially a normal
school, established to train instructors for the new courses in brush drawing implemented
in 1889, into an academy of fine arts. Since the private juku of leading Tokyo artists were
still a viable, possibly preferable, option for those aspiring to become painters, Okakura
evidently had difficulty recruiting the more talented and better-trained pupils and strug-
gled to formulate a curriculum that could meet their very different backgrounds, training,
and expectations. Judging by the size of the entering class, some seven to nine hundred
attended the school during his tenure, yet hardly more than a handful have found their
way into the standard biographical sources.85 His ablest pupils, Yokoyama Taikan, Shimo-
mura Kanzan (18731930), and Hishida Shuns (18741911), atypically enrolled because
of prior ties to members of the faculty.
A poor administrator and fiscal manager, Okakura was frequently admonished by
ministry officials. He constantly sought to extend and exceed his authorityseeking to
place all art schools nationwide under the jurisdiction of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts.
His need to enliven his school exhibitions and to engage instructors led him to recruit the
ablest pupils of Tokyo artists whom he had dismissed as stagnant conservatives, yet it is
they and their pupils who replaced him and his coterie at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts
following his ouster in 1898.
Yokoyama Taikan continued to serve as Okakuras factotum until his death in 1913,
by which time Taikan was forty-five years old and had learned his lessons well. He was a
better administrator and politician than Okakura. Under his leadership the revived Japan
Art Institute, originally founded by Okakura in 1898 and then left to flounder, was inclu-
sive where Okakura had been divisive. Until his own death in 1955, Taikan provided an
institutional setting that enjoyed semi-official status, a spiritually and culturally edifying
credo, and premium exhibition opportunities for all manner of artists, briefly even yga
artists. He thereby laid claim to many of the outstanding artists of his own and succeed-
ing generations and obscured the fact that he, Hishida Shuns, and Shimomura Kanzan
had virtually no pupils per se. Taikan is still widely regarded by the Japanese as the pre-
eminent Nihonga painter of his generation, and his hand scroll, The Wheel of Life, is one
of the few modern paintings designated an Important Cultural Property. Some Western
critics tend to be less laudatory.86

Conclusion

A rigorous examination of the motivation and rhetoric of Fenollosa and Okakura, and an
objective investigation of their accomplishments in the context of contemporary artistic
developments in Japan and abroad, may well reveal the new Nihonga87 they fostered to
have been a dissident faction whose ideological and nationalistic baggage all too often
outweighed their formal achievements and aesthetic aspirations. Despite Fenollosas asser-
tions, it was not Hgai and Gah but the other painters of their generation surveyed in this
chapter that produced the second generation, born in the 1860s and 1870s, and the third
generation, born in the 1880s, of Meiji masters. Although Inten lays claims to Imamura
Shik (18801916), Kobayashi Kokei (18831957), Yasuda Yukihiko (18841978), Maeda
54|Ellen P. Conant

Seison (18851977), and Kawabata Ryshi (18851966), they were trained artists who had
already gained recognition in local exhibitions when they first attracted the attention of
Okakura and were invited to partake of activities of Inten at Izura. Hence the rhetoric of
Fenollosa and Okakura might more constructively be viewed, and reviewed, as expres-
sions of their personal concerns, professional parameters, and career aspirations.
The prevailing narrative has been so resistant to reappraisal because it is simpler and
academically acceptable to subject their rhetoric to the currently espoused conceptual
strategies than to re-examine available data and to secure additional information regard-
ing their personal lives and careers and their interaction with contemporary art circles
both in Japan and abroad. Summary accounts too often neglect to note the distinctions
between theory and practice and therefore fail to indicate that Meiji policy was not uni-
form, that institutional factionalism was rife, that exhibition/exposition rules were fre-
quently abridged, and that jury selection and awards were highly partisan.
Despite the protestations of Fenollosa and Okakura, Meiji painting was manifestly not
suffering from stagnation or excessive Westernization and did not require resuscitation or
renovation. The major painters were no more in need than their predecessors of mentors to
tell them what and how to paint. Japans engagement with its cultural and artistic past and
what it deemed relevant in other cultures was extensive, insightful, and creative. Its artistic
development during the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was as vital
and accomplished as its American counterpart, but both admittedly looked to Europe,
and particularly France,88 for new, innovative ideas and formal modes of expression. This
chapter has endeavored to demonstrate that the cultural policies and pragmatism of the
Meiji government, private sector enterprise and patronage, the initiative and resilience of
the members of the first generation of artists featured above who weathered the transi-
tion from Edo to Meiji, and the accomplishments of their pupils jointly contributed to the
notable achievements of modern Japanese painting.

Notes

1. The literature of both Fenollosa and Okakura is too voluminous to cite and continues to
expand at a rapid pace. The first full-length Western-language biographical account of Fenol-
losa is Lawrence W. Chisolm, Fenollosa: The Far East and American Culture, Yale Publica-
tions in American Studies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963). A major Japanese
account is Yamaguchi Seiichi, Fenorosa: Nihon no bunka no seny ni sasageru issei (Ernest
Francesco Fenollosa: A life devoted to the advocacy of Japanese culture) (Tokyo: Sanseido,
1982). Yamaguchi has continued to reprint, translate, and comment on all aspects of Fenol-
losas life and work, most recently in Ernest Francisco Fenollosa: Published Writings in English,
edited and introduced by Seiichi Yamaguchi (Tokyo: Edition Synapse, 2009), 3 vols. accom-
panied by a Japanese commentary volume titled Fenorosa eibun chosakush kaidai. Murakata
Akiko has been similarly prolific: see Ernest F. Fenollosa, Anesuto F. Fenorosa shiry: Havado
daigaku hton raiburari z, trans. Murakata Akiko, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Myjiamu shuppan, 1982);
and Murakata Akiko, Anesuto F. Fenorosa bunsho shsei: Honkoku, honyaku to kenky, 2 vols.
(Kyoto: Kyoto daigaku gakujutsu shuppankai, 2000). The Fenollosa kai, founded in 1978,
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 55

continues to foster research on Fenollosa and related figures that appears in their publication
Lotos. The literature on Okakura is too voluminous to cite; the latest biographical account is
Kinoshita Nagahiro, Okakura Tenshin: Mono ni kanzureba tsuni ware nashi i, Mineruva Nihon
Hyodensen (Kyoto: Mineruva shob, 2005).
2. Victoria Weston, Japanese Painting and National Identity: Okakura Tenshin and His
Circle (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), pp. 298299. For my review of this
volume, see Journal of Japanese Studies 32, no. 2 (summer 2006): pp. 489493.
3. Weston, Japanese Painting and National Identity, pp. 301302. One of the few Japanese
art survey texts to include a chapter on modern art, Penelope Mason, History of Japanese Art
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993), pp. 363367, Japanese-style Painting subscribes to
traditional views similar to those advanced by Weston. Aida Yuen Wong, Inventing Eastern
Art in Japan and China, ca. 1890s to ca. 1930s (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1999), p. 8,
maintains, Together with his American mentor Ernest F. Fenollosa, Okakura spearheaded a
comprehensive program to salvage Japanese national culture from the degradation it had suf-
fered in the early phase of the Meiji Restoration, which saw Westernization as the only path to
Japans modernization. This dissertation has been published as Aida Yuen Wong, Parting the
Mists: Discovering Japan and the Rise of National-style Painting in Modern China (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 2006). In a still unpublished paper, Cheng-hua Wang, Rediscov-
ering Song Painting for the Nation: Artistic Discursive Practice in Early Twentieth-Century
China, states, Regardless of the definition of nihonga, which changed with the development
of art in Meiji Japan and later, the Kano school was selected as one of the representations of
Japanese national spirit because of its realistic yet traditional style.
4. Nihon Bijutsu-in Hyakunenshi Henshshitsu, ed., Nihon Bijutsu-in hyakunenshi (Cen-
tennial history of the Japan Art Institute), 15 vols. (Tokyo: Nihon Bijutsu-in, 19891999). It is
due to the initiative of Taikan and the ongoing efforts of the Japan Art Institute, commonly
known as Inten, that this narrative became so ingrained and has proved so resistant to revision.
5. Joe Earle, Splendors of Meiji: Treasures of Imperial Japan, Masterpieces from the Khalili
Collection, exhibition catalogue (St. Petersburg, Fla.: Broughton International, 1999), and a
later version that includes many new acquisitions, Splendors of Imperial Japan: Arts of the Meiji
Period from the Khalili Collection, exhibition catalogue (London: Khalili Family Trust, 2002),
identifies artists designs employed by Meiji craftsmen.
6. Patricia J. Graham, The Later Flourishing of Literati Painting in Edo-period Japan, in
An Enduring Vision: 17th to the 20th Century Japanese Painting from the Gitter-Yelen Collection,
ed. Kobayashi Takashi et al., pp. 6987 (New Orleans: New Orleans Museum of Art, 2002).
7. For late Edo exposure to and absorption of Western art, see Calvin L. French et al.,
Through Closed Doors: Western Influence on Japanese Art 16391853 (Kobe City Museum of
Namban Art and Rochester, Mich.: Meadow Brook Art Gallery, Oakland University, 1977).
See also Yukiko Shirahara, Japan Envisions the West: 16th19th century Japanese art from Kobe
City Museum, exhibition catalogue (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2007).
8. Ellen P. Conant, Kyoto Painting: Innovations and Limitations 18551895, in Meiji
Bijutsu Gakkai and Meiji Bijutsu Gakkai Kokusai Shinpojmu, Nihon kindai bijutsu to seiy:
Kokusai shinpojmu (International symposium on modern Japanese art and the Western cul-
ture), pp. 217226 (Tokyo: Meiji Bijutsu Gakkai, 1992). See also Timon Screech, The Shoguns
Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States 17601829 (London: Reaktion Books
Ltd., 2000), particularly pp. 148166.
56|Ellen P. Conant

9. Yasumura Toshinobu, Kan-ha ketteiban (The decisive book on the Kan school)
(Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2004). For derogatory attitude toward Kan artists by later scholars, see
Karen M. Gerhart, Talent, Training, and Power: The Kano Painting Workshop in the Seven-
teenth Century, in Copying the Master and Stealing His Secrets: Talent and Training in Japa-
nese Painting, ed. Brenda Jordan and Victoria Weston, p. 25 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 2003). I am grateful to Patricia J. Graham for bringing these sources to my attention.
10. Kyoto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Hyakunen Shi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Hyakunen Shi
Kyoto shiritsu geijutsu daigaku (Centennial history of the Kyoto Municipal University of Fine
Arts) (Kyoto: Kyoto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku, 1981), pp. 216, 125194; and Kyoto hakuran
kyokai shiryaku (Records of the Kyoto Exposition Organization) (Kyoto: Kyoto hakurankai
kyokai, 1937), pp. 1139, detail the founding of these two seminal organizations.
11. John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), pp.
7980.
12. Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1996).
13. See Henry D. Smith, The Edo-Tokyo Transition: In Search of Common Ground,
in Japan in Transition, from Tokugawa to Meiji, ed. Marius B. Jansen and Gilbert Rozman,
pp. 347374 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986). The lack of reference to this
event in the biographies of first-generation Meiji artists suggests that there has not been ade-
quate reappraisal of their lives in relation to contemporary political, social, and economic
developments.
14. There is no adequate study as to how the various Kan academies fared following the
Restoration and why some were more successful than others in securing government appoint-
ments and painting commissions.
15.What Clark, Modern Asian Art, pp. 135152, terms The Reprographic Context
provided the nexus for the intermingling of artists, media, and techniques. This is explored
by Sawatari Kiyoko, Innovational Adaptations: Contacts between Japanese and Western
Artists in Yokohama, 18591899, in Challenging Past and Present: The Metamorphosis of
Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art, ed. Ellen P. Conant, pp. 83113 (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2006).
16. Kaneko Kazuo, Kindai Nihon bijutsu kyiku no kenky, Meiji jidai (Study of mod-
ern Japanese art education, Meiji era) (Tokyo: Ch kron bijutsu shuppansha, 1992), does
not provide the relevant data, but the broader implications are explored in Richard Rubinger,
Education: From One Room to One System, in Japan in Transition, from Tokugawa to Meiji,
ed. Marius B. Jansen and Gilbert Rozman, pp. 195230 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1986), and Yukihiko Motoyama, J. S. A. Elisonas, and Richard Rubinger, Proliferating
Talent: Essays on Politics, Thought, and Education in the Meiji Era (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1997), particularly chapters 2 and 8. The discussion of art education in Meiji
public schools in Weston, Japanese Painting and National Identity, pp. 5965, does not indicate
that the majority of students in the 1870s still attended private academies and temple schools
that continued to teach predominantly traditional subjects.
17. Muramatsu Teijir, Oyatoi gaikokujin (Foreign employees), p. 15. Kenchiku to doboku
(Architecture and engineering) (Tokyo: Kajima kenkysho shuppankai, 1976), p. 187.
18. For additional information regarding the background and career of the Italian art-
ists engaged by the Technical Art School, see Ellen P. Conant, Principles and Pragmatism:
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 57

The Yatoi in the Field of Art, in Foreign Employees in Nineteenth-Century Japan, ed. Edward
R. Beauchamp and Akira Iriye, pp. 137170 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990).
19. Yamao was a member of the so-called Chsh Five, sent abroad to study during
the Bakumatsu, which also included It Hirobumi, Inoue Kaoru, Nomura Yakichi, and End
Kinsuke. It was called back a year later when the Western powers attacked Shimonoseki, but
Yamao remained until 1870, studying at University College, London, and later at Andersons
University, Glasgow, which Dyer also attended. Other relevant information is to be found in
Olive Checkland, Britains Encounter with Meiji Japan, 18681912 (London: MacMillan, 1989).
Fujimori Terunobu, Josia Konderu to Nihon (Josiah Conder and Japan), in Rokumeikan
no kenchikuka: Josia Konderu ten (Josiah Conder: A Victorian architect in Japan), pp. 1221
(Tokyo: Tokyo Station Gallery, 1997), states that there are no records regarding how and when
Conder was engaged.
20. Indicative of a clash of political, pedagogical, and pragmatic considerations, Don
Choi, Educating the Architect in Meiji Japan (unpublished paper presented at the sympo-
sium Architecture and Modern Japan, held at Columbia University, Oct. 21, 2000), p. 11,
writes that in addition to instruction in mechanical drawing, Conder felt that perspective,
freehand drawing, and shading were more important, adding, The importance of a knowl-
edge of the human figure to an Architect and of study from the Antique and the Nude, as
carried out in Europe not only for direct use in making drawings containing Sculpture and
Decoration, but also for the development of a truly Artistic feeling for the beauty of forms,
and of powers of Design, is by no means lost sight of. There are, however, many reasons why it
would be futile to suggest such a course at present. Neither Choi nor other scholars query why
Conders students could not avail themselves of just such training offered at the Technical Art
School and apparently did not even have access to reproductions of famous works of European
architecture, painting, and sculpture brought by Fontanesi.
21. See Ozaki Takafumi, Kbu bijutsu gakk shikhon (Manuscript history of the Tech-
nical Art School), an unpublished paper presented at the symposium Continuity and Change
in Modern Japanese Art, held at Dunwalke, Princeton University, 1987, Appendix I, for a list
of fifty-six painting students contained in Bijutsu Meiji 9 nen yori d 15 nen ni itaru kbu
sh, of the Taisei kiy. Twelve of these students appear in Kawakita Michiaki, Miwa Hideo,
Sato Dshin, and Yamanashi Emiko, Kindai Nihon bijutsu jiten (Modern Japanese art dic-
tionary) (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1989), and twenty more appear in Kaneko, Kindai Nihon bijutsu
kyiku no kenky. Two also appear in Honda Kinkichir, Yf bijutsuka shden (Biographies
of Western-style painters) (Tokyo: Honda Kinkichir, 1908). A critical review of their careers
is likely to affirm the effectiveness of this project.
22. This did not mark the end of government support for Western art or the strik-
ing shift in attitude inferred by Alice Tseng, Kuroda Seikis Morning Toilette on Exhibi-
tion in Modern Kyoto, The Art Bulletin XC, no. 3 (September 2008): p. 420. Cartography,
drafting, and related skills continued to be taught at Army College, Numazu, and other mili-
tary academies. The Tokyo Higher Normal School (Tokyo Kt Shihan Gakk) continued to
train teachers of Western painting and drawing employed by government schools; courses in
Western art and printing techniques were taught at the Printing Bureau of the Finance Min-
istry, and additional technical training was furnished by commercial printing firms such as
Gengend, as well as at technical schools such as Tokyo Higher Industrial School (Tokyo Kt
Kgyo Gakk).
58|Ellen P. Conant

23. For an account of the Tokyo Music School, the Japanese director Isawa Shji, and his
American advisor Luther Whiting Mason, see Ury Eppstein, Musical Instruction in Meiji
Education: A Study in Adaptation and Assimilation, Monumenta Nipponica 40, no. 1 (spring
1985): pp. 137. See also Kaminuma Hachir, Isawa Shji (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1962);
and Sondra Wieland Howe, Luther Whiting Mason: International Music Educator (Warren,
Mich.: Harmonie Park Press, 1997).
24. Some of the books, teaching materials, plaster casts, and other equipment Fontanesi
had brought, as well as other resources subsequently acquired or produced by the Technical
Art School, were likewise transferred to the universitys College of Engineering, where they
remained unbeknownst for close to a century. Additional material brought by Fontanesi, as
well as examples of students works, are now stored in the Research Division of the Tokyo
National University of Fine Arts and Music. See Ozaki Takafumi, Kobu bijutsu gakk seito
shuga sakuhin ten (Exhibition of exercise drawings by students of the Technical Art School),
exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: Geijutsu daigaku geijutsu shirykan, Nov. 18Dec. 24, 1985).
25. Lawrence Smith, The Japanese Print since 1900: Old Dreams and New Visions (Lon-
don: British Museum Publications, 1983) and Nihonga: Traditional Japanese Painting 1900
1940 (London: British Museum Publications, 1991).
26. Clark, Modern Asian Art, 120133. Classification by schools that had become per-
meable, by styles that had become eclectic and versatile, by media with which many artists
experimented, is manifestly unproductive. The further classification by teachers and art orga-
nizations is as likely to mask as to reveal the affinities that existed among artists of the same
generation, particularly since, as Clark acknowledges, they were based upon personal and pro-
fessional ties rather than artistic affinity.
27. Hence the Nihonga/yga classification can have scant relevance for this generation
and does not assume meaningful distinctions until Taishearly Shwa, as expounded by Bert
Winther-Tamaki, Embodiment/Disembodiment: Japanese Painting during the Fifteen-Year
War, Monumenta Nipponica 52, no. 2 (summer 1997): pp. 145180. Kitazawa Noriaki, ed.,
Me no shinden (The pantheon of the eye) (Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha, 1989), documents the
early rhetorical usage of these politically fraught terms but does not address what effect these
distinctions actually had on the life and work of the first generation of Meiji artists. The trans-
lation of Nihonga as Japanese-style painting has distinctly self/other connotations, and
terms such as traditional or Clarks neo-traditional belie these artists efforts to seek new
means and modes of expression. The early medium-based dichotomy ink/oil painting was
clearly too limited, but the translation of yga as foreign or Western has Saidian overtones.
Terminological ramifications are further explored by Sat Dshin, Nihon bijutsu tanj: Kin-
dai Nihon no kotoba to senryaku (The birth of Japanese art: Verbal tactics in modern Japan)
(Tky: Kdansha, 1996).
28. See Sakugo hyakunijnen Kikuchi Ysai to Meiji bijutsu (Kikuchi Ysai and the art of
the Meiji era), exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: Nerima-ku shiritsu bijutsukan, 1999). A study of
the illustrated books and prints by these artists and their pupils would augment our aware-
ness of their accomplishments and the continuing inappropriateness of drawing distinctions
between painting and prints in the study of Meiji art, which is partly attributable to Okakuras
exclusion of prints from the curriculum of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts.
29. Both paintings are illustrated in Egakareta rekishi: Kindai Nihon bijutsu ni miru
densetsu to shinwa (The images of history in Japanese modern art), ed. Hyogo Kenritsu Kindai
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 59

Bijutsukan and Kanagawa Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, exhibition catalogue (Kobe: Egakareta
rekishi jikk iinkai, 1993), figs. IV-49, 53.
30. J. Thomas Rimer, An Afterword Posing as a Foreword, in Copying the Master and
Stealing His Secrets: Talent and Training in Japanese Painting, ed. Brenda Jordan and Victoria
Weston, xixxx (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003).
31. Yutaka Tazawa, Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Art (Tokyo: Kodansha Interna-
tional Ltd., in collaboration with International Society for Educational Information Inc., 1981),
p. 672, refers to him as a lacquer artist and Nihonga (Japanese-style) painter, but relegates
him to the section on Lacquer. See also Joe Earle, Shibata Zeshin: Masterpieces of Lacquer
from the Khalili Collection (Edinburgh: National Museum of Scotland and London, Kib
Foundation, 1997) and Zeshin: The Catherine and Thomas Edson Collection, intro. Joe Earle,
cat. Sebastian Izzard (San Antonio, Tex: San Antonio Museum of Art, 2007).
32. See Gke Tadaomi, ed., Shibata Zeshin meihinsh: Bakumatsu kaikaki no shikk
kaiga, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Gakken, 1981), p. 1. Nos. 210211 are now in the Clark Center for Japa-
nese Art and Culture, Hanford, Calif.; nos. 219220, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, were included in the pioneering exhibition Imperial Japan: The Art of the Meiji Era
18681912, Martie W. Young and Frederick Baekeland (Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art,
Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1980); nos. 221222 were in 2006 in the possession of a New
York art dealer, Erik Thomsen, and are now in a private collection. A fourth pair that has not
yet been reproduced is in a Japanese private collection.
33. Kyoto Nihonga no nagare: Sansui kara fkei e: Bunrin, Bairei, Seih: tokubetsuten (The
course of Kyoto Japanese-style painting: From landscape to scenery: Bunrin, Bairei, Seih,
exhibition catalogue) (Kyoto: Kyoto shinbunsha, c. 1995).
34. Bunrin 33 kaiki kinen iboku tenrankai gash, ed. Nomura Bunkyo (Tokyo: Gahsha,
1910). Despite the poor photographs, this memorial catalogue, edited by his pupil Nomura
Bunkyo, who was painting instructor at the Peers School in Tokyo, is one of the few Meiji-era
publications to feature his work.
35. Seih funded a lavish memorial volume, Bairei iboku (Kno Bairei ga) (Bairei memorial:
Paintings of Kno Bairei), ed. Takeuchi Itsu and Takeuchi Shir (Kyto: Takeuchi seih, 1940).
36. Despite the burgeoning literature on Okakura and the Tokyo School of Fine Arts,
apart from Tky geijutsu daigaku daigaku bijutsukan zo Kawabata Gyokusho tsuketatega
tehon (Exercises assigned by Kawabata Gyokush in the Art Museum, Tokyo National Uni-
versity of Fine Arts and Music), comp. Fukuda Yoshiki (saka: Th shuppan, 2002), the only
earlier publication of value was Matsushita Hidemaru, Kawabata Gyokush (Tokyo: Ch
kran bijutsu shuppan, 1959).
37. Kose Shseki, according to Weston, Japanese Painting and National Identity, p. 81,
belonged to the Kose school of Buddhist painters, but it was solely by virtue of his name since
he was a pupil of Kishi Chikud and then the literati artist Nakanishi Kseki.
38. See Mori Kansai to Mori-ha no kaiga (Kansai and paintings of the Mori school), exhi-
bition catalogue (Kyoto: Hanazono daigaku rekishi hakubutsukan, 2001). Most biographical
accounts fail to mention among the successors of kyo, Kunii bun (18331887), the son
of the sister of Maruyama shin and pupil of Maruyama ritsu, and his heir, Kunii y
(18681923), who continued to play an active role in Kyoto painting circles. The validity of
Maruyama-Shij school designations is currently under re-evaluation by Timothy Clark, head
of the Japanese Section, Department of Asia, of the British Museum.
60|Ellen P. Conant

39. See Kishi ha to sono keifu: Ganku kara Chikud e (Genealogy of the Kishi School:
From Ganku to Chikud), exhibition catalogue (Ritto, Shiga Pref.: Ritto rekishi minzoku
hakubutsukan, 1996).
40. Kishi Chikud: Kindai Kyoto gadan no yoake: Tokubetsuten (The dawn of modern
Kyoto painting circles), exhibition catalogue (tsu: Shiga kenritsu kindai bijutsukan and
Kyoto shinbunsha, 1987), pp. 4449, no. 15, reproduces both screens and a detail of each in
color, as well as related sketches.
41. Until the exhibition and publication of Kyoto Bunka Hakubutsukan, gakugeika, ed.,
Ky no yga: Kosode to bybu: Chis korekushon (The elegance of Kyoto style: Kosode kimonos
and folding screens from the Chis collection) (Kyoto Bunka Hakubutsukan and Mainichi
shinbunsha, 2005), their present ownership was not publicly known and these screens had
been so rarely reproduced and exhibited that they have not received the recognition they merit.
My request to include them in the Nihonga exhibition held at the Saint Louis Art Museum in
1995 was denied on the grounds that they had never been exhibited outside the Kansai area.
Yet Kyo no yga: Kosode to bybu: Chis korekushon, p. 241, states that they were displayed at
the Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876, a claim that cannot be corroborated
by the entries for S. Nishimura, Kiyoto that appear in Philadelphia International Exhibition,
1876, Official Catalogue of the Japanese Section, and descriptive notes on the Industry and Agri-
culture of Japan (Philadelphia: Published by the Japanese Commission, 1876), p. 28.
42. Ellen P. Conant, in collaboration with Steven D. Owyoung and J. Thomas Rimer,
Nihonga, Transcending the Past: Japanese-Style Painting, 18681968, exhibition catalogue (St.
Louis: The Saint Louis Art Museum and Tokyo: The Japan Foundation, 1995), pl. 33.
43. Weston, Japanese Painting and National Identity, pp. 173217.
44. See Kyto-shi Bijutsukan, Kyto gadan Edo matsu Meiji no gajintachi (Painters in
Kyoto of the late Edo and the Meiji periods) (Kyto: Atosha shuppan, 1977) and various studies
by Harada Heisaku, but there are no recent publications on Gyokusen.
45. Kyto gadan: Hara-ha no tenkai (Kyoto painting circles: The development of the Hara
school), exhibition catalogue (Tsuruga: Tsuruga shiritsu hakubutsukan, 2001).
46. Harada Minoru, Meiji Western Painting, trans. Akiko Murakata (New York and
Tokyo: Weatherhill/Shibundo, 1974), scants the development of yga in Kyoto prior to the
arrival of Asai Ch in 1902.
47. John Rosenfield, Western Style Painting in the Early Meiji Period and Its Critics, in
Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, ed. Donald H. Shively, pp. 181219 (Princ-
eton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971). For illustrations of his work, see Kawakami Tgai
to sono shhen: Bakumatsu kara Meiji (Tgai and his environs: Bakumatsu to Meiji) (Nagano-
shi: Nagano-ken shinano bijutsukan, Feb. 24Mar. 25, 1990).
48. Tru Haga, The Formation of Realism in Meiji Painting: The Artistic Career of Taka-
hashi Yuichi, in Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, ed. Donald H. Shively, pp.
221256 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971).
49. Sawatari, Innovational Adaptations, in Challenging Past and Present: The Metamor-
phosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art, ed. Ellen P. Conant, p. 100 (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2006), charts the evolution of the Shogunal Institute of Western Studies (Ban-
sho Shirabesho), 18561862, which was renamed the Yosho Shirabesho in 1862, and the For-
eign Studies Center (Kaiseisho), from 18631867.
50. Doris Croissant, In Quest of the Real: Portrayal and Photography in Japanese
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 61

Painting Theory, in Challenging Past and Present: The Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century

Japanese Art, ed. Ellen Conant, pp. 153176 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006).
51. It is evident from the foregoing that the so-called yga artists of early Meiji were rela-
tively few in number and their work was primarily of a technical nature for government agen-
cies. Hence they were unlikely to have impinged, as maintained by Fenollosa and Okakura, on
the livelihood of those who chose to pursue traditional careers.
52. John Clark, Japanese Exchanges in Art 1850s1930s, with Britain, Continental Europe,
and the USA (Sydney: Power Publications, 2001), p. 265, claims he moved to Yokohama in
1864, but there is sufficient variation in the sources to suggest that biographical data, as for
many other artists of this period, is still scanty and uncertain.
53. Sawatari, Innovational Adaptations, p. 92, states that it is dated by its owner to
18601867.
54. This aspect of his career is explored by Tamaki Maeda, Tomioka Tessais Narrative
Landscapes: Rethinking Sino-Japanese Traditions (PhD diss., University of Washington,
Seattle, 2004).
55. Christine Guth, Meiji Response to Bunjinga, in Challenging Past and Present: The
Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art, ed. Ellen P. Conant, pp. 177196 (Hono-
lulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006).
56. Elizabeth Lillehoj, ed., Critical Perspectives on Classicism in Japanese Painting, 1600
1700 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), p. 220, defines kanga (Han painting) as a
term that came into widespread use in the Muromachi period [and] . . . refers to paintings based
on models from the Song (9601279) and the Yuan dynasty (12791368). The term kanga was
introduced to differentiate colorful Tang-style painting from Song and Yuan-style work. By
the mid-nineteenth century the term had also come to refer to Ming-Ching academic painting.
57. See Rosina Buckland, Japanese Art in a Time of Change: A Study of Taki Katei
(18301901) (MA thesis, University of London, 1999), p. 10. However, in the colophon to an
illustrated manual, Kkkan Gash, published by Taki Katei in Tokyo in 1883, he identifies
himself as a Tokyo commoner (heimin). See also Rosina Buckland, Traveling Bunjin to Impe-
rial Household Artist: Taki Katei (18301901) and the Transformation of Literati Painting in
Late Nineteenth-century Japan (PhD diss., New York University, 2008); and Stephen Addiss,
Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, et al., Japanese Quest for a New Vision: The Impact
of Visiting Chinese Painters, 16001900: Selections from the Hutchinson Collection at the Spen-
cer Museum of Art, 1st ed. (Lawrence: Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1986),
pp. 6670.
58. Kawanabe Kysai Kinen Bijutsukan, ed., Kawanabe Kysai to Edo Tky (Warabi,
Saitama Pref.: Kawanabe Kysai Kinen Bijutsukan, 1994), pl. 66 (Matsu ni shki to oni zu).
59. Timothy Clark, Kawanabe Kysai Kinen Bijutsukan, and the British Museum, Demon
of Painting: The Art of Kawanabe Kysai (London: Published for the Trustees of the British
Museum by the British Museum Press, 1993). See also Brenda G. Jordan, Strange Fancies
and Fresh Conceptions: Kysai in an Age of Conflict (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1993);
Brenda G. Jordan and Victoria Weston, eds., Copying the Master and Stealing His Secrets
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), ch. 5; and Josiah Conder, Paintings and Studies
by Kawanabe Kysai: An illustrated and decorative catalogue of a collection of paintings, stud-
ies, and sketches, by the above artist, with explanatory notes on the principles, materials and
technique of Japanese painting (Tokyo: Maruzen, 1911).
62|Ellen P. Conant

60. Clark, Japanese Exchanges in Art, p. 284. This would presumably apply as well to the
other first-generation Meiji painters listed above.
61. Although there have been several exhibitions of works from the Imperial Collection,
including National Treasures, notably Moritoku Hirabayashi, Freer Gallery of Art, and Arthur
M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), Twelve Centuries of Japanese Art from the Impe-
rial Collections (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), the Kannon as Compassionate Mother was considered
too valuable to be exhibited abroad. A comparison of these Kannon paintings is too complex
and lengthy for inclusion in this chapter, but it is addressed by Chelsea Foxwell, Kano Hgai
(18281888) and the Making of Modern Japanese Painting (PhD diss., Columbia University,
2008), chapter V; and Chelsea Foxwell, Merciful Mother Kannon and Its Audiences, The Art
Bulletin 92, no. 4 (December 2010): pp. 326347.
62. Patricia J. Graham, Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 16002005 (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 2007).
63. Kan Hgai, 18281888, in Conant, ed., Nihonga, Transcending the Past, pp. 301
302. Chelsea Foxwell, Dekadansu: Ukiyo-e and the Codification of Aesthetic Values in Mod-
ern Japan, 18801930, in Octapus 3 (fall 2007): p. 25, maintains that Hgai lost his peak years
of productivity waiting out the political upheaval of the Restoration and its aftermath in his
distant hometown of Shimonoseki.
64. Kinoshita Nagahiro, Okakura Tenshin: Mono ni kanzureba tsuini ware nashi, pp.
8889, relying on Murakata Akiko, Anesuto F. Fenorosa bunsho shsei, 2, 110, and Furuta Ry,
Kan Hgai, Takahashi Yuichi: Nihonga mo seiyga mo kisuru tokoro wa doitsu no tokoro (Kano
Hgai and Takahashi Yuichi: Nihonga and yga have the same point of origin) (Mineruva
shobo, 2006), believe that it was at the second exhibition in 1884. However, Martin Collcutt,
Kannon as Compassionate Mother in Meiji Art and Culture, in Challenging Past and Pres-
ent: The Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art, ed. Ellen P. Conant, pp. 197224
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), particularly 198, based on a letter Fenollosa sent
to Charles Lang Freer, dated October 12, 1902, the Charles Lang Freer Papers, Freer Gallery
of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.,
believes that the meeting first occurred in 1882.
65. Murakata, Anesuto F. Fenorosa bunsho shsei, p. 2, 110.
66. Collcutt, Kannon as Compassionate Mother, pp. 199201. See above-mentioned let-
ter of Fenollosa to Freer, dated October 12, 1902.
67. Collcutt, Kannon as Compassionate Mother, pp. 199201.
68. Fenollosas art studies prior to his visit to the Centennial Exposition of 1876 remain
ambiguous; he does not appear on the roster of students for 18761877 when he supposedly
attended the Massachusetts Normal Art School. Although he was a member of the first class of
1877, H. Winthrop Peirce, History of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 18761930
(Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1930), pp. 3233, notes that he studied drawing as he studied
Greek and mathematics, doing well, as he would in any kind of school work, but one doubted
his future as a creative artist. This observation is buttressed by Fenollosas Portrait of Susan
Shattuck Cabot, reproduced in Art in Transition: A Century of the Museum School, exhibition
and catalogue by Bartlett Hayes (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, March 23May 30, 1977),
no. 35. The identity and role of the family executor is discussed in my forthcoming study of
Fenollosa.
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 63

69. Gino K. Piovesana, Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought 18621962 ([Tokyo]:

Enderle Bookstore, 1963), pp. 152, provides a comprehensive historical overview; Michele
Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics, A Reader (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999),
offers a critical analysis of key figures. For reduction in the ranks of foreign employees, see
Hazel Jones, Live Machines: Hired Foreigners and Meiji Japan (Vancouver: University of British
Columbia Press, 1980), pp. 146152.
70. Yutaka Tazawa ed., Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Art, pp. 682683, includes
Fenollosa in the chart of Nakabashi Kan painters, thereby affirming a dubious association,
inasmuch as Fenollosa did not study painting with Eitoku.
71. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston database, http://www.mfa.org/collections/search_art;
Nihon bijutsu-in hyakunenshi, 1 (illustrations), pp. 17160, and text, pp. 439477, furnishes
additional examples and relevant text.
72. See Ellen P. Conant, Japan Abroad at the Chicago Exposition, 1893, in Challenging
Past and Present: The Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art, ed. Ellen P. Conant,
p. 168 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006).
73. There is a dearth of information because both his first and second wives took pains to
conceal this aspect of his career.
74. Ernest Francesco Fenollosa Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, *78M-19
bMS Am 1759.3 (12) [Notes on a visit to the Centennial Exposition]. Ignoring George Inness,
Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, and other noted painters, Fenollosa pronounced Peter Fred-
erick Rothermel (18171895), an artist of edifying historicals, the foremost American painter,
and particularly admired his monumental Hypatia, the Neo-Platonic Philosopher, stripped and
torn to pieces by the Christian mob of Alexandria. Mark Thistlewaite, Painting in the Grand
Manner: The Art of Peter Frederick Rothermel (Brandywine, Pa.: Brandywine Museum, 1995),
could not locate or illustrate Hypatia, which was painted in 1865.
75. See Ernest Francesco Fenollosa Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University,
71M 24 bMS Am 1759.2 (24), [No title], 6. Murakata Akiko, Shikago bankokuhaku ni okeru
Fenorosa no kwa (Fenollosas lecture at the Chicago fair), part 1, Lotos 19 (March 2000): pp.
2936; part 2, Lotos 20 (March 2001): pp. 111, discovered this lecture amongst Fenollosas
other papers, but she failed to identify Agache.
76. For Hellenic Belles at Alexandria by George Antoine Rochegrosse (18521938), see
Ernest F. Fenollosa, Modern Spanish Art to the Fore in the Salon of Nineteen Hundred and
Eight: Decadence of French Influence, The Craftsman 14, no. 6 (September 1908): p. 584, illus-
trated 575. Although many Western artists and craftsmen derived new decorative designs and
aesthetic concepts from mediocre examples of Japanese art, there is no reason to believe that
Fenollosas lack of visual discernment in his own culture would have made him a more dis-
criminating judge of the art of an alien culture.
77. Mary McNeil Fenollosa Diary for October 12, 1896, the Museum of Mobile, Alabama,
reveals that Fenollosa waxed ecstatic over certain Chinese masterpieces, none of which are
now considered authentic, according to James Cahill, An Index of Early Chinese Painters and
Paintings Tang, Sung, and Yan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1980). While connoisseurship admittedly was still limited, Fenollosa had such confidence in
the information imparted by his Japanese dealers and his own ability to judge authenticity that
he seemed oblivious to Frank Brinkleys admonitions regarding the skill of Chinese and Japa-
nese copyists and the prevalence of forgeries. See Ellen P. Conant, Captain Frank Brinkley
64|Ellen P. Conant

Resurrected, in Meiji no takara/Treasures of Imperial Japan, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection

of Japanese Art (London: The Kibo Foundation, 1995), pp. 1, 126130. There is also no indica-
tion that he was aware of current developments in Western art history and the extensive re-
evaluation of ancient and Renaissance art then occurring in Europe.
78. Anne Nishimura Morse, Promoting Authenticity: Okakura Kakuz and the Japa-
nese Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in Nagoya Bosuton Bijutsukan and
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Okakura Tenshin to Bosuton Bijutsukan (Okakura Tenshin and
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) (Nagoya: Nagoya Bosuton Bijutsukan, 1999), pp. 145151.
79. Mary McNeil Fenollosa notes in the Forward to Ernest Francisco Fenollosa, Epochs
of Chinese & Japanese Art: An Outline History of East Asiatic Design, 2 vols. (New York: Fred-
erick A. Stokes Company, 1912), p. 1. v, that [t]he original manuscript of this book, left as it
was in hasty pencil writing, was little more than a rough draft of the finished work he intended
to make of it, and she acknowledges that many names, dates, and choice of illustrations had
to be added.
80. British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, Descriptive and Historical
Catalogue of a Collection of Japanese and Chinese Paintings in the British Museum, by William
Anderson, F.R.C.S. (London: Longmans & Co., 1886).
81. Anne Nishimura Morse, William and Helen Pounds Senior Curator of Japanese Art,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, personal communication, believes that Fenollosa may have
taken his papers with him when he departed. No record of the inventory he had prepared for
Japanese customs in 1886 has been found. His still unpublished notebook listing his hanging
scrolls was discovered in a Boston bookshop by the noted art historian Akiyama Teruo (1888
1977) and remained in the possession of his son, also an art historian, Akiyama Terukazu
(19182009). Nothing is known of an additional notebook listing his screens. It is not certain
when the collection actually entered the museum because both the Bigelow and Weld bequests
were not formalized until 1911, and hence all accession records bear that date.
82. Fuenorosa shi enjutsu Omori Korenaka hikki, bijutsu shinsetsu (A true theory on
art), Rychi-kai Zhan, 1882, in Fuenorosa bijutsu ronsh (Writings on art by Fenollosa), ed.
Yamaguchi Seiichi, pp. 836 (Tokyo: Ch kron bijutsu shuppan, 1988); and Anita Brockmann,
Auf dem Weg zu einem Neuen Kunstverstndnis. Ernest F. Fenollosas Bijutsu Shinsetsu,
Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung 18 (1994): pp. 144188, contains a German trans-
lation. I am indebted to J. Thomas Rimer for furnishing me a copy of his still unpublished
English translation. For a further analysis of the text, see Doris Croissant, Fenollosas Wahre
Theorie der Kunst und ihre Wirkung in der Meiji Zeit (18681912), Saeculum 38, no. 1 (1987):
pp. 5275.
83. In Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation, ed.
Michael F. Marra (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), p. 97. If Fenollosa and
Okakura were as influential as currently claimed, why were they not able to secure Hgai and
Gah commissions to decorate the cedar doors of the new palace in Tokyo awarded to many of
the artists cited above, including some of their Kan contemporaries? See Seki Chiyo, Kkyo
sugido-e ni tsuite (Cedar door paintings of the Meiji palace), Bijutsu Kenky 264 (July 1969):
pp. 132; and Kkyo Sugido-e, photographed by Terashima Ikuo (Kyto: Kyto shoin, 1982).
84. Indeed in a recent re-examination of the opening of Japan, Michael R. Auslin treats
Japan not as a passive victim of the Wests coercive diplomacy but as a nation with its own
agendas, strategies, and negotiating tactics. Michael R. Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism:
 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji | 65

The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2004), quotation from review by Akira Iriye cited on the dust jacket.
85. Kawakita Michiaki, Miwa Hideo, Sato Dshin, and Yamanashi Emiko, Kindai Nihon
bijutsu jiten.
86. James Cahill, Nihonga Painters in the Nanga Tradition, Oriental Art 42, no. 2 (sum-
mer 1996): pp. 212, considers him an artist of far less attainment but much more pretension
than two Kyoto artists, Tomioka Tessai and Murakami Kagaku (18881939).
87. See Sat Dshins account of this term in his entry, Rychikai, in Conant, ed., Tran-
scending the Past, pp. 7879.
88. I am indebted to Professor Donald McCallum for bringing this distinction to my
attention.
 Gennifer Weisenfeld

3 The Expanding Arts of the

Interwar Period

Grab the Hand of 50,000 readers! Friend of the people, read the Musansha shinbun (Pro-
letarian Times) exclaims the bold red headline on Yanase Masamus now iconic 1927
poster for the Japanese communist party newspaper (see Plate 5). A large red hand, super-
imposed on the front page of a mock newspaper, reaches out to seize the hand of the reader
in a gesture of solidarity. Inspired by the revolutionary graphics of the Russian avant-
garde, Yanases dynamic political poster agitating for social revolution exemplifies the
deep interpenetration of high art and mass culture that was expanding the boundaries of
artistic production during this time. The period between the end of World War I in 1918
and the beginning of the Asia-Pacific war in 1937, when Yanase was working, was a time
of intense cultural and political foment in Japan. Encompassing the brief Taish period
(19121926) and the early part of Shwa (19261989), Japans interwar period1 represents
a significant cultural juncture. Historian Jordan Sand has written that [a] familiar set of
polarities typically serve to distinguish Meiji civilization [bunmei] from Taish culture
[bunka] as two moments in the development of the national character: public Meiji/pri-
vate Taish, nationalist Meiji/cosmopolitan Taish, self-sacrificing Meiji/self-cultivating
Taish, productionist Meiji/consumerist Taish.2 To be sure, what is designated as Taish
in this equation was already gestating in the final years of Meiji, particularly after Japans
victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, when it seemed to many that the nation had
finally reached a level of parity with other world powers that could at least partially release
its imperial subjects from a total dedication to the national mission of producing a rich
country, strong army (fukoku kyhei). And this Taish ethos of individualism, interna-
tionalism, and consumerism continued well into the early Shwa period through most
of the 1930s, even as Japan experienced a devastating economic depression and began
to mobilize for war. By the late 1910s and early 1920s, impulses to Westernize, while still
abundantly in evidence, were clearly less state-driven and less focused on national politi-
cal goals. There was still widespread inspiration from cultural trends originated in the
European, North American, and Russian contexts, but it constituted a more selective
and interpretive adaptation that was conceived in relation to indigenous cultural models.
Modernity in Japan was impelled by its own logic based on local contingencies; it paral-
leled rather than followed developments in the West.3 Moreover, despite an increasingly
ideologically driven rhetoric of ethnic homogeneity, the Japanese were still in fact quite
diverse in terms of regional location and class, not to mention the broadly differentiated
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 67

experiences of men and women during this time, making it difficult to speak of a single
Japanese experience of modernity.
The interwar period saw a great degree of man-made and natural turbulence. Begin-
ning with popular antigovernment riots after the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, the Japa-
nese people were increasingly inclined to bring their grievances into the public sphere
through strikes and riots, most notably the Rice Riots of 1918, which highlighted the tre-
mendous class inequalities that lay just under the surface of national solidarity. In the
international arena, Japans northern neighbor Russia experienced a bloody revolution in
1917 that brought social rebellion right to Japans borders. Socialist and communist ideas
that identified social ills as rooted in an exploitative class structure were already filter-
ing into Japan from abroad, appealing to the working class and fueling political activism
among the younger generation of the nations intelligentsia, such as the talented painter
Yanase Masamu. This awareness of social issues emerged among a broad range of artists,
mostly based in major urban centers, which made them particularly sympathetic to leftist
politics and strongly inflected their cultural production with a transgressive and contesta-
tive character.
Right as the Taish period was hitting its stride and modern times were in full swing,
a mammoth earthquake on September 1, 1923, devastated the nations capital of Tokyo,
along with the bustling nearby cosmopolitan port city of Yokohama and a large swath
of their surrounding areas. No one in the region was left untouched by the Great Kant
Earthquake, as the calamity soon came to be known. A vivid outpouring of grief, sym-
pathy, nostalgia, anger, and samaritanism flowed from the artistic community, which
labored to make sense of the shocking experience while actively assisting in the recon-
struction effort. Their response resulted in a body of work that testifies to the potency of
this traumatic event in the collective Japanese imagination.
This was the dynamic and chaotic context into which many innovative Japanese art
and design movements of the 1920s and 1930s were born. And it was precisely the transi-
tional and unstable nature of the interwar period and the range of cultural possibilities it
offered to artists and designers that fueled their imaginations, compelling them to push
the envelope of cultural production. This included an unprecedented interest in more sub-
stantially integrating art into daily life, which increasingly brought high art aesthetics into
the commercial spherea trend that would continue to influence the Japanese cultural
field for decades to come.

Mavo

At the onset of the 1920s, a range of Japanese artists interested in international movements
abroad began forming local avant-gardist associations. Rebelling against what they saw
as the mimetic role of Western-style art in the Japanese academy and the notion of an
autonomous pure art (junsei/junsui bijutsu) limited to the more conventional media of
painting and sculpture, these artists not only explored the aestheticism and subjectivity of
modernism, but they also experimented with new media and forms of expression in order
to highlight the materiality of art and its mode of production. One of the most prominent
among these groups was the collective known as Mavo, formed in July 1923.4 Although
68|Gennifer Weisenfeld

a short-lived collaboration active until the end of 1925, Mavo made an indelible imprint
on the contemporary art establishment and the art criticism of the period. Intentionally
provocative in demeanor, Mavo artists drew inspiration from cultural anarchists like the
Italian and Russian futurists and the German Dadaists, proclaiming themselves to be the
true Japanese avant-garde, determined to shake up the status quo of the art establishment
in Japan. To this end, they cast themselves as social critics, strategically fusing modern-
ist aesthetics with leftist politics to form their critique. While actively publishing criti-
cal essays and reviews in contemporary journals, they produced an intriguing range of
artwork that included multimedia constructions of painting and found objects, prints,
posters, a magazine, book illustrations, architectural projects, and dance and theatrical
performances. Many Mavo artists were also known in cultural fields beyond art such as
literature, poetry, dance, and theater.
The original group had five members, the artists Murayama Tomoyoshi (19011977),
ura Shz (18901928), Yanase Masamu (19001945), Ogata Kamenosuke (19001942),
and Kadowaki Shinr (active 1920s). But Mavo quickly expanded to a core of between ten
and fifteen young artist-activists, with Murayama, recently returned from a year in Ber-
lin, serving as their philosophical leader. An ardent believer in the socially transformative
potential of innovative aesthetics, Murayama played a crucial role in the Japanese art world
as cultural interpreter, arbiter, rebel, and personality. Soon after his return from Berlin,
Murayama introduced his distinct artistic theory of conscious constructivism (ishikiteki
kseishugi) to the Japanese public in his April 1923 article titled Expressionism Expiring.5
In his theory, Murayama insisted on the negation of traditional realistic modes of represen-
tation, advocating the expression of modern life through abstracted or entirely nonobjec-
tive forms. Like many of his contemporaries in Europe and Russia, he used the metaphor of
construction to disavow both mimetic reproduction and the romantic subjectivity associ-
ated with expressionist abstraction. Murayamas theory became the guiding principle of
Mavos collective work, even as group members maintained their own distinct trajectories.
Murayama rallied the other Mavo artists in an attempt to radically reinvent the Japa-
nese art establishment as a generative source of art. With little formal artistic training, he
was an autodidact, which effectively rendered him an outsider to the institutionalized sys-
tem of professional artistic training practiced in private ateliers and state-sponsored acad-
emies. Unable to access the exhibition or patronage opportunities this system afforded,
he soon became acutely aware of its powerful legitimating function in the Japanese art
world as it sanctioned particular forms of artistic production and conferred professional
status on those artists who conformed. He felt that this system ultimately rigidified art
practice, isolating artists from the pressing concerns of daily life and stultifying Japans
artistic growth. In response, he urged his Mavo colleagues to experiment with new media,
to engage everyday social and political issues, and to investigate alternative exhibition ven-
ues and means of financial support.
This project was facilitated by the increasing spread of mass media and mass consum-
erism in Japan. With the support of newly emergent newspapers, publishers, and com-
mercial sponsors, Mavo artists began to transform the relationship between art practice,
art production, and the everyday conditions of modernity. They exhibited on the street, in
cafs, and in department stores, pushing art deeper into the public sphere of daily life. Seek-
ing to cultivate an expanded audience, they looked to the literate and culture-consuming
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 69

urban middle class, whose numbers dramatically increased in the 1920s as Japanese of
all classes migrated from the countryside to the cities in search of work. Mavo art activi-
ties were fueled by consumer demand for cultural entertainment. Mounting provocative
dance and theatrical performances that were then recorded in photographs and widely
covered in the contemporary press, the artists employed their bodies as expressive tools
linking art and desire. The groups prominence in the media earned the members a kind of
celebrity status as left-wing radicals. By publicly engaging in performative cross-dressing
and sexually charged theatrical happenings, Mavo artists also fundamentally questioned
the dominant Japanese pro-natalist discourses on gender and sexuality that emerged in
tandem with nation building. Instead, the artists affirmed a personal quest for pleasure as
a crucial component of individual rights, thus incurring the scorn of critics who dismissed
them as nihilistic hedonists.
One of Mavos major contributions was the publication of an eponymous journal.
Mavo began publication in July 1924 and ran just over a year until August 1925.6 For
the group, the magazine affirmed the collaborative and reproducible nature of art in the
machine age. It also redefined the role of the artist from a subjective interpreter of indi-
vidual experiences and emotions to an active agent in the deployment of communication
technologies in the production of mass culture. The visual techniques Mavo employed in
the magazine strongly asserted the connection between artistic practice and mass-circu-
lated print media. This included the use of printed photographs and the incorporation of
whole sheets of actual newspaper into its pages. For many artists who were inclined toward
socialism, mass media was seen as a critical tool for stimulating or sustaining a social revo-
lution, as it could educate the public with innovative and progressive aesthetics. Mavos
provocative posture sometimes led the group into trouble with the authorities, however,
when a firecracker attached to the cover of the third issue was deemed seditious and the
entire run was censored, causing the group tremendous financial hardship.
To announce Mavo magazines publication, the group issued a publicity broadside
rendered in a playful, eye-catching typographical mix of large and small characters laid
out in all directions on the page. The distinctly anarchistic statement read:

Mavo is a group of completely blue criminals (hannin) who wear completely black
glasses on their completely red faces. Lazily, like pigs, like weeds, like the trembling
emotions of sexual desire, we are the last bombs that rain down on all the intellectual
criminals (including the bourgeois cliques) who swim in this world.

With its left eye, Mavo stares at XX, with its right eye, it charges into the eternal XX
and XX. But the bottom half of our body is a vehicle of fire, a locomotive that runs off
the tracks. Because of this, we defy any value judgments, wade through all class divi-
sions, and praise all kinds of universal techniques for rationally marching according
to the union of the complete contents of life and clamorous sounds.

Daringly we declarebold and dauntlessthat [we are] the first and will be the last
to appear in the [entire] history of human beings, thoughts, societies, and art move-
ments. Try reading Mavo magazine; [you will see that] through architecture, theater,
poetry, dance, painting, sculpture, etc., how freely the moving body, itself perfectly
70|Gennifer Weisenfeld

[synthesizing] peculiar elements, is combining all the pulsing arms of life to the
utmost limit of human knowledge, passion, and will power. In addition, [you will see]
how firmly and strongly it is constructed by consciousness and desires. Try reading
Mavo magazine.7

An additional sentence running sideways and upside down along the lower border of the
announcement declared, People! Lets live Mavo spirit, it is unlimited, absolute perfection.8
Incorporating a range of thematic subjects from art, politics, and daily life, the maga-
zine featured original linocuts and reproductions of artwork in different media. The pho-
tographic reproductions were often incorporated into collages within the magazine, effec-
tively creating new works that highlighted the replication of visual culture in an industrial
society. The recombination also brought layers of new meaning to bear on the original
work. In issue 3, for example, a photograph of Murayamas abstract collage Women Friends
at the Window (Mado ni yoreru onna tomodachi, 1924) was superimposed on a newspaper
page (fig. 3.1) devoted to commercial advertisements for popular consumer items such

Figure 3.1. Photograph of

Murayama Tomoyoshis
Women Friends at the Window
(Mado ni yoreru onna tomo-
dachi), affixed to a page from
Yamato shinbun. In Mavo,
no. 3 (September 1924).
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 71

as Ka soap and Yunion perfume. In each edition of the magazine, the advertisements
were slightly different, although they were generally for items purchased by women: Jin-
tan tooth powder, Club face powder, and Kenshi Pomade (a brand of womens hair tonic).
In constructing a collage out of these two disparate imagesa construction of deformed
fragments meant to stand in for the iconic romanticized female body and a collection of
commodities that traced the emergence of the female consumer-subjectthe new Mavo
image provided a dynamic and multifaceted vision of the modern Japanese woman.
Mavo cover designs reveal the groups wide-ranging experimentation with new kinds of
typography and innovative editorial layout (fig. 3.2). Liberating themselves from the restric-
tions of a strict directionality or rectilinearity, Mavo artists joined their avant-garde col-
leagues abroad in championing the visual expressiveness of letter forms. The shape and size
of printed text, its position, and the sheer placement of forms on the page were seen as a visual
meta-language above and beyond the literal meaning of the texts. Highlighted through
dynamic combination, standardized typographies were juxtaposed with more organic,
free-flowing letter forms. Visual and textual components were choreographed in tandem.

Figure 3.2. Mavo, composite of magazine cover designs (19241925). Museum of Contemporary Art,
Tokyo and the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama.
72|Gennifer Weisenfeld

The dynamic relationship between text and image evident in Mavo magazines ani-
mated compositions inspired innumerable Japanese contemporary artists who were work-
ing in the design field. A number of Mavo group members were also directly employed as
commercial artists, tangibly linking the worlds of fine art and design, as they used similar
aesthetics and art practices interchangeably in both realms. This not only resulted in a
commercialization of art, but also in a noticeable artification of the streets, as evidenced
in show window designs and street-side promotional displays, a phenomenon that was
remarked upon by a wide array of contemporary critics.

Artists and the Great Kant Earthquake

Just as Mavos activities began to gain momentum, the Great Kant Earthquake hit Tokyo,
killing upwards of one hundred thousand people and injuring an additional fifty thou-
sand. More than 70 percent of the two million people living in the capital had homes dam-
aged or destroyed. With communications cut off, public utilities not functioning, and the
government in chaos, there were food riots, looting, and a widespread vigilante rampage
against Korean nationals residing in Japan who were wrongly accused of acts of sabotage
during the disaster. Thousands of Koreans and Chinese were massacred before the newly
formed cabinet under Prime Minister Yamamoto Gonnohye could gain a measure of
control with the establishment of martial law.
Ironically, the upheaval immediately following the earthquake provided a window
of opportunity for the Mavo movement to flourish, as the artists were presented with an
unprecedented chance to participate in the physical and psychological reconstruction
of the city while the institutional fetters of the art establishment were temporarily inca-
pacitated. Within a month of the quake, Mavo had already launched an ambitious trav-
eling exhibition at cafs and restaurants throughout the city. These cafs were part of a
new leisure economy serving the burgeoning urban middle class. In the months follow-
ing the quake, they were crowded with refugees seeking a momentary respite from the
grim reality of the disaster. Mavo artists sought to inject their work into these popular
gathering spots. Murayama later recalled that while moving from caf to caf the artists
would often pause and display some of their works on the street and in city parks, which
they referred to as street exhibitions (gait-ten). Soon, however, the police censured
this activity.
To many Mavo artists, the post-earthquake conditions symbolized the coming social
revolution, a clearing of the structures of the past to make way for a society of the future.
Mavos post-earthquake work included the decoration of the temporary structures known
as barracks (barakku) that were erected in the wake of the disaster. The term barracks
was used broadly after the 1923 quake for diverse structures that included tent-like shelters
and huts of iron sheet metal for refugees and businesses, as well as sturdier and sometimes
elaborately decorated wooden edifices designed to stand for several years until permanent
reconstruction could be completed. Barrack projects were concentrated in the lower-lying
areas of the city, known as the low city (shitamachi), most heavily damaged by the earth-
quake. This area included what had been the commercial center of Tokyo as well as sev-
eral working-class residential neighborhoods adjacent to sizable industrial developments.
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 73

Barracks were concentrated in Hibiya, Ginza, Kybashi, Nihonbashi, Kanda, Asakusa,

Fukagawa, and Honjo. The barracks became both a symbol and a site for the generation of
a new art intrinsically linked to daily life. Many Japanese proponents of socialism saw the
barracks as representing the emergence of a truly proletarian consciousness. The make-
shift and extemporaneous structures, and the new social formations they constituted,
signified the possibility of complete freedom from conventions and institutional powers.
Artists working on the barracks mirrored this sense of liberation in their expressive and
free-form decorations. Mavos decoration project for the Hayashi-ya restaurant covered
by the Ch shinbun displays a highly anarchic aesthetic as letters and abstract forms
appear to dance across the surface of the building.9 As art historian Soga Takaaki has
argued, for Mavo artists the barracks were life-size assemblages more than architectural
spaces. Thus they differentiated their expressionistic, design-oriented work from the more
spatial and structural concerns of practicing architects. Mavos colorful designs produced
a vibrant backdrop to the streets activity, transforming the urban space of Tokyo into a
public stage that would draw those passing by into a relationship with the outlandishly
decorated structures. By activating the building faade, the artists gave viewers the sensa-
tion of an interactive experience.10
Mavo was joined in their barrack projects by another dynamic group of young artist-
designers who called themselves the Barrack Decoration Company.11 The company was
organized by the Waseda University architecture professor Kon Wajir (18881973), a
graduate of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts who was trained in design and architecture.
Prior to the earthquake, Kon and his partner, the artist Yoshida Kenkichi (18971982),
were already developing a strong interest in documenting the changing practices of daily
life in Japan; the quake motivated them to bring their artwork to the streets with the Bar-
rack Decoration Company. In fact, an important element of Kons barrack-related work
was the preparation and publication of detailed field notes on the location, condition, pop-
ulation, and specific construction designs of various barrack settlements throughout the
city. Yoshida was a multitalented artist, graphic designer, and stage designer who gradu-
ated from the design section of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. He was also a founding
member of the influential avant-garde theater company called the Tsukiji Little Theater
(Tsukiji Shgekij), where he produced highly acclaimed stage designs for Japans modern
theater, particularly the proletarian theater movement.
Later Kon and Yoshida became widely known for their ethnographic studies of Japa-
nese modern life, termed modernology (kgengaku), in which they recorded the everyday
life and practices in urban Tokyo from the mid-1920s into the early 1930s. They developed
an elaborate and distinctive style of pictorial notation to record their data and attempted to
quantify and qualify the cultural ramifications of capitalism and industrialization. Their
activities in the immediate post-earthquake period reinforced their documentary interests
and can be considered a galvanizing experience for their succeeding work.
Along with Kon and Yoshida, the companys initial membership was listed as Naka
gawa Kigen (18921972), Kambara Tai (18981997), Asano Mfu (19001984), Yokoyama
Junnosuke (19031971), Yoshimura Jir (18991942), tsubo Shigechika (1899?), Asuka
Tetsuo (aka Takahashi Tetsuo, 18951997), and Tyama Shizuo (18951986). It was active
from September 1923 until around June 1924. On October 2, 1923, the company issued a
public statement:
74|Gennifer Weisenfeld

We have become the avant-garde of the imperial reconstruction. In an effort to cre-

ate beautiful buildings distinct from convention, we have taken to working in the
streets. We believe that Tokyo in the age of barracks has afforded a good opportunity
to experiment with our art.12

Willing to work on any kind of structure from stores to storage sheds, they advertised
for clients who were willing to take a chance with experimental projects, waiving any
commission and offering their services for cost. The cheap and ephemeral nature of the
structures provided a chance to design in a more free-form manner, not beholden to pre-
existing architectural conventions. And as examples of a new architectural type generated
directly out of the living conditions after the disaster, the barracks were seen by the group
as a perfect site for artistic intervention into daily life. The companys most well-known
decoration project was the Caf Kirin (fig. 3.3) (1923) in the popular commercial area of
the Ginza, which was built by the Takenaka Construction Company. Photographs and
verbal descriptions of the exterior indicate that the front doors were pushed off to the side
with a large series of windows inserted in the center. The lower portion of the faade was

Figure 3.3. Photograph. Bar-

rack Decoration Company,
Caf Kirin, Ginza, Tokyo,
c. 1923. Kon Wajir Archive,
Kgakuin University.
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 75

painted in dark earth tones while the areas around the window panes were rendered in a
mixture of colors that became increasingly more intense as one looked up the building,
eventually climaxing in what one reviewer termed a rococo style signboard at the top
emblazoned with the words Kirin Beer and Caf Kirin in romanized capital letters.13
The sign displayed two bestial figures in profile glaring mischievously from their corner
perches, renditions of the eponymous mythological Chinese animal that served as Kirins
emblem. The contorted figures crouched within the confines of a decorative border of exu-
berantly painted abstract patterns.
On the interior, decorations consisted of lyrical wall paintings and figurative sculp-
tural reliefs. Periodically a bold abstract design would punctuate the wall, extending from
a decorative molding near the ceiling down to the tables, giving the sensation that the
wall was being unzipped and a torrent of abstract forms was surging out of the rupture.
An assortment of figurative and abstract scenes adorned the walls at eye level next to each
table, which read as hanging paintings, giving the impression of looking out a window
onto an expressionist dreamscape. In general, the caf interior exuded a gay and cosmo-
politan ambiance meant to provide earthquake survivors with a welcoming temporary
refuge from the grim and laborious task of reconstruction.14
Barrack decoration had supporters and detractors. Writing about his impressions
of barrack architecture in the article Concerning the Bad Trends in Expression, Yada
Shigeru, a member of the Secessionist architecture group (discussed by Jonathan Reynolds
in this volume), wrote,

when I walk on the streets these days, somehow I cant relax, I become irritated. What
reflects in my eyes is an endorsement for administering cheap make-up to temporary
architecture. I want to say to young architects, Look deeply! Think calmly! I would
like to see them express rhythms and compositions from nature as it is, with a clear
head like one would have the morning after a sound sleep. I do not want them to make
architecture that looks like it has been forced into an excited state through whiskey
like [the feeling] in ones head after staying up all night.15

Rather than focusing on these criticisms, however, the Barrack Decoration Company art-
ists emphasized the aesthetic and spiritual rewards of the work. Asuka Tetsuo, for exam-
ple, was quoted as saying that our job is really like an oasis in the middle of the desert
because we have to bring each beautiful thing to life on the rough, burnt earth. For Asuka,
beauty (bi) was an indispensable part of life and reflective of ones cultivation (kyy). In
his view, the bleak state of the barracks was repulsive and pitifully devoid of civilization,
which compelled him to intervene to restore a bit of humanity and culture to the barren
landscape. While acknowledging that the groups efforts were grossly insufficient to the
task, he expressed the hope that artists could remedy at least some of the spiritual despair
among the disaster refugees.16
Kon, on the other hand, inspired by the austerity of the barracks, rhapsodized about
the beauty of the simple life (sobokuna seikatsu). He attributed a profound spiritual mean-
ing to the stripped-down state of the barracks, idealizing the simplicity of poverty and
affirming the sublimity of a subsistence-level existence. Unlike Asuka, he saw great beauty
in the crude environment of the barracks that he associated with the dignity of rural
76|Gennifer Weisenfeld

poverty. This prompted Kon to call for a return to basics and to remind his audience to
differentiate between the necessities of existence and the material desires of modern life.17
Kon also stressed the artisanal character of the decoration work, implying an honor-
able moral position for the artist as he was transformed into a laborer. The manual labor of
painting barracks temporarily recast artist-intellectuals as members of the working class,
an identity they tried to express through their informal work outfits consisting of cut-off
pants and gaiters. While sheepishly admitting that he felt more like an actor playing the
role of a laborer than an actual laborer, Kon still expressed great delight in having had
the chance to experience this blue-collar lifestyle, to the extent that he even joined a labor
union of craftsmen to better understand the profession.18
While the Barrack Decoration Companys work was ephemeral and only survives in
photographs and verbal accounts, the groups art of the streets had an enduring legacy
for Japanese artistic and architectural production. Their collaboration with architects and
engineers on the barrack projects contributed to a major shift in architectural practice in
the post-earthquake period away from stalwart, institutional structures toward more indi-
vidualized, expressive forms with playful faade and interior ornamentation. Architec-
tural historian Fujimori Terunobu has argued that the barracks offered a new generation of
architects the opportunity to indulge in and enjoy design, something the previous genera-
tion would not countenance, producing a great sense of liberation after the earthquake.19

Sanka

In 1925, after most artists began to move away from their earthquake projects, Mavo joined
forces with a diverse array of modern artists working in both Western-style (yga) and
neotraditional style (Nihonga) to form a short-lived collaborative known as the Third Sec-
tion Plastic Arts Association (Sanka Zkei Bijutsu Kykai), later shortened to just Sanka.
Sanka nevertheless churned up intense interest in the art world by mounting two pro-
vocative exhibitions and an outrageous evening of performances known as Sanka in the
Theater (Gekij no Sanka). Sankas principal goal was to create a new, unjuried, all-inclu-
sive exhibition forum for artists outside the Japanese art establishment. Although their
long-term objectives went unrealized, their short-term impact was widely commented
upon. A number of the non-Mavo participants in Sanka had been members of the group
Action (Akushon), which was a much-publicized splinter group of the prominent modern-
ist exhibiting society, the Nika Association (Nika-kai). Action artists worked primarily
in fauvist, cubist, and futurist painting styles. The Action Coterie Manifesto (Akushon
djin sengensho), penned by Kambara Tai, one of the most vocal members, clearly articu-
lated the groups sense of its avant-garde position:

We are young men who lead with a clear conscience and a rigorous conviction, who
want to walk on the front line of art with free and sure stepswith audacity and
gaiety. . . . We are not slaves of the history of art. . . . We are young men who do not
hesitate to take the cross and follow the way of difficulty according to our own opin-
ions and the freedom of our lives. . . . We know we are but beginners. But if we do not
stand up here and now, the birth of the new era will be even more painful . . . up until
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 77

now artists have sat in silence, suffering from a false humility where they say that it
is enough to just move forward along their own paths. They have hesitated for much
too long. But now the time has come for us to arise. We bravely stand up according to
our own beliefs.20

One of the more colorful figures in the Sanka alliance was the eccentric Nihonga painter
Tamamura Zennosuke (18931951), better known by his artists name Hokut. Tamamura
exhibited in the annual salon of the leading Nihonga institution, the Japan Art Academy,
but was forced to withdraw because of irreconcilable differences with the powerful paint-
ing master Yokoyama Taikan. Two years before joining Sanka, he had organized a radical
Nihonga group called the First Artists League (Daiichi Sakka Dmei, or DSD), dedicated
to opposing the Japanese art establishment, championing social equality, and integrat-
ing stylistic and theoretical developments from the European avant-garde into Japanese-
style painting.21 Together with other DSD artists, he published the arts magazine Epokku
(Epoch or Epock). Each cover of the magazine was rendered in a different abstract compo-
sition revealing strong connections to European expressionism. The March special issue
number 6, published in 1923, displays a purple cover with intricately scribbled Japanese
calligraphy cascading down the page (fig. 3.4). The text is overwritten multiple times, with
letters from the phonetic Japanese syllabaries overlapping characters, creating a discor-
dant visual aesthetic. The text is rendered largely illegible, but a few scrawled words emerge
from the cacophony: the title, number, and date of the magazine, the name Max Weber,
and the phrase cubist poetry collection. Bits of text in the foreground and background
echo this reference to Weber, a Russian-born American artist who had published an influ-
ential volume of Cubist poems in 1914. These references herald the forthcoming appear-
ance of the Japanese version of Webers work translated by Tamamuras close colleague,
poet Nogawa Ry.22 The following year Tamamuras company Epokku-sha launched a
Dadaist poetry magazine with the nonsensical title Ge gimgigam prrr gimgem, co-edited
by Nogawa and the celebrated avant-garde poet Hashimoto Kenkichi (better known as
Kitasono Katue). Tamamuras graphic compositions for these magazines, and later for a
1927 Sanka poster publicizing a second group performance, display a deep familiarity
with avant-garde design abroad and a lively sense of formal experimentation. He was even
known to have exhibited show window designs at his art exhibitions incorporating these
avant-garde aesthetics.23
Sankas second exhibition was unquestionably one of the most heavily reviewed artis-
tic events of its time, and while attendance figures are unreliable, the exhibition clearly
drew a large audience. Every major news organization in the city ran commentary on the
show, and several papers had articles on various individual Sanka artists. Sanka was also
newsworthy because of the altercations between exhibition participants and the authorities
over the forced withdrawal of certain works deemed subversive. Well-known critics like
Kawaji Ryk immediately remarked that Sankas work closely resembled that of Mavo.
He also noted that Sanka was by far the most radical of the Japanese leftist art groups,
speculating that it represented an intensification of left-wing artistic activity worldwide.
Focusing mostly on the Mavo-inspired constructions, Kawaji ruminated on how to appro-
priately define art in the modern age, questioning whether it should be defined by its mate-
rials or by the consciousness of its creator. While admitting a grudging respect for Mavos
78|Gennifer Weisenfeld

constructivist work, he nevertheless also expressed an intense frustration with the inscru-
tability of this form of nonrepresentational expression. Gently mocking the artists, he
described the bewildered, amused, and sometimes pained expressions of the viewers at the
exhibition as they tried to make sense of Sankas bizarre display: Well, if art (or whatever
it is) is something that has the wonderful power to stimulate irritation, then this work has
really succeeded, he wrote sardonically, asking, Who, how, and why would anyone try
to understand these works? He questioned the willingness of viewers to attempt to com-
prehend the work, disavowing the critics responsibility to explain such anarchic, nihilistic
creations, which in his estimation clearly exceeded the conventional bounds of art.24
Sanka constructions included works outside the exhibition hall, such as the Sanka
Exhibition Entrance Tower (Sankaten mont) (fig. 3.5) and the Gate Light and Moving
Ticket Selling Machine (Mont ken id kippu uriba, 1925), both of which were outlandish
creations incorporating an array of cast-off materials. The tower was an assemblage of util-
itarian and industrial objects twisted into a serpentine kiosk reminiscent of expressionist

Figure 3.4. Cover of Epokku

magazine, issue 6, March
1923. Kanagawa Museum
of Modern Literature.
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 79

set designs. Projecting out of the top of this bizarre edifice was a sign advertising the name
of the exhibition.
The mobile ticket selling machine constructed by Mavo artist Okada Tatsuo (fig. 3.6)
(active 1920s1930s) in September 1925 was a contraption on wheels that was intended
to be stationed outside the exhibition venue near the Sanka tower or to circulate through
the hall playing music. Okada explained to reporters that there would be a person inside
(perhaps naked, he provocatively suggested), and when visitors approached the machine,
just a black hand would appear to sell them a ticket. The box was designed to be tipped on
its side or positioned upright. Although Okada announced that four of the machines had
been completed, a photograph of only one survives. It shows Okada himself seated on top
of the machine, which randomly displays the words entrance, exit, Mavo, and ticket
selling place. Shelves on the side reveal piles of Mavo magazines, presumably for sale. It
was Okadas hope that many more of these machines would be constructed to circulate
through the city selling tickets and advertising future exhibitions.25

Figure 3.5. Photograph.

Sanka Exhibition Entrance
Tower (Sankaten mont),
1925. Exhibited outside
the second Sanka Exhibi-
tion, September 1925. Ch
bijutsu, no. 119 (October
1925): p. 189.
80|Gennifer Weisenfeld

Figure 3.6. Okada Tatsuo

seated in the Gate Light
and Moving Ticket Selling
Machine (Mont ken id
kippu uriba), second Sanka
Exhibition, September 1925.
Photograph in Murayama,
Sankaten no ben (The
diction of the Sanka Exhibi-
tion), Ch bijutsu, no. 119
(October 1925): p. 189.

Performance and performativity were critical components of Sanka work. Many

Mavo-Sanka theatrical strategies were based on the provocative theater and cabaret pro-
ductions of futurism and Dada. Predicated on the factors of chance, confrontation, and
dissonance, these performances were in all respects theaters of surprise such as advocated
by Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. In the first Sanka exhibition, Kinoshita
Shichir (18961991) created two living sculptures, which consisted of two seated peo-
ple with their faces painted red, white, and blue decorated with small surrealistic animal
motifs of snakes, lizards, and birds. In the midst of the exhibition, the two figures suddenly
began to shake and blink their eyes, and then they stood up, moving silently around the
room. This was followed by them chain-smoking and drinking coffee in front of viewers,
during which time they beckoned to one of the artists and said, Hey, if youre going to give
us coffee, how about a little toast?
The groups theatrical extravaganza on May 30, 1925, called Sanka in the Theater,
consisted of twelve unrelated performance pieces with interludes during which actors
would run out into the audience to shake peoples hands. The acts ranged in length and
complexity, but only fragmentary evidence survives about these performances beyond
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 81

their titles. As the curtain opened, a large white sheet of paper was seen hung across the
middle of the stage with a giant red button suspended beside it and a caged monkey star-
ing out absentmindedly at the audience. Suddenly a factory whistle screeched and an
empty lunchbox was heard clanking to the floor. Then the stage was plunged into dark-
ness and what was described as a Dada film, featuring a small toy truck and a close-up
of a face, was projected onto the paper screen. When it ended, thirty actors dressed as
workers ripped through the paper and spilled out onto the front of the stage. This was fol-
lowed by a writhing, expressionist dance performed by a barefoot Murayama Tomoyoshi
to Beethovens Minuet in G. Subsequent acts produced billowing smoke and deafening
sounds, and at one point performers even pelted the audience with dried tangerine peels.
According to reviews, some of the most memorable elements of the production were the
dramatic recitations of prose and poetry, in which performers dramatically modulated the
tempo of their readings, randomly speeding up and slowing down.
Mavos and Sankas theatrical experimentation reflected a strong connection between
artistic expression and the free expression of sexuality, particularly autoeroticism. Art-
ists repeatedly referred to masturbation or onanism as a metaphor for art making. Such
sexual activities were sharply criticized by state officials, psychologists, and health experts
as antithetical to a progressive, productive, and normal society. The legitimacy of plea-
sure (kyraku) and the social implications of pleasure seeking, pejoratively labeled by some
as hedonism (kyrakushugi), were fiercely debated. The possibly subversive aspects of this
behavior were deeply disturbing to certain Japanese intellectuals, who worried that this
new liberation associated with modernity would lead to widespread decadence and the
deterioration of Japanese society.

The Proletarian Arts Movement

Anti-authoritarian cultural activity in 1920s Japan centered mainly around leftist political
groups and the organized labor movement.26 After the vicious targeted assassinations of
several key labor leaders during the period of pandemonium in the immediate aftermath
of the earthquake, artists sympathetic to socialism joined the proletarian arts movement
in large numbers, working in a range of media that included painting, the graphic arts,
and the theater. Painter Mochizuki Katsuras (18871975) many evocative sketches and
portraits of murdered anarcho-syndicalist leader sugi Sakae, a close friend of his, now
seem to express a foreboding sense of sugis violent demise, a precursor to the numer-
ous death masks rendered of other prominent leftist figures who died in police custody
throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s. Although trained in Western-style painting at
the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, Mochizuki actively worked in both oil and ink throughout
his career, blurring the boundaries between yga and Nihonga. He was also an active car-
toon illustrator, collaborating with sugi on a volume of political cartoons titled Manbun
manga (Carefree jottings and cartoons) in 1922. A founding member of the Peoples Art
Movement (Minsh Bijutsu Und) in the early 1920s, Mochizukis modernist inflected
paintings in ink and light color exhibited a strong sense of social conscience with a deep
sympathy for the working class. For example, his ink painting Factory Girl (Shjo) from
1920 displays the repeated, overlapping figure of a young female factory worker who moves
82|Gennifer Weisenfeld

repetitively through her labor, evoking the famous image of Marcel Duchamps Nude
Descending a Staircase. In machine-like fashion, the abstracted, anonymous figure is a
mechanistic dynamo, fueled by the engine of industrialization.
Mochizukis highly abstracted ink paintings such as Illness and Pain (Byku), which
shows a small black figure in a fetal position in the center of a billowing cloud of ink, dis-
play a deep psychological pathos about the human condition, while his more descriptive
works like Are Machines Alright? (Kikai wa daijobu ka, 1920) (fig. 3.7), which depicts the
anguished figure of a worker whose hand has just been severed in an industrial accident,
focus on social issues directly pertinent to the labor movement. Mochizukis animated
figures hark back to the great expressive figural painters of the Edo period and connect to
the lively and humorous social commentary of contemporary political caricaturists, who
represented a significant arm of the proletarian arts movement.

Figure 3.7. Mochizuki

Katsura, Are Machines
Alright? (Kikai wa
daijobu ka?), 1920.
Ink and light color
on paper. Mochizuki
family.
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 83

A large portion of proletarian art was for the purpose of political agitation, coming in
the form of graphic illustrations and other forms of propaganda such as posters. In fact, it
was right after the dissolution of the Mavo-Sanka alliance in 1925 that Yanase Masamu,
deeply dissatisfied with the impact of his prior artistic activity, publicly renounced the pro-
duction of fine art, claiming himself reborn as a servant of the revolutionary cause of the
proletarian arts movement. He became a founding member of the Japan Proletarian Arts
Association (Nihon Puroretaria Geijutsu Renmei) in 1926 and a principal illustrator for
the Musansha shinbun (Proletarian times), for which he designed the publicity poster dis-
cussed at the beginning of this essay (see Plate 5). The tremendous boom in leftist literature
in the 1920s, which was especially popular among university students, generated a sig-
nificant amount of work for illustrators and book designers. These designs were featured
prominently throughout the leftist literary world until the movement was suppressed in
the mid-1930s.
In addition to his hundreds of magazine covers and poster designs, Yanase was also an
active political cartoonist with a membership in the Japan Cartoonists Association (Nihon
Mangaka Renmei), and he regularly contributed to the group magazine Yumoa (Humor),
inaugurated in 1926. A selection of his satirical political cartoon work was published in
1930 under the title Yanase Masamu gash (The collected drawings of Yanase Masamu).
Yanase also returned to work as a regular illustrator for the Yomiuri shinbun in the early
1930s, and from July to October 1932 he produced a stunning series of 119 illustrations
for the serialized novel of well-known French mystery writer Maurice LeBlanc titled From
Midnight to Morning (F: De minuit sept heures, J: Shinyonaka kara Shichiji made, 1932)
(fig. 3.8). Yanases photocollage illustrations combined hand-drawn caricatures with pho-
tographic collages to produce a powerful meditation on the hybrid nature of the visual
culture of modernity. The following year, he was thrown into jail as a political subversive
under Japans Peace Preservation Law for his membership in the outlawed Japanese Com-
munist Party and was forced to refrain from overt political activity.

Commercial Art (Shgy bijutsu)

Like political propaganda, commercial design relied on the art of persuasion. And like the
boom in leftist publishing, Japans rapid growth in consumerism produced valuable work
opportunities for artists in the market. Despite the seeming divide between modern arts
sometimes recondite aesthetic sensibilities and the more didactic imperatives of commer-
cial advertising, the prevalence of a diverse range of modernist and avant-garde pictorial
strategies in Japanese print advertising provides strong evidence that these art techniques
held widespread and sustained appeal in the commercial sector from the late 1920s well
into the war years. These pictorial strategies were effectively instrumentalized to aestheti-
cize a range of new consumer products. The fine line separating high art from the market
economy was quickly eroding.
As advertising design gradually shifted away from its artisanal roots in the first few
decades of the twentieth century, it was increasingly viewed as a valid artistic profession.
The construction of a new social status for design was not a coincidental development.
It was consciously and aggressively forged by designers and design theorists who sought
Figure 3.8. Yanase Masamu, original drawings, illustrations for Maurice LeBlancs novel From Mid-
night to Morning (De minuit sept heures), serialized in the Yomiuri shinbun, 1932. Ink and photo-
graphs on paper. Musashino Art University and Library.
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 85

aesthetic and social legitimacy for the profession. Hamada Masuji (18921938), one of the
most vocal design theorists of this period, had a major impact on the development of the
modern Japanese design movement during its critical formative stage in the late 1920s and
early 1930s.27 By publicly endorsing art as a means of persuasion and systematizing the
specialized requisite knowledge, Hamada helped launch a new professional field of artistic
practice that explicitly and unapologetically put aesthetics in the service of commerce.
For Hamada, products could not merely be placed in the market to speak for themselves.
They required skillful packaging, and who better to design this packaging than artists who
understood the affectivity of visual stimuli.
Hamada Masuji was initially trained in the fine arts, first in Western-style painting
at the White Horse Society Western-style painting studio run by well-known academi-
cian Kuroda Seiki and his students, and then at the more conservative Pacific Painting
Society studio. He then entered the Tokyo School of Fine Arts sculpture division. And
like so many of his contemporaries, he began freelancing as a commercial designer
while still in school. It was during this time that he came into contact with Mavo and
forged a connection with the group over their mutual interests in integrating art into
daily life through design. In 1926, Hamada and a group of young colleagues formed the
Association of Commercial Artists (Shgy Bijutsuka Kykai), which published the peri-
odical Shgy bijutsu (Commercial art) from 1930.28 The association mounted yearly exhi-
bitions, mostly in fine art venues, which were reviewed with great interest in both the art
and popular press.
Principal among Hamadas works was a twenty-four-volume illustrated compendium
of commercial design with annotation and theoretical analysis published by Ars from 1928
until 1930. The series was titled Gendai shgy bijutsu zensh in Japanese and The Com-
plete Commercial Artist in English.29 Hamada edited and cowrote the publication together
with more than sixty well-known professional journalists, educators, and practitioners
active in the design field. This bountiful sourcebook of commercial art forms and tech-
niques served as both a record of original design work being produced during the period
and as an invaluable tool for disseminating the most up-to-date design practices to small
retail shops that could not afford to employ full-time designers but still sought to invest
their advertising and displays with creative aesthetics.30
Hamadas design theory combined modernist fine art aesthetics with the progres-
sive values of industrialism: rationalism, efficiency, effectiveness, applicability, and prag-
matism. To this was added a touch of popular psychology and visual perception theory
and a strong dose of Marxian social utopianism to produce Hamadas own distinct brand
of commercial art, dubbed shgy bijutsu, a recently coined neologism of the period.
While shgy bijutsu now principally refers to two-dimensional graphic design, in the
late 1920s and in Hamadas writings, it was a more inclusive term, also comprising three-
dimensional forms such as show windows and architectural structures used for advertising
like kiosks and storefronts. Moreover, Hamada stressed that shgy bijutsu was not merely
any art used in advertising, but rather it was art that formally embodied its commercial
function. It required the skillful manipulation of aesthetics to attract the consumers eye
and make the product stand out, effects that would further commercial interests.31 With
this attitude, Hamada paved the way for both a commercialization of aesthetics and an
aestheticization of commerce.32
86|Gennifer Weisenfeld

Modernism was Hamadas tool of choice for undertaking this process of aestheticiza-
tion. He redirected the visually evocative aesthetic strategies of autonomous abstract art
that undergirded modernism to serve a more clearly functional purpose, beginning with
the general assertion that form itself resonated with people in distinct ways.33 It was
the designers job to maximize and direct this resonance in the mind of the consumer.
Hamada and his colleagues closely followed international developments in modernism
and the avant-garde through publications and exhibitions and by traveling abroad. Adapt-
ing Swiss architect Le Corbusiers famous dictum that architecture was a machine for
living, Hamada produced his own mechanical metaphor, declaring art as a machine with
a purpose. The implication was that art could function pragmatically through applied
design, which was manipulable in a manner akin to the precise calibrations of a machine.34
Hamada argued that this form of art addressed the real-life conditions of a modern indus-
trial society under capitalism. It was less elitist, appealing to the mass consumer. He
believed that in the end the practical or applied arts would actually enable the artist to
break through the limiting bonds of subjectivity in pure art.35
Heralding a new consciousness for design, he advocated the independence of the
designer vis--vis the client. And design should have a conceptualand even social
underpinning that would function beyond purely monetary objectives. This signaled a
new combination of the spiritual and the materialist. Design would transform a prod-
uct into a commodity by mediating between the producer and the market, generating
image and desire.36 However, Hamadas commercial art tended to emphasize produc-
tion, downplaying consumption as the bourgeois component of modern commerce. He
claimed that the main purpose of commerce was to enhance the prosperity and livelihood
of the masses. And [m]ass production would solve problems by producing only practi-
cal, necessary items rather than consumer demand items.37 Yet despite his claims to the
contrary, consumption was still the essential flip side to Hamadas commercial art strate-
gies. It was the implied, and hoped for, consequence of these techniques. Moreover, it was
developments in the consumer market that fueled the expansion of the commercial design
field as much as, if not more than, increases in production. Hamada also gave little serious
attention to the issue of a products merit or the designers possible complicity in creating
false need.
Hamadas final essay in the compendium (1930) best illustrates the relationship
between commercial art and international art developments. It begins with a series of illus-
trations showing various modernist and avant-garde works of art. Among each grouping
is at least one piece labeled commercial art, demonstrating the easy conversion of modern-
ist isms into styles for the commercial realm. In one illustration he presents an array of
abstract paintings under the caption Suprematism and directions for its practical applica-
tions (fig. 3.9). Two images (labeled A and B) are identified as works by the suprematist
Russian painter Kasimir Malevich. One (C) is by the De Stijl principal Theo Van Doesberg.
Another (E) is a collage construction created in homage to Van Doesburg by Mavo art-
ist Murayama Tomoyoshi. And two (D and F) are by Hamada himself. D is identified
as an experimental rational composition for use in a poster, with no product explicitly
mentioned. F, in the right corner, is identified as a design for a beer poster. Mirroring
Van Doesburgs work, Hamadas composition produces a lively decorative backdrop that
simultaneously camouflages and reveals the katakana letters for beer looming above.
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 87

Figure 3.9. Suprematism and

directions for its practical
application. In Gendai shgy
bijitsu zensh 24 (1930): ill. 6.

Immediately below one can make out the shape of a bottle and its label, and figures seated
at tables in a caf slowly appear. The abstract composition subtly discloses its promotional
content to the viewer.
Advertising was integral to the creation of a national society, and Japanese corporate
advertisers stood among a range of competing interests, both public and private, who were
attempting to mold the lives of Japans imperial subjects. Print advertisements for a range
of newly emerging national Japanese corporations reveal a heavy emphasis on innovative
design strategies in the construction of modern corporate identities. Companies such as
the Ka Soap Company and the Morinaga Confectionary Company, for example, used
these techniques to promote their products precisely because of the formal association
with the modern, the new, and the machine aesthetic.38 In 1930, under the newly hired
art director ta Hideshige (18921982), considered one of the first professional art direc-
tors in Japan, Ka decided to launch a new advertising campaign that drastically changed
the companys image right down to the packaging of its soap bar. To augment his staff,
ta hired two graduates of the design division of the prestigious Tokyo School of Fine
Arts: Asuka Tetsuo and Okuda Masanori (19011967), both of whom had worked with the
Barrack Decoration Company. And he prompted the company to sponsor an invitational
88|Gennifer Weisenfeld

Figure 3.10. Original drawings for the new and improved Ka soap package design competition:
(top from left) Hara Hiromu (winning entry), Hirokawa Matsugor, Sugiura Hisui, (bottom from
left) Yoshida Kenkichi, Murayama Tomoyoshi, and Okuda Masanori. Kao Corporation.

competition for a new package design that garnered multiple proposals by eight individual
artist-designers. The submitted designs, which included proposals by avant-garde artists
Yoshida Kenkichi and Murayama Tomoyoshi and the well-established principal designer
for Mitsukoshi Department Store, Sugiura Hisui, ranged widely in aesthetic approaches
from decorative floral motifs to expressionist abstraction (fig. 3.10).
Ka selected the bold modern red package design by the still unknown Hara Hiromu
(19031986), launching an illustrious career that would establish Hara as one of the most
important and powerful graphic designers in twentieth-century Japan.39 Hara studied at
the Tokyo Metropolitan Craft School (Tokyo Furitsu Kgei Gakk), one of the first pro-
grams to offer a specialization in the field of graphic design (insatsu zuan, also translated
as printing design). His design on a vermilion background became emblematic of the
new company image, so much so that designers commonly referred to the red as the Ka
color. He also supplemented the calligraphy-style characters used for the companys name
by surrounding them with stylish Western typography spelling out Kwa. The w in the
older style of transliteration was removed when the package actually went into produc-
tion.40 The new design and vibrant color greatly simplified, while intensifying, the visual
impact of the product. This also represented a radical reduction in text on the packaging.
The loopy letterforms in Haras typography rolled off the corners of the soap bar, but were
just legible enough to make out soap and the brand name Ka.
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 89

The redesigned Ka soap bar figured prominently in all subsequent promotional cam-
paigns, often superimposed on various advertising compositions, producing the effect of a
surreal photomontage. It is visible floating in the lower right-hand corner of the full-page
newspaper advertisement that kicked off the New and Improved Ka campaign in 1931,
which ran in all the major Japanese newspapers (fig. 3.11). This now famous advertisement
featured a striking photographic image shot from overhead by commercial photographer
Kanamaru Shigene (19001977), director of the small commercial photography studio
Kinreisha and who would later become one of the most influential photography critics of
his era.41 This was, incidentally, one of the earliest examples of a full-page photographic
newspaper advertisement in Japan.
Kanamarus photograph showed a crowd of company employees standing outside the
production factory holding up banners and energetically raising their hands in triumph.
The copy, reminiscent of Procter & Gambles endorsement for Ivory soap, read, Today is
the day of New and Improved Ka, 99.4% pure, net price 10 sen a piece. Bleeding off the
edges of the image, the sea of Ka workers seems to go on indefinitelya flood of cheer-
ful labor, male and female, interspersed with a convoy of Ka soap trucks ready to charge
out into the streets. The image responded to Ka president Nagase Tomir IIs rallying cry
printed in the new company house organ Nagaseman, in which he enjoined all employees
to be soldiers in the company fight on the battlefield of the consumer market.42
Kanamarus photograph also clearly drew from triumphal images of industry and
social revolution emanating from the Soviet Union in widely circulated propaganda jour-
nals such as the USSR in Construction, designed by Alexandr Rodchenko and El Lissitzky.
This might at first seem an odd choice of inspiration for depicting production under a
capitalist system. Yet it is less strange if one remembers that in 1918, Lenin, known to
have a photograph of American industrialist and great scientific manager Henry Ford over
his desk, stated, The possibility of building socialism depends exactly on our success in
combining the Soviet power and the Soviet organization of administration with the up-
to-date achievements of capitalism. We must organize in Russia the study and teaching of
the Taylor system and systematically try it out and adapt it to our ends.43 Many Japanese
manufacturers positioned themselves as progressive producers in terms of their technolo-
gized, precision manufacturing and their high-quality products, which were marketed as
bringing a healthy new life to the Japanese collective in line with state objectives. Thus, in
Kas case, this conflation of labor and capital in a burst of revolutionary victory presents
the company at the core of the imagined community of the nation, surrounded by concen-
tric rings of enthusiastic consumer-subjects.
In the New and Improved Ka campaign, even salespeople were cloaked in the
new Ka wrapping. The company hired so-called mannequin girls to stand at all major
department stores throughout the Kant region holding balloons to promote the cam-
paign. On several occasions well-known popular film actresses were enlisted to greet
consumers at point-of-purchase displays and in front of stores. They wore logo-patterned
sheaths and headscarves that prominently displayed the new Ka typography dynamically
rippling across their bodies.
The Morinaga Confectionary Company sponsored similarly innovative promotional
designs, working with many well-known artist-designers and photographers throughout
their campaigns. To celebrate the capitals re-emergence from a nearly decade-long process
Figure 3.11. Ka soap advertisement launching the new and improved Ka campaign (Shins Ka).
Run in all major Japanese newspapers, March 1931. Photographer: Kanamaru Shigene. Ka Corporation.
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 91

of reconstruction after the Great Kant Earthquake, in September 1932 the company
issued 22,500 tins of Morinaga Great City Tokyo Commemorative Cookies (Morinaga
dai Tky kinen bisuketto) (see Plate 6). The colorful wrapping paper on the tins featured
a montage of Tokyo that echoed the cinematic kaleidoscope of German director Walther
Ruttmanns landmark film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), with bright, graphi-
cally rendered images of high-rise department stores, the new National Diet Building, the
five-story pagoda at Sensji temple in Asakusa, an airborne Zeppelin, and a modern high-
speed train, all superimposed on a photomontage of sights throughout the city. While
champions of pure art have viewed this kind of design as a form of cultural degradation,
later historians have instead heralded it as arts democratic immersion in the everyday
life of commerce.44

Reactionary Modernism: Nippon Kb

The continued flourishing of a consumer-oriented society into the 1930s, when the Japa-
nese nation took a marked political swing toward the right, complicates many standard
readings of the period or any conventional notions of progressive artistic practice. The
continued production of a lively mass culture well into the early war years quickly blurred
the boundaries between art, commerce, and national propaganda. Designers often worked
freely between the commercial and political spheres, and theorist-practitioners like Kana-
maru Shigene, for instance, continued to actively champion the variable applicability of
modernist pictorial techniques to both. During this time, a collective of skilled commer-
cial designers and photographers called Japan Studio (Nippon Kb) emerged under the
direction of photographer Natori Ynosuke (19101962), who had studied applied crafts,
commercial art, and photojournalism in Germany from 1928 until 1932 after graduating
from Keio Gijuku Daigaku (forerunner of Keio University middle school).45 Nippon Kb
worked for a number of state agencies such as the Japan National Board of Tourist Indus-
try and the Society for International Cultural Relations (Kokusai Bunka Shinkkai, fore-
runner of the Japan Foundation), a nonprofit organization established under the auspices
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Together with the sponsorship of the private textile
company Kanegafuchi Spinning Company (Kanegafuchi Bseki, Kanebo for short), they
commissioned the studio to produce a multilingual journal to publicize Japanese culture
to the rest of the world. This was a time of increasing world political tensions and ris-
ing anti-Japanese sentiment abroad caused by Japans economic practices and aggressive
expansion into Asia.46
Nippon Kb began publishing the journal NIPPON (Japan) in 1934, producing
thirty-six issues over the next decade until its activities folded right before the end of the
Asia-Pacific War. NIPPON was available in at least eight countries, published regularly
in four and sometimes as many as six languages, with most articles translated multilin-
gually in each issue.47 It served as a quasi-governmental organ of national propaganda.
The publication was a total collaboration between photographers and designers, not to
mention important textual contributions by well-known ideologues and intellectuals, cul-
tural figures, politicians, and high-ranking military officials. The visual and textual mutu-
ally amplified one another. The magazines effectiveness as a means of persuasion was due
92|Gennifer Weisenfeld

in large part to the extraordinary talent of its contributors, which included some of the
foremost Japanese photographers and designers of the twentieth century, many of whom
worked for corporations like Ka, Morinaga, and the now internationally well-known Shi-
seido cosmetics company. Most prominently the roster included photographers Domon
Ken (19091990), Horino Masao (19071999), Kimura Ihee (19011974), Watanabe Yoshio
(19072000), Fujimoto Shihachi (also known as Yonpachi, b. 1911), Matsuda Masashi (b.
1916), Numano Ken (b. 1912), and Furukawa Narutoshi (1900?). The chief designers at
the magazine were Yamana Ayao (18971980), Kno Takashi (19061999), and Kamekura
Ysaku (19151997).
A large portion of the Nippon Kb photographers were also concurrently affiliated
with modernist photography associations, showing a strong allegiance to avant-gardist
manipulation of the photographic medium and fostering what photography historian
John Roberts has called the dialectical permeation or the shared cultural space of the
photographic document and the avant-garde.48
NIPPONs kaleidoscopic view of the Japanese empire promoted a timeless land with
verdant peaks, typified by the national symbol of Mount Fuji, friendly natives (the ideal-
ized happy people of the countryside and the colonies), and refined cultural sensibili-
ties. At the same time, it presented an urban, industrialized, expansionist imperial power
that had rapidly annexed Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria and was setting its sights on
the rest of China. Articulated just at the moment when Japanese military and colonial
bureaucracies were becoming literal custodians of land and people on the continent, the
magazines presentation of assimilated images of Asianness derived from imperial colonial
acquisitions. The visual language for the Japanese metropole and its colonies was skillfully
blended to obscure internal boundaries and mute the cultural violence implicit in Japanese
imperialism.
The topics covered in the magazine ranged widely, often oscillating between the con-
temporary and the traditional, or preservation of the latter in the former as evidenced,
for example, in the lifestyles and activities of people on the periphery of metropolitan Japan
such as the agrarian countryside. A careful symmetry was maintained between the rural
and the urban, the folkish and the cosmopolitan, the historical and the contemporary,
each portrayed as a symbiotically linked part of a larger whole, a notion pithily expressed
by Yamana Ayaos montage cover design for the first issue of the magazine in 1934 (fig.
3.12). The image of a bright red, kimono-clad, Japanese female folk doll is superimposed
on Watanabe Yoshios black-and-white photograph of a modern steel-reinforced concrete
building, an emblem of the Japanese modernist architecture that was transforming the
urban landscape. The images are balanced in a curious manner, with the doll positioned
on a sharp diagonal to the left, solidly anchored in the right angle of the building structure,
whose partial image is shown clearly slanted to the right. The images visually interlock and
interpenetrate, the transparency of the red form revealing the building behind. The com-
ponents that constitute Japan may be divergent, but they are inseparable.
Specific attention was given to the aesthetic aspects of Japanese culture as evidence
of the nations overall civilization. In Life and Art, cultural critic Hasegawa Nyozekan
asserts that [n]o nation is capable of producing supreme art without some refinement in
the very life of her people. The artistic curves of physical arts are defined by the curves
in the movements and gestures in daily life.49 In addition to theater, music, and the fine
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 93

Figure 3.12. Yamana Ayao,

cover design, NIPPON no. 1
(1934), private collection.

arts, Japanese handicrafts were specifically featured in the magazine. Crafts had served
the nation-building project exceptionally well by representing Japanese culture on the
prominent imperialist stage of international worlds fairs, beginning with their spectacu-
lar reception in Vienna in 1873. This practice continued unabated.
Crafts were heralded in the pages of NIPPON for displaying the Japanese peoples
adroitness at adapting the cultural achievements of other nations (for example, China,
Korea, and Western countries). They were a testament to the Japanese ability to harmonize
the two opposing forces of Oriental and Occidental culture. As aesthetic but functional
objects, crafts were strongly connected to the life of the people, implying a high level of
refinement in the everyday life of regular Japanese folk, a notion that came right out of
the ideology of the Japanese folk craft movement (mingei und) as articulated by its pri-
mary theorist, Yanagi Setsu. The decorative alcove (tokonoma) in the Japanese house was
lauded as a kind of altar to aestheticism.
NIPPONs subtle interweaving of colonial subjects into the fabric of Japan went a long
way in legitimizing the nations imperialist agenda. A 1939 special issue of the journal on
94|Gennifer Weisenfeld

the Japanese puppet-state of Manchukuo, established in 1931, is one of the most visually
interesting of the entire run of the magazine. It begins with an eye-catching cover design
by Kamekura Ysaku (see Plate 7), a protg of Ka art director ta Hideshige, show-
ing a series of cut-out photographs of individual figures from the interior layouts, men
and women, farmers, soldiers, and city dwellers, superimposed on a boldly colored orange
map of Manchukuo. They are identifiable by costume as Japanese, Manchurian, Korean,
Mongolian, and White Russian, the so-called quinque racial population of Manchu-
ria. The racial diversity and mutual cooperation between the races in Manchukuo was
emphasized as a defining feature of the region. The visible map of Manchukuo rests in
a yellow frame, metonymically representing its debt to the Japanese, the people of the
sun. The NIPPON title under the yellow frame reinforces this association. A soldier, most
likely Japanesethe only figure who stands completely outside the bounded area of the
mappoints to it with great purpose. In the white space around the map, figures gaze,
walk, and gesture toward the mapped landscape. Two women in kimonos seen walking
from behind allude to the influx of Japanese women into the colonies as part of the gov-
ernmental policy of intermarriage between Japanese and native inhabitants as a strategy
of colonial integration (a policy employed in all Japanese colonial regions). Two soldiers
holding shovels sitting to the right are revealed inside the magazine to be assisting in the
reclamation of arable land that is transforming Manchukuos agrarian economy. To the
upper left, a soldier looks out beyond the border with binoculars standing in defense of the
realm. To his right in the north, mounted riders lead the eye to a Manchurian woman and
her small childthe mother points toward the land indicating to the next generation the
future to come. Kamekuras cover attempts to express the utopian excitement of Japanese
policies toward Manchuria.

Conclusion

The interwar period in Japan is not easily characterized. It represents both the expand-
ing and contracting possibilities of expression in early twentieth-century Japan. As art-
ists moved well beyond the conventional boundaries of painting and sculpture into the
new and exciting spheres of multimedia, performance, architecture, graphic design, and
cartoons, the dividing lines between art, commerce, and politics quickly began to blur.
With the expansion of the public sphere, artists not only found themselves redefining the
boundaries of art, but they were also given an unprecedented opportunity to reinvent the
social and political role of the artist.
Just as Yanases poster for the Communist Party newspaper exultantly invites the
viewer to envision a new revolutionary landscape in Japan, Kamekuras cover for NIPPON
triumphantly opens a window onto the utopian promised land of Japans colonial proj-
ect in Manchuria. Both artists employ cutting-edge designs informed by modernist and
avant-garde work abroad, yet their parallel gestures represent diametrically opposite ends
of the political spectrum. While scholars often speak of Japans march into militarism in
the 1930s as a dark valley, they seldom substantively address the continuities of experimen-
tal artistic practice through the interwar years that informs the later nationalistic modes
of expression, which were equally dynamic and innovative in form, yet unquestionably
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 95

reactionary in content. Even though modernism is often seen as an anathema to the classi-
cizing, tradition-bound, inward turn of wartime Japan, it is clear that the seeds of moder-
nity were planted deeply in the interwar period, and the cross-fertilization of high and low
art that fueled the transgressive actions of avant-gardists like Mavo was equally important
for the nationalist propaganda production of Nippon Kb.

Notes
1.In the Euro-American historical context, the interwar period refers to the period
between the First and Second World Wars (19191939). In Japan, however, it can be argued that
the interwar period begins slightly earlier with Japans triumph in the Russo-Japanese War
in 1905 and extends to the onset of the war in China in 1937. Although slightly staggered in
duration, Japans interwar period was characterized by a similarly expansive kind of cultural
experimentation as the interwar period in the West.
2. Jordan Sand, The Cultured Life as Contested Space, in Being Modern in Japan, ed.
Elise Tipton and John Clark, p. 99 (Sydney, Australian Humanities Research Foundation,
2000).
3. For a general discussion of the visual culture of modernity in Japan, see Elise Tipton
and John Clark, Being Modern in Japan and MOBO MOGA/Modern Boy, Modern Girl: Japa-
nese Modern Art 19101935, exhibition catalogue (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales,
1998).
4. For a fuller discussion of Mavo and Sanka, see Omuka Toshiharu, Taishki shink
bijutsu und no kenky (A study of the new art movements of the Taish period) (Tokyo: Sky-
door, 1995); and Gennifer Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 19051931
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
5. Murayama Tomoyoshi, Sugiyuku hygenha (Expressionism expiring), Ch bijutsu,
no. 91 (April 1923): p. 14. The title Expressionism Expiring was probably taken from an
article in German of the same title by Ivan Goll (n Herbert Lang 18911950) in the Serbo-
Croatian avant-garde periodical published in Zagreb, Zenit (Zenith) 1, no. 8 (October 1921):
pp. 89. RoseCarol Washton Long, ed., German Expressionism: Documents from the End of
the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism (New York and Toronto: G. K. Hall and
Maxwell Macmillan, 1993), pp. 287289.
6. The magazines seven issues were published monthly in two series. The first phase
extended from July 1924 until October 1924. Then the group ran into financial trouble and did
not resume publishing until it secured sponsorship from the publisher Chrysha, after which
it published an additional three issues from June 1925 until August 1925. Mavo. Nihon Kindai
Bungakukan and Odagiri Susumu, eds., Mavo fukkokuban (Mavo facsimile) (Nihon Kindai
Bungakukan, 1991).
7. The use of XX in the second paragraph was probably an intentional reference to the
marks (fuseiji) used by the Japanese censors to replace expurgated portions of texts.
8. This announcement survives in Murayama Tomoyoshis personal scrapbook No. 1, n.p.
9. A photograph of this building accompanied an article on Mavo in Shinsaigo (After
the quake), Ch shinbun, March 6, 1924, a.m. ed., p. 3.
96|Gennifer Weisenfeld

10. Soga Takaaki, Taish makki ni okeru shink geijutsu und no ksatsu: Zkei bijutsu
to kenchiku no kakawari o megutte (Thoughts on the new art movement of the late Taish
period: On the relationship between the plastic arts and architecture) (masters thesis, Waseda
University, 1990), pp. 76, 79.
11. Gennifer Weisenfeld, Designing after Disaster: Barrack Decoration and the Great
Kant Earthquake, Japanese Studies 18, no. 3 (1998): pp. 229246.
12. Gait ni deru gakkatachi: Akushonsha to djinsha ga (Artists out on the street:
Action and djinsha), Asahi shinbun, October 2, 1923, p.m. ed., p. 3; Atorie kara gairo e
(From the atelier to the streets), Miyako shinbun, October 9, 1923, a.m. ed., p. 5.
13. Sait Sogan and Hinako Jitsuz, Barakku kenbutsu: Kas no Ginza to Asakusa
(6) (Barrack sightseeing: The disguise of Ginza and Asakusa), Yomiuri shinbun, March 11,
1924, a.m. ed., p. 7. A full frontal illustration of the Caf Kirin and an interior shot is included
in Barakku kenchiku (Barrack architecture) in Kenchiku shashin ruij (Kysha, 1923), vol.
4:12:1, ills. 35, 36.
14. Unfortunately, the morning after Caf Kirin was completed half of it was destroyed in
a fire ignited by sparks from an adjacent building.
15. Quoted in Fujimori Terunobu, Kon Wajir to Barakku Sshokusha (Kon Wajir
and the Barrack Decoration Company), Quarterly Column, no. 88 (1983): p. 64.
16. Asuka Tetsuo, Shigoto no ato de kanjita koto (What I felt after the [barrack] job),
Mizue, no. 226 (December 1923): p. 22.
17. Kon Wajir, Soboku to iroiro no bi (Simplicity and various aesthetics), Mizue, no.
225 (November 1923).
18. Kon Wajir, Poketto no naka no ni en yon j hachi sen (The two yen and fortyeight
sen in my pocket), Mizue, no. 226 (December 1923): pp. 2526.
19. Fujimori, Kon Wajir to Barakku Sshokusha, p. 60.
20. Original text reproduced in Yurakuch Asahi Gyararii (Yurakuch Asahi Gallery),
Hokkaidritsu Hakodate Bijutsukan (Hokkaido Prefectural Hakodate Art Museum), and
Naganoken Tatsunoch Kydo Bijutsukan (Nagano Prefectural Tatsuno City Art Museum),
eds., Taish shink bijutsu no ibuki: Akushonten (The youthful energy of the new art of the
Taish period: Action exhibition) (Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1989), p. 52.
21. Tanaka Kazuyoshi, Daiichi Sakka Dmei no keik (The inclination of the First Art-
ists League), Ch bijutsu, no. 87 (December 1922): pp. 2634; Sun Giichi (?), Daiichi Sakka
Dmei (D.S.D.) wa seiritsu shita (The First Artists League is established), Ch bijutsu, no. 83
(August 1922): pp. 1017; Daiichi Sakka Dmei (DSD) (The First Artists League), Bijutsu
gurafu 22, no. 9 (November 1972): pp. 1215.
22. I am grateful to Takizawa Kyji for his invaluable insights into this reference to Max
Weber.
23. An undated and unidentified newspaper photograph of a show window design exhib-
ited by Tamamuras Hokut Company (Hokut-sha) survives in the scrapbook of his Sanka
colleague Kawabe Masahisa.
24. Kawaji Ryk, Hygen geijutsu yori seikatsu geijutsu e (From expressionist art to
the art of daily life), Atelier 2, no. 7 (July 1925): pp. 167168.
25. Kippu uriba ni nyutto kuroi te (Suddenly a black hand from the ticket selling place),
Yorozu chh, August 30, 1925, a.m. ed., p. 2.
26. For a general history of the proletarian arts movement by two active participants, see
 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period | 97

Okamoto Tki and Matsuyama Fumio, eds, Nihon proretaria bijutsushi (A history of Japanese
proletarian art) (Tokyo: Zkei-sha, 1972).
27.Gennifer Weisenfeld, Japanese Modernism and Consumerism: Forging the New
Artistic Field of Shgy Bijutsu, in Being Modern in Japan, ed. Elise Tipton and John Clark,
7598 (Sydney: Australian Humanities Research Foundation, 2000).
28. Association member Murota Kuraz later became editor of the long-running, more
mainstream periodical Advertising World (Kkokukai), which ran for 194 issues from March
1926 until the end of 1941. See James Fraser, Steven Heller, and Seymour Chwast, Japanese
Modern: Graphic Design between the Wars (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996), pp. 88, 97.
29. Gendai shgy bijutsu zensh (The complete commercial artist), vols. 124 (Tokyo:
Ars, 19281930). Hereafter abbreviated as GSBZ.
30.Designs by Mavo-Sanka artists Murayama Tomoyoshi, ura Shz, and Yoshida
Kenkichi are among the many examples featured in the compendium.
31. Hamada Masuji, Shgy bijutsu sron, GSBZ 24, pp. 1113.
32. Hamada, Shgy bijutsu sron, GSBZ 24, p. 62.
33. Hamada, Shgy bijutsu sron, GSBZ 24, p. 14.
34. Hamada, Shgy bijutsu sron, GSBZ 24, p. 85.
35. Hamada, Shgy bijutsu sron, GSBZ 24, pp. 5758.
36. Hamada, Shgy bijutsu sron, GSBZ 24, pp. 7071.
37. Hamada, Shgy bijutsu sron, GSBZ 24, p. 66.
38. For a detailed discussion of Ka soap advertising design, see Gennifer Weisenfeld,
From Babys First Bath: Ka Soap and Modern Japanese Commercial Design, The Art Bul-
letin LXXXVI, no. 3 (September 2004): pp. 573598.
39. For a full account of Haras career, see Kawahata Naomichi, Hara Hiromu to bokutachi
no shin kappanjutsu (Hara Hiromu and our new printing technology) (Tokyo: Transart, 2002).
40. Nihon Keieishi Kenkyjo and Ka Kabushiki Gaisha Shashi Hensanshitsu, Ka-shi
100-nen (Tokyo: Ka Kabushiki Gaisha, 1993), p. 96.
41. Ka-shi 100-nen, pp. 3031.
42. Ka-shi 100-nen, p. 95.
43. Quoted in Terry Smith, Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design in America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 4. European politicians, thinkers, and com-
mercial enterprises with allegiances ranging across the political spectrum adopted scientific
management and Taylorism. For a discussion of their appeal to the left and right, see Charles
Maier, Between Taylorism and Technocracy: European Ideologies and the Vision of Indus-
trial Productivity in the 1920s, Journal of Contemporary History 5, no. 2 (1970): pp. 2761;
Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
44. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America
(New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 300.
45. For a more detailed discussion of Nippon Kb, see Gennifer Weisenfeld, Tour-
ing Japan as Museum: NIPPON and Other Japanese Imperialist Travelogues, in Gennifer
Weisenfeld, ed., Visual Cultures of Japanese Imperialism, positions: east asia cultures critique
8, no. 3 (Winter 2000): pp. 747793.
46. Increased political tensions had already led Japan to withdraw from the League of
Nations in 1933. The Japanese were particularly concerned to maintain amicable relations with
the United States as evidenced in the extensive U.S.-Japan Friendship display that the Japanese
98|Gennifer Weisenfeld

government mounted in 19391940 in the countrys pavilion at the New York Worlds Fair,
which visually documented the long-standing cultural amity between the two countries.
47. The United States, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland, France, Brazil, and Italy.
On average about five thousand copies were published for each issue.
48. John Roberts, The Art of Interruption (Manchester: University of Manchester Press,
1998), p. 3. For example, the Association for the Study of New Photography (Shink Shashin
Kenkykai), formed in 1930, included Horino Masao, Watanabe Yoshio, and Furukawa Naru-
toshi. And Kimura Ihee was a regular contributor to the important modernist photography
journal Kga (19321933).
49. Hasegawa Nyozekan Life and Art, NIPPON 11 (1937): p. 5.
 Mayu Tsuruya

4 Senso
Sakusen Kirokuga
Seeing Japans War Documentary Painting
as a Public Monument

The purpose of this chapter is to define and characterize the genre of painting that
emerged as state-sponsored public art during the second Sino-Japanese War1 and the
Pacific War2 between 1937 and 1945. This important work was called sens sakusen
kirokuga (war campaign documentary painting) for its depictions of Japanese military
campaigns in Asia; today the term is often abbreviated to sens kirokuga (war documen-
tary painting). This official war art constitutes its own genre apart from other war-themed
paintings (sensga or war paintings) created by private Japanese artists, both professional
and amateur.
Our current understanding of war documentary painting has benefited from criti-
cal analysis appearing in publications in Japan and abroad over the past two decades.
Examples include the work of Tanaka Hisao and Bert Winther-Tamaki.3 These studies,
although small in number, focus on the historical and cultural relevance of war documen-
tary painting. In this way they are distinct from other references that were available mostly
in Japanese publications. These commentaries either emphasized war responsibility on the
part of state-sponsored artists without analyzing institutional elements of the state war art
program, or they criticized the propagandistic character of the work without articulating
the mechanism of its propaganda component. The underlying sentiment in those two atti-
tudes was that war documentary painting was a wartime anomaly that had only surfaced
briefly and had little significance in the history of Japanese art. This chapter questions
those dismissive views by focusing on formal and stylistic elements in these works, which
could indicate historical continuity with previous movements.
War documentary painting is categorically a variety of the genre of European monu-
mental history painting.4 However, this chapter proposes that war painting is more than
just a large format picture depicting a historical theme; it evolved from Japanese art of pre-
ceding periods in an environment where the importance of the general public had grown
rapidly for both art production and the politics of war. Significant precursors were war
panorama painting popularized in late nineteenth-century Japan, and socially concerned
art movements such as the mural in the immediate prewar years. These preceding forms
were often of foreign origin and had developed in different historical contexts, but none-
theless would inspire Japanese artists who had been attuned to artistic and technical devel-
opments abroad. The nineteenth-century Western invention of panorama painting was a
direct precursor to the cinema in its ability to transport the viewer to an artificially created
100|Mayu Tsuruya

reality even though the images were still. Europeans rushed to panorama theaters to
experience the mountainous landscapes of Switzerland and aerial cityscapes of London
and Paris that they could never have seen in person before. Murals, on the other hand,
provided a public arena for artists to directly communicate their political and social views
to people beyond the confines of museums, which were frequented mostly by cultural
elites. The enthusiastic reception of these new forms taught Japanese artists the potential
of the larger public as a receptive audience for art. They saw that art could have a social
role to play.
Japanese officials also became aware of the potential power of mobilizing the masses
with disseminated information about policy. The project of the Meiji Picture Gallery to
commemorate the Meiji emperor (who ruled from 1868 to 1912) in the 1930s was an exem-
plary attempt by the government to promote patriotism by displaying a series of mon-
umental pictures illustrating the life of the emperor. Soon, war documentary painting
manifested the military regimes desire to provide a monumental national imagery of war
in order to unite the Japanese people in the late 1930s.
One of the most powerful messages conveyed in the war painting imagery was the
nobility of the depicted imperial soldiers sacrificing their individual desires for the cause
of the nation. Japanese artists who had acquired the new concept of art for the masses
were ready to respond to the states call for such public depictions of sacrifice, thereby
harnessing art as a psychological weapon in the total war effort. Five aspects of the war
documentary painting effort, when seen together, demonstrate a clear commitment on
the part of the government to establish a visual monument. First, as this chapter empha-
sizes, the art was state-sponsored. Second, it depicted nationalistic subject matter. Third,
the works utilized the readily comprehensible realism of yga (Japanese adoption of
Western-style oil painting). Fourth, the gesture of imperial endorsement lent an unpar-
alleled weight to war art. Fifth and finally, the large format of the paintings underscores
the governments stated intention to produce works that would have a lasting impression
for posterity.
The following summary of this new, monumental genre of Japanese war painting is
drawn from limited available sources. There remain fewer and fewer people who can pro-
vide firsthand accounts of events surrounding the production and display of Japanese war
documentary paintings. Therefore, this subject demands an immediate research effort. No
painters who received war documentary painting commissions are alive today. Similarly,
public and private source material is hard to find and could deteriorate with the passing
of time. To draw attention to the need for more research, a public showing of the war
documentary paintings now in the custody of the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art
would be a welcome step.

The Birth of the War Documentary Painting Genre

Artists involved in war documentary painting would receive an unprecedented level of

support from the government. Throughout the war years, both the Imperial Army and
Navy separately appointed and dispatched their own war painters to observe and paint the
troops military campaigns in China, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific. The resulting
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|101

sens sakusen kirokuga, or war campaign documentary painting, was a series of monumen-
tal canvases (approximately 72 inches high by 100 inches wide) depicting battles in the air,
at sea, and on the ground as well as imperial soldiers engaging in noncombatant roles. These
canvases marked a historic development in Japanese art, establishing a new genre for the
masses. They were commemorative representations of war, designed to serve as monuments
for visually reinforcing the wartime propaganda of national unity under the emperor.
The military produced war documentary painting for two reasons: to document the
war and to raise the Japanese peoples morale in support of the war effort. Lieutenant
Colonel Akiyama Kunio in the Army Press Division, which oversaw the armys dispatches
of war painters (jgungaka or, literally, military-service painters) stated these objectives in
concise if grandiose terms:

War campaign documentary paintings hold the historical significance of document-

ing and preserving the armys military campaigns forever. These paintings convey
the glorious military achievements of the imperial soldiers, who fought with fierce
conviction to destroy the enemy and win victory in order to protect our national pol-
ity illuminated under great imperial authority. The works also play an important role
in handing down to posterity for hundreds and thousands of years to come how we
fought at this time and on this day.5

In the making of war documentary painting, the army anticipated a kind of war imag-
ery that would accurately portray military campaigns in realistic detail and yet be more
than a mere photographic copy of the subject. War imagery, they believed, should embrace
martial ideals and offer enthralling content. In the armys vocabulary, these two essential
elements were termed documentary quality (kirokusei) and artistic expression (geijutsusei)
embracing feeling (kanj) or ideas (shis). Above all, the army stressed the importance of
maintaining a balance between the two.6 But while the government seems to have left the
issue of expressive content largely up to the individual artist, technical concerns about
documentary quality plainly affected its selection of painters: officials overwhelmingly
endorsed the Japanese version of western oil painting on canvas called yga (western-
style painting) for its pictorial realism. Only a small number of commissions went to paint-
ers working in Japans traditional watercolor painting style called Nihonga (Japanese-style
painting) due to its understatement of physical reality.
A realistic quality has been one of the most important elements for the dissemination
of war imagery by modern nations. For example, when the authorities in France during
the First World War7 and later in Nazi Germany8 invoked nationalism for the sake of uni-
fying their populaces for victory, they sought an art for the people that would use clear
and straightforward styles. In the case of French nationalism during the First World War,
abstract imagery in the avant-garde style of cubism was criticized for its elitism. In Ger-
many, Nazi officials dismissed modern art as degenerate for similar reasons. In both soci-
eties, conventional, naturalistic representation replaced the avant-garde experiments that
had preceded the wars. In Japan during the prewar years, abstraction had been popular
in the art community, but the war was partially responsible for a shift toward naturalism
that accommodated both the public desire to share the war experiences with their fellow
soldiers at the front and the official attempt to control war imagery.
102|Mayu Tsuruya

In terms of painting format, the military sponsors set the standard format of war doc-
umentary painting to be the Japanese canvas size of 200 (approximately 72 inches high by
100 inches wide). These designated dimensions came with an allowance for some variation
in height and width.9 This monumental scale was deemed appropriate for war documen-
tary painting designated for public, commemorative art. The imposing size helped officials
to designate the paintings as national treasures (kokuh), a rank given by the government
to artwork of the foremost cultural importance. Moreover, military art officials under-
stood that the large format had the practical merit of deterring accidental loss.10 In the
postwar era, ironically, this precaution served its function when the American occupation
army was in search of these war documentary paintings all over Japan and in Korea. They
were too big to hide away.11
The states call for the production of war painting signaled a great advancement in
the social status of artists, particularly yga painters. Because the Meiji government had
officially adopted this foreign art form in the late nineteenth century for its technical supe-
riority in depicting scientific realism, people had not fully appreciated yga as an artistic
expression. Moreover, nationalist officials saw this art form as a source of anti-Japanese
sentiment, symptomatic of a blind worship of Western culture and thought. This prejudice
hindered yga painters aspiration to create paintings that truly would resonate with the
Japanese people, an ambition that took form in the depiction of historical themes and
figures during the Meiji period by artists of the Meiji Art Society, the central organization
of yga painters. However, their attempts resulted merely in an unsuccessful mixture of
Japanese motifs and Western painting technique, devoid of emotional content that could
appeal to the contemporary Japanese audience.12 To the dismay of artists who were inter-
ested in using yga to communicate with the public, this experiment coincided with the
return of the artist Kuroda Seiki (18661924), who would leave his decisive mark on the
direction of the yga genre. Kuroda brought back from his nine-year study in France a new
impressionistic style imbued with artistic subjectivity. The visual appeal of his painting
style thereafter impacted standards in Japans academic art education, resulting in dimin-
ished interest in art as a means for recording reality with precise detail. Artists influenced
by Kuroda would paint works intended as individual, subjective expressions rather than
creating works that pertained to public or social topics.
Since the war as a subject had greater power to attract a contemporary audience than
any other, it provided an opportunity for some yga artists to renew their attempt to
communicate shared interests with the public. The governments endorsement of yga,
furthermore, meant that the painting style, despite its origins in the West, could now be
accepted as a genuine art of Japan, positioning it in the domain that Nihonga had occupied
effortlessly by virtue of its own national association. The enthusiasm among Japanese yga
artists was understandably high.
It should be noted that official emphasis on realism in war documentary painting
alone might not have resulted in the yga war painters sustained involvement in the con-
certed war efforts of the regime; a close relationship between modern government and art
that had already been established in the Meiji period was an essential element. The Meiji
government addressed culture as a national commodity and shaped its development with
governmental guidance and directives. This relationship between art and state policy had
affected the development of yga both positively and negatively at times. Political favor
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|103

was initially given to yga when the nations first art school was established in 1876 to
teach scientific, Western-style painting to aid the nations modernization. When the state
policy changed from an intense pursuit of Westernization to the formation of a national
identity to empower the military and support industry in the late 1880s, official interest in
yga waned accordingly. Policy makers instead became inclined to support the traditional
forms of arts and crafts. Later, official art policy again reversed course in favor of yga
during the war due to its ability to portray realistic detail and depth. The official demand
for realism gave yga artists a strong impetus to contribute to the nationalist cause by
wielding their paintbrushes. The wartime alliance forged by artists and officials thus was
not a new phenomenon emerging only in response to this war, but was following a prec-
edent set during the Meiji era. Only the benefactors of such alliances between government
and artist varied from time to time. Art was continually under the influence of national
policy both during the Meiji and Showa eras. During the Pacific War, what cemented the
commitment of yga painters to the military authorities was the legitimacy conferred
upon yga by the regime.
In the war art program military officials selected painters by consulting with the art
community through military-affiliated artist organizations, which sprang up after the
outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War. One of the most powerful organizations was
the Army Art Association (Rikugun Bijutsu Kykai), established in 1939.13 The military
sponsors usually assigned the artists specific topics to paint, but allowed the painters some
discretion in subject matter.14 It is not clear how much artistic expression in war painting
was censored by art officials, in comparison to the well-known and systematic censorship
of printed media.15
The war documentary painting program was not a carefully planned, concerted effort
of the army and navy. Rather, it evolved from an initiative conceived by the Imperial
Armys Shanghai Division,16 which in 1938 sent the first dispatch of ten painters to the
Shanghai and Nanjing areas. The commissioned work at this time was called Shina jihen
kinenga (China Incident commemorative painting), derived from the expression Shina
jihen (China Incident) by which the Japanese referred to the second Sino-Japanese War.
The jihengas objectives were to commemorate the Jihen eternally and serve as material
for the education of future generations.17 A few months later the navy followed suit by
dispatching six painters to China. In the spring of 1940, the armys war art program was
expanded under new supervision by the Press Division of the Army Headquarters, which
dispatched the third group of twelve painters to China. Japans attack on Pearl Harbor in
1941 and its mounting military successes in the Pacific theater from late 1941 prompted
both the army and navy to increase the number of painting commissions, reflecting grow-
ing patriotic pride among the Japanese at the time. Even after it became clear that the mili-
tary could not sustain the pace of its initial victories and Japan began to experience heavy
casualties in the Pacific, the regime not only continued, but actually expanded its support
of the war documentary painting program.
The activities of the commissioned war painters were revealed to the public by the
press, which hailed their exemplary patriotism under the banner of saikan hkoku (paint-
brush patriotism). The artists efforts were akin to those of other cultural and literary fig-
ures who were called on by the government to provide personal reportage of the war to
share with the rest of the nation. The wartime Asahi newspaper featured articles about
104|Mayu Tsuruya

eight dispatches of artists in the war documentary painting program.18 Those dispatches
were as follows:

1. Army (10 painters to China), May 1938

2. Navy (6 painters to China), September 1938
3. Army (12 painters to China), April 1940
4. Army (16 painters to the South Pacific and Southeast Asia), in MarchApril 1942
5. Navy (15 painters and 1 sculptor to the South Pacific), May 1942
6. Navy (22 painters and 3 sculptors to the South Pacific), May 1943
7. Army (25 painters and 1 sculptor to the South Pacific and Burma), announced in
May 1943
8. Army (some 30 to the South Pacific), 1944

Through the war years between 1937 and 1945, the eighty-five dispatched painters
produced 189 war documentary paintings.19 Among the eighty-five officially commis-
sioned painters, a handful won the favor and trust of both the army and navy over the
protracted course of the war and received multiple painting assignments. In the yga com-
munity, Fujita Tsuguji (18861968) stands out as the most prolific war artist, earning com-
missions for sixteen works. He was followed in scale of production by Nakamura Kenichi
(18951967; eleven works), Miyamoto Sabur (19051974; seven works), Koiso Ryhei
(19031988; six works), Kurihara Shin (18941966; six works), and Tamura Knosuke
(19031986; six works). Some of these painters were already well positioned to surpass
senior members of the hierarchical art community based on merit. For the record, the
most prolific war artist in the Nihonga camp was Yoshioka Kenji (19061990; four works),
followed by Kawabata Ryshi (18851966; three works). Kawabata Ryshi is known for
his advocacy of large-format painting for popular audiences, which will be discussed later
in this chapter. The majority of the artists who received commissions from the military
produced only one or two paintings. In terms of the painting style of these eighty-five
painters, seventy were yga painters while only fifteen worked in the Nihonga style. The
dominance of yga is more dramatic when one counts the number of works created in each
medium. Of the 189 war documentary paintings, the 164 yga works easily outnumber the
25 Nihonga paintings.
A general profile of the typical official war painter emerges as follows. The artist was
male and was a graduate of the Western art department at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts,
Japans premier official art school. He would have studied in Europe to acquire authentic
Western painting techniques firsthand at a time when traveling abroad was costly and
uncommon. Such a background was the mark of a distinguished talent with future pros-
pects for a leadership position in the art community. In fact, some war painters had already
served as judges for the official art salons prior to their state commissions.
The media treatment of official war painters illustrates their high status. The Asahi
newspaper article announcing the navy dispatch of 1938 described the selected six paint-
ers bound for China as gosho, which means a doyen of the art community, or one of
its most senior members.20 Indeed this was an impressive group, consisting of Fujishima
Takeji, Ishii Hakutei (18821958), Ishikawa Toraji (18751964), Tanabe Itaru, Fujita Tsu-
guji, and Nakamura Kenichi (18951967). Similarly, the press characterized the fourth
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|105

group of sixteen artists sent by the army to the South Pacific campaign as ichiry, mean-
ing first-rate.21 About the same time, the navy dispatched the fifth group, which included
fifteen painters and one sculptor, to the South Pacific. An Asahi newspaper article report-
ing this dispatch stated that the entourage was made up of both jchin (prominent art-
ists) such as Yasuda Yukihiko, who was a member of the exclusive Imperial Academy of
Fine Arts, and shinshin (emerging, promising artists).22 The press coverage attests to the
great respect and expectations held for the dispatched painters.
Another characteristic of Japanese official war painters worth mentioning is that they
were not conscript soldiers. This means that they were not combat artists as was the case,
for example, with American war painters during the Second World War. Instead, the state
art commissions given to appointed painters made them part of a privileged class that was
exempted from military service, but eligible for special military support. For example,
they were given preferential treatment in getting art supplies, which became gradually
scarcer during the war. Military artists enjoyed the relatively comfortable accommoda-
tions normally reserved for military officers while on tour to observe the war, as well as
similar attendant care. The official Japanese war artists gained the prerogatives of high
social status and artistic reputation.

System of Presentation and Authentication

Military Art Exhibitions

Throughout the war years, the Japanese public eagerly visited military war art exhibits,
where they could see official war documentary paintings on display. Once the war painters
were back in their homeland studios and had completed their commissioned images of impe-
rial troops based on the studies and sketches made during their dispatches, their work was
made available to the public. The exhibitions were inaugurated in Tokyo, and then traveled
to major cities in the country including Kyoto and Osaka, and sometimes to Japanese-
occupied Manchuria and Korea. The openings of these exhibitions were scheduled around
dates of historic military significance as part of national celebrations. Examples of those
dates include the anniversary of the China Incident that had begun on July 7, 1937, and the
opening of the Pacific War with the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. Other activi-
ties such as music concerts and sports competitions often accompanied the celebrations.
In addition to the official war documentary paintings, the shows displayed hundreds
of war-themed paintings submitted by patriotic artists eager to participate in this national
artistic movement. The works of these hopefuls, which included painting, sculpture, and
sometimes posters, competed for entry through the scrutiny of a panel of judges made up
of civilian artists and military officials. The organizers also invited certain senior mem-
bers of the art community to participate by submitting their work. This exhibition system,
characterized by open competition, jury selection, and special treatment for high-ranking
artists, was not devised by the military regime but was derived from the long-running
official annual art exhibition established by the Ministry of Education in 1907. Since the
Meiji period, the official annual art exhibitions had been used by the state as a guidance
apparatus for channeling official taste in art to general audiences in Japan. By the time of
106|Mayu Tsuruya

the Pacific War, the Japanese people were already accustomed to government control over
their consumption of art. Benefiting from the publics familiarity with this established
exhibition system, military war art shows drew a number of submissions from artists and
attracted large audiences.
The only war art show sponsored jointly by the army and navy was held to mark the
first anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. This coincided with a time when the Japanese
people were enthusiastically welcoming the news of imperial victories in Southeast Asia.
In December 1942, the First Great East Asia War Art Exhibition (Daiikkai daita sens
bijutsu tenrankai) opened in Tokyo, and then traveled to Osaka and Nagoya. The total of
314 works included 39 state-commissioned pieces: 23 paintings by army-commissioned
artists and 16 works by navy-dispatched painters. This was also the largest number of such
paintings to appear together in any of the war exhibitions. About 3.85 million visitors
came to the exhibition as it circulated, by the armys own count.23 This was about ten times
the number of visitors to the popular official annual art exhibition.

The Role of the Media

The huge attendance figures were also the result of fanfare created by the government-con-
trolled press. The Asahi, one of the three national newspapers, was the primary cosponsor
for the military art exhibitions throughout the war years. Even before the war, the Asahi
newspaper had been involved in sponsoring civilian art exhibitions as part of its educa-
tional mission.24 The Asahi newspaper provided publicity for the exhibitions by running
a serialized special feature that published one picture a day from the state-commissioned
war documentary paintings. An explanatory article, sometimes including an interview
with the painter, accompanied each reproduced image. The paper also reported when dig-
nitaries, large groups of returned soldiers, or schoolchildren visited the show. The Asahi
newspaper promoted the war exhibitions in much the same way as todays major Japanese
newspapers promote blockbuster art exhibitions or cultural events (now generally termed
as evento) that they sponsor. The print media would embellish their pages with repro-
ductions of the official war paintings and exhibition reviews; these glowing reports served
to turn the exhibitions into national affairs.

Tenran (Imperial Inspection)

The role the press played in publicizing war documentary paintings was enormous. How-
ever, the most ingenious marketing tactic was imperial association with the paintings,
which was staged and publicized by officials. Prior to public viewing, the works received
the honor of tenran (viewing by the emperor) and tairan (viewing by the empress and
other members of the imperial family) at the imperial palace. With this venerable treat-
ment, the military regime authenticated war art in an effort to monumentalize the series.
An intimate inspection by the imperial couple at the palace no doubt elevated the prestige
of the works and the exhibitions as well. The Japanese people, who at the time deified
the emperor, took the news of the imperial inspections of war documentary paintings as
evidence of their paramount significance. For ordinary people to see the works in person
became an unparalleled honor.25
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|107

Art Historical Lineage of War Documentary Painting as Public Art

The war documentary painting of the 1930s and 1940s was not the first instance of war
imagery appearing in the modern medium of yga. Yga painters involvement with con-
temporary battle scenes began with the first Sino-Japanese War of 18941895. A small
number of yga painters including Asai Ch (18561907) (fig. 4.1) traveled to China under
the aegis of various sponsors. Asai was dispatched as a media correspondent by the Japa-
nese newspaper Jiji shinp. Drawn in Western-style realism and disseminated in repro-
ductions, these artists visual reportage made the war more credible to the public. Japans
involvement in modern warfare opened a new arena for yga artists just before the exten-
sive use of photography emerged.
However, it is difficult to see a smooth artistic transition from the war illustrations
and several small tableaux of war scenes created by artists during the previous wars to the
monumental canvases of war documentary painting produced by the state-commissioned
painters many decades later. To understand how war documentary painting came into
being, I propose considering the often overlooked developments that took place during
the preceding years that were important in the creative transition yga painters made. The
panorama painting of the first Sino-Japanese War and the socially conscious art move-
ments of the 1930s both acknowledged the public as an audience for art and as an active
participant in national affairs.

Panorama Painting

Panorama painting imported from Europe and the United States emerged in the arena
of visual entertainment in the last decade of nineteenth-century Japan.26 As art histori-
ans Urasaki Eishaku and Kinoshita Naoyuki point out, panorama (panorama in Japa-
nese) played an important but often overlooked role in providing yga an opportunity to
demonstrate its power of persuasion through high-impact realism in historical imagery.27
Through war imagery in panorama pictures, the Japanese public became more intimate
with realistic depictions in Western-style painting, and it came to equate what was pre-
sented in such large formats with what had actually happened. As Kinoshita observed,
the popular amusement of the panorama provided the best vessel for war education28
and perhaps functioned positively by imbuing a martial spirit in its viewers.

Figure 4.1.Asai Ch, On

the Jinzhou Palace Walls
(Kinshj hekij), 18941895.
Watercolor on paper,
56.0 82.0 cm. Chiba
Prefectural Museum
of Art.
108|Mayu Tsuruya

The panorama is one continuous picture applied to a large surface or adjacent walls,
often encircling the area where the audience stands. This configuration enables the pan-
orama artist to create the sense that the audience is standing within the picture they are
viewing. Today, panoramic murals are often employed at historical museums as part of
dioramas and other educational displays representing events of the past in a true-to-life
fashion. One might imagine how exciting it was for Japanese audiences to view accurately
rendered scenes of events in a lifelike scale, as though the action were unfolding before
their eyes. The spectacle of the panorama predated the widespread presence of photogra-
phy in the news media, and could be called a precursor of the motion picture experience.29
In conjunction with the third Domestic Industrial Exposition held in Ueno Park in
1890, Japans first public panorama venue was presented at the Ueno Panorama Theater
(Ueno Panoramakan). This was soon followed by the Japan Panorama Theater (Nihon
Panoramakan) in Asakusa, and more panorama theaters sprang up in other popular
entertainment districts, including Kanda in Tokyo, Nanba in Osaka, and Shinkygoku
in Kyoto. Many of the early panorama pictures, both imports and domestic productions,
dealt with war themes. These included General Ulysses S. Grants army in the American
Civil War, and the revenge of the forty-seven samurai from the well-known Chshingura
story.
Panorama painting, with its large, encircling format, and realistic rendering in West-
ern-style painting, was able to give its audiences a vicarious experience of events from dis-
tant wars. Political and financial leaders were attracted to this medium as a form of visual
entertainment useful for mass education. Businessman kura Kihachir (18371928),30
the representative of the Japan Panorama Theater,31 remarked that the panorama was the
essence of art and a shortcut for education.32 His words are ambitious for describing a
form of mass amusement, but kura and his contemporary panorama advocates held the
realistic nature of the panoramic yga depictions in high regard and thereby recognized
the value of the panorama for teaching history. Moreover, they supported the position
that a commonly shared view of history and current events could help to shape a sense
of nationhood among people. kura also defined the educational importance of the pan-
orama for promoting martial philosophy among the populace.33 This remark keenly
reflects the fact that in 1890, a universal conscription system had been put into effect,
and war had become a national issue. War was a consistent theme employed in Japanese
panorama painting because the unusually large format of the panorama was suited to
spectacles such as battle scenes.
One of the most notable war panorama creators was Koyama Shtar (18571916). He
was recognized as a leading member of the yga Meiji Art Society and an art instructor at
the National Teachers College (Kt Shihan Gakk). Koyama was one of the prominent
painters who headed to China during the first Sino-Japanese War (18941895) under the
aegis of various sponsors to produce imagery of the conflict. He was especially known as a
fervent advocate of the need to document the war in works of art. On commission from the
Japan Panorama Theater, Koyama created a panorama painting titled The Japanese Armys
Attack on Pyongyang in the Sino-Japanese War (Nisshin sens heij kgeki zu, 114.0 by 15.0
m) (fig. 4.2).34 It took him about five months to produce this image, an effort that involved
thirty of his pupils, and it was completed in 1896. The war panorama drew a large audience
to the theater every day.
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|109

Figure 4.2. Koyama Shtar,

section of The Japanese
Attack on Pyongyang in the
Sino-Japanese War (Nisshin
sens Heij kgeki zu), 1896.
Panorama painting, 15.0
114.0 m. Reproduced from
History of the Eighty Years of
Bakumatsu, Meiji, and Taish
(Bakumatsu, Meiji, Taish
kaiko hachijnen-shi), vol. 11
(Tokyo: Ty bunka kykai,
1937).

The prominence of panorama painting as a tool for disseminating war information

was short-lived. It was eclipsed by the increased use of photography in the press and had
gone out of style by the time of the Russo-Japanese War (19041905). However, its suc-
cess in conveying to the public victorious feats of war paved the way for state sponsorship
of yga in the next wave of militarism during the Pacific War. What gave impetus to the
revival of panorama-like pictures in the 1930s was the inclination of artists to reach out
to the masses in their art by employing a large picture format, an easily understandable
visual language of realism, and commonplace subject matter. These trends manifested
themselves in various artistic forms including kaij geijutsu (exhibition hall art), mural
painting, and proletarian art. This time, though, it was the artists themselves who wanted
to broaden their audience.

Kaij Geijutsu (Exhibition Hall Art)

The emergence of Japanese mass society in the 1920s expanded the consumer base in art.
The monopoly held over art by a small, connoisseur elite was ending, and artists were eager
to find ways of bringing their work to a mass audience. In the late 1920s, maverick Jap-
anese-style painter Kawabata Ryshi (18851966)35 advocated liberating paintings from
the confinement of their display spaces in Japanese-style homes. Traditionally, artwork
was placed in the alcove (tokonoma) of a tatami-mat room (zashiki), a space also used for
presenting flower arrangements and calligraphy. He asserted that more people would see
significant art works if they were not confined exclusively to the residences of the wealthy,
the only ones then able to afford them.36
Kawabata, who was first trained in yga and made a career as a newspaper illustrator,
traveled to the United States in 1913 to study Western-style painting. There he had a fateful
change of mind because of two influential encounters: first, the Japanese art collection at
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, opened his eyes to Japans artistic traditions. Second, the
mural paintings of Pierre-Ccile Puvis de Chavannes (18241898) surrounding the stair-
case at the Boston Public Library gave Kawabata a vision of art as accessible to ordinary
110|Mayu Tsuruya

people. Returning to Japan, he began to work in Nihonga and in the form of art known as
kaij geijutsu, or exhibition hall art. The term kaij geijutsu referred to Kawabatas vision
of art for the people and was coined by contemporary critics who ridiculed his experimen-
tal art. With this vision of art Kawabata would become one of the leading Japanese-style
painters to receive military painting commissions during the second Sino-Japanese War
and the Pacific War.
In search of a style that could speak to the public, Kawabata painted subject matter
closely associated with the land and people of contemporary Japan, using large formats
like murals, and he exhibited his work at shows of the Blue Dragon Society, an art group he
founded. At the first exhibition of the society in 1929, Kawabata exhibited a close-up view
of a swirling ocean titled The Naruto Channel (simply Naruto in Japanese), a geographical
location in Japans Inland Sea well known for a natural aquatic phenomenon in which the
tide rushes in and out between the island of Awaji and the region of Naruto four times daily.
Kawabatas sensitivity to his times and people led him to subject matter that would
be in harmony with popular interests.37 He perhaps cultivated this sensitivity from his
earlier career as a newspaper illustrator. His vocation in the mass media had taught him
the importance in modern democratic societies of reaching a wide audience.38 In 1936,
one year before the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War, he painted Conquerers of
the Seas (see Plate 8).39 This painting reflected the new international situation following
the breakdown of negotiations at the London Naval Conference of 19351936, which had
sought limits to the number of heavy naval vessels signatory nations could float. Kawa-
bata depicted factory workers building a battleship, which expressed Japans ambition to
become a naval power in Asia. His dedication to art for the people found a peculiar reso-
nance with the military government, which just then was mobilizing the people toward
the common goal of winning the war.

Mural Art

The mural painting (hekiga) movement was another new form of mass art paralleling
Kawabatas pursuit of kaij geijutsu that would inform war artists and others well into
the future. Its development in Japan was contemporary to its widespread popularity in
Mexico, the United States, and Italy in association with the Marxist revolutionary move-
ment. Murals allowed Japanese artists to go outside of the conventional exhibition space
of the museum or private residence. Murals also let them work with easily understood
representations of form and content, as opposed to the contemporary trends in abstract art
that originated from the European art movements of cubism, expressionism, and fauvism.
The new exhibition sites were mostly in commercial spaces such as cafs and department
stores, and the works created were not as political as their counterparts abroad. In this
sense, the mural movement of Japan separated itself from similar trends in foreign coun-
tries. Artists were motivated to seek out a new format, in part to bypass hierarchical con-
flict within the art community as well as to surmount the exclusivity of the official annual
art exhibition. These two obstacles were both frustrating to painters who had yet to attain
recognition in the art community and those with a rebellious streak like Kawabata.
One of the artists vigorously engaged in making murals was Fujita Tsuguji, who would
become a leader of the Army Art Association and a prolific war painter.40 Fujita was already
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|111

well established in Europe, his long-term artistic base, but when he returned home in 1933,
he was a new face in the exclusive Japanese art circles. Murals, because of their public
nature, served as a public relations tool to reintroduce his work to the people of his home
country. Fujita had worked on murals in Paris, but his interest in the art format was rein-
forced during his two-year trip to Latin America from 1931 to 1933. He visited multiple
countries including Mexico, where the mural movement was developing under artists like
Diego Rivera (18861957) and Jos Clemente Orozco (18831949). Fujitas Latin American
experience inspired him to continue to experiment with the mural format.
Leaving Latin America, Fujita went to Japan to see his elderly father instead of return-
ing to Paris. He then became a central figure in the mural movement taking place there,
receiving mural commissions for spaces such as cafs and department stores.41 His first
mural commission, in 1934, came from a Brazilian coffee company that had opened a
caf in the Seishokan Building (todays Kybunkan Building) in Ginza, the toniest sec-
tion of Tokyo. Fujita painted a scene of Brazilian people against an idyllic backdrop of Rio
de Janeiro, which he titled The Earth (Daichi) (fig. 4.3), on the walls of the caf. Perhaps
influenced by his exposure to Mexican murals, Fujitas palette became brighter than before,
and his figures gained monumentality in contrast to the delicate style he had previously
developed in Paris.42 Fujitas involvement in murals transformed his work from portrai-
ture of a single female in a bourgeois setting to the depiction of multiple figures. However,
contemporary critics wondered whether the painters use of the mural format implied
commitment to social and political causes.43 This question remains to be answered. In
any case, Fujita became a successful builder of communal values with his murals of war-
time subjects, which contained compelling social and political messages for the entire
nation. Art historian Hayashi Yko places an emphasis on the social characteristics of
both murals and war documentary painting, suggesting that the painters real success as
a cultural agent able to connect the state and the people would come with his paintings of
the Pacific War.44

Figure 4.3. Fujita Tsukuji, The Earth (Daichi), 1934. Mural, 3.6 18.0 m, Seisyokan (todays
Kybunkan), Tokyo. Original destroyed. Reproduced from Antonin Raymond, Antonin Raymond:
An Autobiography (Rutland, Vt.: C. E. Tuttle, 1973). Photo courtesy Tuttle Publishing, a member of
the Periflus Publishing Group.
112|Mayu Tsuruya

Proletarian Art

The proletarian art movement, active in Japan between 1925 and 1935, was another impor-
tant attempt by artists in the prewar years to reach a broader audience. Some of the young
yga artists were inspired by a Marxist emphasis on collectivism and discovered that art
could play a social and political role in mobilizing the masses. In this capacity, artwork
could also become a vehicle for cultivating a communal experience among viewers and
uniting people behind a shared goal. This function clearly emerged in war documentary
painting. The philosophical focus on collective as opposed to individual values also shifted
artistic concerns from an expression of individuality to an expression representative of the
people as a whole.45 Modern Japanese art and design specialist Gennifer Weisenfeld sums
up the changes: Artistic merit no longer hinged on individual expression or even formal
innovation but on efficacy.46 These artists measured their value by how well they could
reflect and convey ideas to larger groups of people.
Proletarian artists aimed to create paintings that were easily accessible to ordinary
people in terms of style and subject matter. Okamoto Tki, one of the founding members
of Plastic Arts (Zkei), a proletarian art group formed in late 1925, advocated paintings
that would convey the ingenuity of working peoples in groups. Okamoto envisioned
a type of artwork that could represent the inner desires of workers and then communi-
cate them to the masses.47 Naturally, the effort to unite people behind a shared goal, such
as workers gathering in protest, became an important theme in his paintings. Depicting
multiple figures in painting was a new challenge for Japanese artists who had previously
favored painting a single sitter, landscape, or still life. These artists rediscovered the use-
fulness of pictorial realism as a visual language of the ordinary over the then-fashionable
abstract art trends of the elite.48
Despite the enthusiastic social consciousness exhibited by some artists, Japans pro-
letarian art movement was short-lived and marginal. This occurred in part because these
artists, who were enamored with Marxism, did not have the right set of painting skills
necessary for translating their lofty ideas into pictorial imagery that could speak with elo-
quence to their intended audiences. Moreover, since the early 1920s the government had
been tightening its grip on socialists and anarchists, who were deemed as having a desta-
bilizing effect on society. Nevertheless, social themes brought to the fore by the proletar-
ian art movement began to impact the mainstream art community. At the official annual
art exhibitions, artists not associated with proletarian art groups began to submit their
own images representing the lives of ordinary people in a straightforward fashion without
beautification. Some yga paintings exemplifying this form of realism can be found in
works by Hashimoto Yaoji and Fujita Tsuguji, who both became enthusiastic participants
in the state war art program in the 1940s. In the painting titled New Shift (Ktai jikan)
(fig. 4.4), Hashimoto Yaoji treated the everyday routine of factory workers during a shift
change. The tired workers appear to be expressing a stifled and lethargic mood. Fujita sub-
mitted One-Thousand Stitches (Senninbari) to the Nikakai exhibit, in which he presented
the familiar scene of women working together to stitch white cloth for a soldier as a talis-
man. Both works foreshadow the arrival of popular war painting in their effectiveness at
conveying a sense of empathy; in Fujitas composition, this is felt for the women as well as
for the unseen soldier for whom they work.
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|113

Figure 4.4. Hashimoto Yaoji, New Shift (Ktai jikan), 1930. Oil on canvas, 194.0 258.0 cm. Morioka
City Foundation for Cultural Activities, Iwate.

Meiji Picture Gallery

By the 1930s, the desire to reach out to the public in visual art was shared with others
besides the artists who utilized the mural format or advocated social subject matter. The
government was also ready to take on a public art project, resulting in the Meiji Shrine
Seitoku Memorial Picture Gallery (Meiji Jing Seitoku Kinen Kaigakan), where a series
of paintings commemorating the Meiji emperor were displayed in monumental scale. The
gallery was Japans first official, permanent theme painting exhibition. The government
intended to use art as a vehicle to elevate national pride and unite the people through
the symbolism of the emperor. It was a precursor to the itinerant, government-sponsored
monumental war art exhibitions discussed in this chapter.
The picture gallery was built in 1926 in the outer garden of the Meiji Shrine (Meiji
Jing), itself a commemoration of the Meiji imperial couple. The building has a simple
form of two elongated wings extending off the main entrance. It has an imposing solid-
ity and dignity in Western-style concrete and stone reflecting the celebrated majesty of
the Meiji emperors history. The catalogue describes the series of paintings as murals
114|Mayu Tsuruya

(hekiga) offering a faithful documentation of facts relating to the lives of the Emperor
and Empress Meiji whose reign of forty-six years enhanced the national power of Japan
greatly.49 Emperor Meijis adult life coincided with Japans modernization, and during his
reign he witnessed Japans victories over China and Russia before his death in 1912. At the
time of the gallerys completion, forty accomplished painters were selected from both the
yga and Nihonga circles for a total of eighty artists, who were each assigned specific topics
for their compositions. The painters finished their work in 1936. The size of each painting
was designated to be ten feet by nine feet, an unusually large format for modern Japanese
painting. The series begins with a picture of the birth of the emperor in 1852 and ends with
an image of his funeral in 1912.
For the first forty works, Nihonga painters dealt with themes in the chronological
order of the emperors life, while yga painters handled the rest. These arrangements seem
appropriate for taking advantage of the strengths found in either painting style. The first
forty images depict the first eleven years of the Meiji period, allowing the artists to paint
the emperor and other figures in traditional Japanese attire, or in native Japanese architec-
tural settings. In contrast, the other forty works representing the later part of his life depict
a time when the emperor appeared in public dressed in a Western-style suit or a military
uniform and lived and worked in interiors with Western-influenced decoration. The work
of the Meiji Picture Gallery foreshadowed the arrival of war propaganda painting by mobi-
lizing a large number of artists for a national celebration with monumental canvases.

Propaganda and Symbolism of War

Documentary Painting

Ideology of Self-Effacement

War documentary painting showcased Japanese war campaigns overseas more through
the unexpectedly calm demeanor of anonymous soldiers than the vigorous actions of dis-
tinguished war heroes. Much of the work representing ground warfare portrays impe-
rial troops in tactical advancement or support work in the rear; far fewer paintings pres-
ent troops engaged in actual fighting. In contrast to the often-understated depiction of
human figures, the imagery of naval or aerial warfare relies on imposing depictions of
heavy machinery to serve as a centerpiece in the paintings. One explanation for this differ-
ence may be the enhanced role that large military vehicles like naval warships or airplanes
played in destroying the enemy during the conflict. These war pictures can be described as
conveying a straightforward, patriotic enthusiasm for the war. However, many paintings
lack strident elements often associated with martial vigor. Instead of fierce and warrior-
like depictions, the imperial soldiers who are the central focus in many war documentary
paintings of both combat and noncombat scenes are presented as undeniably demure and
of a modest disposition. This apparent modesty may be partially ascribed to the limited
artistic ability of the painters to conceive and execute dynamic physical action. The train-
ing yga painters received at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts was not oriented toward com-
posing the kind of complex, large-format pictures found in Western history painting, with
multiple figures and diverse, vigorous movements.
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|115

On the other hand, a cultural explanation for the often modest appearance of military
personnel in these war paintings should be considered. In the context of Showa Japan,
ones virtues could still be judged by qualities of internal fortitude rather than superfi-
cial expressions of fidelity. The Japanese people have traditionally placed significance on
personal qualities of inconspicuousness in their legendary heroes and beloved historical
figures, in addition to narratives manifesting instances of physical prowess.
Consider an example of inconspicuous heroism depicted in the popular eighteenth-
century tale of the loyal forty-seven retainers (Chshingura), in which the ranking samurai
loyal to their unjustly executed lord carried out their vengeance. Those retainers, finding
themselves masterless samurai after their domain was confiscated by the Shogunate, lived
for two years in humble disguises, simply waiting for the right moment to fulfill their oaths
of fealty by killing the lords malicious accuser. This famous vendetta depicts the strong
Japanese traditional value placed on inner spiritual strength over outward manifestations
of physical might. None of the forty-seven retainers exhibits superhuman qualities, but
their inner strength is demonstrated by their poignant willingness to endure humiliation
for many months as they waited to fulfill their obligation. The tale was originally popular-
ized in the kabuki and bunraku puppet theaters in the Edo period; it was also executed in
panorama painting around the time of the first Sino-Japanese War,50 and was later recap-
tured in films in the immediate prewar and war periods.
The samurai retainers exhibit an adherence to Confucian moral teaching, as is seen in
their honorable submission to a superior authority years after the death of their lord.51 This
Confucian submission to superiors in general may materialize in the obedience of a child
to his parents, a wife to her husband, a student to his teacher, and a man to his country.
Furthermore, filial piety is demanded and celebrated in order to maintain peaceful stabil-
ity in the family, in social organizations, and within the nation. Relationships at every
level define an individuals proper role, and each person must fulfill the responsibilities
incurred by these relationships.
With these moral codes integrated into a worldview placing the emperor at the center
of everything, the nation was modeled as one big family with him on the top as the supreme
protector. This coded imperial hierarchy situated the general populace as the emperors chil-
dren (sekishi). In return, the country was expected to serve the emperor out of filial obliga-
tion, as subjects (shinka). This subordinate relationship between the emperor and the people
is a subtext arguably present in seemingly mundane war documentary paintings featuring
the understated hero. Medical staff members attentively assist casualties in Evacuation of
the Wounded and the Hardworking Relief Unit (Kanja gos to kygohan no kusin) (fig. 4.5).
The soldiers in respite from advancement in Marching through Niangzi-guan (Shshikan wo
yuku) (see Plate 9) display a quiet, respectful humility. The lone border guard in Patrol on
the Russo-Manchurian Border (Seibu soman kokky keibi) (fig. 4.6) stands in a silent vigil
under massive skies. An engineering corps endures hard physical labor in Engineers Bridge
Construction in Malaya (Kheitai kaky sagy) (fig. 4.7). Young, obedient, and hardworking
soldiers and personnel, as loyal subjects of the emperor, perfectly represent the consensual
social scheme of which they are depicted as an integral part. The images described here
illustrate the idea that these soldiers devotion to their imperial duties rightly occupies their
minds and that a sense of fulfillment of obligation alone should be reward enough for them.
Thus the ubiquitous presence of the emperor may be seen as implicit in these images.
Figure 4.5. Suzuki Ryz, Evacuation of the Wounded and the Hardworking Relief Unit (Kanja gos to
kygohan no kusin), 1943. Oil on canvas, 192.0 254.7 cm. National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo,
indefinite loan.

Figure 4.6. Ishii

Hakutei, Patrol on
the Russo-Manchu-
rian Border (Seibu
soman kokky keibi),
1944. Oil on canvas,
187.0 256.5 cm.
National Museum of
Modern Art, Tokyo,
indefinite loan.
Figure 4.7. Shimizu Toshi, Engineers Bridge Construction in Malaya (Kheitai kaky sagy), c. 1944.
Oil on canvas. 159.5 128.7 cm. National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, indefinite loan.
118|Mayu Tsuruya

The anti-individualist quality found in war documentary painting may be called self-
effacement, to borrow the term used in a contemporary American military intelligence
analysis made of Japanese wartime propaganda films to describe the persona desired by
prewar Japanese society. This research was documented in a paper titled Japanese Films:
A Phase of Psychological Warfare prepared by the Research and Analysis Branch of the
Office of Strategic Services (referred to below as OSS) of the United States in March 1944.
It studied twenty Japanese films sponsored by the Japanese military to understand how the
enemys brain was wired.52 Film became an important propaganda tool for the military in
disseminating imperial ideology to the populace because of its capacity to develop a plot
in an engaging, visual manner. The Japanese Films: A Phase of Psychological Warfare study
praised the artistic and technical quality of the Japanese productions. In terms of symbol-
ism, the study noted that an underlying unity manifested in all the films was the spirit
of sacrifice or subjection of self to pattern. The American study found that the virtues of
filial piety, fidelity, and patriotism were dominant themes, and it described the mechanism
for stimulating wartime cohesion found in these films in terms of their ability to effect
emotional identification of the audience with the film heroes. The study recognized
that the humble and simple heroes portrayed in these movies were the essential cultural
mechanism on which the propaganda was based. By portraying selfless imperial soldiers
obediently performing their duties, the cinematic characters established a narrative that
could strike a subordinate cultural chord in Japanese wartime audiences. One illustra-
tive example is found in the OSS description of scenes from Earth and Soldiers (Tsuchi to
heitai), made in 1940 and based on a bestselling novel with the same title by Hino Ashi-
hei.53 The film illustrates the life story of an infantry squad in a distinctively uneventful
manner. It shows, according to the American study, dull days on the transport, landing at
dawn, days of marching in the mud, nights in the trenches soaked in water and drenched
by pouring rain, cold food, cold lodging, monotony, hardship, blisters, lice, dirt.54 These
descriptions parallel the menial routines of service members that were depicted in war
documentary painting.
Historian John Dower reveals in his study of Japanese war films that he was also
struck by their true-to-life portrayals. His analysis of the effect of this type of realism is
essentially the same as the OSSs conclusion: Dower recognizes realisms ability to strike
a resonant chord in the hearts of Japanese viewers.55 Because painting was another visual
medium that the military employed for propaganda purposes under its guidance, it is
arguably valid to apply these observations to the portrayal of the soldier in war documen-
tary painting. Their lives are likewise unexaggerated and unromanticized. Although the
painting medium does not have the advantage of being able to develop a cinematic plot
through to a persuasive conclusion, the painted image could still arouse empathy among
Japanese viewers by showing their fellow citizens serving in their daily military routines.
War documentary paintings that depicted the mundane aspects of military life plainly
record the truth about the lives of the dutiful and humble soldier, airman, or sailor as it
was in their stations of duty. We know from contemporary and postwar reviews that the
paintings were successful in developing strong feelings of filial empathy. A lack of physical
vigor and theatrical heroism often depicted in Western art did not keep Japanese audi-
ences from perceiving the inner strength of the depicted soldiers. For them, representation
that is closer to real life was more true and believable than a heroic spectacle.56 In contrast,
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|119

these humble images allowed Japanese audiences to vicariously experience the war, and
although hard and unpleasant in essence, they brought the suffering of Japans revered
troops into focus. In this manner Japanese viewers were inoculated to become immune
to their personal fears. Empathy enabled this mechanism. By presenting examples of ser-
vice members and civilians sacrificing and working hard for collective goals, Japanese
propagandists were trying to immunize audiences against a natural dislike of war and
diminish their inborn desire for personal fulfillment by imprinting a feeling of shame for
selfish thoughts.

Conclusion

War documentary painting was established at the confluence of an emerging awareness

of the social role of art (which was stimulated by a burgeoning modern mass society) and
the need for the state to disseminate a national ideology in defense of total war. Another
important condition was met by the artists of war documentary painting, who were pre-
pared to embrace their own potential role as agents of social transformation. It was a sin-
gular opportunity for them to be part of what they must have perceived as the manifesta-
tion of Japanese power in the eyes of the world. With the sanction of the imperial and mili-
tary authority, these artists had pioneered a new type of public monument in Japanese art.
Unlike much of the other media employed in state war propaganda such as publica-
tion and film, each war documentary painting was a unique, monumental object aimed
at reaching a large public audience, and thus its dissemination could not take place simul-
taneously in multiple sites. This seeming disadvantage was compensated by the imperial
authentication of tenran. The inspection system functioned to bestow special significance
on the war documentary paintings and, by means of the modern press, induced people
to go see them in person. In this way, the irreproducible nature of the individual works
served as an incentive.
One of the most striking characteristics of Japanese war documentary painting is its
repetitiveness and simplicity of image. These characteristics imparted the ability to imprint
ideal and exemplary images of the imperial soldiers in the minds of the Japanese people.
Japanese war documentary paintings become an endless reference to selfless soldiers in
Japanese military uniform. Through the lens of Western democracy, reticent soldiers in
mundane military routines depicted in the works might appear unmoving. However, in
Japans wartime context, what is signified in these images was intense love of nation, which
was identified with the emperor in martial ideology. This simplicity of visual language was
a necessary element for the ordinary Japanese citizen to understand what was depicted and
what the depiction meant.
This study of Japanese war documentary painting provides a glimpse into the relation-
ship between art and state in modern Japan. The subject calls for further research to clarify
several issues, including the administrative details of the militarys supervisory entities
(such as the Army Press Division) and the mechanism and implementation of censorship
of the work by commissioned painters. The work of war documentary painting should not
remain a relic of the war, but should be studied for its potential to reveal greater continuity
in the trajectory of modern Japanese art and its cultural implications.
120|Mayu Tsuruya

Notes

1. In Japan, the second Sino-Japanese War was called Shina jihen (China Incident) during
the conflict and Nitch sens (China war) after the Second World War.
2. For the definition of the work used by the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art,
see Shozhin mokuroku: Suisai, soby, sho, chkoku, shiry, sens kirokuga (Museum collec-
tion catalogue: Watercolor, calligraphy, sculpture, documentation, and war painting) (Tokyo:
National Museum of Modern Art, 1992).
3. Tanaka Hisao, Nihon no sensga: Sono keifu to tokushitsu (Japans war painting: Its
lineage and characteristics) (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1985); Bert Winther-Tamaki, Embodiment/
Disembodiment: Japanese Painting during the Fifteen-Year War, Monumenta Nipponica 52,
no. 2 (1997): pp. 145180.
4. Kawata Akihisa, Jgonen sens to daikzu no seiritsu (The fifteen-year war and the
establishment of grand composition), Bijutsushi 44, no. 2 (March 1995): pp. 248251.
5. Akiyama Kunio, Honnendo kirokuga ni tsuite (About this years record paintings),
Bijutsu 5 (May 1944): p. 2.
6.Yamanouchi Ichir, Sakusen kirokuga no arikata (War campaign record painting as
it ought to be), Bijutsu 5 (May 1944): p. 3.
7. Kenneth E. Silver, Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First
World War, 19141925 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989).
8. Peter Adam, Art of the Third Reich (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1992).
9. Daita sens kirokuga seisaku no tame gaka genchi haken keikaku (Plans to dispatch
painters for great East Asia war documentary painting) (n.p., n.d.). Reprinted in Shigeo Sasaki,
Sens to bijutsu kankei bunken shiry mokuroku (Bibliography relating to war and art),
Kaiz 12 (1997): pp. 182185.
10.Yamanouchi, Sakusen kirokuga no arikata, p. 4.
11. For the process involved in this confiscation effort, see Mayu Tsuruya, Sens Saku-
sen Kirokuga (War Campaign Documentary Painting): Japans National Imagery of the
Holy War, 19371945 (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2005); Hirase Reita, Sensga
to Amerika (War painting and America), Bulletin of Himeji City Museum of Art 3 (1999):
pp. 145; Akihisa Kawata, Sorera o dsureba yoinoka? (What is to be done with them: The
process of the procurement of war documentary paintings found in the American National
Archives), Kindai Gasetsu 8 (1999): pp. 141.
12. Hijikata Teiichi, Kindai nihon ygashi (History of modern Japanese Western-style
painting) (Tokyo: Hunsha, 1947).
13.It was formerly known as the Great Japan Army Military-Service Painters Associa-
tion. The new army art associations president was Army General Matsui Iwane (18781948),
who had commanded Japanese troops in the Shanghai and Nanjing regions. Renowned oil
painter Fujishima Takeji was vice president. Fujita Tsuguji would later play a leading role in
the association.
14. Seiyaku no naka deno geijutsu (The arts with restrictions), Special edition: Taiheiy
sens meigash, Mainichi gurafu (November 3, 1967): pp. 8788.
15. For a discussion of wartime censorship of the press, see Gregory J. Kasza, The State and
the Mass Media in Japan, 19181945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Richard
H. Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|121

16. The Shanghai Division was later expanded and renamed the Central China Division.
17. Kuroda Senkichir, Sensga ni tsuite (About war painting), Daita sens: Nanp
gashin (Illustrated journal of the Great East Asia War: Southern campaign) 5 (September 15,
1942): p. 6.
18. Saikan senshi no kinjit: Hdanka ni seisaku jninsh (Monumental work by
soldiers with the painting brush: A series of twelve paintings made under the rain of shells),
Asahi shinbun, July 10, 1938; Umi no Kank kryakuga: Fujishima shi ra roku gahaku jgun
(Imagery of the Hankou conquest: Six painters including Fujishima go on military service),
Asahi shinbun, September 28, 1938; Zensen e jni gahaku Rikugun kara hatsuno haken (The
first dispatch by the Imperial Army of twelve painters to the front), Asahi shinbun, April 29,
1940; Gahitsu nimo daisenka o (Brilliant military achievements with the paintbrush), Asahi
shinbun, March 25, 1942; Umi no ysen o egaku (Painting brave naval warfare), Asahi shin-
bun, May 5, 1942; Rekishiteki kaisen o saigen: bijutsuka 25 shi o zensen e (25 artists sent to
the front to reproduce historical naval campaigns), Asahi shinbun, May 5, 1943.
19. This number is based on my study of wartime military art exhibition catalogues,
but I do not mean to imply that this is the final count. Japanese researcher Kawata Akihisa
has counted 214 sensga (war paintings) in Sensga to wa nanika? (What are Japans war
paintings?), Geijutsu shinch 548 (August 1995): pp. 7884. I believe, from the context of his
essay, that his use of the term sensga is not limited exclusively to the strict definition of state-
commissioned war documentary paintings. In addition, the United States Occupation Army
reported that about two hundred official war paintings were made.
20. Umi no Kank kryakuga: Fujishima shi ra roku gahaku jgun. Umehara Ryzabur
and Yasui Star were notably absent from the list of official war art painters. They could be
counted as gosho, or highest-ranking masters of the yga community, and these two artists
were immensely popular with audiences. However, their fauvist style was not capable of pro-
viding realistic detail and therefore possibly was not considered suitable for war documentary
painting. Yet they did paint Chinese motifs specific to their war experience, such as happy
Asian women in Chinese garb and idyllic regional landscapes.
21. Gahitsu nimo daisenka o.
22. Umi no ysen o egaku.
23. The exact number given was 3,854,000 visitors. Daita sens kirokuga seisaku no
tame gaka genchi haken keikaku, p. 184.
24.For more information about the Asahi newspapers role in art sponsorship, see
Yamano Hidetsugu, Jnarizumu to bijutsu (Journalism and art), in Kindai Nihon no media
evento (Media events in modern Japan), ed. Tsuganezawa Toshihiro, pp. 249269 (Tokyo:
Dbunkan shuppan, 1996).
25.Yamada Shinichi, who had assisted in the American confiscation of Japans war
paintings, points out the importance of imperial inspection employed by the regime in his
personal notes, reprinted in Sasaki Shigeo, Sensga no sengo shori (Postwar treatment of
war paintings), Live and Review 17 (2000): p. 50.
26. An Englishman named Robert Barker is credited with originating the format of pan-
orama, and he received a British patent for it in 1787. This new visual medium enjoyed popu-
larity in the West between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. For a general
history of the development of panorama in the West, see Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama:
History of a Mass Medium, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (New York: Zone Books, 1997).
122|Mayu Tsuruya

27.Urasaki Eishaku, Nihon kindai bijutsu hattatsushi: Meiji hen (Developmental history
of modern Japanese art: Meiji period) (Tokyo: Tokyo bijutsu, 1974); Kinoshita Naoyuki, Bijutsu
to iu misemono (Visual spectacle called art) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1993).
28.Kinoshita, Bijutsu to iu misemono, p. 172.
29. Takeyama Akiko argues that another successor of war panorama painting is the doc-
umentary newsreel, which became a powerful, official propaganda tool during the Pacific War.
Takeyama Akiko, Media evento to shite no nysu eiga (Newsreels as a media event), in Sen-
jiki Nihon no media evento (Media events in wartime Japan), ed. Tsuganezawa Toshihiro and
Ariyama Teruo, pp. 7190 (Tokyo: Sekai shissha, 1998).
30. kura made his fortune in arms trading, which became the basis of the kura con-
glomerate. He also founded Tokyo Economics University (Tokyo Keizai Daigaku).
31. Other supporters included financial tycoons Shibusawa Eiichi (18401931) and Yasuda
Zenjir (18381921).
32. The original quote in Japanese is bijutsu no shinzui nishite kyiku no shkei nari.
Kinoshita, Bijutsu to iu misemono, p. 170.
33.The original quote in Japanese is kokumin no kbu shis o shreisu. Kinoshita,
Bijutsu to iu misemono, p. 170.
34. Koyamas panorama painting and one of his sketches are reproduced in Kinoshita,
Bijutsu to iu misemono, pp. 176177.
35. For more on Kawabata and his war painting, see Mimi Hall-Yiengpruksawan, Japa-
nese War Painting: Kawabata Ryshi and the Emptying of the Modern, Archives of Asian Art
XLVI (1993): pp. 7690.
36. Moriguchi Tari, Bijutsu hachij-nen shi (Eighty years of Japanese art) (Tokyo: Bijutsu
shuppan, 1954), p. 321.
37. Ibid., p. 322.
38. Official war painters, including Koiso Ryhei and Miyamoto Sabur, worked in the
mass media during the Pacific War by furnishing illustrations for serialized newspaper novels.
39. This painting belongs to his Pacific Ocean (Taiheiy) series.
40. For more on Fujita and his war painting, see Mark H. Sandler, A Painter of the Holy
War: Fujita Tsuguji and the Japanese Military, in War, Occupation, and Creativity: Japan and
East Asia, 19201960, ed. Marlene J. Mayo and J. Thomas Rimer, pp. 188211 (Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawaii Press, 2001); Hayashi Yko, Fujita Tsuguji no 1930 nendai: Rafu to sensga
o tsunagu mono (Fujita Tsugujis 1930s: A link between his female nudes and war painting),
in Nihon bijutsushi no suimyaku (Undercurrents in Japanese art), ed. Tsuji Nobuo sensei kan-
reki kinenkai, pp. 621648 (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1993).
41. Fujita became an advisor to the Japan Mural Association (Nihon Hekiga Kykai)
established in October 1936. Not much about this association is known, according to Hayashi.
42. Hayashi, Fujita Tsuguji no 1930 nendai, p. 634.
43. Ibid., 640. For examples of murals made in the mid-1930s, see entries in the Bijutsu
nenkan (Japanese art yearbooks) (Tokyo: National Research Institute of Cultural Properties)
for the year 1935.
44. Hayashi, Fujita Tsuguji no 1930 nendai, p. 642.
45. Gennifer Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-garde 19051931 (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 249.
46. Ibid., p. 250.
 4. Sens Sakusen Kirokuga|123

47. Quoted by Moriguchi, Bijutsu hachij-nen shi, p. 348.

48. There were artists who searched for alternative artistic languages such as construc-
tivism (e.g., Murayama Tomoyoshi and Yanase Masamu) and futurism (e.g., Kanbara Tai) to
express their revolutionary philosophies inspired by new social movements.
49. Meiji jing seitoku kinen kaigakan hekiga (Meiji shrine memorial picture gallery cata-
logue) (Tokyo: Meiji jing gaien, 2001), unpaginated.
50.Leading yga painters Asai Ch, Honda Kinkichir, and Nakamura Fusetsu made the
depiction of the tale of the forty-seven samurai for the Kanda Panorama Theater.
51. Darrell William Davis, Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity,
Japanese Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 6465.
52. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Research and Analysis Branch, Japanese Films: A
Phase of Psychological Warfare, Record Group 226, National Archives at College Park, Md.
53. A lengthy description of the novel and Hinos place in Japanese culture can be found
in David M. Rosenfeld, Unhappy Soldier: Hino Ashihei and Japanese World War II Literature
(Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2002).
54. OSS, Japanese Films, p. 12.
55. John W. Dower, War and Peace (New York: New Press, 1993), p. 37. Haruko Taya-
Cook is another historian who makes the same observation. Haruko Taya-Cook and Theodore
F. Cook, eds., Japan at War: An Oral History (New York: New Press, 1992), p. 242.
56. For discussion of the qualities of heroes in Japanese literature, see Ivan Morris, The
Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan (New York: Noonday Press, 1975).
 Bert Winther-Tamaki

5 From Resplendent Signs

to Heavy Hands
Japanese Painting in War and Defeat,
19371952

Japanese citizenship in the turbulent period of the late 1930s through the early 1950s was
experienced by many as a sequence of abruptly shifting emotional extremes: euphoria,
aggression, suffering, exhaustion, and resolve. Japanese people saw their nation rise to
the summit of an enormous empire expanding across Asia and the Pacific Ocean, only to
see that empire sharply peeled back to the shores of the four main islands of the Japanese
archipelago. Militaristic and imperialistic policies in the 1930s led to the outbreak of full-
scale war in China in 1937, a war referred to euphemistically in Japan as the China Inci-
dent. The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 broadened this conflict into what was referred
to in Japan at the time as the Great East Asia War. Known to English-language speakers
today as the Pacific theater of World War II, this conflict brought Japanese forces into com-
bat against the Americans, British, and Dutch. The defeat and surrender of Japan in 1945
terminated these years of fighting with the military occupation of Japan by the United
States. This loss of sovereignty to a foreign power, the first such event in Japan in recorded
history, continued for seven years until the implementation in 1952 of the peace treaty
signed the previous year in San Francisco. Artists were not immune to the emotions of
either the euphoric rise of their nation to imperial glory nor its traumatic defeat. While
political and economic conditions clearly inhibited the ambitions of some painters, artistic
initiatives were also enabled and promoted by pressing social needs and exhilarating ideo-
logical passions. The paintings created and debated in these years remain compelling and
enigmatic documents of the unparalleled enthusiasms and tribulations of this dramatic
phase of midcentury history.

Imperial Landscapists

In 1937, the Japanese government added the Order of Culture (Bunka Kunsh) to the ros-
ter of awards that esteemed citizens were eligible to receive from the emperor. Prime Min-
ister Hayashi Senjr explained:

Since the flourishing of culture is significantly related to national destiny, the devel-
opment of culture cannot be neglected for even one day. Since our nation pos-
sesses a culture based on an ancient and distinctive spiritual history, we must exalt
 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands | 125

accomplishments that accord with the progress of contemporary times and contrib-
ute them to the culture of the world abroad.1

Thus, a government committed to aggressive militaristic policies was by no means a gov-

ernment unconcerned with culture. Indeed, the prime ministers advocacy of the state-
sponsored projection of Japanese culture beyond Japanese borders complemented the con-
current military thrust of Japanese power in Asia. The nine individuals who received the
new Order of Culture in 1937 included one representative each from the fields of literature,
history of poetry, geology, metallurgy, and physics . . . plus no fewer than four painters.
Surely, this reflects the extraordinary value accorded the art of painting in the cultural
mission of the nation. One function of painting that earned it such esteem was rendering
the fantastic territorial expansion of Japanese domain visible and aesthetically appealing
in the form of landscape painting.
The Nihonga painter Yokoyama Taikan, one of the winners of the 1937 Order of Cul-
ture, did not paint actual landscapes of Japans new overseas possessions. Rather, he painted
the Japanese homeland as the spiritual source of imperial expansion. Taikan, still remem-
bered today as a prolific painter of Mount Fuji, intensified his focus on the mountain in the
late 1930s while vigorously advocating an ideology of nationalistic Japanese spiritualism.
In 1938, he articulated his views in a speech first delivered to a group of Hitler Youth on
their visit to Japan. Taikan argued that Japanese art was rooted in oriental spirit and
was completely contrary to Western art, which he felt explain[ed] the objective world
realistically.2 But Taikans spirit of Japanese art was also related to contemporary Japanese
military endeavors in China:

This year, a multitude of the emperors subjects disregard the threat to their lives,
fighting for our Japan against communist China in a crusade for peace in the orient.
. . . [Their Japanese spirit] is none other than the vitality that has burgeoned forth
from the realm of Japan since ancient times. In art too, only works which express this
vitality are honored.3

Taikan sought to implement his rhetoric of Japanese spirit in such paintings as Resplen-
dent Signs (fig. 5.1), a vision of Mount Fuji as a gleaming, snow-capped peak rising from a
misty cloud in a golden sky pierced by a scarlet disk that seems pasted in from the Japanese
national flag. According to Taikans aesthetic stance, rendering the mountain from direct
observation was not an element in the production of this picture. A fellow Nihonga painter
noted, I am in agreement with Professor Taikan that sketching the likes of Mount Fuji
from life would vulgarize it.4 Indeed, all evidence of contemporary Japanese society seems
to have been erased from Taikans mountain and his spiritualized approach to depiction
seems to have cast the pristine Fuji in sanitized perfection. The enigmatic title Resplendent
Signs (Kagayaku kenkon) employs an archaic term for two divination signs, suggesting
polar oppositions that Taikan regarded as symbolic of Japan, such as heaven/earth and
shadow/light.
But the Japanese power that was the expressive aim of this work was not just national, it
was imperialistic expansion. This image was one of a series of twenty hanging scrolls, includ-
ing ten views of Mount Fuji and ten ocean views, that Taikan undertook in collaboration
Figure 5.1. Yokoyama Taikan, Resplendent Signs (Kenkon kagayaku), from the series Ten Mountain
Views and Ten Ocean Views, 1940. Colors on paper, 80.3 115.5 cm. Adachi Bijutsukan.

Figure 5.2. Fujishima Takeji, Morning Sunrise at Rikug, Mongolia (Kyokujitsu Rikug o terasu), 1937.
Oil on canvas, 71 98.3 cm, Sannomaru Shozkan.
 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands | 127

with officials in the Ministry of Culture to raise funds for the military and raise public spirit
for fighting the war. A high price was set for each painting in the series and the entire pro-
ceeds were donated to the military to fund the production of fighter planes. The complete
set sold out before the exhibition opened and the resulting sum of 500,000 yen financed
four airplanes, which were christened Taikan in ceremonies filmed for a newsreel titled
Yokoyama Taikans Paintbrush Patriotism (Saikan hkoku Yokoyama Taikan).5 In effect, the
whole undertaking mobilized Taikans lofty painterly rhetoric to military action consistent
with his ideological aims. Mount Fuji, summit of the realm of Japan, literally and figura-
tively launched a multitude of fighting spirits on a crusade for the Orient (Ty).
While Taikan sought to spiritualize rather than visualize the imperial landscape,
yga painters such as Fujishima Takeji and Umehara Ryzabur ventured out into Asia
to observe its actual appearance. Fujishima (18671943), who like Taikan had received
the Order of Culture in 1937, undertook a commission in 1927 for a painting to hang
in the emperors study in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Fujishima settled on the Japa-
nese rising sun (fig. 5.2), but in contrast to Taikans spiritualized approach to the national
ensign, he proceeded to travel throughout Asia over the next decade in a quest for the
best horizon for the observation and appreciation of the glorious sunrise. In the 1920s the
Japanese government had established annual academic exhibition salons in its colonies
Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria. Fujishima and other Japanese artists were called upon
to serve as jurors and administer this infrastructure for colonial culture. Fujishimas
exploration of Asian motifs on these trips represented a new direction for a self-identified
Western painter (yga-ka) who had studied in Europe from 1905 to 1910. Inspired by
the newest frontier of the empire, Fujishima finally obtained a sunset fit for the emperor
in 1937: now with the expansion of national prestige far beyond Manchuria to Mongolia,
there is even deeper significance to seeking the symbol for Japans shining national glory
in this land.6
Umehara Ryzabur (18881969) was another highly respected yga painter who dur-
ing this period traveled to continental Asia to serve as a colonial salon juror. Umehara,
however, found himself so drawn to Beijing, the ancient capital city of dynastic China, that
he returned each summer from 1939 to 1942, during the Japanese invasion and occupa-
tion of China. In works such as Forbidden City (see Plate 10), he painted the views from the
windows of his room in what was regarded as Beijings best hotel and hired young Chinese
women to model for paintings. Umehara pursued beauty in defiance of the contempo-
rary events of the war:

The whole of Beijing is filled with a peacefully relaxed grandeur. In it, I myself began
feeling tranquilly composed. At one time, such was my serenity that I was repri-
manded by the occupying Japanese soldiers and was left ashamed of myself. But that
is the greatness of Beijing.

Umeharas indulgence of Chinese grandeur was perhaps conducive to a feeling of serenity,

but it was also surely enabled by the aggressive acts of the Japanese military. Umehara was
a consumer of China; in writings about his Beijing experiences, he extolled the food, the
beauty of the women, the Beijing Opera, the colors of the cityscape, and other aspects of
Chinese culture.
128|Bert Winther-Tamaki

One quality of the spectacle of Beijing that Umehara was keen on painting from his
hotel perch was its continental aesthetic. In his account of Umeharas vision of Beijing, the
art historian Yashiro Yukio wrote that the horizon spreads out with a vastness incom-
prehensible to the Japanese imagination that was formed by the space of a small, moun-
tainous, island nation. This continental (tairikuteki) quality was also manifested in the
sky; whereas the humid atmosphere of Japan cast distant views in mist and gave clouds
blurry contours, the limpid air of north China produced the sharply defined clouds that
Umehara exaggerated in The Forbidden City. But these Beijing clouds could also be seen
as expressive of Japanese continental ambitions, much like Fujishimas sunrise. Yashiro
reported that one day while painting an unusual configuration of clouds in Beijing, the
artist exclaimed that splendid clouds came out early this morning. They were spirited
clouds resembling two hands lifted up in a banzai salute!7
Umeharas vision of the popular wartime gesture of loyalty to the emperor in the
clouds above the Forbidden City divulges the political signification of what might oth-
erwise seem merely a decorative and picturesque scene. The Forbidden City had been the
seat of supreme authority in China for five centuries, the residence of successive Ming and
Qing emperors until 1911. Umehara preferred to paint the ancient palace from the distant
vantage of his hotel, where he appreciated the beauty of their mass and gorgeous colors,
because close up, it was a little disappointing that they looked rather crude.8 Indeed, all
evidence of war and suffering are banished from Umeharas numerous views of Beijing. He
softened the rigid and regular geometry of the numerous buildings and vast plazas in the
symmetrical compound by painting them from an oblique angle in a loose, brushy style,
endowing the scene with a picturesque and romantic quality.
Umehara undertook the particular version of the Forbidden City illustrated here spe-
cifically to submit to the Art Exhibition in Commemoration of the 2600th Year of the
Imperial Lineage, a large state-sponsored event in Tokyo that was heralded as part of a
national ritual. Yamanashi Emiko has called attention to the political significance of
the paintings pronounced high viewpoint; Umehara positioned the viewer to look down
on the ancient palace compound.9 In contrast, the Japanese viewers who found this paint-
ing appealing in Tokyo would surely have been disturbed, Yamanashi argued, if a non-
Japanese artist had presumed to look down on the low rooftops of the Imperial Palace of
the Japanese emperor in Tokyo. Thus, while Taikan spiritualized the Japanese homeland
as the source of a crusade to obtain an empire and Fujishima staged the sublime Japanese
sunrise in the remote Asian frontier, Umehara indulged in the splendors of the Chinese
capital obtained as a fruit of imperialism.

Withering Autonomy

The Tokyo art world of the late 1930s may have been dominated by such conservative fig-
ures as Yokoyama Taikan and Fujishima Takeji, but it also possessed assorted niches for
artists committed to more progressive movements, styles, and ideologies. Abstraction and
surrealism were the two most influential progressive movements in Japanese painting at
this point, and anxieties about disturbing contemporary political trends may have briefly
increased the reformist ardor of their followers. Nevertheless, the oppressive regime and
 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands | 129

social climate arrested these tendencies and by about 1940 most abstract and surrealist
paintings fell from public view. While individual artists responded to such pressures in
different ways, none could escape the powerful dogma that stigmatized avant-gardism,
individualism, and European modernism.
In April 1941, the painter Fukuzawa Ichir and the poet and critic Takiguchi Shz,
two of the leading figures of Japanese surrealism, were arrested by authorities, who main-
tained that surrealism was inseparable from communism. The arrest of these two figures
was a tremendous shock to the Art Culture Association (Bijutsu Bunka Kykai), for Fuku-
zawa was its leader and Takiguchi its ideologue. This artists group considered canceling
its exhibition scheduled to open three weeks after the arrests, but members decided to
proceed with the exhibition after removing works painted in an overtly surrealist style
and changing titles of others. The associations members recanted in the official language
of the day: Following the path of the Japanese Empire, we have become more conscious
of our sincere observance of loyalty. The proof of our sincerity is expressed in [our] exhibi-
tion which makes a clean sweep of past errors.10 Several police and military authorities
previewed their exhibition of 191 works and one concluded, as I thought, painters cannot
convert. Despite the camouflage, your surrealist views have not changed.11 When Fuku-
zawa returned after six months in prison, he cautioned his followers, I was sacrificed. If
you do surrealistic work you will definitely get the same, so be careful.12 He then pro-
ceeded to paint the scene of a Japanese victory over the British, the sinking of the HMS
Exeter in the Battle of the Java Sea. In addition to the surveillance and coercion of military
authorities, the activities of the Art Culture Association were also obstructed by wartime
hardships, including the draft of member artists. Nonetheless, while officials of the author-
itarian state and military bureaucracy halted the development of surrealist painting, the
painters themselves were not opposed to the war. Fukuzawa had expressed his ardor for
war victory in 1938, three years before his arrest, and other members of his group, like
most Japanese people, were ecstatic about the astounding Japanese military victories from
Pearl Harbor in December 1941 until the first major defeat of Japanese forces at the Battle
of Midway in June 1942. Thus, the disagreement between progressive artists and military
officials was perhaps more about painting style than political ideology.
Nevertheless, as the war progressed, military authorities stepped up their campaign
to bring artists into alignment with the state policy of mobilizing the entire nation for the
war effort. Perhaps the most striking document of the military bureaucracys intervention
in the art world is the transcript of a conversation between three officers in the Office of
Information of the Ministry of the Army and one art critic that was published in an art
magazine in January 1941. The title of their conversation was The National Defense State
and Art; What Is the Painter to Do?13 The New Order (Shintaisei) had recently been pro-
claimed to unify and mobilize the entire Japanese nation to win the war in China, which
was proving more intractable than expected. One officer declared that everybody must
take responsibility for the national defense state; this includes artists who cannot simply
pursue pleasure. Although he professed to refrain from instructing painters how to handle
their brushes, he nonetheless asserted his prerogative to prescribe what kind of thought
and emotion should be expressed. Artists were denounced for liberalism, profiteering,
and extravagance and were urged to paint works with national content that contributed
to the culture of the people. The officers threatened to withhold rations of paint supplies
130|Bert Winther-Tamaki

and deny permission to hold exhibitions to artists unable to understand the imperatives
of the military state. Perhaps the most chilling metaphor was one officers reference to a
sifter (furui) to explain the function of the planned consolidation of all the art groups
and exhibitions of the art world to one system that would screen the unacceptable artists
from the acceptable.
While this art world thought control was certainly intimidating, some artists contin-
ued to produce works that must have been less than satisfying to the Office of Information.
Matsumoto Shunsukes Landscape with National Diet Building (fig. 5.3) appears to express
a degree of defiance. To be sure, the political institutions of representational government
were by no means accorded anything approaching the exalted status of the emperor and
the Tokyo Imperial Palace. Nevertheless, the National Diet Building remained one of the
most important architectural symbols of Japanese governance, and Matsumotos painting
relegated it to the shadows of a barren industrial landscape. The unmistakable pyramidal
peak of the vaguely neoclassical-style building, completed in 1936, is sunken to a lesser
height than an inactive smokestack and thrust behind a garage and a row of leafless trees
in an ashen sky. The only human life in the vicinity of the supposed center of Japanese
democracy is a nameless figure pulling a rustic cart away from the Diet, as though haul-
ing off the last remnants of a more promising era. The rising sun painted so gloriously by
Fujishima and Taikan seems to have been eclipsed by the darkness of war that has depopu-
lated the streets of Tokyo.

Figure 5.3. Matumoto Shunsuke, Landscape with National Diet Building (Gijid no aru Fkei), January
1942. Oil on canvas, 60.5 91 cm. Iwate Prefectural Museum.
 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands | 131

The convictions underlying Matsumotos desolate wartime view of the National Diet
are articulated in an essay he published the previous year in response to the military offi-
cers discussion about art and the national defense state.14 Nevertheless, postwar authors
have offered widely divergent interpretations of this essay, titled The Living Painter,
ranging from protest and resistance to appeal for collaboration with national policy.
Indeed, Matsumoto asserts an autonomous and humanistic stance for the artist, but also
advocates art as means of strengthening the aims of the nation-state. I believe that under
the New Order, he wrote, our efforts in the fully armed nation state are directed toward
the accomplishment of the ideals of the global universality of new Japan. He staked out
a grand scheme for these national ideals of art as an expression of world value compa-
rable to ancient Egyptian sculpture, Renaissance painting, and Buddhist murals of eighth-
century Japan. Matsumotos vision for advancing the human spirit, however, was greatly
complicated by wartime conditions in Japan:

Despite the great difficulties of daily life in our environment, we young painters do
not halt our creative work. Our persistence holds the significance of building human-
ity in ourselves one step at a time. Even if I have not completed any work, as long as I
live my life in proper relation to what comes before and after, somebody will eventu-
ally fulfill this will. I believe that we are living in the century, indeed the millennium,
of the national mission.15

This was written at the beginning of 1941; it was shortly after the December 1941 attack on
Pearl Harbor that Matsumoto painted Landscape with the National Diet. The great diffi-
culties of daily life presented by our environment seem to have worsened, intensifying the
obstacles to the attainment of millenarian glory. The lone silhouetted cart puller who turns
his back on the moribund monument of Japanese democracy seems tragically emblematic
of the young painter that Matsumoto had sought to stir to millenarian accomplishment
for the nation.
Nevertheless, Matsumoto persisted not only in painting wartime scenes of Japan, but
also in organizing colleagues to do the same. In 1943, he and seven sympathetic painters,
all in their thirties, founded the Painting Society of the New Man (Shinjin Gakai). This
group held three exhibitions in 1943 and 1944 of modest and often dark still lifes, por-
traits, and landscapes, reflecting these artists withdrawal from their earlier forays into
constructivist and surrealist styles. Several of these artists painted searing self-portraits
that seem expressive of an inner discord produced by their estrangement from the ideals
of manhood and uniformed service that prevailed in this period of overwhelming public
support for the war. Among the most compelling self-portraits from the Painting Society
of the New Man are three canvases by Aimitsu (19071946). In each version, the artists
chest is cropped into a wall-like plane, the neck is elongated, and the face is shown strain-
ing to see something in the far distance. In Self Portrait with Hat (fig. 5.4), the artist covers
his head with something like a fez, which he fashioned by removing the brim of one of
his wifes hats. The artists exertion to penetrate the distance is so great that it seems to
compress his own head into a diagonal oblong and contort his eyes and mouth. In one of
his next self-portraits and last paintings, Aimitsus eyes are erased altogether, while wire-
like tree branches seem to scratch at his neck. Aimitsu and his colleagues were unable to
132|Bert Winther-Tamaki

Figure 5.4. Aimitsu, Self-

Portrait with Hat (Bshi no
aru fkei), 1943. Oil on can-
vas, 60 50 cm. Hiroshima
Kenritsu Bijutsukan.

sustain their gestures of artistic autonomy for long. In 1944, Aimitsu was drafted at age
thirty-seven into military service and would die from illness in a military hospital on the
front in China. And in the same year, the prohibition of all public exhibitions not officially
sponsored brought the Painting Society of the New Man to an end.

Cultural Warriors

In their inability or unwillingness to dedicate their art to the war effort, artists such as
Matsumoto Shunsuke and Aimitsu were by no means representative of their colleagues
in the Tokyo art world. Many eagerly sought opportunities to serve the military estab-
lishment, and such opportunities were increasingly abundant. The first major Japanese
war to attract the participation of military service painters (jgun gaka) was the Sino-
Japanese War of 18941895, when leading Japanese oil painters such as Asai Ch, Koyama
Shtar, and Kuroda Seiki traveled to battlefields to create war scenography under the
auspices of the military bureaucracy and newspaper companies. But with the beginning of
the China Incident in 1937, unprecedented numbers of painters approached the authorities
in the Ministry of the Army for official imprimatur and sponsorship to work as military
 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands | 133

service painters. Many of them were passionately committed to contributing their efforts
to the war. At first there was little systematic coordination of their activities by the military
bureaucracy, but this changed with the establishment of such organizations as the Army
Art Association (Rikugun Bijutsu Kykai) in 1939 as an official auxiliary organization of
the Ministry of the Army.16 Military officials actively commissioned groups of artists to
travel to the sites of Japanese military operations and create works to display in Tokyo at,
for example, the First Holy War Art Exhibition in 1939. Such exhibitions of war painting
proved tremendously popular, and the reproduction of war paintings in newspapers, mag-
azines, posters, postcards, and catalogues gave them a mass media circulation and social
impact far beyond what was customary for one-of-a-kind art works. Thus the military
bureaucracy sought to exploit the propagandistic value of commissioned war paintings to
stimulate the public to greater sacrifice for the war effort.
In the spring of 1942, the Ministry of the Army dispatched sixteen yga and Nihonga
painters to various locations in the Southern Territories, the common term in this period
for regions in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia where Japanese forces were fighting.
On the eve of his departure with this group, the Nihonga painter Kawabata Ryshi (1885
1966) declared,

No matter how long the war takes, we must prevail in the end in preserving East Asia
for East Asians and bring about a new order in the world. As artists, it is our unde-
served honor to play a role in completing this historic undertaking . . . we will exert
our fullest as cultural warriors (bunka senshi) to fulfill this heavy responsibility and
meet that which is expected of us.17

Since in Yokoyama Taikans practice Nihonga was a medium that supported the war with-
out deigning to record its observable appearance, one may well wonder how Nihonga
painters such as Kawabata Ryshi, who were commissioned to observe and paint actual
war scenography, fulfilled the expectations of the military. Ryshis trip resulted in a series
of large folding screens titled Episodes in the Southern Territories (Nanp hen), which fea-
tured a few improbable and decontextualized Indonesian figures, but also a ninth-century
Japanese prince who may have traveled to Indonesia, as well as water spirits and a dragon.
Nevertheless, some Nihonga military service painters worked in a manner that was more
faithful to the reportorial aegis of their mission. Kendall Brown notes that a large percent-
age of war paintings realized in both Nihonga and yga fulfilled a demand for tranquil
views of occupied territories to suggest that the Japanese occupation was benign and
that less civilized people needed Japans guidance.18 Those Nihonga painters who actually
painted war scenography were typically committed to blurring the bifurcation of Japa-
nese painting into Nihonga and yga. For instance, Fukuda Toyoshir, an advocate of New
Nihonga, as his group was called, wished to bring about an international Japanese paint-
ing that unifies Nihonga and yga.19 And though he continued to paint the topographies
and battle scenes of the Japanese army in the South Seas, he berated himself for his failed
attempt to use Nihonga pigments to grasp the sort of light he encountered in the South
Seas.20 Nihonga was associated with decorative and delicate painting styles and little rigor-
ous study of human anatomy and perspective. Hence many regarded it as inferior to yga
in the task of rendering of the harsh realities of modern warfare.
134|Bert Winther-Tamaki

With the works of military service painters assuming increasing attention in the art
world, critical attention was devoted to the theoretical problem of just what a successful
war painting (sensga) should be. Opinions diverged, but clear trends emerged in the
wartime writings of such advocates of war painting as the critics Uemura Takachiyo and
Yanagi Ry.21 In addition to their skepticism for the potential of Nihonga as war painting,
such writers defined this genre as a topical art (shdai geijutsu), a term that assumes
meaning in contrast to the bland motifs of much painting in early and mid-twentieth-
century Japan. Compared to the endless prewar stream of paintings of flower vases and
anonymous expressionless young women, the purportedly news-rich imagery of contem-
porary uniformed soldiers on the move in distant lands was indeed topical art. Although
European avant-garde styles such as cubism and surrealism were rejected as inappropriate
for war painting, Western painting history was by no means dismissed altogether. Battle
scenes by such French romantics as Delacroix and Gericault were extolled as the highest
paragons of war painting, and contemporary Japanese war painters were exhorted to rival
the intensity and accomplishment of their legacy. Thus, while documentary realism was
regarded as a critical component of paintings that were expected to be accurate reportage,
there was also a strong call for elevating visual fact with glorious and inspirational senti-
ment. Japanese society encompassed, of course, a modern media environment, and writers
were anxious to differentiate the artists war painting from the news photograph or film. A
good war painting was one that possessed a certain emotive drama and artistic depth that
was considered beyond the reach of a photograph.
Miyamoto Saburs oil-on-canvas Meeting of Generals Yamashita and Percival (fig.
5.5) was much lauded as a success in terms of this emerging definition of the war paint-
ing genre. The topic was assigned to the artist by the military authorities, and he traveled
in the same mission as Kawabata Ryshi in the spring of 1942 to examine the office of an
automobile factory outside Singapore that was the site of the historic British surrender two
months earlier. Miyamoto met and sketched portraits of the principal Japanese officers
who had been present at the meeting and also visited prisoner-of-war camps to sketch
their British counterparts. While his composition closely approximates the appearance of
the meeting preserved in photographs, Miyamoto added details such as the flags, enlarged
what had been a very cramped room, and gave the Japanese at the high side of the table a
much more commanding presence, while leaving the British to squirm cowardly on the
low side of the table. The painting proved very popular and won the prestigious Imperial
Art Institute Prize in 1943. The writer and painter Ishii Hakutei enthused:

If this picture is taken to Europe for exhibition after the war, it will surely tear down
the narrow-minded preconception of white superiority due to the fact that Anglo-
Saxons surrendered to East Asians. At the same time, I would like to demonstrate that
Japanese peoples oil painting technique has risen to equal that of Western people and
I think that this picture by Miyamoto will stand up in comparison.22

The war enabled a gratifying politics of artistic rivalry with European art that had long
smoldered among the motives of Japans Western painting (yga). But the very aesthetic
success that this painting garnered in the early 1940s would come to seem suspect to
 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands | 135

postwar critics. Mizusawa Tsutomu argued persuasively that an appearance of dignity was
attained by revising photographic sources in a classicizing manner that extinguished the
expressions in the photographed faces, set their eyes aimlessly adrift in the lifeless air of a
vacuous space. The falsehood of the classic, concluded Mizusawa, shifted the reality of
the war into something aesthetic, austere, and circumspect.23

Smashed Jewels

As the Japanese position in the war worsened with numerous battlefield defeats in 1944
and 1945, writers who filled pages of the one art journal that authorities allowed to remain
in publication dwelled increasingly on the need for art to express strength. A special issue
of this journal was devoted to art of power, including articles on Michelangelos symbol-
ism of power, images of the wrathful Buddhist deity Fud My, and the aesthetics of
power in Japanese architecture.24 In a paradigmatic expression of fascist aesthetics, one
military officer declared:

Figure 5.5. Miyamoto Sabur, Meeting of Generals Yamashita and Percival (Yamashita, Pshibaru
ryshirekan kaiken zu), 1942. Oil on canvas, 181 226 cm. Tokyo Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan.
136|Bert Winther-Tamaki

Beauty is power. Art is the flower of national culture. It is that which grasps the root of
the spiritual power of the nation. Now, confronted with the most serious crisis since
the founding of the empire, art must fully exercise the power of its three thousand
year tradition. On with fighting art! On with art as war power!25

In what was only superficially a contradiction of this rhetoric of power, however, war paint-
ing reflected a much greater preoccupation with death than the visualization of physical
strength.
The most conspicuous and influential proponent of painting and aestheticizing
death in the late stages of the war was Fujita Tsuguharu (18861968). After many years
of residence and considerable success in the Paris art world as a painter of beautiful nude
women, Fujita emerged as one of the most vociferous and active military service painters
in the early 1940s. His eccentricity and bohemian flair was dramatically transformed by
the exhilaration of war into nationalistic fighting spirit: I have discovered for the first
time this year, he wrote in 1943, why I spent the last forty years working as a painter. It
has become clear for the first time, that I was working for this day. . . . I feel as though I
have offered my right arm to the nation.26 Earlier melancholic doubts about the potential
of modern Japanese painting were vanquished by artistic triumph: [T]he Great East Asia
War has called forth a great unprecedented revolution in Japanese painting . . . todays war
painting is the pride of Japan, an art which I believe has no parallel in any other country of
the world.27 With this sentiment, Fujita painted with a feverish intensity and productivity
that astounded his intimates.
But increasingly, in the late phase of the war, Fujitas enthusiasm was stimulated by
combat violence and bloodlust, and he reinvented war painting as a genre of dark murky
tableaus of internecine combat. His most famous war picture depicts the suicidal last
stand in May 1943 of a remnant group of 150 Japanese defenders of a base on the Aleu-
tian island of Attu against an overwhelming American force (fig. 5.6). Fujitas large can-
vas in near monochrome browns shows a tangled mlange of figures plunging bayonets
into one another. Far from an image of heroic Japanese strength, the painting strains the
viewers capacity to distinguish the Japanese soldiers from their American enemies. Some
have debated whether such pictures reflect Fujitas abhorrence of the war, and indeed there
seems to have been some initial concern in the military about Fujitas paintings effect on
the war spirit of his viewers. Nevertheless, Fujitas scene of Attu Island was exhibited, and
spectators were moved to bow their heads before the painting and leave offerings of coins
on the floor beneath it. The compatibility of this view of battlefield horror with the official
Japanese ideology of militarism and spiritualism must not be underestimated. To glorify
the Japanese deaths at Attu, authorities invoked the archaic term gyokusai, smashed jew-
els, from classical Chinese texts about the lofty morality of one who would smash personal
treasures rather than betray a loyalty. Fujitas Attu gyokusai solemnly dramatized the doc-
trine of religious self-sacrifice for the emperor and the nation. One Attu soldier had writ-
ten, I will become a deity with a smile in the heavy fog. I am only waiting for the day of
death.28 Japanese newspapers reported that the heroic spirits of those who had died at
Attu miraculously descended to fight American soldiers in a distant location.
The passions that were unbridled in Fujitas art by this environment of extreme nation-
alism and militarism sometimes led him to paint ironic images such as his Sacred Soldiers to
 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands | 137

Figure 5.6. Fujita Tsuguharu, Attu Island Gyokusai (Attu gyokusai), 1943. Oil on canvas, 193.5 259.5 cm.
Tokyo Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan.

the Rescue of 1944. In this mise-en-scne, Japanese heroes rush into the murky dark interior
of a lavishly appointed Dutch mansion in Indonesia to rescue a buxom captive woman.
But they aim their bayonets at the confined young woman with such a menacing phallic
gesture that they seem to pose a greater threat to her than do her erstwhile Dutch masters.
Not only did Fujitas preoccupation with violence and death win continued patronage from
the authorities, but indeed a general tendency to aestheticize death was broadly character-
istic of the work of artists who managed to continue painting in the late stages of the war.
For example, in a work in his Episodes in the Southern Territories (Nanp hen), Kawabata
Ryshi painted three water spirits hurling a golden torpedo through the depths of the sea.
These figures are rendered as muscular male bodies with blue skin and expressions of fury
reminiscent of the wrathful deities that Ryshi had often painted in more conventional
renditions of Buddhist iconography. Viewers may enjoy the spirited brushwork, attractive
blue and shimmering gold palette, and even the amusing kitsch quality of Torpedo Spirits,
but it should be recognized that this image was painted in a society that glorified the deaths
of young men as kamikaze in the state-sponsored program of suicidal attack missions in
the late phase of the war.29 And when, three days before the end of the war, Ryshis own
home was destroyed by a direct hit during American air raids, he aestheticized the event
with a huge golden painting. Heroic Death by Explosion (Bakudan sange) (see Plate 11) takes
138|Bert Winther-Tamaki

a conventional theme, that of autumn melon vines and fruits, and subjects it to a violent
whiplash action that rips the plants apart and tosses their fragments. The term sange, mean-
ing heroic death in Ryshis title, also designates a Buddhist flower-scattering ceremony,
and the exploded plant matter is gilded with a splendid cloud of decorative bits of torn
gold foil. The entropic forces of war that seem to reduce the bodies of Fujitas soldiers to the
blood-brown earth are here rendered stylishly elegant, as though to polish the shine in the
term smashed jewels and beautify the deaths this ideology caused.

Defeat and Occupation

Under the American occupation, various modernist painters groups and publications that
had been terminated under the military bureaucracy were rejuvenated, and ties between
the Tokyo-centered art world and developments of modern art in Europe were eagerly
rekindled. With the influx of American military personnel into Japan during the occupa-
tion, certain sectors of the art world became beneficiaries of American patronage. Nev-
ertheless, the occupation administration also censored Japanese art and publications, for
example, banning the discussion and representation of the nuclear destruction of Hiro-
shima and Nagasaki. Moreover, this was a period of severe material deprivation and ongo-
ing political turmoil caused by events such as strikes, anti-American demonstrations, and
the Tokyo war crimes trial. Millions of military and civilian Japanese in occupied ter-
ritories returned to find their homeland devastated, and many, including artists, started
the first years of the postwar era homeless and starving. Painters, however, returned to
their canvases fairly quickly, and many responded vigorously and creatively to the new
circumstances.
A few artists were able to continue their wartime painting practice with little change
in style. The aged Yokoyama Taikan continued painting idealized views of Mount Fuji
much as he had during the war, provoking speculation about the new paintings symbol-
izing the postwar plight of his nation. Similarly, though Umehara Ryzaburs attachment
to Beijing was severed by the removal of Japanese authority in China in 1945, he found
other locales to paint in his characteristic picturesque style. Military service painters such
as Fujita Tsuguharu and Miyamoto Sabur, however, dropped the genre of war painting as
quickly as they could. Fujita was officially criticized for his war work by leaders of a large
new artists group. Though the criticism was somewhat hypocritical since many of the
critics had also painted war painting, he responded by leaving Japan, becoming a French
citizen, and spending the rest of his career painting subjects such as children, cats, and
Christian iconography. Other painters with a radical political agenda emerged, working
in socialist realist and other styles to present blistering critiques of the new conservative
regime backed by the American military.
One of the most memorable paintings that specifically represented the defeat of Japan
is a work by Fukuzawa Ichir, the painter who was incarcerated for six months in 1941
for his advocacy of surrealist art despite his support for the war. At first view, Fukuzawas
War Defeat Group (fig. 5.7) of 1948 may suggest that the artist now regretted certain of his
activities and paintings that supported official narratives of the war after his 1941 release
from prison. War Defeat Group depicts a mass of human bodies stacked like a heap of
 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands | 139

Figure 5.7. Fukuzawa Ichir, War Defeat Group (Haisen gunz), 1948. Oil on canvas, 193.9 259.1 cm.
Gunma Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan.

firewood in the center of a barren desolate landscape. Nevertheless, the intention under-
lying this painting is not entirely unrelated to the use of art for the assertion of national
power that had been a central aim of Japanese art three or four years earlier. Despite the
desolation of Fukuzawas scene, the sky is a bright blue and the piled bodies hardly have
the appearance of decaying cadavers. They are endowed with a surprisingly healthy flesh
tone and some appear to have powerful musculatures, suggesting wrestlers struggling
to free themselves from confinement. In an essay deploring postwar malaise, Fukuzawa
expressed his concern for national power:

The recent declaration by American officials that the recovery of Japanese national
power (Nihon no kokuryoku) lags behind even those occupied nations that we once
tried to control depresses our spirits. . . . The notion that the loss of the war is explained
by our national character is despairing and defeatist. But disappointment is pointless.
The present experience is the prerequisite for the opportunity for recovery.30

Fukuzawas lament of national decline and warning against defeatism suggest that the
Michelangelesque physiques of the tensely interlocked bodies as well as the robust tones
of their flesh and the monumental form of their stowage could be read as signs of latent
140|Bert Winther-Tamaki

potential. While the despair of a bitter defeat is apparent in this display of bodies, it also
harbors an odd intimation of the prerequisite for the opportunity for recovery. Indeed,
Fukuzawas rendition of the human destruction of the war seems to incorporate bodies
into an aggregate of somatic energy that might be imagined as fueling the recovery of
Japans national power.
Some of the most compelling paintings of the immediate postwar years were painted
by veterans. These men were not military service painters who had received preferential
treatment and avoided combat dangers. Rather, their prewar painting careers were inter-
rupted when they were drafted into the military as ordinary soldiers. After the war many
of these artists painted images that directly or indirectly expressed their memories of
combat horrors and the social malaise of occupied Japan. Tsuruoka Masao (19071979)
had been a colleague of Aimitsu and Matsumoto Shunsuke since the 1920s and active in
various artists groups, including the Painting Society of the New Man. He was drafted
in 1938 and served in China until 1940. After the war, anecdotes of his war experience
would become part of the narrative repeated in accounts of his artistic development. For
instance, Tsuruoka remembered witnessing a Japanese soldier who, upon seeing an old
person sitting on a chair in front of an earthen wall across a field, leveled his weapon and
said to his fellow soldiers, Hey, shall I aim at him? Tsuruoka maintained that he never
harmed anyone while in uniform, and when a superior ordered him to fire in an execu-
tion squad he took his aim off the target, though the convict died from other bullets fired.
Tsuruoka claimed that he owed his own life to a saddle horse that blocked enemy fire. Such
experiences are referenced in works such as the ironically titled Beginning (Hajimari) of
1951, which depicts a screaming figure whose head is severed by a dotted line represent-
ing the speeding trajectory of a bullet, and Evil Omen (Kych) of 1952, which depicts a
distorted human figure under attack by a large monstrous creature.
Tsuruokas Heavy Hands (Omoi te) (fig. 5.8) of 1949 is probably his best-known work,
and one that is sometimes regarded as broadly emblematic of conditions in the immediate
postwar years. This work is reportedly based on the impression of large numbers of home-
less people in underground passageways near Ueno Station in Tokyo. But the painting
shows a lone crouching figure who seems unable to struggle against the menacing geom-
etries of his environment due to the crushing weight of grotesquely swollen hands that
grow out of his own body. The attitudes and values expressed in contemporary apprecia-
tions of this work and its artist are symptomatic of common reflexes of individuals in the
art world in their struggle to recover from wartime and postwar reverses.31 Tsuruoka was
admired for having been consistently opposed to war as a matter of humanistic principle
prior to and throughout the war. He is said to have held on to his paint box during his mili-
tary service, though he was never able to use it to paint and though he never informed his
superiors that he was an artist. This fetish-like paint box was construed as symbolic of the
artistic character of his wordless opposition to the war. Tsuruoka was quite poor even by
Japanese standards in the 1940s and 1950s; he supported his family at various jobs includ-
ing grilling chicken at a cheap eatery, and his studio was the same small room that served
as his familys living room and dining room. But Tsuruoka did not paint to sell pictures,
and his perseverance in the face of hardship was taken as the sign of an admirable unwill-
ingness to compromise with society. He and his colleagues were known for their blistering
denunciations of corruption in their political and social environment, especially the art
 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands | 141

Figure 5.8.
Tsuroka Masao,
Heavy Hands
(Omoi te), 1949.
Oil on canvas,
130 97 cm.
Tokyo-to Gendai
Bijutsukan.

world. Tsuruoka, like many artists, had lost nearly all of his prewar oeuvre in American
air raids in 1945 and the new works he painted in a great burst of energy in the late 1940s
were admired as effecting a recovery of ten years lost to war. The stylistic closeness of
much of Tsuruokas work to certain of Picassos surrealist and cubist works was generally
recognized, but he was defended from charges of being derivative by the assertion that the
content of his work was deeply grounded in a bleak nihilism linked to the harshness of
Japanese reality.
Tsuruoka is remembered for contributing to a major development in Japanese art in
the mid-1950s.32 A broad tendency toward the representation of suffering or even frag-
mented human bodies in postwar painting can be seen in both Fukuzawas War Defeat
Group and Tsuruokas Heavy Hands.33 But while Fukuzawas image of death is redeemed
142|Bert Winther-Tamaki

by the hope for a future regeneration of national power, Tsuruokas Heavy Hands was a
much bleaker indictment of the dearth of humanistic values in the age of modern war and
industrialism. Tsuruoka prophetically pointed the way to more radical modes of paint-
erly disembodiment when he proclaimed that artists should paint things (mono), not
events (koto).34 The implication was that society had declined to such a level that human
bodies and actions and ideals could no longer be painted; the painters objects had been
reduced to inert objects.
During the war years, art had been pumped up with the romantic and grandiose
nationalist rhetoric of Yokoyama Taikans Japanese spirit, Matsumoto Shunsukes mil-
lennial national mission, as well as the militarys exhortation On with fighting art! On
with art as war power! Some artists were so energized by this lofty enthusiasm that the
act of wielding the paintbrush was elevated to the solemn ritual Fujita evoked when he
declared, I feel as though I have offered my right arm to the nation. But as Aimitsus
self-portrait suggests, the strain of this millennial mission could be unbearable, and as the
morbid beauty of paintings by Fujita and Kawabata Ryshi suggest, the explosive release of
this tension could be horrible. Defeat, surrender, and occupation collapsed the ideological
foundation of the painterly war romance. Thus the hand that wielded the brush as an offer-
ing to the nation was now, at least in Tsuruokas painting, pathologically weighted down
by some disabling inner force that would reduce the painting to an object as lifeless as the
materials with which it was painted.

Notes

1. Quoted by Hosono Masanobu, Senji taisei shita no inten, in Nihon bijutsu in hyakunen
shi, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Nihon bijutsu in, 1998), p. 319.
2. The text of Taikans 1938 speech is published as Nihon bijutsu seishin, in Taikan no
garon (Tokyo: Yokoyama Taikan kinen kan, 1993), p. 264.
3.Ibid.
4. Shimada Bokusen, Ii tehon ni natta, Bijutsu hyron 9, no. 3 (April 1940): p. 14.
5. See Niizeki Kimiko, Yokoyama Taikan Umi ni chinamu jdai, Yama ni chinamu jdai
o megutte, in Yokoyama Taikan Umiyama jdai ten (Tokyo: NHK, 2004), p. 17.
6. Fujishima Takeji, Naim no hinode (1937), in Geijutsu no esupuri (Tokyo: Ch
kron bijutsu shuppan, 1982), pp. 269270.
7. Yashiro Yukio, Yasui, Umehara, Runoru, Gohho (Tokyo: Shinchsha, 1953), p. 159.
8. Umehara Ryzabur, Pekin no insh, Tei 15, no. 11 (November 1939): pp. 3638.
9. Yamanashi Emiko, Nihon kindai yga ni okeru orientarizumu in Kataru genzai,
katarareru kak Nihon no bijutsushi-gaku 100-nen (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1999), p. 91.
10. Usami Sh, Ikebukuro monparunasu (Tokyo: Sheisha, 1990), p. 403.
11. Ibid., p. 408.
12. Ibid., p. 413.
13. Suzuki Kuraz, in Kokub Koka to Bijutsu, Gaka wa nani o nasubeki ka, Mizue 434
(January 1941), reprinted in Miyagi Ken Bijutsukan, Shwa no kaiga (Miyagi Kenritsu Bijut-
sukan, 1991), pp. 9295.
 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands | 143

14. Matsumoto Shunsuke, Ikite iru gaka (April 1941), reprinted in Matsumoto, Ningen
fkei (Tokyo: Ch kron, 1982), pp. 236247.
15. Matsumoto Shunsuke, Ikite iru gaka, p. 247.
16. See Tano Yasunari and Kawata Akihisa, Imji no naka no sens; Nisshin, Nichir kara
reisen made (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1996), pp. 6062.
17. Kawabata Ryshi, Nanp ni tsukai suru, Nihon bijutsu 1, no. 1 (May 1, 1942), p. 20.
18. Kendall Brown, Out of the Dark Valley: Japanese Woodblock Prints and War, 1937
1945, Impressions 23 (2001): p. 69.
19.Fukuda Toyoshir, Kans issoku, shin-nihonga ni tsuite, Bi no kuni 13, no. 12
(December 1937): pp. 6465.
20. Fukuda Toyoshir, Seisaku kki, Shin bijutsu 19 (February 3, 1943): p. 29.
21. Uemura Takachiyo, Kirokuga to geijutsu-sei, Bijutsu 1, no. 4 (May 1944): pp. 617;
Yanagi Ry, Ooinaru yashin o mote; Rikugun bijutsu ten, Bijutsu 1, no. 4 (May 1944): pp. 1821.
22. Ishii Hakutei, Bijutsu no sen (Tokyo: Hunsha, 1943), p. 353.
23. Mizusawa Tsutomu, in Mizusawa Tsutomu, ed., Fuan to sens no jidai (Nihon no kin-
dai bijutsu, 10) (Tokyo: Otsuki shoten, 1992), p. 123.
24. Bijutsu 1, no. 2 (February 1944): pp. 130.
25. Inoue Shir, Department of Information, Arts Section, Teikoku bijutsu kakuritsu no
michi, Bijutsu (MarchApril 1944), as quoted in Kikuhata Mokuma, Ekaki to sens (Fukuoka:
Kaichsha, 1993), pp. 241242.
26. Fujita Tsuguharu, Sensga ni tsuite, in Shinbijutsu (February 1943), reprinted in
Miyagi Ken Bijutsukan, Shwa no kaiga, p. 105.
27. Fujita Tsuguharu, Sensga seisaku no yken, in Bijutsu (May 1944): pp. 2223.
28. Quoted in John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New
York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 231.
29. For discussion of the politics of this and other works by Kawabata, see Mimi Yieng-
pruksawan, Japanese War Paint: Kawabata Ryshi and the Emptying of the Modern, Archives
of Asian Art 46 (1993): pp. 7690.
30. Fukuzawa Ichir, Kou omou, Bijutsu 3, no. 2 (1946): pp. 2829.
31.See Inoue Chzabur, Hymanisuto Tsuruoka Masao, Atorie 268 (May 1949):
pp. 5152; Sanami Hajime, Tsuruoka Masao ron, Mizue 524 (July 1949): pp. 5760; Yoshii
Tadashi, Tsuruoka Masao ni tsuite, Atorie 310 (September 1952): pp. 1316.
32. See, for example, Minemura Yoshiaki, The Realism of Tactility, in 1953: Shedding
Light on Art in Japan, Eng. trans. by Tomii Reiko, pp. 45, 4950 (Tokyo: Meguro kuritsu bijut-
sukan, 1997).
33.See Bert Winther-Tamaki, Oil Painting in Post-Surrender Japan; Reconstructing
Subjectivity through Deformation of the Body, Monumenta Nipponica 58, no. 3 (Autumn
2003): pp. 347396.
34. Oyamada Jir, Komai Tetsur, Sait Yoshishige, Tsuruoka Masao, Sugimata Tadashi,
Zadankai: Koto de wa naku, mono o kaku to iu koto, Bijutsu hihy 26 (1954): pp. 1324.
 Reiko Tomii

6 HowGendaiBijutsuStoletheMuseum
An Institutional Observation of the
Vanguard 1960s

Dismantle the power machine of art [bijutsu kenryoku kik] to win the
struggle of the 1970s to destroy modern rationalism! . . .
Dismantle the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art!. . . .
Smash the open call exhibition [kbo-ten] system . . . ! . . .
Dismantle the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum!
The powers that control art [bijutsu kenryoku], which we must smash,
has its de facto headquarters at the Tokyo Metropolitan. Let us begin a
struggle to liberate the enemys fortress by our own hands.
Smash Tokyo Biennale 70! Smash Expo 70! . . .
From Bikyt, An Appeal to Artists, July 5, 19691

Art does not exist in vacuum. It exists and evolves in a larger context of history, society,
and culture. Yet art also asserts its own internal life, each work of art comprising its own
autonomous universe. Art engenders and inhabits its own environment, with individual
artists more often than not operating in what is generally called the art world in modern
times, which has its own history, society, and culture. Within this matrix, the institution
(seido) of art governs what artists may and may not do, constituting that which vanguards
dare to challenge. The institution functions both conceptually and socially. Conceptually,
for example, the received idea of what a painting should look like prescriptively defines
the medium. The social institutions are arts infrastructure, encompassing museums, gal-
leries, schools, and the exhibition system, among others. The working of the institution as
a whole is not always visible or obvious, precisely because the institution is an ingrained
mentalpart of practice. Moreover, as time passes by, its invisible grip tends to intensify
rather than weaken; if no effort is made to uncover its existence, it can even totally be
buried by the sands of time.
In the vanguard 1960s, the focus of this chapter, the modern institution was under
constant attack.2 After Gutai (Gutai Art Association) prefigured a gamut of experimen-
tal options of 1960s art already in the mid-1950s, Anti-Art (Han-geijutsu) and Non-Art
(Hi-geijutsu) made a concerted effort to critique, subvert, and dismantle Art (Geijutsu),
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 145

which is the modern institution par excellence. (The critical difference between Anti-Art,
spanning from around 1958 through mid-decade, and Non-Art, which followed Anti-Art,
concerns the issue of making: While Anti-Art rendered a fervent attack on making
itself, Non-Art was preoccupied with not making.) If performance art, which arose from
Anti-Art in full force and continued as Non-Art, actively shifted the site of operation to
outside the institutional confines, conceptualism, following a similar evolutionary trajec-
tory, undertook the ultimate institutional critique (seido hihan) through a number of strat-
egies.3 Taken together, the art of 1960s Japan was distinctly anti-institutional. It dynami-
cally echoed the politically turbulent atmosphere that enveloped numerous regions in the
world, including Japan, whose geopolitical situation tied to the Anpo (U.S.-Japan security
treaty) added local ramifications to the globally raging antiwar, antiestablishment, and
student movements. It also pointed to the state of international contemporaneity (koku-
saiteki djisei) in art,4 wherein artists in diverse locationsnotably Euro-America, but also
Japan, Latin America, and other formerly peripheral areasmore or less contemporane-
ously dealt brutal blows to the age-old conventions of art.
In Japanese art, anti-institutional radicalism of the 1960s was so rich and compelling
that it has almost overshadowed an integral episode of this story: the institutionaliza-
tion of the avant-garde (zenei) as gendai bijutsu (contemporary art). This episode has a
theoretical implication, resonating with the concept of gendai (the contemporary) put
forth by the art critic Miyakawa Atsushi, who astutely observed the collapse of kindai
(the modern or modernity) brought about by Anti-Art and the preceding movement of
gestural abstraction (codified as Art Informel in Europe and Japan).5 Thus, gendai bijutsu
was not just art produced today but art that reflects the urgency of today. Seen histori-
cally, the rise of gendai bijutsu came in tandem with the decline of the gadan, or Japans
art establishment,6 effected by the increasing irrelevancy of Nihonga (Japanese-style paint-
ing) and yga (Western-style painting), two modern practices that were the cornerstones
of the gadan development since the late nineteenth century. Nowhere can the ascent of
gendai bijutsu be more clearly observed than in the museum, the site expressly shunned
in 1960s art.
What may amount to the foundation myth of gendai bijutsu was played out in two
acts. In act I, by 1960 Anti-Art invaded the museum but quickly lost it. In act II, Non-
Art took it back in 1970. The museum in this story was the Tokyo Metropolitan Art
Museumor the de facto headquarters of the gadan (power machine) in the words of
the Artists Joint Struggle Council (Bikyt), a radical artists collective founded in 1969
amidst the nationwide campus uprisings. The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (Tokyo-
to Bijutsukan; hereafter Tokyo Metropolitan) served as the proverbial line drawn in the
sand in the great battles7 of gendai bijutsu, while two newspaper-sponsored exhibitions
held therethe Yomiuri Independent Exhibition and the Tokyo Biennale (organized by
Mainichi)became battlegrounds. However, by the late 1960s, the Tokyo Metropolitan
was no longer the sole site that engaged vanguard artists, as demonstrated by Bikyts
not so short enemy list (see chapter epigraph and Plate 12). The museum, in this sense,
ultimately signifies the official, institutionalized part of the art world.
What follows is a narration of this story, complete with a prologue (outlining the
back history), an interlude (looking at the intervening exile), and an epilogue (examining
the implications).
146|Reiko Tomii

Prologue: The Museum for Living Artists

In conjunction with the Peace Memorial Exposition to be held in March

1922, we propose to construct a display hall for art [bijutsu chinretsu-
kan] as a permanent memorial. The primary purpose of the proposed
display hall for art is to function as venues of art exhibitions. . . . The new
facility must be built of fireproof material and have the gross area of over
90,000 square feet [2,500 tsubo].
Proposal to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, 19218

The Tokyo Metropolitan was opened in 1926 in Ueno Park in central Tokyo9 (fig. 6.1). It
was not conceived as a collecting institution but intended primarily as a rental exhibition
hall. Although its gallery spaces were rented for a variety of kikaku-ten (specially planned
exhibitions) organized by newspaper companies and other entities, the museum was first
and foremost the home of kbo-ten (open call exhibitions), which encompassed the gov-
ernment salon and dantai-ten, or salon-style annual exhibitions sponsored by scores of
art organizations (bijutsu dantai). The government salon dates back to 1907, when it was
first introduced as Ministry of Education Art Exhibition and nicknamed Bunten. Hav-
ing been renamed and restructured over the years, it remained both the focal point of art
world politics and the driving force of modern art movements.

Figure 6.1.Okada Shinichir, plan for Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, c. 1924. Reproduced from
Tokyo Furitsu Bijutsukan kensetsu no yurai oyobi jiseki yroku (The origin and history of the Tokyo
Metropolitan Art Museum), 1925. Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 147

By the time the Tokyo Metropolitan was established, the exhibition paradigm of gov-
ernmental (kan) vs. nongovernmental (zaiya) was established in the art world. Dissi-
dent artists, be they conservative or progressive, would form art organizations in order to
have their own exhibition forums, many of which were still modeled after the salon system
consisting of the members displays and the juried, open-call sections. The governmental
salon and a complex network of nongovernmental dantai-ten soon formed the core of
the gadan establishment. The regime of gadan-centered mainstream art, headquartered at
the Tokyo Metropolitan, continued to dominate postwar art, even after the official salon
underwent a series of democratizing measures and was finally reconstituted as a private
foundation Nitten (shortened from The Japan Fine Arts Exhibition) in 1958.
The Tokyo Metropolitan was a unique institution in modern Japan. Its neighbors
in Ueno Park long included three national art facilities: the Tokyo National University
of Fine Arts and Music, dating to 1887, which trained future artists; the Tokyo National
Museum, instituted in 1872 to collect and preserve traditional and early Meiji art; and the
National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo, established in 1930, whose task
was to study the nations art. Situated among these hallowed institutions of art, the Tokyo
Metropolitan upheld a mission that was distinctly modern: to present the work of liv-
ing artists through open-call exhibitions. Moreover, the Tokyo Metropolitan kept a busy
schedule (some 770 exhibitions, for example, were held during its first twenty years), and
its exhibitions were all extremely well attended.10 Its mission to show the work of living
artists kept it popular after more specialized museums opened in the greater metropolitan
area in the 1950s, including the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura (opened in 1951 as
Kanagawa Prefectures facility); the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (1952); the
private Bridgestone Museum of Art (also 1952), specializing in European modern art; and
the National Museum of Western Art, also in Ueno Park (1959).
During the occupation period, the art world, like the rest of Japanese society, was
buoyed by the hope of democratization. One promising idea was to create an independent
exhibition. The word independent unequivocally signaled freedom, with any fee-pay-
ing artist given a chance to show his or her works without being subjected to the jury. The
independent system would circumvent the rigidly vertical hierarchy of the gadan. Better
yet, if held at the Tokyo Metropolitan, the independent exhibition would send a breath of
fresh air into this epicenter of the Japanese art world.
The idea was so attractive that two competing programs were launched, both with
the exact same title, Japan Independent Exhibition (Nihon andepandan-ten). The leftist
Japan Art Society (Nihon Bijutsu-kai) went first with its program in 1947,11 followed two
years later by the Yomiuri Newspapers, a media giant. Artists soon devised nicknames,
Nichibi Anpan and Yomiuri Anpan, to differentiate the two.12 The latters name was
not officially changed to Yomiuri Independent Exhibition until 1957.
The goals of these two independent exhibitions could not be more different. If the
Nichibi Anpan represented a commitment to the principle of democratic art, the Yomi-
uri Anpan was a publicity tool of the newspaper company, eager to exert influence in
the art world. The Yomiuri Anpan was routinely accompanied by advance publicity, and
concurrent reviews written by such influential critics as Takiguchi Shz were printed
in the pages of the nationwide newspaper.13 Yomiuris true rival was not the leftist art-
ists group but two other national dailies, Asahi and Mainichi, which were also vying for
148|Reiko Tomii

power in the postwar art world. After some democratization effort, Mainichi moved to
establish the International Art Exhibition, Japan (Nihon kokusai bijutsu-ten) in 1952
and inaugurated the Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan (Gendai Nihon bijutsu-ten)
in 1954, thereafter alternating the two annually.14 Both held at the Tokyo Metropolitan,
the Mainichi Contemporary and Mainichi International began as invitational bien-
nials. In the 1960s, they went on to offer vanguard artists a valuable, if more exclusive,
entrance into the official art world, with the Mainichi Contemporary adding open call
competition sections in 1962. In 1961, Mainichi emulated the by-then prestigious Venice
and So Paolo Biennales and officially renamed its international exhibition in English as
Tokyo Biennale.
Whereas the combined appeal of a carte blanche to show at the museum for liv-
ing artists and Yomiuris media machine attracted Anti-Art practitioners to the Yomiuri
Anpan, Mainichis ambitious cultural enterprises at the Tokyo Metropolitan set the stage
for Non-Art.

Act I: How Anti-Art Lost the Museum

In December [1962], The Guidelines for Specifications of Works to Be

Displayed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum were introduced.
This ordinance expressly stated the museum would refuse to show:
(1) works that use mechanisms which emit unpleasant or high-pitched
sounds; (2) works that use foul-smelling or perishable materials;
(3) works that use cutlery and may therefore be deemed dangerous;
(4) works that give the viewer a very unpleasant impression, which may
deemed violating public sanitation ordinances; (5) works that spread
gravel or sand directly on the floor, or use materials which may dam-
age or soil the floors; (6) works that hang directly from the ceiling. . . .
The itemized bans . . . indeed intimated the kinds of work shown at the
Yomiuri Independent Exhibition earlier that year. After learning about
the ordinance in the news report, we the artists felt uneasy. We even had
a premonition: the Yomiuri Independent might soon be over.
Akasegawa Genpei, Anti-Art Anpan15

At the Tokyo Metropolitan, Anti-Art and its invasion (nagurikomi)in the words of
the critic Hary Ichir16 were first noticed at the tenth Yomiuri Anpan in 1958. While
Ushio Shinohara, the poster boy of Anti-Art and a soon-to-be member of the group Neo
Dada (initially, Neo Dadaism Organizer[s]), showed two junk sculptures and premiered
his Mohawk hairdo, Kysh-ha (literally, Kysh school) transported the members
asphalt-saturated works all the way from Fukuoka. From then on, objetswhich in the
Japanese art lexicon means both ready-made everyday objects and works incorporat-
ing such objectsproliferated exponentially and became Anti-Arts signature feature.
By 1960, the objets craze was hard to miss: the critic Tno Yoshiaki famously called the
work of Kud Tetsumi junk anti-art in his review for the Yomiuri newspaper, thus
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 149

unwittingly inserting the rubric of Anti-Art into the Japanese discourse.17 The 1962
Anpan was dominated by vanguard one-upmanship, as inventive artists went beyond
objets in subverting conventional painting and sculpture. Most talked about was Kud
Tetsumi, who successfully realized a room-size installation, with black phallic objets
hanging from the ceiling, titled Distribution Map of Impotence and the Rise of Protec-
tion Dome at the Saturation Point. He cunningly exploited the entry-fee system, which
practically allowed an artist to secure a whole room by paying for the entire length of
its walls.18 An intermedia approach was pursued by Yasunao Tone, a member of the col-
lective Group Ongaku (literally, group music), who made his first participation with a
sculpture comprising a noise-emitting tape recorder wrapped in white cloth.19 Audi-
ence participation was explored by the group Jikan-ha (literally, time school). One of
its installations involved paint-filled sacks hidden under a large cloth laid on the floor;
when museum-goers stepped on them, the paint was squeezed out to stain the cloth.20 The
chaotic atmosphere of the Yomiuri Anpan is illustrated by Akasegawa Genpei in Unruly
Anpan-Eating Competition! Rushing Straight to Self-Destruction! a scene from his pic-
torial chronicle of 1960s art, Great Battles of the World of Art in Japan (1972; see also the
extended caption to this illustration with Plate 13).21 (Anpan is a homonym for a Japanese
bun filled with red-bean paste.)
The museum administrators found these works at the 1962 Yomiuri Anpan too
unconventional to tolerate at a facility of social education.22 They removed works incor-
porating cutlery and those they deemed obscene, as well as the paint-bag installation
by Jikan-ha.23 As a step further, the Tokyo Metropolitan introduced the Guidelines for
Specifications of Works to Be Displayed in late December 1962, just in time for the Yomi-
uri Anpan annually scheduled in early March.24 The museum ostentatiously consulted
with the representatives of dantai-ten, the mainstay of the Tokyo Metropolitans exhi-
bition program, but the guidelines were transparently targeted at the Yomiuri Anpan.
In particular, six widely publicized bans (see the epigraph to this section) precisely and
uncannily reflected some of the Yomiuri works from 1962, either outright removed or
quietly tolerated.
Objections to the new regulations never amounted to a unified voice strong enough
to force the museum bureaucracy to repeal it. There were scattered protests at the fif-
teenth Yomiuri Independent in 1963. On the first day, Hamaguchi Tomiharu, a member
of Zenei Tosa-ha (literally, avant-garde Tosa school), whose work with cutlery was
removed the year before, presented an unofficial exhibition outside the museum; one of
his works incorporated a kitchen knife rotating in a birdcagewith electricity borrowed
from the museum, at that.25 Performances inside the museum more intently challenged
the guidelines. Among them, Zero Jigen (literally, zero dimension), a Nagoya-based
collective, used the floor to perform one of their notorious rituals (gishiki), lying down to
gaze at an erotic print pasted to the ceiling.26 In a public area outside the galleries, Kosugi
Takehisa, a Group Ongaku member, played his Instrument, a large bag made of white
cloth. He got in the bag and stuck out his limbs alternately from its zippered openings:
that was his Chamber Music.27 Kazakura Sh, a Neo Dada member, joined in by standing
on his head, completely naked from the waist down. Kosugi and Kazakura were taken
to the museums office and interrogated by Yomiuri officials, who almost took them to
the police.28
150|Reiko Tomii

The most radical was Imaizumi Yoshihiko, a close associate of Hi Red Center. The
politically minded painter-editor long denounced the corporate-sponsored independent
exhibition as utterly absurd and now saw it defanged by the display guidelines.29 To put the
no longer viable Yomiuri Anpan to death, conceptually speaking, he mailed his appeal, a
veritable funeral notice, Send the Independent Exhibition Black Mourning Armbands.
And You Go Out of the Museum! to the Yomiuri regulars, some of whom responded to
his call on the opening day by wearing black armbands. On the eve of the closing day, he
painted the word died on the huge exhibition signage at the museum entrance so that
it would read The Yomiuri Independent Exhibition Died, declaring the demise of the
exhibition.30
As predicted by Imaizumi and as tacitly dreaded by many Anti-Art practitioners,
Yomiuri terminated its independent exhibition program in 1964. It sent an announcement
in early January, a mere two months before the scheduled opening.
Anti-Art thus lost the museum, with the young rebels themselves ruining a rareif
not the soleopportunity given to them: the two weeks that were the best time of the
year.31 By nature, Anti-Art was subversive. Its transgressive intent inevitably assumed
an antisocial dimension. When their transgressions clashed with the museum, Anti-Art
practitioners cried freedom of expression and the museum as an extralegal space.32
But they were knowing offenders, committed to testing the limits of the patience of both
the art world and society at large. They were indeed rushing straight to self-destruction.
In the politically contentious decade, the social expediency of keeping things under
control may have been a mitigating factor in Yomiuris decision. The institutional impe-
tus, however, cannot be underestimated. The whole incident illuminates the nature of
the Tokyo Metropolitan, which was not a museological institution but was essentially
a rental exhibition hall for dantai-ten. The museums administrators were not curators
whose museological duty was the safekeeping of collections, but bureaucratic land-
lords,33 mindful of the safekeeping of the facility. Their museum was far from being an
idealized space of white cube.34 On the contrary, the Tokyo Metropolitan was merely
a box for dantai-ten, which, in their creatively backward state, no longer functioned as
an aesthetic institution but existed as a social institution. Should the autonomy of art be
acknowledged inside the painting frame or on the sculptural pedestal, the autonomous
existence of art beyond these tiny sanctuaries was subjugated to the gadans preroga-
tives, such as the elaborately structured membership hierarchy, the master-disciple rela-
tionship, and the resulting favoritism, sectionalism, and territorialism. In this sense, the
space inside the museumand the exhibitions held in itconstituted a highly socialized
space in which the guarantee of freedom of expression, a core concept of democracy,
was not necessarily absolute. Indeed, the Yomiuri Independents exhibition guidelines
contained a proviso to protect the museum and the exhibition against turning into an
extralegal territory: while abiding by the spirit of the independent exhibition, the orga-
nizers [Yomiuri] may refuse the display of certain works . . . should unavoidable circum-
stances arise.35
If neither the Tokyo Metropolitan nor Yomiuri was obligated to show Anti-Art, then
the rebellious partying must end. Depending on how it is looked at, Anti-Art either bit
the hand that fed it, outgrew the straightjacket that is the museum, or outlived its own
potential.36
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 151

Interlude: In a Wide Open Wilderness

We rally all lone wolves scattering in all corners of Japan to [Gifu Inde-
pendent Art Festival].
Howling against the phony authority, we command all self-proclaimed
renegades to gather together.
1. Our new independent exhibition begins where the old one
ended.
2. Liberate ourselves from the museum which has become the
elitist haven.
Nishio Ichiz, 196537

In retrospect, the most significant event in the aftermath of the Yomiuri Anpans termina-
tion was the Anti-Art debate, in which the young critic Miyakawa Atsushi put forth two
astute observations: that Anti-Art stylistically represented the descent to the everyday
and that it is impossible for Art to vanish or not exist.38 The first thesis was equivalent to
the avant-garde mantra of blurring the boundary between art and life, as codified in the
West, and the second was tantamount to declaring the mission of Anti-Art to eradicate
Art as being a theoretical impossibility.
A more mundane concern for artists was to determine what step to take next. Opin-
ions split into two camps. One camp believed that a new independent exhibition must be
organized by artists themselves to extend the fifteen-year legacy of the Yomiuri Anpan in
a truly independent manner.39 The most ardent leader in this camp was the critic Hary
Ichir, who managed to arrange Independent 64 (also known as Harys Anpan) at none
other than the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in June, by subleasing an exhibition slot
from the leftist Avant-Garde Art Society (Zenei bijutsu-kai). The other camp was rep-
resented by the critic Tno Yoshiaki, who coolly observed that there was just one less
venue in which to exhibit.40 Such Anti-Art pioneers as Ushio Shinohara, Miki Tomio, and
Nakanishi Natsuyuki generally agreed with him.41
Despite the emotional shock caused by Yomiuris termination, Tnos pronouncement
accurately reflected the state of vanguard art at the time. Throughout modern times, dis-
sident artists, avant-garde or otherwise, made it their mission to seek out alternative sites
of operation. In the prewar years, the customary way to express dissent was to establish
a new dantai to hold new open-call exhibitions. The term given to antisalon groups was
zaiya, which literally means being in the wilderness, signifying in essence outside the
government salon. In the postwar years, especially in the 1960s, vanguard artists inven-
tively expanded this dissident tradition to go into the wildernessoutside the official
venues of postwar art, such as the museums, dantai-ten, and other types of postwar open-
call exhibitions. The wilderness was, indeed, the natural habitat of the avant-garde, where
the most radical and challenging contingents of 1960s art flourished.
Anti-Arts descent to the everyday took place in many places, as such new expressive
strategies as objets, installation, and performance emerged. An urge for action inspired art-
ists to wander into the streets as well as unconventional indoor venues, including a public
152|Reiko Tomii

bathhouse (Zero Jigen) (fig. 6.2) and a courtroom (Akasegawa Genpei).42 These experi-
ments in the public sphere naturally led artists to the space of publicity, engendered by the
rapidly growing mass media, in which artists could court and gain publicity as reward
in the otherwise rewardless (mush) life of the avant-garde.43 Printed matter, in the form
of ephemera and mail art, constituted a key alternative for language-based conceptualism,
as exemplified by Yoko Onos book of instructions, Grapefruit (1964). Sgetsu Art Center
in Tokyo was the hotbed of intermedia experimentation, with other rental recital halls
and small theaters also offering suitable alternatives for performative adventures, most
notably Gutais pioneering onstage presentations.44 By far, the biggest alternative site of
all was outside Japan, with such artists as Kusama Yayoi and On Kawara asserting their
originality on the foreign soil of New York.

Figure 6.2. Zero Jigen,

Bathing Ritual in Full
Dress, 1964. Docu-
mentary photograph of
performance at a public
bathhouse in Tokyo.
Photo Hirata Minoru.
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 153

In the post-Yomiuri wilderness, there were two important developments. The first
concerns the shifting nature of collectivism. For ambitious vanguard artists, it was obvi-
ously no longer viable to form yet another dantai.45 The more agile and smaller assembly
of shdan (collectives) served postwar artists well, especially in the 1960s, allowing them
to hold small, members-only exhibitions and collaborate in performative works. A much
looser mode of association was also devised: to hold a group exhibition with like-minded
artists at a rental gallery without formalizing the assembly as a collective. Instrumental in
this direction was Ushio Shinohara, who subsequently defined the 1960s as the age of gal-
leries.46 He organized three separate exhibitions, all titled Sweet, at Kawasumi, Shinjuku
Daiichi, and Lunami Galleries in 1963, and Left Hook and Big Fight at Tsubaki Kindai Gal-
lery in 1964 and 1965, respectively. The best-known was Off Museum, held at Tsubaki Kin-
dai Gallery in June 1964, followed by its outdoor component at the Tama riverbank later
that summer. It was conceived as a counteraction to Harys Anpan held at the Tokyo Met-
ropolitan.47 The rental galleries (kashi gar) wereand still area vital building block
of Japans art world. During the 1960s, a number of rental galleriesincluding the legend-
ary yet short-lived Naiqua (19631966)were newly opened, serving as a test tube48 for
vanguard experiments.
Another important development was a brief succession of artist-organized regional
independent exhibitions, which set the stage for a new generation to emerge. The spiritual
heir to Harys Anpan, these exhibitions included Gifu Independent Art Festival (1965),
Sakai Contemporary Art Festival (Osaka, 1966), All Setouchi Contemporary Art Exhibi-
tion (Okayama, 19661996), and South Japan Contemporary Art Exhibition (Kchi, 1967).
The Gifu Anpan, organized by the local vanguard collective Vava (est. 1958), set the tone,
eschewing the museum la Off Museum, as proclaimed by the Vava leader Nishio Ichiz
(see the epigraph to this section). The exhibition held at a citizens center, an adjoining
park, and a bank of the Nagara River became the vanguard event of the year.
Once again, the critic Tno Yoshiaki, who had christened Anti-Art in 1960, managed
to divine a new tendency. He singled out two works, Hole and Homo Sapiens, from among
some two hundred works reportedly on display,49 under the novel rubric of body art.50
In Hole, the nine members of Group I (fig. 6.3), a Kobe collective, silently toiled under
the scorching summer sun for the duration of the Anpan, digging a hole ten meters in
diameter and filling it back in. If their act signified a meaninglessly harsh treatment of
the body, a pointless imprisonment of the body51 was undertaken in Homo Sapiens (fig.
6.4) by Ikemizu Keiichi, an Osaka artist. He put himself inside an approximately nine-foot
cubic cage with a multilingual label: Jinrui, Homo sapiens, Ningen, Man, .
Although the artist-organized Anpan movement is often criticized because it did not
last, artists were in reality ill-equipped to manage large-scale affairs and generally lacked
necessary administrative support.52 (Brilliant in this respect was Independent 64 in the
Wilderness, conceived by the conceptualist Matsuzawa Yutaka, who ingeniously elimi-
nated administrative tasks by asking participants to send their works through demate-
rialized mannersincluding telepathyto a wilderness [kya] near his home in cen-
tral Japan.53) However short it might have been, the post-Yomiuri independent exhibition
movement provided the new generation with crucial regional alternatives in which they
could forge a sense of competitive camaraderie comparable to the kind that had once per-
meated the Yomiuri Anpan.
Figure 6.3. Group I,
Hole, 1965. Documentary
photographs of perfor-
mance at Gifu Indepen-
dent Art Festival. Photo
courtesy Kawaguchi
Tatsuo.
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 155

Figure 6.4. Ikemizu Keiichi,

Homo Sapiens, 1965. Docu-
mentary photograph of per-
formance at Gifu Independent
Art Festival. Photo courtesy
Ikemizu Keiichi.

Act II: How Non-Art Regained the Museum

At Tokyo Biennale 70, Carl Andre scattered pieces of rusty wire on the
floor. The meaning of the wire did not change, after it was transferred
from the streets to inside the museum. What changed is the space
itself. This space, however, concerns neither visuality nor plas-
ticity. They represent an old story related to painting and sculpture.
The space in question is a space of action [ki] in which we take
action. This space of action has effected a certain change. The work
[sakuhin], then, that we should study is not the arrangement of rusty
wire pieces, but the space as a whole dissimilated by them.
Nakahara Ysuke, 197154

Ironically, in the post-Yomiuri 1960s, the official environment surrounding vanguard art-
ists appreciably improved. On the museological front, the year 1964 saw the opening of
Japans first ever museum of contemporary art in a regional city of Takaoka, Niigata Pre-
fecture. Founded by a private collector, Komagata Jkichi, the Museum of Contemporary
156|Reiko Tomii

Art, Nagaoka (hereafter Nagaoka Contemporary) immediately instituted an annual

competition to proactively contribute to the advancement of gendai bijutsu.55 If the
Nagaoka Contemporarys annual competition (held through 1968) asserted its interna-
tionalism by inviting foreign artists and jurors from the second year onward, the Kyoto
branch of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (hereafter Kyoto Modern and
Tokyo Modern) paid attention to the domestic development. Opened in 1963 as a make-
shift branch and made a full-fledged museum in 1967, the Kyoto Modern launched an
annual survey, Tendency of Contemporary Art, which would continue through 1970.
At the Tokyo Metropolitan, its exhibition calendar was affected by the political sit-
uation under the dark shadow cast by the decennial renewal of Anpo slated for 1970.
Whereas the massive protest against the treatys renewal in 1960 spilled into the Tokyo
Metropolitan in the form of Anti-Art fervor, the anticipation of another bloody con-
test was accompanied by a more official turn of events. Above all, the timing of Expo
70the first Asian worlds fair to be held in Osakawas highly suspicious in the eye
of the cultural left, which accused the state of using the festive occasion as a sinister tac-
tic to divert the Japanese peoples attention from the anti-Anpo struggle.56 (Many Anti-
Art practitioners as well as other vanguard artists who participated in Expo 70 were
therefore accused of selling out and considered to have brought about the demise of the
avant-garde.) Mainichi, which alternated the international and domestic contemporary
biennials at the Tokyo Metropolitan, decided to push back the Mainichi International
(better known as Tokyo Biennale) to 1970 so that it would coincide with Expo 70, in
which gendai bijutsu was extensively mobilized to enliven the fairs central facilities and
corporate pavilions.
Touted as a unique international exhibition and an extraordinary adventure by the
organizers, Tokyo Biennale 1970 differed from its counterpart in Venice and Mainichis
nine preceding international exhibitions with its appointment of the critic Nakahara
Ysuke as general commissioner, who held the sole authority to select artists not based
on national lines.57 Taking on a thematic curatorial project was not new to Nakahara,
who curated Room in Alibi (Fuzai no heya) for Naiqua Gallery in 1963 and co-curated
Tricks and Vision with another critic, Ishiko Junz, for Tokyo Gallery and Muramatsu
Gallery in 1968. This time, he extensively traveled in Euro-America and selected forty art-
ists under the theme of Between Man and Matter. Among them, twenty-seven were non-
Japanese artists, seventeen of whom came to Tokyo to produce and install their works. A
great degree of ephemerality was demonstrated in the works by these forty artists, who
varyingly adopted strategies of Arte Povera, conceptualism and postminimalism, and
Japans Non-Art, which encompassed both conceptualism and Mono-ha (literally, things
school). As a whole, Tokyo Biennale 1970 was permeated by internationality and con-
temporaneity (djisei). Not coincidentally, these two attributes also marked Contempo-
rary Art: Dialogue Between the East and the West, an exhibition that in the previous year
inaugurated a new building of the Tokyo Modern (designed by Taniguchi Yoshir) near
the Imperial Palace.58 A major difference was that while the Tokyo Modern looked at the
past quarter-century, Nakahara selected from the most vanguard of global vanguard art.
By doing so, he anointed Non-Art as a truly contemporary gendai bijutsu different from
that showcased in Expo 70. It was a triumphant return59 of vanguard art to the Tokyo
Metropolitan.
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 157

Gendai bijutsu in a broader sense was welcomed to two Mainichi Contemporary exhi-
bitions that flanked Tokyo Biennale 1970. The 1969 Mainichi Contemporary showcased
Frontiers of Gendai Bijutsu by inviting eighty-seven artists to produce works under such
themes as Light and Motion and Labyrinthine Rooms. Two types of gendai bijutsu
were present: one garishly anticipating a technology-based intermedia carnival, Expo
70, and the other quietly pointing to the ephemeral re-examination of art, which would
dominate Tokyo Biennale 1970. The reconfiguration of the competitive sections, which
had been initiated with the sculpture section in 1969, was completed in 1971, with the
entire competitive sections streamlined into two categories, heimen and rittai (literally,
two- and three-dimensional works). This represented an official acknowledgment that
painting and sculpture were no longer viable, that the consequences of Anti-Art and
Non-Art were here to stay. At the same time, the 1971 Mainichi Contemporary emulated
Tokyo Biennale 1970 in its invitational section, embracing the theme of Man and Nature
and inviting gendai bijutsu practitioners, many of whom worked in the directions domi-
nant in the 1970 exhibition.60
In this context, a new type of vanguard practice arose: Mono-ha, a singularly success-
ful movement fraught with many contradictions. Stylistically, its potent expression of raw
materiality revealed a high degree of ephemerality, typical of Japanese installation art. Stra-
tegically, it actively exploited an increasingly accommodating official environment while
advancing the resolutely Non-Art principle of not making (tsukuranai koto). The core
group surrounding Sekine Nobuo, its leading practitioner, and Lee Ufan, its main ideo-
logue, never formally declared itself as a collective, yet the movement that spread beyond
the initial assembly gained the name Mono-ha by 1973,61 the year Sekine shifted from
Mono-ha practice to public sculpture, still a nascent field, in search of arts social relevance.
Sekines meteoric ascent to stardom demonstrates how things had changed from the
heyday of Anti-Art. In 1968, Sekine completed his graduate studies in oil painting at Tama
Art University; in 1970, merely two years later, he was selected a Japanese representative to
the Venice Biennale, the highest possible recognition a young artist could dream of at the
time. In comparison, it took ten years for Takamatsu Jir, a Yomiuri veteran, to achieve
the same recognition after his graduation in 1958. His break in the official art world came
with his double success in 1965 at the Nagaoka Contemporarys competition and the Shell
Prize Exhibition (established in 1956 to discover young talents), which made him the first
star artist of gendai bijutsu, and he was duly sent to Venice in 1968.
Sekine, a one-time studio assistant of Takamatsus, owed his success to a fortuitous
clerical mistake at the Mainichi Contemporary of 1968: a high-relief painting from his
Phase (Is) series was accepted into not the painting but sculpture competition. His explo-
ration of spatial cognition, informed by mathematical topology (is sgaku) as well as the
philosophy of Zen and Laozi, went on to win this painting major a second prize in sculp-
turethe honor that resulted in an invitation to the first Biennale of Kbe at the Suma
Detached Palace Garden: Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition (Kbe Suma riky ken
gendai chkoku-ten). His entry to the Suma exhibition in October of that year was the
monumental Phase: Mother Earth (fig. 6.5), produced in situ. The overwhelming presence
of cylindrically compacted dirt towering 2.6 meters high and accompanied by a hole as its
negative double won Sekine instant recognition and the Asahi Newspaper Prize. A month
later, in November, his Phase: Sponge won the grand prize at the Nagaoka Contemporarys
Figure 6.5. Sekine Nobuo, Phase: Mother Earth, 1968. Documentary photograph of site-specific sculp-
ture at Suma Detached Palace Garden. Photo Murai Osamu.
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 159

competition, sealing his stardom. His busy schedule in 1969, which included an invitation
to the Mainichi Contemporarys Frontiers section, was followed in 1970 by his participa-
tion in the Venice Biennale, thanks to the critic Tno Yoshiaki, Japans commissioner for
that year and a perceptive talent spotter.
Sekine knew he needed more than the approval of the official art world to leave a mark
in history. The shortcomings of Anti-Art taught him that he and his comrades needed
their own language, instead of ideas borrowed from Euro-America, to grow out of the
ingrained modernity.62 Professional critics were utterly incapable of understanding his
work beyond its topological visuality. It was Lee Ufan who filled this discursive void. The
Korean-born artist-theorist expounded on Miyakawas concept of gendai and formulated
a theory of the world as it is (aruga mama no sekai) to validate Sekines desire for not
making.63 The strategic alliance of Sekine and Lee involved a tightly knit group of art-
istsall recent graduates of Tama Art University (Koshimizu Susumu, Yoshida Katsur,
Narita Katsuhiko, and Suga Kishio)but was never formalized as an exhibition collective
like Neo Dada and Hi Red Center. Instead, Lee opted to create a discursive presence in the
print media by orchestrating a roundtable discussion, A World Revealed by Mono, for
the February 1970 issue of the contemporary art magazine Bijutsu tech (Art notebook).64
Around 1970, the physical presence of what would be known as Mono-ha, in differ-
ent permutations, was felt in the official art world, including the Kyoto Moderns 1969
Tendency survey and Tokyo Biennale 1970. However, the decisive event was August
1970, an exhibition organized by Tno, Nakaharas rival. Held at the Tokyo Modern, it
was a response to Tokyo Biennale 1970, held at the Tokyo Metropolitan. Tno specifi-
cally excluded the conceptualists selected for the biennale, such as Matsuzawa Yutaka, On
Kawara, and Horikawa Michio, and focused on thirteen mono-based artists, including
the core Tama groupexcept for Sekine, who stayed on in Europe after the Venice open-
ingto conceive works for the museums spaces. If the Bijutsu tech roundtable effectively
served up a Mono-ha manifesto, August 1970 was a Mono-ha exhibition without being
billed as such.
Mono-has ephemeral installations were instrumental in changing the notion of what
the museum could be. At both Tokyo Biennale 1970 and August 1970, rinj-shugi (literally,
in-situ-ism) in Nakaharas word,65 was introduced, and participating artists were asked
to create their works specific to their assigned spaces. When many of them brought in
expressly non-art, raw materials such as charcoal blocks (Narita Katsuhiko) and rusty wires
(Carl Andre), an inevitable question arose: Why is it art?66 Critics answers amounted to:
because they were put inside the museum that was a special place whose function is to
see art and, more significantly, a special space that turns anything into art.67 Nakahara
himself explained that the museum became a site (ba) in which to experience and
act.68 This new consciousness about the museum was distinct from one that equates it
with the container to display studio-made works (the premise of conventional exhibitions
in general and gadan exhibitions in particular) or with the extralegal sanctuary (as some
Anti-Art apologists protested). The museum as site had already been anticipated by such
Anti-Art works as Kuds hanging phallic objets. Still, Mono-ha stripped away the rowdy
expressionism expressed by Anti-Arts objets and turned them into Non-Arts blunt yet
reticent mono (things or objects), which could engender a phenomenological relation-
ship between the work, the viewer, and the site.
160|Reiko Tomii

Back in 1962, faced with unruly objet-based works of Anti-Art, the Tokyo Metropoli-
tan devised the display guidelines, which were still in effect at the time of Mainichis Tokyo
Biennale 1970. Nakaharas in-situ-ism brought about another crisis. Minemura Toshiaki,
a Mainichi official who would soon become an influential art critic, mediated between the
museum and some artists, with varying degrees of success.69 Prompted by this experience,
the Tokyo Metropolitan revised the guidelines, prohibiting works whose display catego-
ries were not clear and thus difficult to manage and protect, as well as works that use
water, oil, nails and such which may damage or soil the walls and floors.70 Obviously, the
Tokyo Metropolitan, operated as a rental exhibition hall, was unable to cope with cutting-
edge gendai bijutsu. At the same time, Mainichis ambitious internationalism resulted
in the decrease of attendance by half from its domestic biennale of 1969, populated with
crowd-pleasing light- and video-based works. For Mainichi, organizing art exhibitions
was after all part of business. The newspaper company had to move away from incompre-
hensible and unpopular kinds of gendai bijutsu. After skipping 1972 for its international
biennale, Mainichi sought safer ground; its declawed exhibition lasted until 1990.71

Epilogue: Outside Is Inside

We are dissociated from optimists who believe they can escape the insti-
tution through advocating Off Museum. The museum emerges wher-
ever one conducts an act of art making. . . . Our starting point is: several
people encounter and discover the museum manifesting itself within
the act of art making, of which we as individuals have been previously
unaware. Through our [collective] activities, we have aimed to con-
cretely possess this internal museum as our commonality.
Hikosaka Naoyoshi, 197372

In 1970, the triumphant return of gendai bijutsu to the Tokyo Metropolitan exposed the
limitations of the museum as a rental exhibition hall and the newspaper companies as exhi-
bition agents. Gendai bijutsu, however, was to see a much expanded field beyond 1970, the
year that marked another milestone in the institutional history of Japanese art. The con-
struction boom of regional art museums began, with the opening of the Hygo Prefectural
Museum of Modern Art, Kbe, and the Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama. In the newly
established prefectural and municipal museums, gendai bijutsu was routinely featured as a
vital component of their collection and exhibition programs. As for the gadan, the histori-
cal development of Nihonga and yga became the object of museological attention, while a
number of regional museums, through their space rental programs, catered to the need
of the ongoing dantai-ten and living artists working in noncontemporary media.
In 1975, when the Tokyo Metropolitan moved into a new building constructed on the
same Ueno Park ground, it adopted a dual mode of operation, serving as both collecting
institution and a rental space. Notably, not only did the new Tokyo Metropolitan institute
a curatorial department, it also established a publicly accessible contemporary art library,
thus laying a foundation for the future study of gendai bijutsu. In 1995, twenty years later,
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 161

when the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, was established by the Tokyo metro-
politan government, the Tokyo Metropolitans art library and superb postwar collection
including seminal Anti-Art and Non-Art workswere transferred to the new museum.
This returned the Tokyo Metropolitan to its original function of rental exhibition halla
situation which continues to date.
However, these developments would not become evident to the eye of history for
another few decades. Into the 1970s, artists continued to struggle in a changing institu-
tional environment. Although the Tokyo Metropolitan was no longer the museum that
concerned vanguard artists, the museums in general remained a contentious locus.
Gone was an outright impulse to destroy, however, epitomized by Neo Dadas fan-
tasy of bombing the Tokyo Metropolitan in 1962 and Bikyts directive to dismantle
the Tokyo Metropolitan and the Tokyo Modern in 1969. Inverting Anti-Arts descent
to the everyday, vanguard artists instead learned to undermine the museums authority
and devised new strategies of bringing the outside in. To bring unconventional materials
inside the museum in an understated manner was one direction, as seen at Tokyo Bien-
nale 1970. An outdoor work could be translated for the interior with added implications.
In 1969, Lee Ufan executed a performance by laying numerous discarded windowpanes
on the street of Shinjuku in Tokyo and had boulders dropped on themthe work that led
to an invitation to the Kyoto Moderns Tendency survey that year.73 Yet he chose instead
to show a single-pane work (Relatum), aspiring to reveal an intensely condensed moment
of collision. Interested in sculpting time, Nomura Hitoshi did not bring such unstable
and hazardous substances as dry ice and iodine into the museum, but used photography

Figure 6.6. Nomura Hitoshi, Iodine (March 29, 1970), 1970. 12 photographs 70 86 cm each. Courtesy
Nomura Hitoshi and McCaffrey Fine Art, New York.
162|Reiko Tomii

to show their transformation over time at Tokyo Biennale 1970 (fig. 6.6). Likewise, Ike-
mizu Keiichis sociozoological concern was expressed through an elephants life-size pho-
tograph, accompanied by printed documents (copies of which the audience could take
home), in I Became an Elephant This Summer. Didnt You Become an Elephant? shown
at Artists Today 69 at Yokohama Civic Art Gallery. (The gallery, founded in 1964, was
another public venue friendly to gendai bijutsu.)
An exploration of outside the museums continued on either a collective or an indi-
vidual basis. A series of memorable projects were produced by The Play, based in Osaka
and led by Ikemizu, whose annual summer project from 1968 to 1986 included Voyage:
Happening in an Egg in 1968 (throwing a gigantic fiberglass egg into the ocean, hoping
it might cross the Pacific to reach an American coast) and Current of Contemporary Art in
1969 (traveling downstream from Kyoto to Osaka on a Styrofoam raft). Yet, outside the
museum was no longer an innocently anti-institutional site. In 1971, the Bikyt Revolu-
tion Committee, a subgroup of the radical artists collective Bikyt, produced a series of
members solo exhibitions outside the institutional venue (the museum/gallery). However,
these exhibitions, held at a members house (fig. 6.7), an underground theater, a riverbank,
and a college campus, were never an attempt to go off museum, because wherever artists
conduct an act of art making, the internal institution (uchinaru seido), specifically the
internal museum, unavoidably arises in their minds, as the groups ideologue Hikosaka
Naoyoshi soberly observed (see the epigraph to this section).

Figure 6.7. Hikosaka Naoyoshi, Floor Event (invitation to solo exhibition Revolution), 1970. Documen-
tary photo of performance, 1971. Postcard, silkscreen and offset printing, 10 14.5 cm. Collection of
the artist.
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 163

The internalization had its own consequences. A certain insularity of gendai bijutsu
ensued; an impression that gendai bijutsu is incomprehensible or inaccessible to the gen-
eral publicand many in the art world, for that mattergrew after Tokyo Biennale 1970.
The sense of international contemporaneity, embraced in the same exhibition, did not
take younger artists beyond the national border, as they focused their creative energy and
intellectual resources on issues particular to their localesuch as the reconstitution of
painting.74 It was not until the mid-1980s, when the postmodern and multicultural dis-
course internationally kicked in and the globalization of the art world began, that Japanese
artists resumed paying active attention to the stage abroad, be it institutional or commer-
cial. Into the 1990s, the so-called lost decade, during which Japan suffered a prolonged
stretch of economic stagnation, the public museums at all levelsnational, prefectural,
and municipalwere subjected to governmental restructuring and downsizing on an
unprecedented scale. To a considerable extent, this crisis jolted museum curators and art-
ists alike out of their complacency, impelling them to rethink their insular practices and
make them more open and accessible to the public. Although what has happened in this
new round of institutional and strategic transformation demands a separate account, suf-
fice it to say that Japanese artists never cease to be inventive and daring in the face of their
share of historical, social, and cultural challenges.

Notes

1. Bikyt, Bijutsuka eno teish (An appeal to artists), agitational flier, dated July 5,
1969, as compiled in Bikyt shiry (Bikyt documents).
2. For general introduction to 1960s art in Japan, see Alexandra Munroe, ed., Japa-
nese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (New York: Abrams, 1994); Reiko Tomii, ed.,
Art Outside the Box in 1960s Japan, special issue, Review of Japanese Culture and Society 17
(2005).
3. Reiko Tomii, Concerning the Institution of Art: Conceptualism in Japan, in Global
Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s1980s, exh. cat. (New York: Queens Museum of Art,
1999), pp. 1429.
4. See Reiko Tomii, Historicizing Contemporary Art: Some Discursive Practices in
Gendai Bijutsu in Japan, Positions 12, no. 3 (2004): especially pp. 615619; International
Contemporaneity in the 1960s: Discoursing on Art in Japan and Beyond, Nichibunken Japan
Review, no. 21 (2009), also available at http://shinku.nichibun.ac.jp/jpub/pdf/jr/JN2103.pdf
(accessed December 6, 2010).
5. See Tomii, Historicizing, pp. 619623.
6. See ibid., p. 615.
7. The phrase is taken from Akasegawa Genpei with Minami Nobuhiro (Shinb) and
Matsuda Tetsuo, Nihon geijutsu dai-gekisen: Sretsu emaki (Great battles of the Japanese art
world: A heroic picture album), Bijutsu tech, no. 355 (May 1972).
8. Kengisho (A proposal), in Tokyo Furitsu Bijutsukan kensetsu no yurai oyobi jiseki
yroku (The origin and history of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum) (Tokyo: Bijutsukan
kensetsu kysankai, 1925), p. 2.
164|Reiko Tomii

9. It appears that there was no official English translation of its name, according to Seki
Naoko, Gaka/hihyka/kyikusha ni yoru tenran kaij no kansei (The possibility of exhibi-
tion halls theorized by a painter/critic/educator), in Tokyo-fu Bijutsukan no jidai 19261970/
Age of Tokyo Metropolitan Art Gallery 19261970, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Museum of Contempo-
rary Art, 2005), p. 129. The institution was renamed as Tokyo-to Bijutsukan in 1943 due to the
change of the capital citys legal status. Although the publications related to Tokyo Biennale
1970 list its English name as Tokyo Metropolitan Art Gallery, this author uses its literal
translation, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, in this chapter, because in the minds of Japa-
nese artists as well as the general public, it was a bijutsukan, that is, museum.
10. Sait Yasuyoshi, Tokyo-fu Bijutsukan no jidai (The era of the Tokyo Metropolitan
Art Museum), Tokyo-fu Bijutsukan no jidai, p. 14 (2005).
11. See www.nihonbijyutukai.com/nichibi/menu3.htm and www.nihonbijyutukai.com/
anpan/menu5.htm (accessed September 14, 2006).
12. Anpan is a Japanese shorthand of andepandan, the French reading of independent.
13. For the complete list of works exhibited at the Yomiuri Anpan and Yomiuris reviews
and articles, see Segi Shinichi, ed., Nihon andepandan-ten zen kiroku 19491963 (Complete
records of the Japan (Yomiuri) Independent Exhibition 19491963) (Tokyo: Sbi-sha, 1993).
14. For the newspaper companies exhibition programs, see Reiko Tomii, Glossary, in
Munroe, Japanese Art After 1945, p. 396.
15. Akasegawa Genpei, Han-geijutsu Anpan (Anti-Art independent) (1985); pocketbook
edition (Tokyo: Chikuma bunko, 1994), pp. 184185.
16. Hary Ichir, Andepandan-ten wa kieta ga (Although the Yomiuri Independent
was abolished), Geijutsu shinch (March 1964): p. 167.
17. For Tno and Anti-Art, see Reiko Tomii, Geijutsu on Their Minds: Memorable
Words on Anti-Art, in Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Post-
war Japan, 19501970, ed. Charles Merewether with Rika Iezumi Hiro, exh. cat. (Los Angeles:
Getty Research Institute, 2007), pp. 3638.
18. Akasegawa, Han-geijutsu Anpan, pp. 183184; Shuppin kiyaku (Entry guidelines),
in Segi Shinichi, Nihon andepandan-ten zen kiroku, p. 280. For Kuds work, see Reiko Tomii,
Ground Zero of Anti-Art: Kud Tetsumis Early Years, 19571962, gallery handout (New
York: Andrea Rosen Gallery, 2008).
19. Takiguchi Shz, Sakuhin no kiki to sekinin (Crisis and responsibility of works),
Yomiuri shinbun, March 16, 1962, evening edition; reprinted in Segi Shinichi, Nihon andepan-
dan-ten zen kiroku, p. 258.
20. Takiguchi, Sakuhin no kiki to sekinin; Akasegawa, Han-geijutsu Anpan, p. 181.
21. Akasegawa et al., Mukid pankui kys! Jimetsu e masshigura! in Nihon geijutsu
dai-gekisen.
22. Tokyo-to Bijutsukan chinretsu sakuhin kikaku kijun yk (The guidelines for spec-
ifications of works to be displayed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum), museum docu-
ment, no. 285, December 24, 1962. Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
23. Akasegawa, Han-geijutsu Anpan, pp. 176181.
24. Tokyo-to Bijutsukan chinretsu sakuhin kikaku kijun yk. In addition to the
six thou shalt nots, the guidelines also included weight and measurement restriction and
required advance notices for the use of electricity.
25. Akasegawa, Han-geijutsu Anpan, p. 189.
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 165

26. Ibid., p. 202.

27. Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005), p. 171.
28. Akasegawa, Han-geijutsu Anpan, pp. 194201.
29. Nagara T [Imaizumi Yoshihiko], Chokusetsu kd no kizashi II (A sign of direct
action 2), Keish, no. 8 (1963): pp. 3034.
30. Imaizumi Yoshihiko, Ekaki-domo no hentekorinna arekore maesetsu (nos. 7 and
9) (Preambles to painters strange doings) (1985), reprinted in Aida, nos. 5556 (July 2000):
3638, and no. 58 (October 2000): pp. 3133.
31. Akasegawa, Han-geijutsu Anpan, p. 11.
32. Hary, Andepandan-ten wa kieta ga, p. 164; Nagara [Imaizumi], Chokusetsu kd
no kizashi II, p. 33.
33. Hary, Andepandan-ten wa kieta ga, p. 165.
34. Brian ODoherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Santa
Monica, Calif.: Lapis Press, 1986).
35. Shuppin kiyaku.
36. This last case was Akasegawa Genpei, who later confessed that he despaired of the
notion of expression and ran out of what he wanted to make in Han-geijutsu Anpan, p. 17.
37. Nishio Ichiz, VAVA ga teian suru neo andepandan fesutibaru ni tsuite (About a
new independent festival proposed by Vava), Gendai bijutsu, no. 3 (1965): pp. 67, cited in
Takahashi Ayako, 1965-nen natsu: Zenei no hanabi joronAndepandan to fesutivaru
towa nani ka? (Hanabi summer 1965: Fireworks for avant-garde prologueregarding inde-
pendent art festival), Nagoya geijutsu daigaku kiy 27 (2006): p. 77.
38. For the Anti-Art debate, see Tomii, Geijutsu on Their Minds, pp. 3941.
39. Hary Ichir, Futatsu no teian: Andepandan-ten no shrai no tame ni (Two pro-
posals: For the future of the independent exhibition), Bijutsu tech, no. 234 (April 1964): p. 28.
40. Tno Yoshiaki, Saynara Yomiuri andepandan-ten (Goodbye the Yomiuri Indepen-
dent Exhibition), Bijutsu tech, no. 234 (April 1964): p. 12.
41. Hary Ichir, Andepandan-ten wa kieta ga, pp. 28.
42. For Akasegawas courtroom ordeal, see Reiko Tomii, State v. (Anti-)Art: Model
1,000-Yen Note Incident by Akasegawa Genpei and Company, Positions 10, no. 1 (2002): pp.
141172.
43. Tomii, Geijutsu on Their Minds, pp. 4951.
44. See Kat Mizuho and Ming Tiampo, Electrifying Art: Atsuko Tanaka, 19541968, exh.
cat. (Vancouver: Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2004).
45. See Reiko Tomii, After the Descent to the Everyday: Japanese Collectivism from Hi
Red Center to The Play, 19641973, in Collectivism After Modernism, ed. Blake Stimson and
Gregory Sholette (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
46. Ushio Shinohara, Zenei no michi (The avant-garde road) (Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppan-
sha, 1968), pp. 99, 154.
47. Midori Yoshimoto, Off Museum! Performance Art That Turned the Street into The-
atre, Circa 1964 Tokyo, Performance Paradigm, no. 2 (March 2006): pp. 102118.
48. Miyata Kunio, Gar manifesuto (Gallery manifesto), Naiqua Gallery, undated flier,
reproduced in Miyata Yka, Naiqua Gar: 60-nendai no zenei (Naiqua Gallery: 1960s avant-
garde), exh. cat. (Kyoto: Kyoto University of Art and Design Museum, 2000).
166|Reiko Tomii

49. Takahashi, 1965-nen natsu, p. 85.

50. Tno Yoshiaki, Bod to towa nani ka (What is body art?), Bijutsu tech, no. 258
(October 1965): pp. 1819.
51. Tno, cited in Ikeda Tatsuo, Nagaragawa no zenei matsuri (An avant-garde festival
at the Nagara River), Geijutsu shinch (October 1965): p. 83.
52. The notable exception was the All Setouchi Contemporary Art Exhibition (Han-
Setouchi gendai bijutsu-ten), which lasted three decades thanks to the involvement of Okayama
Prefecture from early on. See Sengo Okayama no bijutsu (Art of postwar Okayama), exh. cat.
(Okayama: Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, 2002), pp. 100101. A similar instance was
the Kyoto Independent Exhibition (19551990), initially launched by the Kyoto Young Artists
Collective (Kyoto Seinen Bijutsuka Shdan) but taken over by the city of Kyoto in 1957. See
Kyoto-shi Bijutsukan 40-nen shi (Four decades of Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art) (Kyoto:
Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 1974), pp. 6369.
53. See Tomii, Concerning the Institution of Art, pp. 1920.
54. Nakahara Ysuke, Busshitsu kara kkan e: Yomiuri andepandan-ten igo (From
matter to space: After the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition), Bijutsu tech, no. 347 (October
1971): p. 42.
55. Goaisatsu [Greetings], in Nagaoka Gendai Bijutsukan-sh kaikoten 19641968 (A
retrospective of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagaoka, Prize Exhibition 19641968),
exh. cat. (Niigata: The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art et al., 2002).
56. For art and politics around 1970, see Reiko Tomii, Tokyo 19671973, in Century
City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, ed. Iwona Blazwick, exh. cat., pp. 198223
(London: Tate Modern, 2001).
57. Tenrankai no seikaku ni tsuite (What is Tokyo Biennale, 1970?), in Ningen to
busshitsu: Dai 10-kai Nihon kokusai bijutsu-ten (Between man and matter: Tokyo Biennale
1970), exh. cat. (Tokyo: Mainichi shinbun-sha, 1970).
58. Honma Masayoshi, Jo (Introduction), in Gendai sekai bijutsu-ten: Higashi to nishi
no taiwa (Contemporary art: Dialogue between the East and the West), exh. cat. (Tokyo:
National Museum of Modern Art, 1969), p. 5.
59. Akasegawa et al., Dd no gaisen! Gendai geijutsu koky ni nishiki o kazaru! (Tri-
umphant return! Contemporary art comes home with honors!) from Nihon geijutsu dai-
gekisen, n.p.
60. Hary Ichir, Ningen to shizen, in Dai 10-kai gendai Nihon bijutsu-ten (The 10th
Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan 1971), exh. cat. (Tokyo: Mainichi Newspapers, 1971).
The 1971 domestic biennales emulation of the 1970 international biennale extends to its cata-
logue cover featuring a photograph of Taki Kji, an associate of Nakahira Takuma and a fellow
member of the photographers collective Provoke, whose photograph graced the 1970 bien-
nales catalogue cover.
61. The earliest confirmed use of the term Mono-ha in print dates from 1973. See edito-
rial preface to Shgen: Mono-ha ga kataru Mono-ha (Testimony: Mono-ha as explained by
the Mono-ha), Bijutsu tech, no. 706 (May 1995): p. 254.
62. Sekine Nobuo, Seishun to dgigo no Mono-ha to ima (Mono-ha, a synonym of
youth and its present), Bijutsu tech, no. 706 (May 1995): p. 262.
63. See Tomii, Historicizing, pp. 623625.
 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the Museum | 167

64. Koshimizu Susumu, Sekine Nobuo, Suga Kishio, Nariga Katsuhiko, Yoshida Katsur,
and Lee Ufan, Mono ga hiraku atarashii sekai, Bijutsu tech, no. 324 (February 1970): pp.
3455. Another important publication in this context is Ba s ji (Site, phase, time), a 1970
booklet with texts by Lee and Joseph Love, privately published in conjunction with Sekines
Venice presentation.
65. Nakahara Ysuke, Ningen to busshitsu (Between man and matter), in Ningen to
busshitsu. In-situ-ism is authors translation.
66. Naze kore ga geijutsu ka? (Why is it art?), special feature on Tokyo Biennale 1970,
Bijutsu tech, no. 329 (July 1970): pp. 179.
67. Respectively paraphrased from Fujieda Teruo, Atarashii hygen eno shik (Direc-
tions to new expression), Bijutsu tech, no. 329 (July 1970): p. 58; and Miki Tamon, 60-nendai
kara 70-nendai e (From the 1960s to the 1970s), in Dai 10-kai gendai Nihon bijutsu-ten.
68. Nakahara, Ningen to busshitsu; and epigraph to this section.
69. [Minemura Toshiaki], Keika hkoku: Jakkan no oboegaki (After the Exhibition), in
Dai-10 kai Nihon kokusai bijutsu-ten: Ningen to busshitsu (Tokyo Biennale 1970: Between Man
and Matter), documentation volume (Tokyo: Mainichi Newspapers, 1970).
70. Tokyo-to Bijutsukan chinretsu sakuhin kikaku kijun yk (The guidelines for spec-
ifications of works to be displayed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum), museum docu-
ment, no. 150, October 1, 1970. Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
71. Watanabe Yko, Hijna bken no tenrannkai (An extraordinary adventure),
Tokyo-fu Bijutsukan no jidai, p. 151.
72. Shihy Group and Hikosaka Naoyoshi, Shdan no shi: Kydsei o tsuiky shita
yottsu no purakutisu (Death of collectivism: Four practices that pursued collectivity), Bijutsu
tech, no. 372 (October 1973): pp. 148149. For an English translation, see Text 6: Practice 3,
in Tomii, Concerning the Institution of Art, p. 23.
73. Lee Ufan, interview with author, May 2000.
74. See Tomii, Historicizing, p. 630.
 Eric C. Shiner

7 Fashion Altars, Performance

Factors, and Pop Cells
Transforming Contemporary Japanese Art,
One Body at a Time

Even the most beautiful body is soon destroyed by age. Where is beauty
then? Only art makes human beauty endure. You must devise an artists
scheme to preserve it. You must commit suicide at the height of your
beauty.1
Yukio Mishima, Kykos House

From the mid-1970s and into the first decade of the twenty-first century, Japanese contem-
porary artists who have engaged in the examination of that countrys popular culture have
looked in equal measure to a variety of traditional aesthetic tropes for their formal inspira-
tion, as well as to artwork from around the world for a novel means of commenting on the
domestic condition through foreign eyes. Todays Japanese artist is therefore a hybrid cul-
tural critic and world citizen; each role is dependent on the other if the artist endeavors to
break into the mainstream world of contemporary art. As a result, many of the traditional
modes of expression that have been partially adapted to meet the requirements of the new
globalism in art rely on a number of culturally specific and generation-specific thematic
filters or screens through which the contemporary viewer is able to make sense of the
work before her, regardless of her own nationality. In this chapter, I will focus on the three
screens that nearly all contemporary Japanese artists engaged in social commentary have
turned to at one time or anotherbodily transformation (henshin)2 through costuming,
makeup, or computer manipulation; performance (engi), including role playing and iden-
tity reification; and the depiction of fantasy worlds in animation (anime) and the comic
book (manga)to draw attention to the ever-changing face of Japanese contemporary art
vis--vis the international art world. I hope to present a new way of looking at the past
three decades of Japanese contemporary art while simultaneously attempting to expose the
reasons why these trends have gradually become tenets of modern aesthetics in Japan. As
with any art historical reading, the theories outlined in this chapter are not to be viewed as
definitive or absolute, for they represent just one possible reading of the constant ebb and
flow that nourishes and defines contemporary Japanese art. So too should the reader be
aware that due to space limitations, only a very few contemporary artists and works appear
in these pages. Each student is encouraged to take it upon herself to examine the richness
of postwar Japanese art in detail, and perhaps to make a new discovery of her own.
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 169

Although it may seem odd to begin this study with a brief literary passage written by
one of Japans most opinionated and flamboyant authors more than forty-five years ago,
the reader will soon discover that Mishimas seemingly trivial reference to the role of the
artist is more than telling in its candid proclamation that to be successful, one must under-
take a scheme to stop the aging process in its tracks by tricking the viewer into believing
that the image before her is one of immortal beauty. The further admonition to commit
suicide to preserve ones beauty for eternity in this passage eerily foreshadows Mishimas
own performative suicide in 1970.3 Add to this Mishimas overall project as played out in
Kyokos House that can be read as the authors attempt to reveal his multidimensional iden-
tity to the outside world through four fully discrete narrative undercurrentsathleticism/
machismo, aesthetic pursuit, narcissism/performance, and secrecy/nihilismrepresented
by, respectively, a boxer, a painter, an actor, and a businessman. The latter, it should be
noted, navigates life with an absolute contempt for reality, thus hinting at the authors
clear regard for the realm of fantasy over that of the mundane world.4 Having created four
distinct personas to represent his singular being, Mishima indicates that the presentation
of ones complex identity is at times most easily accomplished through taking on anothers
attributes, acting out that role, and telling a story to convey certain elements of ones true
inner self.5 In other words, Mishima creates a scheme to camouflage reality with multiple
alternate identities that are performed as though putting on a mask or fully replacing one-
self with a prosthetic self. Oftentimes, the mask that the contemporary Japanese artist
dons is one with a strong Japanese influence, albeit augmented with stimuli from diverse
cultures, histories, and geographic regions around the globe.
In the flow of Japanese art history, Mishima could find many precedents for his mode
of beguiling self-expression. Any student in the field should be familiar with the Frolick-
ing Animals Scrolls of the late Heian period (twelfth century) in which a litany of small
animalsrabbits, tortoises, and mice among themtake on the attributes of priests and
laypeople as they sing and cavort in human garb and with human motions. References
to humans becoming animals and, indeed, animals becoming humans is an ages old tra-
dition in Japanese literature, theater, and the visual arts that results in a rich history of
expressing actual tales and moral lessons via the tropes of fantasy, transformation, and
role playing. So too was this a formal trope of Greek mythology, Egyptian theology, and
nearly every other early civilization across the globe.
Mishima also shares an art historical link with one of the twentieth centurys most
important artist collectives in Japan, Mavo, thanks to that groups penchant for masquer-
ade. Founded by Murayama Tomoyoshi and active in the 1920s, Mavo attempted to turn
the world of Japanese art on its head by introducing their Japanese counterparts to West-
ern modes of expression that many of the groups members picked up firsthand during
sojourns to Europe in the early twentieth century.6 Their Dadaist tendencies to decon-
struct traditional modes of artistic expression, most markedly that of painting,7 took
the group in a most avant-garde direction. With nearly all the groups members adopting
the same bowl-shaped o-kappa haircut and dressing in decidedly European dandy attire,
the men and women of Mavo depended not only on new modes of creation in terms of
the physical objects they made, such as fantastical collage and radically shaped paintings
or sculptures, to herald their deconstructivist leanings, for they also engaged in cross-
dressing performances in which the male Mavoistes danced in wigs, makeup, and dresses
170|Eric C. Shiner

and the women dressed in suits with top hats and monocles.8 To change Japanese society,
it seems, Mavo opted to strike at the heart of human identity in its radical undermining of
sexual differentiation and prescribed gender roles. The reverberations of their European
constructivist and Dada-informed efforts can still be felt in Japanese art today.
Returning, however briefly, to Mishima, the student of contemporary Japan must also
be aware of the strong homosexual undertones in many of the authors novels, especially
the autobiographical Confessions of a Mask from 1949 and Forbidden Colors of 1951. By
no means out as we understand the expression of ones sexual self-expression today,
Mishima, although married and a father, did engage in sexual relationships with other
men and, more importantly, wrote on the topic often and vigorously. Plugged into the
pervasive change that was taking place in the decade just after the end of World War II in
occupied Japan, Mishimas overt storylines revealing divergent sexualities provided strong
foundations to subversive representations of sexuality in the performing arts that would
follow in the next decade, such as those played out on the stage by butoh luminaries Hiji-
kata Tatsumi and Ono Kazuo.9
The realm of the visual arts also examined the issue thoroughly through the body-
based action art of the Gutai group in the late 1950s and the conceptual work of Fluxus
artists Yoko Ono and Shigeko Kubota that broached the topic through the overt exposure
of ones sex in the early 1960s. For example, in Onos Cut Piece performance of 1964, the
artist sits on the stage of Kyotos Yamaichi Concert Hall and invites audience members to
climb onto the stage and cut away a piece of her dress until she is completely uncovered
and exposed. Likewise, Kubota investigates feminine sexuality through her Vagina Paint-
ing performance of 1965, in which the artist literally holds a paintbrush with her genitals
and moves around the gallery space on her haunches making bright red marks on a paper
laid out on the floor. These personal explorations of sexuality and the body performed in
the public sphere, themselves strongly informed by like-minded movements in Europe
and America, continue to hold immense sway for the Japanese art and artists of the past
thirty years and in many ways help to make sense of Mishimas suicide, itself a quasi-
public performance of epic proportions played out on the stage of political upheaval that
was then sweeping the world.

From Identities Performed to Cells Exposed

While all the above-mentioned experimentation with novel modes of expression was play-
ing out in the world of high art in Japan, a fully different, yet equally influential, mode
of visual expression was taking firm root in the realm of so-called low art in the form of
comic books and animated films that became pervasive in Japan in the 1950s. The effect
that this new mode of entertainment held on todays Japanese artists is vast. Growing up,
each of them would have been fully surrounded by the genre from early youth through to
maturity, and in many cases beyond. Perhaps most influential in the spread and popular-
ization of animation in Japan was Tezuka Osamu, a Takarazuka-based artist who began
his career while still in medical school in the late 1940s. Having written more than seven
hundred comic books over his long career, Tezuka is often referred to as the Father of
Manga in Japan. His interest in science and technology led to the development of his
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 171

most famous character, Tetsuwan Atomu (Atom Boy), while his diverse fascination with
nature led to a number of comics populated by animals with human attributes.10 Tezuka
also relished the classic romance novel and created many love stories in his manga and
anime. Debuting in 1953, Tezukas Princess Knight11 (fig. 7.1) featured a young heroine
who was born with the dualistic psychological identity of being both a boy and a girl. The
comic soon became a favorite of young girls and women across Japan and can be viewed as
the main vehicle through which the wide acceptance of androgynous characters in main-
stream media in Japan was first delivered. In fact, the story was based on the Takarazuka
Revue,12 an all-female performance troupe based in Tezukas hometown in which male
roles are played by androgynous actresses with short hair and deep voices, while female
roles are played by hyper-feminized actresses to maintain the imaginary division of the
sexes, when in fact there is none. Both the revue and Tezukas gender-bending comics
continue to influence the relative acceptance that blurred gender roles enjoy in the world
of fiction in contemporary Japan.13

Figure 7.1. Tezuka

Osamu, Princess
Knight, 1967. Cell
from animated
cartoon series.
Illustration
from issue 1 of
Tezuka Osamu,
Ribon no Kishi
(Princess Knight),
Kdansha, 1963.
172|Eric C. Shiner

From a formal perspective, Tezukas development as an artist soon moved beyond

the static pages of the comic book as his focus shifted to the accelerated format of anime,
in which individual comic cells blend into a movie or narrative seamless whole. In terms
of Japansand indeed the worldsvisual culture, the omnipresence of the comic book
and the animated movie has radically changed the way ones surrounding world is under-
stood.14 Thanks to mangas formal layout, in which individual frames separate elements
of a narrative into fully unique visual units, it is not a far leap to put forward the idea that
this has led to the viewers ability to similarly frame a piece of art before her on the gallery
wall as though it were but one cell of an entire tale. The imagination of the viewer, then, is
required to fill in the rest, thus giving credence to the realm of fantasy.
As a foundation to the cultural criticism found in Japanese art of the mid-1970s
through today, the sway of transformation and performance as practiced by Mavo, Gutai,
Butoh, and Fluxus in the visual and performing arts is strong, as is the influence of the
cellular vision born from the comic book and animated film. Moving beyond these pri-
mary foundationsmany of which have been covered in great detail in earlier chapters
of this bookwe must begin to search for the moment in time when those two worlds
collided or, in other words, when the world of high art melded with that of the low to
form a fully new visual vocabulary that might be called self-contained pop, or seco-pop.15
For via this new means of commenting on the world around them, a group of Japanese
artists began to create works that were reliant on the power of a single image to convey an
entire story to the viewer, who in turn would fill in the blanks using her own familiarity
with comic books, film, and the outside world. In other words, these artists created works
that could be plugged in to popular culture to elicit meaning and social acceptance. The
point of origin of this new aesthetic order was to be found in the world of graphic design.
Chief among the instigators of this new form of expression was Yokoo Tadanori. Born
in Hyogo Prefecture in 1936, this prolific graphic designercumartist, actor, and pop cul-
ture powerhouse started his career in 1956 doing design work for the Kobe newspaper, and
just eight years later at the age of twenty-eight started his own design studio, Ilfil. By the
end of the 1960s, Yokoos fantastic posters, album covers, and other designs were instantly
recognizable by anyone even remotely associated with the world of art or popular culture
in Japan, such was the omnipresence and peculiarity of his work. Perhaps best described
as vast mindscapes of the times, Yokoos images often include numerous references to all
things Japanese, including the Hinomaru flag, ukiyo-estyle waves, and other cultural
markers as a sort of background to the main subject matter at hand, whether it be a rock
star, movie actor, consumer product, or stage production (see Plate 14).
Utilizing a vast and vivid color palette, Yokoo arranges his designs so that the entire
picture plane is covered either in imagery or tinted bursts. His lively pictures become
images of the contemporary floating world, thus bespeaking their debt to the tradition of
the woodblock print in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japan, as well as to the Euro-
pean modern art traditions of Dada and its proclivity toward assemblage, collage, and
photomontage. To this day, Yokoo Tadanori continues to be a major force in the world of
contemporary Japanese pop culture.
Kimura Tsunehisa followed close on the heels of Yokoo, expanding his own mode
of production beyond his colleagues signature use of pastiche, animation-like graphics,
and showy color palettes to include photography, montage, and the nascent computer
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 173

manipulation of said imagery that would in due course destroy a pictures ability to tell
the truth. Born in Osaka in 1928, Kimura spent his early youth surrounded by the grow-
ing war machine of the Showa state. Recalling the death and destruction in his hometown
during the last year of the war, Kimura says that the city of Osaka more or less disap-
peared.16 This early and deep interaction with a nation at war set the stage for Kimura to
become both a radical antiwar proponent and ardent cultural critic. His later introduction
to German Dada in his early adult years, and his specific interest in the work of German
Dadaist John Heartfield that sprouted in 1968, directly influenced Kimuras artistic pro-
duction in later years through the introduction of photomontage and deconstruction as
tools in his repertoire of visual deceit.
In 1977, Kimura held an exhibition of large-scale photomontage works at the Parco art
gallery in Tokyos Shibuya district. Two years after the show, a catalogue titled Kimura
Camera: Kimura Tsunehisas Visual Scandal was published that included hundreds of
visual puns commenting on the social and political conditions of Japan in the 1960s and
1970s. Of these images, one work stands above all others as the perfect example of the per-
vasive influence that Western pop had on Japan.17 The work, titled Cola (fig. 7.2), is from

Figure 7.2. Kimura Tsunehisa, Cola, 1970. Monochrome photograph. Published in Kimura Camera:
Kimura Tsunehisa Visual Scandal, an exhibition catalogue of the artist, for the exhibition held at
Parco, Tokyo, in 1979, p. 39.
174|Eric C. Shiner

1970 and portrays dozens of Coca-Cola bottles raining down upon Tokyo in a bevy of mis-
siles and a Pepsi-sponsored dirigible crashing into Tokyo Tower in the deep recesses of the
image. The work stands as a testament to the literal attacks by U.S. fighter planes that Japan
suffered during World War II, while at the same time exposing the new American threat
to Japan: consumerism and the omnipresence of American brand-name products such as
Coca-Cola and Pepsi as far as the eye could see. Kimuras photomontage has at least two
relevant precedents, however, one domestic and one from abroad. The first is a photograph
by Kawada Kikuji from his Maps series of 1962. The image features six Coca-Cola bottles
set in concrete, bringing to mind both a consumer culture frozen in a sea of outside influ-
ence (i.e., America is here to stay) and a temporal stoppage brought on by nuclear win-
ter.18 As Kikujis overall photographic oeuvre is to be read as social commentary on the
American attack onand occupation ofJapan, the idea of stasis in time becomes fully
animated when the viewer is confronted by the violent and immediate nature of Kimuras
Coke bottle bombs as they rocket through the Tokyo sky.
Kimuras Cola is also directly connected to American pop artist Andy Warhol and
his Coke bottle canvases from 1962. In these works, Warhol borrows the image of the
cola bottle as a primary symbol of postwar America, replicates and multiplies it, and then
aligns the many containers in perfect rows as if ripe for the picking directly from the gro-
cers shelf.19 It is important to note that both Kikuji and Warhol completed these works
in the same year; one displays static chaos, the other a bountiful cornucopia of shopping-
induced euphoria. Is it not likely that in creating his own photomontage, Kimura thought
about these images as he turned both tranquility and history on their ears in his depiction
of American-made consumer missiles aimed at the heart of the capital city of Japanpop
art as weapon, if you will.

From Visual Scandal to Scandalous Visions

Around the same time that Kimura Tsunehisa was attempting to undermine the author-
ity of vision, a number of Japanese fashion designers, namely Issey Miyake and Rei
Kawakubo of Comme des Garons, were radically altering the body itself through their
rejection of traditional modes of clothing design in favor of new shapes and styles that
more closely resembled architecture. Thanks to Miyakes pleated plateaus and Kawakubos
batting-stuffed appendages, the wearers form became a social construct, or constructed
body, most unlike anything seen before. Many fans of the designers no doubt viewed the
idea of donning these frocks as a means by which to recreate the self, thus turning a con-
sumer commodity into a meaning-laden and protective shell within which ones true iden-
tity lurked.
Indeed, thanks to the bubble economy that Japan experienced throughout much of the
1980s, a huge boom revolving around high fashion seeped into nearly all segments of Japa-
nese society. In the years between 1975 and 1985, the main fashion houses of Europe and
America took advantage of Japans economic strength and moved into the major urban
centers of the country, opening freestanding boutiques or establishing retail contracts
with large department store chains. As consumers had ready access to cash, this new wave
of fashion retailers and luxury brand houses created the perfect outlet for fashion-savvy
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 175

customers to lighten their designer wallets and pocketbooks. During the 1980s, the fashion
boom took off with rockets smoking, and hundreds of fashion magazines were launched
to keep the ship afloat. New terms linked to the changing corpus of the 1980s such as
bodei-kon (body conscious) and hea-meiku (hair and makeup styling) entered mainstream
vocabulary as a substratum of the new fashion-fueled boom.
The art of the 1980s is deeply connected to this consumer-driven shopping binge,
and artists of the decade recorded the proceedings in a number of waysmany of them
revolving around ideas of fantasy and bodily transformation, or henshin. The most pro-
lific artist during this period was Morimura Yasumasa, an artist made famous by his
initial works in which he played the primary role in many famed Western artworks,
including the central figures in paintings by Van Gogh, Rubens, Velasquez and Manet,
to name just a few. Morimuras work Futago (Twins) from 1988 features the artist
posing as both the prostitute and maidservant in Manets Olympia and is the perfect
point from which to launch into a deeper look at the artists oeuvre and the ways he
makes biting critiques on his countrys love affair with consumerism based on Western
notions of luxury and on the rampant free spending that many Japanese investors engaged
in to acquire great Western masterworks at the time. Further, Morimuras position as a
Japanese male in place of a Western female model in a number of his photographs calls
into question the validity of Western ideals of beauty and fashion that were being force-
fed to Japanese consumers across the nation at the time. Although Morimuras work was
made more than a decade after Kimura Tsunehisas Cola, both artists seem to be making
similar statements with the same visual vocabulary; Kimura takes note of the first waves
of Western consumer attack utilizing photomontage, while Morimura acknowledges the
sustained influence of the West through inserting his own Japanese body into the image
as if to say, I [Japan] will always be a part of the West because the West will always be a
part of me.
Looking back to the artists first foray into the world of fine art, Morimura made a
less-than-miraculous debut in the Kyoto art scene with his first solo exhibition at Kyotos
Galerie Marronnier in 1983. It was not until two years later, thanks to his participation in
the group show Smile with Radical Will at Gallery 16 in Kyoto, that Morimura made his
big break with the first of the above-mentioned works in which the artist takes on a role
from Western art history. In this early work, Morimura does indeed do that: for example,
the artists Portrait (Van Gogh) (see Plate 15) hangs on the gallery wall and all seems in
order until the viewer ventures closer, only to realize that the perceived painting is indeed
a photograph.
Over the next decade, Morimura would continue to insert himself into numerous
masterpieces, including Bruegels The Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind of 1568, Rem-
brandts The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp of 1632, and dozens of other famous works. In
all his work in this series, Morimura, through the use of makeup, body paint, and other
cosmetics, actually changes his body to become a new being. As discussed above in terms
of Mishimas writing and the fantasy realm of the comic book, this bodily transformation
(henshin) can be likened to a performancea performance from being the man Morimura
Yasumasa to becoming the desired character in the painting he is attempting to recre-
ate. In the case of the Van Gogh self-portrait, the only visible sign that a human being is
under the painted face of the sitter is that the eyeballs appear to be real because the work
176|Eric C. Shiner

is a photograph in which Morimura has painted his face to make it look like the original
painting. He layers on the paint so thickly that it is truly hard to believe that a human face
lies below. Using different colorsbeiges and creams for the base facial colors, reds for
the cheeks and lips and greenish black for the lineaments of the faceMorimura quite
literally uses his face as a blank canvas upon which he slathers the paint and, in the end,
becomes a Van Gogh portrait. Set against an orange and red background with a pipe
and smoke painted to the right of his face, Morimura stands behind a papier-mch prop
painted green to mimic Van Goghs coat and undershirt. A white bandage, again covered
with paint, is wrapped around his head to hide Van Goghs missing ear, and the whole
is topped off with a papier-mch hat adorned with dozens of nails and painted black
to come close to the hat in the original work. Taken as a whole, the entire work is cov-
ered with layer upon layer of paintand Morimuras face is no exception. Throughout the
works that will follow in this Art History series, Morimura continually paints and repaints
his face and his body to come as close to the original as possible.
In 1991, Morimura, in addition to working with Western masterpieces, turned his
gaze onto his own society. In his Sisters series of that year, he posed as several young,
nameless Japanese womenno one in particulardressed to the nines in Chanel, Cour-
reges, Louis Vuitton, and strange combinations of the above (for example, a Chanel suit
covered with Louis Vuittons trademark LV). Dana Friis-Hansen, then a curator at the
Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, and current director of the Austin Museum of Art,
says that Morimura implicates the new class of idle Japanese wives who have jettisoned
the honored role of housewife but have little else to aspire to than to help balance the trade
deficit by spending the nations surplus wealth on imported luxury goods!20 Morimura
thus pokes fun at the consumer culture of Japan, defined by free spending and phenom-
enal wealth at the height of the nations bubble economy.
In 1994, Morimura turned his eyes not to paintings imported to Japan from the West,
but to pop music, with his series Psychoborg (a linguistic combination of psychology and
cyborg) in which he poses as two of Americas most famous exports: Madonna and Michael
Jackson. Morimuras uncanny impersonations of the two rock stars is unsettling, but his
hybrid mix of the two is simply frightening in its depiction of a Michael Jackson-esque
figure dressed in a black bustier and high heels a la Madonna.
Never ending his examination of Western influence on Japanese culture and continu-
ing his study of sexuality, Morimura completed the Actresses series in 1996, posing as a
number of Hollywood starlets, a European porn queen, and even many Japanese movie
heroines from the 1940s to 1970s in the roles that made them famous. It seems that no
one is safe here: Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Vivien Leigh, Liz Taylor, Ingrid
Bergman, Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, the European porn star Sylvia Kristel of
Emmanuelle fame, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda, Jodie Foster, and Marilyn Monroe each
succumb to Morimuras wiles in numerous scenes borrowed directly from the films in
which these actresses appeared. In addition to restaging many famous scenarios from the
films, Morimura also poses the actressesand their characters, and himselfin several
Japanese settings: Vivien Leigh as Scarlett OHara of Gone With the Wind in a Japanese
garden; Sylvia Kristel as Emmanuelle in a Buddhist temple; and Jodie Foster as the young
prostitute Iris in Taxi Driver situated in a small Japanese alley with dozens of pink tissue
packets (a common advertising medium in Japan) littered about her feet.
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 177

Morimura has also brought certain of his characters to life, and perhaps the most
meaning-laden of these interpretive impersonations was a performance held in a large
lecture hall on the Komaba campus of Tokyo University, the very same hall where on May
13, 1969, Yukio Mishima addressed a large group of students engaged in a strike against
the university.21 Speaking of his own revolutionary and militaristic intentions, Mishima
addressed the crowd with high spirits in his call for a return to an imperial state, itself an
unveiled diatribe against the state of Japan under heavy American influence. The students
looked up to Mishima as both literary master and revolutionary icon, and his acknowledg-
ment of their protests against the university were no doubt seen as complete affirmation
of their actions and beliefs. Morimura, in choosing to reference his own fascination with
Mishima and his star power, staged his own diatribe of sorts in 1995 when he stepped
onto a large white podium set on two rows of desks at the front of the lecture hall dressed
in the garb of Marilyn Monroe. Climbing up on the podium with an industrial strength
fan hidden inside, Morimura, bedecked in a white gown very much like Monroes dress in
The Seven Year Itch, began posing as the fabled American actress, and then with all of his
energy started wailing at top volume for several minutes. His screams and howls captured
the angst of a nation now entrenched in a recession and also stood as a reminder of the
same emotional outpouring that occurred in the room two and a half decades prior. In
many ways, the act can also be seen as a eulogy of sorts for Mishima, who in 1970 ended
his life, as noted above, in a performative suicide enacted during a botched coup detat in
which he and several acolytes attempted to take over the Japanese army. The performance,
in its simple equation of beauty plus outrage equals revolution and perhaps death, also
relied upon the filter of henshin to draw reference to Mishimas own homosexuality and
icon status, as well as making a direct link between Mishima and Monroe thanks to both
cultural powerhouses having committed suicide in their prime.22 Morimuras Marilyn
therefore not only screams out at the state of the current world, but also bemoans the pre-
mature loss of two of the global star systems most talked about celebrity luminaries. Equal
parts fantasy and historical re-enactment, Morimuras performance stands as a corporeal
ode to Mishima and Marilyn through a hybrid performance of gender transformation and
cultural criticism rolled into one.

Building Cultural Critique through Changing the Body

By no means was Morimura Yasumasa alone in his proclivity for using performance and
bodily transformation as a filter through which the West was to be translated and Japan
was to be understood. Another artist enamored with the tropes of henshin, fantasy, and
myth is Teraoka Masami. Born in Japan in 1936, Teraoka moved to the United States at
the age of twenty-five to undertake further art study, and his later work borrowed from
aesthetic traditions from both his home and adopted countries. Best known for his ukiyo-
einspired paintings revolving around themes of sexuality, disease, and the beach culture
of California and Hawaii, the artist creates rich visual narratives played out in a single
image often populated by beautiful blonde women, geisha, ghosts, sea creatures, and tat-
tooed men enthralled in the pleasures of the flesh. His AIDS series of 19881991 depicts
the horrors associated with this deadly disease, and it does so in a universal fashion in that
178|Eric C. Shiner

Figure 7.3. Masami Teraoka, Hanging Rock, from the AIDS series, 1990. Watercolor study on paper.
29 11/16 23 13/16 inches. Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, R. T. Miller
Fund, 1999. Image courtesy of the artist and the Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco.

the disease is shown to affect heterosexuals and homosexual subjects alike. In Hanging
Rock (fig. 7.3) of 1990 from the series, Teraoka depicts American photographer and AIDS
victim Robert Mapplethorpe drying photographs on the rocky outcrop of the same name
in Melbourne, Australia. This rugged terrain is well known in Melbourne for its danger-
ous rock ledges, from which Teraoka once feared falling while on a hike there. In the work,
he paints an evil government official attempting to censor Mapplethorpes photographs
and draws a parallel with the deadly terrain of Hanging Rock, the U.S. governments wish
that Mapplethorpe and his work would simply disappear, and the curse of AIDS and the
destruction it brings to life and to art as well. Teraokas fantasy realms rely on a knowledge
of current events and social norms to make sense even though they are portrayed in the
vein of nineteenth-century ukiyo-e prints. Like Morimura, Teraoka plays with history, fan-
tasy, and sexuality to critique his own contemporary floating world.
In a similar vein to Morimura and Teraoka, but in a wholly disparate visual language,
the painter Fukuda Miran reconfigures art history to her own liking through the physi-
cal manipulation of the very canvas upon which an image is portrayed and of the frame
within which it is hung. Born in Tokyo in 1963, Fukuda has been known to hang canvases
housed in trapezoidal frames in the upper corners of a gallery (Portrait, 1995), to cut apart
a painting and hang the many sections of canvas and frame bric-a-brac on the gallery wall
(Woman with a Letter, 1991), and to scramble the images of famous Western artists, such
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 179

as Diego Velazquez, in a grid formation where elements of the original work are reconfig-
ured into a nonsensical configuration (Lunch, or Three Men at a Table, 1992). She has also
shifted the perspective on such works as Botticellis La Primavera (Allegory of Spring) of
14771478, Manets Le Djeuner sur lHerbe of 1863, and Velazquezs Las Meninas of 1656
to reveal what is happening with figures not central to the original work. Fukuda has also
injected a heavy dose of humor into her work, for example by proffering a heaven-sent
bounty of Lipton tea bags on the Greek heroine Danae in her work Danae Receiving the
Shower of Gold of 1994. The artists contorted canvases compel the viewer to question not
only the validity of the original masterwork that she has deconstructed, but also the very
nature of the art system itself through a witty reorganization of art historical logic and
value. Fukuda does not so much replicate the work using Japanese tropes, but reconfigures
it in a seeming attempt to show that the perspective of the West is only one option in a
world of limitless viewpoints. Quite literally, she reconstructs bodies depicted in famous
works of art to her own liking using the basic concepts of henshin and fantasy in the devel-
opment of her own unique vision of the world around her.
The sculptor Yanobe Kenji does the same thing, but through the less subtle mode of
creating monster machines and nuclear fallout suits upon and within which he takes on
art history and its staid vocabulary. For example, the artists Foot Soldier (Godzilla) (fig.
7.4) of 1991 is a three-and-a-half-meter-tall set of Godzilla legs and sweeping tail con-
structed from indigo blue urethane rubber. It houses a motor and a steering device and
is set on an exterior chassis with wheels. There is also a drivers seat set where Godzillas
upper torso and head should be; it is here that Yanobe steers his contraption on a course of
conceptual destruction, no doubt headed directly at the heart of Japanese society and the

Figure 7.4. Yanobe Kenji,

Foot Soldier (Godzilla),
1991. Urethane rubber,
steel, motor, mixed media.
Photograph by Kurosawa
Shin. Image courtesy of
Yamato Gendai, Tokyo.
180|Eric C. Shiner

history of art. Other works have included the artists series of photographs of the nuclear
wasteland of Chernobyl, Russia, in which Yanobe dons a self-made radiation fallout suit
constructed of bright yellow vinyl, replete with a globe-like diving helmet and radioac-
tive badges. Yanobe traverses the barren landscape of Chernobyls destroyed factories in
a seeming quest for the truth of what happened there, yet as a performance, the work
takes on an almost manga-like sense of adventurethe hero having been dropped into
unfriendly territory and forced to find signs of life. Yanobes performative gestures in the
guise of a well-protected scientist or superhero play on the concepts of cartoon narrative,
fantastical discovery, and bodily transformation and take the artist and his audience on a
journey focused on navigating an otherwise unfriendly world. For audiences in Japan, this
postapocalyptic world no doubt conjures a fondness for anime classics such as Akira and
Space Battleship Yamato from the 1970s and 1980s, but perhaps more poignantly examines
Japans own experience with nuclear attack in World War II. By taking on the trappings of
the lone survivor of an otherwise imagined nuclear winter, Yanobe shows the viewer that
one must be creative in order to survive.
And it is just this attention to surviving our tumultuous times that fueled the work of
the Kyoto-based performance collective Dumb Type. Founded by Furuhashi Teiji in 1984,
the group traveled the world throughout the 1990s performing many of its classic theatri-
cal performances, including pH (1990), S/N (1995), and OR (1997). Addressing such social
ills as AIDS and the inability of Japanese society to recognize the gay community, Dumb
Type created spectacular multimedia environments that combined live performance, con-
temporary dance, video projections, and lighting effects in a singularly focused critique
on the rigidity of Japanese society at the time. Itself rocked by the death of Furuhashi to
AIDS in 1995, the remaining members of Dumb Type, including BuBu de la Madeleine,
Akira the Hustler, Takatani Shiro, and Koyamada Toru, continued to perform into the
late 1990s with the sole mission of exposing the secrets that were considered taboo in
mainstream Japanese society. Much like their peers noted above, the members of Dumb
Type used drag, fantasy, and performance to urge their audience to envision a future world
free from the constraints of social subjugation, prejudice, and government ignorance. Pro-
moting safe sex and open minds, Dumb Type utilized art to show that the global AIDS
crisis affected the Japanese as much as it affected others around the world, and they helped
change the viewpoint of a country that had theretofore turned its eyes away from the crisis.
As much as Japan had ignored the AIDS crisis and the existence of the gay commu-
nity, an even more ingrained chauvinism was experienced every day by the entire female
population. Photographer Yanagi Miwa took this entrenched sexism as her point of depar-
ture and set about weaving an intricate tale on the condition of women in contemporary
Japanese society. The artists Elevator Girls series from 1995 to 1999 presents a visual story
portrayed in photographic chapters, not unlike the cells of a comic book as discussed ear-
lier in this chapter. Yanagi takes as her subject the refined beauty and hidden angst of the
Japanese elevator girl, a comely young uniformed woman who whiles away her working
hours in the confines of a luxury department store elevator. Poised in speech and gesture,
the elevator girl politely welcomes customers to the store, thanks them for their patronage,
and inquires what floor the would-be shopper would like to be set free upon. Her perfect
manners and tasteful appearance represent the retailers own corporate image, especially
meaningful in Japan where presentation is of the utmost importance. In her portrayal of
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 181

these vestal maidens, Yanagi not only presents the elevator girl as a heavenly angel who
personifies beauty, grace, and poise, but also as a woman both victimized by and trapped
within the nightmarish bounds of sexist Japanese society. Representing perceived femi-
nine ideals of beauty and charm, while at the same time conjuring frightful images of
entrapment and servitude, the elevator girls in Yanagis photographs perhaps symbolize
the dualistic roles of all women in Japan.
Thus taking up the subject of the caged bird of paradise, Yanagi has created a visual
epic in multiple scenes that first locates her heroine within the cold steel walls of the depart-
ment store elevator in 1995s White Casket (fig. 7.5). Itself a work in four panels focusing
from above on the interior of the cramped space of the elevator, White Casket portrays the
gradual metamorphosis of three elevator girls askew on the floor into a pool of blood in
the form of the Mitsukoshi department stores signature wrapping paper design. As the
series progresses in Information City of 1996 and Aquajenne in Paradise I & II of 1997, the
elevator girls begin to increase exponentially in number while slowly emerging from the
elevator itself into a series of pristine subterranean passageways. In the subsequent Eleva-
tor Girl House, 1F of 1997, the girls surface to ground level, and in their seeming release
from an underground prison, find themselves instead enshrined within the glass walls
of a display case that runs along the track of a moving walkway in the left-hand panel of
this photographic diptych. In the second panel, the girls are freed from the case onto the
surface of the moving belt and are then replaced by bouquets of beautiful flowers, thus
connecting the idea of woman = beauty = flower = commodity. Also of note here is the
physical position of the freshly emancipated women, who sit and lay recumbent in a state
of confusion and insecurity on the walkway that ends in a black void. In Midnight Dream
Awakening of 1999, the elevator girls seem to emerge from the tunnel into an immense
complex housing a shopping center, aquarium, and grand atrium. Stretching more than
eighteen meters long and standing nearly two meters tall, the work is reminiscent of early
Japanese hand scrolls in its sweeping horizontal picture plane set off by space-defining
architectural frames. Within these frames, numerous elevator girls inhabit the spaces of a
clearly above-ground consumer paradise-cum-prison. Although there are no visible exits
within this labyrinthine complex, the light pouring in from the skylight in the upper far
left corner of the work alludes to the eventual freedom that the elevator girls, and Japanese
women on the whole, will one day enjoy. As her work is set in a dream world, with make-
believe characters acting upon imagined stages, Yanagi has presented her female audience
with the dream that conditions for women in Japan will improve and that her metaphori-
cal elevators will one day reach the upper floors of society and crash through the glass
ceiling of patriarchy with reverberations that will last throughout time.
The fashion photographs in Izima Kaorus collection Twenty Landscapes with a
Corpse23 also focus on fashion, consumerism, and the role of women in Japan, although
in a very different way than the work of Yanagi Miwa. Shot between 1993 and 1998, the
photographs bring us to the very borderline of life and death, of beauty and homeliness,
indeed to the very core of existence itself. Bound to the aesthetics of passing (both pass-
ing away and passing in the sense of a successful masquerade), these images compel
the viewer to question concepts of life, art, and beauty in their always disturbing, and at
times provoking, portrayals of death and decay cloaked in the sophisticated trappings of
cutting-edge high fashion, makeup, and glamour. More importantly, they challenge the
Figure 7.5. Yanagi Miwa, White Casket, 1995. Color photograph. Image courtesy of the artist and
Yoshiko Isshiki Office, Tokyo.
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 183

viewer to question the perceived borders between a multitude of binarieslife and death,
beauty and decay, eros and pathos, masculine and feminineand to deconstruct these
binaries to re-examine ones socioconstructed and preconceived notions of death.
Centering on the macabre circumstances of twenty personal curtain calls, Izimas
works depict the meticulously staged death performances of twenty well-known Japanese
actresses, actors, and models. Working closely with Izima, one of Japans leading fash-
ion photographers, the models conceptualize the minute details of their own ideal exits
from the world. In an essay published in a catalogue of Izimas work, the art historian
Oshima Hiroshi likens the models in the photographs to cloth folded inside a trunk, a
cloth spread over the slope of a mountain, a drenched cloth clinging to [a] wet rock.24
Izimas female models are presented to the viewer as objects that, in their lifeless state, are
equally expendable and changeable, yet clearly desirable. These images are magazine fash-
ion photographs, made for the purpose of marketing and selling the couture designs that
the atypically dead models are wearing. They inherently suggest that women, like fashion,
are mere commodities able to be bought and sold at will.

Neo-Pop versus Self-Contained Pop:

Pessimism and Optimism Collide
Following on the heels of the bubble economy and its rampant consumerism that some-
how legitimized work such as Izimas, the contemporary Japanese art world of today is
often times equated with the big-name artists associated with the neo-pop movement:
Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Mr., and Chiho Aoshima, to name just a few. Theirs
is a movement steeped in the very tropes I have discussed at length above: henshin, per-
formativity, fantasy narrative. All their work plays on these themes, yet it does so from a
pessimistic position. In his self-curated exhibition Little Boy, held at Japan Society in New
York City in 2005, Murakami, the generally regarded leader of the movement, presented
a number of works that seemed to focus solely on the emasculation that Japan suffered
at the hands of the nuclear bombs let loose by American forces in World War II. Japan
has never recovered, Murakami seems to say, and as a result has become an infantilized
and weak nation that depends on cute characters such as Hello Kitty and Doraemon and
fantasy-laden manga in order to survive. Thus the world of imagination becomes a sort of
prosthetic device that the citizens of Japan must carry with them at all times to make sense
of the world around them. I tend to disagree.
Murakami, Nara, and Aoshima create visually stunning works. Their subject matter
tends to the adventurous, the comical, and the perverse. However, and much in line with
Murakamis own superflat theories, in which the two-dimensional work of the neo-pop
movement is to be read only as a flat imaginary depiction of our truly flat contemporary
world, a foreboding sense of pessimism infiltrates these artists works as if to say, We have
given up. The cute yet vicious D.O.B. character, Murakamis answer to Mickey Mouse,
always and only floats in front of the viewer like so much hot air; Naras evil-eyed children
hold knives and appear ready to attack, yet they never do; Aoshimas fantastical landscapes
of anthropomorphized cities might appear interesting, but one feels no urge to step inside.
Although important to the overall ebb and flow of contemporary Japanese art on a number
184|Eric C. Shiner

of levels, it seems to me that the truly indicative art of a particular moment in time are
those that critique the current situation yet offer an alternate vision of the future. They
offer a means to cope with the situation at hand, an escape route in some cases, a weapon
in others. What neo-pop offers is simply a flat picture with little behind it; it is a faade
behind which one can hide. And, as such, it is truly indicative of Japans growing otaku
(geek) subculture in which those who feel unable to navigate society hide from the main-
stream by losing themselves in the world of comics, computers, and character idolization.
As a cultural record of the otaku subculture, neo-pop hits the nail on the head; as artwork
indicative of an entire society, it is only able to present the outer aesthetic shell, with little
substance and nary a tool with which the viewer can make sense of it all.
I would instead like to put forward the idea that a number of mainstream Japanese
artists working in the 1990s and into the twenty-first century have instead worked under
a much more optimistic umbrella through the creation of works that both comment on
the world around them through the borrowing of imagery from popular culture and give
the viewer something to walk away with at the end of the day. These artists, including
Morimura and Yanagi, are no doubt working in the language of pop art, yet they are pro-
ducing images that are in many ways self-contained. Looking at their output under this
new rubric of self-contained pop, or rather a novel pop art based on popular imagery yet
infused with an energy that draws upon not only the viewers visual lexicon but also on
their imagination to make sense of the world around them, I would suggest that these
artists offer a limitless narrative to the viewer, whereas the neo-pop artists only present a
one-act play.
Take for example the radical Kansai-based performance collectives, the Biters and
the OK Girls. The Biters, a trio in the form of former Dumb Type members BuBu de la
Madeleine and Akira the Hustler in collaboration with Sunayama Norico, are a group of
professional prostitutes-cum-artists who support their art production with funds derived
from their red light trade. They not only support their artwork with their sex work, but
they also use their experiences to inform it. In their work, the three enact sexual encoun-
ters and advertisements through photography and mock comic books, all with the inten-
tion of liberating defined notions of sexuality and pleasure. Akira, under the stage name
Miss Melodias, appears in lurid photographs, posing for the camera and offering himself
up for sale. Sunayama, with two stage names, Dominatrix Mikado and Conosnatch Zubo-
binskaya, often dresses as an S&M super-heroine with a phallus-tipped futuristic gun.
The trio often appear nude or semiclothed in their work, wearing the garments of the sex
tradefishnet stockings, patent leather bustiers, and provocative underwearyet their
work is far from sexual in its humorous critique of the very system in which they operate.
They seem to say, If you are desperate enough to pay for sex, we are here and well make it
fun. In reality, the group, like Teraoka Masami outlined above, encourages the viewer to
practice safe sex, have an open mind, and realize that the world of sexuality is dependent
on the very fantasies that they enact in their work. Viewers can thus enter this world of
sex-based fantasy and decide for themselves what the outcome of an imaginary tryst with
the artists will be, or they can turn in embarrassment if the work somehow repels them.
The Biters work provokes the viewer into thinking about an often unmentionable aspect
of Japanese culture and, for better or worse, has helped to awaken debate on the issues of
safe sex, AIDS prevention, and sex work from an aesthetic point of view.
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 185

Similarly, photographer Yoshinaga Masayuki captures another societal taboo through

his depiction of the regalia and spectacular, chrome-laden, souped-up steeds of the noc-
turnal bszoku motorcycle gangs of Japans underworld. Shooting the gang members
and their bikes in pristine white studios, Yoshinagas humanistic approach elicits respect
for and credence toward this otherwise feared and misunderstood subculture, made up
mainly of young men and women under twenty. Placing them in either group scenarios or
as individuals set in close proximity to their preciously detailed bikes, Yoshinaga, who once
belonged to a motorcycle gang himself, memorializes his former cohorts in formal por-
traits that complement his other series of action-laced documentary street scenes. In all the
photos, the gang members well-kept suits draw immediate attention; usually in solid black
or white, the suits are heavily embroidered with each groups individual mottos, Japanese
imperial flags, and golden chrysanthemums. Theirs is a right-wing nationalism literally
sewn to their sleeves in brightly-hued silken thread. The rough young faces that populate
Yoshinagas photographs represent not the elite organized crime underlings that so many
take them to be, but instead a group of teenagers who have become Japans marginalized
revolutionaries. In a unified procession of unabashed abandon, bszoku riders rush down
the darkened streets of towns and cities across Japan in a nightly crescendo of unmuffled
roars, screeching wheels, and haunting chantsall bent on upsetting the status quo. By
placing these young undesirables in a formal studio and presenting them in stoic poses,
Yoshinaga provides the viewer with an alternate reading of these thugs, who in the artists
portraits become proud bike owners draped in richly detailed uniforms. In many ways the
figures seem to have been culled from the pages of a comic book. They are characters upon
which others can transpose their own experiences and emotions, and again, through aes-
thetic means, Yoshinaga makes the gangs an issue suitable for public discussion and debate.
In an entirely different light, young photographer Sawada Tomoko examines the latent
potentiality of the self through a body of works in which the artist uses her own visage as
a blank canvas upon which she enacts hundreds of alternate personalities, all in an effort
to explore the many different versions of the self that inhabit the far reaches of each of
our minds. In her ID400 series from 1999 (fig. 7.6), Sawada dressed in a different guise
four hundred times and took her self-portrait in a passport ID photo booth in a parking
garage in her hometown of Kobe. She then assembled these photographs, four images per
personality, into groups of one hundred, displaying the resultant images in large grids of
four hundred each. The four grid works are flanked by poster-size images of Sawada with
a shaved head and no makeupthe raw canvas, if you will. The viewer is immediately
drawn in, seeking out a familiar face, a connection of sorts with her own reality. Thanks to
the range of the personalities that Sawada enactseverything from frumpy schoolgirl to
stylish fashionistamost viewers are able to identify a familiar face, perhaps even their
own. In other works, Sawada has posed as a prospective bride in her Omiai series of 2001,
as a bevy of female workerseverything from a nun to a policewomanin her Costume
series of 2004, and even an entire high school class in her School Days series of 2005. In
all her photographs, Sawada invites viewers to examine their own relations between the
outside world and the interior mind, and she gives everyone the chance to imagine another
reality thanks to her performative henshin and fantasy role playing.
Another young artist, Tabaimo, uses self-drawn animated video to express the vari-
ant worlds the viewer may journey to by simply using her imagination. Tabaimos videos
Figure 7.6. Sawada Tomoko, Detail of ID400, 1999. Monochrome photograph. Image courtesy of the
artist and MEM Ltd.
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 187

often feature fantastic scenes in which sumo wrestlers zip off their suits to reveal suited
salarymen, racing trains populated by chickens laying eggs and large sushi rolls parked in
the middle of the aisle, and even a mother chopping miniature humans up on her kitchen
cutting board. Tabaimos vivid imagination and skillful hand conjure a world with endless
possibilities, a place where the unimaginable becomes reality. In her work Japanese Bath-
house from 2000, the artist creates a wonderland bathhouse in which the above-mentioned
sumo wrestlers wrangle, turtles swim, and baths overflow. Projected onto a large three-
paneled screen, the figures become life-size and the viewer, when standing in the midst
of the screens, truly feels as though she is part of the action unfolding around her. Equal
parts dreamscape and very realistic bathhouse, Tabaimos animated version becomes a
place where the viewers imagination may run wild thanks to the artists use of the same
tropes that many of the artists outlined in this chapter have taken up in their own way and
to very different ends.
In conclusion, I return to Morimura Yasumasa and his most recent work at the time
this chapter was written, a series in homage to both Yukio Mishima and Eikoh Hosoe
titled Beyond Ordeal by Roses and made in 2006. In these monochrome photographs,
Morimura recreates many of the original pictures in Hosoes Barakei. He exactly re-
enacts the photographs, dressing as Mishima, in essence becoming Mishima. In the work
included here, Beyond Ordeal by Roses (The Sound of the Waves Whispers in My Ear)
(fig. 7.7) Morimura poses in perhaps the most recognizable image from the original series,

Figure 7.7. Morimura Yasumasa, Beyond Ordeal by Roses (The Sound of the Waves Whispers in My Ear),
2006. Gelatin silver print. Image courtesy of the artist and MEM Ltd.
188|Eric C. Shiner

a close-up photograph of Mishimas face, the lower portion masked by the rose he holds in
his clenched teeth. As noted above, Mishima commissioned Hosoe to take these portraits
and, in essence, expose the duplicity of his soul and the liquidity of his identity. Through
the act of taking on Mishimas visage, Morimura and his long career seem to have come
full circle; two chameleons have been fused into one beinghundreds of characters here
condensed into a single face. In the ultimate act of dedication, Morimura thus becomes
Mishima, and the resultant image speaks volumes about the history and trajectory of Japa-
nese contemporary art as we know it today.
Indeed, it seems as though the tropes of bodily transformation, fantasy, and perfor-
mance have served successful and radically different ends not only for Morimura, but for
all Japanese artists engaged in an examination of the society within which they live and
work. Reliant on the boundless imagination of the artist to be made in the first placeand
equally reliant on the imagination of the viewer to be made sense ofthe works produced
by these artists straddle the fence of traditional modes of artistic production by relying
on an outside viewpoint to finish the story they plant in the viewers mind. Thanks to
the omnipresence of fantasy-based characters and tales in mainstream Japanese popular
culture, the work of the many artists examined in this chapter stand at the crossroads
between lived reality and dreamed-about alternatives to said reality. They mix tradition
and innovation in equal measure and produce works that are contemporary hybrids span-
ning time, philosophy, and space. By providing a visual catalyst to the viewer, these artists
present a self-contained pop art that provides all the ingredients necessary to fuel the most
creative thinking possible for years to come.

Notes

1. Yukio Mishima, Kyko no Ie (Kykos house) (Tokyo: Shinchsha, 1959), p. 253. It is

interesting to note that Walter Benjamin, in his 1936 text Illuminations, writes, Mankind,
which in Homers time was an object of contemplation for the Olympic gods, now is one for
itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as
an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections
(New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 242.
2. Literally change [the] body.
3. After a botched attempt to deliver a manifesto at the Tokyo headquarters of the Japa-
nese Self-Defense Forces on November 25, 1970, Mishima committed ritual seppuku suicide
in the office of the military commander. He and four acolytes stormed the office and tied the
commander to his chair; Mishima then emerged on the balcony outside the office window and
read his manifesto that aimed at restoring absolute power to the emperor of Japan. The troops
gathered below did not agree with his words and instead booed and mocked him.
4. See Vera Mackie, Understanding through the Body: The Masquerades of Morimura
Yasumasa and Mishima Yukio, in Genders, Transgenders, and Sexualities in Japan, ed. Mark
McLelland and Romit Dasgupta (London: Routledge, 2005); and Roy Starrs, Deadly Dialectics:
Sex, Violence, and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1994) for further insights into Mishimas character development.
 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells | 189

5. Indeed, as a means of presenting his own version of his multifaceted identity to the
world, Mishima commissioned the young photographer Eikoh Hosoe to shoot pictures of him
in various fantasy situations in his home and garden in Tokyo. The resultant book, Barakei
(Ordeal by roses) was published in 1963, helping to establish Hosoe as one of Japans most
important young photographers.
6. For a thorough understanding of Mavos activities, please see Gennifer Weisenfelds
important book Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 19051931 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2002).
7. Works by Mavo members were heavily influenced by the constructivist movement in
Russia and Dada movement on the European continent, and many of their works became
constructions that included various media attached to a canvas or board, thus becoming three-
dimensional works that went well beyond the two-dimensional limits of painting. Performance
was also key to the groups activities, and various members of the group designed stage sets
that were reminiscent of their smaller assemblage works.
8. For images, see Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, pp. 176, 179,
240.
9. See Alexandra Munroes brilliant Scream Against the Sky: Japanese Art After 1945 (New
York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994), pp. 188213, for a detailed account of the formation of
ankoku butoh and other forms of what Munroe labels obsessional art.
10.Cf. Frolicking Animals Scrolls.
11. Ribbon no kishi in Japanese (Ribbon knight).
12. See Jennifer Robertsons studied treatise on the subject, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics
and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
13. Unfortunately, in real life, it is another story. Although the situation is improving year
by year, alternative sexual identities, including gay, lesbian, and transsexual identification, are
often looked down upon by mainstream society.
14. This field of study needs to be researched in far greater detail and is akin to the radi-
cal ways vision was forever altered by the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the nineteenth
century as machines and steam-powered locomotives literally introduced the theory of rapid-
ity into the ways human beings experiencedand viewedthe world around them. The same,
I believe, is true of animation and the cinema in the twentieth century.
15. The reference to Seconal, a calming depressant, is not lost on me here.
16. From Tsunehisa Kimura: Scanning the Digital Apocalypse, http://www.abc.net.au/
arts/visual/stories/montage/page7.htm (accessed June 2002).
17. Once it took firm root on American soil, the pop art phenomenon soon found its way
to Japan in a number of group exhibitions of American pop artists in Japan throughout the
1960s. To this day, Andy Warhol is one of the most widely recognized artists names, alongside
Picasso and Van Gogh, in Japan.
18. For an image of this work, see Sengo bunka no kiseki, 19451995 (Japanese culture:
The postwar years), exh. cat. (Tokyo: Asahi shinbun, 1995).
19. In his book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back Again, Warhol says,
Whats great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers
buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola,
and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think,
you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke
190|Eric C. Shiner

than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes
are good.
20.Munroe, Scream Against the Sky, p. 340.
21.See Mishima Yukio vs Tdai Zenkyt, 19692000 (Yukio Mishima vs. Tokyo Univer-
sity student movement, 19692000) (Tokyo: Fujihara shoten, 2000).
22. Australian historian Vera Mackie has also drawn succinct parallels between the two:
Mishima, like Morimura, engaged in a series of masquerades throughout his life:
as samurai, as yakuza, as soldier, as Saint Sebastian. Mishima participated in a
photographic shoot directed by Hosoe Eikoh, in a series which was later published
under the title Barakei (Ordeal by Roses). The photographs place Mishimas body
in a range of visual environments, drawing on the European artifacts and art
works in his residence. The body is important to both artists: Mishima engages
in bodybuilding and military training, while Morimuras masquerades can be
described as an embodied critical practice. Both are engaged in dialogues with
Japanese and European traditions. Mishimas house is full of European art works
and his writings (particularly the critical writings) refer to the European literary
tradition; Morimuras work quotes extensively from European art history. Nev-
ertheless, they both insert themselves into Japanese traditions in various ways.
Mackie, Understanding through the Body.
23. The Japanese title of the series is Shitai no aru 20 no fkei.
24. Kaoru Izima, Shitai no aru 20 no fkei (Kyoto: Korinsha, 1999), unpaginated.
PARTII

Japanese Art of the Period

in Its Cultural Context
 Michael F. Marra

8 The Creation of the Vocabulary

of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan

The formation in Japan of the notion of the fine arts (bijutsu; lit. acts pertaining to
beauty) in the Western sense of the word took place during the early Meiji period (1868
1912), at the same time that the idea of beauty underwent a massive redefinition. If we
accept the statement by the literary critic Kobayashi Hideo (19021983) that until the Meiji
period in Japan there were beautiful cherry blossoms but no idea of beauty, we might even
argue that beauty in the aesthetic sense of the word was discovered in Japan in the sec-
ond half of the nineteenth century.1 In other words, only the introduction to Japan of
the science of aesthetics allowed a redefinition of the particularity of beautiful objects
in terms of the universality of the concept of beauty. Japans encounter with the idea of
beauty is linked with the creation of the first dictionaries, when a need was felt to find
adequate words to translate the Dutch noun shoonheid and the Dutch adjective schoon.
The scholar of Dutch studies Inamura Sanpaku (17581811) used the word birei to
translate both in his Dutch-Japanese dictionary Haruma wage (A Japanese rendition of
Halmas Dictionary, 1796). The characters bi and rei were historically associated with
something worthy of praise for being good, appealing, and attractive.
When we look at the history in Japan of the character bi, we see it making
an appearance at the very beginning of the first poem from the Manysh (Collection of
ten thousand leaves, 759) as a means to embellish the words basket (ko) and trowel
(fukushi): With a basket, / a pretty basket (miko), / and a trowel, / a pretty trowel (mibu-
kushi) in hand.2 In the tenth century Ki no Yoshimochi (d. 919) used the character bi in
his Chinese preface to the Kokinsh (Collection of ancient and modern poems, 905), with
reference to beautiful landscapes (bikei ), as we read in the following: Whenever
there were good seasons or beautiful scenes (bikei), the earlier Emperors commanded their
banquet guests to compose Japanese poems (waka).3 The character bi came to be used to
write the adjective utsukushi, which included the meanings of darling, cute, beauti-
ful, and splendid. During the late Heian period, utsukushi lost its restrictive meanings
of darling and cute (the beauty to what is small)4 when it came to be associated with
beautiful natural objects, as we can see from the following passage in the kagami (The
great mirror, ca. 1119): After walking all over the capital, I located a beautiful (utsukushiki)
specimen [i.e. tree], covered with deep red blossoms, at the house in the western sector.5
One we turn to the Japanese history of the character rei, we see it appearing in the
compound karei in a footnote to a poem by Empress Iwanohime (fourth or fifth
194|Michael F. Marra

century?), the consort of Emperor Nintoku. Rei, which in antiquity was read uruwashi,
had a variety of meanings, including beautiful, proper, earnest, intimate, and cor-
rect. The compound karei means handsome, as we see from the footnote to Iwano-
himes poem: In the Twenty-Third year of Emperor Ingys reign (434), Prince Kinashi no
Karu was made Crown Prince. His features were handsome (yshi karei), and those who
looked on him found themselves in love with him.6 Ki no Yoshimochi (d. 919) used the
character rei in his Chinese preface, in which we find the compound karei with
the meaning of showy, flowery. Commenting on the poetic skills of Kisen (fl. ca. 810
824), Yoshimochi argues that the language of the Ujiyama monk Kisen is dazzling (sono
kotoba karei), but his poems do not flow smoothly.7 Sugawara no Funtoki (899981) also
made use of the character rei in a Chinese poem included in the Wakan rei sh (Songs
in Chinese and Japanese, 1012), in which the Chinese character is read uruwashi in Japa-
nese pronunciation: Secretary Wangs Orchid Bureau was lovely (rei, uruwashi) / as far
as loveliness goes (rei, uruwashikereba), / but alas! He had only red-cheeked guests; / Hsi
Chung-sans Bamboo Grove was secluded / as far as seclusion goes, / but we must regret
that his guests were not scholars / of truly noble discourse.8 Like the adjective utukushi,
uruwashi also meant dear in ancient times. In this case the word was recorded with a
different character (), as we see from the expression my dear husband (uruwashizuma)
in the Manysh.9 When written phonetically in Manygana script, uruwashi
also referred to the beautiful appearance of a person, as tomo no Tabito (665731)
indicates in his poem: Is it because / my thoughts fly constantly to her, / my handsome
darling (uruwashi to), / that each step I take ahead / should be so desperately hard?10
The nuances of gracefulness and exterior beauty increased in the literature of the Heian
period, as the Genji monogatari (The tale of Genji, ca. 1000) attests: A superb artist had
done the paintings of Ykihi, but the brush can convey only so much, and her picture
lacked the breath of life. The face, so like the lotuses in the Taieki Lake or the willows by
the Mi Palace, was no doubt strikingly beautiful (uruwashiu) in its Chinese way.11 Here
the word uruwashi seems to come to encompass a fascination with a gaudy and showy
type of beauty, an idea that will begin to be more common at the end of the Middle Ages.
As a translation of schoon, Sanpaku also chose the term yoshi (good), point-
ing at something that is likable because of either its ethical goodness or physical appeal.
Already in the Manysh, yoshi referred to the fair looks of a person, as in the following
poem: Despite my efforts / to tie my rope around / Tago Peak, / it is of no avail, / since
her looks are so stunning (sono kao yoki ni).12 Yoshi, however, is an ambiguous term
with a variety of meanings: good (as opposed to evil), skilled, healthy, intelligent, effec-
tive, noble, prosperous, pleasant, friendly, profitable, valuable, auspicious, happy, etc. A
famous tongue-twister from the Manysh plays on a variety of meanings of the adjective
yoshi, conjugated in a variety of ways. It is an homage to the beautiful landscape of the
Yoshino mountains, whose namethe Fair Fieldincorporates the adjective good,
fair, beautiful, attractive (yoshi): Good men from the past / took a good look say-
ing what a good place it was. / Take a good look at Yoshino, the good field / which they
declared to be good! / The good men of nowadays should take a good look.13
In Sango benran (Handbook of three languages, 1857), the scholar of French studies
Murakami Hidetoshi (18111890) translated the word beaut with the character bi
(beauty) accompanied by the reading utsukushisa, the nominal form of the adjective
 8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan | 195

utsukushi (beautiful). This appears to have been the first example in Japan of the use of
the character bi to indicate beauty. Murakami reserved the word birei for the transla-
tion of the French term gentil (graceful, delicate), indicating that these two characters
should be read kirei ni naru (to be graceful). The first Japanese philosophical diction-
ary, Tetsugaku jii (Philosophical dictionary, 1883), edited by Inoue Tetsujir (18551944)
and Ariga Nagao (18601921), records two compound words as translations of beautiful,
kabi (lit. flowery beauty) and furei (lit. rich beauty).14 The first part of the
Meiji period was characterized by fluidity in the use of a variety of characters devised to
signify the word beauty, including kirei naru koto (lit. to be mysteriously
lovely), ktaku (lit. brilliance), bimy (lit. charming and wondrous),
shrei (lit. excellent beauty), and karei (lit. good beauty). Birei
was the most widely used term in the first years of the Meiji era. It was eventually replaced
by the simplified form bi , which thus became the standard translation for beauty,
following the example of the writer Tsubouchi Shy (18581935), who in 1886 wrote a
series of articles titled Bi to wa nan zo ya (What is beauty? 1886).15
We should not look at the lively debates taking place in Japan during the last thirty
years of the nineteenth century as idle exercises in finding right words. The word beauty
coming from the West together with an arsenal of concepts belonging to the field of aes-
thetics forced the Japanese intelligentsia to rethink their cultural heritage in terms of
Western ideas. It rerouted intellectual activities that had developed in Japan over a span
of more than a thousand years into new frameworks of knowledge that used Western sci-
ences as yardsticks for the discussion and evaluation of local cultural products. Questions
of comparison arose, forcing the notion of commensurability over a native reality that was
then rethought in terms of measures coming from the outside. Once thinkers agreed on
the right translation of beauty, and once they had settled on its definition, they had to
ask whether beauty existed in Japan and where it could be found. Were there local versions
of beauty, and, if so, how could they be explained? Answers were found in classical works,
which were recanonized in what came to be known as literature, religion, philosophy,
and history, at the very same time that thinkers were pondering over the correct Chinese
characters to be chosen for signifying beauty. If the word beauty did not exist in Japan
prior to 1796, how did the Japanese refer to their artistic accomplishments in the past?
The question was already the result of the application of Western intellectual norms to
local ways (michi) of transmitting knowledge, since it forced thinkers to find in the local
heritage concepts that could be deemed commensurable with Western notions of beauty.
Yanabu Akira, a leading Japanese scholar of translation theory, mentions six key concepts
taken from the Japanese world of poetry that scholars have repeatedly singled out from the
Meiji period up to the present day to be commensurable with the idea of beauty: Hana
(flower) and ygen (grace), developed by the playwright Zeami (1363?1443?);
wabi (simplicity), characterizing the art of the tea master Riky (15221591); fga
(elegance) and sabi (artlessness), sustaining the poetics of the haiku master
Matsuo Bash (16441694); and mono no aware (the pathos of things), devised
by the scholar of National Learning Motoori Norinaga (17301801).16
When we look at the actual texts in which all the concepts above appear, we cannot
but wonder whether these ancient literati were concerned with producing works of artistic
beauty or, more convincingly, whether they were interested in giving practical advice on
196|Michael F. Marra

how to excel in the arts of which they became undisputed masters. Zeamis discussions
take place in manuals he wrote for the training of young n actorsa set of maxims to
be jealously guarded lest they fall into the hands of rival groups. Bash was concerned
with the survival of poetic styles (and the creation of new ones)styles that were deeply
grounded in rhetorical norms secretly transmitted through the ages from master to disci-
ple. These norms were more related to issues of practical skills (the need to be a good actor
and a successful poet) than to matters of beauty or aesthetic contemplation. Originally,
hana, ygen, fga, etc., were levels of accomplishments that poets and actors had
to struggle their whole life to achieve. The expression ygen appears repeatedly in the
words of judges at poetic matches as they awarded victory to outstanding poems: How-
ever, the way of poetry requires the achievement of the realm of grace (ygen), which is
so difficult to reach, as the poem of the left so skillfully achieves in the verse, the moon
expanding / night after night over Yoshino.17 Zeamis warning to actors was stern when
it came to the achievement of acting skills:

For example, stage characters such as Ladies-in-Waiting, or women of pleasure, beau-

tiful women, or handsome men, all show alike in their form, like the various flow-
ers in the natural world, the quality of Grace (ygen). On the other hand, roles such
as those of warrior, brave men, or demons and gods show in their form the quality
of strength, like pines and cedars in the natural world. If an actor does his best to
create truly such varied characters, then a role that involves Grace will produce an
atmosphere of Grace, and a role demanding strength will of itself appear strong. If
such distinctions are not observed, however, and an actor merely decides to attempt
to create a sense of Grace directly, the performance will be crude and cannot realize
its object.18

The importation to Japan of the field of aesthetics forced a reinterpretation of concepts

belonging to rhetoric, poetics, and theater in light of aesthetic categories, thus transform-
ing these concepts into Japanese counterparts of Western beauty. Without the introduc-
tion of aesthetics, nishi Yoshinori (18881959) would have been unable to rethink the
notion of ygen from the perspectives of intuition (chokkan ) and affection (kand
), thus seeing it as a subbranch of the sublime (sk ).19 Likewise, he would not
have analyzed the concept of aware as an example of world pain (Weltschmerz) keeping
the Heian court within the boundaries of the melancholic.20 Such acts of hermeneutical
colonization were direct results of the reconfiguration of knowledge that took place in
Japan during the Meiji period.21 The path to an understanding of what aesthetics was about
was not an easy one, as the convoluted history of the Japanese name demonstrates. Nishi
Amane (18291897), who was responsible for introducing the science of beauty directly
from Holland, where he studied Western sciences, created five different words to translate
aesthetics, which are indicative of the transformations that the concept underwent in
Nishis mind.
In a draft version of a lecture of 1867 Nishi called aesthetics zenbigaku (the
science of goodness and beauty), a term he used again in 1874 in his Hyakuichi shinron
(New theory of one hundred and one). This word points at the strong ethical underpin-
nings of Nishis Confucian education, which he tried to reconcile with Western theories
 8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan | 197

learned at the University of Leiden under the guidance of the philosopher C. W. Opzoomer
(18121892). Like most of his contemporaries, Nishi believed in the ethical consequences
of the artistic actan idea popularized by Neo-Confucian scholars for whom writing was
geared to the promotion of good and the chastisement of evil (kanzen chaku). No art
could be good unless it promoted good behavior. This tenet conflicted with one of the basic
rules of aesthetics: the autonomy of the artistic realm from any other sphere of knowledge,
including religion and ethics. Nishi found a way out of this dilemma by using the expres-
sion zenbigaku, which combines the Confucian theory of goodness, beauty, capability,
and refinement (shan mei liang ueng) and the Greek theory of goodness and beauty
(kaloskagathos). In this initial stage Nishi was able to remain loyal to his native upbringing
while at the same time introducing an enlightened theory from the West, although one
more than two thousand years old. With his choice of the word zenbigaku, Nishi implied
that while beauty was the material cause of morality, moral goodness was moralitys for-
mal cause. Morality, however, pertained to the human sciences and was independent from
the law and other hard sciences. On this point Nishi challenged his Confucian mentors,
inasmuch as he rejected the idea that a well-ordered nation could be founded upon the
rulers moral behavior. Confucian, Platonic, and utilitarian concerns are at work in this
first definition of aesthetics.22
In 1870 Nishi referred to aesthetics by using three different words: (1) shigakuga
(the science of poetry, music, and painting) in the section on literature of his Ency-
clopedia (Hyakugaku renkan);23 (2) gaku no takubi (science of supreme beauty)
in the section on philosophy of the same volume;24 (3) kashuron (the discipline
of good taste) in the same section on philosophy.25 In the Encyclopedia Nishi linked truth,
goodness, and beauty respectively to the activities of the intellect, the will, and sensibility,
which were the ground of the sciences of logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Here we clearly see
a demarcation between disciplines that are increasingly asserting their autonomy from
each other, not only with regard to the major distinction between human sciences (which
in Hyakuichi shinron Nishi had called psychology) and the hard sciences (which he had
called physics), but also among disciplines belonging to the same group. As a branch of
philosophy, Nishi considered aesthetics to belong to what in the Encyclopedia he called
the intellectual science (theology, philosophy, politics, political economy, and statistics),
distinguished from the physical science (physics, astronomy, chemistry, and natural
history). At this point Nishi considered beauty to be the object of feelings on which the
intellectual power of sensibility was based. In order to discern such an object, a judgment
of taste had to be formulated. This explains his terminological shift to kashuron (the
discipline of good taste)a term that emphasizes the process of aesthetic appreciation.
This choice highlights Nishis reliance on an aesthetics based on the intuitive power of
the observer, the realization that the perception and enjoyment of the beauty are sub-
jective, relative, dependent, even if beauty is not.26 This statement was made by Joseph
Haven (18161874), whose Mental Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities, and Will
of 1857 Nishi translated with the simplified title Shinrigaku (Psychology) in 18701871.
Turning to the Japanese history of the word kashu (good taste), we find it in a
headnote to a poem from the Shish (Collection of gleanings, 10051007), in which the
most powerful politician of the Heian period, Fujiwara no Michinaga (9661027), sings
the elegance of the nature surrounding his new villa. Michinaga used the image of the pine
198|Michael F. Marra

tree for its customary meaning of longevity in order to wish prosperity to his house and its
inhabitants: The Minister of the Right invited several literati and poets to compose poetry
during his first visit to his newly rebuilt house; he wrote the following song on the topic
of elegant (kashu) waters and trees: One can see the future / of this place / where I begin
to livea place as clear as the clear waters / because of the reflection / of the pine trees
shadow by the waterside.27 According to Michinagas diary, the Mid kanpaku ki (Record
of the Buddha-hall regent, 9951021), this gathering took place on the sixth day of the fifth
month 999 in the east side of the Higashi Sanj mansion. He had invited several famous
poets, such as Fujiwara no Takaie (9791044), Fujiwara no Kint (9661041), and Fujiwara
no Tadanobu, in order to compose poems in Chinese.28 The reference to the good taste
of the elegant settings is reminiscent of a verse by Chang Chiu-ling (678740): Enjoying it
in good taste (kashu), / it makes my heart swing.29
Eventually, Nishi settled on the term bimygaku (the science of the delicately
and wondrously beautiful) in his major treatise on aesthetics, Bimy gakusetsu (A theory
on wondrous beauty, 1878).30 In this work Nishi clearly differentiates aesthetics from ethics
and law. He argues that while feelings of morality and justice sustain ethics (the distinc-
tion of good from evil) and law (the distinction of justice from injustice), aesthetic feelings
allow man to distinguish beauty from ugliness. Nishis stress on feelings reminds readers
of the etymological sense of the word aesthetics, which derives from the Greek aisthe-
sis, meaning affects, sensations. The emphasis that earlier debates on aesthetics had put
on the notion of beauty, especially artistic beauty alongside the Hegelian example, had dis-
tracted Japanese thinkers from discussing the feelings at the basis of aesthetic experience.31
Nishi recuperates the original meaning of aesthetics by using a Japanese word, bimy,
which refers to an ancient poetics of delicate, mysterious, wondrous (my or tae )
feelings. In the Japanese vocabulary there is a word, bimy, whose first character
bi means minute, subtle, and hiddena synonym of the first character of ygen
. The second character, my, means supple, hidden, small, wondrous, mysterious, and
beautiful. We find the expression bimy (wondrously beautiful) written with the char-
acters mentioned above in a verse from a Buddhist scripture, the Amida sutra, which Sen-
shi Naishinn (9641035) used as an introduction to one of her poems from the Hosshin
wakash (A collection of poems for the awakening of faith). The Amida sutra says, The
lotuses in those lakes are as big as carriage wheels. / There are lotuses of blue color and blue
light, / lotuses of yellow color and red light, / lotuses of white color and white light, / and
their perfume is wondrously (bimy) strong. This quotation inspired the Kamo priestess
to compose the following poem: Does my heart / appear to be as pure / as those pure
waters / that shine with all the colors / of the lotuses?32
The word my is well entrenched in the Japanese rhetorical vocabulary of ancient
times. Read as tae, it appears in several poems of the Manysh, including the following
long verse (chka) by Mushimaro on the legend of Urashima Tar: They reached the realm
of Everworld. / There in the palace / of the god of the great deep / they made their way /
together, hand in hand, / into the chamber / of the inmost mystery (tae naru tono ni).33
In the Japanese preface to the Kokinsh Ki no Tsurayuki (868945) used the word tae
to judge the Manysh poet Yamabe no Akahito (fl. 724737), whom Tsurayuki called a
poet extraordinary to the point of wonder (uta ni ayashiku tae narikeri).34 According to
Zeami, my is also the highest of the nine levels achieved by a skillful actorthe level
 8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan | 199

of the flower of peerless charm (mykaf ). In his Kyi (Notes on the nine levels)
Zeami defines my as follows:

The meaning of the phrase Peerless Charm (my) surpasses any explanation in words
and lies beyond the workings of consciousness. It can surely be said that the phrase in
the dead of the night, the sun exists in a realm beyond logical explanation. Indeed,
concerning the Grace (yf ) of the greatest performers in our art, there are no
words with which to praise it, [as that Grace gives rise to] the moment of Feeling that
Transcends Cognition (mushin no kan ), and to an art that lies beyond any
level that the artist may have consciously attained. Such surely represents the level of
the Flower of Peerless Charm.35

The close link between the word my and explanations of the articulation of feel-
ings in premodern times was undoubtedly a major reason for Nishis choice of the term
bimygaku to translate aesthetics. In Bimy gakusetsu Nishi highlights a difference
between what he calls aesthetic feelings, which are disinterested, and moral feelings,
which are inserted within a chain of causality and are, thus, related to the consequences
deriving from them. Aesthetic feelings are described by adjectives such as interesting
(omoshiroshi) and funny (okashi); on the other hand, ethical feelings are best represented
by adjectives such as good (yoshi), evil (ashi), cute (kawayushi), hateful (nikushi),
happy (ureshi), pleasurable (tanoshi), and joyful (yorokobashi). We hear behind this
distinction an echo of Immanuel Kants (17241804) definition of aesthetics as purposive-
ness without a purpose or finality without an end (Zweckmssigkeit ohne Zweck). Nishi
is very eloquent on this point:

Unlike the seven passions of joy, anger, sadness, pleasure, love, evil, and greed, inter-
esting and funny do not occur in correlation with ones personal interests. Feelings
of joy, for example, arise in human beings when they obtain what they want and what
benefits them. And feelings of anger arise when they sense something that they hate,
abhor, and might harm them. This is all part of the ordinary course of nature. But in
regard to feeling that something is interesting or funny, personal interest is not a con-
sideration. Simply the sight of a particular thing is interesting or funny. Only when a
person goes so far as wanting to possess this interesting thing does he start positing
the aim of judging good and bad, thus making his feelings the work of the will. It goes
the same way for the feeling of amusement. When you simply think that something
is funny, there should not arise any sense of moral judgment. But once it falls into
the wills hands and a person goes so far as to laugh at people or ridicule them, that
immediately indicates the purposiveness of moral judgment.36

Despite this distinction, in Nishis mind the beautiful never set itself free from the true
and the good. As a translator into Japanese of John Stuart Mills (18061873) Utilitarian-
ism, Nishi aimed at making aesthetics good for his country and true to the promotion of
civilization in Japan.37 Unless he declared that a good person is naturally moved to justice
and his external appearance cannot be deprived of beauty and, likewise, an evil person
is naturally unjust and his appearance ugly, he could not convince the authorities of the
200|Michael F. Marra

Meiji government that aesthetics was a science worthy of imperial support. After all, as he
argued at the end of his lecture, the true purpose of aesthetics does not conflict with the
comparable purposes of morality, law, and economics.38
The need for utilitarian theories that could be directly applied to the enlightenment
of a modernizing country took thinkers away from debates on human feelings and pas-
sionsthe core of native aesthetics that was debated by Neo-Confucian scholars and their
opponents during the Tokugawa period (16001868). Anything reminiscent of the ancient
regime had to be overcome in favor of new thoughts centered on the rights of individuals.
Aesthetics was no exception. The native moment of Nishis definition of aestheticsthe
wondrous nature of human feelings contained in the character mydisappeared from
the word that came to be used as the standard Japanese term for aesthetics: bigaku,
or the science of beauty. The journalist and political scientist Nakae Tokusuke (18471901),
also known as Chmin, devised this term in his translation of Eugne Vrons (18251889)
LEsthtique (Aesthetics, 1878), which Chmin translated as Ishi bigaku (The aesthetics
of Mr. V., 18831884). A formidable opponent of idealism and a severe critic of Platos
metaphysics, Vron stressed the individual and concrete aspects of artistic creation, thus
emphasizing the pre-eminence of the artists genius in the creation of works of art. For
Vron, aesthetics was the science of beauty or, more precisely, the science of beauty in
art, whose object is the study and elucidation of the manifestations of artistic genius.39
Nothing could be further apart from concerns about the metaphysical underpinnings
of human feelings shrouded in the mist of discourses on the wonders and mystery (my
and ygen) of poetic artistic perception than the aesthetics of the politically engaged Vron
in the translation of the socialist Nakae Chmin. Having to choose a word that would
convey the meaning of metaphysician in Vrons pejorative senseno science more
than aesthetics is prey to daydreams of metaphysiciansChmin opted for the expres-
sion rigaku y setsu, which literally means mysteriously profound theo-
ries of philosophy. The character y (mysterious) is the same as the first character
of ygen, a key concept in the discussion of artistic pursuits in premodern times.
The same character appears again in the translation of Vrons statement, From Plato up
to the present time, art has been made into a mixture of quintessential fantasies and tran-
scendental mysteries which find their highest expression in the absolute concept of ideal
Beauty: unmovable and divine prototypes of real things. Chmin conveys Vrons vitri-
olic attack on quintessential fantasies and transcendental mysteries with the expression
ksoku ykai byk sakuzatsu, which literally means intricacies
of fast, dark, and clever schemes. Against this chimerical ontology Vron posits indi-
vidual originality (jika koy no jsei ; lit. personal and individual affec-
tive nature) as the main ingredient for the development of artistic eras (geijutsu no shi
; lit. gentlemen of art), which are always eras of freedom (jika no jsei kish
o hoshiimama ni shite; lit. the fulfillment of the phenomenon
of affective nature).40
The presence of the West in Japan through the scholarly activities of translators and
lecturersJapanese thinkers who had studied abroad as well as foreign scholars invited
by the Meiji governmentwas a constant reminder of the importance of individualism
and individual originality in the formation of a modernized nation. When in 1878 the
Japanese government invited the American Ernest F. Fenollosa (18531908) to lecture on
 8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan | 201

philosophy, aesthetics, art, and literature at what would become Tokyo Imperial Univer-
sity, Japanese translators had to create arrays of words and concepts that would convey
the arcane meanings of Fenollosas speeches. It was not simply a question of words. Ideas
such as authorship and individual creation were quite alien to audiences trained in the
art of communal participation and shared responsibilities in the performance of artistic
pursuits such as the tea ceremony (chanoyu), linked poetry (renga), and the composi-
tion of haiku sequences (haikai). Even when requested to compose an individual poem
such a short poem (tanka), the Japanese poet was mostly concerned with the creation of
a variation on a series of poems written in earlier times on fixed topics. It was a common
practice for poets to use entire verses composed by famous poets and insert them in their
own compositiona practice known as allusive variation (honkadori). The situation was
similar for painters who based their compositions on models, often Chinese, of unargu-
able mastery painted using historically repeated motifs.41 Nothing was more alien to such
audiences than the notion of the inspired genius. A new vocabulary had to be created to
convey words that fit statements such as the following from one of Fenollosas lectures at
the Higher Normal School in Tokyo:

The author has a weighty responsibility, to which few are true. He must not allow one
shadow of influence to affect him from the outside. It will strike a flaw through the
crystal. Although educated out of the past, he must forget the past, and breathe alone
with himself. He must not let his personality intrude, for then self-interest or preju-
dice will disturb the free re-distribution of the affinities. He must not yield to fear, or
hope of gain, or thirst for fame; else, the glorious soul that is forming within him will
be strangled or poisoned in the womb. He must be the pure individual, untainted by
any formalism; then the infinity of the new will bubble out of him like a spring. The
individuality of the literary whole will find itself only through that free fluidity of soul
which his own individuality implies.42

One of Fenollosas translators was mori Ich (18441908), who translated a lecture that
Fenollosa gave to the Dragon Pond Society (Rychikai) on May 14, 1882, in the presence
of the minister of education, Fukuoka Ktei (18341919). mori titled the translation
Bijutsu shinsetsu 43a name that matches the title of what survives today as a
fragmentary manuscript by Fenollosa, The True Meaning of Fine Art.44 In this lecture
Fenollosa introduced what in the manuscript he calls an art-idea, which he defines as
an absolute individual produced by the melting down of ever varying ingredients into
a new synthetic unit. Since such a synthetic unity cannot be twice alike, the art-idea
guarantees the absolute necessity of originality in art. The art-idea is conceived in the
solemn purity of a momentary inspiration, and cannot be reached by analytic steps, fol-
lowing a scientific process. Moreover, an art-idea cannot be found in the application of
general rules, or formulae. Otherwise, the absolute individuality of an art idea would be
destroyed. These insights have a direct impact on the act of artistic judgment and on the
practical purpose of teaching art in schoola purpose that could not escape the attention
of the minister of education. Given the individuality of any single artistic product, there
cannot be standards for the judgment of art. Each work must be appreciated according
to its individual laws, which are dictated by the idea incorporated in it. People have to be
202|Michael F. Marra

educated in the spiritual qualities of thingsan education that will allow them to make
proper aesthetic judgments.

There is no standard for its [arts] ultimate criticism, but the unique one which it
affords itself. Each great work of art prescribes its own law to itself; hence it is the
sole business of the art critic first to divine sympathetically the idea intended, and
then to comment on the purity of its realization. Hence to train the pure art faculty
to feel such individual synthesis, is the primary object of all art education; and if all
the professional art schools in America were abolished tomorrow it would be a far less
serious matter than the possibility of introducing into our public schools a system of
training which shall normally develop the art faculty among the peoples.45

Fenollosas position is truly paradoxical inasmuch as, on the one hand, he promoted the
idea of the originality and nonrepeatability of a discrete work of art that lives in an autono-
mous space, the space of the genius. On the other hand, the sympathetic divining of the
idea meant a reinscription of what he called art-totality into a web of correlations that
Japanese artists had championed in the poetics of mystery and ygen. If a work of art
must be judged according to its idea and people must be educated to see things, situations,
ideas in their larger and spiritual relations, then one must explain the relation between the
idea, the artist, and the object of representation (nature). The result is a mystic union that
the theory of the genius had tried desperately to escape. The end of Fenollosas manuscript
could have been a quotation from a Neo-Confucian text: The arts swallow one another
successively as do the several art problems, and widest of all is the art of life, where man and
his surroundings should be melted into one supreme social harmony. This paradox was the
result of the encounter of abstract aesthetic theories with the realities of art markets that
Fenollosa helped to establish. On the one hand, Fenollosa justified the greatness of Japanese
art according to a Western canon of masters and masterpieces. This move would allow him
to facilitate the commerce of Buddhist statues and scrolls, which were thus placed on an
equal footing with the masterpieces of Western art. On the other hand, he also needed to
justify the decorative arts (ceramics and lacquer wares), which, by being made into works
of art, economically benefited a popular sector of the Japanese market. This might explain
his statement in The True Meaning of Fine Art that perhaps the deepest lesson taught
at the present day by the example of eastern European as well as of Asiatic art is that the
practical divorce between painting and decoration which Western art has allowed in recent
centuries, is as false as it is ruinous. This distinction was particularly ruinous to Fenollosa
in his efforts to promote Japanese art and artifacts among wealthy Bostonian collectors.
The explanation of the gratuity of such a distinction was made on aesthetic grounds that
are more in tune with the ancient Tokugawa regime than with the modernizing Meiji era:

Since nature means representation, decorative art stultifies herself in seeing how far
away she can get from nature. On the other hand the Japanese, who know such dual-
ity, to whom nature means art and beauty, is equally strong on both sides of the scale,
for in his representations he never forgets to clothe it in soul-satisfying music and in
his decoration he never fails to embody everything he needs and loves of nature, into
his lines and colors.46
 8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan | 203

The implications of Fenollosas art-idea were quite far-reaching.47 His translator, mori
Ich, must have been quite aware of the mystical underpinnings of Fenollosas popular
version of idealism when he translated it as bijutsu no mys (lit. the mys-
terious, wondrous thought of the fine arts). Although mori indicated that the charac-
ters mys should be read aijia (idea), he chose a compound that contained the char-
acter my/taeMushimaros inmost mystery, Tsurayukis wondrous excellence,
and Zeamis peerless charm. Several debates ensued on the role played by ideas in
the process of artistic creationsdebates that often suffered from a semantic confusion
between ambiguous terms such as mys (idea; lit. wondrous thought), ris
(idea; lit. thought based on principle),48 and shis (thought; lit. discriminating
thought). A genuinely thought-provoking clash between realism and idealism ended as a
pedantic dispute between the writers Mori gai (18621922) and Tsubouchi Shy (1858
1935)a dispute that came to be known as the debate on submerged ideas (botsuris
). As the Japanese translator of the Hegelian Eduard von Hartmann (18411906),
gai championed a notion of the beautiful as representative of the idea lying behind all
reality.49 On the other hand, Shy argued that art must be realist rather than idealist since
artists must report ideas rather than developing themthe latter being the task of the
philosopher. For Shy, imagination is what counts in an artistthe ability to create situ-
ations in which readers and viewers can find their own ideas reflected. In other words, we
should value the artists work for its submerged ideas. gai reacted strongly, attacking
Shy for denying the need of ris (ideas) in the artistic process.50 The whole debate was
marred by the protagonists inability to agree on the meaning of ris, due to the different
backgrounds of the two writers. gai was trained in Germany as a medical doctor; Shy
was a teacher of English literature and the Japanese translator of Shakespeare. While for
gai ris translated as the Hegelian notion of Ideethe combination of metaphysical
universality with the determinateness of real particularity51for Shy it simply meant
idea in the English sense of the word.
We find a similar misunderstanding in what the president of Tokyo Imperial Uni-
versity and minister of education Toyama Masakazu (18481900) called shisga
(thought paintings) in a lecture delivered on April 27, 1890, at the second meeting of the
Meiji Association of Fine Arts (Meiji Bijutsu-kai). In this lecture, titled Nihon Kaiga no
Mirai (The future of Japanese art), Toyama took Fenollosas concept of Idee (mys) to
mean idea or thought. Therefore, he interpreted Fenollosas invitation to artists to present
in their work ideal representations of reality as a suggestion to portray concrete ideas
and thoughts. In other words, Japanese painters should portray ideological paintings,
paintings based on thoughts, drawing their subject matters from actual events and social
problems.52 These instances of misunderstandings are eloquent examples of the difficulties
involved in conveying alien idioms in native scriptsa task that Meiji intellectuals under-
took with a painstaking fervor. A need for more precise communication led to the forma-
tion of new words and the application of new meanings to old ones. With regard to the
word idea, several expressions were used to differentiate the nuances of the term. In 1877
Nishi Amane used the Buddhist word kannen (meditative thought) to translate
the English idea and French idea translation that Inoue Tetsujir accepted in his
Tetsugaku jii of 1883. The German Idee came to be translated ris by Inoue Enry
(18581919) in his Tetsugaku yry (The basics of philosophy, 1886). In Tetsugaku-shi y
204|Michael F. Marra

(Basics of the history of philosophy, 1901) Hatano Seiichi (18771950) used the word id
in katakana script to translate Kants Idee, and ris to translate Hegels Idee.
Eventually, the word rinen (lit. the thought of principles) came to be used as a
general term for the German Idee.53
Idea was not the only part of Fenollosas expression art-idea to have thrown the
promoters of modernization into a frenzy. Art was problematic as well. In premodern
times the practice of artistic composition was often defined in light of Buddhist terminol-
ogy, so that a poet in medieval Japan would see himself as part of what was known as the
way of poetry (uta no michi, or kad ), in the same way that a monk was practicing
the Buddhist way (hotoke no michi, or butsud ). The poet Shtetsu (13811459)
opened his treatise Shtetsu monogatari (Conversations with Shtetsu) with the statement,
In the way of poetry (kono michi ni te), those who speak ill of Teika should be denied
the protection of the gods and the Buddhas and condemned to the punishment of hell.54
Although English translators of Shtetsu tend to render the first sentence as In this art of
poetry in order to facilitate the readers understanding, technically speaking, in medieval
Japan poetry was a practice (waza /) to be discharged with religious fervor, rather
than an art in the aesthetic sense of the word. Far from being the outcome of romantic
inspiration, artistic practices such as painting, music making, poetry, dance, and act-
ing were the result of extenuating practices (keikogoto ), to be performed with
devotion and with utmost respect, lest a deity might take offense and retaliate against the
unpolished performer, thus bringing calamities (wazawai) upon him or her.
The expressions way (michi), practice (waza), and rehearsals (keigo) used in
Japan in premodern times perfectly fit the meaning of art in its preeighteenth century
sense of crafta nuance carried over from the Greek word techne. Such a meaning was
still at work in the expression geijutsu, , which prior to 1872 signified the technical
skills (gijutsu ) of master crafters. The word geijutsu appears in the Shoku Nihongi
(Chronicles of Japan, continued, 797), in the entry for the sixteenth day of the tenth month
703, in which we read, The emperor (Monmu) made monk Rykan return to secular life.
His original family name was Kon, and his first name was Takara. He was the son of the
ramana Kjin. He was a man of superlative knowledge and great artistic skills (geijutsu).
He was also good in mathematics and astronomy.55 An examination of the Japanese his-
tory of the character gei indicates that Ki no Yoshimochi used it in the compound
word saigei (technical talent) in his Chinese preface to the Kokinsh. The com-
pound is included in the customary apologetic statement on the part of the anthologys
compilers, begging their readers (and their patron, the emperor) for forgiveness for their
alleged lack of technical ability in the poetic craft. Yoshimochi says, Need we say how we
come forward fearing the ridicule of the world, and retire ashamed of our lack of talent
(saigei).56 The poet and essayist Kenk (ca. 1283after 1352) used the word gei to indi-
cate the game of backgammon, which requires skills on the part of the players, and michi
to signify what we would call today art in the sense of profession. He makes the following
statement in Tsurezuregusa (Essays in idleness, 1310?1331):

It is a grave misconception for a stupid man who has one skill, playing go, when he
meets an intelligent man with no talent for this game (gei), to decide that the man is
no match for himself in learning; or for an expert in one of the many different arts
 8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan | 205

(michi), seeing that others are ignorant of this particular specialty, to conclude that he
is more accomplished than they.57

Zeami used the word gei to indicate training in the skills of n performance, as we see at
the beginning of his treatise Fshikaden (Style and the flower): It may be said of our art
(gei) that one may begin at seven.58
When we consider the Japanese history of the character jutsu, we see it stand-
ing for knowledge, discipline, method, and skills. In the Manysh it appears in a head-
note in the form of a letter from Yoshida Yoroshi with the simple meaning of action: I
entreat you, Lord, to spread virtue like Lu Kung, who tamed the pheasant in the morning,
and to leave behind benevolent acts (jutsu, with the reading of michi) like Kung Yu, who
freed the turtle in the eveningso that your name may be spoken of a hundred genera-
tions hence.59 Jutsu also appears in combination with koyomi (calendar) in the com-
pound rekijutsu (the art of calendar making) in a headnote to a poem by Kitabatake
Chikafusa in the Shiny wakash (Collection of new leaves, 13811384).60 The expression
mujutsu (unskilled) is part of the vocabulary of poem evaluations in the judgments of
poetic matches (uta-awase)Right Teams Comment on the Opposition: The verse to
hurry through the storm (shigure o isogu) is unskillful (mujutsu).61
Traditional meanings of the word geijutsu are still present in the Eiwa taiyaku
shchin jisho (A pocketbook English-Japanese dictionary) of 1862, in which geijutsu is
used to translate the English word ingenuity. The practical underpinnings of the tech-
nical skills associated with the notion of art in Meiji Japan are also clear from the fact
that when the Japanese government invited the architect Giovanni Vincenzo Cappelletti
(d. 1887), the painter Antonio Fontanesi (18181882), and the sculptor Vincenzo Ragusa
(18411928) from Italy to teach in Tokyo, the three artists were assigned to the Techno-
logical Art School (Kbu Bijutsu Gakk ), which was originally founded
in 1876 within Tokyos Engineering College (Kbush Kgaku-ry).
The government was less interested in the Italians artistic pre-eminence than in their
practical skills in printing techniques as engravers and graphic designers. During most
of the eighteenth century the word geijutsuka which today means artist
referred to scientists, especially specialists of astronomy, geography, medicine, and math-
ematics. When in 1854 Sakuma Shzan (18111864) encouraged his countrymen to fol-
low Eastern morality and Western technology (ty dtoku, seiy geijutsu
), he used the word geijutsuwhich today we would translate artto indicate
technology.62
In Japan in the 1870s, the meaning of the word art was still quite ambiguous, as we
can see from the variety of Japanese words used to translate it: jutsu (skill), waza
(action), hataraki (work), keisaku (plan), itsuwari (fiction), nari-
hai (occupation), and takumi (ability). The Tetsugaku jii translates art with
the words jutsu, gigei (skillful art), and hataraki .63 In his translation
of Vrons LEsthtique, Nakae Chmin employed the terms gijutsu, geijutsu, gigei,
and kgei (ingenious skills) as mutually interchangeable translations of the French
lart. Once the word beauty (bi ) had entered the vocabulary of Meiji aesthetics, it
was possible to unite the character bi (beauty) with jutsu (discipline), and create the
word bijutsu (the discipline of beauty) to indicate the fine arts. This word made its
206|Michael F. Marra

first appearance in 1872 in the Japanese translation of the German catalogue of the objects
exhibited at the Vienna Exposition in the following year. This was the first international
fair in which Japan participated, and in it Japan stood out for its fine selections of indus-
trial art. Section 22 of the catalogue states, The arts (bijutsu)in the West fine arts are
music, painting, sculpture, poetry, etc.for which museums are built.64 Nishi Amane
used the word bijutsu in Bimy gakusetsu, in a passage in which he includes calligraphy
as an example of the fine arts:

Presently in the West art (bijutsu) includes painting, sculpture, engraving, and archi-
tecture. Yet it is appropriate to say that the principle of aesthetics applies also to
poetry, prose, and music, as well as to Chinese calligraphy. Dance and drama should
also be included in this list.65

Nishi Amanes text, however, was not made public until 1907. Undoubtedly, Fenollosas
lecture The True Meaning of Fine Art (Bijutsu shinsetsu) in moris translation played
a larger role in redefining the field of practical crafts (geijutsu) by making them into objects
of aesthetic appreciation (bijutsu). Seven years later, in 1889, the Technological Art School
became an independent body of learning and was renamed the Tokyo School of Fine Arts
(Tky Bijutsu Gakk ). By this time, the basic vocabulary for a discussion
of art had been established, and Japan was ready to join the Western academic world of
the arts. The way was paved for the establishment of the first Japanese university chair
in aesthetics, which was assigned in 1900 to tsuka Yasuji (18681931) at Tokyo Impe-
rial University.66 The vocabulary of aesthetics began to be standardized around the basic
notion of the fine arts (bijutsu). tsuka contributed to the stabilization of a field that in
Japan had been in flux for more than thirty years by reminding his readers that aesthetics
could not be separated from the empirical objects of its study: the actual works of art the
newly established scholar known as the aesthetician was asked to discuss in philosophi-
cal terms. tsuka attacked Eduard von Hartmanns idealistic aesthetics on which he had
previously lectured at Waseda University, opting for a combination of psychological aes-
thetics and a sociological study of the artsa combination he called bijutsugaku
(the Japanese translation of Kunstwissenschaft, art science). Following tsuka s lead, the
discipline of aesthetics in Japan increasingly distanced itself from philosophy departments
and was eventually integrated into art departments, which to this day are called depart-
ments of aesthetics and art history (bigaku bijutsushigaku , or bigaku gei-
jutsugaku ). Aestheticians, however, never stopped being concerned with what
tsuka singled out as their primary taskthe development of bijutsu tetsugaku,
the philosophy of art. 67

Note

Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Japanese are by the author. Japanese names
are given in the traditional order, surname first. Exceptions are made in the case of indi-
viduals who primarily reside outside their native countries and adopt the Western system
(e.g., On Kawara, Yoko Ono, Ushio Shinohara, and Yasunao Tone).
 8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan | 207

Notes

1. Kobayashi made this point in his 1942 book Taima.

2. Manysh 1:1, by Emperor Yryaku (r. 456479). English translation by Edwin A.
Cranston, A Waka Anthology. Volume One: The Gem-Glistening Cup (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-
ford University Press, 1993), p. 163. The original text appears in Kojima Noriyuki et al., eds.,
Manysh, 1, Nihon koten bungaku zensh 2 (Tokyo: Shgakukan, 1971), p. 63.
3.English translation by Helen C. McCullough, Kokin Wakash: The First Imperial
Anthology of Japanese Poetry (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985), p. 257. The
original text appears in Okumura Tsuneya, ed., Kokin wakash, Shinch Nihon koten shsei 19
(Tokyo: Shinchsha, 1978), p. 385.
4. See, for example, the list of beautiful things (utsukushiki mono) in Sei Shnagons
(966?1017?) Makura no sshi (The pillow book): The face of a child drawn on a melon.
A baby sparrow that comes hopping up when one imitates the squeak of a mouse. . . . A baby
of two or so who is crawling rapidly along the ground. With his sharp eyes he catches sight
of a tiny object and, picking it up with his pretty little fingers, takes it to show to a grown-up
person. . . . A young Palace page, who, still quite small, walks by in ceremonial costume. . . .
One picks up a tiny lotus leaf that is floating on a pond and examines it. Not only lotus leaves,
but little hollyhock flowers, and indeed all small things, are most adorable. English trans-
lation, with slight modifications, by Ivan Morris, The Pillow Book of Sei Shnagon, vol. 1
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 156157. The original text appears in Mat-
suo Satoshi and Nagai Kazuko, eds., Makura no sshi, NKBZ 11 (Tokyo: Shgakukan, 1974),
pp. 298299.
5. English translation by Helen C. McCullough, kagami: The Great Mirror: Fujiwara
Michinaga (9661027) and His Times (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 222.
The original text appears in Tachibana Kenji, ed., kagami, NKBZ 20 (Tokyo: Shgakukan,
1974), p. 387.
6. Manysh 2:90. English translation by Ian Hideo Levy, Manysh: A Translation of
Japans Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry, vol. 1 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1981), p. 83. The original text appears in Kojima Noriyuki, Manysh, 1, p. 117.
7. English translation by Helen C. McCullough, Kokin Wakash, p. 257. The original text
appears in Okumura Tsuneya, Kokin wakash, p. 386.
8. Wakan rei sh, 557. English translation by J. Thomas Rimer and Jonathan Chaves,
Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing: The Wakan Rei Sh (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1997), p. 168. The original text appears in sone Shsuke and Horiuchi Hideaki,
eds., Wakan reish, SNKS 61 (Tokyo: Shinchsha, 1983), p. 212. Funtoki was inspired by a
poem from the Wen hsan (Literary selections, 6th c.), What is lovely is lovely; / however,
loveliness cannot be exhausted. Quoted in sone and Horiuchi, Wakan rei sh, p. 211, head-
note 557.
9. Manysh 4:543, by Kasa Kanamura: My beloved husband / has gone with the many
retainers / following our Sovereign / in his procession. English translation by Ian Hideo Levy,
Manysh, pp. 265266; Kojima Noriyuki, Manysh, 1, p. 321. Some scholars argue that the
character ai was read airashi in ancient times and that the reading uruwashi began
only in the seventeenth century.
10. Manysh 15:3729, by Nakatomi no Yakamori. English translation by Edwin A.
208|Michael F. Marra

Cranston, A Waka Anthology, p. 516; Kojima Noriyuki, et al., eds., Manysh, 4, NKBZ 5
(Tokyo: Shgakukan, 1975), p. 86.
11. Kiritsubo (The Paulownia Pavilion) Chapter. English translation by Royall Tyler,
The Tale of Genji, 1 (New York: Viking, 2001), p. 11. The original text appears in Ishida Jji and
Shimizu Yoshiko, eds., Genji monogatari, 1, SNKS 1 (Tokyo: Shinchsha, 1976), p. 27.
12. Manysh 14:3411. Kojima Noriyuki et al., eds., Manysh, 3, NKBZ 4 (Tokyo:
Shgakukan, 1973), p. 464.
13. Manysh 1:27, by Emperor Tenmu (r. 673686), who composed this poem on the
fifth day of the fifth month 679 during an excursion to Yoshino. The original text, Yoki hito
no / yoshi to yoku mite / yoshi to iishi / Yoshino yoku miyo / yoki hito yoku mitsu, appears in
Kojima Noriyuki, Manysh, 1, p. 79.
14. Inoue Tetsujir and Ariga Nagao, eds., Tetsugaku jii (Tokyo: Tykan, 1883), p. 14.
15. For a complete English translation, see Michael F. Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics:
A Reader (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999), pp. 6586.
16. Yanabu Akira, Honyakugo seiritsu jij (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1982), p. 69.
17. Sengohyakuban uta-awase (The poetry match in fifteen hundred rounds, 1201), 4:541.
The original text appears in Hagitani Boku and Taniyama Shigeru, eds., Uta-awase sh, NKBT
74 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1965), pp. 486487.
18. Zeami made this statement in his first treatise on n, Fshikaden (Style and the flower).
The English translation is by J. Thomas Rimer and Yamazaki Masakazu, On the Art of the
N Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984),
p. 47. The original text appears in Tanaka Yutaka, ed., Zeami Geijutsu Ronsh, SNKS 4 (Tokyo:
Shinchsha, 1976), p. 75.
19. nishi Yoshinori, Ygen to aware (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1939), pp. 4, 101.
20. For an English translation of the chapter on Aware from nishis Bigaku (Aesthet-
ics), see Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics, pp. 122140.
21. On this topic, see Michael F. Marra, Coincidentia Oppositorum: nishi Yoshinoris
Greek Genealogies of Japan, in Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and
Interpretation, pp. 142152 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002). See also Otabe
Tanehisa, Representations of Japaneseness in Modern Japanese Aesthetics: An Introduction
to the Critique of Comparative Reason, in the same volume, pp. 153162.
22.kubo Toshiaki, ed., Nishi Amane Zensh, 1 (Tokyo: Munetaka shob, 1966), pp.
232289.
23. kubo Toshiaki, ed., Nishi Amane Zensh, 4 (Tokyo: Munetaka shob, 1981), p. 99.
24. Ibid., p. 168.
25. Ibid., p. 146.
26. Joseph Haven, Mental Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities, and Will (Bos-
ton: Gould & Lincoln, 1857), p. 274.
27. Shish 18:1175. The original text appears in Masuda Shigeo, ed., Shi Wakash, WBT
32 (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 2003), p. 222. The reference to Michinaga as Minister of the Right is
puzzling since, in fact, he was the powerful Minister of the Left.
28. Francine Hrail, trans., Notes Journalires de Fujiwara no Michinaga Ministre la
Cour de Heian, 1 (Genve: Librarie Droz, 1987), p. 216.
29. Quoted in Nihon kokugo daijiten, 4 (Tokyo: Shgakukan, 1973), p. 552.
 8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan | 209

30. There is a discrepancy in the date of this work. Aso Yoshiteru argues that it was writ-
ten in 1871; kubo Toshiaki gives the date as 1876; Mori Agata argues that Nishi delivered this
work in 1878, not in front of Emperor Meiji, as it was usually believed, but in front of members
of the imperial family. See Hamashita Masahiro, Nishi Amane on Aesthetics: A Japanese Ver-
sion of Utilitarian Aesthetics, in Marra, Japanese Hermeneutics, p. 90. The original text of this
lecture appears in Aoki Shigeru and Sakai Tadayasu, eds., Bijutsu, NKST 17 (Tokyo: Iwanami
shoten, 1989), pp. 314.
31. The emphasis on art in Hegelian aesthetics is present from the very beginning of Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels (17701831) lectures on aesthetics: The present course of lectures
deals with Aesthetic. Their subject is the wide realm of the beautiful, and, more particularly,
their province is Artwe may restrict it, indeed, to Fine Art. Hegel, Introductory Lectures on
Aesthetics (London: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 3.
32. Hosshin wakash 18. English translation by Edward Kamens, The Buddhist Poetry
of the Great Kamo Priestess: Daisaiin Senshi and Hosshin Wakash (Ann Arbor: Center for
Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1990), p. 92. The original text appears in Shinpen
kokka taikan, Ver. 2, CD-ROM, 2003.
33. Manysh 9:1740. English translation by Edwin A. Cranston, A Waka Anthology,
p. 324. The original text appears in Kojima Noriyuki, et al., eds., Manysh, 2, NKBZ 3 (Tokyo:
Shgakukan, 1972), p. 408.
34. Okumura Tsuneya, Kokin wakash, p. 19.
35. English translation by J. Thomas Rimer and Yamazaki Masakazu, On the Art of the
N Drama, p. 120. The original text appears in Tanaka Yutaka, Zeami geijutsu ronsh, p. 165.
36. English translation by Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics, p. 35. For a complete Eng-
lish translation of Nishis Bimy gakusetsu, see ibid., pp. 2637.
37. Nishi translated Mills work as Rigaku , publishing it in 1877.
38.Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics, pp. 28, 37.
39. English translation by W. H. Armstrong, in Eugne Vron, Aesthetics (London: Chap-
man & Hall, 1879), p. 109. The original text appears in Eugne Vron, LEsthtique (Paris: C.
Reinwald, 1878), p. 132.
40. See Kat Shichi and Maruyama Masao, eds., Honyaku no shis, NKST 15 (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1991), pp. 209, 215, with a selection of comparative passages from Vrons
original text and Chmins translation.
41.Concerns about authorship developed with the establishment of art markets in
which the presence of the artists seal determined the value of a painting by guaranteeing its
authenticity.
42.Fenollosa delivered this lecture on January 25, 1898. The text appears in Akiko
Murakata, ed., The Ernest F. Fenollosa Papers: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Japa-
nese ed., vol. 3, Literature (Tokyo: Museum Press, 1987), p. 160.
43. moris translation appears in Aoki Shigeru and Sakai Tadayasu, Bijutsu, pp. 3565.
For a discussion of this lecture in English, see J. Thomas Rimer, Hegel in Tokyo: Ernest Fenol-
losa and His 1882 Lecture on the Truth of Art, in Marra, Japanese Hermeneutics, pp. 97108.
44. This manuscript, catalogued as bMS Am 1759.2 (92), is currently kept at the Hough-
ton Library of Harvard University. All the quotations below come from this manuscript.
45. Ernest Fenollosa, The True Meaning of Fine Art, manuscript.
210|Michael F. Marra

46.Ibid.
47. See Kaneda Tamio, Fenollosa and Tsubouchi Shy, in Michael F. Marra, A History
of Modern Japanese Aesthetics (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), pp. 5367.
48. Although we find the word ris used by the writer Mori gai to signify idea, Nishi
Amane employed it in his translation of Mills Utilitarianism with the meaning of ideal.
49. Mori Rintar and mura Seigai, eds., Shinbi kry: J, ge (Tokyo: Shunyd, 1899).
gai used the word shinbi (lit. a discernment of beauty) to translate Hartmanns
sthetik.
50. For an account of this debate in English, see Richard John Bowring, Mori gai and the
Modernization of Japanese Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 7379.
See also Bruno Lewin, Mori gai and German Aesthetics, in Marra, A History of Modern
Japanese Aesthetics, pp. 6892.
51.Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, pp. 2526.
52. The text appears in Aoki Shigeru and Sakai Tadayasu, Bijutsu, pp. 122152. See espe-
cially pp. 144145.
53.Ishizuka Masahide and Shibata Takayuki, eds., Tetsugaku, shis honyakugo jiten
(Tokyo: Ronssha, 2003), pp. 5051.
54. English translation by Robert H. Brower, Conversations with Shtetsu (Shtetsu mono-
gatari) (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1992), p. 61, with the
first sentence modified. The translation says, In this art of poetry. The original text appears
in Hisamatsu Senichi and Nishio Minoru, eds., Karon sh, ngakuron sh, NKBT 65 (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1961), p. 166.
55. Ujitani Tsutomu, ed., Shoku Nihongi, j, KGB 1030 (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1992), p. 63.
56. English translation by Leonard Grzanka, in Laurel Rasplica Rodd, with Mary Cath-
erine Henkenius, Kokinsh: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 385. The original text appears in Okumura Tsuneya,
Kokin wakash, p. 387.
57. Tsurezuregusa 193. English translation by Donald Keene, Essays in Idleness: The Tsur-
ezuregusa of Kenk (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 165. The original text
appears in Kid Saiz, ed., Tsurezuregusa, SNKS 10 (Tokyo: Shinchsha, 1977), pp. 209210.
58. English translation by J. Thomas Rimer and Yamazaki Masakazu, On the Art of the N
Drama, p. 4. The original text appears in Tanaka Yutaka, Zeami geijutsu ronsh, p. 15.
59. Manysh 5:864. English translation by Ian Hideo Levy, Manysh, p. 376. The origi-
nal text appears in Kojima Noriyuki, Manysh, 2, p. 81.
60. Shiny wakash 16:1131; Kogi Takashi, ed., Shiny wakash: Honbun to kenky
(Tokyo: Kasama Shoin, 1984), p. 214.
61.Rounds 479480 of Roppyakuban uta-awase (The poetry match in six hundred
rounds, 1193). The text appears in Shinpen kokka Taikan, ver. 2, CD-ROM.
62. Sakuma Shzan, Seiken roku (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970), p. 25.
63. Inoue Tetsujir and Ariga Nagao, Tetsugaku jii, p. 11.
64. The text appears in Aoki Shigeru and Sakai Tadayasu, Bijutsu, p. 404.
65. Aoki Shigeru and Sakai Tadayasu, Bijutsu, p. 4. Modified English translation of Marra,
Modern Japanese Aesthetics, p. 28.
66. This chair was established nine years before the second Japanese chair of aesthetics
was approved at Kyoto Imperial University in 1909. Imamichi Tomonobu argues that the chair
 8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan | 211

at Tokyo Imperial University was the first university chair of aesthetics in the world, since in
Europe the first chair was created at the University of Paris in 1919 with the appointment of
Victor Guillaume Bash (18651944). See Imamichi Tomonobu, Biographies of Aestheticians:
tsuka Yasuji, in Marra, A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics, pp. 152153.
67. tsuka argued these points in the article Bigaku no seishitsu oyobi sono kenky
(The nature of aesthetics and its study, 1900), which appeared in the June issue of Tetsugaku
zasshi (Journal of philosophy).
 John Clark

9 Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic

Nationalism

Okakura Kakuz (18621913), more usually known by his sobriquet Tenshin, was that
curious and specifically Meiji human product of Japan after the overthrow of the Edo
military clan government, or bakufu. He was a student of Chinese, Western, Indian,
and Japanese ideas and was interested both in art and theories of the state. He served
as a government bureaucrat, but was also a poet and writer in both Japanese and Eng-
lish. He worked as an art educationalist, an art-world administrator, and an art-move-
ment ideologist. He was engaged as a curator for the Imperial Household Museum and
wrote major, pioneering works as a member of the first generation of modern Japanese
art historians. In his views on the outside world he was both an ultranationalist and
an internationalist as well as a cross-cultural entrepreneur. In his personal life he was
an impassioned lover of children, women, and art. There are greater thinkers and writ-
ers of the Meiji period such as Nishi Amane (18291897) or Mori gai1 (18621922),
and there are more profound thinkers on Japanese art and aesthetics who come after
himnotably the philosopher Kuki Shz (18881941), who wanted Okakura to have
been his father. Part of the complexity of Okakuras ideas is due to the many kinds of
intellectual lives he lived, and this often forces the reader of his texts simply to comment
on their contradictions without imposing a resolution. I have tried to present this feature
of his thought by extracting significant excerpts from his writing and placing them in an
analytical frame. It would be feasible to contextualize these utterances fully in the intel-
lectual currents of their times, but that would be a book-length task beyond the scope of
this survey.
Okakuras retrospective significance after his own time is important, both inside
Japan and in other Asian countries, not to mention his influence on modernist thinking
in Euramerica before World War I. There were few Meiji figures who combined action and
ideas with such intensity as he did and with such broad appeal, both in his lifetime and
down to today across many artistic, intellectual, and political groups from both right and
left within Japan. His books in English were widely read in Europe and North America as
the quintessence of a modern Japanese aesthetic attitude. They were also the material signs
of an exchange between the specifically modern art cultures of India and Japan, the first
such horizontal exchange in Asia.
From the general post-1945 perspective of, for example, Miyagawa Torao in 1956, 2
Okakura should be understood politically as the holder of ideas that in respect to the 1930s
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 213

would be called ultra-nationalist (kokusuiteki),3 but in the field of art as a modern per-
son of culture who made great contributions to the creation of art in civil society. In Meiji
Japan, Okakuras ideas were part of an ideological current that held strongly to nationalist
ideas. However, through his contemporary links to a coterie of supporters of his Japan Art
Academy after 1898, his ideas were later to be associated with the ideology for the aggres-
sive Japanese expansion on the Asian mainland that culminated in the 1930s, and this is
why many of them may be retrospectively regarded as ultra-nationalist, even before this
term was in wide currency. Questioning Okakuras ideas forces critics in the period imme-
diately after World War II, like Miyagawa, to confront squarely the thinking of the later
wartime period. In Japanese intellectual history, the defeat in World War II marked both
a continuity between the modern (kindai) and the contemporary (gendai) periodsvia
the institution of the emperor as living symbol of the stateand a ruptureby the very
fact of defeat and occupation. Understanding Okakura was then a critical recuperation in
Japanese thought of a continuity with the Meiji period and with Japanese modernization
against external imperialist pressures and their cultural forms.

What Is Aesthetic Nationalism?

In Theory

There is no clear way of defining aesthetic nationalism. It involves the notion of a cultur-
ally authentic past focused on the genealogy of earlier values under the guise of perceiving
their beauty; it also requires some method of asserting that these values that are discovered
in the past can be projected forward into the future. Aesthetic nationalism remakes the
past by associating it with a people, or with the culture of a limited geographical area, and
projecting its values forward as a prescription of what the future should be, both for the
presumed nation and those outside who associate with it.
I have analyzed the application of notions of nationalism in modern Asian art else-
where.4 This section takes up some broader intellectual issues as a foundation for what
follows in detailed analyses of Okakuras texts, but these analyses do not claim any unity
or seek to impose one that the texts themselves do not possess. Indeed, it will deliberately
attempt to approach the issues raised by Okakuras ideas obliquely and to convey their
range and density.
Nationalism is articulated on two levels, that of the intellectual or artist who deploys
literary concepts and abstractions of cultural essences in defining a nation, and that of a
quasi-religion on the level of a people or a community that articulates a sense of belonging
to a past that stretches on into, and constructs, a future. Aesthetic nationalism is the appli-
cation to a nation, or some group linked to it by extension, of that contemplative attitude
otherwise reserved for art objects. But it is also an ideology because it is projective and
seeks to realize, or impose, a characteristic set of values attributed to art objects or more
generally associated with a specific society, through the mediation of the nation, either on
the conceptual level or as a specific and world-oriented agency.
Aesthetic nationalism articulates three discursive positions that define the relation of
the aesthetic and the national:
214|John Clark

1. As a direct discourse, with the relation to other discourses being superseded.5

2. As a deferred discourse: politics is displaced into the discourse on what is valued
or thought beautiful.6
3. As a parallel discourse: the aesthetic is used as a rhetorical substitute or stalking
horse for the national.7

All three discursive positions link discourse on us (the national) with discourse on
what is distinctively ours (the aesthetic). These are types of the projective modality called
style, noted by Anderson.8 Further, Carroll thinks that nationalism should be considered
a culturalist ideology that transcends difference.9 Such differences lie between premodern
and modern communities and between the role of religions in the former and of vari-
ous mass media in articulating modern consciousness in the latter. In the former, unself-
conscious coherence waned with the European explorations of the non-European world, a
process that was accompanied by the gradual demotion of sacred language itself. Aesthetic
nationalism is based on a longing to restore a natural and therefore unspoken coherence.
It seeks to recreate a linguistic or cultural continuum, restoring the sacredness at a mass
level that social solidarity has lost at the level of inwardly oriented community religion.10
Okakuras writings were preoccupied with rediscovered pasts after the long obstruc-
tion of the Tokugawa period. He places Japanese art in a genealogy from which he thinks
it had been mistakenly cut off, that of a unitary Asia, by the imposition of the West.
Okakuras material was also conditioned by the model of Japanese uniqueness centered
on the Imperial House that was prevalent in the 1880s and 1890s. It was unavoidable,
despite all Okakuras play with clothing markers and linguistic self-empowerment across
cultural boundaries, that he lacked any real concern with other-than-Japanese minority
discourse between Japan and other cultural continua. In the nineteenth century, when
Japanese culture was struggling to withstand the pressures of Euramerican imperialism,
there was no room for him to recognize such interstitiality, much as it unquestionably
existed. Despite Okakuras play across boundaries, he was historically trapped by his
search for domestic, origin-defining positions and their external negations.11 He could not
adumbrate, as Bhabha was much later to do, a notion of cultural doublingand not plu-
ralityas constituting the hybrid situation of minorities between cultures, nor could he
produce a discourse appropriate to an emergent cultural identity that was not intended to
reconstitute the values or form-language of some original community.12
Okakuras world, which was worked out in terms of a binary as a Japan-as-Asia
versus the West, does not even have the plurality of a multiculturalism. His worldview
lacks any sense of cultural others constituting the self: it does not acknowledge the Other
as a self-defining entity in itself, and it operates entirely within a set of Japan-centered
projections. This is a very different reflexivity than later postcolonial positions. There is
a huge interpretive gap between Okakuras time and the late twentieth century, when the
francophone Antillais Glissant could write that the Other

is always-already in us, and if we know this to be the case, then there can be no simple
sense of individual or cultural identity, no closed, totalising aesthetics or politics of
nationalism of any sort, that does not, either affirmatively or negatively, deal with the
Other in dealing with the self.13
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 215

The central contradiction of nationalism is its search for an origin. This search hides the
aestheticizing of a humanity that is only ours, that is, a national humanity that nation-
alism turns into an ideological tool for the achievement of state goals.14 Okakura simply
argues, through inflated and inflammatory rhetoric, for the genealogy of the aesthetic ide-
als the Meiji state could represent. This was misplacing toward the past the ethical impera-
tive toward the future that these ideals actually carried,15 ones Okakura, from a conserva-
tive position, sought to orient toward the creation of new contemporary art. Okakuras
shifting between the levels of Japan and Asia meant that he agreed that the states core
mission was the use of pedagogy to acculturate its citizens to its past. But the imagining
of a disinterested space had its proleptic formal moment of identification,16 not with a
universal humanity per se that recognized cultural others, but with a Japan-as-Asia
that was somehow outside that humanity.17 The state, in consciousness at least, is also a
body that continuously incorporates a sense of loss. The origin it claims is never there to be
found, just as it is, in the strata of an accumulated and recently excavated past. It is always
constructed, frequently requiring the invention of new signs that mask this construction.
This is why the nation requires monuments to those who sacrificed themselves for it.

In Japan

The above explorations do not take us away from late nineteenth-century Japan; they help
us see the range of approaches that could encompass it. I shall look at the implications of
Okakuras notions of a unitary Asia later, but here we should recall that Okakura was post-
humously to serve as one of the ideological father figures for Japanese ultranationalism
in the 1930s. The basic modality of his thought was to capture what Meiji Japan had lost
under the impact of Western imperialism and transform the pre-Meiji past into a reposi-
tory of cultural value.18 If the theorization of the culturally authentic, and the establish-
ment of an explanatory hermeneutic frame that allows it to be projected into the future, is
the foundation of aesthetic nationalism, so that it is both a reconstitution and a projection
of the past, then, as Pincus indicates, Okakura was the first major Japanese thinker to dis-
cover in cultural theory an adequate substitute for politics and who understood modern-
ization as the occidentalization of the world.19 In case the continuing impact of Okakuras
fusing of the ideas of Japan and Asia should be doubted, Pincus points out that even
in France in 1928, Kuki Shz (18881941) had quoted Okakuras Ideals of the East at the
beginning of his Pontigny lecture Lexpression de linfini dans lart japonais when he
declared that the history of Japanese art is the history of Asian ideals.20 Kuki gave copies
of The Ideals of the East, which he had read in English, to his non-Japanese friends.21 Kuki
also found it not unimportant to him that Okakura, as he was later informed, had once
listened to a lecture at the Collge de France by Henri Bergson, the French philosopher
Kuki so greatly admired.22
But whatever the forward-looking and potentially aggressive qualities of aesthetic
nationalism, it oscillates between two positions. On the one hand, it is based on what ideo-
logically purports to be a truer or more precise grasp of the past, a grasp whose strength
is drawn from its reliance upon a broad range of historical contexts out of which those
values seen as ours arose. On the other hand, from the outset it privileges what is ours
by associating it with a particular mentality. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
216|John Clark

aesthetic nationalism usually linked what was ours with the culture and language of a
specific race and a finite set of ascriptions. This uniquely privileged both the values carried
by the aesthetically conceived body of the culture-state-nation-race and the particular and
closed set of origins that (in construction) pretended this was a natural or essential body.
Okakura early on identified with the first position in the opening and unsigned article
of Kokka (Flower of the nation) in 1889:

Let us turn our eyes and observe the prospect of academic work in art. Eastern art
history is still imprecise. Who is there who engages in historical writing and with
regard to the communication and contact between our country and ancient Korea,
China and the countries of Central Asia, who has analyzed the combination of artis-
tic qualities from what is available and precisely described the outlines of their his-
torical derivation?23

He also made clear the future, prescriptive orientation of such repositioning:

Kokka wants to preserve the true aspect of Japanese art and wishes to see Japanese
art evolve through its own special characteristics. Art is the art of the nation, and
Kokka with the nation will not cease from promoting the protection of the art of this
country.24

The second position significantly allows for foreign contacts and influence, only to depriv-
ilege these via the attribution of a uniquely creative synthesizing and homogenizing qual-
ity to the people accepting them. This view was put forward at exactly the same time by
Kuki Ryichi (18501931). He was the actual father of Kuki Shz and remained a lifelong
if conflicted personal friend of Okakura. But he would also prove in many ways to be
Okakuras rival in public ambition as well as private passion. In his opinion,

The elements of the arts and crafts derive from the blood of races. There are many
aspects we should demand of others and should not forcibly obtain [of ourselves].
Our Japanese race has had natural talents in the arts and crafts from ancient times. By
transforming all phenomena and in moving toward the separate field of painting and
sculpture, by using the literature and culture of alien lands and then developing our
own styles, being ever-changing we have not lost our original taste.25

Whereas in some constructions of aesthetic nationalism the attribution of uniqueness

might stop there and even be tempered with some historical contingency, the second posi-
tion in Japan at this relatively early stage went further. It closed the comparability of the
Japanese assimilation and transformation by its attribution to a unique and racially closed
imperial line. In Kukis words,

Through the historical reigns, that the imperial benevolence has for an elegant eter-
nity ceaselessly promoted and continued literature and art, pushing these to sub-
limely beautiful reaches, accompanying our national essence of a single line for ten
thousand generations, is [a situation] really without comparison in all countries.26
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 217

This is a position that only an ideologist for a new state founding itself on the old body
of its presumed origins would wish to advance. It is the claim for a uniqueness that an ide-
ologist more disposed, or constrained, to admit the historical relativity of his own position
would not make.

Biculturality

The contradiction in Okakuras thought, as much as his own personality, was that his own
knowledge of Japanese art history was increasingly formed by a system of Hegelian dialec-
tics that was not Japanese in origin at all. Bosanquets Introduction to Hegels Philosophy
of Fine Art (London, 1886) was by 1891 in the library of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, of
which he was the director,27 and while Japanese scholarship is unable to prove from the
handwriting of the marginalia whether this was perused by him, there seems every likeli-
hood that it was.
Moreover, in his own personal history Okakura had been brought up as fluent in
English from childhoodalthough as we shall later see, several important qualifications
should be made about his ability in Englishand showed a permanent interest in posi-
tioning himself before cultural others by the clothes he wore and by his command of the
foreign language.28 There does indeed seem to be a crossover between cultural cross-dress-
ing and self-empowerment. As Guth notes,

He believed even as he confirmed Western expectations of Japan, he could transcend

them because his exceptional knowledge of English language and culture set him
apart from other Japanese, allowing him to dictate the terms of his interactions with
the West.

As he explained to his son Kazuo:29

From my first trip to Europe, I wore kimono most of the time. I suggest you travel
abroad in kimono if you think that your English is good enough. But never wear
Japanese costume if you talk in broken English.30

Indeed after 1904, when he worked off and on in Boston, Massachusetts, at the Museum
of Fine Arts, which he did until his death in 1913, he joined the entourage of Isabella
Stewart Gardner, where, like some High Anglican priests, Okakura in his robes attained
the status and freedom of an individual who transcends gender divisions.31 Whether his
role developed in response to an aesthetic preference by Gardner for gender cross-dress-
ers, as suggested by Guth, I think depends on projecting into late nineteenth-century and
early twentieth-century dress codes a gender specificity that may not always have been as
marked as today, at least for cultural boundary riders. But Guth makes clear from many
photographs, also found in the Japanese Collected Works of Okakura,32 that in about 1882,
he wore elegant Western clothes in Japan with Americans (fig. 9.1), as he did shortly later
when in America, despite his portraits as a dapper young Meiji intellectual in Japanese
dress (fig. 9.2), and a Fine Arts School uniform of his own pseudo-antique Chinese
design while horse riding in about 1891 (fig. 9.3) or sitting in group portraits in 1892.
Figure 9.1. Unknown photog- Figure 9.2. Unknown photog-
rapher, Okakura aged twenty- rapher, Okakura aged twenty-
three to twenty-four years, five in the United States,
1884. 18841885.

Figure 9.3. Unknown photographer, Okakura on horseback,

around 1901.
Figure 9.4. Unknown photographer, Okakura at age forty-five, Baiyunguan Beijing, with the abbot,
Gao Yuxin, in the center, October 25, 1906.

Figure 9.5. Unknown photographer, Okakura and others with Mrs. Andrews
in the back row at the Andrews residence 1911, in Boston. Isabella Gardner
sits next to him.
220|John Clark

In 1893 he traveled incognito in China, wearing an artificial queue. Daoist clothes were
made for him in India in 1901 and clothes of this Chinese sage type he wore in Boston
and also in Beijing in 1906. The original photograph shows him alongside a senior Daoist
monk (fig. 9.4). But he was quite capable of slipping back into the Japanese gentleman
mode at will. He wore a fishermans costume in Japan in 1907, when he would spend his
days reading while out fishing,33 a self-image that was turned into a sculpture portrait still
kept at Izura, where Okakuras remains are buried. He also wore a Japanese kimono in
Boston variously between 1904 and 1913, even at high-society social engagements (fig. 9.5).
Taken together the evidence reveals a personality who wanted to show mastery of
their Western discourse as well as representation of our Japanese or more broadly
our Asian discourse at the same time. This indicates a desire for a double hermeneutic
empowerment, as if the aesthetic contest with the West was never transcended or trans-
lated to a higher plane, or, in Hegelian language, was never sublated into a universal, but
was a continuous re-enactment of the contest with the West, whether the domain of
discourse was at home or abroad.
This hybridity was latently postcolonial. It required privileging the culturally intersti-
tial in a way that was exclusively available to neither Western hegemony nor presumed
common Asian values. Two anecdotes suggest why we should see Okakura as tragically
bound to the double binarymastery of the West when in the East; mastery of the
East when in the Westrather than liberating himself into a relatively unbound or less
restrictively bound third space.
When on a trip with the American Bigelow he went to a concert of classical music and
is reported by Bigelow as having said after a Beethoven symphony, Only in that music is
the West superior to the East.34 When he went to see Swami Vivekananda immediately on
his arrival in Calcutta in 1902 he is reported to have told Ms. Macleod, who had accom-
panied him from Japan (and to whom he had had given the lectures in Tokyo which were
written up as The Ideals of the East): Vivekananda is ours. He is an Oriental. He is not
yours.35
The first anecdote indicates Okakuras deep-seated rivalry in opposing, or giving
limited and begrudging recognition to, Western cultural forms as against the Asiatic.
He found few of the former worthy of positive appraisal and chose not to bring them
into a wider set including the Asian, which would have allowed the reappraisal of both.
The latter anecdote points to a deep-seated prejudice that the Western follower could
never have access to the Eastern swami to the same extent as the Asian had, and that
Asian values were presumed to unite one Japanesewho had been in written contact
with Vivekananda since before his arrivalwith the common cultural ground of what
was Asian.36

The Unitary Asia

Okakuras The Ideals of the East (1903) was probably the most widely read of his works
during his lifetime, although his later Book of Tea has subsequently been as influential on
artists, particularly with the rise, since World War II, in interest in Zen Buddhism. The
Ideals of the East has been widely analyzed in many languages, and probably the most
comprehensive and thoughtful study in English has been that of Notehelfer in 1990.37
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 221

The premises of this book, and the needs that brought Okakura to proclaim them, include
the following:

1. Asian culture is a unity, a continuum in large part only comprehensible or tan-

gible to Asians, on a longer time scale and of a greater richness and depth than
that of the West.
Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civili-
zations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian
with its individualism of the Vedas.38
Arab chivalry, Persian poetry, Chinese ethics, and Indian thought, all
speak of a single ancient Asiatic peace, in which there grew up a com-
mon life, bearing in different regions different characteristic blossoms,
but nowhere capable of a hard and fast dividing line.39
2. Japan has a special, historically conditioned role in preserving and manifesting
this unitary character.
It has been, however, the great privilege of Japan to realise this unity-in-
complexity with a special clearness.40
The unique blessing of unbroken sovereignty, the proud self-reliance of
an unconquered race, and the insular isolation which protected ances-
tral ideas and instincts at the cost of expansion, made Japan the real
repository of the trust of Asiatic thought and culture.41
Thus Japan is a museum of Asiatic civilization: and yet more than a
museum because the singular genius of the race leads it to dwell on all
phases of the ideals of the past, in that spirit of living Advaitism [non-
Dualism] which welcomes the new without losing the old.42
3. Artistic advance is the result of cultural conflict, conceived in terms of war.
Technique is thus but the weapon of artistic warfare; scientific knowl-
edge of anatomy and perspective, the commissariat that sustains the
army. These Japanese art may safely accept from the West without
detracting from its own nature. Ideals in turn, are the modes in which
the artistic mind moves, a plan of campaign which the nature of the
country imposes on war. Within and behind them lies always the sover-
eign-general, immovable and self-contained, nodding peace or destruc-
tion from his brow.43
We await the flashing sword of the lightning that shall cleave the dark-
ness. For the terrible hush must be broken, and the raindrops of a new
vigour must refresh the earth before new flowers can spring up to cover
it with their bloom. But it must be from Asia herself, along the ancient
roadways of the race, that the great voice shall be heard.
Victory from within, or a mighty death without.44
222|John Clark

4. Asian cultural regeneration, with Japanese experience as its most concrete model,
and Japan as its cultural leader, must come through a revised consciousness of
what is already there in the past as cultural essence.
[T]o clothe oneself in the web of ones own weaving is to house oneself
in ones own house, to create from the spirit of its own sphere.45
To him [the Indian ascetic] a countryside does not consist of its natural
features alone. It is a nexus of habits and associations, of human ele-
ments and traditions, suffused with the tenderness and friendship of
one who has shared, if only for a moment, the joys and sorrows of its
personal drama.46
The task of Asia to-day, then, becomes that of protecting and restor-
ing Asiatic modes. But to do this she must herself first recognise and
develop consciousness of those modes. For the shadows of the past are
the promise of the future.47
It was some small degree of this self-recognition that re-made Japan,
and enabled her to weather the storm under which so much of the Ori-
ental world went down. And it must be a renewal of the same self-con-
sciousness that shall build up Asia again in her ancient steadfastness
and strength.48
5. Asian culture comprises states of knowledge and artistic expression that are non-
oppositional and not grasped by conflictual or individualist notions of cultural
identity.
[T]he Tao, the great Mood, expresses Itself through different minds and
ages and yet remains ever Itself.
Or again.
The art of living, whose secret lies not in antagonisms or criticisms, but
in gliding into the interstices that exist everywhere.49

Before examining these premises and their various implications, I should note two
crucial issues in the generation of this text. The first is that Sister Nivedita wrote the intro-
duction and edited the English manuscript. This had been written up from lectures given in
Japan in 18991901 to two other followers of Vivekananda, including Josephine Macleod,
who had put Okakura in touch with Vivekananda before Okakuras visit. In a now cultur-
ally distant and unfamiliar manner, Vivekananda and Nivedita represent a peculiar cross-
over between Hindu reformism and socialist politics (even quasi-revolutionary politics in
Niveditas case), whose rhetorical style is only fully to be grasped by reading their texts.
Their very language mixes high religious appeal to Hindu ideals with a burning social
concern and fierce hostility to colonialism. Nivedita, in particular, vigorously opposes the
passivity she sees as having infested Indian society and led to its domination by the Brit-
ish. She requires a far more Aggressive Hinduism, the title of one of her pamphlets. The
tone and the language of The Ideals of the East is permeated by precisely the evangelical
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 223

intensity one would associate with a politically impassioned religious convert, so much so
that it is difficult to think that this book would exist in its present form and style without
Nivedita.
The second issue is that The Ideals of the East was edited and revised in India at the
same time Okakura was drafting The Awakening of the East, a text that was first published
posthumously in 1939 in Japanese translation and then in English in 1940. The tone of this
second text is more extreme than The Ideals of the East, even hysterical. It was apparently
written by Okakura for his Indian friends and was the result of many conversations with
them. The Ideals of the East tends intermittently toward extreme statements but stops short
of actually delivering them with the full vigor of the collective position shared by Okakura
and his Indian friends about Asian nationalism that are expressed in The Awakening of the
East. This vigor was presumably among the reasons why the latter text had such appeal
to Japanese ultranationalists in the 1930s. Its unbridled language may also have been the
reason it was not published in the English-speaking world in Okakuras lifetime, when
Nivedita was under British police surveillance for political reasons.
Some of the five principles given above are contradictory, such as that between the
notion of character of pacific Asians (5) and the notion of art progressing only through
conflict (3). If the latter had not been present in Asian art, then would the pacificity that
supposedly characterizes it have developed? And indeed if Asian culture had such a unity
(1), why then should Japan in particular be endowed with such an historic role in preserv-
ing it (2), (4)? Part of the reason Okakura was apparently relaxed about the copresence of
these contradictions was, as mentioned above, his dialectical method of thought absorbed
via Fenollosas original Hegelianism and his teachings on the social Darwinist Herbert
Spencer in the late 1870s.50
Parts of Okakuras texts emphasize the rebirth of Asia based on a renewed conscious-
ness represented through its creation of art. They read like glosses on Bosanquets prefa-
tory essay and translation of the introduction to Hegels Philosophy of Fine Art, which
Okakura had almost certainly read by around 18911892.

Spirit exists in the medium of consciousness, not in a peculiar kind of matter.51

Art liberates the real import of appearances from the semblance and deception of this
bad and fleeting world, and imparts to phenomenal semblances a higher reality, born
of mind.52

It is also clear that for Hegel, the prominence given to art as the realization of an idea
depends on a postulated inward spiritual state that by implication is the result of a broader
cultural history.

[T]hat the level and excellency of art in attaining a realization adequate to its idea [or
as spirit and in spirit], must depend upon the grade of inwardness and unity with
which Idea and Shape display themselves as fused into one.53

But Okakuras art historical method is more broadly informed than simply a second- or
thirdhand take on Hegel. Kinoshita notes that Okakuras research method found in his
224|John Clark

lectures on art history from the 1890s is supported by four theories that were prevalent as
the method of historical recording in nineteenth-century Europe.

1. Nationalism: the phenomena of art manifested through systematization by state

units.
2. Democracy: reinforcement of realism by the viewpoint of the citizens and masses
not centered on the court.
3. Individualism: the view that all works are in the last analysis the results of the
efforts of individual artists.
4. A developmental historical view: a method for grasping phenomena and analyz-
ing them, where art phenomena are regarded as part of the causal relations of
history.54

Kinoshita also notes that Okakura must have learned a lot from the historian Sue-
matsu Kensh of the governments Historical Bureau, who had himself absorbed these
theories from Zerffis The Science of History, 1879.55
Kinoshita indicates various reasons for the phrase Asia is one, so beloved by later
ultranationalists. The Gad yketsu (Secret keys to the way of painting, 1680), by the Edo
painter and theorist Kano Yasunobu (16081683),56 includes the phrase banbutsu hitotsu
nari (the ten thousand things are one), which borrows from Daoist thought. No doubt
Okakura substituted Ajia for banbutsu as an elegant turn of phrase. For Fukunaga Akishi,
in Daoist thought the many are comprised of the one. The notion of unitariness was
thus probably adopted by Okakura as a kind of literary conceit in the same way he dressed
in a Daoist manner.57 The Ideals of the East should read as [d]escribing art history as a
whole are the various ideas where the art of Asia is one.58
Kinoshita thinks Asia is one makes sense when seen in a diagram of opposites, Asia
versus Europe, which comprised two possible developments. One was a direction that
raised the ideal onto an external plane that transcended the domain of art history; the
other located Asia is one on an internal plane within the domains of beauty and art
and tried to derive an art history from that. This latter position might also be expected
to extend to a critique of modern ideals such as the recording of art historical facts as
posited by the four historical theories habitually deployed in his time. For Kinoshita,
Okakuras use of idealsuntranslated into the plural in Japanese and left as idealis
an extremely Hegelian usage.59 Okakura does not through this usage speak of an ideal
as a purpose or desired state that must be attained; I would say he uses ideal more as
an evaluatory criterion of thought for positioning concepts, and by extension for histori-
cally and culturally classifying art objects that might be considered to embody those ideals
in the world. Unlike other ultranationalists, Okakura was concerned in the 1889 extract
from Kokka to try to describe a Japanese art history of a whole, and later considered it by
around 1900 to lie within an integrated domain called Asia, and not just the particular
isolated phenomena found in India, China, or Japan. This was the case however much he
felt constrained to privilege Japan as the culmination and historical reservoir of tenden-
cies passed to it from the first two cultural domains. Hotta Yojr, an ultranationalist,
noted in 1937 that Okakuras comment that the highest [state] in the art of the world
was in India, China and Japan meant that the influence which had hitherto been seen as
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 225

coming from Greece to Asia should be rewritten as influence towards Greece and Rome.
Okakuras view that the spirit of Japan was to accumulate and protect the heritage of Asia
over 1500 years was an awakening of Japan from the position of Asia itself as manifesting
a world art, rather than from a Western-centered position which had [hitherto] defined
what world art was.60
Kinoshita notes in conclusion that the phrase Asia is one records that the plural
appearances of Asian cultures are one system, or the meshes of one web, and that the
writing of an overall Asian art history is possible. Indeed the final page of handwritten
notes on the draft manuscript that became The Awakening of the East includes the phrase
We are one, so indicating that this book was intended for Indians in support of their
anti-British activities. But it also indicates that Okakura thought there had been contact
between Asians as long as humanity had had a history and that the one in Okakuras
formulation proves his belief the length of that history.61

Biographical Background to Thought

I have initially avoided introducing an important element of personal biography into the
interpretation of Okakuras thought because this must be seen as having its own intellec-
tual dynamic. However, there is no doubt that the intensity of his passionate attachment to
an underlying Asian unity had, in addition to its intellectual basis in opposing the West,
a psychological origin as well. This seems to have been due to a need to return to a pri-
mordial unity after separation. His life was full of these separations and returns. His own
fathers separation from his clan to move to Yokohama, where he was born,62 was followed
by Okakuras own separation from his father, both physically and in culture through his
mastering English before studying classical East Asian culture. I hardly think this can be
taken to mean that his English was better than his Japanese, but simply that he was likely
to have been good at it since childhood to the extent that he could master complex literary
expressions with facility and a lack of personal embarrassment as he got older. Okakura
acquired his knowledge of East Asian culture by mastering the textual decoding practice
of turning kanbun, or classical Chinese, into Japanese. This mastery was surely in conflict
with his later avowed hatred for the constricting effect of Tokugawa rule on Japanese cul-
ture, which had most developed and disseminated the use of kanbun among the samurai
class. Okakura later wanted to return, as he saw it, to ideals of Japanese art that would
equal or go beyond those of ancient Greece, so the notion of separation or of distance and
return is basic to his thought.
Okakura had a history of separating from and rejoining his wives. He left Japan
and his first wife to visit Europe and America on an official mission, and on the boat on
his return from America in 1888 was entrusted with the care of the pregnant Hatsu (or
Hazuko), wife of Kuki Ryichi, then minister at the Japanese Legation in Washington.
An affair began between them that appears to have lasted until about 1898 and was the
subject of a scurrilous letter circulated in that year that forced Okakura to resign as both
head of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and as head of the Fine Art Section of the Imperial
Household Museum. We should note for the moment that this latter post also carried with
it responsibility for writing the first official art history of Japan, which was to be published
226|John Clark

in a French translation at the Paris World Exposition in 1900, and later the same year in
the original Japanese.63
Okakuras relationship with Hatsu may be glimpsed though the recollection of his
visits by her son Kuki Shz, who lived with her around 18951896 and often saw Tenshin
at his mothers house in Negishi, which she may have taken to be near Okakura.64 Kuki
last saw Okakura at a house of his mothers in 19031904 and last saw Okakura himself
when, feigning ignorance, he passed him in a corridor while he was studying at Tokyo
University, where Okakura gave his lectures in AprilJune 1910. Kukis own personality
was itself split between an intense eroticism and a religious spirituality,65 and this may be
seen as derived from his idealization of Okakura.66 But the split or tension in Kuki also
curiously resembles Okakuras own distancing between a longed-for cultural unity in the
past and a tendency toward the abstract idealization of contemporary Meiji Japan as the
contemporary representative of the vestiges of that unity and its creative potential.
It would appear that Kuki Rychi refused Hatsu a divorce although they lived sepa-
rately, but she was effectively abandoned by Okakura, lost her sanity, and was confined to
a mental hospital, where she died in 1931. Okakura had returned to his own wife Motoko
about 1898, having also fathered a second son, Sabur, in 1895 with a different mother,
Yasugi Nao, who was brought up with the surname Wada. Okakura left for India in 1901.
He subsequently had many other platonic attractions to non-Japanese women, such as his
older woman patron Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston and his young poetess correspon-
dent in India, the widow Priyambada Devi Banerjee.67 The relationships with Gardner,
Devi, and Hatsu appear in Okakuras last work, the operatic text The White Fox, written
early in 1913.68 Yet his ability to secure affection and love from his family despite his irreg-
ular, sometimes wild behavior and peripatetic foreign travels is testified to by the presence
of his younger brother, wife, sister, daughter, and first son Kazuo at his death, and Kazuo
having later devoted himself to two volumes of a biography of his father.

Intellectual Tendencies

Okakura was a bureaucratic activist who wrote polemics and reports in his twenties but in
his thirties, when separated from direct policy influence after 1898, wrote more considered
if equally polemical texts, usually in English. Several Japanese scholars who have placed
Okakura in the intellectual currents of his time see him as particularly important in the
debate as to whether the identity of Japan required her to exit from Asia or be further
drawn into it.69
It was The Awakening of the East of 1938,70 which was completed in 1902 but remained
unpublished in Okakuras lifetime, that was to embody most particularly the imbrication
of his thoughts in contemporary intellectual currents. These saw Japan expanding into
Asia as the representative of the restitution and reassertion of Asian values. The major
propositions of this work may be grouped as follows:

1. Asia achieves its contemporary identification in humiliation before the West

with which Asia is in a zero-sum relation: what the West gains in glory Asia
loses in shame.
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 227

Brothers and Sisters of Asia!

A vast suffering is on the land of our ancestors. The Oriental has become
a synonym for the effeminate, the native an epithet for the slave. Our
lauded gentleness is the irony which alien courtesy owes to cowardice.
In the name of commerce we have welcomed the militant, in the name
of civilization we have embraced the imperialistic, in the name of Chris-
tianity we have prostrated before the merciless.
The glory of Europe is the humiliation of Asia! The march of history
is a record of the steps that led the West into inevitable antagonism to
ourselves.71

2. The subjugation is to an economic system, which enables the vastly increased rep-
lication of material goods, as well as to the form of spiritual and intellectual ener-
vation that has allowed this situation to come to pass.
Industrial conquest is awful, moral subjugation is intolerable. Our
ancestral ideals, our family institutions, our ethics, our religions, are
daily fading away. Each succeeding generation loses moral stamina by
contact with the Westerners.72
We have bowed to their armaments, we have surrendered to their mer-
chandise, why not be vanquished by their so-called culture?73
Shame to our mothers that they bore a race of slaves! Shame to our
daughters that they shall wed a race of cowards!74

3. Asian countries are separated by a lack of external contacts and a concentration

on internal problems. The European languages have inserted themselves, together
with the prestige of their knowledge systems. Thus, despite the underlying histori-
cal unity of Asian cultures, the many structurally similar features of their societ-
ies, and sometimes direct commonalities of religion and other beliefs, there is a
lack of mutual knowledge.
The mutual isolation of Asiatic countries prevents them from compre-
hending the appalling situation in its total significance. Engrossed in
bewildering struggles of their own, they disregard the fact that the self-
same misfortune has befallen their neighbors.75
It is wonderful how little we know each other. We blab in all the lan-
guages of Europewhich one of us has learned a single Oriental tongue
besides his own?76
The lack of a common literary vehicle for Eastern scholarship, a natural
distaste for expression in a foreign tongue, the disdain of cheap notori-
ety by hasty generalization, the absence of communication and inter-
change among our thinkers, is a standing barrier to the formulation of
the fundamental principles of our common civilization.77
228|John Clark

The unity of Asiatic consciousness in spirit and form is most apparent in

our art, whose subtle refinement far transcends the amateur coarseness
of Western creations.78

4. In Asia there is a primordial sense of community and a cooperative order that has
been subverted by Western industrial and political competitiveness, which pro-
vides no social order in the place of what it has overthrown to its own advantage.
But now the West comes as a perfect stranger, subverting the order she
is powerless to replace, imposing a scheme we consider as utter ruin.
Victory or Death?79
The Chinese ideograph for a family represents three persons under a
roof and in itself signifies the Eastern triad of father, mother, and child
in contradistinction to the Western duet of man and wife. It involves
at once the triple relations of paternal care, marital helpfulness, and
filial obedience, bound together in indissoluble bonds of mutual loves
and duties, which when widened into the social ideal flower into that
Benevolence, Brotherhood, Loyalty, and Courtesy, which constitute the
beauty and fragrance of Asiatic life.80
Truly we have not that crude notion of personal rights guarded by
mutual assertionsthat perpetual elbowing through the crowd, that
constant snarling over the boneswhich seems to be the glory of the
Occident. Out conceptions of liberty are far higher than these.81

5. The only way this humiliation may be overcome is by a revised consciousness

of what it means to be Asian, as is the case for all the other cultures resumed
under this tutelary unity. Such a consciousness will only be attained by an out-
ward assertiveness, including use of military means if necessary. Some Japanese
scholars like Takeuchi82 suppose that Okakura thought military force was un-
Asian or anti-Asian. The original English texts of the earlier The Ideals of the East
(1903) and The Awakening of Japan (1904) do not support this supposition. That is,
unless we are to allow that Okakuras romanticism led him to flagrantly manipu-
late English metaphors, the full import of which did not concern him.
Our recovery is Consciousness. Our remedy isThe Sword.83
The West on the other hand through its incessant thirst for domination
has developed the concrete notion of nationality in each of its limited
territories.84
But wondrous is the irony of fate! European imperialism has itself fur-
nished the weapons by which it will be destroyed.85
Our constant contact with them has disclosed to us that the bully is a
coward, that their power lies in undue prestige, not in individual prow-
ess. Our acquisition of scientific methods has taught us we can compete
with them whenever there is fair play.86
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 229

6. Japan has appeared on the horizon as the harbinger of a new Pax Asiatica. If
the Japanese could accomplish so much, how much more could be done by the
greater populations of China and India! They only require leadership of a kind
that Japans examplethat is Japan itselfcould provide.
[T]he brilliant resurrection of Japan is very instructive as an instance of
Asiatic revival.87
The sun has risen again in the East to dispel the night of despondency.
. . . Forty millions of self-sacrificing islanders have accomplished this,
why should not four hundred millions of China, and the three hundred
millions of India be armed to stay the further aggression of the preda-
tory West? 88
And a mighty Asiatic peace shall come to clothe humanity with univer-
sal harmony. And Europe shall receive the blessing of Asia given with a
freer if a firmer hand.89

7. A great crisis now hangs over Asia, which has to choose to abandon the political
tinkering introduced in response to Westernization and effect an outspoken
and uncontested return to Asian values. Those who do not make this leap of
faith will suffer a spiritual death.
The hour has come when the leaders shall cease to dream of constitu-
tional measures or economic protests . . . when the alien prestige shall be
broken by mystery and the silent deluge of overwhelming millions shall
flood the land in a single night.
The cowards shrink before the brilliant image of freedom. The cautions
[sic, I think should be cautious] pause on the threshold of a great revo-
lution. Do they prefer Death in Life or Life in Death? A crisis has now
arrived in our history that the dread ordeal has to be faced.90

Categories of Art History

If Okakura was outwardly concerned to overcome Asian passivity and to push back
against the West, by military means if necessary, he was also aware that artistic creativity
must be based on a forward-looking art history. This must deploy a more accurate, and
in certain terms critical, knowledge in dealing with cultural interactions with different,
historically conditioned, external environments that existed in the past. Such a concern
involved a new attitude toward historical writing about art from ancient records as well as
toward rediscovered ancient art objects.
This attitude arose in the late 1880s, according to Tanaka, when Miyake Yonekichi,
a historian active circa 18871891, held that history is the academic field of knowing
the vestiges of the past.91 Interestingly, Miyake tied the origin of the Banner of the Four
Devaraja at Hory-ji to Assyria, thus suggesting Japans connection to an ancient Asian
230|John Clark

civilization that had predated European civilization. Developing an idea that also appears
widely in Okakuras work, Miyake implied that Asia was not merely contiguous with both
Japan and Europe, it was a part of Japans past.92 The problem for Japanese historians in the
late nineteenth century was that they could try to rewrite Japan into a previously unknown
or ignored past in the historical terms of the European Enlightenment for which Japans
past and present were synonymous. But their adoption of a Eurocentric developmental
model would have meant a virtual denial of Japans past and acceptance of a perpetual
state of inferiority. Japanese history would have been an incomplete variation of, or an
anomaly compared to, that of Europe.93
Okakura through all his work tried to show Japanese art history as endogenous, how-
ever it may have been linked to continental Asian precursors. Kinoshita in his excellent
summaries, which describe the generation of Okakuras art historical thought and the
way it was used by Japanese ultranationalism in the 1930s,94 clarifies the way Okakuras
understanding of Japanese art history was based on a thorough knowledge of art objects.
This was gained in 1882, 1884, and 1886 from visits to old temples with his superior Kuki
Ryichi and Fenollosa. It meant that despite all his debts to Fenollosas interpretations of
Hegel via Spencer, he had had the opportunity to view old works himself and to form his
own observations. These have a freshness unattainable by a mere transposition of Hegelian
theoretical categories. Here one must not overlook the fact that Hegels own aesthetics
were also based on a careful examination of particular art objects. Whether this model of
examination passed to Okakura directly via Fenollosa or possibly by a German teacher of
Fenollosas is unclear, because, as we have seen above, Hegels main aesthetic ideas could
not have been directly understood in Japan until the early 1890s, when Bosanquets trans-
lation was available.95
By 1889 Okakura was head of the Fine Art Section of the Imperial Household Museum
as well as effective director of the Tokyo School of Fine Art, where in 18901892 he gave
the first systematic lectures on Japanese Art History and Western Art History. His
lectures treated Japan as the main part of the East, but this position had changed by his
1910 lectures at Tokyo University, which now tended to include China under the rubric of
Japan.96 It is important also to remember that the late-Edo clan backgrounds of major par-
ticipants in the Tokyo art world of the 1880s and 1890s were imbricated between policies
for promoting trade, protecting ancient art, and establishing an art education system, as
well as in the conflicts between several intra-elite groups contesting for variations in these
policy fields.97
In 1891 Okakura wrote an Outline for a Compilation of Japanese Art History and
planned to publish A History of Japanese Art in two volumes, with the first volume to be
published in 1891 and the second in 1892. But these plans were put aside when in 1893
Okakura went for five months on his first visit to China to investigate Chinese art for the
Imperial Household Museum. On September 28, 1897, a commission for a Japanese art
history to be written for the 1900 Paris World Exposition was sent to him by the Ministry
of Agriculture and Trade Temporary Expositions Bureau. But on March 17, 1898, Okakura
suddenly resigned from the Imperial Museum and his post as director of the Tokyo School
of Fine Art, including from the editorship of the History of Japanese Art. As mentioned
earlier, a scurrilous letter was in circulation about his private life, and Kuki Ryichi, with
whose wife Okakura had been having an affair for nearly ten years, became president of
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 231

Imperial Museum and Okakuras superior on March 16, the day before Okakura resigned.
Despite the frisson of scandal, the resignation incident is seen by Kinoshita as due to a con-
flict between Okakuras Asianist attitude in his search for a cross-Asian origin to Japa-
nese art forms and the contemporary, imperial-institution-centered nationalist construc-
tion of Japanese art history. This was based on a notion of the Greater Japanese empire,
which had just defeated China in war. The gap between these two positions had already
been apparent in the first issue of Kokka ten years earlier. So this conflict about art his-
tory, whatever personal trajectories were involved, was also one about the political use
of aesthetics to express a fictional national unity and grandeur, exactly as indicated by
Redfield.98
In fact Okakura still had one foot left in the establishment, since he retained member-
ship of the Committee for the Preservation of Shrines and Temples. As Sat has carefully
established, the flavor of an intra-elite conflict based on former clan affiliation is hard to
dispel in understanding alliances and ruptures in the 1898 art-school crisis.99 Those other
teachers who resigned from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in sympathy with him were
largely from clans loyal to the Tokugawa and thus opposed to the artists and officials from
the outer clans, whose policies of opening up the country and of economic and educational
development had prevailed after the Meiji Restoration.
Japanese art history was constituted by four kinds of publication in the 1890s and
1910s:

1. The official History of Japanese Art.

2. The research journal Kokka from 1888.
3. Various illustrated collections of Japanese art published by the publisher Shinbi
shoin, with official writers and official cooperation but nominally by nonofficial
writers and principally edited by mura Seigai, who had been in the first gradua-
tion group from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts.
4. Various individually published art histories.100

The editorship of the official History of Japanese Art passed to Fukuchi Mataichi. His per-
sonal rivalry with Okakura, as well as the animosity felt toward Okakura by many teachers
at the art school, went back to 1893, when Fukuchi had stood in for Okakura at the Impe-
rial Household Museum while Okakura was away in China. Fukuchis Japanese text and
the French translation were passed to the Expositions Bureau in December 1899 and pub-
lished as Histoire de lart du Japon in April 1900, with 290 pages of main text and 322 illus-
trations. In 1901 the Japanese text was published as Draft Short Art History of the Japanese
Empire. It is marked by the complete disappearance of a sightline concerning relations
with foreign countries and adjoining fields (such as literature and religion) and presents
an art of Japan where Japanese art history continues an unbroken lineage through a
single line of imperial descent over 10,000 ages. In particular, it drastically reduced the
space devoted to the era of the Ashikaga Shogunate (13381573), at the inception of which
the imperial house had been split into two lines. It also restricts attention to the era of
Emperor Kanmu (781806), during which the capital was moved from Nara to Nagaoka to
Heian. The preface interprets Japanese art as having advanced along an original path and
having displayed characteristics that should be called Japanese.101
232|John Clark

In 1900 Okakura had written Historiography of Japanese Art: Chapter One, The Six
Dynasties, published in Nihon bijutsu 17, but in 19011902 he traveled to India and in
1903 published The Ideals of the East. In the seventeen months after this Historiography
of Japanese Art chapter there is a subtle change of emphasis away from seeing Japan as the
continuation of transfers from China, India, and central Asia, and toward the art history
of Japan becoming the history of Asiatic ideals in and of themselves. The other important
departure from the official history is the time scale. Okakuras earlier Outline for a Compi-
lation of Japanese Art History, begun in 1890 as an internal draft of the Imperial Museum,
had included the Meiji period; that is, it had covered what was contemporary art at the
time of writing, however conservatively positioned.
After 1901, Okakuras writing in English, his visits to India, his sending to India of the
painters Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shuns in 1903 (see Plates 16 and 17), and then his
travels in America and Europe in 19041905 and the sending of the painter Shimomura
Kanzan to England in 19031905, can all be seen as attempts to position Japanese art
externally in Europe and Asia. So even though Okakura was nominally in an anti-estab-
lishment position after 1898, he had a state-level vision for Japanese art. Perhaps Okakura
himself was regarding Japan and Asia from the position of an internationalist, but one that
still privileged Japan.102
The art historical implications of phrases such as the important privileges of Japan or
the special character of the Japanese people found in The Ideals of the East position Japan
as the leader of an Asian alliance. They also represent a tendency in Okakuras thought
that could not completely avoid compromise with the idea that the Japanese empire = an
imperial family with a lineage of 10,000 generations.103 This complicity with the aggres-
sive ideals of the Meiji state may account for the later widespread diffusion of Okakuras
ideas in the 1930s when this aggressiveness was implemented in full. Kinoshita dates the
advent of revisionist views of Okakura to a 1938 article by Asano Hikaru in the second
issue of Shin Nihon about The Awakening of Japan (1906).104 It was the same year as the
first publication in Japanese of Ris no saiken (The Reconstruction of Ideals), which was
later republished as an edited version of the original English in 1942 as The Awakening of
the East.
The way Okakuras thought could posthumously be interpreted to support ultranation-
alism is most typically seen in an interview of June 14, 1942, with the painter Yokoyama
Taikan, then secretary of the Association to Commemorate Okakura, which dealt with
the forthcoming raising of a commemorative stone to Okakura in November of that year.
The stone was to be a massive 5.4 meters, with a profile of Okakura in low relief by Niiumi
Takez and an inscription by Yokoyama of Okakuras famous phrase Asia is one: it
would face the Pacific and would be intended to show Okakuras indomitable guise and
be full of the spirit of staring down America.105
Okakuras writing is complex and full of shifts. Despite the incantatory tenor of three
of the texts in English, his art historical position included two fresh kinds of approach.
The first is that art history was a physical, existential recreation of the past. People in the
world regard history as edited records of the facts of the past, that is, as a dead thing. This
is an important error. What is history exists in our bodies and is continually in activity.106
Art history had also to be recomposed from the records, since its causes lay in a wide
net of international cultural flows: the causes for art of whatever country necessarily exist
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 233

from the ancient past. [In Japanese art history,] that the Suiko court rapidly increased its
level and reached a state provided with a splendid literature and art undoubtedly came
about through relations with foreign countries.107 Art history should be proleptic in Red-
fields sense, that is, it should define the future: The key to art history does not stop at all at
the recording of the past. It must necessarily also constitute the ground for making future
art as well.108
Okakura anticipated and agreed with the self-critical move away from earlier Japanese
painting history as being a mere register of biographical anecdotes. This tendency had
begun with Nihon kaigashi (History of Japanese painting, 1901), by Yokoi Jit, and with
Kinsei kaigashi (A history of painting in recent times, 1903), by Fujioka Sakutar.109 The
same direction may also be found in later art historical writing by Okakura such as his
English notes for Japanese Temples and Their Treasures (Tokyo: Shimbi shoin, 1910):

Japan is no exception to the rule that island nations draw from the adjacent continents
for inspiration and actual teaching.

And

The wars and disruptions of China made our country a sanctuary for her exiles and
repository of her art works, and we have deliberately sought her teachings by sending
over our scholars from the very earliest times. Our harshest critics, however, cannot
say that we have been merely copyists, or that we have failed to assimilate what we
have taken. There has never been any lack of lively national feeling, or ability to dis-
criminate what suited our peculiarities and reject the dross.110

Sat Dshin notes that by 1891 Fukuchi Mataichi had already drafted the first chronology
of Japanese art and that even earlier Fenollosa had had Ariga Nagao prepare a chronology
for China and Japan, and this was perhaps the basis for his Epochs of Chinese and Japanese
Art, which was to be posthumously published in London in 1911.111 Thus Fenollosa should
perhaps be seen as the actual originator of Japanese Art History and Eastern Art His-
tory. What is not so visible in Fenollosas book is the slippage in the usage of the term
Tyteki, Eastern or Oriental, into Japanese.
It had been the late-Edo samurai painter Satake Shozan (17481785) who had first
distinguished between Eastern morals, Western technique (Ty dtoku, Seiy geijutsu).
Before Meiji, Tyteki was used to indicate both a civilizational worldview and a view
of history, in addition to being used to denote a geographical space.112 The changing place
of Japan was indicated by Okakura in his 1892 art school lectures on Western art, which
had used the Altai Mountains as a dividing line between East and West. But he had
extended the scope of the East by the time of his 1910 History of Arts and Crafts in East
Asia so that its meaning encompassed Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia. Victory in the Sino-
Japanese war of 18941895 had led to the notion of Japan as leader of the alliance in the
East who would reorganize the history of the East. This attitude surfaced in Kuki
Ryichis preface to the 1900 Histoire de lart du Japon, which relegated the glories of Chi-
nese and Indian art to the past and asserted that Japan would now compile the History
of Eastern Art.113 After the further victory in the Russo-Japanese war of 19041905, the
234|John Clark

History of Eastern Art turned towards the creation of an external self, a stage in which
Japan would leave or escape from Asia and become one of the great powers preparing the
rationalization for its domination over Asia.114

Categories of Art and Its Practice

Takeuchi has pointed out that for Okakura beauty was opposed to science, which is linked
to war, it being the way of beauty to transcend this.115 Niveditas placing Okakura as a kind
of anti-establishment William Morris in her preface to The Ideals of the East in 1903 thus
had its rationale. But Okakura in the 1880s and 1890s was concerned with the creation
of a new national art and was not opposed to the learning of Western painting as such.
He was concerned with what should be the foundation of learning, and for him this was
spirit (a word brought into Japanese from the French esprit and the German Geist and
meaning the mind in the world), which had to be the internal realization of the self.116
He was thus particularly opposed to the formalization of education under the policies of
civilizing and opening up the country since the Meiji Restoration and to the increase of
bureaucratic power that accompanied the reach of the new education system into all levels
of Japanese life. This aversion had been fed by his first appointment at the age of nineteen
after leaving the university. From August 1880 he began in the Ministry of Education as an
assistant to Iizawa Shji, first director of the Tokyo Music School, which had opened before
the Fine Arts School in 1889. Iizawa was an ambitious bureaucrat who implemented a sys-
tem of only Western music education in Japanese schools, and he reinforced this by also
being one of the first standardizers of teacher training education in Japan.117 Thus behind
Okakuras exaggerated attachment to Japanese painting during the 1880s was not so
much an opposition to Western painting but to bureaucratic ambition and standardiza-
tion, as well as to the single-minded pursuit of Western pedagogic models in the cognate
discipline of musical training.
A similar position to that of Iizawa might be seen in Okakuras bte noire in the paint-
ing world, Koyama Shtar, who in 1882 published a text, Sho wa bijutsu narazu (Cal-
ligraphy is not an art) in the MayJuneJuly issue of the journal Ty gakugei zasshi. This
was followed by a response from Okakura in the AugustSeptemberOctober issue.
Their debate cannot be seen outside the context of a discussion over what was to be
included under the category of art or fine art. This was an exhibition category for types
of works, the Japanese word bijutsu having been created for the works shown at the Vienna
Exposition in 1873.118 It was also a concept introduced into critical discourse by the phi-
losopher Nishi Amane in his Theories of Aesthetics, which were lectures for the Emperor
Meiji presented between 1872 and 1877. Amanes lectures were thus roughly contemporary
with the inception of the first Technical Art School (Kbu Bijutsu Gakk, closed in 1883),
where art clearly meant technique. To some extent the issue of categories of work and
types of concept for art overlay each other in the speech The True Theory of Art, pre-
sented by Fenollosa in May 1882. This was a straightforward introduction to some types of
art works and to Spencerian and Hegelian concepts of art and its development.119 Fenollosa
was in search of an artistic criterion for the connoisseurship of art objects and their cri-
tique. It was the idea that always created an absolute and unique sensation in preserving
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 235

the internal relations to an object based on the separation of beauty from utility. Fenol-
losas idea was opposed to realism, technique, science, and industry.120
In a debate that seemingly failed to distinguish between calligraphy and writing,
Koyama came out against writing being art since it was merely a sign used for language.
For him, what people like in writing is not the writing itself but the phrases it is used to
create, the person, and the historical period of the writing. Koyama also negatively com-
pared writing to technique and asked if what the wall painter or the lantern decorator
does is art. Okakura, in reply, thought that if calligraphy was studied and practiced it
had much that reached the domain of art. Among other arguments he advanced, this was
because the form of writing could be varied and thus gave pleasure to the eye, exactly like
that of other arts. Fenollosa had put calligraphy among the arts along with music, poetry,
and sculpture. Okakura suggested that like Fenollosas notion of idea, the true domain
of art is to express the artists internal thought.121 He criticized Koyamas characteriza-
tion of the ideals of art as ones that should be adequately fulfilled by the functions of
a photograph and counterargued that they are thus not in the true function of art.122
Okakuras own argument displays the circularity it will have later on in his English writ-
ings where, in Kiplingesque terms the East is East and West is West,123 cultural differ-
ence becomes a self-defining property, not one defined by the contiguity with the cultur-
ally other. Well, if the development of the East is quite different to that of the West, for
those things which are prevalent due to peoples taste, like art, one cannot doubt there will
be a similar difference.124
Fenollosas 1882 speech was given in English with a Japanese translation, and only
the record of the Japanese translation survives. It was to become the marker for an exten-
sive debate, the terms of which were set by his use for the first time in translation from
Fenollosas English into Japanese of the term Japanese painting, which became Nihonga.
Fenollosas argument in the 1882 Bijutsu shinsetsu is summarized by Kitazawa as follows:

1. What makes Art into Fine Art is that Fine Art possesses an idea.
2. The work is an independent and unified world composed from the subject and the
form of expression.
3. The various fine arts may be divided into music, painting, and poetry according
to the form of expression that manifests the idea, and each of these has its own
specific way of doing so.
4. The practice of painting will atrophy if it does not express a new idea and strike
out in a new direction.
5. Painting does not have its principal aim in copying as does modern Western
painting, but on making something.125

Kitazawa further analyzes at length the advent of the term for Japanese-style paint-
ing over quite a long period, its final stage of development being reached around 1900
1901.126 But the term Nihonga was never used in any of the categories for works at the
Fine Arts Pavilions in the five Expositions for the Promotion of Domestic Manufactures
(Naikoku Kangy Hakurankai) between 1877 and 1903. However, the term Nihonga-shi,
Japanese painter, is mentioned in the Japanese translation of Wagners report on the 1877
exposition as having been given by the court to the artist Ikeda Ysai. The third Exposition
236|John Clark

for the Promotion of Domestic Manufactures in 1890 removed detailed classification by

material and technique and just had a category of painting, thereby also removing that
of calligraphy and painting. This marked the successful separation of painting from the
East Asian notion that calligraphy and painting are identical. In 1890 Okakura was also
assessor for the exposition and wrote the report that uses word Nihonga.
Indeed the categorizing of art practice was tied up with the need seen by the ultrana-
tionalists to integrate what had in the past been many different and highly socially strati-
fied tendencies in painting. In 1886 Fenollosa gave a speech at the Kyoto Prefectural Paint-
ing School (Kytofu Gagakk) that indicated the urgent need to break down sects, that is,
schools of painting with their old status system, as a means to push forward the formation
of the nation. But in the mid-1880s there was still a tendency, particularly in Kyoto, to
use the term Tyga for Eastern painting to comprise both Chinese and Japanese pre-
1850s painting in many styles and media. In 1888 at the Kyoto Prefectural Painting School
there were both Seiyga, Western-style painting, and Tyga, Eastern-style painting,
sections.
Okakuras direct interest was in the categorization of tertiary pedagogy, and in effect
he instituted such a change in around 1889 when the kaigaka painting section was set up
at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Here painting meant that of a Nihonkaigaka, or Japa-
nese-style painting section. Simultaneously the term yga was adopted for Western-style
painting at the newly formed Meiji Art Society. The formal division at the Tokyo School of
Fine Arts into a Nihongaka, Japanese-style painting section, and a Seiygaka, Western-
style painting section, came in 1896 when Kuroda Seiki was appointed first teacher of
this latter practice, two years before the crisis which was to see Okakuras resignation.127
In Okakuras mind until at least the mid-1890s, the bifurcation of Japanese was with
Western practice, and the former comprised the Eastern, not vice versa.

Conceptions of Cultural Continua

It may be useful to further categorize the notions of cultural continua Okakura used to
understand Japan, China, and India and the relation of the latter two with the first. This
must perforce be a schematic and condensed analysis.

The Idea of the East: 1. Japan

There is no doubt that in the 1880s and 1890s Okakura was associated with, and at times
supported by, ultranationalists opposed to European expansion in Asia and supporters of
an imperialist role for Japan in response. Okakura wrote in November 1889 in the ultra-
nationalist journal Nipponjin in support of former general and minister of agriculture
and commerce Tani Tateki.128 He also contributed his article Shina no bijutsu (The Arts
of China) to the thirty-fifth issue of Thkykai hkoku, an association founded in 1891
to oppose the extension of the Russian Siberian railway; Okakuras name was given as a
member in the journal.129 His formation of the Japan Art Academy was widely supported
by ultranationalists associated with the T-A Dbunkai, an ultranationalist lobby group
working on Asia policy. Indeed, several of its more prominent members were present at the
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 237

launch of the Japan Art Academy in November 1898. There is little doubt Okakuras own
romantic ultranationalism was supported from this quarter, in his own lifetime.
Perhaps the historicizing importance given to the assertion of Japan as the temporally
ordained Asian leader came mainly from Okakuras debt to Hegel via Fenollosa in the
notion of one country, Japan, being the bearer of the world historical spirit. By the 1890s it
was time for this idea to come to a higher state through historical development. The stron-
gest expression probably comes in The Awakening of Japan of 1905. Here one should note
again the intervention of a foreign editor. Datta, a Bengali dissident in exile in the United
States, says that The Awakening of Japan was corrected by a Miss Waldo of New York.130
In this book the West appears as the representative of a world historical spirit to which
the East, by some process of historical inevitability, had to subject itself. Only the special
historical circumstances of Japan left room to carry forward an Asian reaction against
this subjugation. Bereft of the spirit of initiative, tired of impotent revolts, and deprived of
legitimate ambitions, the Chinese and the Indian of to-day have come to prostrate them-
selves before the inevitable.131
Such subjection could lead to a specifically Asian kind of internalized spiritual loss,
due not only to the domination of Western barbarians from without, but also due to a lack
of healthy and creative models within the East, particularly China.

To most Eastern nations the advent of the West has been by no means an unmixed
blessing. . . . If the guilty conscience of some European nations has conjured up the
specter of a Yellow Peril, may not the suffering soul of Asia wail over the realities of
the White Disaster.132

We no longer have the benefit of a living art in China to excite our rivalry and urge
us to fresh endeavors. On the other hand, the unfortunately contemptuous attitude
which the average Westerner assumes toward everything connected with Oriental
civilization tends to destroy our self-confidence in regard to our canons of art.133

The barbarity of Europe is said to be destructive of indigenous forms of orderOkakura

does not note the contradiction with the many statements of their autonomous collapse
remarked on elsewhere in the book. The conflict is seen not so much as being between
civilizational ideals, or the dominant bearers of them, but between warring modalities
of economic life that confuse the codes of social order as much as those of aesthetic taste.

The advance of Europe in Asia means not merely the imposition of social ideals which
the East holds to be crude if not barbarous, but also the subversion of all existing law
and authority.134

The philistine nature of industrialism and the restlessness of material progress are
inimical to Eastern art. The machinery of competition imposes the monotony of fash-
ion instead of the variety of life. The cheap is worshiped in place of the beautiful,
while the rush and struggle of modern existence give no opportunity for the leisure
required for the crystalization of ideals. Patronage is no longer even the sign of indi-
vidual bad taste. Music is criticized through the eye, a picture through the ear.135
238|John Clark

Okakura tries to reposition Asia as an alternative and a more inclusive bearer of the world
historical spirit, the relationship to which has been knocked off course by the historically
contingent Western domination of his times. It must be remembered that in spite of the
seeming demarcation of the East and the West, all human development is fundamentally
the same, and that in the vast range of Asiatic history there can be found almost every
variety of social usage.136
But he reprivileges the East, and Japan as its bearer, by saying its regeneration is not
the product of external intervention, but comes from within. Here he is consciously, and
therefore probably disingenuously, adopting a position where the endogenous is privileged
against the exogenous, despite his own historical work that showed that in Japans art his-
torical past the problem of interpretation was to understand how the exogenous interacted
with, or was articulated through, the endogenous.

It seems to be the general impression among foreigners that it was the West who, with
the touch of a magic wand, suddenly rouses us from the sleep of centuries. The real
cause of our awakening, however, came from within.137

All that is vital and representative in our contemporary art and literature is the revivi-
fied expression of the national school, not imitation of European models.138

Nowhere were the contradictions in Okakuras thought brought out more clearly than in
his understanding of the geopolitical significance of the Korean peninsula for Japan. Here
he adopts an ideological position that privileges Japanese restraint and has nothing what-
ever to say about the cultures of Korea and Manchuria, which Japan as the representative
of the world historical spirit in East Asia will dominate. Taken together with The Awaken-
ing of the East, Okakurachillingly, in 19021905clearly and specifically provided the
ideological rationale for Japanese political domination on the Asian mainland thirty or
so years later. Japan went to war because it saw the independence of Korea threatened by
China in 1894 and Russia in 1904.139

Any hostile power in the occupation of the peninsula might easily throw an army
into Japan, for Korea lies like a dagger pointed toward the heart of Japan. Moreover,
the independence [from Russia] of Korea and Manchuria is economically necessary
to the preservation of our race, for starvation awaits our ever-increasing population
if it be deprived of its legitimate outlet in the sparsely cultivated areas of these two
countries.140

There were several occasions when we might have taken possession of Korea, but we
forebore, in the face of strong provocation, because our wishes were for peace.141

The treaty of 1876 recognizing the independence of Korea was a heavy blow to China. She
deeply resented the action of Japan in placing that kingdom beyond the pale of her domin-
ion.142 Okakura extends the underlying rationale for the wars fought by Japan to the whole
of Asia. The Russo-Japanese War was fought not only for our motherland, but for the
ideals of the recent reformation, for the noble heritage of classic culture, and for those
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 239

dreams of peace and harmony in which we saw a glorious rebirth for all Asia.143 He then
refers to the awakening from the loss of self-consciousness by the East and rationalizes
the lessons of imperial aggression by the fact that Europe still has to learn peace. Although
unstated, we are left no doubt that this will be learned from Asia, with its superior civi-
lizational foundations: The night of the orient, which had hidden us in its fold, has been
lifted, but we find the world still in the dusk of humanity. Europe has taught us war; when
shall she learn the blessings of peace?144

The Idea of the East: 2. China

Of the many Japanese commentators on China in Meiji Japan, Okakura was among those
who had actually gone there, first on a mission for the Imperial Household Museum in
1893 and later in 1906 for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.145 His diaries from the first
visit were the basis for lectures on Chinese art and were published in 1894 as Shina no
bijutsu and Shina no bijutsu wo tanky suru tansho (First steps in understanding the art of
China). These are more or less descriptive of his understanding of Chinese art in the con-
text of Meiji art historical writings based on works collected in Japan juxtaposed with what
he then found in China. But unlike others who were willing to singularize or homogenize
China, Okakura was struck by its diversity, and he furthermore draws a parallel between
the cultural diversity of China and that of Europe.

What I have first felt about China is just that There is no China in China. The listener
might think it ridiculous only to say no China. So I would put it another way and
say in China there is nothing in common. When you consider the matter, in Europe
there is nothing in common to Europe either. This is equivalent to there being noth-
ing in common in China. China certainly cannot be discussed under one concept.146

His travelogue does not include suggestions of what is wrong with China or what should
be done about it.147 But his first visit certainly represents the intrinsic fascination of Meiji
Japan with the cultural entity of China, an ideal space with which Japan had long been
acquainted.148 However, throughout Okakuras thought and personal experience runs the
notion that China is outside of time, that contemporary China somehow does not exist.
This was probably because for him the gap was so large between the idea of China as a
provider of civilizational models communicated by Japans historically accumulated per-
ceptionsand especially for Okakura by the genealogies of Japans own art objectsand
the disparate and uncomfortable realities of the contemporary China some Japanese like
himself knew.

Confucian ideals, indeed, were pervasive enough to support the notion of cultural
transference within an Asiatic culture. . . . This formulation thus showed development
in ty, culminating in Japans pre-eminence. But having re-historicized Japans past,
shina [China] was located as temporal inferior.149

This attitude toward China may be seen as exemplary of generalized relations to the
notion of ty (the East) described by Tanaka. If Asia was free of Western fragmentary
240|John Clark

pluralism, the notion of ty enabled Japanese to construct a new past and to claim those
characteristics which they argued were oriental, and thus timeless, [while] the alienness
of this new past made it imperative they distinguish themselves from that same orient.150
As may be seen clearly from the above, by 1906 in the thought of Okakura, the East
conceptualized in Japan was already an internalized one with which Japanese interacted . . .
only as the object of their own discoursea relationship that would lead to tragic conse-
quences.151 Among the few intellectual opponents to Japanese ultranationalist conceptions
of China in the 1930s, Tsuda Skichi saw the historical narrative of Japan as dependent on
neither China nor the West: Is it not groundless to replace praise for the West with that for
India and China. However, the reason for this is that they [the ultranationalists] see the cul-
tures of China and India as inherent [naizai] within [that of] Japan.152 In this book, Tsuda
brilliantly and courageously indicated that one posits the Orient in the sense of [some-
thing] containing both Japan and China, and that one then preserves Oriental culture, or
tries to form one, is perhaps inconceivable in the dreams [of Chinese and Indians].153

The Idea of the East: 3. India

When Okakura arrived in Calcutta on January 6, 1902, he went right away to meet Swami
Vivekananda. Vivekananda himself much liked the expression Ideals of the East; for
example, in his speech of February 24, 1896, in New York he had said, The ideals of the
East are as necessary for the progress of humanity as the ideals of the West.154 Whether
reformist Hindu nationalism in the line of Ramakrishna followed by Vivekananda was the
direct source of this strain in Okakuras thinking is a proposition that is difficult to test.
But there is no doubt about Vivekanandas admiration for Japan. He had gone to America
via the Far East in 1893 on his way to the World Parliament of Religions held at the Colum-
bia Exposition in Chicago, and he wrote a letter giving his impressions of Japan from
Yokohama on July 10, 1893. In a later newspaper interview on his return to India, Vive-
kananda said, The world has never seen such a patriotic and artistic race as the Japanese,
and one special feature about them is this: that while Europe and elsewhere Art generally
goes with dirt, Japanese Art is Art plus absolute cleanliness.155 On being questioned about
the reason for Japans sudden greatness, he replied:

The faith of the Japanese in themselves and their love for their country. The Japanese
are ready to sacrifice everything for their country and they have become a great people.

But India is not like Japan. Each nation has a theme and that of India is religion.156

Certainly Vivekanandas speech at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago on Septem-

ber 11, 1893, must have had some influence on Okakura. The speech was communicated to
him by Ms. Macleod, to whom as we have seen above he gave lectures in 1901 on the history
of Japanese art. It was on these lectures that his Ideals of the East was based, just before his visit
to India. Certainly Okakura was similar to Vivekananda in thinking that Asias contribution
to world civilization was distinctively religious. A later biographer of Vivekananda would
think Okakura did not understand English well and that The Ideals of the East, which was
significantly rewritten by Sister Nivedita, would actually represent Vivekanandas thought.
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 241

Okakura did not know much of English but it seems that he had written a manuscript
dealing with Pan-Asiatic cultural connections. It was re-written by the Sister, as she
told the writer. It contained the stamp of Swamijis ideology on Asia. The book was
named The Ideals of the East.157

Nivedita, who had been born Margaret Noble, was a protestant Northern Irish national-
ist who had met Vivekananda in London in 1895 and in 1898 had come to India, where
she died in 1912. The extreme Indian nationalist position Nivedita adopted, which can be
read in both The Ideals of the East and The Awakening of the East, led Nivedita to leave the
Ramakrishna mission after the death of Vivekananda in 1902 and become one of the five
members of the Bengal Revolutionary Party executive formed by Aurobindo Ghose in Cal-
cutta in the same year.158 Indeed, there are such enormous resonances between the ideas
of Vivekananda and Nivedita on the one hand and the writings of Okakura on the other
that one might think they sprang from the same hand, and they did actually develop in the
same circle of Indian nationalist thinkers and activists in 1901.

There, in Japan, you find a fine assimilation of knowledge, and not its indigestion as
we have here. They have taken everything from the Europeans, but they remain Japa-
nese all the same, and have not turned European: while in our country the terrible
mania of becoming Westernized has seized upon us like a plague.

They are great as a nation because of their art. Dont you see they are Asiatics, as we
are? And though we have lost almost everything, yet what we have is still wonderful.
The very soul of the Asiatic is interwoven with art. The Asiatic never uses a thing unless
there be art in it. Dont you know that art is, with us, a part of religion? How greatly is a
lady admired among us, who can nicely paint the floors and walls, on auspicious occa-
sions, with the paste of rice powder? How great an artist was Sri Ramakrishna himself!159

The Westerner looks for utility in everything, whereas with us art is everywhere. . . .
Now what we need is the combination of art and utility. Japan has done that very
quickly, and so she has advanced by giant strides. Now, in their turn, the Japanese are
going to teach the Westerners.160

Dynamics of Projection

If Okakura was concerned with internal regeneration, there is no doubt he saw external
recognition of this as reflexively reinforcing the place of his ideas within Japanese art his-
torical discourses. His analysis of the causation of crises facing Japanese was more elo-
quent in his 1904 address at the St. Louis Exposition, Modern Problems in Painting, but
it also included concessions to the same problems being faced in the West.

You should remember however, that our wholesale adoption of your methods of life and
culture was not purely a matter of choice but of necessity. The word modernization
242|John Clark

means the occidentalization of the world. The map of Asia will reveal the dismal fate
of the ancient civilizations that have succumbed to the spell of industrialism, com-
mercialism, imperialism, and what not, which the modern spirit has cast over them.161

Disastrous as have been the consequences of the sweeping inundations of Western

ideals, its ravages on Japanese painting might have been comparatively slight had it
not been accompanied by modern industrialism. It may be that Western art is also
suffering from the effects of industrialism, but to us its menace is more direful as
we hear it beating against the bulwarks of our old economic life. To us it seems that
industrialism is making a handmaiden of art, as religion and personal glorification
have made of it in the past. Competition imposes the monotony of fashion instead of
the variety of life.162

But whatever the concessions made to changes in Western understanding, the Japanese
struggle operates in a field that compels its aggressive resistance to, and assertiveness
against, forces from without. Okakura at the end of the speech does retreat slightly from
the bleakness of his vision, but he does not notice the national self-interest that drives it.

A grim pride animates us in facing the enormous odds which modern society has
raised against us. At the present we feel ourselves to be the sole guardians of the art
inheritance of Asia. The battle must be one fought out to the last.163

Perhaps it may have seemed to you that I have painted in too dark a color the modern
problems of art. There is a brighter side of the question. Western society itself is awak-
ening to a better understanding of the problem.164

I am reminded in passing of a conversation between the painter Takeuchi Seih and

Okakura that took place in about 1891 in Kyoto, according to Takeuchis reminiscences in
1928. Takeuchi was asked to go and see Okakura when he was in Kyoto with some teach-
ers or administrators from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Okakura, inebriated, tried to
browbeat Takeuchi into coming to Tokyo to join his art group, already conscious of its own
strength at least seven years before the split off from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Take
uchi was concerned for his family and two young children and declined Okakuras insis-
tence that he come to Tokyo right away and bring his family later, but much later Takeuchi
reminisced about how different his life might have been if he had accepted this offer.165
If by 1904 Okakura was prepared to make a begrudging acceptance of other points of
view, he still had a tendency to push his audience to submit to his intent, as with Takeuchi
some ten years earlier in a more personal context. The question naturally arises of how
much his thought was generated by a romantically assertive personality and how much it
corresponded to a personality type, such as the bureaucrat or man of action turned thinker,
which may be particularly thrown up after an era of radical reform and social change.
How much Okakuras residence for longer periods in the United States, apart from his
many short-term visits earlier, changed his perceptions of what he should communicate
to non-Japanese audiences remains unclear. But by 1905 there is a grudging acknowledg-
ment on his part of the need to write more positively about Japanese aesthetic ideals, rather
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 243

than just engaging in negative dialectics via his perceptions of the West. This came in
The Book of Tea (1906),166 where he immediately drew a contrast between the warlike Japa-
nese code of the samurai and Teaism, which represents so much our Art of Life. Fain
would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilization were to be based on the gruesome
glory of war. Fain would we await the time when due respect shall be paid to our art and
ideals.167 Okakura means, somewhat contortedly, that we [Japanese] can hardly call our-
selves civilized based on samurai ideals and can hardly wait for others to respect our art
and its non-samurai ideals.
Clearly by 19051906, when the book was written, Okakura had become aware of the
mirror of perceptions between both sides of his binary divide into East and West. He
also began to play the knowing cosmopolitan, affecting an air of perspicacity about both
sides of the mutual projection. In fact the tone of The Book of Tea is so different from his
two earlier published works that one suspects Okakura has mellowed. Or, perhaps, that he
had always had multiple selves to show to the world and that from this period on he mobi-
lizes a different and ostensibly more tolerant one.

Why not amuse yourselves at our expense? Asia returns the compliment. There would
be further food for merriment if you were to know all that we have imagined and
written about you. All the glamour of the perspective is there, all the unconscious
homage of wonder, all the silent resentment of the new and undefined. You have been
loaded with virtues too refined to be envied, and accused of crimes too picturesque
to be condemned.168

At times he seems to be declaring that the East-West culture wars of his earlier writings
are over, whether from exhaustion or irrelevance. What has been lost is a sense of the value
of life, lost in a whirl of mutual desire and contest between two civilizations.

Let us stop the continents from hurling epigrams at each other, and be sadder if not
wiser by the mutual gain of half a hemisphere. We have developed along different
lines, but there is no reason why one should not supplement the other. You have
gained expansion at the cost of restlessness; we have created a harmony which is weak
against aggression. Will you believe it?the East is better off in some respects than
the West!169

The heaven of modern humanity is indeed shattered in the Cyclopean struggle for
wealth and power. The world is groping in the shadow of egotism and vulgarity.
Knowledge is bought through a bad conscience, benevolence practiced for the sake
of utility. The East and the West, like two dragons tossed in a sea of ferment, in vain
strive to recover the jewel of life.170

Okakura had long identified his thought with Daoism and it is no surprise to see this
emphasized so much in his most positive book on Japanese aesthetics.

The Taoist conception that immortality lay in the eternal change permeated all their
modes of thought. It was the process, not the deed, which was interesting. It was the
244|John Clark

completing, not the completion, which was really vital. Man came thus at once face to
face with nature. A new meaning grew into the art of life. The tea ceremony began to
be not a poetical pastime, but one of the methods of self-realization.171

Okakura turns tea into a Daoist empathy with life in the present world, rather than
any metaphysical other side and its flawed reflection in the world of attachment, as in
Buddhism.

It is in the Japanese tea-ceremony that we see the culmination of tea-ideals. . . . Tea

with us became more than an idealization of the form of drinking; it is a religion of
the art of life.172

But the chief contribution of Taoism to Asiatic life has been in the realm of aesthetics.
Chinese historians have always spoken of Taoism as the art of being in the world, for
it deals with the presentourselves.173

Two chapters of Okakuras book appeared in April 1905 in The International Quarterly,
more than a year before his second visit to China from late 1906 to early 1907, when he
was to be photographed in Daoist costume with two Daoist priests. The broader human-
ism so evident in The Book of Tea either was an alternative strain in his thought that only
came to resolution during the seven last years of his life when he was traveling each year
between Japan and Boston, or it in fact marked a more radical and overall shift away from
his earlier bellicosity.

Nothing is more hallowing than the meeting of kindred spirits in art. At the moment
of meeting, the art lover transcends himself. At once he is and is not. He catches a
glimpse of Infinity, but words cannot voice his delight, for the eye has no tongue.
Freed from the fetters of matter, his spirit moves in the rhythm of things. It is thus
that art becomes akin to religion and ennobles mankind.174

There even enters a note of regret at the limitations of ones own culture in appreciating
art because all humans are culturally restricted in the kinds of art they may value. It is a
note of regret but made with a humanist realism that is far more sympathetic and probably
more sincere than his earlier bombast.

Art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us. It might be a universal language if
we ourselves were universal in our sympathies. Our finite nature, the power of tradi-
tions and conventionality, as well as our hereditary instincts, restrict the scope of our
capacity for artistic enjoyment.175

It is of course possible that Okakura was thinking about his own mortality so that The
Book of Tea would end with mention of the suicide of Riky: He only who has lived with
the beautiful can die beautifully.176
One would have to conclude, like Tsubouchi, that while The Awakening of Japan seems
to support military force to assert national pride, this is reversed in The Book of Tea, which
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 245

more directly expresses Okakuras position and ends with a dignified yet tragic defeat of
aesthetic value before military power.177 But so far as I know, Okakura never retracted any
of his earlier militant texts or expressed reservations about their rhetoric. We have to pre-
sume that their contradictions remained unresolved for Okakura, as they were for Japan
on the eve of the forcible annexation of Korea in 1910 and the First World War, which
began the year after his death in 1913.

Postcolonial Modalities
What in general can be briefly and simply said about how Okakuras writing fits into our
current understanding of the postcolonial? Japan before, say, 1905 or 1910 could be seen
as in a latently postcolonial position; it was the first Asian power to escape from unequal
treaties and foreign domination, which had continued for Japan from the 1850s to the
1890s. It had become a colonizing power itself in 1895 over Taiwan and in 1910 over Korea
in a trajectory that, under the guise of a colonial liberationist ideology, was to result in the
subjection of huge swaths of Asia between 1932 and 1944. But Okakura and many intellec-
tuals of the late Meiji thought Japan was being treated by Europeans and Americans as if
it was a colonial subordinate. Despite Japanese participation in the First World War on the
Allied sideits warships protected Australian troopships on their way to GallipoliJapan
was not seen as the equal of Western powers until after World War II.
Okakuras conflict was above all with Europe, which, as he sees it, forced changes on
Asia that were destructive of many earlier value systems. The unity of Asia he imputes to
the distribution of these values over non-European social systems and art objects. Perhaps
the problem for all postcolonial history is a peculiar way in which all these other histories
tend to become [reflexive] variations on a master narrative that could be called the history
of Europe or, in my terms, the history of Euramerica.178
Okakuras thought seems to be caught between promoting the nationalism that will
end the colonial, and the self-assertion of an autonomous aesthetics that can somehow
stand outside the history that produced the need for that self-assertion. Or indeed, outside
the need for its forced incorporation in this other, Euramerican history. Okakura was
confronted with a situation that had radically changed the terms on which the past was
constructed, including the Japanese pasts. By the end of the Meiji era in 1912 this would
also mean a change in the terms by which nostalgia for the loss of those reconstructed
pasts could be felt. The terms would become reflexive, secondary, and deeply flawed by
sentimentality. The nostalgia would not be, as it was for Okakura, directly about a lost past,
but indirectly about a nostalgia that had already been historically experienced.
Okakura does not seem to have been aware of, or particularly concerned about, the
fact that only in his time could such directness remain existential. Nor does he face the
difference between assertion against a colonial world order and the self-assertion by Japan
for its own inclusion in that order. His thought implied an ideological and cultural leader-
ship in Asia, and his metaphors directly used notions of military conquest through, or in
spite of, the other Asian cultures, which in his terms had become internally passive and
had fallen before the European onslaught. Here one should not mince words: his thought
directly sanctioned the annexation of Korea, and was one ideological basis for the China
246|John Clark

War of 19371945 and its enormous sacrifices. Rabindranath Tagore was well aware of the
perils of this direction and warned,

never think for a moment that the hurts you inflict upon other races will not infect
you, or that the enmities you sow around your homes will be a wall of protection to
you in time to come.179

Of course in his time it was not possible for Okakura to actually become postcolonial.
Nearly a century later, Dirlik deliberately presented the partially facetious proposition that
the postcolonial period begins when Third World intellectuals have arrived in First World
academe.180 Dirlik was well aware that this proposition begged the question of why the
arrival of such Third World intellectuals and their concerns in the 1980s and 1990s were
accorded the respectability they had. Okakura had the ability to write fluently in English,
even if what comes down to us has received native-speaker editing, and to engage with oth-
ers anticolonialist struggles. He was able to be feted in North American museum circles,
and directly through his own writings and indirectly through those of Fenollosa came to
be a major intellectual reference for many kinds of art practice in Euramerica. If elements
like these were taken together from a much later postcolonial position, they would indicate
the latent possibility that someone such as he was resembling a Third World intellectual
who has at least become visible in the telescope of Euramerican historical narrative.
But Okakuras views did not step outside the domain of curatorial and artistic prac-
tice. Cosmopolitan or Japanese nationalist by turns as he may have been, he could not enter
the Euramerican academy. Despite some impact in artistic and museum circles, his views
at that time did not receive the full attentionand criticismthey may have deserved in
Euramerica. The political and economic system of colonialism was not dead. Nineteenth-
century racial superiority and social Darwinist notions of the superiority of Euramerican
social systems had not yet been transcended by the dynamics of knowledge itself. The full
examination of these issues awaits another history, that of the end of Euramerican colo-
nialism and its underlying mentalities.

Notes

The original lecture for this chapter was delivered in 2003, and this chapter subsequently
appeared in East Asian History 29 (June 2005), where the Japanese characters for names and
titles may be found. I am most grateful to Kinoshita Nagahiro for copies of his writings, for the
intellectual stimulation of his ideas and research, and to Sat Dshin, who has added to the
understanding of Meiji art and its theorists over many years.

1. See Richard Bowring, Mori gai and the Modernization of Japanese Culture (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Thomas R. H. Havens, Nishi Amane and Modern
Japanese Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970).
2. See Kinoshita Nagahiro, Okakura Tenshinron no keisei to sono hihan (The formation
of theories about Okakura Tenshin and their critique), in Bigaku/Geijutsugaku no konnichiteki
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 247

kadai (Contemporary problems of aesthetics and art Theory) (Tokyo: Bigakukai, March, 1999)
(hereafter Kinoshita, Bigakukai). Kinoshitas other writings on Okakura include Kinoshita
Nagahiro, Shi no meiro: Okakura Tenshin no hh (The maze of poetry: Okakura Tenshins
method) (Tokyo: Gakugei shorin, 1989); Kinoshita Nagahiro, Shwa zenki no Okakura Ten-
shin (Okakura Tenshin in early Shwa), in Nihon bijutsuin hyakunenshi (The one hundred
year history of the Japan Art Academy), vol. 7 (Tokyo: Nihon bijutsuin, 1998); Kinoshita Naga-
hiro, Okakura Tenshin to senjika no shis (Okakura Tenshin and thought during wartime),
Amadamu 40 (March 1999); Kinoshita Nagahiro, Okakura Tenshin to bijutsushi (Okakura
Tenshin and Art History), Art History Forum (Seoul) 2, no. 2 (September 1999). Kinoshita
Nagahiros most recently completed study is Okakura Tenshin: Mono ni kanzureba tsui ni
warenashi, (Okakura Tenshin: If you look at things, finally there is no I) (Tokyo: Minerva
shob, 2005), whose front pages include a comprehensive gallery of photographic portraits of
Okakura from 1881 to 1912 [Meiji 1415 to Meiji 45].
3.The Meiji complexity of the term kokusui national essence, merits some analy-
sis. According to the dictionary Nihongo daijiten, vol. 8 (Tokyo, Shogakkan, 1974), koku-
sui means The aesthetic aspect of the spiritual or material strengths particular to a coun-
try, tying it perfectly to the complex of aesthetic nationalism. According to this dictionary,
the word originates in the work of Kitamura Tkoku (18681894), who said in Nihon no
gengo wo yomu (On reading the language of Japan), yo mo mata kokusui wo konomeri, or
I too like the national essence. Kitamura Tkokush, Meiji bungaku zensh, vol. 29 (Tokyo:
Chikuma shob, 1978), pp. 167168, reprints this text from Jogaku zasshi no. 170, 13-7-1899,
three months before the appearance of Kokka. Kitamura refers to earlier statements in no. 168
about the Japanese language by Sat Hiroshi [Kan], to which Kitamura is clearly opposed. The
last two sentences in which the citation from Kitamura occurs suggest that that he is using the
word kokusui in an anti-essentialist and critical sense: In other words Mr Sat is one of the
so-called national essentialists [kokusuika later used for ultranationalist] and when people
make efforts to reform or progress from this, the kokusuika look on in a haughty manner.
I too like the national essence [emphasis in the original], but I do not like those who use neither
broad-axe or plough [to cut away redundant forms or sow the seeds of new ones] as if they had
[already] adequately tilled the land which was uncultivated and undone. Right now our lan-
guage and literature are bravely progressing together, and must await the time of the ordering
of grammar, the generous opening up of argument, also a great progressing in the science of
rhetoric. Kitamura, 1899, Kitamura Tkokush, p. 168.
4. See John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Sydney: Craftsman House; Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1998), ch. 10.
5.Nonaesthetic values and expressions are regarded as of no consequence. Aesthetic
values themselves typify a people, or place, via their embodiment of the essential qualities of a
people, and by extension of the national.
6. Or displaced onto what a culture values as our beauty, because of some lack of will-
ingness to understand directly, or create, the nonaesthetic values of a nation or state. That
aesthetic nationalism usually involves critique and exclusionranging from passive denial
to vigorous extirpation of a set of values considered ugly or depraved or not oursis
indicative of its conservative, and sometimes reactionary, nature.
7. In this, politics is discussed via reference to the national values associated with the
beautiful or with the beauty of some object whose symbolic use serves to unify a political unit
248|John Clark

or movement. The reverse may be the case where the beautiful is discussed in reference to a
current national position or state of being. The characteristic of this third discursive position
is extreme motility, whereby a thinker or artist is able to switch with alacrity between politi-
cal discourse on the national and aesthetic discourse on the characteristics of the national.
This would appear to have been Okakuras position in the key texts he wrote between 1900
and 1906.
8. [C]ommunities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the
style in which they are imagined. Benedict Anderson as cited by David Carroll, The Aesthet-
ics of Nationalism and the Limits of Culture, in Politics and Aesthetics in the Arts, ed. Salim
Kemal and Ivan Gaskell, p. 119 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
9. It is one where at the core of transcendence in the fashioning of the imagined community
lies the problem of the aesthetic as a political phenomenon, of art as the model for self-creation,
manifestation, and self-recognition of a people. Carroll, The Aesthetics of Nationalism, p. 120.
10. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 1619.
11. Christine M. E. Guth, Charles Longfellow and Okakura Kakuz: Cultural Cross-
Dressing in the Colonial Context, positions: east asian cultures critique 8, no. 3 (Winter 2000).
12. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 50.
13. Carroll, The Aesthetics of Nationalism, p. 135.
14. As Redfield puts it, such aestheticized political models . . . actively produce violence
as a by-product of their own impossible reliance on, and projection of, sociopolitical homo-
geneity and transparency. See Mark Redfield, The Politics of Aesthetics: Nationalism, Gender,
Romanticism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 22.
15. Ibid., p. 46
16. Ibid., p. 47.
17.Redfield thinks the nation is a hallucinated limit to iterability, that is, a fantasized
boundary to social replication, which homogenizes time and space, draws and polices bor-
ders, historicizes itself as the continuous arc of an unfolding identity. Ibid., p. 54.
18.Leslie Pincus, Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1996), p. 32. Among works in English that include extensive discussion of Oka
kuras thought and interaction with art are Dinkar Kowshik, Okakura: The Rising Sun of Japa-
nese Renaissance (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1988); Victoria Weston, Japanese Painting
and National Identity: Okakura Tenshin and His Circle (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Stud-
ies, University of Michigan, 2004); Adrian Pinnington, Scholarly Introduction to Okakura
Kakuzo (Tenshin), Nitobe inazo, vol. 2 of Readings in Japanese Propaganda (Folkestone: Global
Oriental, 2003); Rustom Bharucha, Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore & Okakura Tenshin
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006).
19. See Redfield, Politics of Aesthetics, p. 32. See also Okakuras St. Louis speech of 1904,
Modern Problems of Painting, in Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Collected English Writings,
vol. 1 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1984) (hereafter CEW).
20.Pincus, Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan, p. 96.
21. Kuki Shz, Okakura Kakuz-shi no omoide (ca. 1937), in Kuki Shz zensh,
vol. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1981).
22.Ibid.
23. Okakura, unsigned, in Kokka 10.1889. As in Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin) [unsigned],
Kokka [Flower of the nation], Kokka 1 (October, 1889), reprinted in Kokkasha, hensh,
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 249

Kokka ronk seisen (Essential selection from essays in Kokka) (Tokyo: Asahi shinbun, 1989).
Hereafter, translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.
24. Okakura in Kokka 10.1889.
25. Kuki Ryichi in Kokka 10.1889. As in Kuki Ryichi, Kokka no hatsuda ni tsuite (On
the Inception of Kokka), Kokka 1, (October 1889), reprinted in Kokka ronk seisen.
26.Ibid.
27.Kinoshita, Bigakukai, p. 34 n. 5.
28. Oketani Hideaki, Okakura Tenshin to eigobi to ajia ninshiki (1971) (Okakura
Tenshin and Englishbeauty and the perception of Asia), in Hashikawa Bunz, hen, Okakura
Tenshin, hito to shis (Okakura Tenshin, the man and the ideas) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1982).
29. Yasuko Horioka, The Life of Kakuz, author of The Book of Tea (Tokyo: The Hokuseido
Press, 1963), p. 24, translating Okakura Kazuo, Chichi Okakura Tenshin (My father, Okakura
Tenshin) (Tokyo: Seibunkaku, 1940, reprint Tokyo, 1971).
30. Cited in Guth, Charles Longfellow and Okakura Kakuz, p. 623.
31. Ibid., p. 625.
32.Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Zensh (Complete works), 8 vols. and supplement
(Tokyo: Heibonsha, 19791981) (hereafter ZS). Other collections of Okakuras writings include
Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Okakura Tenshin zensh, 5 vols. (Tokyo: Rikugeisha, 1940) (here-
after ZSr); Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Tenshin zensh (Osaka; Sgensha, 1945); Okakura
Kakuz (Tenshin) Okakura Tenshin sh, ed. Kamei Shichir, Miyagawa Torao, Meiji bungaku
zensh (Complete works of Meiji literature), vol. 38 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shob, 1968) (hereafter
MBZ38). In addition to texts cited, other writings of Okakura consulted here are Okakura
Kakuz (Tenshin), Letters to Ernest F. Fenollosa of 1884 and 1888, in CEW, vol. 3, 1984;
Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Kangakai ni oite, in DaiNihon bijutsu shinp (Great Japan art
news) 50 (December 31, 1887) (ZS, vol. 3), translated as A Lecture to the Painting Appreciation
Society, in Michele Marra, Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1999); Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Notes on Contemporary Japanese Art, The
Studio 25, no. 108 (March 1901) (also in CEW, vol. 2, ZS, vol. 2); Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin),
The Bijutsu-In or the New Old School of Japanese Art, Catalogue of Exhibition of Works
of Yokoyama Taikan & Hishida Shuns (New York: Century Associates, 1904) (also in CEW,
vol. 2, ZS, vol. 2); Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), English notes for Japanese Temples and Their
Treasures (Tokyo: Shimbi shoin, 1910) (also in CEW, vol. 2); Okakura Tenshin, Tait kgeishi
(History of arts and crafts of East Asia, 1910) reprinted in Nihon bijutsushi (Art history of
Japan) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2001) (also in ZS, vol. 4); Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), The Nature
and Value of Eastern Connoisseurship, lecture at Boston Museum of Fine Arts, April 6, 1911
(written two years before Okakuras death, in CEW, vol. 2); Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Reli-
gions in East Asiatic Art, lecture at Boston Museum of Fine Arts, April 13, 1911 (in CEW, vol.
2); Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Nature in East Asiatic Painting, lecture at Boston Museum
of Fine Arts, May 4, 1911 (in CEW, vol. 2).
33. See the reminiscence by Okakura Motoko, Bannen no nichij seikatsu (Daily life in
his last years, 1922), in Hashikawa Bunz, Okakura Tenshin, hito to shis.
34. Hashikawa Bunz, Nij no kikbun ni tsuite (On two travel essays) (in ZS, vol. 5),
p. 483.
35.Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana, The Life of Josephine Macleod, Friend of Swami
Vivekananda (Calcutta; Sri Sarada Math, 1990), p. 123. For an intellectual biography of
250|John Clark

Vivekandnada, see chapter 4 of Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the

West in Nineteenth-Century Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, [1988] 2002).
36. The possibilities and limitations of Okakuras cosmopolitanism are a complex subject,
caught as they were in his bicultural divide. Many of these are well analyzed for both Tagore
and Okakura in Bharucha, Another Asia, pp. 112141.
37. F. G. Notehelfer, On Idealism and Realism in the Thought of Okakura Tenshin,
Journal of Japanese Studies 16, no. 2 (1990). In addition to texts cited here, other works on Oka
kuras thought include Hashikawa Bunz, Okakura Tenshin, hito to shis; Kamei Shichir,
Okakura Tenshin to Nihonbijutsu (Okakura Tenshin and Japanese Art), in MBZ38; Karatani
Kjin, Bijutsukan toshite no Nihon: Okakura Tenshin to Fuenorosa, Hihy Kkan 1 (1994)
[English translation as Japan as Art Museum: Okakura Tenshin and Fenollosa, in A His-
tory of Modern Japanese Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Michael F. Marra (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2001); Kawakita Michiaki, Bijutsu shink no jnetsu to kenshiki (Passion
and insight in art beliefs), in ZS, vol. 3; Kurata Bunz, Kokusaijin, Tenshin no menmoku
(Internationalist, a face of Tenshin), in ZS, vol. 2; Miyagawa Torao, Meiji Nashionarizumu to
Okakura Tenshin (Meiji Nationalism and Okakura Tenshin), in MBZ38; Kevin Nute, Frank
Lloyd Wright and Okakura Tenshin: On the social and aesthetic Ideals of the East, Cha-
noyu Quarterly 79 (1995); ka Makoto, Ysh no jimi: Okakura tenshin no shis no toku
shitsu (A superior reticence: Okakura Tenshins thought and its special characteristics), in
ZS, vol. 7.
38. Okakura Kakasu [sic], The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Art of Japan
(London: John Murray, 1903), p. 1. These were oral lectures given in Japan in August 1901 and
completed in India with the assistance of Sister Nivedita by May 1902 (see ZS, vol. 1, and CEW,
vol. 1).
39. Ibid., p. 4.
40. Ibid., p. 5.
41.Ibid.
42.Ibid.
43. Ibid., p. 230.
44. Ibid., p. 244.
45. Ibid., p. 23.
46. Ibid, p. 237.
47. Ibid, p. 240.
48. Ibid, p. 241.
49. Ibid, p. 46.
50. J. Thomas Rimer, Hegel in Tokyo: Ernest Fenollosa and His 1882 Lecture on the
Truth of Art, in Michael F. Marra, Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and
Interpretation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002). Thomas Rimer has also made an
as yet unpublished translation of Fenollosas True Theory of Art speech.
51. Bernard Bosanquet, translation, notes, and prefatory essay, The Introduction to Hegels
Philosophy of Fine Art (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co, 1886), p. xxxi.
52. Ibid., p. 15.
53. Ibid., p. 138.
54.Kinoshita, Bigakukai.
55. That is, Gustavus George Zerffi, The Science of History [with an introductory letter by
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 251

K. Suyematz, i.e., Suematsu Kench, Baron] (privately printed, London, 1879). This book is in
the British Library. The Science of History was Zerffis inaugural address as chairman of the
Royal Historical Society on November 13, 1879, and is printed in the Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society for 1879, pp. 120.
56. For a discussion of Gadyketsu in English, see Karen M. Gerhart, Talent, Training
and Power: The Kano Painting Workshop in the 17th century, in Copying the Master and
Stealing His Secrets: Talent and Training in Japanese Painting, ed. Brenda G. Jordan and Victo-
ria Weston, pp. 2129 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003).
57. Fukunaga Akishi, Okakura Tenshin to Dky (Okakura Tenshin and Daoism), in
ZS, vol. 8.
58.Kinoshita, Bigakukai.
59.Kinoshita, Nihon bijutsuin.
60.Ibid.
61. See Kinoshita, Shwa zenki no Okakura Tenshin.
62.See Kinoshita, Okakura Tenshin to senjika no shis, according to which Aoki
Shigeru has also found a text that gives Okakura Kakuzs place of birth as Tokyo.
63. Professor A. L. Sadlers copy of the second edition of 1908 is in the University of
Sydney Fisher Library East Asian Collection, Honk: Nihon teikoku bijutsu ryakushi (Main
draft: The shorter art history of the Japanese empire) (Tky teishitsu hakubutsukan gozhan,
Tky: Nihon bijutsusha, Meiji 41, 1908), saihan.
64. Kuki Shz, Negishi (1934), in Kuki Shz zensh (Complete works of Kuki Shz),
vol. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1981). Among other texts relevant to Okakuras biography are
[Bigelow] W. S. B. and [Lodge] J. E. L., Okakura Kakuzo, 18621913 (obituary), Ostasiatische
Zeitschrift 14 (1913), CEW, vol. 3; Harada Minoru, Okakura Tenshin (Tokyo: Ty bijutsu sen-
sho, 1970); Horioka Yasuko, Okakura Tenshin: Ajia bunka seny no senkusha (Okakura Ten-
shin: The forerunner of the enhancement of Asian Culture) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kbunkan,
1974); Kawakami Tetsutar, Okakura Tenshin, in MBZ38; Miyagawa Torao, Okakura Ten-
shin (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1956); Okakura Kazuo, Chichi Tenshin wo meguru
hitobito (People around my father Tenshin) (Tokyo: Bunsend, 1943, reprint Tokyo, 1998);
Sait Ryz, Okakura Tenshin (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kbunkan, 1960); Surendranath Tagore,
Some remembrances of Kakuzo Okakura, Visva-Bharati Quarterly II, part II (August 1936),
in CEW, vol. 3.
65. See Pincus, Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan.
66. For a psychoanalytical interpretation, see Megumi Sakebe, Tenshin no kage, in
Fuzai no uta: Kuki Shz no sekai (Song of absence: The world of Kuki Shz) (Tokyo: TBS
Buritanika, 1990).
67. For her letters to Okakura, see CEW, vol. 3.
68. See Sakebe, Tenshin no kage.
69. See Takeuchi Yoshimi, Okakura Tenshinajiakan ni tatsu bunmei hihan (Okakura
Tenshincultural critique erected as a view of Asia), Asahi Jaanaru, May 27, 1963, reprinted
in Nihon to ajia (Tokyo: Chikuma shob, 1993), vol. 3 of Takeuchi Yoshimi hyronsh (Tokyo:
Chikuma shob, 1966); and in Hashikawa, Okakura Tenshin, hito to shis; Hashikawa Bunz,
Fukuzawa Ykichi to Okakura Tenshin (Fukuzawa Ykichi and Okakura Tenshin), in Kin-
dai Nihon to Chgoku (China and modern Japan) vol. 1, Takeuchi Yoshimi, Hashikawa Bunz,
hen (Tokyo: Asahi shimbunsha, 1974).
252|John Clark

70. Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), The Awakening of the East, written in India between late
December 1901 and early October 1902. The original title was possibly The Awakening of Asia
according to reminiscences by Surendranath Tagore. See ZS, vol. 1, 480484, for full pub-
lishing history. It was posthumously published in Japanese translation as Ris no saiken (The
reconstruction of ideals) (Tokyo: Kawade shob, 1938); another Japanese translation was by
Asano Akira as Ty no kakusei, in ZSr 1939. According to ZW, vol. 1, 484, the only version in
which the original text was published was Seibunkaku, 1940. That is, before CEW, vol. 1, 1984.
The intellectual background to Pan-Asianism in Japanese thought of the late Meiji period is
found in Takeuchi Yoshimi, Ajiashugi no tenb (The outlook for Asianism), in Takeuchi
Yoshimi, hensh, Gendai Nihon shis taikei, 9 Ajiashugi (Compendium of modern Japanese
thought, 9, Asianism) (Tokyo: Chikuma shob, 1963).
71. Ibid., p. 136.
72. Ibid., p. 141.
73. Ibid., p. 142.
74. Ibid., pp. 142143.
75. Ibid., p. 144.
76.Ibid.
77.Ibid.
78.Ibid.
79. Ibid., p. 148.
80. Ibid., p. 149.
81. Ibid., p. 151.
82. Takeuchi, Okakura Tenshin, p. 409.
83. Ibid., p. 409.
84.Okakura, The Awakening of the East, p. 158.
85. Ibid., p. 158.
86. Ibid., p. 159.
87. Ibid., pp. 163164.
88. Ibid., p. 164.
89.Ibid.
90. Ibid., p. 168.
91. Stefan Tanaka, Japans Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993), p. 50.
92. Ibid., p. 50.
93.Ibid.
94. Kinoshita, Okakura Tenshin to senjika no shis.
95.Rimer, Hegel in Tokyo, pp. 3848.
96. Sat Dshin, Meijikokka to kindaibijutsu, bi no seijigaku (Modern art and the Meiji
state: The political science of beauty) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kbunkan, 1999).
97. Sat Dshin, Nihon Bijutsu no Tanj, Kindai Nihon no kotoba to senryaku (The birth
of Japanese art: The diction of modern Japan and its strategy) (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1996), p. 171.
98. See in general, Redfield, The Politics of Aesthetics.
99.Sat, Meijikokka to kindaibijutsu, pp. 5863.
100.Sat, Nihon Bijutsu no Tanj, pp. 221224.
101. Kinoshita, Okakura Tenshin to bijutsushi.
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 253

102.Sat, Nihon Bijutsu no Tanj, p. 200.

103. Kinoshita, Okakura Tenshin to bijutsushi.
104. Kinoshita, Okakura Tenshin to senjika no shis, 1999.
105.Ibid.
106. Okakura Tenshin, Nihon bijutsushi (An art history of Japan), reprinted with after-
word by Kinoshita Nagahiro (Tokyo: Heibonsha 1900/2001), ZS, vol. 4.
107. Ibid., p. 17.
108. Ibid., p. 11.
109.Kinoshita, Bigakukai.
110. CEW, vol. 2, p. 409.
111. Ernest F. Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art (New York: F. A. Stokes, 1911,
reprint, Dover, 1963). On Fenollosa and his times, see also Van Wyck Brooks, Fenollosa and His
Circle (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1962); Warren I. Cohen, East Asian Art and American Culture
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); Kevin Nute, Ernest Fenollosa and the Univer-
sal Implications of Japanese Art, Japan Forum 7, no. 1 (April 1995); Aida Yuen Wong, Invent-
ing Eastern Art in Japan and China, ca. 1890s to ca. 1930s (PhD diss., Columbia University,
1999), and the subsequent book, Aida Yuen Wong, Parting the Mists: Discovering Japan and the
Rise of National-Style Painting in Modern China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006).
112. CEW, vol. 2, p. 409.
113.Sat, Meijikokka to kindaibijutsu, p. 147.
114. Ibid., p. 148.
115. Takeuchi, Okakura Tenshin, p. 398.
116. Ibid., p. 403.
117. Ibid., p. 405.
118.Ibid.
119. Ernest F. Fenollosa, Bijutsu shinsetsu (The true theory of art), transcription of
the Japanese translation by mori Ich from lecture notes (all that survives), in Meiji bunka
zensh (Complete works of Meiji culture) (Tokyo: Nihon hyronsha, 1928). Also in Yamaguchi
Seiichi, hen, Fuenorosa bijutsu ronsh (Fenollosas essays on art) (Tokyo: Ch kron bijutsu
shuppansha, 1988); Aoki Shigeru, Sakai Tadayasu, hen, Bijutsu, Nihon kindai shis taikei (Art:
Compendium of modern Japanese thought), vol. 13 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1989). For Eng-
lish interpretation, see Rimer, Hegel in Tokyo.
120. Nakamura Giichi, Nihon Bijutsu no Seiy to Nihon: Sho wa bijutsu narazu rons
(The West and Japan of Japanese art: The debate about calligraphy is not art) in his
Nihon kindai bijutsu ronsshi (The history of modern Japanese art debates) (Tokyo: Kyryd,
1981), p. 89. On this period, see also Kinoshita Naoyuki, Bijutsu to iu misemono (Art as
show) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1992); Kitazawa Noriaki, Me no shinden (In the palace of the gaze)
(Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha, 1989); Nakamura Giichi, Nihon kindai kaiga no daiichi shu-
daiNihonga/Seiyga rons (The first topic in modern Japanese paintingthe debate over
Nihonga and Western-style painting), in his Zoku Nihon kindai bijutsu ronsshi (The history
of modern Japanese art debates, continuation) (Tokyo: Kyryd, 1982).
121. Nakamura, Nihon Bijutsu no Seiy to Nihon, p. 13.
122. Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Sho wa Bijutsu narazu no ron wo yomu (Reading
the debate on calligraphy is not an art) Ty gakugei zasshi 1115 (AugustDecember 1882),
MBZ38, p. 295.
254|John Clark

123. The irony is that, as a reader pointed out, in Kiplings original poem the point is that
they can and do meetwhen two brave men come face to face, though they come from the
ends of the Earth.
124. Okakura, Sho wa Bijutsu narazu no ron wo yomu, p. 293.
125. Kitazawa Noriaki, Nihonga gainen no keisei ni kansuru shiron (Tentative theory
on the formation of the concept of Nihonga), in Aoki Shigeru, hen, Meiji Nihonga shiry
(Materials on Meiji Nihonga) (Tokyo: Ch kron bijutsu shuppansha, 1991), p. 485. See also
Rimer, Hegel in Tokyo.
126. I summarize his views as follows:
1870s: Pro-Western opening and development policies see introduction of oil paint-
ing as technique.
18821887: Ultranationalism la Fenollosa sees exclusion of Western-style painting
from public exhibitions and use of the term Nihonga in speech but not in print.
18871897: Journalistic acceptance of Nihonga becomes widespread, particularly in
the debates from around 1889 on the Future of Japanese Painting, such as the 1889
Nihonga no shrai ikaga (What about the future of Japanese-style painting?) debate
in the journal Bijutsu-en, which reprinted from another teachers journal, Kyiku
hchi, and indicated that the term Nihonga was spoken parlance. In 1890 Toyama
Masakasus address Nihonkaiga no Mirai (The future of Japanese painting) at the
Meiji Art Society received severe critique from Hayashi Tadamasa and Mori gai.
1896/1897: Nihonga was generally accepted as part of a Western/Japanese binary
with yga or Western-style painting. 1907 the Ministry of Education Fine Arts Exhi-
bition Bunten begins with a division of Nihonga and Seiyga.
127. Kitazawa, Nihonga gainen no keisei ni kansuru shiron.
128. Tsubouchi Takahiko, Okakura Tenshin no shisteki tanb: Meissuru Ajiashugi (The
intellectual approach of Okakura Tenshin: The sinuous twisting of Asianism) (Tokyo: Chi-
kuma shob, 1998), p. 37.
129. Ibid., p. 46.
130. Bhupendranath Datta, Swami Vivekananda, Patriot-Prophet (Calcutta: Nababharat
Publishers, 1954), p. 117.
131. Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), The Awakening of Japan (London: John Murray; New
York: The Century Co., 1905) (CEW, vol. 1), p. 18. Written in Boston between December 1903
and July 1904 (see ZS, vol. 1, p. 485).
132. Ibid., p. 95.
133. Ibid., p. 198.
134. Ibid., p. 99.
135. Ibid., p. 197.
136. Ibid., p. 190.
137. Ibid., p. 70.
138. Ibid., p. 195.
139.Ibid.
140. Ibid., p. 208.
141. Ibid., p. 209.
 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism | 255

142. Ibid., p. 213.

143. Ibid., p. 219.
144. Ibid., p. 223.
145. Joshua A. Fogel, The Literature of Travel in the Japanese Rediscovery of China, 1862
1945 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996).
146. Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Shina no Bijutsu, Shina no Bijutsu wo tanky suru
tansho (Art of China, First steps to the study of the Art of China), T-ky kykai hkoku
37 (1894) (MBZ38), pp. 373, 382. Written-up lectures from 1893 visit to China given with slides
and photographs.
147.Fogel, The Literature of Travel, p. 90.
148. Ibid., p. 124.
149.Tanaka, Japans Orient, p. 20.
150. Ibid., p. 19.
151. Ibid., p. 190.
152. Ibid., p. 280, translating Shina shis to Nihon (Chinese thought and Japan), 1938,
p. 184185.
153. Shina shis to Nihon, p. 199, my translation and abridgement. See also John Clark,
Nihonkaiga ni okeru ChugokuzMeiji kki kara haisen made, Nichibunken Kiy 15
(December 1996): 1127. The English translation of the Japanese original is John Clark, Artist
and the State: The Image of China in Japanese Painting, 1890s1940s, in Society and the State
in Interwar Japan, ed. Elise Tipton (London: Routledge, 1997).
154.Tsubouchi, Okakura Tenshin no shisteki tanb, p. 4.
155. Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 5 vols. (Almora:
Advaita Ashrama, 1947). See vol. 5, p. 139, interview with The Hindu, Madras, February 1897.
156. Ibid., p. 140.
157.Datta, Swami Vivekananda, Patriot-Prophet, pp. 116117.
158. See Koizumi Shinya, Tenshin (Okakura Kakuzo)s View of Asia and the Position of
The Ideals of the East, in Asia in Transition, Representation and Identity, ed. Furuichi Yasuko
(Tokyo: Japan Foundation Asia Center, 2003).
159.Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, vol. 5, p. 288, undated
conversation with a coreligionist, possibly around 1897.
160. Ibid., p. 290. Among further texts relevant to this period in India are Pravrajika
Atmaprana, Sister Nivedita of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda (Calcutta: Sister Nivedita Girls
School, 1961); Shakti Das Gupta, Tagores Asian Outlook (Calcutta: Nava Bharati, 1961); Pri-
yambada Devi, letters and notebooks in CEW; Sailendra Nath Dhar, A Comprehensive Biogra-
phy of Swami Vivekananda (Madras: Vivekananda Prakashan Kendra, 1976); Krishna Dutta
and Andrew Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man (London: Bloomsbury,
1995); Stephen N. Hay, Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China,
and India (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970); G. D. Khanolkar, The Lute and
the Plough: A Life of Rabindranath Tagore, trans. T. Gay (Bombay: Book Centre Private, 1963);
Sister Nivedita, The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, ed. Pravrajika Atmaprana, 4 vols. (Cal-
cutta: Sister Nivedita Girls School, 1967, 1973). See vol. 3.
161. Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), Modern Problems in Painting, speech of September 24,
1904, at St. Louis Purchase Exposition, CEW, vol. 2, ZS, vol. 2; also as Modern Art from a
Japanese Point of View, Quarterly Review 11, no. 2 (July 1905), CEW, vol. 2, p. 77. On the
256|John Clark

St. Louis Exposition, see also Carol Ann Christ, The sole guardians of the art inheritance of
Asia: Japan at the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair, positions: east asian cultures critique 8, no. 3
(winter 2000).
162. Okakura, Modern Problems in Painting, p. 80.
163. Ibid., pp. 8081.
164. Ibid., p. 81.
165. Takeuchi Seih, Okakura Kakuz-shi no innen-banashi (1928) (A story of affinity
with Okakura Kakuz), in Hashikawa, Okakura Tenshin, hito to shis.
166. Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin), The Book of Tea, a Japanese Harmony of Art Culture and
the Simple Life (New York: Fox Duffield, 1906; Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1932), CEW, vol. 1,
ZS, vol. 1.
167. Ibid. (1932), p. 3.
168. Ibid., p. 4.
169. Ibid., p. 6.
170. Ibid., p. 10.
171. Ibid., p. 18.
172. Ibid., p. 20.
173. Ibid., p. 28.
174. Ibid., p. 58.
175. Ibid., p. 60.
176. Ibid., p. 81.
177. See Tsubouchi, Okakura Tenshin no shisteki tanb.
178.Dipesh Chakravarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 27.
179.Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism (London: Macmillan, 1917), p. 80. See Bharuchas
insightful analyses of postcolonial dilemmas in the understanding of Tagore in his chapter
Nationalism, in Bharucha, Another Asia, pp. 51111. Unsurprisingly, Tagore was the severest
critic of the invasion of China in 1938, where in a letter to Noguchi Yone(jiro), poet father of
the postWorld War II sculptor Noguchi Isamu, Rabindranath Tagore commented that you
are building your conception of an Asia which would be raised on a tower of skulls. See Bha-
rucha, Another Asia, p. 169.
180. Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capital-
ism (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), p. 52.
 Mikiko Hirayama

10 Japanese Art Criticism

The First Fifty Years

Japanese art theory underwent significant changes during the modern period. Treatises on
art had proliferated in Japan from the seventeenth century onward, but they were essen-
tially appropriations of Chinese art theory written for and by artists.1 Critical commentary
on contemporary art for the mass audience did not arise in Japan until the 1880s. In the
absence of professional critics, artists, novelists, and other intellectuals were recruited to fill
the void. These early practitioners needed to develop new critical terminology for evaluat-
ing contemporary Japanese art. By the early twentieth century, rising interest in European
avant-garde art movements boosted the demand for more specialized critics who could
offer analytical commentary on these new artistic trends. Some of the younger critics active
in the 1930s began to call for a more objective, scientific approach to art criticism, which
they hoped would shed light on the relationship of art to its sociopolitical backgrounds.
This chapter investigates the growth of modern Japanese art criticism from the 1880s
to the late 1930s, with a particular focus on the discourse on yga.
Studies of art criticism cultivate uncharted territory within the field of modern Jap-
anese art history by revealing the hitherto unknown context of critical commentaries
within the larger framework of contemporary art and intellectual histories. Nonetheless,
it is fair to say that the studies of Japanese art criticism are still at the inceptive stage
today. Following the pioneering works by Takeda Michitar and Nakamura Giichi,2 there
were a few sporadic attempts to analyze the work of individual critics. After the second
half of the 1990s, however, more thorough, critical investigations began to appear. Three
essays by kuma Toshiyuki, which were published between 1996 and 1997, were the first
to challenge some of the long-held assumptions originally presented by Nakamura and
Takeda.3 More recently, in November 2002 Kindai gasetsu, the journal of the Meiji Art
Society (Meiji Bijutsu Gakkai), had a special feature on art criticism that included articles
on six individual critics.4 In July 2010, Bijutsu hihyla chosaku sensh, the first anthol-
ogy of major critical texts in twenty volumes, began publication. However, basic research
tools such as anthologies of major critical texts or biographical information about many
of the important critics are not yet available,5 nor has there been any English-language
research on this subject. In view of this situation, the present chapter surveys some of the
major issues in modern Japanese art criticism for an English-speaking audience. Although
such an approach could present too linear a picture, I contend that the current absence of
English-language scholarship makes a historical overview more useful than minute
258|Mikiko Hirayama

analyses of the polemics within this nascent field. This survey of the first fifty years of
modern Japanese art criticism offers an insight into the birth of art criticism as an institu-
tion and delineates the complex dynamics that existed between artists, critics, and audi-
ences. Such an understanding of the byplay of critics, artists, and the public since the 1880s
into the early 1940s is crucial to us today, as it ties into the present practice in art criticism.6

Tripolar Typology of Art Criticism

The history of Japanese art criticism reveals a highly complex trajectory of development,
especially when seen against the analytical model used in the study of French art criticism.
Art historian Dario Gambioni explains the historical development of French art criticism
in terms of the tripolar typology.7 Gambioni recognizes two major types of art criticism
in Francescientific and literaryeach with its own publications, socially defined
collaborators, and distinct market positions. Supported by connoisseurs, teachers, and
art administrators, scientific criticism sought objectivity and precision and was often
carried in prestigious journals. Literary criticism, on the other hand, claimed a right to
subjective expression in the tradition of Baudelaire and was mostly practiced by young
authors who wrote for small, self-financed and mostly ephemeral symbolist periodicals.8
In the second half of the nineteenth century, changes in the distribution system of art
objects and the growth of journalism caused French art criticism to become more profes-
sionalized. As a result, a third category, journalistic art criticism, came into being. This
new type of art criticism was developed in particular by professionals of the press in the
daily newspapers.9 The other two categories of criticism subsequently bifurcated, and the
scientific pole [of art criticism] evolved into art history and the literary pole was marginal-
ized into a form of pure literature.10
The situations were significantly different in modern Japan. To use Gambionis terms,
Japanese art criticism was literary and journalistic at the same time from the very
beginning. As this chapter will show, however, it was not quite scientific until later in
the twentieth century. Even though pre-Meiji Japanese painting treatises did contain criti-
cal commentary on art objects, art criticism as an independent category of writing did
not emerge in Japan until the 1880s, when the state began to implement the institutional
changes similar to those that had given rise to journalistic art criticism in France. None-
theless, there were not yet professional writers who had a full-time career in art criticism.
Although painters were by far the most popular choice, a variety of people including news-
paper reporters, novelists, poets, and scholars were invited to write criticism. More often
than not, their commentary was simply a statement of the authors personal preference.
Vehicles for critical commentary also ranged from lowbrow newspapers to specialized
journals. Given the diversity of the vehicles, audience, and practitioners, the role of this
new genre of writing remained highly ambiguous, even to the most productive critic, into
the early twentieth century.
Scientific art criticism did not arise in Japan until much later, for two main reasons.
First, literary art criticism had long-lasting authority in the Japanese art world into the
twentieth century. This was because early modern painting treatises, which provided the
point of departure for art criticism in modern Japan, were essentially the literary form
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 259

of art criticism. Second, art history as an academic discipline, which would have provided
critics with theoretical underpinnings for scientific criticism, was still in its inceptive
stage in Japan during the late nineteenth century. These conditions fostered the prevalence
of what later critics and journalists called impressionistic criticism (insh hihy), which
primarily consisted of subjective comments with no clear methodological paradigm.

The Rise of Art Criticism in Mass Media

During the first two decades of the Meiji period, various institutions such as annual exhi-
bitions and mass media developed rapidly, creating the need for critical commentary on
contemporary art. Government-sponsored industrial expositions marked the beginning
of art exhibitions in Japan. The first Domestic Industrial Exposition (Naikoku Kangy
Hakurankai) in 1877 displayed both historical and contemporary art objects along with
commercial and natural objects, scientific apparatus, and others.11 Inspired by the success-
ful reception of Japanese art objects at the Vienna World Fair of 1873, subsequent indus-
trial expositions continued to include an art pavilion. In the meantime, exhibitions that
were more focused on contemporary art started to emerge as well. The Domestic Painting
Competition Exhibition (Naikoku Kaiga Kyshinkai), which was devoted strictly to paint-
ing, was organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce for the first time in 1877.
The Society for Appreciation of Painting (Kangakai), a group of bureaucrats, scholars, art-
ists, and connoisseurs, regularly held exhibitions of both classical and new art objects after
1884. Soon afterwards, both yga and Nihonga artists started to organize their own shows,
such as the Japan Art Association (Nihon Bijutsu Kykai) in 1887 and the Meiji Art Society
(Meiji Bijutsukai) in 1889.12
The emerging mass media provided a vehicle for commentary on these shows. The first
few decades of the Meiji period witnessed the inauguration of various newspapers,13 and
exhibition reviews and other types of critical commentary on contemporary art became a
constant feature in them. The authorship of these writings included novelists, newspaper
reporters, scholars, and, eventually, professional art critics. According to critic Takeda
Michitar, the earliest known exhibition review in the newspaper appeared on April 10,
1886, in the Tokyo nichinichi shinbun and addressed the third Painting Competition Exhi-
bition (Kaiga Kyshinkai). Contrary to our expectation today, it did not comment on indi-
vidual exhibits, but the anonymous writer of the article still offered insightful commen-
tary about the show as a whole.14 The following passage sums up the authors overall grasp
of the Nihonga scene at the time:

[Even though Nihonga] has its own strengths, no artists bother to explore how they
could develop these strengths further. Instead, they are content to repeat the old for-
mula . . . those who do try to break new ground are either too coarse or too trivial in
style . . . it is no surprise that their spirit is by no means elevated, and their brushwork
never accomplished.15

By the 1890s, some of the major newspapers had reporters specializing in contemporary
art. Seki Nyorai (18671938), a reporter for the Yomiuri shinbun, wrote stories that were
260|Mikiko Hirayama

sympathetic to the activities of the Association of Japanese Painting (Nihon Kaiga Kykai),
a group formed by Okakura Tenshin (18621913) to promote new styles of Nihonga.16 The
Mainichi shinbun had Yoshioka Hry (dates unknown), an art reporter who was also a
member of Kuroda Seikis group Hakubakai.17

Early Art Periodicals

Furthermore, specialized art periodicals began to emerge during the 1880s. Gay sekichin
(which might be paraphrased to mean Beauties of Art and Scholarship) was inaugurated
in April 1880 as the first art journal in Japan. It was edited by Takahashi Yuichi (1828
1894) and his son Genkichi (18581913) and published five issues altogether. Each issue
had sections devoted to Japanese, Chinese, and Western painting and carried illustrations
in woodblock print, excerpts from classic Chinese painting treatises, and biographies of
great masters ranging from Wang Wei (699759) to Michelangelo. The variety of the arti-
cles indicate that the editors goal was not so much to offer up-to-date information about
contemporary art but to enlighten the reader on masterpieces of the past, both Eastern and
Western. Another significant early art periodical, Bijutsuen (Garden of art), was inaugu-
rated in February 1889.18 It was targeted for a broad audience including craftsmen as the
first purely commercial art periodical in Japan.19 The opening statement in the first issue
proclaimed that this journal would discuss, describe, and critique the arts and crafts of
Japan in order to enhance its recovery from the long period of stagnation.20 In addition
to illustrations, editorials, lecture transcriptions, and recent news in the field, the journal
began to carry unsigned exhibition reviews of the Japan Art Association in May 1889.21
The year 1889 was a watershed year in the history of Japanese art criticism. The first
Meiji Art Society Exhibition, which opened in October, gave rise to the first full review of
yga exhibition in both newspapers and periodicals. The article by Uguisudani Umenoya
was carried in the Tokyo asahi shinbun on October 31, 1889. Takeda Michitar points out
that this essay established the basic format of exhibition reviews, which consisted of an
overall observation of the show at the beginning, followed by commentary on individual
works.22 The opening comment made the following statement:

Yga has made amazing progress. All the paintings [in the exhibition] reflect the
indigenous Japanese taste, and we can show them with pride to any Westerner. Many
of the paintings, however, are in fact too preoccupied with portraying the up-to-date
subject matter and tend to lose gracefulness [gachi].23

As indicated by the use of the word gachi in the above passage, this review was heavily
Chinese-inspired in its phraseology.24 And yet the reviewer was not afraid of making his own
observations, especially about the harmony between the subject matter and visual qualities.
For instance, Uguisudani argued that one of the exhibits, The Search, looked awkward
because it seemed as if the artist had begun with the goal of depicting the temple hall and
worked backwards. The medieval subject matter, he added, appeared to be an afterthought.
Mori gai (18621922), one of the most renowned novelists in modern Japan, and
his friend, yga painter Harada Naojir (18631899), also reviewed the same exhibition in
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 261

the November 1889 issue of Shigarami sshi (Weir magazine).25 The actual commentary
on individual paintings in this article was brief and simplistic. The coauthors paid close
attention to the technical aspects such as brushwork and proportion, but their criticism
was permeated with ambiguous words such as good, vague, uninteresting, tasteful,
and inspirational. Their ultimate concern seems to have been the degree to which the
artist reproduced optic reality. For instance, they commented that the tableau by Asai Ch
was tasteful and well-executed but also looked too sketchy, complaining that they had
trouble deciphering what the roof in the picture was made of.26
As seen above, the basic format of exhibition reviews and major institutional appa-
ratus for art criticism were set up by the end of the 1880s, but the quality of commentary
was still inconsistent. Most of the writers heavily relied on Chinese aesthetic terms, which
had been the foundation of aesthetic judgment in premodern Japanese art theory. Fur-
thermore, art criticism was not yet recognized as a profession in its own right. Artists were
the predominant force as writers of critical commentary, while novelists and journalists
occasionally sojourned into this new category of writing.
Some of these aspects of the late nineteenth-century critical discourse remained
unchanged into the early twentieth century. Continued prominence of exhibition reviews
determined the nature of the authorship and, by extension, the content of art criticism.27
Painters were still in constant demand for the exhibition reviews because they were often
believed to be the most appropriate people to comment on the technical aspects of exhibits.
Furthermore, impressionistic criticism by educated laypeoplenovelists, theater critics,
and so forthalso remained in high demand.28 On the other hand, the adequacy of Chinese-
inspired critical methods and the qualification for critics came under increasing scrutiny.

Impressionistic Criticism by Dilettante Critics

Criticism by so-called dilettantes was still a regular feature in the specialized and lay press
alike. They tended to offer their personal thoughts on broader cultural implications of art
rather than commenting on specific qualities of individual exhibits or painters. When they
did address formal issues, they often resorted to the familiar strategy of using Chinese
aesthetic terms. The exhibits that did not appeal to them tended to be flatly dismissed
without much explanation. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that dilettante criticism greatly
contributed to raising the overall level of knowledge of contemporary art among the edu-
cated public. As pointed out by J. Thomas Rimer, they attempted to introduce a variety of
European ideas on the visual arts and to show as well in their writings, by way of personal
example, what kind of cultural perspectives were needed in order to appreciate these new
forms of expression.29
One of the early examples of dilettante criticism was by Aeba Kson (18551922), a
reporter for the Tokyo asahi shinbun who specialized in literature and theater criticism. He
wrote Kangy hakurankai shirtohy (A dilettantes criticism of the Industrial Exposi-
tion), which ran for seventeen days in April 1890. Following the familiar strategy, Kson
evaluated Nihonga using classical Chinese terms. He wrote, for example, that Shkei san-
sui (Autumn landscape) by Hashimoto Gah (18351908) should be praised as inspired
(shinpin, Ch. shenpin) because of its exquisite composition (ish), fine skills, well-balanced
Figure 10.1. Harada Naojir, Kannon Bodhisattva on Dragonback. Oil on canvas, 272.4 181 cm.
Gokokuji, Tokyo.
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 263

proportion (haig), and fine colors.30 However, Ksons criticism of yga was flippant
and tended to skirt around formal issues.31 On Kiry Kannon (Kannon Bodhisattva on
Dragonback [fig. 10.1]) by Harada Naojir, he wrote that the flames in the background
looked so ferocious that should one touch them, he would almost feel the heat. Such real-
ity, he continued, made the painting look vulgar. This remark once again indicates Ksons
indebtedness to conventional East Asian aesthetics, which belittled exact formal likeness.32
The contrast between Ksons criticism on yga and Nihonga implies that what seemed
like relatively sophisticated criticism often relied on conventional Chinese terminology for
its success. The popularity of this method explains the enduring prevalence of dilettante
criticism in Japan but at the same time reveals its ultimate inadequacy to the critique of
contemporary Japanese art, especially yga.

The Paris World Fair and Art Criticism

The ongoing prominence of dilettante criticism at the turn of the century generated
discussions on the qualification of art critics. The jury selection for the Japanese exhibits at
the Paris World Fair of 1900 particularly received a great deal of media attention. In July
1898, Hayashi Tadamasa (18531906),33 the ad hoc director of administrative affairs for the
World Fair (rinji hakurankai jimu kanch), named eighteen artists of Nihonga, yga, and
sculpture as well as eighteen critics. Twelve of the eighteen critics were newspaper report-
ers. Hayashi explained that they were added to the jury to offset the artists tendency to
be partisan in their judgment. His decision subsequently stirred up a controversy in the
media. Takayama Chogy (18711902), a journalist and aesthetician, was elected to be a
juror but declined. He voiced strong objection to the jury selection, arguing that it needed
fewer artists and more art critics who had expertise in art theory, firsthand experience
in the history of art and connoisseurship, and sharp sensibility.34 In response to this, art
critic Iwamura Tru (18701917) wrote that practical knowledge of art making was more
important to art critics than expertise in theory. Critics were neither scholars nor artists,
claimed Iwamura, but should be mediators between the general public and artists.35 These
debates suggest that there was no consensus in Japanese society at the time about the role
of art criticism, nor was there anyone who was universally recognized as a reliable profes-
sional art critic.36

Bijutsu Hyron

Given this ambiguity in the world of art criticism, some practitioners at the turn of the
century began to aspire to more precision, objectivity, and authority in their own field.
Bijutsu hyron (Art criticism), known as the first purely critical art journal in Japan, was
launched in November 1897 toward this goal.37 The periodical was founded and edited
by Asian art historian mura Seigai (18681927), and its staff writers included top-notch
intellectuals in the contemporary art world, such as Mori gai, Iwamura Tru, and oil
painter Kume Keiichir (18661934). The magazine regularly carried illustrations, edito-
rials, exhibition reviews, and current news. The inaugural statement commented that the
264|Mikiko Hirayama

editors decided to publish this journal because the current state of art criticism in Japan
was far from being perfect. Through this journal, they sought to enhance the develop-
ment of art criticism and thereby stimulate the growth of the arts.38
The exhibition reviews in Bijutsu hyron, which combined sophisticated visual analy-
sis with solid art historical perspective, are regarded as the beginning of full-fledged art
criticism in Japan.39 They were in the format of roundtable discussions by the above four-
some and other associates in a satirical tone that never pulled punches. Thanks to this
format, the reader was presented with multiple points of view about any given work of art.
A mixed but largely favorable comment on Evening at the Ferry (Tot no ygure) (see Plate
2) by Wada Eisaku (18741959), displayed at the White Horse Society exhibition in 1897,
is a good example. For instance, one reviewers statement demonstrated the depth of his
knowledge about the plein air school; he commented that the figures looked too much like
studio models because of the discrepancy in the light cast on the figures and on the back-
ground.40 Two others addressed the difficulty of producing a genre painting. One of them
praised the subtle balance between two major components of the painting, people and
landscape.41 The other, however, said it was unsatisfactory either as a landscape or figure
painting since it lacked carefully constructed composition and an emotional interaction
among the figures:

If [the artist] wanted to depict a family of diligent peasants going home after a day of
hard work, he should have portrayed more healthy-looking human bodies, but the
figures in the painting all look tired and unhealthy. It seems as if this work lost its
naturalness (shizen) in its preoccupation with verisimilitude (shajitsu).42

The reviews in Bijutsu hyron thus offered discussions of concrete visual qualities of con-
temporary art in intelligent yet accessible language, without relying too much on Chinese
aesthetic terms.
In addition to the exhibition reviews, Bijutsu hyron featured what was probably one
of the earliest critiques of yga criticism. Attributed to mura Seigai, brief yet incisive
comments in the news section occasionally addressed the then-current nature of art criti-
cism in Japan. For instance, in the November 1897 issue, the writer criticized the ways
some newspaper criticism relied on old jargon such as ish (design) or kiin (spirit reso-
nance) and suggested that those who want to critique paintings study more seriously and
use more precise words.43 mura continued to stress careful observation of the aesthetic
qualities of the object and to criticize reliance on abstruse Chinese painting theories.44 His
essays indicate that some critics by the turn of the century started to recognize the need
for a concrete critical paradigm and terminology that was suitable for contemporary art.

Alternative Approaches to Art Criticism

During the Decade of 1910
The 1910s marked an important juncture in the history of yga criticism. A quest for the
overarching critical principle (hihy genri) arose. I will highlight some writers attempts
at self-reflective critique of their own field, which represented a new level of sophistication
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 265

in Japanese art criticism. In 1910, the Ministry of Education Art Exhibition (Bunten) was
founded as the government-sponsored annual exhibition that encompassed all styles and
artists groups. It consisted of three sectionsNihonga, yga, and sculptureand had a
separate jury for each section. This structure perpetuated the institutional divisions of yga
and Nihonga, which, as some art historians have argued, also prompted the specialization
of art critics in either style of painting.45 By this time, yga painters had more opportuni-
ties than ever to study overseas and see contemporary Western art firsthand. Some of these
artists started to write art criticism after returning to Japan, based on their knowledge of
the latest European art. The expanding art press, which now included literary periodicals
such as Shirakaba (White birch, 19101923) and Subaru (Pleiades, 19091913), provided
them with the perfect venue. Essays by these returnees introduced the Japanese audience
to such movements as postimpressionism and futurism. Both specialized and lay journals
began to devote more space to the in-depth discussion of contemporary European art, but
at the same time, the demand for exhibition reviews by no means dwindled as ambitious
young artists began to form independent art shows such as the Fuzankai and Nikakai, the
two main strongholds of modernist art in Japan.

Takamura Ktars A Green Sun

During this decade, the pursuit of rigorous critical principles continued in the hands of
several critics. The most distinguished among them were sculptor-poet Takamura Ktar
(18831956) and poet Kinoshita Mokutar (18851945).46 Although both ushered in a new
phase in the criticism of yga, their approaches were notably different. In his best-known
critical essay from 1910, A Green Sun (Midoriiro no taiy), Takamura sought to establish
a critical paradigm that centered on the expression of each painters individuality rather
than ones national character as Japanese:

Even if someone paints a green sun, I will not say it is wrong. This is because there
may be a time when the sun looks that way to me, too. Simply because a painting has
a green sun in it, I will not be able to overlook the overall value of the painting. The
good or bad of the painting has nothing to do with whether the sun is green or flam-
ing scarlet. In such a case, too, as I said before, Id like to savor the tone of the green
sun as part of the work.47

The impact of this manifesto was twofold. Not only did it mark the introduction of fauvism
to Japan, but it also did much to define, then glorify, the idea of the individual artist, whose
skills were used in order to best express his interior, instinctive responses to his subject
matter.48 By stressing the idea of art making as self-expression, Takamura provided many
young artists with an intellectual reasoning for transcending conventional Western-style
naturalistic representation and engaging in bolder experiments with color and form in their
art. Takamura made a name in the art world once again in October 1914. In his review of
the Buntens sculpture division, he tore apart almost every work on display, claiming that it
did not convey la vie: I see that the artists standpoint, his artthat is, his attitude toward
la vieis too inconclusive . . . [the modeling of this work], therefore, has no true life.49
266|Mikiko Hirayama

While some of his comments seem arbitrary to us today, his contribution to Japanese
art criticism is undeniable in that he had the unprecedented audacity to proclaim clearly
to his reader the principles by which he judged works of art.

Kinoshita Mokutars Historicist Criticism

On the other hand, Kinoshita Mokutar pursued a more systematic, rationalized approach
to criticism. Alarmed by the prevalence of impressionistic criticism in the world of yga,
he tried to stress the difference between art appreciation and criticism: Few can distin-
guish between appreciation and criticism. . . . Most people boast to themselves that they
possess a critical spirit, but appreciation and criticism stem from two different aspects of
our understanding. They may overlap, but they are not the same.50 Kinoshita aspired to art
criticism that was based on consistent, logical standards: Arbitrary criticism that simply
judges a given painting as good or bad is rampant today, but unless the writer clarifies
the logic through which he reached that judgment, his criticism could not be trusted.51
Criticism did not merely consist of fragmentary thoughts or emotions, he insisted; it
had to contain unification of those thoughts and emotions. Such unification required a
concrete standpoint (rikkyakuten)some kind of principle (keik) that would enable
the critic to systematically process a variety of information. Ideas such as naturalism,
nationalism, and aestheticism, Kinoshita said, were all meant to serve as such a principle.52
He was convinced that looking at art in relationship to its historical and cultural back-
grounds was to be a crucial corrective for a public that until then had no choice but
to view a work of art without the benefit of any larger frame of reference.53 Kinoshita
Mokutars historicist criticism was thus intended, first and foremost, to enhance the pub-
lics understanding of art. It is also clear that his other goal was to confer a new kind of
authority to art critics as professionals.

Kojima Kikuo and Yashiro Yukios Editorship of Bijutsu Shinp

Another important corrective measure to yga criticism came from Bijutsu shinp, one
of the leading art journals of the time. In January 1916, the periodical appointed Kojima
Kikuo (18871950) and Yashiro Yukio (18901975), art history graduate students at Tokyo
Imperial University, to take over the editorship while the incumbent editor Sakai Saisui
traveled to Europe.54 Founded in March 1902, Bijutsu shinp was known for journalistic
reports on the latest European and Japanese art, but the new editors started to give more
emphasis to historical art, ranging from the Italian Renaissance to nineteenth-century
France. Their explanations for this drastic change in the editorial policy reflect their ideals
of art criticism and their confidence in their own approach. Yashiro expressed his mistrust
of contemporary art criticism, which begins and ends with personal thoughts such as
art should be based on ones existence or art should express ones life.55 Bijutsu shinp
would inevitably be more focused on the masters of the earlier periods since he and Kojima
believed they had so much to learn from historical art. They did not feel compelled to
cover contemporary art such as cubism and futurism simply because these styles were
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 267

up-to-date.56 They also value[d] translations of good, solid scholarship more highly than
half-baked original essays.57 They adopted these new policies, Yashiro claimed, precisely
because they cared about Japanese art today.58 Their determination is evident in Kojimas
promise that they would sign every article.59 Though their views may seem conservative or
even reactionary at first glance, it is evident that Yashiro and Kojima sought to introduce
the professional rigor that was hitherto unseen in art criticism and strove for substance
rather than novelty. Their appointment thus marked a major turning point in the history
of Japanese art criticism.

Pursuit of Methodological Rigor in the 1930s

It was not until the 1930s, however, that methodological analyses of yga criticism began to
truly flourish.60 The art world encountered much sociopolitical and cultural turmoil during
this decade, which necessitated a re-evaluation of the role of criticism. The politically moti-
vated reshuffling of the Imperial Art Academy in 1934 restructured the entire art world,
and many critics were compelled to comment on how this major institutional change might
affect the future of Japanese painting.61 State intervention into the art community, such as
commissions for war painting, began to intensify.62 Moreover, the introduction of Euro-
pean avant-garde art such as cubism and surrealism created demands for detailed critical
analyses of the domestic and international art scenes. And yet many critics and artists felt
that critical spirit had hit an all-time low in the art world during the 1930s.63
Indeed, the concern with the deficiency of critical spirit was widely shared in the
art world. From 1935 to 1936, art periodicals such as Atorie, Binokuni (Nation of art),
and Bijutsu shinron (New theories on art) frequently carried special features and shorter
articles that addressed the state of art criticism.64 Many of these publications called for
more rigorous methodologies and a consensus about the role of art criticism. Particularly
important among them is the four-part special series on art criticism that was carried in
Atorie from September to December 1935. The foreword to the series stated the purpose
of the articles:

These days, there seems to be a sense of insecurity and an urge among both the art-
ists and the audience to reconstruct art criticism. Questioning the way art criticism
should be and defining what role it should play, therefore, is an urgent task.65

Descriptions of contemporary art criticism by Tokunaga Ikusuke (19111992), one of the

contributors to the series, were quite bleak. In his view, current art criticism was either
technique-oriented commentary, a flattery of the artist by a group of hangers-on, or a tte-
-tte between artists and critics.66 Although its role was to mediate between the public
and artists, it tended to separate them further. Moreover, many shared the view that the
ongoing preoccupation with exhibition reviews was the source of persistent problems in
the field, such as sectarianism among both artists and critics. As pointed out by some crit-
ics, the fragmentary nature of exhibition reviews also prevented them from addressing
more complex issues such as the stylistic development of important artists or an analysis
of specific art movements.67
268|Mikiko Hirayama

The polemics during the 1930s reveal the widespread urge among art critics to redefine
their professional responsibilities and to come to terms with the ever-increasing repercus-
sions of larger ideological issues on art criticism. Discussions on the state of the field involved
some old issues as well as new, more complex ones. Surprisingly, the adequacy of criticism
by artists was still hotly contested.68 The overriding majority of contributors, whether art-
ists or critics, believed that art criticism should exert stronger leadership in the art world.
The issue of methodological approaches consequently became a topic of major concern for
everyone. As an alternative to impressionistic criticism, some advocated scientific criti-
cism, which was based on a more objective methodology and greater social awareness. The
ultimate question, however, was the role of art criticism vis--vis contemporary society. The
debate centered on whether or not artists and critics should address contemporary social
issues more explicitly in their own work. Furthermore, art criticism was now recognized in
some constituencies as a unique discursive category that combined aesthetic judgment, sci-
entific accuracy, and social awarenessin other words, the creative process in its own right.
There were two major groups of writers who were especially vocal in the debate on
art criticism that unfolded during the 1930s. One group consisted of those who were
trained as art historians, such as Tominaga Sichi, Kawaji Ryk, Moriguchi Tari, Hasumi
Shigeyasu, and Kojima Kikuo. The other group included those who had more varied aca-
demic backgrounds and were well-versed in Marxist discourses; this group included Sawa
Hajime, Tokunaga Ikusuke, Araki Sueo, hira Akira, Egawa Kazuhiko, Ogawa Takei, and
Yokokawa Kiichir.69 As we will see, the first group tended to emphasize the autonomy of
art, while the second group insisted that critics should discuss art in terms of its relation-
ship to society. The latter group was also more involved in establishing art criticism as an
independent discursive category in Japan. Regardless of their views, many of these critics
had experience in print media or universities at some point in their careers.
Most of the contributors to the series of articles in Atorie agreed that contemporary criti-
cism needed to play a more active role in directing the future of the art world. Given the rising
public interest in the visual arts, it was considered more crucial than ever that critics strive to
educate the audience through their writings.70 Just exactly what they should do to fulfill such
a role became an issue of major contention. For example, Tominaga Sichi (19021980) com-
mented that he and his colleagues needed to address a broader range of topics that may be
relevant to the audience as well as artists: Critics should be more interested in explicating the
general tendencies of contemporary art and closely examining them . . . [in order to] high-
light its meanings and characteristics.71 Another critic, Kawaji Ryk (18881959), who was
also known as a poet, urged his colleagues to look for hidden potential in artists and to strive
for greater creativity in their own writing.72 As remarked by an anonymous writer in 1930, the
contemporary art world was perceived to be in dire need of critics who could transcend all
the sectarian interests and comment on larger issues with authority.73

Problems of Impressionistic Criticism

The ongoing quest for stronger leadership led many critics to be skeptical of impression-
istic criticism. To Tominaga Sichi, impressionistic criticism without a specific stand-
point was more indicative of the writers psyche than the quality of the works discussed.
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 269

It therefore did not necessarily enhance the viewers understanding of art objects and
tended to hamper discussions among critics and artists with different opinions.74 He even
claimed that the current prevalence of impressionistic criticism was a dishonor to the
Japanese art world as a whole.75 One of the most acute denunciations of impressionistic
criticism came from hira Akira (19011937), who particularly equated this methodol-
ogy with bourgeois sensibilities. In his view, such criticism was essentially based on the
writers personal preference and hence arbitrary. And yet most impressionistic critics tried
to justify their evaluation by claiming that beauty was absolute and universal.76 Object-
ing to this assumption, hira argued that there was no such thing as eternal or absolute
beauty. Each era, each people, and each class was entitled to its own concept of beauty.77
Furthermore, he pointed out a major methodological flaw in current art criticism in gen-
eral. Although it was almost a norm for critics working at the time to call for correct
understanding and correct interpretation of art objects, no one actually explained how
these could be attained.78

Advocacy of Scientific Criticism

In fact, the majority of critics who addressed the state of art criticism in the 1930s sup-
ported an objective, scientific (kagakuteki) approach in one way or another. One critic
explained that scientific criticism should include two vectorshistorical and systematic.
In other words, he expected critics to evaluate works of art based on their knowledge of
past works of art as well as their insight into contemporary culture at large.79 A major
champion of scientific criticism, Araki Sueo defined it as a method that was founded on
a logical, systematic paradigm and a uniform canon.80 Scientific criticism, he added,
must always discuss a work of art in relationship to its historical and social backgrounds
and analyze [it] according to empirical evidence.81 As can be seen, a consistent theoreti-
cal standpoint, empiricism, and understanding of historical and contemporary art were
commonly regarded as the basis of the scientific method.
Furthermore, it is evident that advocates of the scientific method felt compelled to
defend social criticism (shakaiteki hihy), commentary on the social background of the
art object, as a crucial component of their approach. According to Araki Sueo, scientific
criticism had to objectively address the ways social circumstances imposed various limita-
tions on art.82 He insisted that only by doing so could one accurately uncover the signifi-
cance of an art object in its entirety.83 Sawa Hajime (19011971) made a similar point that
social criticism was a way of viewing art as reflections of the times, society, and envi-
ronment, rather than as a self-contained object.84 Indifference to the times, he continued,
had been a major shortcoming of artists and critics alike, past and present.
Nevertheless, some critics expressed reservations about the scientific-social approach,
even though they acknowledged its significance. Kawaji Ryk admitted that critics should
use scientific methods but also stated that art criticism itself was not a science but a synthe-
sis of various disciplines such as philosophy, aesthetics, psychology, history, and sociology.
It was therefore fundamentally different from science but more similar to artistic creation.
While he contended that the art critics job in most cases was to understand art in
terms of its interrelationship with its time and its environment, he was also skeptical
270|Mikiko Hirayama

about criticism that adhered to a single normative theory or a universal aesthetic con-
cept.85 For this reason, he also discredited social criticism by calling it pink criticism.86
Art historian-critic Moriguchi Tari (18921984) also mildly criticized the tendency to turn
to a single ideology as the only source of standards.87 To him, those critics who advocated
scientific criticism appeared to be easily impressed by criticism that merely judged works
of art by single standards, thinking that it is scientific and therefore better than impres-
sionistic criticism.88 While acknowledging that Japanese art criticism in the past lacked
ideological standards, he also warned that adhering to a specific ideology could lead to a
new mannerism.89
Such mistrust of new approaches triggered a strong reaction from socially minded
critics. In their view, social criticism was not to be conflated with radicalism or dogma-
tism.90 Araki Sueo explained that social criticism was not necessarily socialist or leftist;
rather, it was inspired by the sociology of art (geijutsu shakaigaku), which addressed
important issues such as Hippolyte Taines (18291893) concept of milieu.91 Sawa
Hajimes argument was that being social did not necessarily mean blind allegiance to
a single ideology. These approaches, he stated, actually allowed critics to discuss works
of art from a broader viewpoint than purely formal analyses.92 Their strict separation of
social and scientific approaches from Marxism and socialism indicates the degree of
their methodological sophistication, but perhaps they were also motivated by the desire to
distance themselves from these radical thoughts.93
By contrast, hira Akira, an active contributor to proletarian art journals, was stead-
fast in his support of the Marxist method.94 He proposed that the dialectical, material-
ist approach was the answer to the aforementioned void in current critical methodology,
which offered no explanations on exactly how to attain correct understanding and cor-
rect interpretation.95 According to hira, a Marxist approach would enable art critics to
evaluate a work of art, be it contemporary or historical, based on what kind of role it played
in society at the time and how it could enhance the well-being of the proletarian class
today. It would also offer an antidote to the stagnation of bourgeois art in the current
Japanese art world. For hira, this was precisely the role of art criticism. He thus went one
step further than Araki and Sawa in his elaborations on what art critics should educe from
their observations of art objects.

The Autonomy of Art and Art Criticism

The ultimate issue at stake in all the above discussions was whether or not critics and artists
should advocate the autonomy of art. Some critics insisted that artists should try not to be
distracted by contemporary social issues. Kojima Kikuo, the art historian who had served
as the coeditor of the Bijutsu shinp in the 1910s, exemplifies this view in this statement:

It is unnecessary [for artists] to be preoccupied with trivial affairs such as the govern-
ment control of the reshuffling of the Imperial Art Academy, the decline of liberal-
ism, or class-oriented nature of the arts because the essence of art transcends these
contemporary issues . . . a genuine artist . . . would never lose freedom of the creative
process no matter where he stands.96
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 271

On the other hand, more socially minded authors opposed such a view, fearing that it
could justify indifference to contemporary issues. In the words of one critic, painters
who assumed the autonomy of art tended to drift apart from the interests of the general
public, losing the basis for their class identity and a genuine goal to pursue through
their art.97 Critics who even remotely advocated the autonomy of art, such as Moriguchi
Tari and Kawaji Ryk, were also accused of being completely impervious to the state of
todays capitalist culture that was impregnated with agony and contradiction.98 For Sawa
Hajime, it would be meaningless to discuss works of art without addressing their ideo-
logical implications and the artists worldview: Art critics must assess the manifestation
of the artists worldview in his work, not simply his technique. They must view the artist
holistically as a human being and a mature member of society.99
For Sawa Hajime and his colleagues, fulfilling their mission to society was an espe-
cially important step toward their ultimate goal of greater leadership, autonomy, and
authority. As a matter of fact, members of the Japan Association of Art Critics (Nihon
Bijutsu Hihyka Kykai), which formed in March 1931, had been addressing this issue
at length.100 Yokokawa Kiichir (18951973), one of the founding members, declared that
criticism had a social responsibility (shakaiteki ninmu) to represent the contemporary
ethos to the public.101 More specifically, art criticism needed to adapt to the reality (gen-
jitsu) of the general public who showed interest in contemporary art so as to enlighten
and lead them, rather than serving individual artists.102 Realism (riarizumu) had been
the mantra of Yokokawa and his fellow members; it encapsulated their resolution to view
art in terms of social values and detach oneself from complacent individualism.103 They
were determined to live as realists before discussing art as critics, claiming that discus-
sions of larger social issues behind a work of art should come before visual analysis.104 This
responsibility of art criticism, stated Yokokawa, could only be fulfilled through the mate-
rialist method, which would evaluate the social as well as aesthetic values of art.105
Disheartened by the ongoing lack of autonomy in the field, art historian Hasumi
Shigeyasu (19041979) urged critics to form a stronger spiritual union (naimenteki
teikei) with artists so as to assert the significance of their own work to the art world.106
Such spiritual union would arise between artists and critics who shared the same world-
view. Contemporary art, insisted Hasumi, could truly withstand the test of time and have
lasting importance only if it struck a chord in critics who shared the same worldview as its
maker.107 The role of art critics, then, was to evaluate the potential (miraisei) and sincer-
ity (shinjitsusei) of such artwork from a neutral, independent standpoint and make it
known to the broader public.108 Hasumi urged critics to recognize the significance of their
own profession and strive for a higher social recognition that they truly deserved: Rigor-
ous art criticism is also a rigorous scholarly discipline . . . in principle, art criticism should
be an independent [discipline] of the same caliber as literature and philosophy.109
Such aspirations to the autonomy of art criticism also led some critics to insist that
their work should be recognized as a creative process in its own right. The consensus
among all five participants in the 1935 roundtable discussion for Atorie was that critical
commentary on individual works of art needed to coexist with creative art criticism
(ssaku hihy).110 For Egawa Kazuhiko (18961981), creative art criticism would address
the sensibilities, atmosphere, and zeitgeist expressed in the work of art. More broadly,
he stated, it must reveal the truth about the artist as well as humanity as a whole.111 Araki
272|Mikiko Hirayama

Sueo explained that such creative criticism would also have to be based on scientific rigor.
Because art is deeply connected to society, its criticism must also be based on a scientific
investigation of society, and critics must possess acute social awareness and express that in
their own writings.112 While critics should strive for accuracy and impartiality, they could
also assert their individuality in the way they synthesized scientific elementswhether
psychological, ethnological, sociological, or economicand personal reflections in their
own work.113
By the mid-1930s, Japanese art criticism was thus established as an independent cat-
egory of discourse with a group of specialized writers. Most critics active in the 1930s
expressed skepticism of the technique-oriented exhibition reviews that had been hitherto
dominant. More rigorous analysis of broader social and art historical issues was increas-
ingly in demand as an alternative. But despite the shared sense of crisis about the future of
art criticism, the Japanese critical world of the 1930s was sharply divided over the issue of
methodology. The disputes over the impressionistic versus scientific methods spilled over
into battles waged between what could be described as the aestheticist approach and the
Marxism-inspired, more socially based approach. Some of the critics who aligned them-
selves with Marxism earnestly explored the uncharted watersthe relationship between
art, criticism, and society.

Art Criticism under the New Order

However, this trend toward methodological and thematic sophistication was thwarted by
World War II. In June 1940, Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro (18911945) introduced
the New Order Policy, which effectively dissolved all political parties and solidified the
totalitarian regime. Also during that time, the state enforced a new directive to produce
national art (kokumin bijutsu), which was expected to enhance the aesthetic sensibilities
of the Japanese people.114 A crackdown on the freedom of expression seemed imminent.
The state continued to tighten its control over the art community throughout the first half
of the decade. In April 1941, the Special Higher Police indicted Fukuzawa Ichir (1898
1992) and Takiguchi Shz (19031979), two of the most prominent avant-garde artists.115
Thirty-eight art periodicals were consolidated into eight journals later that year. Moreover,
starting in 1943, numerous painters groups disbanded, and juried art shows were banned
in 1944. Now every writer had to grapple with the question: If the state exerted control
over art criticism, what should critics do to ensure the integrity of their discipline? Critic
Ogawa Takei (19161945) was concerned that state thought control would force art critics
to merely praise simple, wholesome, and productive art that celebrated Japanese national
culture and enhanced the peoples inner strength.116
The response to such a prospect was divided. Some more or less embraced it, expecting
that it would benefit the field as a whole: In order to confer authority to art criticism, it is
far more effective to comply with totalitarianism or other ideologies.117 Even Sawa Hajime
urged the entire art community to become united in its efforts to create true Japanese
art: leadership [in art criticism] depends on the power of the state, not an individual.118
The less conciliatory critics, including Ogawa Takei, declared that they should not give up
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 273

their own critical spirit but should continue to evaluate art based on its representation
of humanity. By persistently holding to their professional ideals, Ogawa stated, art critics
could ultimately contribute to the foundation of solid spiritual groundone of the goals
of the New Order Policy.119 Japanese art critics of the early 1940s thus struggled to keep
their sense of professional integrity while being watchful of the changing political climate.

Epilogue

As this chapter has shown, Japanese art criticism during its first fifty years showed dras-
tic diversification in both methodology and content. Recondite Chinese-inspired terms
were still in heavy use at the end of the 1890s. On the other hand, the quest for the sound
critical standards and terminology for evaluating contemporary Japanese art intensified
during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Impressionistic commentary by dil-
ettante critics was seen with increasing suspicion, while qualifications for art critics were
subjected to more scrutiny. Consequently, full-time writers with advanced knowledge of
art history and art making gradually took over the world of prewar art criticism. Their pri-
mary concern on the eve of World War II was achieving greater autonomy, methodological
rigor, and leadership in their field. No other subject was more trenchant at this time than
the bearings of contemporary social-ideological issues on art and art criticism, and yet
discussions on this subject were hushed by the implementation of the New Order and the
subsequent crackdown on the freedom of press.
These polemics of the 1930s, however, did not die down completely. Critics resumed
their discussions as soon as the free press was revived in 1946. During that year alone,
important prewar art periodicals Mizue and Atorie were relaunched, and a new jour-
nal, Sansai (Three colors), which gave coverage to both historical and contemporary art,
was also published. Within four years, most of the major postwar art journals had been
launched, including Bijutsu tech (Notebook on art) in 1948 and Geijutsu shinch (New
currents in the arts) in 1950.120
Newspapers also began to carry exhibition reviews again by 1950. Four years later,
eleven critics founded the Japanese Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics
(AICA Japan) by invitation by members of the international headquarters in Paris.121
The early postwar discourses revisited some of the unresolved issues from the pre-
war period. Even before the major art periodicals were in full swing, some writers once
again advocated the independence of pictorial reality from external circumstances, while
others, now openly affiliated with Marxism, demanded that art have a concrete basis in
broad social reality. Despite the differences of opinions, all postwar critics shared a point
of departure. Mass mobilization during the war, including the state commission of war
painting, made it painfully clear that modernist art had stood on extremely precarious
ground in prewar Japanese society. Such awareness compelled critics of various convic-
tions to reassess, with renewed enthusiasm and self-reflection, the ways they addressed
the interface of contemporary Japanese art and realityhowever they defined itin their
own work. As a result, two opposing approaches to art criticism, aestheticism and mate-
rialism, both continued to serve as guiding principles in the art community even after
274|Mikiko Hirayama

Marxist criticism declined after the red purge and the breakout of the Korean War in
1950.122 The critical spirit that had arisen in the first fifty years of Japanese art criticism
thus continued to live onindeed it became a vital component of postwar art discourses
as Japanese artists and commentators engaged in global artistic dialogue more extensively
than ever before.

Notes
1.For a historical overview of premodern painting treatises, see Sakazaki Shizuka,
Nihonga no seishin (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1995).
2. See Takeda Michitar, Shinbun ni okeru bijutsu hihy no hensen (Tokyo: Asahi shin-
bunsha, 1955); and Nakamura Giichi, Bijutsu hihy no shidryoku: Bijutsu hihy rons, in
Nihon kindai bijutsu ronsshi, pp. 231262 (Tokyo: Kyryd, 1981).
3.See kuma Toshiyuki, 193040 nendai no Nihon no ygadan ni okeru bijutsu
hihyka no yakuwari, Kajima bijutsu kenky nenp no. 11 (1994): pp. 372379; kuma Toshi-
yuki, Meiji chki ikno bijutsu hihyron I, Sannomaru shzkan nenp kiy no. 3 (1996):
pp. 4655; kuma Toshiyuki, Meiji chki ikno bijutsu hihyron II, Sannomaru shzkan
nenp kiy no. 4 (1997): pp. 5970.
4.See Kindai gasetsu no. 11 (2002) as well as four essays on prewar art criticism in Con-
temporary Artists Review no. 20 (February 1996).
5. Many of the critics who are addressed in this chapter have fallen into obscurity. Books
they published during their lifetime are usually out of print today, and their intellectual back-
grounds and sources of information are lost.
6. It would be far beyond the scope of this chapter to attempt even a brief summary of
postwar art criticism, which indeed deserves a whole new article. Because very few materi-
als that pull together postwar critical commentary are currently available, extensive primary
research would be needed to write a comprehensive study. Since the 1990s, however, some
important studies have come out such as Mie Prefectural Art Museum, ed., Aatisuto to kuri-
tikku: Hihyka Hijikata Teiichi to sengo bijutsu (exhibition catalogue) (Tsu, Mie Prefecture:
Mie Prefectural Art Museum, 1992); Mitsuda Yuri, Riarizumu rons shiron: Nihon sengo
bijutsu hihy (1), Kz no. 11 (August 1995); Kurashiki City Art Museum, ed., Kindai nihon
bijutsushi no keisei: Kawakita Michiaki ga tsikyshita geijutsu no sekai (exhibition catalogue)
(Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture: Kurashiki City Art Museum, 1997); and Bijutsu hyronka
renmei, ed., Bijutsu hihy to sengo bijutsu (Tokyo: Buryukke, 2007).
7. Dario Gambioni, The Relative Autonomy of Art Criticism, in Art Criticism and Its
Institutions in Nineteenth-century France, ed. Michael R. Orwicz, pp. 182194 (Manchester,
UK: Manchester University Press, 1994).
8. Ibid., p. 183.
9.Ibid.
10.Ibid.
11. The earliest exposition in Japan was held in May 1871 at a shrine in Kudan, Tokyo, by the
Commerce Bureau of the Southern Branch, Tokyo University (Daigaku Nank Bussankyoku).
12. Also during the 1880s, museum administration quickly got under way. In March 1882,
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 275

the first state-run museum, Naimush Hakubutsukan, opened. Additional imperial museums
were established in Nara and Kyoto in 1887. These museums housed traditional Japanese and
Chinese art, not contemporary art. See Aoki Shigeru, Kaisetsu, in Nihon kindai shis taikei vol.
17: Bijutsu, ed. Aoki Shigeru and Sakai Tadayasu, pp. 440497 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1989).
13.Takeda, Shinbun ni okeru bijutsu hihy no hensen, p. 13.
14. Kaiga kyshinkai, Tokyo nichinichi shinbun, April 10, 1886, p. 2. See Takeda, Shin-
bun ni okeru bijutsu hihy no hensen, p. 14.
15. Kaiga kyshinkai, Tokyo nichinichi shinbun, April 10, 1886, p. 2. See Takeda, Shin-
bun ni okeru bijutsu hihy no hensen, p. 16.
16. Seki worked for the Yomiuri shinbun until 1913 and later became an independent
critic.
17.Yoshioka was a reporter for the Tokyo nichinichi shinbun and later replaced mura
Seigai as the editor in chief of Bijutsu hyron in June 1899.
18. Mori Noboru, Bijutsuen kaidai, in Kindai bijutsu zasshi ssho 7: Bijutsuen, pp. 45
(Tokyo: Yumani shob, 1991).
19. Most of the periodicals that were founded after the demise of Gay sekichin, such
as Dainippon bijutsu shinp (The great Japan art news, 1883) and Rychikai hkoku (Dragon
Pond Society report, 1885) were essentially bulletins for specific interest groups in the art
world. Mori, Bijutsuen kaidai, p. 6.
20. Anonymous, Shogen, Bijutsuen no. 1 (February 5, 1889): p. 1.
21. Anonymous, Bijutsu tenrankai shinseihin manpy, Bijutsuen no. 6 (May 1889).
22.Takeda, Shinbun ni okeru bijutsu hihy no hensen, p. 22. The identity of Uguisudani
Umenoya, clearly a nom de plume, is unknown.
23. Uguisudani Umenoya, Meiji bijutsukai tenranga ryakuhy, Tokyo asahi shinbun,
October 31, 1889, p. 3.
24. He also used such terms as force of the brush (hissei), will of the brush (hitsui),
taste (shumi), composition (fchi), and design (ish).
25.Nakamura, Bijutsu hihy no shidryoku, p. 233. gai Gyoshi and Engai Shfu
(Mori gai and Harada Naojir), Kanbadai no tengakai, Shigarami sshi no. 2 (November
25, 1889), in gai zensh vol. 22 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1971), pp. 8386.
26. gai Gyoshi and Engai Shfu, Kanbadai no tengakai, p. 84.
27. Art critic Tominaga Sichi pointed out in 1935 that art criticism in contemporary
Japan was overly focused on exhibition reviews and therefore was too topical and fragmen-
tary. Tominaga Sichi, Bijutsu hihy no mondai, Atorie 12, no. 9 (September 1935): p. 14.
28. Takeda Michitar, Tokush: Nihon no bijutsu hihy o kentsuru, Bijutsu tech no.
118 (October 1957): p. 63.
29. J. Thomas Rimer, Kinoshita Mokutar as Critic: Putting Meiji Art in Context, in
Modern Japanese Art and the West: International Symposium, ed. Meiji Bijutsu Gakkai, p. 282
(Tokyo: Ch kron bijutsu shuppan, 1992).
30. Aeba Kson, Kangyhakurankai shirtohy (3), Tokyo asahi shinbun, April 8, 1890,
p. 2. See also Takeda, Shinbun ni okeru bijutsu hihy no hensen, p. 28.
31.Aeba Kson, Kangyhakurankai shirtohy (5), Tokyo asahi shinbun, April 12,
1890, p. 2.
32. Aeba Kson, Kangyhakurankai shirtohy (12), Tokyo asahi shinbun, April 24,
1890, p. 2.
276|Mikiko Hirayama

33. For Hayashis biography, see Jzuka Taketoshi, Umi o wataru Ukiyoe (Tokyo: Bijutsu
kronsha, 1981).
34. Takayama Chogy, Geijutsu no kansa o ronzu, Taiy, September 5, 1899. See also
Nakamura, Bijutsu hihy no shidryoku, p. 234.
35.Kand gakujin (Iwamura Tru), Hihyka to gijutsuka, Bijutsu hyron no. 22
(November 7, 1899): p. 169170.
36. Nakamura, Bijutsu hihy no shidryoku, p. 236.
37. Bijutsu hyron published twenty-five issues and went out of publication in March 1900.
38. Hakkan no shui, Bijutsu hyron no. 1 (November 1897): pp. 34.
39. Mori Noboru, Bijutsu hyron kaisetsu, in Kindai bijutsu ssho 4 Bijutsu hyron
bessatsu, p. 19 (Tokyo: Yumani shob, 1991).
40.Hihy, Bijutsu hyron no. 3 (December 5, 1897): p. 22.
41. Ibid., p. 24.
42. Ibid., p. 23.
43.Zatsuroku, Bijutsu hyron no. 2 (November 20, 1897): p. 42.
44.Zakkan, Bijutsu hyron no. 3 (December 5, 1897): p. 35.
45. Nakamura, Bijutsu hihy no shidryoku, p. 237. Takeda Michitar insists that the
division of criticism into yga and Nihonga reveals that these two factions were at drastically
different levels of sophistication in the early twentieth century. According to him, criticism of
Nihonga had already reached maturation by the time the Bunten was founded, thanks to peo-
ple like Taki Setsuan (18731945) and Hamada Seiry (18811938). They taught Asian art his-
tory at Tokyo Imperial University and archaeology at Kyoto Imperial University, respectively,
and thus their critical commentary liberally adopted the terminology of Chinese aesthetics. As
indicated by their prominence, the world of Nihonga possessed a much larger pool of people
with solid understanding of the art than the world of yga. Yga criticism, by contrast, was yet
to go through more significant transformations after the foundation of the Bunten. Takeda,
Shinbun ni okeru bijutsu hihy no hensen, p. 5. However, kuma Toshiyuki challenges this
view by pointing out that Nihonga criticism was in fact still divided between technical com-
mentary by painters and the empirical, scholarly approach (ksh hihy). See kuma, 193040
nendai no Nihon, p. 65.
46. Takamura was the son of Japanese-style wood sculptor Takamura Kun (18521934).
He spent three years overseas during the 1900s. After his return to Japan he became known
as an extremely prolific poet as well as art critic. Kinoshita Mokutar contributed his work to
literary journals such as Subaru. He studied in France from 1921 to 1924.
47. Takamura Ktar, A Green Sun, in A Brief History of Imbecility: Poetry and Prose of
Takamura Ktar, trans. Sat Hiroaki, p. 182 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992).
This essay was originally published in Subaru 2, no. 4 (April 1910).
48. J. Thomas Rimer, Tokyo in Paris/Paris in Tokyo, in Paris in Japan: The Japanese
Encounter with European Painting, ed. Shji Takashina and J. Thomas Rimer with Gerald D.
Bolas, p. 60 (Tokyo: The Japan Foundation; St. Louis: Washington University Press, 1987).
49. Takamura Ktar, Bunten no chkoku, Jiji shinp (October 1913), in Takamura
Ktar zensh, vol. 5, p. 122 (Tokyo: Chikuma shob, 1994).
50.Kinoshita Mokutar, Kaiga to hihy to: Daigokai Bunten kan, Bijutsu shinp 11, no. 1
(November 17, 1911), in Kinoshita Mokutar zensh, vol. 7, p. 411 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
1981). The translation is from Rimer, Kinoshita Mokutar as Critic, p. 286.
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 277

51.Kinoshita Mokutar, Nihon gendai no yga no hihy ni tsuite, Subaru no. 5 (May 1,
1909), in Kinoshita Mokutar zensh vol. 7, pp. 122129 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1981).
52.Kinoshita, Kaiga to hihy to: Daigokai Bunten kan, p. 412.
53.Rimer, Kinoshita Mokutar as Critic, p. 284.
54.Yashiro studied with Bernard Berenson (18651959) and became a renowned Renais-
sance art specialist. Kojima, on the other hand, became affiliated with Heinrich Wlfflin
(18641945) in Germany. For more details about Kojima Kikuos art criticism, see Mikiko
Hirayama, The Restoration of Shajitsu: Kojima Kikuo and the Growth of Art Criticism in
Modern Japan (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2001).
55.Yashiro Yukio, Hensh yoji, Bijutsu shinp 15, no. 3 (January 1, 1916): p. 48.
56.Ibid.
57.Kojima Kikuo, Hensh yoji, Bijutsu shinp 15, no. 5 (March 1, 1916): p. 29.
58.Yashiro, Hensh yoji, p. 185.
59.Kojima, Hensh yoji, p. 29.
60. kuma, Meiji chki ikno bijutsu hihyron I, p. 67.
61. For more details about the reshuffling of the Imperial Art Academy, see Yga no dran
Showa 10nen: Teiten kaiso to ygadan (exhibition catalogue) (Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan
Teien Art Museum, 1992).
62. For instance, Seisen jgunga ten (Exhibition of holy war painting) was held in March
1939, followed by the first Seisen bijutsuten (Exhibition of holy war art) in July 1939. The first
officially commissioned war documentary paintings were produced in 1939. The dispatch of
painters to the battlefield began in 1942.
63. See Arishima Ikuma, Hihyteki seishin no ketsub jidai, Atorie 8, no. 7 (July 1931):
p. 2.
64. The political affiliation of each art periodical is not clear in most cases and requires
further investigation.
65. Bijutsu hihy no kenky, Atorie 12, no. 9 (September 1935): p. 2. The first series in
Atorie from September to December 1935 included fifteen essays by leading art and literary
critics, artists, and aestheticians in four installments. The second series in 1936 was in eight
installments with articles by twelve artists and critics.
66. Tokunaga Ikusuke, Hihy no hihy no mondai, Atorie 12, no. 11 (November 1935):
p. 6061. Tokunaga is known as one of the contributors to the important journal Bi hihy (Art
and criticism, 19301935), which was edited by Kyoto-based aesthetician Nakai Masakazu
(19001952).
67. Toyama Usabur, Tenrankai to hihy no mondai, Binokuni 7, no. 10 (October 1931):
p. 87.
68. For instance, see Yokokawa Sanka (Kiichir), Bijutsu hihy fushin jidai no kaib,
Bijutsu shinron 5, no. 4 (April 1930): pp. 134136. The artists voice regarding this issue is well
represented in the essay by Kimura Shhachi, Senmon de nakereba, Atorie 8, no. 4 (April
1931): pp. 46.
69.Sawa and Araki studied French literature and English literature, respectively, at
Waseda University, while Tokunaga was a Japanese literature major at Hsei University. Yoko-
kawa originally studied painting. hiras academic background is currently unknown.
70. Aoyagi Masahiro et al., Gendai bijutsu zadankai, Atorie 7, no. 3 (May 1935): p. 141.
Araki Sueo, Egaka Kazuhiko, and Usugane Kenjir were the rest of the discussants.
278|Mikiko Hirayama

71. Tominaga, Bijutsu hihy no mondai, p. 14. Tominaga was one of the prominent
scholar-critics of the day who taught art history at Tokyo Imperial University, his alma mater.
72.Kawaji Ryk, Bijutsu hihy narumono, Atorie 12, no. 9 (September 1935): p. 5.
Kawaji was a poet particularly known for his vernacular poetry. He studied Asian art history
at the University of Paris.
73. Anonymous, Bijutsu hihy ka kykai, Bijutsu shinron 5, no. 12 (December 1930): p. 2.
74. Tominaga, Bijutsu hihy no mondai, p. 13.
75.Ibid.
76. hira Akira, Bijutsu hihy no kijun ni tsuite, Atorie 8, no. 8 (August 1931): p. 89.
77.Ibid.
78. Ibid., p. 90.
79. Aoyagi, et al., Gendai bijutsu zadankai, p. 144. The comment was made by Aoyagi
Masahiro.
80. Araki Sueo, Kagakuteki hihy ni tsuite (hihy no rearizumu), Atorie 12, no. 12
(December 1935): p. 2. Araki graduated from the Department of English Literature at Waseda
University in Tokyo. He was the editor-in-chief of the monthly journal Nichifutsu geijutsu (The
art of Japan and France), which was in publication from 1924 to 1928.
81. Ibid., p. 23.
82. Ibid., p. 3.
83.Ibid.
84. Sawa Hajime, Bijutsu hihy ni tsuite, Atorie 12, no. 10 (October 1935): p. 8.
85.Kawaji, Bijutsu hihy narumono, p. 4.
86. Ibid., p. 5.
87. Moriguchi Tari, Ichi bijutsu hihy ka no kokuhaku, Atorie 12, no. 9 (September
1935): p. 7. Moriguchi was an art historian who published important historical surveys of mod-
ern Japanese art, such as Bijutsu hachijnen (Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha, 1954). For further
information about his biography, see Akiyama Shinichi, Kindai chishikijin no seiy to Nihon:
Moriguchi Tari no sekai (Tokyo: Dseisha, 2007).
88. Moriguchi, Ichi bijutsu hihy ka no kokuhaku, p. 8.
89. Ibid., p. 7.
90. Sawa, Bijutsu hihy ni tsuite, p. 11; Araki, Kagakuteki hihy ni tsuite, p. 3. Accord-
ing to Kawata Akihisa, critics who were involved in the activities of the Communist Party
included hira Akira, shima Ryichi, and Ogawa Takei. See Kawata Akihisa, Yokokawa
Kiichir: Bijutsu to shakai, bijutsu no shakai, Kindai gasetsu no. 11 (2002): p. 21. It is unknown
at this point whether or not Araki Sueo was also affiliated with communism.
91. Araki, Kagakuteki hihy ni tsuite, p. 3.
92. Sawa, Bijutsu hihy ni tsuite, p. 8.
93. The Communist Party was an underground organization in Japan until 1945.
94. During the early 1930s, hira was an active contributor to proletarian journals such
as Puroretaria bijutsu (Proletarian art) and Seinen bijutsu (Youth art). According to Omuka
Toshiharu, hira was the only art critic known to have been directly affiliated with the pro-
letarian art movement. See Omuka Toshiharu, Bijutsu hihyka tachi no tj: Shakaiteki na
ninchi to bunka tsei, in Modanizumu/nashonarizumu: 1930 nendai nihon no geijutsu, ed.
Omuka Toshiharu and Mizukawa Tsutomu, p. 94 (Tokyo: Serika shob, 2003).
95. hira, Bijutsu hihy no kijun ni tsuite, p. 90.
 10. Japanese Art Criticism | 279

96. Though he did not contribute to the ongoing debate on the state of art criticism,
Kojima made this comment in one of his exhibition reviews from 1935. Kojima Kikuo, Tokyo
Asahi shinbun, August 31, 1935.
97. Tokunaga, Hihy no hihy no mondai, pp. 6164.
98. Araki, Kagakuteki hihy ni tsuite, p. 3.
99. Sawa, Bijutsu hihy ni tsuite, pp. 1011.
100. Shinkei Skr, Nihon bijutsu hihyka kykai no setsuritsu ni tsuite, Atorie 8, no.
3 (March 1931): pp. 136. The Japan Association of Art Critics was the first professional organi-
zation of critics.
101.Yokokawa Sanka (Kiichir), Bijutsu ni okeru hihyteki hegemony no shozai: Bijutsu
hihy no shakaiteki ninmu ni tsuite, Atorie 8, no. 2 (February 1931): pp. 4546.
102.Yokokawa Kiichir, Shakaigakuteki tka no hakken to bijutsuteki kachi no hyka,
Atorie 8, no. 3 (March 1931): p. 15.
103. Shinkei, Nihon bijutsu hihyka kykai no setsuritsu ni tsuite, p. 136.
104.Ibid.
105.Yokokawa analyzed the differences between philosophical criticism (tetsugakuteki
hihy) and materialist criticism (benshhteki hihy) at length, often referring to the theo-
ries of Georgii Plekhanov (18561918) in defense of the latter. See Yokokawa, Shakaigakuteki
tka, pp. 1619.
106. Hasumi Shigeyasu, Gendai gadan no ikizumari to bijutsu hihy no jiritsusei ni
tsuite, Fukk ch bijutsu no. 32 (March 1936): p. 8.
107.Ibid.
108. Ibid., p. 7.
109.Ibid.
110. Aoyagi et al., Gendai bijutsu zadankai, p. 141.
111. Ibid. Egawa began to publish art criticism shortly after graduating from Waseda
University in 1920. In 1947, he became a cofounder of the Japan Avant-Garde Artists Club
(Nihon Avangyarudo Bijutsuka Kurabu) with Takiguchi Shz (19031979), Fukuzawa Ichir
(18981992), Murai Masaaki (19051999), Okamoto Tar (19111996), and five others. Egawa
was also actively involved in professional organizations such as the Art Critics Union (Bijutsu
Hyron Kumiai) and the Art Critics Club (Bijutsu Hyron Kurabu) throughout the postwar
period.
112. Ibid., p. 144.
113. Ibid. This comment was by Egawa Kazuhiko.
114. Araki Sueo, Bijutsu bunka seisaku no konpon rinen: Asu e no seishin kz to sono
hsaku, Mizue no. 437 (April 1941): p. 386.
115. For more information about Japanese art during World War II, see Hariu Ichir, ed.,
Sens to bijutsu 19371945 (Tokyo: Kokusho kankkai, 2008); and Kawata Akihisa and Tano
Yasunori, Iwanami kindai nihon no bijutsu vol. 1: Imeji no nakano sens (Tokyo: Iwanami
shoten, 1996).
116.Ogawa Takei, Shintaisei to hihy no ichigenka, Atorie 17, no. 11 (October 1940):
p. 30. Ogawa originally studied yga at the Kawabata School of Art and ultimately became an
editor for art periodicals such as Aurto, Ch bijutsu, and Ek, and later wrote art criticism on
a regular basis as a guest contributor for the Mainichi shinbun.
117. Uemura Takachiyo, Hihy seishin ni tsuite, Atorie 17, no. 11 (October 1940): p. 28.
280|Mikiko Hirayama

118. Sawa Hajime, Atarashiki hihy seishin, Atorie 17, no. 11 (October 1940): p. 27. It is
beyond the scope of this chapter to address wartime art criticism fully. Contemporary journal
articles that offer valuable insight into the nature of critical discourse during the early 1940s
include Araki Sueo et al., Kokub kokka to bijutsu: Gaka wa nani o nasubekika, Mizue no. 434
(January 1941): p. 129139; and Tyama Takashi, Kessen to bijutsuka no kakugo, Bijutsu 1,
no. 1 (January 1944): pp. 26.
119.Ogawa, Shintaisei to hihy no ichigenka, p. 30.
120. Bijutsu techs impact was particularly profound. Not only did it offer a venue for
important postwar critics such as Nakahara Ysuke (1931) and Hariu Ichir (19252010), it
reached a wide group of future artists as the most commonly subscribed art periodical in high
school libraries across the country. See Araki Shinya, Tsukurareru kosei: Tokyo Geijutsu
Daigaku to juken sangy no bijutsu kyiku (MA thesis, University of Tokyo, 2005). http://
zeroken.org/thesis/honbun_02.html (accessed August 24, 2008).
121. See International Association of Art Critics Japanese Section, AICA Japan: Koku-
sai bijutsu hyronka renmei Nihon shibu ni tsuite, April 2004. http://www.aicajapan.com/
index.htm (accessed July 21, 2008) for the full roster of the founders. Today, the majority of the
170 members of AICA Japan are museum curators and university faculty members; this mem-
bership alone seems to indicate the changing demographics of art critics as well as the complex
intertwining of scholarly and journalistic criticism in postwar Japan.
122. See Mitsuda, Riarizumu rons shiron: Nihon sengo bijutsu hihy (1), pp. 6970.
PARTIII

Individual Forms of Expression

 Shu
ji Tanaka

11 Sculpture
Translated by Toshiko McCallum

From Edo to Meiji: the Birth of Sculpture

Where to begin this narrative?

This has never been an easy question to answer, since the history of modern Japanese
sculpture has generally been defined in terms of the sculpture produced under the influ-
ence of Auguste Rodin (18401917), beginning in about 1908. Nevertheless, it is reason-
able to state that as far back as the late nineteenth century, substantial changes in the art
of sculpture occurred. From the opening of Japan in the Meiji period, beginning in 1868,
such changes were due to influences from the West, but fresh trends had in fact already
been developing in the Edo period, so that such tendencies in modern Japanese sculpture
were ready to be undertaken at the moment of this great change in society.
The term art itself and such related concepts came into existence in the Meiji period,
and the term sculpture (chkoku), in the meaning used in the West, was created at the
time of the establishment of the Kbu Art School, established by the Ministry of Engineer-
ing in 1876. Western-style sculpture was taught there by an Italian instructor. In the case
of the term chkoku, however, the two written characters used to create this new term,
ch and koku, already existed in the Edo period. At that time they meant carve and
chisel, respectively. This shift of meaning raises another question: Who should be con-
sidered sculptors?
The backgrounds of those important figures who became known as sculptors from
the Meiji period onward were in fact quite varied. Several were Buddhist sculptors, among
them Takamura Kun (18521934), Yamada Kisai (18641901), and Shinkai Taketar
(18681927). Others, such as Asahi Gyokuzan (18431923), Takenouchi Hisakazu
(Kyichi) (18571916), and Ishikawa Kmei (18521913) were ivory carvers who made
netsuke and similar objects. The reason Naganuma Moriyoshi (18571942), who studied
sculpture in Venice, wanted to become a sculptor was because he had observed a craftsman
decorating swords as a boy and so became interested in sculpture. Yonehara Unkai (1869
1925) and Kitamura Shikai (18711927) originally were carpenters, and Yamazaki Chun
(18671954), who studied together with Yonehara under Takamura Kun, had been born
into a family that made ceramics, and he often frequented the homes of carpenters and
doll makers in his youth before entering into formal training as a sculptor of Buddhist
images. Moreover, Tawara Kseki (18681935), originally a stonemason, came to study
284|Shji Tanaka

under Takamura Kun with the intention of becoming a sculptor. As these examples show,
artists and artisans from many fields became sculptors in the Meiji period.
Viewed from this perspective, we can take a fresh look at the Edo period, which has
normally been considered a period of decline in the history of traditional Japanese sculp-
ture, usually defined in terms of the creation of Buddhist statuary. Carpenters richly deco-
rated the architecture of shrines and temples; tusk carvers created diverse human and
animal forms in a space small enough to hold in ones hand; stonemasons carved guardian
lion dogs redolent with dynamic volume; doll makers were able to capture the delicate
expressions of the human body by kneading clay and adding color to enhance these fig-
ures. I believe that the legacy of such skills must be mentioned when considering the his-
tory of modern Japanese sculpture.
Another aspect of the tradition that should be noted is the wide geographical spread of
those who practiced the art of sculpture during this period. Yamada from Fukui, Shinkai
from Yamagata, Naganuma from Iwate, Yonehara from Shimane, Kitamura from Nagano,
Yamazaki from Fukuoka, and Tawara from Chiba, all these artists came from widely
divergent areas. Of the names mentioned above, only Takamura, Asahi, Takenouchi, and
Ishikawa were born in the city of Edo itself. This factor should not be overlooked, since
most studies of Japanese art history tend to assume that such work was carried out in the
areas of Nara, Kyoto, and Edo. And the fact that, in terms of sculpture, much activity was
eventually transferred to Tokyo relates in turn to the general situation of the arts in the
Meiji period and after.
The environment for sculpture in the Meiji period offered a strong and fresh oppor-
tunity for artisans throughout the country, who had been involved in the creation of such
a variety of three-dimensional objects utilizing a variety of materials, techniques, themes,
and styles, to transform themselves from craftsmen to artists, in the Western sense of
the word. In other words, this tendency in the Meiji period for a variety of artisans to rise
to the challenge of Western conceptions of sculpture becomes the starting point for the
history of modern Japanese sculpture. In this new and complex environment, inherited
habits from tradition and the adoption of new ideas and challenges from the West were
mixed together in various ways by the sculptors of that generation.
Many works of sculpture in the Meiji period were displayed at domestic and foreign
expositions, and those expositions, so important at the time, became in turn the place
where new definitions of sculpture were able to develop. Asahi Gyokuzan, an artist active
in these expositions, was especially skilled at creating minute skeleton figures (fig. 11.1),
and his desire to observe an object in a new way by studying anatomy from a Western
scientific perspective allowed him to create a kind of realistic and proportionally accurate
expression quite dissimilar from works created in the Edo period. Creators of sculpted
images from many different fields, including such outstanding figures as Takamura Kun,
joined a group called the Society of Carvers and Craftsmen (Tokyo Chkkai) in Tokyo,
established by Asahi, Ishikawa Kmei, and others in 1887. The membership of this society
reveals the diversity of what was regarded as sculpture in the Meiji period.
However, while various craft traditions were absorbed into the world of sculpture, oth-
ers were removed from that category. For example, the living doll (iki ningy) tradition
was excluded. These dolls, life-sized figures dressed in real kimonos, were posed in scenes
illustrating popular stories. Many of these were created for use in the kind of popular
Figure 11.1. Asahi Gyokuzan, Human Skeleton, Meiji period. Antler, h. 26.0 cm. The University Art
Museum, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.
286|Shji Tanaka

entertainment enjoyed by the general public from the end of the Edo period into the early
years of Meiji. And these figures had artistic merit; for example, the very realistic expres-
sion of the dolls created by Matsumoto Kisabur (18251891) and others proved influential
for Takamura Kun. Nevertheless, doll making, metal working, and ceramics were gradu-
ally placed in the category of craft work as the Meiji period progressed, and this category
of craft work was created in much the same way as was the category of sculpture.
One of the reasons for such categorizations was a conscious intention to create a his-
tory of Japanese sculpture that would be consistent with the history of Western sculp-
ture, since the very term sculpture (chkoku) itself had been defined in terms of the new
imported Western concepts in Meiji. Indeed, the creation of all Japanese art history was
formulated along the same lines. Therefore, when the Western historical perspective
which had come to consider ancient Greek and Roman sculpture as the classic ideal, rep-
resenting the beginning of the great traditions of sculpturewas applied to Japan, ancient
Buddhist sculpture was now seen as the equivalent of that Western ideal. And because of
this approach, the history of Japanese sculpture, until quite recently, was generally con-
ceived of as the history of Buddhist sculpture. As a result, other three-dimensional forms
were excluded from this new concept of sculpture in Meiji Japan. Indeed, such terms
as ornament and doll, terms that already existed for so many other traditional three-
dimensional genres, now seemed occasionally insulting when applied to the works of those
who now came to be termed sculptors.

The First Sculptors: Space and Bronze Monuments

The time when sculpture in the modern sense was beginning to develop in the early Meiji
period was a prosperous time for the export of ivory and other similar works. But at the
end of the Edo period there was a movement by the government to suppress Buddhism by
separating Buddhism and Shint. Even though both religions had been practiced almost as
a single religion by the general population until that time, the imperialist movement tried
to make Shint the national religion and reject Buddhism, which had been imported from
the Asian continent. Such activities as the destruction of Buddhist images, now ascer-
tained to be figures of foreign gods, or of efforts to change their appearance into Shint
figures, were related to an ultimately futile effort to purify Shint from foreign influences.
These efforts might be considered as one type of vandalism. In the end, however, such
activities represented quite a negative tendency, as many valuable Buddhist works of sculp-
ture and temple structures were destroyed or sold. But despite this destruction, such con-
tradictions in the area of the creative arts created a significant sense of tension that led to
the birth of sculptors in the Meiji period.
According to Takamura Kun, whose lineage went back through many generations of
Buddhist sculptors in the Edo period, the occupation of a Buddhist sculptor could now no
longer be sustained because of the decline in the demand for Buddhist images. He encoun-
tered a case, even in the early years of Meiji, when splendid works of Buddhist sculpture
were put on sale at miserable prices. And, more generally, the drastic changes in the social
system at the time of the Meiji Restoration could not help but greatly influence the work
done by artisans, who had formerly made their living in these fields during the Edo period.
 11. Sculpture|287

In such a situation, artisans now began to find a means, through their own efforts
and activities, to create objects that could be exported, especially ivory figures and metal
works, and such objects became a source of considerable income for them. These artisans
not only benefited economically, but they also came to learn about the taste of Western
buyers and to adjust their work to meet that demand. When Takamura Kun became
involved in creating such objects, he had all sorts of new ideas. By moving away from a
Buddhist taste, he wrote, I will try something new, like sketching, observing that for a
human being, it is better to have a tall and slender figure.1
For a person such as Kun, the opening of the Kbu Art School in 1876 was extremely
important, as he yearned to study the techniques of Western modeling and plaster
work taught at the school. Three Italian teachers were invited to teach in the schools pro-
gram. The course on sculpture was taught by Vincenzo Ragusa (18411927), originally
from Sicily.
While it is generally believed that Ragusa merely taught the most orthodox styles of
Western sculpture, I believe he should be given a more positive evaluation. After arriving
in Japan, he produced works of his own depicting the common people in the streets, such
as a carpenter with a tattoo on his back and women wearing their everyday clothes, as well
as doing portraits of politicians. These works of his were not merely images of Japanese
subjects created through his Western visual sense, but they also transmitted something
of the inner life of his subjects. The nature of Ragusas style may be related to the impor-
tant Italian movement of verismo, in which artists dealt positively with social themes
and strove to express directly a sense of their society as it actually existed at that time.
It is therefore important to consider that the earliest Western sculpture introduced into
Japan was related to this contemporary movement in Italy. The graduation work of kuma
Ujihiro (18561934), who was ranked as Ragusas top student, was a copy of the statue
Spartaco by Vincenzo Vela (18201891), a sculptor of the Italian verismo movement.
kuma, who was born into a rich farming family in Saitama Prefecture and who had
been raised in the cultural milieu of the Edo period, went on to study in Paris and Rome
and subsequently became a representative Western-style sculptor of the Meiji period. His
works clearly show a desire to represent human beings from his own times, and he made
every attempt to realize their innate humanity as much as possible. This type of stylistic
tendency can be seen in one of his representative works, A Monument to mura Masujir
(see Plate 18), completed in 1893 and the first full-scale Western-style monumental sculp-
ture created in Japan.
This statue commemorating mura (18251869), one of the heroes of the Meiji Resto-
ration and the founder of the modern Japanese army, was created for display at the Yasu-
kuni Shrine and was constructed in 1869 to honor Japanese soldiers who had laid down
their lives for their country. Gradually, however, Yasukuni became closely connected with
Japanese militarism, although, since horse races and circuses were held in the outer gar-
dens of the shrine during the Meiji period, it also possessed at that time the atmosphere
of a place of entertainment for the general public. Placed on the central axis of this great
space, this statue, about three meters tall, was set on a pedestal close to nine meters in
height. The pedestal has a stone base and column of cast iron, with an epitaph to mura
engraved on the surface of the column. Such a monumental sculpture at the center of this
important park must have captured the attention of ordinary Japanese citizens, who would
288|Shji Tanaka

have seen this as an example of visual space created in the Western manner. Those visiting
the park could look carefully at the statue from a distance, or at close proximity.
The most important aspect of this work of sculpture, and of its installation, was that
until then there had never been in the history of Japanese art a statue commemorating a
particular individual placed in a large public space where it could be widely viewed. Of
course, such a practice was long common in the West. Indeed, portraiture of any kind in
Japan was very limited compared to the Western traditions, and most portraits that were
created were made for Buddhist and other private contexts. From this perspective, this
monument to mura created a new means of stylistic expression and gave the public a new
way of looking at art.
Changes in this new age were not only found in Western-style sculpture. In 1893, the
same year in which the Monument to mura Masujir was completed, a number of wood
carvings, later to become important in the history of modern Japanese sculpture, were
exhibited at the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago. They included, among others,
a polychrome sculpture called Mahesvara, Goddess of Art (Gigeiten), 214.5 centimeters
tall, by Takenouchi Hisakazu, who had studied methods of carving traditional Buddhist
sculpture in Nara. Another important work was A Wooden Relief Plate Seated Avalokites
vara Bodhisattva with Pendant Legs (Ukibori Kannon bosatsu kiz), which was created by
Ishikawa Kmei and showed the figure of Kannon, the Buddhist deity, sitting cross-legged.
Yamada Kisai created a group of figures representing the horses of medieval warriors, A
Wooden Relief Plate Tale of Heiji (Ukibori Heiji monogatari zu), and Takamura Kun
himself presented his Aged Monkey (Ren) (fig. 11.2).

Figure 11.2. Takamura Kun,

Aged Monkey, 1893. Wood
(Japanese horse chestnut),
h. 108.5 cm. Tokyo National
Museum.
 11. Sculpture|289

Aged Monkey is a work that presents an animal of almost human size sitting on a rock,
carved from a piece of wood from a large horse chestnut tree. The monkey holds an eagle
feather in his hand, has a raised shoulder and a bent upper body, and faces diagonally
upwards, looking toward the space where an eagle has flown away. With his eyes focused
in the distance, the sculpture manages to embrace the surrounding area, thereby creating
a new kind of dynamic compositional space.
While teaching at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, Takamura Kun made a number
of wooden models for important works that were later cast in bronze. These include the
monument showing the famous medieval warrior Kusunoki Masashige (12941336) on
horseback, now at the plaza in the Imperial Palace grounds in Tokyo, and the monument
to a heroic, romantic figure of the Meiji Restoration, Saig Takamori (18271877), in ordi-
nary clothing and with his dog, now in Ueno Park in Tokyo. The Saig Takamori statue
was put on display the year after the original model was made, but, even though the model
for the Kusunoki Masashige statue was prepared in 1893, the actual statue was not com-
pleted and installed until 1900. Okazaki Sessei (18541921), a professor who specialized in
metal casting at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and who worked on the casting of these two
monuments, traveled to the United States to study the casting process for a complicated
sculpture such as a horseman. Japanese of this period who faced the challenge of making
large-scale monuments had to deal with both the new experience of creating a model and
then casting it in bronze.
The Monument to mura Masujir required eleven years from the original planning
proposition to completion. kuma Ujihiro, who created the model, learned not only mod-
eling but also the relevant casting techniques when he studied in France and Italy. The
statue was cast, using the most advanced techniques, at the army artillery factory, making
use of kumas knowledge. Nevertheless, the people who carried out the actual produc-
tion were ordinary artisans who used the traditional casting techniques of the Edo period.
Although small details cannot be observed from a distance, careful examination reveals
their excellent skill in minute execution of details, such as a sword sheath and decora-
tions on a uniform in sections of the Monument to mura Masujir and the Monument to
Prince Arisugawa Taruhito. The latter statue was cast, based on a model by kuma Ujihiro,
at the army artillery factory and placed on display in 1903. At that time, the name of the
casting specialist, rather than the sculptor who prepared the model, was given, and this
omission may indicate that the status of the sculptor was not yet generally recognized.
Takamura Kuns wooden models were created in concert with other sculptors. For
example, Got Sadayuki (18491903), an expert in animal sculpture, made the horse for
the Kusunoki statue and also created the hunting dog in the Saig sculpture. Got also
became a painter after a French military officer recognized his talent when he was in mili-
tary service, and he subsequently studied lithography and photography as well. He under-
took to learn the art of sculpture from Kun and attempted to achieve absolute realism
through his close study of anatomy. As a new kind of multitalented artist to emerge in the
Meiji era, he must have provided a considerable stimulus to his teacher Kun, who himself
had been trained the world of artisans.
These historical creations were produced on a very large scale, rare in Japanese sculp-
ture until that time, and they reveal a strong awareness of the principles of Western
sculpture. These changes, for the artists, allowed for a new kind of creativity in a changed
290|Shji Tanaka

environment, and for those who looked at such sculpture, such works gave them a sense
that because of the scale involved, there was a greater need for physical distance to see such
large-scale works properly. Natsume Sseki (18671916), one of the foremost novelists of
Meiji Japan, who had seen many such works of art while in London, wrote that such an
experience was a new one for the Japanese.2

Naturalism in Sculpture

The sculpture section of the Kbu Art School, which trained a number of Western-style
sculptors including kuma Ujihiro and Fujita Bunz (18611934), was closed in 1882, a
year the entire school was shut down. When the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (the predecessor
of the current Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) was opened in 1889, only
Japanese-style painting (Nihonga) was taught in the painting section, and there were no
classes in Western-style sculpture in the sculpture section, which had as its main instruc-
tors Kun and Takenouchi Hisakazu. Countering these efforts, a group of Western-style
artists organized the Meiji Fine Arts Society (Meiji Bijutsukai); among the sculptors who
joined were Naganuma Moriyoshi and kuma Ujihiro.
In 1896, however, the Western-style painter Kuroda Seiki (18661924), who had stud-
ied in France, began a class in Western-style painting (yga) at the Tokyo School of Fine
Arts, and two years later Naganuma began teaching Western-style sculpture shortly after
Okakura Tenshin was fired from his position as president because of various factional rifts
in the school. Two graduates who had completed the sculpture course at the Tokyo School
of Fine Arts in 1893, mura Seigai (18681927) and Shirai Uzan (18641928), made strong
efforts to establish classes specifically in Western sculpture at the school. Shirai later stud-
ied in Europe and produced realistic works of sculpture. mura became active as an art
critic and eventually well known as an historian of Asian art.
mura had learned about the aesthetic philosophy of the then-celebrated German
philosopher Eduard von Hartmann (18421906) from another eminent novelist and intel-
lectual of the period, Mori gai (18621922), who himself had studied in Germany, and
he now made use of some of Hartmanns concepts. mura categorized the plastic arts into
pure objects and applied objects. In an article he published in 1895, he included sculp-
ture in the class of pure objects and proposed a new term, combining carving (ch) and
modeling (so), rather than the already existing term chkoku, since the etymology of that
term expressed only carving.3
Although today the older term, chkoku, is more common than chso, the fact that
mura wished to provide such a precise definition that included modeling technique is an
indication of the importance he attached to modeling in defining sculpture as a pure art,
and his ideas had a strong influence on the development of Japanese sculpture from that
time on. Such a perspective seemed to offer a confirmation of a specific identity for those
sculptors who were attempting to escape from the world of the artisan. By the same token,
this differentiation produced a hierarchical consciousness that would come to define craft
as an applied art, and this attitude in turn became a factor in the loss of diversity in Japa-
nese modern sculpture, which originally developed, as I noted before, from the work of the
various kinds of artisans described above.
 11. Sculpture|291

Furthermore, mura indicated certain directions for his fellow sculptors at the time
with regard to what true sculpture should be expected to express. In attempting to achieve
this goal, he worked hard to establish a department of modeling at the Tokyo School of
Fine Arts. In addition, he and Shirai Uzan made efforts in 1897 to found an association
for their colleagues, the Society of Young Sculptors (Seinen Chsokai). Both actively sup-
ported as well the formation of the Society for Sculptors (Chsokai), which was formed
by graduates and students of the same school in 1899. mura contributed a preface to the
catalogue of their first exhibition in 1900, in which he stated that nature, a whole world
of humans, animals, and plants, are inexhaustible for art in such a variety of forms, and
its profound law of cause and effect, a statement that indicated precisely the nature of the
efforts made so sincerely by those young sculptors participating in the exhibition.
In the same year, 1900, the Museikai (literally, the voiceless society), an association
for painters in the Japanese style (Nihonga), was founded by Hirafuku Hyakusui (1877
1933) and Yki Somei (18751957). mura served as their intellectual leader. The activi-
ties of both associations ran parallel with each other. Both involved a new emphasis on
naturalism, in contradistinction to the idealism advocated by Okakura Tenshin and such
Nihonga artists as Hashimoto Gah (18351908) and Yokoyama Taikan (18681958).
The term naturalism in Japanese modern art is not directly related to the literary
movement that sought out the realities and the true nature of humanity in that society.
This movement arose in France during the late nineteenth century and flourished in
Japan at the beginning of twentieth century. Rather, naturalism in Japanese modern art
is considered to be a manifestation of the ideas of two famous literary figures, Tokutomi
Soh (18631957) and Kitamura Tkoku (18681894), who argued that we can capture
human emotions and the inner life by a minute observation of the various expressions
and actions that people display. The purpose of artists in the Society for Sculptors and the
Museikai was to observe nature in a broadly defined sense, including the human activities
they witnessed, and then to express what they had seen. This movement denied traditional
forms and created works with new subject matter not included among already existing
themes, such as historical and mythological stories and representations of nature, includ-
ing flowers, birds, and landscapes. These factors prepared the way for the subsequent
development in the next generation of Japanese modern sculpture, and so, in that sense,
it can be said that naturalism was significant movement in the development of modern
sculpture in Japan.
In the exhibitions given by the Society for Sculptors, young artists such as Watanabe
Osao (18741952), who had studied modeling at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and Taka-
mura Ktar (18831956), the eldest son of Kun, exhibited their works. The majority
of these were whole-body figures or busts, but looking over the published illustrations,
it appears that these do not seem to go beyond what appear to be studies. Nevertheless
these works, however imperfect, do reflect the artists aims to reproduce carefully the
forms of nature, even going so far as to indicate the wrinkles on each face and the gestures
of the fingers.
Around the same time, there was another movement seeking a similar kind of expres-
siveness led by sculptors of a slightly older generation than the young artists who exhib-
ited their works at the Society for Sculptors. The Group of Three-Three (Sansankai, with
nine members, three times three) included sculptors in wood, including such figures as
292|Shji Tanaka

Yonehara Unkai, Yamazaki Chun, Shinkai Taketar, and Numata Ichiga (18731954),
who learned the techniques of sculpture in the Western style from Ogura Sjir (1845
1913), who himself had been trained by Ragusa. Afterwards, Shinkai became one of the
most important Western-style sculptors in modern Japan, and Numata, who later studied
at Svres, in France, was to become the leading figure in ceramic sculpture. The member-
ship in the society continued to increase, and eventually the group changed its name to the
Group of Three-Four (Sanshikai, with twelve members, three times four). The members of
the group practiced creating in their studios subjects based on human emotions, produc-
ing works with such specific designations as anger or death. Then they would exchange
critiques among themselves.
Two important sculptors, Niiro Chnosuke (18681954) and Shinkai Taketar, joined
Okakura Tenshins new association, which he established in 1898, shortly after his dis-
missal from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. There were, however, fewer possibilities for
activities by sculptors in the Japan Art Institute (Nihon Bijutsuin) than for the painters,
several of whom became famous artists in the Nihonga style. Nevertheless, a project spon-
sored by the institute to conserve older works of Buddhist sculpture was supervised by
Niiro; these activities later were re-established independent of the institute and continue
today. These conservation activities were based on the principle of preserving the original
state of each work rather than relying too much on speculative reconstruction, and as a
result, the group played a significant role in transmitting the forms of ancient and medi-
eval Japanese sculpture into the present. Although, strictly speaking, this is not a creative
activity, such efforts should not be overlooked, since these efforts preserved the images of
Buddhist sculpture for future generations.
Shinkai Taketar, who belonged both to the Group of Three-Three and to the Japan Art
Institute, was born into a family of Buddhist sculptors in Yamagata Prefecture. For a time
he became a soldier, and, while in the army, his talent as a sculptor was recognized. After
studying under Got Sadayuki, he finished a work in 1899 that won him fame, a wooden
model for A Monument to Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa, which depicted an important
member of the imperial family at the time. The monument was cast in bronze in 1903 and
has now been placed next to the Craft Gallery of the National Museum of Modern Art in
Tokyo. Prince Yoshihisa had been a division commander of the army and died from malaria
at the front in Taiwan during the Sino-Japanese War (18941895), in which Shinkai him-
self served.
In the following year Shinkai traveled to see the famous Paris World Exposition of
1900 and took the opportunity to study with Ernst Herter (18461917), an important aca-
demic sculptor in Berlin. Shinkai returned to Tokyo in 1902 and joined a new group, the
Pacific Painting Society (Taiheiy Gakai), that had been founded by a group of Western-
style painters. The group started a sculpture workshop, where Shinkai and his friend and
colleague Kitamura Shikai taught a number of important young sculptors, including Hori
Shinji (18901978) and Nakahara Teijir (18881921).
Shinkai himself exhibited a large nude figure, titled Bathing (Yuami), at the first exhi-
bition sponsored by the Ministry of Education (popularly called Bunten) in 1907. This work
is often regarded as his masterpiece, and it is considered a key example of capturing in a
work of sculpture a real sense of Japanese femininity, characterized by elegance and even
a touch of sensuousness, all expressed through a fine mastery of the Western sculptural
 11. Sculpture|293

tradition. Shinkai continued to experiment in various directions, producing Buddhist

subjects and everyday scenes, using skillful modeling, wood carving, three-dimensional
forms, and embossing techniques. One of his celebrated sculptures, belonging to a cat-
egory he terms floating world sculptures (ukiyo chkoku), first exhibited in 1912, has as
its subject a man and a woman escaping from their pursuers because of their forbidden
love (fig. 11.3), a representation based on the theme of a drama by the famous playwright
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (16531724), active in the early Edo period. This work, showing
the couple arm-in-arm and walking under a single umbrella in the snow, captured the
famous moment when the two were headed toward their deaths. His effective design of a
composition in space utilized for this purpose the expanse of the umbrella surface.
The starting point for Shinkais approach to his art derived from the Asian-based
sense of naturalism advocated by his friend mura Seigai, mentioned above. Shinkai fur-
ther developed in his art a fresh perspective that might be seen as a combination of social
realism and humanism, two qualities rare in the history of the Japanese arts. He wrote that
I understand sculpture in a broad sense. . . . We should work in a large, a wide perspec-
tive,4 We can assume that these words were related to his hope for the possibility of diver-
sity in Japanese sculpture, continuing the varied traditions that characterized the Edo
period, but on the whole this kind of attitude has remained rare among Japanese sculptors.

Figure 11.3. Shinkai Taketar, Warming

Their Frozen Hands (Umekawa and Chbei,
characters from the play The Courier for
Hell by Chikamatsu Monzaemon), 1912.
Plaster, h. 53.6 cm. The bronze version is
in Yamagata Museum of Art.
294|Shji Tanaka

This is doubtless because artists after this period considered only two standards as appli-
cable to their own development: traditional Buddhist sculpture and the works of Rodin. By
doing so, they attempted to define sculpture in as limited a sense as possible.

The Influence of Rodin

The first Bunten of 1907, where Shinkai Taketar exhibited his Bathing, was the first
national exhibition of art, modeled after the French national Salon. Sculpture represented
the third category of works to be exhibited, after Nihonga and Western-style painting.
Ogiwara Morie (18791910), who had just returned from his studies in France, had a half-
length sculpture of a muscular man titled Mongaku selected for the second Bunten of
1908, where it took the third prize. Ogiwara, born to a farming family in Nagano, first
studied Western-style painting at an art school in Tokyo, then moved to the United States
in 1901, working there to make enough money to travel to France, where he planned to
continue his study of painting. Two years after he arrived in France, he saw Rodins famous
statue The Thinker, and on the basis of that encounter, he decided to become a sculptor.
After a brief trip back to the United States, he returned to France and made an intensive
study of Rodins work.
Both Ogiwaras own work and his writings, in which he passionately discussed his
admiration for Rodin, greatly impressed his Japanese audience. At the same time, Ogiwara
was deeply impressed by the Buddhist sculpture of ancient Japan. As a result, his own
works often show a characteristic serenity that differed considerably from Rodins rich
eroticism. In fact, it has often been observed that many painters and sculptors who studied
in Europe tended to disregard such excessive richness after their return to Japan. Ogiwara
left one masterpiece, a female nude statue he simply called Woman (Onna), before he died
at thirty. His life and work, overlapping with that of Rodin, exerted a strong influence on
the younger sculptors who followed him.
The movement called Rodinisme, introduced by Ogiwara and his friend Takamura
Ktar, both of whom served as the movements leading advocates, established what was
to become the fundamental standard for modern sculpture in Japan, as mentioned above.
In contradistinction to the view prevalent in previous generations, which attached much
importance to the careful treatment of external forms, those who followed the principles
of Rodinisme believed that sculptors could not express inner power and life through
these traditional ways of expression; rather, the true aim of sculpture was precisely to
express these unseen qualities themselves. The traces of the sculptors hand can be seen
on the rough surface texture, and in many works there is an emphasis on suggesting the
emotions of the artist as well as the actual qualities of the material. In addition to such
actual sculptural expressions, Rodinisme also brought a new vocabulary to Japan appro-
priate for the discussion of sculpture. French terms that were frequently used to charac-
terize Rodins sculpture, such as masse (katamari), volume (ry), mouvement (dsei), and
plan (men), were translated into Japanese by Takamura Ktar, a superb poet as well as a
sculptor. Because of this, sculpture came to be discussed with this new vocabulary rather
than with the terms employed in the painting world or using the technical terms employed
by artisans.
 11. Sculpture|295

In November of 1910, directly after Ogiwaras death, the influential magazine Shira
kaba (White birch) published a special issue on Rodin and his work. Shirakaba had been
founded only months before by a group of literary people and intellectuals, including such
figures as Mushanokji Saneatsu (18851976) and Yanagi Setsu (18891961), who later
became major contributors to interwar Japanese culture. Their White Birch Society intro-
duced new currents in Western culture that appealed to them, allowing for an enthusiastic
reception of Rodin and other artists such as Czanne and van Gogh by the younger gen-
eration. The editors of the magazine introduced these Western artists as if they represented
the embodiment of the modern, individualistic self, those qualities they wished to emulate
themselves. In such a context, it was no wonder that Rodin was seen in Japan as an exem-
plification of a person with just such a character.
Members of the society sent as a gift a series of ukiyo-e woodblock prints to Rodin
shortly after the special issue mentioned above was published, and in the following year
Rodin himself sent three of his own works to Japan in return. In the issue of Shirakaba for
February 1912, one writer gave a description of the arrival of these works, with details of
the exciting scene when they went to the harbor to receive them, using both the train and a
jinrikisha. The group gathered at the house of one of their members to admire what Rodin
had sent them. The fact that Rodin, an artist they so much respected, had responded so
quickly was regarded as a highly significant event. The arrival of these works of Rodin can
be considered a turning point in the history of modern sculpture in Japan.
A number of painters and sculptors also contributed to Shirakabas special issue on
Rodin, including Shinkai Taketar and Takamura Ktar. Shinkai had already seen the
great retrospective exhibition of Rodins work held in Paris in 1900. Takamura, who had
learned the technique of wood sculpture from his father Kun, was first fascinated with
the French masters work when he saw a photograph of The Thinker during his studies at
the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Takamura later studied in New York, London, and Paris;
when he returned to Japan in 1909, he began to write art criticism as well. His abilities as a
writer had already been recognized because of the quality of the poetry he wrote during his
school days, and indeed Takamura went on to become one of the most important poets of
his period writing in the modern style. Through his writings, he encouraged the activities
of Ogiwara Morie, whom he had met abroad. By the same token, Takamura wrote force-
fully about the artistic stagnation he found in the existing circles of sculpture in Japan.
Takamura wrote a review titled A Last Glance at the Third Art Exhibition of the Min-
istry of Education of the exhibition held in 1909, in which two works of Ogiwara had been
accepted, Worker (Rdsha) (fig. 11.4) and A Portrait of Hj Torakichi, a hat dealer who
was an associate of the sculptors older brother. In this review, Takamura describes how
he walked rapidly through the exhibition, glancing quickly at the works displayed there,5
much like the White Birch Society members had done when they received the works of
Rodin. This attitude reveals the extent to which this was a period of change that would lead
toward a new democracy of feeling, one which in turn would bring about a change in the
exhibition system, as well as new perspectives for viewing and interpreting sculpture those
changes would came to allow for.
In 1916 Takamura Ktar published The Words of Rodin (Rodin no kotoba), an influ-
ential book that became a virtual bible for young people desiring to become sculptors; its
influence continued even into the second half of the twentieth century. Takamura selected
296|Shji Tanaka

Figure 11.4. Ogiwara

Morie, Worker, 1909.
Plaster, h. 107.0 cm.
Rokuzan Art Museum.

Rodins own words from the French sculptors own publications, such as Cathedrals of
France and other sources, translating and compiling these for his book. Indeed, this kind
of anthology probably only appeared in Japan. While the collection was probably created
as a result of the enthusiasm of Takamura, who wanted to transmit the authentic voice of
the French master to those readers who wished to hear it, the creation of such a book may
well be related to the particular nature of the Japanese artistic practice that often combines
the written and the visual in a single whole.
In 1915, when Takamura first began publishing his translations of Rodins essays in
magazines, World War I was already under way; in fact, the Germans had bombed Reims,
Rodins favorite cathedral, six months earlier. The situation in the European art world
during the war years, including Rodins activities as a patriot, was thoroughly reported in
Japanese art magazines. His death in 1917, while the war was still continuing, was received
with great sadness in Japan. The end of the war and the death of Rodin saw fundamental
changes in the development of European sculpture, giving rise to what has been termed
the after Rodin period, and the same changes can be seen in Japan as well. It should be
 11. Sculpture|297

pointed out, however, that in Japan, such an after Rodin period was juxtaposed with
a greater knowledge of Rodins accomplishments because of efforts such as Takamuras
book. Thus both a Rodin period and an after Rodin period coexisted in Japan as the
country moved into the artistic spaces existing between the two world wars.

The Establishment of Academism and the

Development of Wood Sculpture
Although Japan participated in World War I as an ally of England and France, for most
of the Japanese people the turmoil must have seemed like incidents in a distant world.
Along with the power of Rodins influence, there developed another set of attitudes among
those artists of the time who wished to consciously place some distance between Japan
and European models, including Rodin. This perspective perhaps developed because of
the period of confusion and stagnation in the European arts as a result of the war. Some
members of the Japanese art world began to reflect on the fact that too often, up until then,
they were desperately following all the newest currents in West. At the time, for example,
Asakura Fumio (18831964) wrote that Japanese sculptors should develop their own art,
acting like a frog in a well, to quote the traditional Japanese saying.6
Asakura, who was born in ita in Kysh, went to Tokyo in 1902, relying on help
from his brother, Watanabe Osao, who had already made a name for himself as a sculp-
tor. Asakura chose the same career. Asakuras move to Tokyo was brought about by his
interest in the theories of Masaoka Shiki (18671902), a leading waka and haiku poet of
the day, whose ideas of sketching from nature (shasei) and naturalism (shinzen shugi)
could be applied to sculpture as well. Asakuras famous work The Keeper of a Cemetery
(Hakamori) of 1910 was created by using the unassuming standing figure of an old man in
his neighborhood, depicted from a purely objective perspective.7 Asakura possessed an
excellent ability for such representation and was even able to capture the facial expressions
of Matsui Sumako (18861919), a popular stage actress, in his Acting as Katisha (Funshi
taru Kachsha) (fig. 11.5) of 1914, in which she performed a leading role in a dramatization
of Tolstoys novel Resurrection.
Asakura also showed a talent for leadership and planning by helping to organize his
colleagues to increase their effectiveness. In 1918, for example, he established a group
called the Pandora Sha, derived from the account of Pandoras box that can be found in
Greek mythology, together with his friend Ogura Uichir (18811962) and others because
the world of sculpture is too unconnected with real society.8 One of the aims of this soci-
ety was to make works of a small size that could be displayed in homes. The next year he
formed one of the largest and most powerful groups among sculptors, the Tdai Sculpture
Society (Tdai Chso Kai), and arranged for many of his students to join this new associa-
tion (Tdai is another name of the hill at Ueno, where the Tokyo School of Fine Arts was
located). He developed one idea after another, suggesting that potted plants be used to
establish an equilibrium between the works and exhibition space, and he created a plan for
the first large-scale outdoor exhibition of sculpture in Japan.
Such activities, however, caused friction with other sculptors, who were showing their
works in the national exhibitions. For a number of reasons, however, the national yearly
298|Shji Tanaka

Figure 11.5. Asakura Fumio,

Acting as Katisha (Matsui
Sumako performing the
role of Katisha from the play
Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy),
1914. Plaster, h. 136.5 cm.
Asakura Choso Museum.

Bunten exhibitions were now restructured, and in 1919 were to become the Imperial Acad-
emy of Arts Exhibition (Teikoku Bijutsuin Tenrankai), most often referred to as Teiten.
Generational factors became an issue as well. In 1921, two years after the founding
of the Tdai Sculpture Society, a new group, the Field Group (Kgensha), was formed in
opposition. These sculptors, Kitamura Seib (18841987), Tatehata Taimu (18801942),
and others, belonged to a slightly younger generation. While it is true that such activities
may have been the result of some factional strife, it should be pointed out that the Field
Group did have certain specific and unusual aims, such as creating a facility to provide
working space for young sculptors with financial hardships and sponsoring exhibitions for
sculptures made by children, reflecting a current movement in educational circles at that
time that advocated the need for a free art education.
Asakura, Kitamura, and Tatehata, all then about forty years old, already held profes-
sorships at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where they trained a number of students. Each
of the three had different characteristics: Kitamura was good at creating masculine figures,
 11. Sculpture|299

sportsmen and the like, while Tatehata created excellent sculptures of delicate female fig-
ures. Together they established a solid and realistic style now often referred to as National
Exhibition Academism, a term that, when used by some critics, contains more than a hint
of sarcasm. Nevertheless, this group achieved a powerful position, occupying the main-
stream in the field of sculpture.
None of these three sculptors had the experience of studying in Europe. This may be
because they lost the opportunity to travel because of World War I, yet that fact in itself
does not resolve the issue, since the majority of the most respected painters in the Western
style did manage to study abroad. Perhaps when compared to these painters, who pos-
sessed a strong sense that their art was based on Western models as opposed to the work
of Japanese-style painters, the Western-style sculptors in the 1920s may well have believed
that they did have a proper historical perspective based on the traditions of ancient
Buddhist sculpture. These views were reinforced by, for example, influential books such
as Koji junrei (A pilgrimage to ancient temples) of Watsuji Tetsur (18891960), published
in 1919, in which the eminent philosopher, already well versed in the world of European
ideas, now traveled to Kyoto and Nara, describing his deep appreciation for Buddhist
sculpture. The book, incidentally, remains in print and is read with considerable interest
even today.
The confrontation between Asakuras Tdai Sculpture Society and Kitamuras Field
Group was brought to a close at the time of the Great Kant Earthquake of 1923, but this
tendency was later repeated with conflicts between the older sculptors belonging to the
Field Group and other younger artists. These generational changes can be seen in sculp-
tural circles, particularly in the field of wood sculpture.
An older generation of wood sculptors, such as Yonehara Unkai and Yamazaki Chun,
who had been active since around the end of the nineteenth century, were associated with
a movement that approached the model of Western-style sculpture. They experimented
with a style that might be called naturalism, which they accomplished by adopting
techniques of modeling from clay sculpture. These artists organized the Japan Sculpture
Society (Nihon Chkokukai) in 1907, at the suggestion of Okakura Tenshin. Their strong
intention was to create Asian sculptures of both purpose and size appropriate for such spe-
cifically domestic Japanese architectural elements as the tokonoma, and they were highly
motivated by a desire to create sculptures that could be sold. In my view, these atti-
tudes did not constitute merely a conservative movement but rather were a manifestation
of an important self-consciousness regarding the appropriate place for sculpture in soci-
ety. Nevertheless such attitudes became a target for criticism by young sculptors in the
Taish period.
According to Yamazaki Chun, Japanese wood carving, traditionally characterized
mainly as a craft in the West, first came to be viewed as sculpture from the time that
examples were exhibited at the Rome World Exposition in 1911.9 Such recognition must
have given these artists greater confidence, yet by the time it was evident that such work
was truly sculpture, younger wood sculptors had already come to the fore.
Nait Shin (18821967), who had also participated in the establishment of the Tdai
Sculpture Society, did not adopt the smooth surface finish employed in traditional wood
sculpture, but instead exhibited powerful works carved in a bold manner that retained
the feeling of the wood surface itself. His technique was surely influenced by the fact that
300|Shji Tanaka

direct carving methods were emphasized in Europe during the early years of the twentieth
century. Thus even those wood sculptors who may have been inclined toward traditional
techniques could not be indifferent to movements in the West, perhaps all the more so
because they had to examine and face their own traditions directly.
Beginning in 1924, Takamura Ktar began to create small wooden sculptures of little
birds and fruits, lightly colored in a fashion totally at variance with his previous works,
which had been modeled in the style of Rodin. It is difficult to interpret the reasons for
this change. Perhaps this became a new choice now open to him; earlier he had been criti-
cal of this sort of approach found in his fathers work, but now, since circumstances had
changed, the tense situation between the generations no longer existed.
Sculptors of the younger generation recognized the importance of physical mass in
their materials and were cognizant of the characteristics of their matire, and they now
attempted to capture the energy that emerged from the materials themselves. This contem-
porary tendency had a certain resonance with a kind of animistic belief long part of the
Japanese wood sculpture tradition, which resulted in a fresh way of drawing out a kind of
spirituality existing in the tree itself. It was from the late Taish period, in the 1920s, that
a younger generation of sculptors such as Hasegawa Eisaku (18901944) and Miki Ssaku
(18911945) began to make a number of Buddhist images conceived of not for any directly
religious purposes but to be shown in exhibitions.

Various Phases between the Two World Wars

Along with the those artists connected with the National Exhibitions, such as Asakura
Fumio, another important group of sculptors was associated with the Japan Art Institute,
the group of artists originally founded by Okakura Tenshin and reconstituted in 1914 after
his death. A number of talented sculptors joined this group, including Hirakushi Dench
(18721979), who was active in the Group of Three-Four and the Japan Sculpture Society.
He was a central member of this sculpture section along with several individual wood
sculptors such as Nait Shin, Sat Chzan (18881963), and Yoshida Hakurei (18711942).
Others, influenced by the modeling techniques of Ogiwara Morie, became members as
well. Others who earned important reputations were Ishii Tsuruz (18871973), who mas-
tered a wide variety of techniques both in clay modeling and wood, and Tobari Kogan
(18821927), who, although his works remained small in scale, created sculptures of a
voluptuous quality largely absent from Ogiwaras work. Rodins influence also continued
in the work of Nakahara Teijir, and the group was joined a bit later by Fujii Ky (1882
1958), who was influenced by the Belgian sculptor Constantin Meunier (18311905).
Working together in the facilities of the Japan Art Institute, these sculptors were often
able to stimulate each other in terms of their respective styles. Hirakushi Dench, for
example, worked hard to make human figures using clay models. He was able to create
a new level of expression in his human figures carved in wood through techniques he
learned from Yonehara Unkai, who had also made wooden sculptures based on plaster
models. Dench, trained as a doll maker in his childhood, was able to create many poly-
chrome works of sculpture. His style, which combined modeling, wood carving, and the
use of color, marked an interesting new direction for modern Japanese sculpture.
 11. Sculpture|301

Nakahara Teijir, born in Hokkaid, originally came to Tokyo to become a painter.

He visited the studio of Ogiwara Morie because he was excited by a photograph he had
seen of Rodins The Thinker he happened to see in a night stall. As a result, he and Tobari
Kogan both changed their original plans and decided to become sculptors, although this
decision was made after Ogiwaras death. Nakahara first studied sculpture with Shinkai
Taketar at the Taiheiyo Group, producing in his brief career a number of powerful por-
traits, such as his Young Caucasian (Wakaki Kafukasu-jin) (fig. 11.6), first shown in an
exhibition at the Japan Art Institute in 1919. The sculpture represents a portrait of a young
Russian wanderer who has managed to come as far as Japan in the midst of the upheavals
during the period of World War I and the Russian Revolution. The work shows a youth
with a clear-cut face and head, rising from a sturdy neck; altogether the sculpture shows
a powerful and solid structural quality rare in Japanese modern sculpture. It has been
remarked that this portrait is in a kind of after Rodin style first created in Japan, perhaps
because Japan was so far from France that that a free play of styles and motifs was possible.
At the end of World War I in 1918, Japans economy was strong, and perhaps because
of these circumstances, a number of artists were now able to visit Europe. Two artists
from the Japan Art Institute, Yasuda Rymon (18911965), who moved to sculpture after
beginning his training in Western-style painting, and Sat Chzan, a wood sculptor, went
to France and studied under the great sculptor Antoine Bourdelle (18611929). Sat was

Figure 11.6. Nakahara Teijir, Young

Caucasian, 1919. Bronze, h. 42.3 cm.
The University Art Museum, Tokyo
National University of Fine Arts
and Music.
302|Shji Tanaka

born in the house of a shrine carpenter in the village of Sma in Fukushima Prefecture
and had come to Tokyo to study with Yamazaki Chun. He was to show works influenced
by Indian sculpture and a new interest in Egyptian sculpture developed during his time
in France. His attitudes concerning his study abroad parallel those of Ogiwara Morie and
Takamura Ktar, and like them he used a wide variety of sources to seek a new identity
for sculpture in his time, doubtless to avoid becoming overwhelmed when face to face with
the traditions of Western sculpture.
Others who studied with Bourdelle were Shimizu Takashi (18971981), who became
an important figure in Japan after World War II, as well as Kaneko Kuheiji (18951968)
and Kinouchi Yoshi (18921977). Yamamoto Toyoichi (18991987), a member of the Japan
Art Institute, studied under Aristide Maillol (18611944), and, after his return to Japan,
made female figures with rich lines, using techniques learned from the French master.
Another figure who created fresh works after returning from Europe was Fujikawa
Yz (18831935), who actually served as an assistant to Rodin during the later years of the
French sculptors career. Fujikawa, born into a family of lacquer artisans in Takamatsu, in
Shikoku, began to study wood sculpture in a local craft school before entering the Tokyo
School of Fine Arts. Fujikawa left for France for further study in 1908, but fell ill and
returned to Japan in 1916, during World War I, to recuperate. Three years later he became
the first member of the sculpture section of the Second Division Society (Nikakai), an
important art association established in 1914 by a group of Western-style painters who
remained unsatisfied with the conservative tendencies of Bunten. A private group, the Sec-
ond Division Society became, along with Bunten, one of the most powerful groups in the
Japanese art world. When Fujikawa began working again and exhibiting his works with
the Second Division Society, his work, and that of other sculptors associated with him,
came to occupy a significant position in the art world.
Unfortunately, not many of Fujikawas works remain today, and most of those that do
are small figures, so it is difficult to evaluate the extent of his contribution. Nevertheless,
in Blonde (Brondo), created in 1913 while in France, his success in creating a delicate sense
of form can be seen in the way he represents various features, such as the facial expressions
of the woman, conveyed by her chin moving slightly forward. Similar successes can be
seen in works he created after his return to Japan. His 1926 Poet M (Shijin M) (fig. 11.7), a
rendering of the head of the proletarian dramatist Miyoshi Jr (19021958), suggests with
its closed eyes an appearance of deep thought, as the figure faces downwards. On the other
hand, there is a sense of relaxation and of delicacy in his small female nudes, which possess
a sense of solidity and roundness.
Fujikawa was also an educator who nurtured a number of excellent sculptors who
became prominent in the next generation. In 1929, he established an institute called the
Bansh Gijuku in the Banshu area of Tokyo, which he created to meet the needs of those
young sculptors who were now gathering around him. Kikuchi Kazuo (19081985), for
example, the son of Kikuchi Keigetsu, an eminent Japanese style painter living in Kyoto,
studied art history at Tokyo Imperial University and continued with the French sculptor
Charles Despiau (18741946), who himself had worked with Rodin before World War I.
Kikuchis work shows a sharpness of realistic expression and a special success in grasp-
ing the nature of space. Another sculptor, Horiuchi Masakazu (19112001), an important
abstract sculptor after World War II, also began his studies at the Banshu Gijuku.
 11. Sculpture|303

Figure 11.7. Fujikawa Yz, Poet M, 1925.

Bronze, h. 21.5 cm. National Museum of
Modern Art, Tokyo.

From the Great Kant Earthquake to World War II

The earthquake of September 1, 1923, caused devastating damage in such large cities as
Tokyo and Yokohama. It goes without saying that, as with virtually every aspect of life at
that time, the art world was severely affected. Numerous works were lost, and exhibitions
were canceled. The loss of patrons severely challenged artists, who forfeited their financial
support. On the other hand, this inevitable confusion also permitted the art world to find
new stimulation and developments. One year after the earthquake, an important exhibi-
tion to commemorate the reconstruction was held, titled The United Sculpture Exhibition
to Commemorate the Reconstruction (Fukk Kinen Chso Gd Tenrankai), and the con-
flicts between the Tdai Sculpture Society and the Field Group were more or less resolved.
Among the works in that exhibition, a work by Y Kanji (18981935) titled Embrac
ing under the Light (Tka Hy) (fig. 11.8) was shown. The sculpture depicted a man and a
woman embracing under a streetlight. The work, revealing a private, strong eroticism, was
considered to be obscene and was removed from the exhibition by police order. In fact, the
work reflected the maturity of Japans urban culture. It can be pointed out, however, that
there was no work of sculpture in the exhibition that directly confronted in artistic terms
the damage caused by the earthquake, despite the theme of the exhibition, suggesting that
a firm conception of realism had yet to be developed among Japanese sculptors at the time.
Another exhibition commemorating the damage of the earthquake, the Exhibi
tion of the Creative Arts for the Reconstruction of the Imperial City (Teito Fukk San
Ten), included two works of interest by Hinago Jitsuz (18931945), two maquettes for
304|Shji Tanaka

Figure 11.8. Y Kanji, Embracing under the

Light, 1924. Plaster, h. 167.5 cm. The National
Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

monuments, A Tower of Death (Shi no t) and Monument to a Burned Culture (Bunka

enj hi). In one respect, at least, Hinagos approach was noteworthy. Born in Usuki in
ita Prefecture, a place known for the remains of ancient rock Buddhist sculptures from
the Heian and Kamakura periods, Hinago studied with Asakura at the Tokyo School of
Fine Arts, although his interests were considerably different from those of his teacher.
Hinago joined the Barrack Decoration Society (Barakku Sshoku Sha), a group organized
by Kon Wajir (18881973), a scholar of design and architecture. Other avant-garde artists
joined this group, among them Asano Mfu (19001984), a sculptor who had given up his
early interest in futurism and joined the proletarian art movement. The goal of the society
was to decorate the many barrack structures quickly constructed in the capital after the
earthquake.
In 1926, Hinago established the Structure Group (Kzsha), which became a home for
the most adventurous and enthusiastic sculptors for the next decade. Hinago was joined
in this effort by Sait Sogan (18891974), who had studied sculpture in England. Later, Y
Kanji, mentioned above, and Ogishima Yasuji (18951939), who was the first artist to cre-
ate artistic mannequins in Japan, became members as well. One of the aims of the group
was to fuse sculpture and architecture, and a number of experiments were carried out,
 11. Sculpture|305

which they referred to as coordination experiments (sg shisaku), on which members

would work together and experiment with architectural composition by setting one spe-
cific theme. They also developed a style of sculpture unusual in Japan at that time, includ-
ing works influenced by the well-known Croatian sculptor Ivan Metrovi (18831962),
already widely admired around the world for his works on religious themes.
Sometime in 1928, Hinago spent some time in Europe, where he took a strong inter-
est in the various monuments that had been built to commemorate World War I. Such
interests doubtless led to his own creation in 1940 of a monumental thirty-seven-meter
work, The Founding Pillar of Heaven and Earth (Ame tsuchi no motohashira), made to
commemorate the territorial expansion of the Japanese military during those years. This
large monument still exists in the city of Miyazaki, in Kysh, but ironically, the title has
been changed to The Tower of Peace (Heiwa no t).
In the decade after World War I, an increasing number of Japanese artists were able to
study in Europe. And even for those who remained behind, opportunities to learn about
the latest European developments were considerably increased. Information arrived from
Japanese students in Europe, and many books and journals reporting the newest develop-
ments in European sculpture were published, including studies of the works of Metrovi
in 1923 and Alexander Archipenko in 1926. Perhaps the most important of these was the
book After Rodin (Rodin igo), written in 1926 by the architect Kurata Chikatada (1895
1966), who wrote it using as a reference Die Neuere Plastik by Alfred Kuhn, published in
Germany in 1922. Kuratas book addressed the concerns of sculptors at the time and intro-
duced the works of many famous European sculptors, such as Maillol, Ossip Zadkine,
Archipenko, and, of course, Metrovi. Illustrations of works by others, including such
German artists as Ernst Barlach, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Georg Kolbe, and Franz Metzner,
as well as Georges Minne from Belgium, and abstract works by such artists as Henri Lau-
rens, Oskar Schlemmer, and Constantin Brancusi, were also included. The work of many
of these artists left few traces in Japan, but the fact that their names were included suggests
that research needs to be undertaken on this period to comprehend the range of interests
and influences on Japanese sculptors during this time.
Opportunities for Japanese sculptors and the general public to look directly at actual
works of Western sculpture also increased during this period. In 1922, for example, just
prior to the earthquake, a one-man show of works by Ossip Zadkine (18901967) was held
at the Bunka Gakuin, a school founded by Nishimura Isaku (18841963), an educator with
liberal ideas. Works by both Zadkine and Archipenko were also displayed at the exhibition
sponsored by the Second Division Society, and Zadkine himself became a member of the
group in 1931. In addition, beginning in 1922, a yearly exhibition of French art was held,
planned by Herman dOelsnitz (18821941), a French art dealer, that introduced a number
of works by Rodin, Bourdelle, Maillol, and Joseph Bernard (18661931). When the exhibi-
tion was held in 1924, certain works, including Rodins The Kiss, were forcibly withdrawn
because of a charge of obscenity. The Japanese art world protested, to no avail, and the
incident forced Japanese artists of the period to realize that there was still a significant gap
between Japan and Europe in the area of freedom of expression.
Among the diverse elements of Western culture to enter Japan during this period
were a number of movements that originated in the Soviet Union, among them prole-
tarian art and constructivism. Artists associated with these movements, such as Nakada
306|Shji Tanaka

Sadanosuke (18881970), who was involved in abstract sculpture, and Fumon Gy (1896
1972), a member of the futurist movement, became leaders in the creation of Japanese
abstract sculpture. Many works by other artists sharing the same interests appeared dur-
ing these years, but as government suppression became more severe, fewer and fewer such
works were created, and the movement eventually disappeared. It is difficult to study
this prewar movement today, since most of the experimental works by these young artists
have vanished.
Nevertheless, the fact that so few of these works remain does not indicate, I believe, the
absence of any significant movement for abstract sculpture in Japan during this period. In
particular, I suggest that the three-dimensional collages, constructivist works, and stage
settings by such a leading figure as Murayama Tomoyoshi (19011977) and some others
should be examined from the perspective of the history of sculpture during the period.
In addition, new groups were established in the craft field, such as the Formless Group
(Mukei) in 1926 and the Craftsman Group (Kojinsha) in 1927, both of which tried to move
beyond the traditional perimeters of craft art. We can observe the influence of art deco in
their work, and in fact some of their creations include more abstract sculptural composi-
tions than do many of the so-called abstract sculptures created at the time. Might this be
because craft artists, required to directly confront the issue of functionality, were able to
develop a deeper sense of those issues related to the form of an object? Their experiments,
in fact, may well offer valuable insights into how the field of sculpture in modern Japan
should be defined.

War and Sculpture

As choices narrowed with the coming of the war, for those sculptors who maintained a
deeper concern for the human figure, admiring both Buddhist sculpture and Rodin, The
Words of Rodin remained their Bible, and these artists came again into the fore at a time
when avant-garde art was looked on as an enemy tendency.
The importance of rendering sculpture linked to human figures had a wider influence.
Asakura Fumio and Kitamura Seib, for example, who continued their allegiances to the
system of national exhibitions, now began making a number of strongly masculine male
figures, choosing for their subjects sportsmen and other similar figures. In an article writ-
ten by Asakura during the war years, he criticized the kind of abstract work produced by
Archipenko as sickly and praised German sculptors of the early twentieth century, such
as Franz Metzner (18701919), who designed the Peoples Battle Monument in Leipzig in
1913, and Hugo Lederer (18711940), creator of a well-known monument to Bismarck in
Hamburg erected in 1906. Indeed, in Kuratas After Rodin, mentioned above, the author
noted his conviction that important developments among younger individual sculptors
after the death of Rodin are more easily identified in Germany than among the younger
generation in France. Asakuras evaluation would seem to agree.10
Despite the prominence of the national exhibitions, however, there were a few nongov-
ernmental associations that remained active. Among them was the sculpture section of the
Society for the Creation of a National Style of Painting (Kokuga Ssaku Kykai), organized
in 1926 by Kaneko Kuheiji, who had studied with Bourdelle in France. Two years later,
 11. Sculpture|307

the group was reorganized as the Society for National Painting (Kokugakai), and at that
time, other well-known sculptors such as Takamura Ktar, Shimizu Takashi, and Takata
Hiroatsu (19001987) also joined. In general it can be said that these sculptors preserved
the currents of style emanating from the work and ideals of Rodin, but there was a fresh-
ness about their work that set their accomplishments apart from the more academic work
associated with artists whose allegiance remained with the national exhibitions.
Takata, who had been befriended by Takamura Ktar, first mastered sculptural tech-
niques on his own, then lived in France for an extended period, from 1931 to 1957. He also
was responsible for introducing some of the newest movements from Europe into Japan.
A number of relatively younger sculptors whose careers continued long into the post-
war years, among them Hong Shin (19051980), Yanagihara Yoshitatsu (19102004),
Funakoshi Yasutake (19122002), and Sat Chry (19122011), worked closely with the
society; in 1939 they managed to establish a sculpture section in a new association of
Western-style painters, the Association of Artists for New Works (Shinseisakuha Kykai),
which had been organized in 1936 in the wake of the Japanese governments failed attempt
to organize the entire art world of the period. These artists, however, were able to advocate
autonomy for their art movement, and the sculptors who belonged to this group managed
to continue to work in their own individual ways. Many of these artists would become
important figures during the postwar period.
Moreover, a number of young and individualistic sculptors began to show their works
in the sculpture section of the Japan Art Institute, alongside works of their older colleagues
who led the group, Hirakushi Dench, Ishii Tsuruz, and Sat Chzan. Among these
younger talents were Yamamoto Toyoichi, who took up the study of the dry-lacquer tech-
nique familiar from traditional Buddhist sculpture after his return from France, where
he studied with Maillol, and Shinkai Takez (18971968), a nephew of Shinkai Taketar,
who made Kinuta in 1939, a statue of refreshing style showing a Korean woman beat-
ing cloth. Shinkai had observed this traditional custom while traveling in Korea, then
under Japanese occupation. Other notable newcomers were Sakurai Yichi (19141981),
who did his studies with Hirakushi, and Hashimoto Heihachi (18971935), a gifted student
of Sats. Hashimoto made wooden sculptures, leaving sharp traces of the chisel, which
manifest an intense spirituality, such as Celestial Nymph Playing in the Flower Garden
(Hanazono ni asobu Tennyo) (fig. 11.9) in 1930. The peculiar sensibility of Tsuji Shind
(19101981) resulted in his unusual statue Poet, a Study of tomo no Yakamochi (Shijin,
tomo no Yakamochi shisaku) in 1942, in wood, of a naked figure representing the famous
poet (717?785) of the Nara period. Of these artists, Shinkai, Sakurai, and Yamamoto re-
established the sculpture section of the Society for National Painting in the postwar period
and left a number of distinguished contributions.
Whatever these individualistic developments, no artist could remain free from the
political situation as war came ever closer; in the end, artists were forced to adopt narrow,
nationalistic values represented by such politically correct terms as classic, spiritual,
and traditional, regardless of the individual directions they may have wished to pur-
sue. In 1936, following the confusions noted above, the now-reorganized Imperial Exhibi-
tion (Teiten) became the overarching national showplace for contemporary art. Sculpture,
heretofore shown in one category, was now divided into two separate categories, wood
and modeled works, to be shown in alternate years. Although this experiment was not
Figure 11.9. Hashimoto Heihachi, Celestial Nymph Playing in the Flower Garden, 1930. Wood,
h. 121.7 cm. The University Art Museum, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.
 11. Sculpture|309

repeated, the idea behind the division seems to suggest that sculpture in wood represented
the truly traditional Japanese style.
Other materials also came into use. For example, from the late 1920s, a number of
sculptures made in cement were created. Such a novel use of material, it appears to me,
seems related to an increased consciousness by Japanese sculptors about new possibilities
for materials. The use of cement in contemporary architecture may have provided one
influence, thus serving as an attractive medium for sculptors seeking new styles in the
after Rodin era. In particular, a number of striking works in cement were shown in the
exhibitions of the Structure Group. Horie Naoshi (18971935), who did his first studies
under Asakura Fumio and organized the Mass and Human Group Society (Kaijinsha)
with And Teru (18921945) in 1929, also created both serene human figures and abstract
animal figures in cement.
Another reason for the use of unfamiliar materials was the need for a substitute for
metal, increasingly in short supply during the war years. Copper and tin, the materials
needed for bronze, were rationed beginning in 1937 as Japan became more deeply involved
in the war. Not only did this cause problems for sculptors used to working with metal,
but many of the existing monuments throughout the country were actually removed for
use by the military for their materials under a national order given around 1943, as the
war was moving to its disastrous conclusion. It is true, of course, that some nationalistic
monuments were created to encourage the Japanese fighting spirit, but these remained
very much the exception. It is easy to find numerous articles, sometimes with command-
ing headlines, indicating how bronze monuments of great men and soldiers were melted
down to aid in the war effort. It seems as though these objects were treated not as works of
art but as actual individuals, proud to go off to war.
Furthermore, after the defeat of Japan in 1945, works in bronze that were considered
militaristic and had been spared during the war were now removed for the opposite rea-
son. Sculptors in Japan repeatedly experienced the reality that works made of even such a
sturdy material as bronze could easily be destroyed, prey to the larger historical situation.

Sculpture in the Postwar Period and

Its Changing Destinations
Japans defeat in 1945 and the postwar move to democracy extensively altered the entire
value system of Japanese society. Yet despite the confusing social situation, the art world,
including the field of sculpture, managed to recover rapidly. Those sculptors who had
cooperated with the totalitarian government during the prewar and wartime periods now
began to create works glorifying the coming of a democratic age in the postwar era. For
example, Kitamura Seib created the gigantic Peace Statue (Heiwa kinenz) in 1955, with
a height of 9.7 meters, dedicated to the victims of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
Yet it should be noted that the style of this powerful male figure is no different from his
works made in the prewar period.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that generally speaking, sculpture created in the
postwar period, as in other areas of the visual arts, is often highly attractive. Is it perhaps
too superficial to say that this quality is based on a new sense of idealism and democracy,
310|Shji Tanaka

filled with joy for humanism and a new freedom of expression? A number of projects to
display works of sculpture in public areas began to take shape in many areas around the
country from the 1950s. Among them, an exhibition of outdoor sculpture in the city of
Ube in 1961 has been one of the most influential. In a way, this movement to create a new
sense of living space for ordinary citizens through the use of sculpture was an extension
of these fresh postwar attitudes, and indeed this movement became the occasion in which
the identity of sculpture was to be redefined in many significant ways.
An example of such pioneering efforts was the open-air exhibition of works created
in white cement held in Tokyo from 1950. These works were created with the coopera-
tion of a cement company, despite the shortages of materials in the early postwar period.
Under these new circumstances, artists were now able to exhibit both figural and abstract
sculptures that now reflected a freer sense of style. The creation of female nude sculptures,
so heavily restricted in the prewar years, were now displayed without any particular sense
of concern, and those who saw them doubtless admired them without hesitation. On the
other hand, a well-known male nude work by Hong Shin, Voices from the Sea (Wadat
sumi no koe), created in 1950, caused the authorities some difficulties as to its placement,
but the work, created as a memorial to college students who were drafted and died during
the war, expresses a sense of sadness and mortification and reveals a distinctly antiwar
feeling. Today it can certainly be recognized that such nude representations were related
to a longing for a dignified sense of humanity, feelings long oppressed under the totalitar-
ian regime.
By the same token, I do not disagree with the argument that representations of the nude
have now been continuously employed without much concern, one way or the other, and
certainly such works continue to be displayed in public places. Nevertheless, the existence
of such figures serves to indicate that such figurative sculpture, especially of a specific style
of human figure, remains a theme that continues to challenge sculptors in modern Japan.
In this postwar period, a number of talented figurative sculptors appeared, among them
Mineta Toshir (born 1939), a student of Shinkai Takezs, and Funakoshi Katsura (born
1951), the son of Funakoshi Yasutake. Influences of figurative sculptors from abroad con-
tinued to be of importance. In the 1950s, modern Italian figurative sculptures by Marino
Marini (19011980), Giacomo Manz (19081991), and Pericle Fazzini (19131987) were
introduced in Japan, and their works received an enthusiastic response. Presumably these
works possessed qualities Japanese sculptors found significant in this new era of artistic
freedom.
The surprisingly rapid spread of abstract sculpture in Japan during the postwar period
cannot be understood without considering the historical background of those artists who
were seeking a freer means of expression. It is impossible to quickly characterize in general
terms the varied developments in postwar abstract sculpture in Japan, represented in the
works of such artists as Kasagi Sueo (19011967), Konno Hisashi (19151985), Tatehata
Kakuz (19192006), and Mukai Rykichi (19182010), but it can certainly be observed
that most of their work contains organic forms and a warm sense of feeling. Among
Western sculptors of this period, Henry Moores work attracted particular attention and
admiration, and his example may have contributed to broader tendencies in Japanese
abstraction. And, of course, the kinds of abstract forms of wood sculpture by Ueki Shigeru
(19131984), who had continued to make the same kind of abstract sculpture he created
 11. Sculpture|311

in the prewar period, as well as those by Sunazawa Bikki (sometimes romanized as Bikky)
(19311989), are related to themes that long established a close rapport between spirituality
and nature. In this regard, it is of interest to note that Sunazawa came from Ainu stock, the
native inhabitants of Hokkaid.
In observing the developments of sculpture in the postwar period it must be remem-
bered that Kyoto became a new center for the creation of sculpture in the 1950s and 1960s,
rivaling Tokyo, which had been the center for sculpture since the Meiji period. While
Kikuchi Kazuo, the first major figure in the Kyoto sculpture movement and who created
the well-known work The Childrens Peace Monument (Genbaku no ko no z) (fig. 11.10) in
1958, did leave to accept a position at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music
(which replaced and expanded the activities of the prewar Tokyo School of Fine Arts) in
1949, several others, including Tsuji Shind, Horiuchi Masakazu, and Yamamoto Kakuji
(19152000), remained in the Kyoto area, working together at the Kyoto City University

Figure 11.10. Kikuchi Kazuo,

Childrens Peace Monument,
1958. Bronze and concrete,
h. including base 9 m. Peace
Memorial Park, Hiroshima.
312|Shji Tanaka

of Arts. Each of them became active in differing movements. Yamamoto, who had studied
in Paris before the war, displayed a delicate style in his realistic portraits. Tsuji, who cre-
ated wood sculptures in the prewar period, now began to create a unique world of abstract
works, moving through a variety of materials such as clay, metals, and cement. Horiuchi
created witty images through the use of geometric abstract forms.
Two young Kyoto artists, Yagi Kazuo (19181979) (see fig. 15.5), a ceramic artist who
studied with Numata Ichiga, and Suzuki Osamu (19252001), organized a new group, the
Running on the Mud Society (Sdeisha) in 1948. These artists created avant-garde, three-
dimensional forms that broke away altogether from the traditional context of ceramic
works. These developments have a great importance in the history of postwar sculpture.
Tsuji himself, although beginning his career with the creation of wood sculptures, came in
the end to adopt ceramic art. Indeed, there are striking points in common between Yagi
and Tsuji. It was in Kyoto that Japanese modern sculpture and more traditional three-
dimensional forms could meet and fuse together, creating fresh directions. The same pos-
sibilities are found in the work of Kiyomizu Kybei (sometimes romanized as Kybey)
(19222006), who, although coming from a long line of traditional ceramicistshe inher-
ited the title of Kiyomizu Rokubei the 7thwas able to create abstract works of sculpture
made of aluminum.
I am not certain as to whether such a fusion of different genres is unique to Japan. In
this context, however, the career of Isamu Noguchi (19041988) has a special significance.
Although most of his work was done in the United States, Noguchi was very active in
Japan after the war, frequently visiting ceramic kilns and finding much there to stimulate
his own creativity. I might also observe that the avant-garde artists of flower arrangement,
such as Teshigahara Sf (19001979) and Ohara Hun (19081995), were not merely, as
some would have it, transgressing the border into the art of sculpture, for in fact there is a
quality in their work that helps define something of the true nature of sculpture in Japan.
It is beyond the reach of such a brief chapter as this to consider in detail the nature of
the expansion of contemporary concepts of sculpture, certainly a phenomenon that can
be observed in the West as well in recent decades. But I cannot resist pointing out that
in Japan, around the period of the 1970s, a turning point can be seen in the creation of
such large-scale works as the Great Earth Phase (Daichi-is) by Sekine Nobuo (born 1942),
shown at the First Modern Sculpture Exhibition in 1968 at Suma Riky Park in Kobe, and
the Tower of the Sun (Taiyo no t) by Okamoto Tar (19111996), created for the Japan
World Exposition in 1970.
In reflecting back over what I have written here, I note that in many ways the repre-
sentation of human figures by Japanese sculptors remains a recurring theme. Yet the desire
to sculpt human figures was not always evident, as it has been in the Western tradition.
In fact, with the coming of the modern period, Japanese sculptors began to approach the
human figure as a new and exciting prospect. Consequently, creating these human figures
confirmed their identity as modern sculptors, and it was upon such a foundation that
sculptors sought to maintain their footing, however infirm that base may have been.
It is surely the case that from the beginning of the postwar period until the present, the
expansion of the concept of sculpture has come to touch on, and interact with, realms
that more traditional sculptors would have considered outside the area of pure sculp-
ture. But such a tendency is clear. In the so-called mono ha movement of the 1970s, artists
 11. Sculpture|313

approached things (mono) directly, without even using the term sculpture. The solid
yet delicate sculptures of an artist such as Wakabayashi Isamu (19362003) share these
traits when his works attempt to inquire as to the fundamental nature of a three-dimen-
sional object, a thing. Such a new examination into the nature of three-dimensional
reality parallels in some ways the conditions in the Meiji period, when artistsand the
publicfirst encountered the imported concept of sculpture and were forced to examine
what it actually might be. (We can look the figyua [figure] works of Murakami Takashi
and Nara Yoshitomo from such a perspective.)
In the end, perhaps one can say that our experience of sculpture means an activity in
which we constantly question the relationship between others and our own self. These
others are thingsincluding human beingsand our own self looks at and observes
these things. A history of modern Japanese sculpture can certainly be constructed on the
basis of these issues. Such, of course, is only one way to consider the matter. A work of
sculpture displays its diverse nature when observed from various angles. In just such a
fashion, modern Japanese sculpture represents a rich field of possibilities that can include
a variety of interpretations as yet not imagined.

Notes

1. Takamura Kun, Kun kaikodan (Tokyo: Banrikaku shob, 1929), pp. 183, 142.
2. Natsume Sseki, Nichi-ei Hakurankai no bijutsuhin, Tokyo asahi shinbun, December
16, 1909. kuma Ujihiro and Shinkai Taketar made similar statements.
3. mura Seigai, Bijutsu to wa nan zo ya, Kyoto bijutsu kykai zasshi, no. 28 (September
1894); and Chso ron in the same journal no. 29 for October of the same year.
4. Shinkai Taketar, Chso no shinpo, Yomiuri shinbun, October 15, 1911.
5. Subaru 2, no. 1 (January 1910).
6. Asakura Fumio, Kaiga to chkoku, Ch bijutsu 2, no. 8 (August 1916): p. 61.
7. Asakura Fumio, Watashi no rirekisho Chso yoteki: Asakura Fumio bunsh (Tokyo:
Asakura Chso Art Museum, 1983), p. 292.
8. Ogura Uichir, Pandora sha tenrankai kaisai ni tsuite, in Bijutsu junp, no. 159 (May
29, 1918): p. 3.
9. Yamazaki Chun, Mokuchkai omoidebanashi, Atorie 8, no. 9 (September 1931):
p. 121.
10. Asakura Fumio, Bi no seika (Tokyo: Kokubunsha, 1942), pp. 34, 38. Kuratas book
Rodin igo was published by Ch bijutsu sha in 1926. See pp. 34.

Japanese Sculpture from Meiji Onward:

Selected Bibliography in English
The Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (New York and Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1983)
has a useful entry on the subject by Sakai Tadayasu (vol. 7, pp. 4344). Readers seeking
additional details may find the following of interest. Editors
314|Shji Tanaka

Earl, Joe. New Bamboo: Contemporary Japanese Masters. New York: The Japan Society, 2008.
Fox, Howard N. A Primal Spirit: Ten Contemporary Japanese Sculptors. San Francisco: Chron-
icle Books, 1990.
Kawakita Michiaki. Modern Currents in Japanese Art. New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill/
Heibonsha, 1974.
Koplos, Janet. Contemporary Japanese Sculpture. New York: Abbeville Press, 1991.
Lieberman, William S. The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture: An Exhibition Selected by Doro
thy C. Miller and William S. Lieberman. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966.
Mason, Penelope. History of Japanese Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993.
Terada Toru. Japanese Art in World Perspective. New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill/Heibonsha,
1976.
Uyeno Naoteru, ed., Japanese Arts and Crafts in the Meiji Era. Vol. 7 in the series Japanese
Culture in the Meiji Era. Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, 1958.
 Jonathan M. Reynolds

12 Can Architecture Be Both

Modern and Japanese?
The Expression of Japanese Cultural Identity
through Architectural Practice from
1850 to the Present

When, in the face of foreign encroachment, Japan leapt headlong into a race to modern-
ize, many of the cultural practices that had defined Japanese identity in the past came
into question. This process has been especially pronounced in architecture, a field that
combines a thirst for new technology with the mastery of forms richly imbued with cul-
tural values. The Japanese quickly seized upon the latest building technology made avail-
able through increased contact with the West from the 1850s onward. For many there
was more ambivalence about architectural styles. A buildings style communicates many
things; it can play an important role in shaping the community by expressing that commu-
nitys values. Some embraced imported architectural styles as symbols of modernity. Oth-
ers advocated the preservation of architectural forms that were considered characteristi-
cally Japanese, even in buildings constructed of modern materials, in order to reinforce
a sense of cultural identity distinct from the West. This search for community has been
one of the most compelling themes of architectural practice in Japan in the modern era.

The Formation of an Architectural Profession in Japan

Despite the severe restrictions on interaction with the outside world imposed by the mili-
tary government during the Edo period (16001868), Japanese were able to gather infor-
mation about European culture and scientific ideas through books and other materials
imported by the Dutch based in Nagasaki. In 1850, three years before Commodore Perry
presented an ultimatum to the shoguns government demanding that Japan open its ports
to the world, the domain of Saga in southwestern Japan made use of Western masonry
techniques to construct a furnace to forge modern weapons.1 Other projects soon followed.
After the establishment of the first treaty ports in 1859, a flood of information about West-
ern architectural methods poured into the country. The foreign merchants and govern-
ment representatives who came to live in Yokohama and the other newly opened ports
directed Japanese craftsmen to build houses, warehouses, and other structures in a man-
ner that conformed as closely as possible to the building types familiar to them. These
earlier visitors were not trained architects and had to rely on books and memory to guide
construction. The Japanese contractors hired to carry out the work inevitably drew upon
their own highly refined carpentry methods to construct these unfamiliar forms.
316|Jonathan M. Reynolds

Figure 12.1. Shimizu Kisuke II, Mitsui House (later First National Bank), Tokyo, 1872. Courtesy Archi-
tectural Institute of Japan.

The Mitsui House (fig. 12.1) is representative of this transitional period. It was con-
structed as a bank for the Mitsui Company in the Nihonbashi business district in Tokyo
in 1872. The builder was Shimizu Kisuke II (18151881), a contractor from Tyama, who
with his adoptive father set up a branch of the family business in the rapidly expanding
treaty port of Yokohama in the 1860s. Although the combination of bow-shaped gables
and triangular gables jutting out from the complex roof might have been vaguely remi-
niscent of main structures in Japanese castles, the elaborate wrought-iron railings on the
roof turrets and the central lantern with flagpole were not. For most Japanese passersby
this structure must have seemed exotically foreign. That said, there was certainly no prec-
edent for such a building overseas, either. The colonnaded first- and second-floor balconies
on the main faade were of Western inspiration, but the transoms between the columns
were ornamented with an East Asian tortoise-and-crane motif. The construction was lav-
ishalthough the building relied on wood-frame construction, exterior walls were faced
with masonry and the front columns were of bronze. Clearly Mitsui hoped to capitalize on
its distinctive bank headquarters, for it commissioned woodblock prints to advertise the
structure. Unfortunately for Mitsui, the new national government, which also hoped to
cloak itself in the mantel of modernity, commandeered the distinctive building as its own
First National Bank soon after it was completed.
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 317

The last shogun abdicated after a period of open rebellion in 1867, and a new gov-
ernment claiming to restore the direct rule of the imperial institution took power in the
following year. Ironically, although this new Meiji government was built upon two of the
central pillars of the old regime, the samurai and the emperor, it was remarkably open
to change. Of greatest concern was the acquisition of sufficient military and economic
strength to ensure Japans future autonomy. Japans new leaders were just as sensitive about
how the West perceived Japan. The treaties Japan signed under the threat of the gun in the
1850s not only forced them to open their ports, but also imposed other humiliating provi-
sions such as extraterritoriality. If Japan was ever going to succeed in shaking off those
burdens, it had to convince the Western powers and the Japanese people themselves that
the nation was capable of engaging with the modern world on its own terms.
Architecture had an important role to play in this modernization project. The Japa-
nese accelerated the process of acquiring Western building methods in order to address
the emerging demands of government and business. Structures designed in Western archi-
tectural styles were also sought after, for they expressed in concrete terms their patrons
commitment to modernization.
The appearance of the streets of Tokyo and Japans other major cities changed rapidly
as the government and private businesses began to build in the new manner. In 1872, a ter-
rible fire destroyed approximately 2,900 structures in the Ginza and Tsukiji districts east
and southeast of the Imperial Palace. The government hired Thomas Waters (1842?), an
Irish surveyor and engineer, to rebuild the Ginza. Waters, who had already completed the
impressive Osaka Mint a year before, produced an ambitious plan. Before the fire, build-
ings in the Ginza (as in most of the city) were constructed of wood, and the streets were
narrow and irregularconditions that made the city especially vulnerable to devastat-
ing fires. Waters proposed rebuilding the entire area with brick structures organized on a
regular grid of broad, brick-paved streets. The two-story structures along the main street
were strung together by a monumental colonnade. This street had generous, tree-lined
sidewalks, and, after 1877, the street was illuminated at night with gas lamps. In 1882, rails
for horse-drawn streetcars were installed.2 Each of these features was new to Japan.
This radical departure from normal building practices was not universally accepted.
The brick construction was not popular with merchants and residents, who found them
dark and damp.3 They proved difficult to sell and eventually many rejected brick in favor of
more conventional construction. A survey of the Ginza in 1879 indicated that only 916 of
the 2,400 structures in the district were of brick.4 Although some foreign observers praised
the project, others who came to Japan expecting the exotic were disappointed to find in
the Ginza what for them was a pale imitation of the cities they had left behind.5 For many
Japanese, however, the Ginza Brick Town offered an excitingly different urban experi-
ence. The spaciousness of the Ginzas main street, the grandeur of its colonnades and the
masonry storefronts, the sense of energy and movement generated by the streetcars and
the rickshaws, all generated an air of cosmopolitan modernity that was unique in Japan
at the time.
Early on the Meiji government recognized the need to train people in engineering and
other technical fields, and in 1871, only three years after the Meiji Restoration, they estab-
lished a College of Engineering, and in 1873 the first European faculty members arrived in
Japan. This institution, which would eventually be absorbed into the Imperial University,
318|Jonathan M. Reynolds

provided instruction in subjects such as civil engineering, chemistry, metallurgy, mining,

and telegraphy. In the first few years, training in architecture was comparatively rudimen-
tary, but in 1877, the government brought the English architect Josiah Conder (18521920)
to Japan to development a more systematic architecture program. Conder was a resourceful
and charismatic teacher. Only twenty students graduated from the architecture program
while he was in charge (he stepped down as the head of the program in 1884 although he
remained a lecturer at the College of Engineering until 1888), but from among this small
group emerged the future leaders of the fledgling profession.6
Conder himself was a prolific architect who designed for government, business, and
private individuals. His Deer Cry Pavilion (Rokumeikan) was completed in 1884 under the
patronage of the foreign minister, Inoue Kaoru. A two-story loggia with elaborately orna-
mented columns extended across the entire main faade of the large masonry structure.
The interior was decorated with a finely carved wood staircase, expensive brocade drapes,
and gilded gas-lit chandeliers. Inoue used the Rokumeikan as a government guesthouse
and reception hall. Here he hosted grand balls and charity bazaars for foreign dignitaries
and members of Japans elite. Inoue was one of the governments most aggressive advocates
of Westernization, and when political opponents took aim at him and his policies they
targeted the elegant (or, in the eyes of some, decadent) social life that swirled around the
Rokumeikan as well. The building became so closely associated with this period of open-
ness in the mid-1880s that the period is often referred to as the Rokumeikan era.7
Tatsuno Kingo (18541919) was one of the five students in Conders first graduating
class at the Imperial Engineering College in 1879. Five years later, after study in England,
he succeeded his teacher as the head of the architecture program there. Tatsuno served
for a time as the president of Japans first professional association for architects.8 Tatsuno
also executed some of the most significant designs of the Meiji era, including Tokyos main
train station.
Railways were both literally and figuratively the engines of modernization in Japan.
They facilitated the movement of people and goods in the countrys rapidly growing econ-
omy. Since the 1870s, the main railway terminus for Tokyo had been located at Shimbashi,
south of the center of the city, and by the 1890s there were calls for construction of a
train station closer to the center of the city. Tatsuno was awarded the commission for the
new Tokyo station in 1903 and construction began in 1908 (fig. 12.2).9 The new station
was a massive undertaking and construction lasted six years. Tatsuno designed a single
335-meter-long structure divided into three pavilions: the south pavilion for departures,
the north pavilion for arrivals, and the central pavilion to house a special entrance and
waiting rooms for the emperor. The soil in the area directly east of the Imperial Palace was
unstable (much of the land in this section of the city had been created through landfill in
the seventeenth century), and so thousands of logs were driven deep into the ground at
the base of the site to stabilize the foundation. Tatsuno utilized modern materials such as
concrete for the foundation and floors, a steel frame, and massive masonry walls. The exte-
rior of the three-story structure was faced with red brick (although relatively new at the
time the Ginza Brick Town was constructed, brick had become the signature construction
material for public buildings in Japan by the first decade of the twentieth century) punc-
tuated by the cream-colored sandstone that framed windows and doors. Tatsuno capped
the north and south pavilions with impressive octagonal domes lit by ocular windows. In
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 319

Figure 12.2.Tatsuno Kingo, Tokyo Train Station, Tokyo, 1914. Courtesy Architectural Institute of Japan.

terms of the scale of the structure, the sophistication of its engineering, and the style of
its design, Tokyo Station would have been at home in one of the great capitals in Europe.
At the time the Mitsui House was constructed in the early 1870s, the carpenters and
contractors who managed most building projects were trained by apprenticeship in tra-
ditional Japanese building methods. Forty years later, carpenters using methods that in
many respects resembled the methods used by their grandfathers continued to produce
the majority of smaller projects. But in the meantime a parallel profession had emerged to
meet the demand for buildings in the Western mode. University-trained architects, well-
versed in Western architectural practices, now acted as executives who designed buildings
and oversaw their construction. Working in collaboration with these architects, contrac-
tors, such as Shimizu Kisuke II, had established modern construction companies that spe-
cialized in large-scale projects in the Western manner (some of which, such as Shimizu
Construction, are among the largest firms of their type in the world today). There was now
a modern architectural sector within the larger construction industry.

The Debate over the Japaneseness of Modern Design

No sooner had Conder and his students begun to establish institutions for the training and
promotion of Western architectural practices in Japan, challenges began to emerge from
within the profession. One group of architects, who were concerned that Japanese culture
was becoming overly dependent on the West, argued that architects needed to find design
approaches grounded in Asian, and specifically Japanese, cultural experience. Others
attacked the professions reliance on historical styles based on European architecture tra-
ditions (neoclassical, gothic revival, etc.) because they felt these styles were divorced from
contemporary living conditions and were not sufficiently expressive of modern building
methods and materials.
Some within the profession began to search for a way to acclimate those practices
to the unique physical conditions and social needs of their new environment. It Chta
(18671954), who graduated from the architecture program at Tokyo Imperial University
320|Jonathan M. Reynolds

Figure 12.3. It Chta, Great Kant Earthquake Memorial Hall, Tokyo, 1930. Photograph by the author.

in 1892, would emerge as one of the most vocal advocates for a new Japanese architecture
that made use of building technology and design approaches borrowed from the West, but
that also selectively incorporated Japanese architectural features that would establish con-
tinuity with Japans pre-Westernized past and distinguish modern Japanese architecture
from its Western counterparts.
It, whose graduation thesis demonstrated a keen interest in the history of architec-
ture from around the world, traveled extensively across Asia and Europe in the years that
followed. As a student, It had received some training in Japanese architectural practices,
but when he himself became a professor at the Imperial University he introduced more
systematic training in Japanese architectural history that included field trips to major
monuments.
In 1930, It completed a memorial to the victims of the Great Kant Earthquake (fig.
12.3) of September 1923. The structure was constructed on the site of a former military
depot. Tragically, thousands had fled to the open area hoping to escape the fires ravag-
ing the city, only to be trapped and killed by the firestorm that swept over the area. It
naturally chose to build in fire-resistant steel and reinforced concrete. Yet It employed
these advanced building methods to construct a memorial that drew liberally from his-
toric architectural styles, both Japanese and European.
The entry to the worship hall, with its bow-shaped gable (karahafu), linked the struc-
ture with Buddhist temples and high-status residential structures from Japans past. It
molded concrete forms that resemble rafters under the eaves of the great, hipped and
gabled, tiled roofs, even though these forms served no structural function.
It placed a pagoda at the back of the structure to house the ashes of those lost in the
earthquake. Historically, pagodas were important monuments that housed relics of the
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 321

historic Buddha or other Buddhist leaders in many East Asian Buddhist monasteries.10
Its incorporation of a pagoda at the Earthquake Memorial was, in this sense, a logical
extension of its original purpose, but unlike earlier examples, which were freestanding
structures, Its pagoda was joined with the worship hall. The presence of such familiar
forms may well have been reassuring to the families of those remembered.
It ornamented the Earthquake Memorial with imaginative adaptations of traditional
motifs. The bronze light fixtures in the worship hall were in the shape of the lotus, one of
the most ubiquitous symbols in Buddhist iconography. The globes for the lights over the
doors are grasped in the mouths of creatures resembling aardvarks.
Underneath the reconfigured East Asian architectural features at the Memorial Hall,
there were still vestiges of Its training in Western historical styles. Its graduation proj-
ect at the Imperial University was a gothic cathedral with a prominent crossing tower. By
linking the main worship hall with the pagoda, It made the pagoda the equivalent of the
crossing tower in his earlier cathedral design.
Even though It drew heavily from historical sources, the final design for the Earth-
quake Memorial Hall was unprecedented. That said, the building had more visible links
with premodern Japanese architecture than with any Western sources. It must be remem-
bered that the memorial was completed at a time of growing political tensions. Although
the Memorial Hall was in technological terms a modern building, it was conspicu-
ously different from the European-inspired modernist designs then advocated by some
younger architects, including many of Its own students at the Imperial University. It,
a product of a Western-style architectural education and an advocate of modern materials,
was representative of a nationalistic trend among architects and figures in other fields in
the arts.11
In 1920, six recent graduates of the architecture department of Tokyo Imperial Uni-
versity organized an exhibition and published a catalogue of their writings and designs.12
They called themselves the Secessionist Architectural Society (Bunriha Kenchikukai). The
Bunriha issued a manifesto that declared:

We arise!

We break away [bunri shite] from the realm of past architecture so that we might cre-
ate a new architectural realm where all of the architecture that we produce is given
genuine significance

We arise!

In order to awaken all that is sleeping in the realm of past architecture

In order to rescue all that is in the process of drowning

In a state of joy, we dedicate everything that we have to the attainment of this ideal
and we will wait expectantly for it until we collapse and die

In unison, we declare this to the world!13

322|Jonathan M. Reynolds

This group had the temerity to insist that the architecture promoted by their seniors was
floundering, and they had the self-confidence to proclaim that they would take architec-
ture in a new direction. For them the search for architecture with integrity and relevance
was nothing short of a life-or-death issue. These young architects were products of an elite
education and as such were the heirs apparent to key posts in their respected profession.
And yet they seemed to take aim at the very institutions that would secure their future.
In fact, the Bunriha architects did not abandon all links with architecture of the
pasta close examination of their works reveals citations from sources as diverse as Euro-
pean gothic architecture and Japanese tea ceremony rooms. They would, however, insist
on more complete integration of these sources and on a more (in their opinion) rational
relationship between architectural forms and their underlying materials.
The Tokyo Central Telegraph Office (fig. 12.4) was the design of Yamada Mamoru
(18941966), one of the founding members of the Bunriha. Soon after graduation Yamada
had been hired by the Communications Ministry, a government entity especially commit-
ted to the promotion of new technology and remarkably open to progressive architectural
designs for its many building projects throughout Japan. The Central Telegraph Office was
constructed in 1925 in fire-resistant reinforced concrete. Offices in the main block of the
structure enjoyed ample natural light from rows of relatively austere windows. The build-
ing was comparatively free of the historically based ornamentation applied to many other
recent designs built for government and the private sector. However, on two faades the
windows were grouped together in narrow vertical columns capped by slightly pointed

Figure 12.4. Yamada Mamoru, Tokyo Central Telegraph Office, Tokyo, 1925. Courtesy Architectural
Institute of Japan.
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 323

arches in a manner reminiscent of French gothic lancet windows. Yamada also incorpo-
rated the pointed arches in the tower at one corner of the building. The pointed arches
provided the Central Telegraph Office with a distinctive appearance and helped to unify
the design. Their presence testifies to Yamadas identification with the certain architects
in Europe, such as Hans Poelzig, who drew on the gothic because of its resonances with
certain spiritual longings within the modernist movement. Yet Yamada was careful not to
be too literal in his historical citationthe gothic details were just simplified and abstract
enough so that they related well with the radical simplicity of other sections of the design.
This was how he sought to avoid the perceived pitfalls of his senior colleagues designs.
Yamada and other member of the Bunriha continued to exhibit together until 1928. A
number of the participants, including Yamada, Horiguchi Sutemi, and Yamaguchi Bunz,
would go on to build extremely successful careers as designers, writers, and teachers. The
members decision to join forces for exhibitions and publications would also serve as a
model for ambitious modernist architects in the future.
Throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, architects continued to be drawn to the
newest developments in Europe. Some had the financial resources to make pilgrimages
to France, Germany, and the Netherlands to study with the leading modernists, while
others had to make do with scouring the latest publications for ideas. Designs suggestive
of art nouveau or expressionism gave way to leaner, less historically ornamented styles
based on the work of the German Bauhaus or that of the Paris-based Swiss Le Corbusier.
Some found in European modernism not only artistic ideas, but the inspiration to pursue
social change through architectural practice. It would be dangerous for architects to pur-
sue left-leaning political goals in the intolerant atmosphere that prevailed in Japan in the
late 1920s and 1930s.
Japanese modernists were not immune to anxiety over cultural identity. Even in some
of the most aggressively modernist designs one can find features that grounded the works
in their Japanese cultural context. Regardless of how these designs actually looked, their
creators made an effort to argue for continuity with Japans rich architectural heritage.
Undoubtedly, many sincerely believed that modernist design was consistent with the prin-
ciples such as simplicity and respect for materials that they found in certain landmarks
of Japanese design. However, as nationalism intensified and government efforts to crush
progressive political movements accelerated, it became increasingly important for these
architects to claim that their designs were in some sense Japanese, even if in some cases
those claims seemed hollow. In the years leading up to the Pacific War, modernists seemed
to be constantly looking over their shoulders, worried that their Western-oriented and in
some cases politically radical work might draw official censure.
The growing pressure to Japanicize architecture was expressed most explicitly in a
series of competitions for major public buildings in the late 1920s and 1930s. Juries for these
events consistently selected entries that incorporated tiled roofs and decorative ornament
derived from premodern Japanese precedents. In some cases, as with the competition for
the Soldiers Public Hall (Gunjin Kaikan) of 1930, patrons signaled their preferences by
stipulating that the design be imbued with national essence.14 Although these rules were
vague, architects quickly learned from the successful designs what the juries were looking
for. The style of designs combining modern building methods with conspicuous tiled roofs
and other traditional features came to be known as Japanese taste.15
324|Jonathan M. Reynolds

Undoubtedly the most famous showdown between the modernists and those advo-
cating more explicit links with premodern Japanese architecture was the competition for
the Tokyo Imperial Household Museum in 1931. The main structure for the museum,
designed by Josiah Conder in 1882, had been badly damaged in the earthquake of 1923.
The opportunity to redesign this prominently located museum with its prestigious collec-
tion of Japanese art would have been a great prize for any architect at the time, and the
competition attracted hundreds of entries.
The jury, which included It Chta, awarded the first prize to Watanabe Jin (1887
1973), a Tokyo Imperial University graduate in the middle of a long and successful career.
Watanabes plans (fig. 12.5) called for advanced building technology (steel and reinforced
concrete) and incorporated the most up-to-date approaches to lighting and gallery layout.
Competition rules also insisted on entries that were in an Eastern style which is based on
Japanese taste, so that it will preserve harmony with the contents of the museum.16 Wata-
nabe met this requirement by crowning his building with a prominent slanted, tiled roof.
Under the eaves he included false rafters, as It had done in the Earthquake Memorial.
The railings on the balconies on the main faade were topped with pointed newel caps like
those on premodern Japanese buildings and bridges. The covered entryway at the main
entrance had a tiled roof with a triangular gable on the front that was also reminiscent of
traditional designs.
The twenty-six-year-old architect Maekawa Kunio (19051986) was one of the many
entrants in the competition for the museum. Maekawa, another Tokyo Imperial Univer-
sity graduate, had only recently returned from two years in the studio of Le Corbusier in
Paris and was a passionate advocate of modernism. His entry (fig. 12.6) stood in sharp
contrast to that of Watanabe. His design eliminated the tiled roof and all the ornament in
Japanese taste that had become de rigueur in recent competitions. Instead, he offered a

Figure 12.5. Watanabe Jin, competition entry for Imperial Household Museum, 1931. Kokusai ken-
chiku 7, no. 6 (June 1931).
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 325

flat roof with a roof garden for visitors. Maekawa exploited the potential of his steel and
reinforced concrete structure by lifting portions of the building up off the ground on col-
umns and by opening up the galleries with dramatic windows running the full length of
exterior walls. His aggressively modernist approach was a frontal assault upon the hybrid
traditionalism of Japanese taste.
Maekawas design was not included among the ten finalists, but he strongly defended
his design both in a statement that accompanied the entry and in an inflammatory essay
published in the modernist architectural magazines soon after the competition results
were announced. Rather than challenge the underlying nationalist motives behind the
promotion of Japanese taste, Maekawa claimed that his design was more sympathetic
with Japanese traditions than the entries of Watanabe and his other competitors, for it
offered a respectfully neutral backdrop for the display of Japans artist heritage.17 Further-
more, Maekawa argued that the use of modern building materials to replicate architectural
forms grounded in older building methods was a betrayal of traditions. Despite Maekawas
efforts to affirm the nationalistic assumptions underlying the competition, his defense of
his modernist position did not sway the jury. His challenge to design in Japanese taste
did, however, make him something of a hero to his modernist colleagues.
Only months after the Imperial Household Museum competition, the Japanese mili-
tary staged an incident in Manchuria that was used to justify installing a puppet regime in
the region. In the years that followed, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China (1937)
and then embarked on its ill-fated attack on the United States and other parts of Asia
(1941). As Japan became embroiled in war, human and material resources were channeled
increasingly to the war effort. Some architects were drafted into the military, and many
of those who did not go to the battlefield supported the war effort through their work. In
1939, a competition to solicit designs for memorials for Japans fallen soldiers drew 1,699

Figure 12.6. Maekawa Kunio, competition entry for Imperial Household Museum, 1931. Kokusai
Kenchiku 7, no. 6 (June 1931).
326|Jonathan M. Reynolds

professional and amateur entries.18 Four years later, the last major competition before the
end of the war, the Thai-Japan Cultural Center, attracted many leading architects. The first
prize was awarded to a former employee of Maekawa, Tange Kenz (19132005). Tanges
design closely followed traditional Japanese sources such as the audience hall of the Impe-
rial Palace in Kyoto. Even Maekawa, who had established his modernist credentials by
critiquing designs in Japanese taste in 1931, now submitted an entry that incorporated
unmistakeable Japanese features. Conditions were so severe that even Maekawas politi-
cally neutral defense of modernism would not receive public recognition, but this work in
Japanese taste brought Maekawa the second prize.

Rebuilding a Nation

Japan finally surrendered on August 14, 1945, after eight years of war (formal surrender
would not take place until September 2). Japans military adventures had left the country
in shambles. Most major cities had been severely damaged by months of air raids. There
were millions of casualties, both military and civilian. Millions more were homeless. Mal-
nourishment was widespread, and as the winter of 1945 approached, there was growing
fear of starvation on a large scale, a catastrophe that was only averted with massive food
shipments from the United States.19
For architects, one of the greatest challenges was how to provide the 4.2 million hous-
ing units that were needed in the wake of the destruction. The solution was slow in com-
ing. Most of the rebuilding occurred in the private sector, not through centralized housing
projects. Before the war, although some medium to large apartment blocks had been built,
there was a strong preference for freestanding houses even in urban areas. These prefer-
ences continued into the immediate postwar period.
Architects such as Maekawa Kunio and Sakakura Junz experimented with prefabri-
cation in the hope that the mass production of houses in factories might bring down costs
and improve quality. Although these experiments did not lead to prefabrication on a large
scale at that time, they set an important precedent that decades later would result in the
most sophisticated prefabricated housing industry in the world.
In 1949, the architect Seike Kiyoshi (19182005) produced the first of a series of
small houses that combined modern conveniences with traditional Japanese residential
design within the severe economic constraints of early postwar years. The Mori house
had two rooms floored with tatami (woven straw mats) that were divided by removable
sliding screens. Since these rooms were not furnished with heavy furniture as Western-
style rooms usually were, they could be used as living rooms or as sleeping areas (bedding
could be folded up and stored away during the day). The house was also equipped with a
toilet, a bath, and a kitchen and dining area. The house was efficient, flexible, and relatively
inexpensive.
As Japans economy began to recover in the 1950s, large apartment buildings became
an increasingly important component of the housing mix. The primary construction
materials were steel and concrete, but architects experimented with a variety of structural
systems and apartment arrangements. The Harumi Apartments, which were designed by
Maekawa Kunios firm and were commissioned by the publicly funded Japan Housing
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 327

Corporation in 1956, provided one innovative model. The block of 168 apartments used a
skip-floor system to reduce the square footage lost to corridors (one accessed each apart-
ment via individual staircases leading from corridors on every third floor). Here Maekawa
was drawing on the example of Le Corbusier, who used a similar strategy for his Unit
dHabitation in Marseilles (1952). Unlike his former mentor, however, Maekawa took
advantage of the flexibility offered by Japanese precedents. Each apartment was equipped
with a small, wood-floored kitchen/dining area, but the main rooms in the small apart-
ments were floored with tatami so they could easily serve multiple functions.
Recovery did not just entail the replacement of housing or the rebuilding of factories
and public infrastructure. The construction of new cultural institutions marked another
important step on the road. In 1951, the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art
(fig. 12.7) was constructed in front of a lotus pond on the extensive grounds of the Tsu-
rugaoka Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura. For this historic site, the architect, Sakakura
Junz (19041968), provided a design that subtly combined elements of both high modern
and premodern Japanese origins. On the main faade, the museum appears to be a white
box resting on a base of richly textured volcanic stone. A monumental staircase leads up
to the gallery entrance on the second floor. Sakakura, like Maekawa, had studied with Le
Corbusier, and one can see that study reflected in his use of a clearly defined geometric
form that is raised up off the ground, in part, by columns. In fact, many elements in the
design can be linked to several disparate sources, including not only works from Europe,
but premodern Japanese precedents as well. For example, Sakakura provided an open-air
atrium at the center of the structure that can be used as a sculpture garden (the plan of
the museum is a square doughnut, not a box). The atrium calls to mind the courtyards
of Mediterranean houses, but it also draws on the enclosed gardens of earlier Japanese
houses. The dark, thin, I-beam columns that help support the main gallery firmly situate
the museum within modernist design, yet these attenuated supports also recall the dark
wood columns found in a lineage of Japanese elite residential design known as sukiya. The
connection to sukiya style is especially noticeable on the south side of the museum, which
faces the pond. A substantial portion of the gallery extends out over the pond and rests on
a series of these columns, and they in turn appear to rest on roughly hewn stones in the
pond (actually, they cut through the stones to foundations beneath the water rather than
being supported by them). With this arrangement Sakakura is clearly citing designs such
as the famous seventeenth-century Hiunkaku of Kyoto. The effect of this arrangement is
light and dynamic and brilliantly ties the modern structure to its garden surroundings.
The Japanese have long struggled to find a way to come to terms with the devastation
wrought by the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The construction of the Peace
Park in Hiroshima (fig. 12.8) was a significant milestone in the healing process. Immedi-
ately after the war, the city of Hiroshima began planning the rebuilding of the center of the
city, which had been leveled by the atomic bomb. In 1949, Tange Kenz won the first prize
in a competition to design a park that would memorialize the tragic events of August 6,
1945. The park is located on the tip of an island in the middle of the city near the epicenter
of the atomic explosion. Tange made use of the lessons he had learned from his study of
European urban planning during graduate school. Tange designed a network of spacious
walking paths through the park. One path on the north-south axis creates a dramatic vista
with the haunting ruins of an industrial exhibition hall now known as the Atomic Bomb
Figure 12.7. Sakakura Junz, Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, 1950.
Photograph by the author.

Figure 12.8.Tange Kenz, Hiroshima Peace Park, Hiroshima, 1955. Photograph by the author.
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 329

Dome across the river from the park as the focal point at one end and the three building of
the Memorial Peace Center at the other.
Along this central axis Tange placed a saddle-shaped cenotaph within which the
names of the more than 200,000 victims of the bomb have been preserved. This is a Japa-
nese memorial, but one with unique relevance for the world community. Tange derived the
saddle shape of the cenotaph from the curved roofs of ceramic house once placed on tombs
in Japan.20 However, the form is so abstract that its historical origins are not readily appar-
ent. The cultural link is there, but is vague enough so that it does not dilute the universality
of the overall design with references that are too locally specific.
Tanges museum at the center of the Peace Center rises up above the surrounding
plaza on massive reinforced concrete supports (the two buildings flanking the museum
an auditorium and the main hallwere eventually completed by other designers). The
long walls of the rectangular exhibition space are comparatively open, with a latticework
of concrete shutters. The effect of the building is monumental and somewhat austere.
Tange had had an interest in Le Corbusier since his days as a graduate student at the Impe-
rial Museum in the 1930s, and his debt to the Swiss master is evident in his design. Crit-
ics recognized this connection, but interestingly enough, they sought to link the design
to Japanese precedents as well. The architectural critic Kawazoe Noboru, for example,
suggested that the museum resembled the famous eighth-century Shsin storehouse in
Nara, because both structures were raised off the ground on columns and because the
museums concrete shutters resembled the horizontal timbers used to construct the walls
of the storehouse.21 Tange himself only hesitantly acknowledged these claimed similari-
tiesperhaps because of long-standing modernist anxieties about overly literal borrowing
from historical sourcesbut for Tanges audience there was clearly a need to find Japanese
roots for his boldly modern design.
By the time the Hiroshima Peace Park was completed in 1955, signs of what would
become Japans economic miracle were already in evidence.22 As a part of that trans-
formation, large numbers of people emigrated from the countryside to the major cities.
So although the recovery made it possible to build more housing, there never seemed to
be enough to keep up with demand, and Tokyo and other cities became increasingly con-
gested. It is no wonder then that architects became fascinated with urban planning on a
massive scale. In 1958, the young architect Kikutake Kiyonori (1928) began to experi-
ment with urban planning on a large scale; for his Ocean City Project (1958), he imag-
ined the construction of a city composed, in part, of enormous towers rising out of lily
padlike platforms built over the ocean. While Tange Kenz was teaching as a guest at
MIT in 19591960 he assigned his students the task of designing a city for ten thousand
to be built in Boston Harbor. Back in Japan, he and his students allowed that kernel of an
idea to explode into a city for ten million to be built in Tokyo Bay. Tange and his colleagues
envisioned clusters of massive residential complexes and office structures built on artificial
islands linked to each other and to the rest of Tokyo by a grid of highways and monorails.
When Tange invited the World Design Conference to meet in Tokyo in 1960, a group
of architects, an architectural journalist, an industrial designer, and a graphics designer
seized the opportunity to introduce their ideas to an international audience. They called
their approach Metabolism.23 Kikutake was one of the Metabolists, and the visionary
urban planning projects he and his colleagues presented to the conference (including the
330|Jonathan M. Reynolds

reworking of some of the ideas introduced in his earlier Ocean City Project) required as yet
unavailable building technology. Yet in the next ten to fifteen years, Metabolists and their
supporters were able to realize some of their ideas on a smaller scale.24
As the Metabolists indicated in their manifesto, they chose to graft the biological term
metabolism onto inanimate architecture because they sought design and technology
that would denote human vitality.25 The group theorized that individual buildings and
entire cities could be designed to facilitate transformation and growth in a manner that
emulated living organisms. They proposed buildings with a skeleton or core structure that
would provide circulation pathways and basic services (electrical, water, sewage, etc.) onto
which they would attach replaceable office and living space. The Metabolists imagined
whole cities inhabited by these malleable megastructures.
In 1960, the Metabolist designs were not totally unprecedented. Le Corbusiers mega-
lomaniacal Voisin Plan of 1925 proposed demolishing the crowded, irregular streets in
one of the oldest sections of Paris with high-density towers lined up in a park-like set-
ting. The Swiss architect had also anticipated the Metabolists with his proposal to construct
apartment blocks with prefabricated apartment units that could be slid into place within
reinforced concrete frames. The Metabolists shared their technophilic obsession for megas-
tructures with contemporaries such as the architects associated with Team Ten in Europe.26
As ahead of their time as their projects seemed, the Metabolists were anxious to claim
roots in Japanese cultural traditions. Kurokawa Kisho (19342007), who would emerge
as one of the most prolific authors and designers of the group, argued that while technol-
ogy would in some ways unite architects in different regions of the world, the cultures of
different regions each contribute to the language of modern architecture, and as a result
modern architecture will probably come to speak not a lingua franca but a complex and
many-faceted language.27 For Kurokawa, some of the design principles that seemed most
innovative were in fact grounded in long-standing Japanese cultural practices. Kurokawa
cited the Shint Shrine at Ise, in which major structures have been carefully reconstructed
approximately every twenty years for centuries, as a precedent for his own efforts to design
buildings in which individual components could be regularly replaced but in which the
basic form would remain intact.28 He also linked his aesthetics to Buddhism, writing that
the principle that architecture should change with time, the principle of replaceability
and interchangeability, and the principle of the metabolic cycle, as well as the belief that
architecture, cities and humanity itself is ephemeral, are all in accord with the doctrines of
samsra and laksana-alaksanata.29 Kurokawa was undoubtedly sincere. At the same time,
these arguments made it possible for Kurokawa to distinguish his work and that of his col-
leagues from other similar work produced in Europe and elsewhere and made it easier to
attract a foreign audience eager to embrace a modernist architecture enriched by exotic
Eastern spirituality.
The Metabolists were a significant presence at the highly successful Expo 70 in Osaka.
Their futuristic designs were, perhaps, best suited to this kind of venue. Kurokawa contrib-
uted the designs for two pavilions, including Takara Beautillion, a showcase for a manu-
facturer of furniture and other products for beauty salons that was constructed of prefabri-
cated steel capsules suspended in a framework assembled from modules of bent steel pipes.
Kikutake offered the Expo 70 Tower, a steel shaft onto which he attached observation
platforms constructed of geodesic domes.30
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 331

Kurokawas Nakagin Capsule Tower (see Plate 19) (1972) is one of the most representa-
tive examples of a Metabolist design intended for long-term use. His Nakagin Tower was
built across the street from an elevated expressway on a constricted site in an extremely
congested section of downtown Tokyo and is an especially imaginative response to the
limitations faced by architects and contractors during this period of rapid growth. The
core of the structure consists of two steel and reinforced concrete towers. They contain the
stairwell, elevator, water pipes, electrical lines, and other services. Bolted to these towers
are 144 capsules 2.5 meters by 4 meters by 2.5 meters in size. Each capsule is equipped with
built-in furniture and a bathroom. Kurokawa anticipated that they might be used as small
apartments or offices.
The capsules were constructed in a factory that produced shipping containers (Japan
was one of the leading manufacturers of these containers at the time) using similar tech-
niques. Factory manufacturing reduced costly on-site construction time and held open
the promise of mass production, a dream pursued by architects for decades. The capsules
were all the same size and had standardized placement for water and electrical hookups,
but Kurokawa allowed for some individuation by offering variations with different window
placement, interior dcor, etc. Once the capsules were built in the factory, they were trucked
to the site and hoisted into place. The capsules were arranged on the towers in an irregular
fashion, and a portion of each tower rose above the highest capsules. This left the building
looking as if it were incomplete, as if additional capsules might be added at any time.
The capsules were crampedeven in crowded Tokyo people aspired to more living
space.31 The Nakagin Building was, however, a successful demonstration of prefabrication
technology. And although the building has remained largely as it was constructed in 1972,
it can be seen as a manifestation of an aesthetic that could serve as a model for a future
generation of buildings that would be designed so that they could be readily transformed
in response to changing needs.
Although the members of the Metabolist group have continued to pursue their indi-
vidual careers, Metabolism as a phenomenon was short-lived. A series of political and
economic crises in the early 1970s put a damper on the more speculative strain in the
groups work for some time. Yet the forces that inspired the Metabolists did not disappear
entirely. Proposals for massive building projects on Tokyo Bay re-emerged in response to
the crazed real estate speculation of the late 1980s, and the ambitious Odaiba develop-
ment constructed on reclaimed land across the harbor from Tokyo might be seen as an
outgrowth of that same spirit.
And Tadao (1941) has always taken a very different approach to architectural
design. As an internationally celebrated architect (he, like Tange, has been awarded the
prestigious Pritzker Prize), he has received a number of large commissions, but many of
his most respected designs have been residences, museums, and commercial structures on
a comparatively small scale. He is not known for pushing the limits of new technology, but
rather for his remarkable handling of familiar materials (he is particularly well known for
his sensitive treatment of concrete).
The Koshino House was designed for a fashion designer and his family at the foot of
Mount Rokko in the wealthy community of Ashiya City west of Osaka (the main house
was completed in 1981). And excavated the sloping site and inserted the house into the
hillside so that the roof of the northwest side of the one wing of the house is at ground level.
332|Jonathan M. Reynolds

As a result, the house does not overwhelm the siterather the house seems to be embraced
by its surroundings. The main structure consists of two connected rectangular blocks of
reinforced concrete. One block contains the main entrance, the master bedroom, and bath
on one level, and the double-height living room, a dinner area, and kitchen down a flight
of stairs. A second, long and narrow block contains a bathroom, six small bedrooms in
Western style, and two tatami rooms. An atelier was added to the north of the main struc-
ture in 1984. The most memorable feature of the design is the living room. A large plate
glass window facing east and an even larger sliding glass window on the south open out to
the yard and to a concrete terrace between the two blocks of the structure. These openings
offer ample light yet are protected and private. A skylight that runs the full length of the
room lights the north wall. And is notoriously demanding of his contractors. Here the
results of those high standards are evident. And deliberately preserved the rectangular
grid marking the edges of the forms that were used to cast the concrete wall. He also left
unfilled the holes left by the tie rods that had held the two sides of the casting forms in
place. The concrete surface itself is quite smooth, testifying to the skill of the construction
workers. As the skylight casts its glancing light across the wall, the patterns on the wall
become animated, as if the wall were low-relief sculpture.
And designed the Times Building (fig. 12.9) for a radically different environment
the loud and crowded entertainment district in Kyoto. The first phase of the project,
completed in 1984, was designed on three levels, with high-end fashion boutiques and a
small coffeehouse. In the second phase (1991) And added a beer garden/restaurant on the
south. The building is constructed of reinforced concrete and concrete blocks applied with
the precision and elegant simplicity characteristic of Ands work.

Figure 12.9. And Tadao, Times Building, Kyoto, 1984 and 1991. Photograph by the author.
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 333

The Times Building is organized to insulate the visitor as much as possible from the
chaotic surroundings. The building is open to the canal that runs along the east side, but is
closed off along the south and west. One enters the building from the busy street via mod-
est staircases that lead one down half a flight of steps to the first level or up half a flight of
steps to the second level. As one descends to the first level one arrives at a small terrace
elegantly curved to follow the banks of the canal. Here the tired shopper can sit quietly by
the canal and enjoy an oasis in the midst of the city.
The man-made canal, known as the Takase River, was for And the most significant
feature of the site. It was his objective to design the Times so that it was in harmony with
the canal. He wrote:

I wish, through the Times, to resurrect the true meaning of the Takasegawa and to
re-establish the lost dialogue between man and nature. Brought up amidst nature, the
Japanese respond sensitively to natural elements such as the sight and sound of water
flowing and the sudden appearance of the sky before them. Ryoanji has its impres-
sive rocks, Saihoji its plush green moss, the Times its friendly water. Shall I call the
Takasegawa the water garden of the Times building? I believe that it is necessary in
our contemporary world to perpetuate the qualities of our inherited treasures.32

Even though the Times shoppers are likely to be urban dwellers who live and work in
modern facilities, And imagines them all engaged in an eternal dialogue with nature.
Furthermore, he seems unperturbed by either the artificial origins of this natural river
feature or the neon and the noise of the surrounding neighborhood. For both his Japanese
and foreign audience, And presents his work as the continuation of a stable and unified
Japanese cultural identity.
Isozaki Arata (1931) is of the same generation as the Metabolists, and although he
was not affiliated with the group he shared their interest in metastructures and massive
city planning projects in the early 1960s. Although the Metabolist obsession with build-
ings that could be repeatedly changed is not of central importance for Isozaki, he did share
the Metabolists tendency to emphasize or even exaggerate the structural elements in his
designs. Isozakis work is also characterized by a playful and ironic sense of humor. His
Fujimi Golf Clubhouse (1973) was formed into the shape of a question mark with round
plant bed in the parking lot as the dot. In the 1970s he became enamored with a sensuous
double-curved shape that he worked into the backrest for chairs and the undulating walls
of several public buildings, such as Kamioka Town Hall (1978). The source for this line was
the silhouette of the back and backside of Marilyn Monroe as revealed in a famous nude
photograph of the actress!
In 1979 Isozaki began work on the Tsukuba Center Building (fig. 12.10), a large mul-
tiuse project in Tsukuba Science City, located about forty miles from Tokyo. Tsukuba Sci-
ence City was developed by Japans central government to house a major university and
research center. The Tsukuba Center Building would offer the community a hotel, a concert
hall, a small shopping mall, and a public plaza. The complex can be approached on foot
from a broad pedestrian overpass, but in this broadly dispersed city most visitors arrive by
automobile (Tsukuba resembles a low-density American suburb more closely than it does
the congested but public transportationrich environment of the typical Japanese city).
334|Jonathan M. Reynolds

Figure 12.10. Isozaki Arata,

Tsukuba Center Building,
Tsukuba, 1983. Photograph
by the author.

Isozaki took several issues into consideration as he began work on the project. First he
concluded that the vast majority of the occupants of Tsukuba were transplants who lacked
any meaningful connection to the area and that the calculated nature of the built environ-
ment resisted the formation of meaning.
At the heart of the Tsukuba Center are an expansive upper pedestrian plaza and an
oval lower plaza. He organized the hotel, mall, and concert hall on two sides of the plaza.
At one corner of the lower plaza a rock garden with a jagged profile seems to have erupted
into the otherwise precisely bounded oval. Water cascades down the rocks and into a thin
channel that drains into a low fountain at the center of the plaza.
Isozakis client at Tsukuba was the Japanese national government. For Isozaki that gov-
ernment had become so completely fused with capitalism that the state itself had in effect
disappeared. In years past the Japanese state had, like its European and American coun-
terparts, favored neoclassical designs in architecture for their clarity and monumentality.
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 335

Isozaki chose to rework this neoclassical language to represent his vision of the state. He
chose as his model Michelangelos redesign of the plaza on the Capitoline Hill in Rome,
but he systematically inverted many features of the original. Whereas the plaza in Rome
is on a dramatic site at the top of a hill, the plaza at Tsukuba is sunken below the larger
plaza. At the center of the Capitoline plaza is a commanding equestrian portrait of the
emperor Marcus Aurelius; the focus for the plaza at Tsukuba is little more than a hole in
the ground. At the Capitoline plaza Michelangelo fashioned an elaborate geometric pat-
tern for the pavement. Isozaki reproduced the pattern but then reversed the light and dark
areas in design.
Elsewhere in the complex Isozaki playfully distorted classical conventions. Over sev-
eral entrances he placed wildly oversized keystones (since the construction is reinforced
concrete these keystones are not structural anyway). He framed the main street-level
entrance to the hotel with banded pilasters (composed of alternating square and round
segments)a motif popular with both Michelangelos contemporary Giulio Romano and
the French architect Claude Ledoux. Isozaki has outmannered these mannerists by rotat-
ing the pilasters forty-five degrees relative to the building faade.
And how did Isozaki negotiate the turbulent waters of cultural politics? In an essay
discussing Tsukuba he wrote:

As I have often said, the Katsura palace, the Parthenon, the Capitoline piazza, and
so on all live in a time and place equidistant from us. Anything occurring in the his-
tory of architectureeven in the history of the worldis open to quotation. But the
important point to notice is that, once quoted, things lose their original meaning and
generate new meanings with an effect resembling concentric circles rippling around
a stone thrown in the water.33

Isozaki was not willing to accept that his use of European (or any) models would make his
work derivative or un-Japanese. Nor was he interested in making any proprietary claim
on Japanese sources such as the Katsura Villa. The manipulation, recombination, and
recontextualization of these historical elements would provide the design its legitimacy.
After more than a century of struggle over these issues, Isozakis declaration that the great
architectural monuments of the world all live in a time and place equidistant from us is
liberating.
Taniguchi Yoshios designs are far from the eclectically postmodern work produced by
Isozaki in the 1970s and 1980s. His office has concentrated on a relatively small number of
larger public projects characterized by an understated, elegant, modernist sensibility, such
as IBM Japans Makuhari Technical Center (1991), the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art
(1995), and the New York Museum of Modern Art (2004).
The Domon Ken Museum (see Plate 20) (1983) is dedicated to the work of a photog-
rapher known both for gritty street photojournalism and for powerful interpretations of
Japans most celebrated ancient architecture and sculpture. The museum is located in a
park in the city of Sakata (Domons birthplace) in northeastern Japan. The low-lying struc-
ture of concrete is carefully proportioned to rest well in its surroundings. The exterior is
sheathed in shades of gray (exposed concrete and masonry facing). Taniguchi extended
one wing of the museum out into the small pond at the sitea cascade flows from a
336|Jonathan M. Reynolds

partially enclosed courtyard designed by the Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi out
into the pond. The cascade is animated further by a large stone sculpture by Noguchi. At
the back of the site, the designer Teshigahara Hiroshi introduced a semi-enclosed stone
and bamboo garden. The restraint continues in the interior, where Taniguchi created gal-
leries with putty-colored walls and warm, hardwood floorsnothing distracts from the
photography on display.
One might imagine some of the architects discussed above asserting that the build-
ing was Japanese because the design brings the visitor into close contact with its natural
surroundings, or because the courtyard garden and the bamboo garden of his two col-
laborators Noguchi and Teshigahara are reminiscent of premodern Japanese courtyard
gardens. While Taniguchi was committed to integrating the museum with its physical site,
his descriptions of the museum do not attempt to justify the design as Japanese.34 While
some designers have sought Japaneseness in unlikely places, this has not been central to
Taniguchis own representation of his work.
At the time Taniguchi was chosen to design the new building for New Yorks Museum
of Modern Art, New York Times Magazine published a cover story on the architect. One of
the most striking aspects of this article is the emphasis it placed on Taniguchis Japanese
origins. The author, Suzannah Lessard, was bound and determined to uncover the Japa-
nese roots of Taniguchis design. She remarked on Taniguchis European clothing and his
Harvard graduate education and reported, with perhaps the slightest hint of surprise, that
when she met Taniguchi for their first interview in the Okura Hotel in Tokyo, he ordered
bacon, eggs, and coffee instead of a Japanese-style breakfast. Yet throughout the article
Lessard seemed compelled to uncover what was distinctively Japanese about Japanese
modernist architecture in general and in Taniguchis designs in particular. Taniguchi was
apparently reluctant to contribute to this effort, but with some persistence Lessard got her
story. She wrote, Taniguchi himself resists the idea that his architecture is specifically
Japanese. Its just architecture, he says, but then admits that Japanese tradition is probably
in his system.
On the strength of that admission Lessard then observes, His modernism is extraor-
dinarily pure, drawing out of the center of modernist esthetics. There is about it a serenity
and depth in which one vividly senses his connection to the Japanese past.35
Lessards effort to essentialize Taniguchis work is by no means unusual. In fact, the
impulse to search the Japanese past in the designs of modern Japanese architects has
been a compulsion for many Western critics. Nor is this pattern confined to the writings
of non-Japanese. As we have seen, many Japanese architects and critics have been far less
reticent than Taniguchi to situate their work and the work of their colleagues within the
context of Japanese tradition.

Conclusion

The need to appropriate technology and new building types has continued unabated from
the end of the Edo period to the present. Yet these innovations were at times problematic.
This process of cultural exchange unfolded within the context of a foreign threat. The pros-
pect of being overwhelmed by Western culture and of losing Japanese identity haunted the
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 337

architectural profession. Japans first modern architects, such as Tatsuno Kingo, were pre-
pared to leave older Japanese architectural practices behind. Tatsunos student, It Chta,
was less willing to abandon Japanese traditions. He recognized that the use of reinforced
concrete was essential for safety, and he drew heavily on his training in Western architec-
tural history and even incorporated forms from elsewhere in Asia as well. Yet throughout
his career, he pressed for the invention of a Japanese architecture that rehabilitated Japa-
nese forms for new uses.
One can see traces of this hybrid approach in much that followed. Its student,
Tange Kenz, while more wary of the appropriation of Japanese historical styles than
his teacher, did find uses for those forms. Kurokawa and And were less hesitant. There
have, however, been other strategies. Isozaki has worked with Japanese forms but did so
by abandoning any proprietary claim to any one cultural legacy over another (a move that
granted him the world, so to speak). Taniguchi has at times attempted to dodge the style
debate altogether.
Many leading Japanese patrons of architecture have been concerned about the foreign
reaction to design. Foreign observers have watched and contributed to the development of
modern Japanese architecture, and some were just as anxious about the loss of Japans
exotic tradition as many Japanese were. Aware of this interest, many Japanese architects
have pursued a foreign audience for their designs and have shaped their self-presentation
to stress the Japaneseness of their work in order to cultivate that audience (here Kurokawa
and And are particularly conspicuous examples). In doing so, however, they risk ghet-
toizing their designs. Taniguchi has reached for the universality of high modernism and
has reaped the reward of one of the most sought-after international commissions in recent
years. Is it realistic to imagine that Taniguchi would have been rewarded with the Museum
of Modern Art project had he wrapped it in Japanese cultural nationalism? The desire
to rework Japans rich architectural heritage in contemporary practice will undoubtedly
continue into the future, but it will always be a challenge to do so without imposing some
limitations as well.

Notes

1. Dallas Finn, Meiji Revisited: The Site of Victorian Japan (New York: Weatherhill, 1995),
p. 7.
2. Julia Meech-Pekarik, The World of the Meiji Print (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), p. 94.
3. The widespread damage caused to brick construction in a severe earthquake in 1893
raised other questions about the appropriateness of unreinforced brick construction for
Japan.
4. Suzuki Hiroyuki and Yamaguchi Hiroshi, eds., Kindai gendai kenchikushi, vol. 5 of
Uchida Yoshichika et al., eds., Shin kenchikugaku taikei (Tokyo: Shkokusha, 1993), p. 250.
5. Edward Seidensticker summarizes a sample of foreign reactions in his Low City, High
City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), p. 60.
6. See Don Choi, Educating the Architect in Meiji Japan, paper presented at the Archi-
tecture and Modern Japan symposium at Columbia University (October 12, 2000). See also
338|Jonathan M. Reynolds

Jonathan M. Reynolds, The Formation of a Japanese Architectural Profession, in The Artist

as Professional in Japan, ed. Melinda Takeuchi, pp. 180200 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 2004).
7. For a photograph of the Rokumeikan and for an especially evocative description of
the life around this remarkable building, see Meech-Pekarik, The World of the Meiji Print, pp.
144157.
8. The Zka Gakkai was founded in 1886 following the example of the Royal Institute
of British Architects; the organization is now known as the Nihon Kenchiku Gakkai, or the
Architectural Institute of Japan.
9. See Finn, Meiji Revisited, p. 246250. See also Yoshikawa Seiichi et al., eds., The Tokyo
Station and Tatsuno Kingo (Tokyo: Tokyo Station Gallery, 1990).
10. In some cases, such as at the seventh-century Hryji in Nara, glass beads were placed
at the base of the pagodas central column as symbolic relics.
11. Although It drew heavily from traditional sources, he felt free to be highly selec-
tive about the elements he would appropriate for his own designs and was willing to use those
architectural elements in new ways. Tradition for It and for later colleagues was always
open to radical reinterpretation. For this reason, it is not possible to provide any one stable
definition for the concept, even though it was and continues to be a central feature of architec-
tural rhetoric right up to the present.
12. For further discussion of the Bunriha, see Jonathan M. Reynolds, The Bunri-ha and
the Problem of Tradition for Modernist Architecture in Japan, 19201928, in Japans Com-
peting Modernities: Issues in Culture and Democracy, 19001930, ed. Sharon A. Minichiello,
pp. 228246 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998).
13. Bunriha Kenchikukai no sengen, Bunriha Kenchikukai (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1920).
The manifesto was included in the groups later catalogues as well. It is reprinted in Shichir
Fujii and Yamaguchi Hiroshi, eds., Nihon kenchiku sengen bunsh (Tokyo: Shkokusha, 1973),
p. 126.
14.Cited in Inoue Shichi, to, kitchu, japanesuku: Daita no posutomodan (Tokyo:
Seidsha, 1987), p. 22.
15.Later the style was pejoratively dubbed Imperial Crown, a style that emphasized the
superficial imposition of traditional roofs (like a crown) onto modern construction.
16.From Tokyo teishitsu hakubutsukan sekkei zuan kensh bosh kitei, Kenchiku
zasshi 44, no. 540 (December 1930): p. 2213.
17. For further discussion of Maekawas participation in this competition, see Jonathan
M. Reynolds, Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 89101.
18. For a detailed discussion of this competition, see Akiko Takenaka-OBrien, The Aes-
thetics of Mass-Persuasion: War and Architectural Sites in Tokyo, 18681945 (PhD diss., Yale
University, 2004), ch. 4.
19. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: New
Press, 1999), pp. 8997.
20.Low-fired ceramics known as haniwa were produced in the shape of houses, humans,
animals, weapons, and other objects from the third until the seventh centuries.
21. Kawazoe Noboru, Tange Kenz no Nihonteki seikaku: Toku ni rmen kz no hat-
ten o tshite, Shinkenchiku 30, no. 1 (January 1955): p. 63.
 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and Japanese? | 339

22. Japans GNP grew by nearly 60 percent between 1951 and 1955 (14.2 to 22.7 billion
dollars), and the Japanese economy sustained an amazing average growth rate of more than
10 percent per year from 1950 to 1973; see Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From
Tokugawa Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 245248.
23. The Metabolists included the architects Kikutake Kiyonori, Kurokawa Kisho, Maki
Fumihiko, and Otaka Masato, the industrial designer Ekuan Kenji, and the architectural jour-
nalist Kawazoe Noboru.
24. For an especially thoughtful introduction to the Metabolists, see Cherie Wendelken,
Putting Metabolism Back in Place: The Making of a Radically Decontextualized Architec-
ture in Japan, in Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, ed.
Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Rjean Legault, pp. 279299 (Montreal: Canadian Centre for
Architecture, 2000). See also Michael Franklin Ross, Beyond Metabolism: The New Japanese
Architecture (New York: Architectural Record Books, 1978).
25. Kawazoe Noboru et al., Metabolism/1960 (Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha, 1960), p. 5.
26. See Reyner Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (New York:
Harper and Row, 1976).
27. Kurokawa Kisho, Metabolism in Architecture (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1977),
p. 7.
28.Kurokawa, Metabolism, p. 33.
29. Kurokawa discusses these two Buddhist concepts (referring to reincarnation and the
illusory or conditional nature of existence) at some length; Kurokawa, Metabolism, p. 35.
30. As Ross suggests, Kikutakes design is strongly reminiscent of Peter Cooks proposal
for an Entertainment Tower for the Montreal Expo of 1963; Ross, Beyond Metabolism, pp.
5456.
31. Kurokawa also designed houses that provided more living space by joining several
capsules into one unified living unit.
32. Ando Tadao, The Yale Studio and Current Works (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), pp. 6364.
The Ryanji is a famous garden in Kyoto composed of rocks and gravel believed to date origi-
nally from the end of the fifteenth century. The Saihji is another Buddhist temple in Kyoto
with an expansive garden renowned for its moss.
33. Isozaki Arata, Of City, Nation, and Style, in Postmodernism and Japan, ed. Masao
Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian, p. 59 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989).
34. See also Taniguchi Yoshio, The Architecture of Yoshio Taniguchi (New York: Harry N.
Abrams, 1999), p. 40.
35. Suzannah Lessard, Quietly, He Grew on Them, New York Times Magazine, April 12,
1998, p. 57. I would like to thank Zo Strother for suggesting this passage.
 Toshio Watanabe

13 The Modern Japanese Garden

What Is a Modern Japanese Garden?

The modern Japanese garden is a multifaceted, complex, and fascinating subject. My aim
here is not so much to give a survey of the modern Japanese garden but rather to investigate
the meaning of the term to indicate how the meaning and significance of a garden could
change with time and with different observers.1 The meaning of a modern Japanese garden
cannot remain a single one. It depends on whose meaning it represents. The patron, the
designer, the gardener, the connoisseur, the local citizen, the tourist, each bring with them
their own value systems they use to judge and, indeed, to make sense of a particular modern
Japanese garden. It is fascinating to observe the vicissitudes concerning the ways modern
Japanese gardens have been valued.
We are discussing the modern Japanese garden as though it is a clearly understood
concept. But this is not necessarily so. Let me restrict my discussion here to examples from
about the 1860s to the 1960s. The term modern in our case will refer to this particular
span of years and will be distinguished from the term modernist, which involves an
artistic intentionality of being modern. The term Japanese is also, surprisingly, not a
straightforward one, as I will include not only modern gardens in Japan, but also Jap-
anese-style gardens in Europe, the United States, the Japanese colonies, and elsewhere.
Kendall H. Brown has also dealt with the issue of Japanese versus Japanese-style in
his discussion of James Roses 1965 text, in which the author insists that a Japanese garden
is a garden made in Japan and anything built outside the country is a translation and not
the real object and therefore bypasses the real human context.2 I believe Roses view is too
restrictive and does not consider, for example, those cases in which gardens were built for
Japanese clients abroad. Indeed, such distinctions as those made between the Japanese
and the Japanese-style are not as clear-cut as one might assume, as we will see. Another
reason why I retain the term Japanese garden is simply that it has been by now so widely
used that the term could well be understood to incorporate the meaning of a garden in
Japan as well as any garden created in a Japanese style.
The modern Japanese garden also contains a wide variety of garden types, from a 6.5
by 7 centimeter tabletop Zen gardening kit to large national park. To give a fresh look
at the modern Japanese garden, I will divide my definitions into three at times overlap-
ping categories: the peopled Japanese garden, both public and private; the Japanese garden
abroad; and the modernist Japanese garden.
 13. The Modern Japanese Garden | 341

The Peopled Garden: The Public Park

What is a garden for? Some are made more or less as self-contained entities to be gazed
upon from outside their boundaries, whereas others are created for people to be active
within them, walking, jogging, picnicking, playing, partying, putting on actual perfor-
mances, etc. In this section I will examine gardens that were created to be populated by
those actively engaged in various activities within them.
The most momentous event for the beginning of public parks was the 1873 Cabinet
Ordinance (Dajkan fukoku), which is regarded as the first official statement for the cre-
ation of public parks in Japan. The ordinance states that public parks (ken) should be
set up for everyones enjoyment and asks local authorities to choose and propose appro-
priate sites. This notion of a public park is clearly based on Western precedents, and the
ordinance takes it for granted that it is part of a modern nations obligation to provide
such parks for its citizens, regardless of social class. Whats more, the ordinance was not
restricted to Tokyo, but was meant to encourage a national project covering the whole of
Japan. To impose a national unitary solution was another sign of a modern nation the new
Meiji government strove to imitate.
Ono Ryhei has argued in his excellent book Ken no tanj (The birth of the public
park) that this ordinances primary intention was not necessarily to provide sites for lei-
sure for the citizens or to improve the urban environment, but actually for the government
to appropriate land where the ownership was not clear-cut.3 For example, precinct owner-
ship of temples and shrines was often ambiguous, and the government appropriated such
spaces by calling them public parks.4 During the previous Edo period, most of these pre-
cincts already functioned as public spaces for citizens to enjoy, especially at festival times.
However, the new notion added by this ordinance asserts that these places are now deemed
to be public parks controlled by public bodies, such as the local authority or the govern-
ment, and not by a temple or a shrine. The term ken in fact consists of two concepts, k,
meaning public, and en, meaning garden. The actual activities that occurred in these
places may not have differed much from before, but in my view the import of the place has
radically changed from that of a mere local site to one whose meaning and significance was
controlled nationally and was endowed with a new role by the central government.
Thus the system for public parks was initiated by this ordinance, but the idea of a
proper ab initio creation of a modern public park as part of a larger scheme of urban
planning could be dated to 1885, when a committee set up to reorganize the city of Tokyo
(Tokyo shiku kaisei shinsakai) made its report to the government.5 The primary purpose of
a public park according to this report was hygiene: parks would provide a healthy environ-
ment within the urban space. But there were further functions of public parks envisaged
by the government and others, some overt and some covert.6 One function of a public
park, which continues the hygienic argument, was to provide a place not only for walk-
ing but also for sports. Thus, the park becomes an active site where things happen. It was
also argued that the park, which could improve the health of the nations citizenry, would
also contribute to an increase in productivity of the workers and thus to the enriching of
the Japanese nation as a whole (fukoku).7
There were some other, more sinister aspects to setting up public parks as well. Ono
suspects that the sites of some parks were chosen for the convenience of police surveillance,
342|Toshio Watanabe

since major police stations were planned to be constructed next to these parks. A park
often provided an ideal space for political gatherings, a type of activity not welcomed by
the state, and thus in the eyes of the police the park became a potentially subversive site.
Such considerations reveal that the kind of public park envisaged by this report did not
merely function as a place for leisure but also as an instrument for the formation of a mod-
ern national state.8
After 1885, the debate on public parks continued vigorously, but the actual creation
of new parks was surprisingly slow, and some of the aspects proposed in the report were
not always pursued. Perhaps the most famous example of this modern type of public park
was Hibiya Park in Tokyo, opened provisionally in 1903.9 Until the last moment, the draft
design included a Japanese-style garden designed by Ozawa Keijir (18421932) within the
space, but this plan was rejected in the end, not for ideological but for financial reasons.
The main part of the park was designed in Western style by Honda Seiroku (18661952),
with considerable inspiration taken from German examples. It seems ironic that Honda at
this stage was, unlike Ozawa, not an expert in garden design but was instead well versed
in agriculture and forestry, and he seems to have received the commission more or less by
accident. Nevertheless, after the success of Hibiya Park, he became one of the towering fig-
ures in the field of garden design in Japan. This choice also had the effect that the academic
study of garden design came to be conducted mostly in departments of agriculture rather
than departments of architecture or elsewhere.
Although the history of the creation of Hibiya Park was a tortuous one, once com-
pleted, it gained a paradigmatic status as a modern public park. Its ideally central position
within Tokyo attracted many activities, from musical events to political gatherings. In
1905 Hibiya Park even became a focal point of clashes between the police and those who
opposed the Treaty of Portsmouth that concluded the Russo-Japanese War. Opponents
of the agreement regarded it as a sell-out, convinced that Japan, which had won the war,
was forced to suffer the interference of other nations, particularly the United States and its
president, Theodore Roosevelt. This protest quickly got out of hand and developed into a
full-scale riot, which initiated a period of popular unrest that lasted more than a decade.
These clashes came to be known as the Hibiya Riots, and thus the park acquired a new
meaning, standing as a symbol of citizen unrest.
The Hibiya Riots represented an example of subversive activities performed in the
context of a public park, but parks were also used as a space for events created to support
the ideology of the national government. Ueno Park is a case in point. This area was one of
the public parks identified with the principles outlined in the Dajkan fukoku in 1873. It
opened in 1876 and was extensively used to promote government projects. Already in 1877,
the first Domestic Industrial Exposition (Naikoku Kangy Hakurankai) took place there,
and the British architect Josiah Conder began to create a design for the National Museum
in 1878, which was eventually completed in 1881. Ueno Park soon became an important
center for cultural institutions, with its museums, concert halls, and zoo. Unlike Hibiya
Park, Ueno Park was already an established place for leisure for the citizens of Edo and
was long famous for its cherry blossom viewings (hanami), when the whole area over-
flowed with people admiring the flowers and enjoying themselves at parties held under
the cherry trees. Thus Ueno already had established its character as a place for leisure
for urban inhabitants during the Edo period. It is fascinating to note, however, that the
 13. The Modern Japanese Garden | 343

Uenos hanami had a more high-class nature than the more plebeian hanami of Tokyos
Mukjima area, as Shirahata Yzabur has pointed out.10 Ono argues that even during the
Edo period Ueno was under the control of the political authorities of its time, because the
area was part of the precincts of the family temple of the Tokugawa shgun and that with
the coming of the Meiji period, the political authority simply changed from the Shgunate
to that of the Imperial state.11 Thus in my view the significance of the place as one under
tight control by the powers of its time and its continuing importance as a site for peoples
activities had not changed.

The Peopled Garden: The Private Garden

With his seminal 1997 book Daimy teien (The daimy garden), Shirahata Yzabur
rehabilitated the garden designs of Edo, denigrated by many modern garden histori-
ans.12 Edo, when it became the capital of Japan in 1603, had no proper urban infrastruc-
ture, but it developed rapidly as the daimy were obliged to maintain substantial resi-
dences in Edo, mostly at least three each and some even more. It is estimated that just
before the Meiji Restoration in 1868 there were at least a thousand daimy gardens and
probably several thousand major gardens within the city limits.13 Western travelers during
the 1850s and 1860s who gained access to Edo frequently emphasized the greenness of the
Japanese capital.
One of Shirahatas key findings establishes the chief function of daimy garden as that
of entertaining guests. He examines not just what and how but, most crucially, why these
costly spaces were created. The importance of these gardens was precisely in their func-
tions as spaces for socializing and diplomacy. Gardens provided areas for the organization
of tea ceremonies, n performances, banquets, and parties. Important functionaries were
invited so that behind-the-scenes negotiations could take place. Allies and friends were
invited to cement their relationships. Though these gardens were private spaces, on these
occasions often they assumed a semipublic function.
In our context of the modern Japanese garden, one significant point Shirahata makes
is that most Meiji private garden designs were essentially a continuation of the Edo daimy
garden. The luxury gardens of Meiji politicians, high-ranking officials, and industrialists
performed functions similar to those of the daimy gardens. They often invited guests to
their gardens to entertain them, thus fulfilling various social functions of the period. Some
show certain stylistic developments and other variations from the designs of previous Edo
period gardens, but the most important point in the present context is that the meaning
and the function of these particular Meiji gardens essentially remained the same.
The most famous and influential Meiji garden designer was Ogawa Jihei (18601933),
usually known as Ueji. He came from a family of gardeners in Kyoto, but once he estab-
lished his reputation as a garden designer, he dominated the Meiji garden scene and built
more than sixty major gardens in Kyoto and elsewhere, some in Tokyo.14 Murin-an (see
Plate 21) in Kyoto near the Nanzenji Temple is probably his best-known garden and is
also one of Uejis earliest. It was built for the Meiji oligarch Yamagata Aritomo (1838
1922) from 1894 to 1896, with further alterations completed in 1902.15 Ogawas extensive
and lively use of water, the open expanse of lawn, and his choice to place an emphasis on
344|Toshio Watanabe

naturalistic elements provided by the site rather than emphasizing any heavy symbolism
all reveal at once what came to be known as Uejis characteristic personal style.
However, in my view Ueji was heavily indebted to his patron Yamagata for all these enu-
merated characteristics of his garden style. Because Yamagata was such a famous politician,
there has been a tendency to underestimate his pioneering skill as an innovative garden
designer. A recent study has shown that Yamagata already had pioneered all the elements of
the Ueji style mentioned above before he commissioned Ueji to build the Murin-an garden.16
Therefore, artistically speaking, it is likely that Ueji was heavily indebted to Yamagata. In
fact, Uejis family business was more likely to have been treated as one furnishing garden-
ing services, rather than providing garden design in any modern sense.17 Uejis greatness
lay in the fact that he was able to change his family business from one mainly providing
gardening services into a full-scale modern garden design company. Kyoto in the Meiji
period produced a number of exciting designer-entrepreneurs who converted a traditional
craft enterprise into modern companies with design flair and entrepreneurial daring. Iida
Shinshichi of Takashimaya, Kawashima Jinbei of Kawashima Orimono, and Miyagawa
Kzan of Makuzuyaki all experimented in ways to revitalize traditional Kyoto crafts.18 Ueji
could certainly be regarded as another example of such an entrepreneur. The importance
of Ueji also lies in his establishment of garden design as a modern design profession. Ueji
became a brand, and he remains the only widely known Meiji garden designer.19
Murin-an already stirred the interest of the Kyoto media while it was still being built;
the Hinode shinbun (Hinode newspaper) provided several short reports on its progress.20 It
also reported that prominent Kyoto politicians, such as the chair of the Kyoto City Assem-
bly, were preparing a thank-you gift to present to Yamagata for the banquet provided by
him, likely a completion party organized for these dignitaries.21 We also know that the
art critic Kuroda Tengai visited Murin-an in December 1900 and reported Yamagatas
views as to why he had chosen this more naturalistic approach to garden design.22 How-
ever, in the larger context of this chapter, Tengais comments on another Ueji garden in
Kyoto are of even greater interest. In 1912 he published an article introducing the garden
of Tairy Sans, not far from Murin-an.23 Discussing the large expanse of the lawn, he
commented that here several hundred people can be accommodated, and garden parties
should be organized. For in our times, this [feature for a garden] is something we cannot
do without.24 This article was based on an interview held while the owner and Ueji strolled
together in the garden, and these comments give further credence to the importance of
human activities held within the garden, even private ones.
Moving into the Taish and the early Shwa periods, it appears that with the era of
so-called Taish democracy, the concept of a new type of private garden, one conceived of
as part of the homes of urban, middle-class citizens, now gained interest among designers,
architects, and writers. This is a different type of private garden from the grander gardens
designed by Ueji for the politicians, high-ranking officials, and industrialists, planned for
their various different functions and activities to be held within them. The new era cel-
ebrated domesticity, and the individual house was now emphasized as a place that should
serve the family, its design no longer skewed to accommodate the needs of occasional
visitors.25 For example, Nishimura Isaku (18841963), the educator and super-dilettante,
already showed this trait in 1915 when he built a house for himself and his family in the
remote Shing city that put the family spaces at the center of the house.26 He was quite
 13. The Modern Japanese Garden | 345

adamant that the family living room, rather than the reception/guest room, should occupy
the largest space within the house. Jordan Sand states that Nishimura treated his domes-
tic life as a kind of edifying performance.27 This notion of the house as a site for family
activities spreads out into the garden space as well. Garden designer and writer Nishikawa
Tomotaka argued in 1929 that the interior and garden design must come together, and
he saw the garden as a unified living environment joining with the house.28 Moriguchi
Tari and Hayashi Itoko argued in 1922 that traditional domestic gardens were designed
just to be admired from the guest room and ignored the needs of children.29 These writ-
ers insisted that an ideal home garden should satisfy the needs of all the family members
equally. Such a garden should constitute a democratic space, where women and children
can have the same rights as the head of the house or guest. Here children could play, and
flowers, fruit, and even vegetables could be grown for the family. This new attitude toward
private gardens is more or less the opposite of the gardens Ueji built. Unlike his concep-
tions, here the new space is mainly devoted to the activities of the family and not the
guests. It so happens that both types emphasize the importance of the lawn, but for com-
pletely different reasons. The family garden is not a place where parties and banquets are
held, but where children and pets can run around. The props are no longer stone lanterns
and large rocks, but swings, slides, and sand pits.
The concept of the domestic garden as a site for promoting family health continues to
the present, although with some variation. But the ideology of why this should be so has
undergone certain changes. Early examples of promoting childrens needs in a domes-
tic space, such as those promoted by Nishimura Isaku, soon became part of a broader
reform movement concerning everyday life. However, with an increasingly nationalistic
atmosphere that developed as the war approached, another reason for promoting space for
children was promoted. A how-to book on small gardens published in 1941 proclaims the
duty of creating a healthy second generation of citizens (Daini kokumin) for the nation.30
Even the idea of a modest garden in which children could play was now incorporated into
a national effort for propping up the nation in times of war. The same book also provides
a fascinating article on how to incorporate a bomb shelter into a domestic garden.31 An
illustrated example (fig. 13.1) shows that the shelter is camouflaged by grapevine pergolas
and neatly trimmed mounds of tea trees. The south-facing entrance space to the shelter
becomes a greenhouse packed with flower pots! This example suggests that a grim neces-
sity need not prevent the family from enjoying their garden and benefiting from it.

The Japanese Garden Abroad: International Exhibitions,

Western Adoption, and the Colonies
When a Japanese section was created for the first time at an international exhibition in
London in 1862, no garden was provided. This display was organized not by the Japanese
government but by the then British minister in Japan, Rutherford Alcock. However, for
the 1867 Exposition Universelle at Paris, the Tokugawa bakufu government, as well as
the Satsuma and Saga domains, all exhibited there separately. The government set up a
teahouse, which was very popular, and it seems that some modest landscaping was pro-
vided around it.32
Figure 13.1. Design of a bomb shelter in a small garden. Shimizu Eiji, ed., Shteien no mikata tsukuri-
kata (How to appreciate or create a small garden) (Tokyo: Nippon denken kabushikigaisha shuppanbu,
1941), p. 90.
 13. The Modern Japanese Garden | 347

The first time a Japanese garden was given a proper exposure in Europe was when a
garden was built for the Japanese section of the 1873 Weltausstellung (World Exposition)
in Vienna. This was the first international exhibition in which the Meiji government par-
ticipated, and government officials took the challenge seriously and prepared carefully.
The garden was important in setting the scene and enhancing the experience of the visi-
tors, since the space constituted the first glimpse of something Japanese a visitor would
encounter upon entering and therefore gave spectators the first impression of what Japan
was like. In fact, the construction of the garden and the buildings was delayed; the Japa-
nese gardeners and builders were still working when the exhibition was opened. This set-
back actually provided an unexpected spectacle for the visitors and was commented on
favorably.33 A photograph of the garden shows that traditional paraphernalia such as a
stone lantern or rocks were used for the construction of the garden.34
Just a few days after the opening on May 5, Japanese officials managed to arrange a visit
to the Japanese pavilion by the Emperor Franz Joseph himself, along with Empress Elisa-
beth. An illustration of their visit (fig. 13.2) was published in a German periodical, showing

Figure 13.2. Franz Kollarz, Emperor Franz Joseph and the Empress Elisabeth visiting the Japanese
garden. Land und Meer (Stuttgart) 15, no. 40 (1873).
348|Toshio Watanabe

the emperor and empress returning from a visit they had made to show respect to a small
Shint shrine set up in the garden. The empress, renowned for her beauty, provides the
central focal point of the composition, whereas the humble Japanese gardeners are admir-
ing her, bowing to her in an almost Eadweard Muybridgelike slow motion sequence.
The importance of this garden in the Vienna Exposition was that it was not only the
first Japanese garden available for viewing by the European public, but also because it was
visited by such a large number of people. Further, such illustrations as the one discussed
above contributed to an even wider dissemination of the image of the Japanese garden.
From this time forward a Japanese garden, even a small-scale one, became a regular
contribution by the Japanese to major international exhibitions. Japanese gardens were
featured in expositions held in Philadelphia (1876, 1926), Paris (1878, 1889, 1900, 1925),
Chicago (1893, 1933), St. Louis (1904), London (1910), San Francisco (1915, 1939), New York
(19391940, 19641965), Brussels (1958), Seattle (1909, 1962), and Montreal (1967), among
others.35 This means for the entire period under discussion, Japanese gardens were on view
at these major crowd-attracting events more or less every few years. Each of these gardens
offered a highly visible space imbued with Oriental exoticism in a Western public site. The
total number of people who visited these Japanese gardens must have been extremely high,
as even a single international exhibition routinely reached attendance numbers of many
millions. It is also important that these gardens were accessible to everybody who paid the
entrance fee. They were open to people of all classes rather than to a select few. As stated
above, these Japanese gardens were usually the first sight the visitors encountered and so
played a significant role in the construction of the image in the larger world of Japan and
Japanese culture.
Together with some of the Japanese pavilions and gates at these international exhibi-
tions, a number of Japanese gardens also enjoyed lives beyond the exhibitions themselves,
though they usually went through a number of changes, sometimes to a degree that only
a rudiment of their previous design remained. For example, the Viennese 1873 Japanese
garden, including its Shint shrine, was actually sold to the Alexandra Park Company
and moved to London.36 The writer and designer Christopher Dresser (18341904), who
traveled to Japan few years later in 18761877 and wrote a major book on Japanese art and
crafts, played a key role in this transaction. Chicagos Japanese garden also went through
many changes, but has survived as the Osaka Garden, though very little from the origi-
nal garden remains. Similarly, Philadelphias Fairmont Park had three Japanese gardens
constructed at different times, beginning in 1876. The site of the Japanese garden created
for the Japan-Britain Exhibition of 1910, a small municipal park at the back of BBC White
City Studio in London, was renovated in 2010 and is called Heiwa-en (Garden of peace).
These gardens were clearly meant to promote Japanese culture at these international
events, but the intention and actual effect did not always match. Kendall Brown, in his
perceptive book Japanese-Style Gardens of the Pacific West Coast, provides details on a
number of these cases.37 For example, the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis
coincided with the Russo-Japanese War, and the Japanese pursued an aggressive policy,
attempting to take over the space at the exposition vacated by the Russians. However, such
a move also necessitated conserving funds, so that instead of a replica of Nagoya Castle, a
more peaceful stroll garden with temple-style wooden buildings was constructed, which
elicited the desired effect.38
 13. The Modern Japanese Garden | 349

Compared to this, the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco

created a quite complicated situation. Initially, when the Japanese withdrew because of the
introduction by California of the Alien Land Act banning Japanese from land ownership,
efforts were made to bring the Japanese back by postponing the vote on the bill until after
the fair was concluded. In the end, the Japanese did participate, but in this debate the tea
garden assumed a symbolic role representing the whole issue of Japanese participation.
Quotes such as we cannot sell our birthright for a tea garden or it [labor] will not be
lured from its opposition by promise of the most beautiful tea-garden that the mind of Ori-
ental man has conceived39 show that, whatever the political situation, there was a gener-
ally agreed perception that a Japanese garden was something beautiful and of great value.
Apparently the debate was over whether this aesthetic value was greater than the basic
rights of the workers. Despite the hostility of many Californians toward Japanese immi-
grants, most visitors were charmed by the fairy garden.40 There were examples of more
blatantly propagandist efforts by the Japanese at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition
in Chicago and in 1939 at both the New York and San Francisco expositions.41 In these
cases the Japanese garden was enlisted to impress on visitors the peaceful nature of Japa-
nese culture and by implication the peaceful intention of the Japanese government, and
to ameliorate the bad impression Japan was gaining through its aggressive China policy.
Stimulated by these examples as well as by a growing enthusiasm for Japonisme, that
more general cultural trend in Western taste for things Japanese, many Japanese-style gar-
dens were created in North America and Europe.42 The peaks of such interest were during
the first decades of the twentieth century, the immediate decades after World War II, and
from about the last decade of the last century up to our own time; indeed, except for the
period during the World War II, Japanese gardens were created in these countries on a
more or less continuous basis. In that regard, it can be said that the Japanese garden was
probably one of the most significant phenomena of twentieth-century Japonisme.
Brown rightly chides the scholarship on garden history for not paying enough atten-
tion, until recently, to the sociopolitical implications of Japanese gardens.43 However, he is
perhaps too severe in describing some of these gardens, where new forms were combined
with various older sections, as being like Dr. Frankensteins monster.44 As he argues,
these gardens are generally believed to be authentic Japanese gardens and to capture
the essence of Japanese culture, but he finds these claims to be highly problematic.45 This
demand for Japanese uniqueness versus a statement of the universality of Japanese civili-
zation remains a perennial question when discussing Japanese culture. It is indeed neces-
sary to question the claim for the validity of any single and universal authenticity for any
specific cultural manifestation. What is needed, in my view, is an effort to examine each
cultural product for its own authenticity within its own context. Even then, the act of
the appropriate appreciation of a cultural product remains still yet another separate issue,
which needs to be examined in a way different from the context of the product itself. Of
course the cobbling together of disparate cultural and historical components is a meth-
odology used throughout history and not simply a strategy invented by postmodernism.
Garden design in particular is a peculiarly difficult genre in which to establish any unique,
frozen authenticity. As a cultural product it is difficult to pin down what that nature con-
sists of, but an even more urgent matter is the need to examine the history and context of
the appreciation of these gardens.
350|Toshio Watanabe

Many of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese gardens in the
West demonstrate characteristics of Meiji garden design, features that in turn were based
on the daimy gardens of the Edo period. As Shirahata has argued, and as I will point out
below, we have lost the ability to appreciate Meiji and Edo gardens because we are now con-
ditioned to see them through modernist glasses.46 As many of the early Japanese gardens
in the West were made in the Meiji style, we feel they do not match our aesthetic expecta-
tions in the twenty-first century. If we are arguing for some sort of authenticity at all, the
possibility of which is actually debatable, we should at least be examining the authentic-
ity of the time and circumstances when they were created rather than fabricating some
imaginary model of a universal Japanese garden.
A key text for the understanding and appreciation of Japanese gardens by those in
the West is Josiah Conders Landscape Gardening in Japan, published in Tokyo in 1893,
including a Supplement that contains many collotype photographs. A revised version was
then published in 1912, suggesting a continuous demand for this publication. It is regarded
even now as a classic of its kind in the West. One of the motives for Conder to publish this
book was to make clear his recommendation that European and American readers con-
sider designing a Japanese garden. His arguments in persuading Western readers to adopt
the design of a Japanese garden are based on purely aesthetic considerations. In creating a
Japanese garden in the West, he underplays the historical and culturally specific elements
of Japanese garden design, emphasizing instead a more abstract and formalist notion of
beauty, such as composition, etc., a notion that can also be widely observed in Western
modernist attitudes toward Japanese culture in general. Thus Conders book could be
regarded as one of the final products of the Japonisme of the aesthetic movement.47
However, this purely aesthetic view radically changes with another classic of its kind,
Harada Jirs The Gardens of Japan, published by the Studio in London in 1928. Harada
emphasizes the Japanese garden as a necessity in life, not so much for the physical as
for the mental and spiritual.48 By the 1920s, spirituality clearly assumes a central role in
defining the meaning of a Japanese garden, whereas Conder in his earlier publication did
not refer to it at all.
During the 1930s another new appreciation of the Japanese garden emerged. Chris-
topher Tunnards book Gardens in the Modern Landscape, published in London in 1938,
is, strictly speaking, not even a book on Japanese gardens; his argument concerns the way
one should build an authentic modern garden. In this context Tunnard hails the Japa-
nese garden as an important source for inspiration for all modern garden designers. He
provides a sensitive and at times detailed analysis of the Japanese garden and its useful-
ness. Fascinatingly, one of the examples he illustrates is a modernist garden by Horiguchi
Sutemi (18951984), thus showing that Western interest in modern Japanese culture is not
confined to the post-1960s period.
One type of Japanese garden constructed abroad which has heretofore received little
attention is those gardens constructed in the Japanese colonies. Japanese gardens built in
the West are usually regarded as something positive. Even when anti-Japanese sentiments
were voiced, as in the case of San Francisco in 1915, the aesthetic value of a Japanese gar-
den itself was not in dispute. However, in discussing Japanese gardens in the colonies, we
have to face the issue of cultural colonialism. In fact, the state of scholarship in this area
of research is presently so poor that some basic fact-finding research is urgently needed.49
 13. The Modern Japanese Garden | 351

Many Japanese-style domestic buildings with their gardens were built in the colonies, and
Japanese gardens must have been attached to many public buildings. Of particular interest
are those parks and the religious precincts of Shint shrines and Buddhist temples run by
the Japanese.
I would like to mention here just one example, that of Taish Park (Taish Ken) (fig.
13.3) in Hong Kong. The Japanese invaded Hong Kong and the British colony surrendered
on Christmas day in 1941.50 The next year, an Osaka firm was commissioned to alter the
Government House for Lieutenant General Isogai Rensuke.51 This house has a command-
ing view of the city below, but the botanical garden, situated just above the Government
House, has an even better view. This garden, with its strong atmosphere of British colonial-
ism, was simply renamed the Taish Garden. Thus a Japanese garden was created simply by
renaming it, without any change in form. The area was then earmarked for the site of the
Hong Kong Shrine, but the end of the war also meant the end of this Japanese garden, and
the space has now reverted back to its use as a botanical garden, including a small zoo.52
More recently, architectural historians have been active in researching Japanese archi-
tectural activities in its colonies; in the photographs and plans for these buildings that
have been discussed, one can observe the existence of gardens, but very few scholars actu-
ally discuss the gardens themselves.53
There are also a small number of modest war period Japanese-style gardens in the
United States, which are gaining some recent scholarly attention. These are the gardens
made by those who were forced to live in the Japanese American internment camps.54
These suggest an amazing sense of resilience of spirit and an effort to create an environ-
ment amenable to the owners identity, against all odds.

Figure 13.3. Taish Park, Hong Kong. Postcard, c. 1942. Po Hung Cheng, Hong Kong during the Japanese
Occupation (Hong Kong: University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong, 2006), p. 91.
352|Toshio Watanabe

The Modernist Garden

In Japan itself during the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable change in the
appreciation of the Japanese garden occurred. Simply put, the reputation of Edo gardens
plummeted, but the reputation of the gardens of Ryanji and Katsura Detached Palace in
Kyoto soared. Shirahata has chronicled this change in his book Daimy teien.55 For him, as
a supporter of the daimy garden, the two culprits for this change were Mori Osamu and
Shigemori Mirei, two giants in the scholarship of Japanese garden history. Mori rated the
ideals of late Heian period garden making highly and viewed Katsura as an extant example
of this ideal, whereas for Shigemori the epitome of the Japanese garden style was the stone
garden style (kare sansui) prevalent during the late Kamakura and Muromachi period,
epitomized in the garden of Ryanji. These two scholars published prolifically and created
a postwar orthodoxy that to a greater or lesser extent continues to this day.
This period also coincided with that of the consolidation of modernism in Japan. The
German architect Bruno Taut (18801938), who visited Japan during 19331936, is usu-
ally regarded as the first person to put Katsura at the highest aesthetic level. Certainly,
Tauts eulogy of Katsura made a huge impact in Japan, but Inoue Shichi has convincingly
refuted the myth of Taut as the discoverer of Katsura and gives in his book Tsukurareta
Katsura riky shinwa (The manufactured myth of Katsura Detached Palace) a detailed and
nuanced account of how Katsuras reputation went through a complicated path as Taut and
various Japanese groups interacted with each other.56 Methodologically his book is par-
ticularly valuable, as the author brilliantly analyzes how a garden can be interpreted and
appreciated, and in a most complex way. He shows how different groups, with contrast-
ing agendas, place different meanings on the same garden. His depiction of how Japanese
modernists interacted with Taut, whom Inoue does not regard as a modernist, is particu-
larly instructive.
The general rise in the appreciation of Zen gardens made a strong impact on the mod-
ernists, or rather it could perhaps be said that modernist sensibilities contributed to the
meteoric rise in the reputation of Zen gardens. In his book Zen to iu na no Nihonmaru
(The Japan ship named Zen), Yamada Shji has applied a methodology similar to one by
Inoue, examining this time the vicissitudes of the reputation of the Ryanji garden. Here
again, Taut is given a major role in the revaluation of this particular garden.57 Further-
more, Yamada refers to Wybe Kuiterts research, which established the fact that even the
now-accepted notion of Ryanji garden as the representative garden of Zen Buddhism is
only recent and probably originated in the 1934 publication Essays in Zen Buddhism by
the famous proselytizer of Zen in the West, Suzuki Daisetsu.58 There is, however, some
evidence that the discussion of Zen and the garden around this time is not confined to
Suzuki, and further investigation on this point is needed to clarify the situation.
Shigemori Mirei (18961975), who promoted Ryanji and other so-called stone gar-
dens, was himself a major garden designer, and perhaps his most famous garden is the
one designed for the North Garden of Hj (fig. 13.4) in Tfukuji, Kyoto, with its two-
dimensional, square, and geometric shapes. This elegant rhythmical design is in fact quite
unusual for him, as his favorite theme is the contrast of white sand and masculine, irreg-
ular-shaped standing rocks, as can be seen elsewhere in the same temple. However, this
Mondrian-like pattern caught the imagination of his audience and is probably the most
 13. The Modern Japanese Garden | 353

Figure 13.4. Shigemori Mirei, North Garden, Hj, Tfukuji, Kyoto, 1939. Photograph by the author.

reproduced design in Shigemoris oeuvre. The point is that this particular design gave the
impression of being modernist and that it was the photographs of the garden that under-
lined this impression. Jonathan Reynolds has argued that the modern aesthetic apprecia-
tion of the architecture of Ise Shrine is closely linked to the photographs of these buildings
by Watanabe Yoshio.59 In my view, the same argument could be deployed for the analysis
of the relationship of photographs and the appreciation of Japanese gardens during this
earlier period.
Another important and hitherto little-discussed aspect to this phenomenon is the
fact that many of Shigemoris gardens were not planned to provide a site where visitors
could actually make use of the garden for their activities, such as parties or sport. Some
of his gardens did allow people to stroll within them, but even then such movements were
usually strictly circumscribed by the use of stepping stones. He used white sand exten-
sively and, unlike a lawn, the space used for sand is not one that allows a person to enter.
Essentially, these gardens are something to be looked at from outside their boundaries, an
arrangement of fixed components to be gazed at, a work of modern art created by a named
master. Thus in its character, a garden of this type breaks away from the Edo and Meiji
tradition of garden design. Shigemori was certainly not solely responsible for this change.
It was probably Horiguchi Sutemi, mentioned above, who was the greatest pioneer in this
regard. Many of the other modernist architects were also first-rate garden designers. By
creating the building and the garden together, the sense of spatial unity could be enhanced.
Another such architect/garden designer was Tange Kenz (19132005), perhaps the
best-known Japanese architect worldwide. He designed both the building and the garden
354|Toshio Watanabe

Figure 13.5. Isamu Noguchi, Garden of Isamu-ya, Mure, 1970. Photograph by the author.

of the Kagawa Prefectural Office (see Plate 22) in Takamatsu in 1958. Here Tange also uses
masculine, erect stones, but the small garden itself is open to all citizens. Large carved
stones are situated in the water and thus the white sand, traditionally seen as a substitute
for water in dry gardens and frequently used by Shigemori, is here replaced by actual water.
As the water is inaccessible, this part of the garden assumes the character of a space to be
looked at rather than one available for human activities, a function to which other parts
of the garden, such as the small mound, are assigned. Indeed, this garden could be seen
as a metaphor for Japans newly introduced democracy, as the space does not have any
perimeter fences. This new freedom of access is also visually enhanced by the use of glass
curtain wall for the side of the building facing the garden, thus enhancing the idea of the
primacy of the citizens over the bureaucrats. The place is meant to be an open house rather
than a fortress.
This particular garden type has been identified by Gnter Nitschke as belonging to
the new prototype that emerged after the World War II, with new social backgrounds of
its sponsors, new themes, and new elements of its composition, such as the carved, i.e.,
not natural, rock as its main compositional component and geometry as its spatial infra-
structure.60 These new gardens are seen not as mirroring nature but as the individual self-
expression of the artist, creators who are now sculptors, architects, and landscape design-
ers with university qualifications.61 Indeed, the history of postwar modernist gardens is
dominated by such advocates.
 13. The Modern Japanese Garden | 355

Probably one of the most interesting and influential artists in this regard was the Japa-
nese American artist Isamu Noguchi (19041988).62 His workshop is situated not far from
Takamatsu in Mure, on the island of Shikoku, a convenient place for him because the site
is situated near a quarry. He set up his workshop there in 1969 and completed his house,
Isamu-ya, in the same location in 1970. Its quite modest garden contains few components,
but it creates a superb sense of Noguchis ideas as to what a garden should be (fig. 13.5).
Though he also created wonderful gardens where people could walk around, relax and
have lunch, etc., such as the California Scenario (a small gem of a garden in Costa Mesa,
California, placed between two office towers and a parking garage), this particular garden
in Mure is not a garden for activities, but rather provides a contemplative space without
any overt or specific religious connotation.
For many, this garden has an essentially Japanese quality, due especially to the use
of bamboo, and the context of the folk crafttype house also enhances this impression.
Noguchis cultural homeland, however, is really the United States, where he grew up. He
is an American and not a Japanese. His father, Noguchi Yonejir (18751942), a notable
writer and poet, was a native Japanese, and although Isamu Noguchi had mixed feelings
about his father, he himself remained deeply concerned with Japanese culture, going so
far as to create these gardens in Japan. His works epitomizes the complexity of assigning
nationalities to works of art. Rather, his works could be better understood as superb expo-
nents of transnational art.

Conclusion

I have attempted here to examine the modern Japanese garden in order to explore its
meaning. Let us summarize some of the key issues:
First, the modern Japanese garden can be identified by its diversity. Most publica-
tions on modern Japanese gardens reveal only a limited range of the possibilities. Japanese
public parks are particularly neglected in English-language publications. Indeed, there
are many types of Japanese modern gardens that I could not examine here. For example,
national parks, both in the process of their creation and in the scholarly debate concern-
ing them, are closely related to public parks. Even the personalities involved are often the
same. Also, many older gardens, especially daimy gardens, have now become public
parks and as such constitute modern parks in terms of their usage.
Second, many of the examples, especially those of modernist Japanese gardens, are
connected closely with other art forms. For example, Tange Kenzs garden for the Kagawa
Prefectural Office in Takamatsu contains strong sculptural rocks. In design, this garden
is closely related to the main building, where a colorful ceramic mural by the painter
Inokuma Genichir (19021993) in the ground floor hall can be seen through the large
expanse of a glass wall. Also, many of Isamu Noguchis gardens incorporate sculptures
and sculptural elements, revealing an affinity with sculpture that is certainly a widely
shared characteristic with many modernist Japanese gardens. In many cases, such as the
Takamatsu garden by Tange, the garden and the architecture of a specific site are designed
by the same person. Some gardens, such as the posthumously created Moerenuma Park
by Isamu Noguchi in Hokkaid, or the Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro (Yr Tenmei
356|Toshio Watanabe

Hantenchi) by the avant-garde artist Arakawa Shsaku (born 1936) and his wife Madeline
Gins (born 1941) in Gifu Prefecture, can be seen as large-scale environmental experiments
in which the division of art forms, such as architecture, sculpture, or the garden as sepa-
rate entities, is superseded.
Third, previous discussions on modern Japanese gardens tended to focus on a type of
space created simply to be gazed upon and in which no event is seen to occur. The photo-
graphs in so many relevant publications usually reveal no people in the gardens. In reality,
however, for many modern Japanese gardens, activities and the events held within them
represent a significant element in their design. For example, currently there are about 125
takigi n (outdoor n) performances during the year across Japan, and as these are by defi-
nition outdoor affairs, most are performed in gardens or garden-like places.63 It is impor-
tant to note that through these activities, the Japanese garden touches the life of a vast
number of people, both publicly and privately.
Fourth, the Japanese gardens during the World War II era have been severely neglected
by postwar scholarship. Recently, Japanese gardens created at the internment camps of the
Japanese Americans began to become the subject of scholarly investigation. However, the
Japanese colonial gardens in Asia, as well as the ways in which Japanese gardens abroad
were treated during the war period, have not as yet received much attention.
Fifth, above all, the modern Japanese garden is surprisingly transnational. Since the
second half of the nineteenth century, the Japanese garden has made its way into many
countries all over the world. Often such gardens serve to perform the role of identity con-
firmation in a non-Japanese environment. This could be the identity of a Japanese embassy,
a Japanese company, or a Japanese restaurant; in addition, many of the key sites quickly
come to acquire a deeply felt symbolism for the local ethnic Japanese communities, such
as the Japanese Americans in San Francisco or Nikkei Brazilians in Sao Paulo. The mod-
ern garden in Japan, on the other hand, has also absorbed elements from outside Japan
in many complex ways. Some of the earliest public parks, such as Hibiya Park, show a
strong German flavor. Another major green space in the center of Tokyo, Shinjuku Gyoen,
went through a major remodeling, designed by a Frenchman, during the Meiji period.
Even Murin-an by Ueji, usually regarded as continuing the Edo tradition in an innovative
way, has recently been hailed as a synthesis of the English and the Japanese traditions.64
Whether any Japanese colonial gardens have incorporated local Asian elements is still an
unexplored topic, whereas the transnational nature of most modernist gardens is more
clearly evident. This is not just a simplistic matter of Western influence, as modernity
itself is not a monopoly of the West. Indeed, it could be argued that in many ways Japan
actually contributed to the formation of modernism. This complexity, even the murkiness
of such relationships, is a characteristic feature of the transnational.
My examination of the modern Japanese garden has focused on the period up to
the 1960s. What is most remarkable about its development from the 1970s onwards is its
ceaseless transnational expansion. Japanese gardens continue to be built across the globe
in a variety of places, such as Japanese-owned hotels, offices, and factories; overseas Bud-
dhist and Shint precincts; or Japanese restaurants. Many of the large botanical gardens
and cultural institutions such as universities across the world have added Japanese gar-
dens. Cities twinned with a Japanese one often receive a Japanese garden as a gift. As
many of the top international chefs are now dabbling with soy sauce and miso paste, many
 13. The Modern Japanese Garden | 357

international garden designers are showing increased interest in the Japanese garden. Even
an amateur garden designer is enticed to get his or her inspiration from the many books on
Japanese gardens that can invariably be found in larger bookstores.
This transnational popularity of the Japanese garden is a remarkable phenomenon.
Going back to my initial discussion of the definition of terms, we could examine what
Japan may actually mean for those who create these new gardens. What identity is
presented and supported by these Japanese gardens? It could be a commercial one, as in
the case of a company or a hotel, or an ethnic one, for example in the case of the Japanese
Americans. For whatever reason, the garden, as a form of visual culture, seems to provide
a strong identity of being Japanese, and the significance of the modern Japanese garden
is showing no sign of diminishing.

Notes

1. For a thorough discussion of the reception history of garden design, see John Dixon
Hunt, The Afterlife of Gardens (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). For a
Japanese overview of the history of modern Japanese garden, see Kjiro Yichir, Gendai
no meitei (Great contemporary gardens), vol. 7, Nihon no teien (Japanese gardens) (Tokyo:
Kdansha, 1980), especially pp. 147175.
2. James Rose, Gardens Make Me Laugh (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1965), quoted in Kendall H. Brown, Japanese-Style Gardens of the Pacific West
Coast (New York: Rizzoli, 1999), p. 8. Brown is one of the very few scholars of garden history
who take the question of the terminology seriously. See also Suzuki Makoto, Nihon teien no
teigi ni kansuru ksatsu (A study on the definition of Japanese garden as a scientific term),
Nihon teien gakkaishi 5 (1997): pp. 1622.
3. Ono Ryhei, Ken no tanj (The birth of the public park) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kbunkan,
2003), p. 12. This study breaks new ground in the study of public parks in Japan and I am
indebted to many insights offered in this book. For other useful studies regarding the history
of Japanese public parks, see Tanaka Seidai, Nihon no ken (Japanese public parks) (Tokyo:
Kashima shuppankai, 1974); Maruyama Hiroshi, Kindai Nihon kenshi (Kyoto: Shibunkaku
shuppan, 1994); Shirahata Yzabur, Kindai toshi kenshi no kenky: ka no keifu (The study
of the history of modern urban parks: The genealogy of Westernization) (Kyoto: Shibunkaku
shuppan, 1995).
4. Ono Ryhei, Ken no tanj.
5. Ibid., p. 15.
6. Ibid., pp. 1456.
7. Ibid., p. 47.
8. Ibid., p. 56.
9. For the history of Hibiya Park, see Maejima Yasuhiko, Hibiya Ken (Hibiya Park)
(Tokyo: Tkyto ken kykai, 1980, rev. ed. 1994); Shirahata, Kindai toshi kenshi no kenky.
10. Shirahata Yzabur, Hanami to sakura (Flower viewing and cherry blossoms) (Tokyo
and Kyoto: PHP Kenkyjo, 2000), pp. 8487, 146148.
11. Ono Ryhei, Ken no tanj, p. 134.
358|Toshio Watanabe

12. Shirahata Yzabur, Daimy teien (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1997).

13. Ibid., pp. 234235.
14. Amasaki Hiromasa, ed., Ishi to mizu no ish: Ueji no zengih (Design with stone and
water: The Uejis garden design technique) (Kyoto: Tanksha, 1992), p. 230.
15. For Murin-an, see Amasaki Hiromasa, ed., Ueji no niwa: Ogawa Jihei no sekai (Uejis
gardens: The world of Ogawa Jihei) (Kyoto: Tanksha, 1990).
16. Suzuki Makoto, Awano Takashi, and Inokawa Wakana, Yamagata Aritomo no teien-
kan to Chinzans (Aritomo Yamagatas image and view of gardens and Chinzan-s), Land-
scape Research Japan 68, no. 4 (2005): pp. 339350. See also a perceptive article on Yamagata
and Ueji by Suzuki Hiroyuki, Sukisha to patoron: Try to kenchikuka (The man of taste
and the patron: The master builder and the architect), in Chashitsu, roji (Teahouse, tea garden),
ed. Nakamura Toshinori, vol. 6, Sadgaku taikei (Outline of study of tea ceremony) (Kyoto:
Tanksha, 2000), pp. 255291.
17. While he was building the Murin-an garden, he was referred to by another patron as
uekiya (gardener, literally the person who plants trees). Amasaki, Ueji no niwa, p. 11.
18. The young Miyagawa Kzan left the family kiln in Makuzugahara, Kyoto, established
by his father, and went to Yokohama in 1870 to try his fortune there. For Kzans artistic
and entrepreneurial acumen, see Clare Pollard, Master Potter of Meiji Japan: Makuzu Kzan
(18421916) and His Workshop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
19. He is the only modern garden designer to be allotted an entry in Yutaka Tazawa, ed.,
Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Art (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1981).
20.Amasaki, Ueji no niwa, p. 54.
21. Ibid., p. 55.
22. Ibid., pp. 215216.
23. Ibid., pp. 6768.
24. Kuroda Tengai, Shinmeienki (2) (Notes on new great gardens (2)), Nihon bijutsu to
Kgei (Japanese art and craft), January 1912, quoted from Ono Kenkichi, Tairy Sans teien
ni okeru Ogawa Jihei no sakutei shuh (Jihei Ogawas design represented in Tairyu-sanso gar-
den), Zen zasshi (Journal of the Japanese Institute of Landscape Architects) 50, no. 5 (1987),
pp. 1317, 16.
25. One of the best publications to examine this new domesticity is Jordan Sand, House
and Home: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 18801930 (Cambridge,
Mass., and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003).
26. Toshio Watanabe, ed., Ruskin in Japan 18901940: Nature for Art, Art for Life (Tokyo:
Cogito, 1997), p. 325.
27.Sand, House and Home, p. 301.
28. Mori Hitoshi, Teien kgei towaTeienshi to Nishikawa Tomotaka no ichi (What
is garden craft?The history of garden and the position of Nishikawa Tomotaka), Issun (One
sun) 27 (August 2006), pp. 3437, 35.
29. Moriguchi Tari and Hayashi Itoko, Bunkateki jtaku no kenky (The study of Cultural
House) (Tokyo: Ars, 1922).
30. Shimizu Eiji, ed., Shteien no mikata tsukurikata (How to appreciate or create a small
garden) (Tokyo: Nippon Denken Kabushikigaisha Shuppanbu, 1941), p. 103.
31. Ibid., pp. 8892.
32. There is some confusion in the Japanese literature on the illustrations, as in some
 13. The Modern Japanese Garden | 359

cases illustrations from other international exhibitions are attributed to the 1867 exhibition.
Shibusawa Eiichis diary, when he was part of the bakufu delegation, mentions a small pond.
This was pointed out in shima Seiji, Japonisumu (Japonisme) (Tokyo: Bijutsu kronsha,
1980), p. 56.
33. Peter Pantzer, Japans Weg nach WienAuftakt und Folgen, in Japan auf der Wel-
tausstellung in Wien 1873, ed. Herbert Fux, pp. 1117, 1415 (Vienna: sterreichisches Museum
fr angewandte Kunst, 1973).
34. Julia Krejsa and Peter Pantzer, Japanisches Wien (Vienna: Herold, 1989), p. 30.
35. Yoshida Mitsukuni, gen. ed., Bankokuhaku no Nihonkan (Japanese pavilions at inter-
national exhibitions) (Tokyo: INAX, 1990).
36. The Alexandra Palace Guide (18751876) has an illustration of The Japanese Village,
which shows that this village is indeed the Viennese Japanese garden. See Widar Haln,
Dresser and Japan, in Shock of the Old: Christopher Dressers Design Revolution, ed. Michael
Whiteway, pp. 127139, 164, fig. 164 (London: V&A Publications, 2004).
37.Brown, Japanese-Style Gardens, pp. 1620. This book by Brown, though confined to
Japanese gardens in North America, provides the best analysis of Japanese gardens abroad.
38. Ibid., p. 16.
39.Ibid.
40. Ibid., p. 17.
41. Ibid., pp. 1718.
42. For information on North American examples, see Brown, Japanese-Style Gardens;
for those of the British Isles, see Bowen Pearse, Companion to Japanese Britain and Ireland
(Brighton: In Print, 1991); and Amanda Herries, Japanese Gardens in Britain (Princes Risbor-
ough: Shire, 2001). Also, some of the European examples became well-known tourist spots,
such as the one in Giverny created by Monet or the one in Boulogne-Billancourt created by
Albert Kahn. The website JGarden has a worldwide database of Japanese gardens (http://www
.jgarden.org).
43.Brown, Japanese-Style Gardens, p. 19.
44.Ibid.
45.Ibid.
46. Shirahata Yzabur, Daimy teien, pp. 178183, 243245.
47. Watanabe Toshio, Rekishisei Shshitsu to iu aidentitJosaia Kondoru no Nihon tei-
enron (Historical loss as an identity: Josiah Conders Landscape Gardening in Japan), in Nihon
no dent kgei saik: Soto kara mita kgei no shrai to sono kansei (Traditional Japanese arts
and crafts in the twenty-first century: Reconsidering the future from an international perspec-
tive), ed. Inaga Shigemi and Patricia Fister (Kyoto: International Research Centre for Japanese
Studies, 2007).
48. Ibid. For Harada Jir, see Katahira Miyuki, bei ni okeru Nihon teienz no keisei
to Harada Jir no The Gardens of Japan (Euro-American formation of the image of Japanese
garden and Harada Jirs The Gardens of Japan), Nihon kenky (Japanese studies) 34 (March
2007): pp. 179208.
49. On Japanese gardens in colonial Taiwan, see articles written by Su-chi Yang, such as
Su-chi Yang, Nihon shokuminchi ni okeru Taiwan no teien zei to sono haikei (A study of
the background of garden erection during the Japanese colonization of Taiwan), Landscape
Research Japan 68, no. 5 (2005): pp. 431434.
360|Toshio Watanabe

50. Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China and the Japanese Occupation (New
Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 7173.
51. Ibid., pp. 156, 263, 420.
52. Cheng Po Hung, Hong Kong during the Japanese Occupation (Hong Kong: University
Museum and Art Gallery, the University of Hong Kong, 2006), pp. 75, 91.
53. A rare example is Marc Treibs reference to the architect Maekawa Kunios expansion
plan for a neighborhood sector for Daido, probably in Manchuria, within the context of a dis-
cussion of Japanese landscape design. Marc Treib, Converging Arcs on a Sphere: Renewing
Japanese Landscape Design, in The Architecture of Landscape 19401960, ed. Marc Treib, pp.
270299, 272273 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).
54. Delphine Hirasuna, The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese Ameri-
can Internment Camps 19421946 (Berkeley & Toronto: Ten Speed Press, 2005); Kenneth I.
Helphand, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime (San Antonio: Trinity University
Press, 2006).
55.Shirahata, Daimy teien, pp. 178187, 244245.
56. Inoue Shichi, Tsukurareta Katsura Riky shinwa (The manufactured myth of Katsura
Detached Palace) (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1986, pb. ed. 1997).
57.Yamada Shji, Zen to iu na no Nihonmaru (The Japan ship named Zen) (Tokyo:
Kbund, 2005), pp. 284286. This book has recently been translated into English as Yamada
Shji, Shots in the Dark: Japan, Zen, and the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
58. Ibid. Wybe Kuitert, Themes in the History of Japanese Garden Art (Honolulu: Univer-
sity of Hawaii Press, 2002), pp. 132, 240, n. 11.
59. Jonathan Reynolds, Ise Shrine and a Modernist Construction of Japanese Tradition,
Art Bulletin 83, no. 2 (2001): pp. 316341.
60. Gnter Nitschke, Japanese Garden (Kln: Benedikt Taschen, 1991), p. 268.
61.Ibid.
62. For Noguchi and Japanese gardens, see Bert Winther, Isamu Noguchi: The Modern-
ization of Japanese Garden: Reduction Exile Abstraction, Journal of the Academic Society of
Japanese Garden 1, no. 1 (March 1993): pp. 3044.
63. I am grateful to Ms. Shimizu Reiko for this information.
64. Shinichi Anzai, Is the World a Garden? Garden Aesthetics between the Japanese and
English Traditions, Aesthetics 11 (2004): pp. 112, 8.
 Lawrence Smith

14 Japanese Prints 18682008

In 2008 there were many hundreds of independent printmakers in Japan (the Japanese
Print Association listed more than 350 members in 2003).1 Most of them were now col-
lege-trained, though very few of them except the grandest of old practitioners could live
by their art alone.2 Few of them belonged any longer to a recognizably coherent idealis-
tic group. Colleges specializing in graphic techniques, such as Tokyo University of Fine
Arts and Music, Tama University of Arts, Musashino University of Arts, and Kyoto Tech-
nical University, had become dominant nationally as well as influential internationally.
Most print artists were members of peer group associations, most notably the Japanese
Print Association. Many of them were carrying out all the necessary production processes
themselves. Their sales were in many cases international, as were their connections. It
had become customary but not yet obligatory at some time in a career to study and work
abroad. All the techniques of international printmaking were now mastered and used,
and Japanese artists were often in the forefront of innovation and skill. This had become
especially noticeable in intaglio, to which Japanese printmakers were relative latecomers
but could now be said to lead the world in standards of technique.
In Japan there were now museums devoted entirely to print art, such as the Machida
Museum of Graphic Art; the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo had a perma-
nent exhibition space for prints. Almost uniquely to Japan, there were also museums com-
memorating individual graphic/print artists, such as Takehisa Yumeji (no less than four),3
Munakata Shik (three),4 Natori Shunsen,5 Yamamoto Kanae,6 Ono Tadayoshi,7 Ikeda
Masuo,8 and Hiratsuka Unichi.9 Prominent printmakers were now among the most cel-
ebrated sons of their birthplaces or chosen residences, for example Yamaguchi Gen in
Numazu, Yoshida Masaji in Wakayama, and Hamada Chimei in Kumamoto.
It is argued that after the demise of the old ukiyo-e print production system in the
early years of the twentieth century, modern Japanese prints had passed through the clas-
sic stages of struggle for recognition, early success, acceptance, and finally absorption into
an artistic establishment, which at the time of this writing seemed vulnerable to eclipse by
more vigorous latecomers to the international scene, such as Korea and China.10
362|Lawrence Smith

Behind all this period has loomed one great ghostly presence, namely ukiyo-e, the
urban art of the great cities of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto in the Edo period, which found its
typical expression in woodblock prints. At the start of the Meiji period, the ukiyo-e print
world continued as if Japan had hardly changed. As it declined as a profitable industry, its
past gained more and more prestige, at first with Westerners, then around 1900 with Japa-
nese artists, publishers, and intellectuals themselves. Groups vied in the first half of the
twentieth century to be heirs of ukiyo-e, or to profit from its traditional sources of patron-
age, native or foreign. From around 1960, this wish to inherit the mantle was replaced
by more and more ironic attachments to what had become a major icon of Japanese self-
awareness. In some sense or other, the history of Japanese prints since 1868 has always
been about a relationship, even if occasionally a hostile one, to ukiyo-e.
However, the practical scene in 2008 had in some key respects similarities to those in
1868. Where artists then had mostly been dependent on publishers for their livelihood,
now they were in practice dependent on dealers (or agents). In some notable casesHara
Takeshi (born 1942), for example, or Sawada Tetsur (19351999) or Kuroda Shigeki (born
1953)the demands to repeat a popular formula can be seen to have impeded creativity.11
But now, in some contrast to 1868, very few pure print artists could make an independent
living by their art alone, though there had been a few examples, such as Hagiwara Hideo
(19132007). In 1868, the major conflict between Western and Japanese (or East Asian)
styles and themes was just developing. In 2008 it had not been at all convincingly resolved
in printmaking, though much convergence had occurred and the old tensionsoften a
stimulus to creativitylived on.
In between these dates, great waves of ideology had come and gone, most notably the
crucial contest between Creative Prints (Ssaku Hanga) and Revival Prints (Shin Hanga)
in the first half of the twentieth century, and these had caused a history of factional rivalry.
It seems safe now to assert that a typically Japanese idealistic factionalism was one moti-
vating feature of most of the years up to the end of the occupation in 1952, years when
Japan itself was constantly involved in dramatic economic and social change, warfare, and
the tensions of international politics. But these absorbing and sometimes dramatic artistic
conflicts were in the end merely the surface manifestations of deeper underlying objectives
of print artists over this whole long era. These were, first, the more general drive toward
the autonomy of the artist in a traditionally controlled society, and second, the need of
printmakers, in the face of the ever-developing dominance of photography, to justify their
art on its own terms. It might be claimed at the time of writing that both of these had been
established.
After 1952, long years of peace, stability, prosperity, and hence active international
exchanges had decreased those internal rivalries and factions until the printmaking scene
had become more like that of the international art world in other developed nations. But
the debates about Japanese and foreign have continued unabated as they have in paint-
ing, ceramics, and many other visual arts.12 These may be seen as an especially long-stand-
ing Japanese preoccupation, going back to the fifteen-hundred-year-old relationship with
Chinese culture and at least to the late sixteenth century in regard to Europe. Though
Japan had long been the forerunner in this Asian/European debate, such examples of self-
conscious cultural nationalism are no longer unique to Japan in Asia, and indeed can be
found on all the worlds continents.
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 363

The Historical Graphic Print Industry, 18681912

In 1868, when Edo became Tokyo, there was still no serious alternative there in reproductive
art processes (nor in Osaka, Kyoto, and other great cities) to the long-established East Asian
media of woodblock and stencil, of which woodblock was easily dominant, so much so that
even moveable type for the printing of texts was no longer practiced.13 In truth, these were
all that was needed until the move toward modernization under the Meiji regime. Then,
the drive to mass re-education, including all the apparatus of Western journalistic persua-
sion, brought about rapid moves toward Western techniques, especially in the publishing of
books, magazines, newspapers, and government propaganda. Yet the popular taste for sheet
prints had enough momentum to last another thirty years, and the old publishing houses and
their newer rivals in the great cities were to enjoy an equally long prosperity. Although many
past commentators have seen the Meiji era as one of decline for the traditional print, that was
not so, for these years saw as much vitality and inventiveness as had the previous century.14
The factor that fashioned this negative point of view originated with the foreign con-
noisseurs of ukiyo-e, who had quickly begun to appear almost as soon the end of isolation.15
They had little taste for the new Meiji styles, which were the product of a new, quickly
changing culture and no longer seemed attractive to foreign visitors. These prints therefore
did not get collected or studied in the same quantity. This has masked the general continu-
ity of style during the remainder of the nineteenth century of three of the habitual subjects
of the ukiyo-e print: the Kabuki theater, fashions in and for women, and landscape/town-
scape. The first two were carried on mainly by the many artists of the Utagawa line, and the
latter by the successors of And Hiroshige (17971858). Among these more conventional
artists, perhaps the most remarkable is Toyohara Chikanobu (18381912), whose many
actor portraits from 1869 onwards combine a traditional forcefulness with a new, confident
crispness in the skillful use of the darker dyes of early Meiji. His later portraits of modish
beauties have similar qualities and use the then lighter palette with considerable finesse.16

Early Intaglio and Lithography

Although etching and engraving had existed continuously in Japan since the late eigh-
teenth century, mostly in Kyoto and Osaka, it had remained a curiosity and a novelty and
had normally followed imported Dutch styles.17 With the move of the capital to Tokyo,
intaglio suddenly became an admired technique of modernization. The engraver Matsuda
Rokuzan (18371903) was called there in 1869 to work on the new paper currency, and he
was by 1870 also much involved in the study and development of lithography, which the
government saw as even more up-to-date and Western, especially in its ability to print
easily in color.18 During the rest of the nineteenth century, both techniques were widely
used, especially in tourist literature, where intaglio continued to suggest exotic modernity,
as in Ishida Ynens (18441916) Fifty Famous Scenes of Kyoto (Kyto meisho gojkkei,
1890).19 But such prints had to be hand-colored, resulting in a staid quality. Lithography in
contrast could reproduce a sense of a painters real style and also, following the perfection
in 1877 of the first color lithograph in Japan, a truer feeling for the originals palette of
colors.20 A good quality example is Shimizu Sanjirs Picture Album of the 36 Gates to Edo
during the Tokugawa Bakufu (Tokugawa hafu Edo sanjroku jmon gaj) 1896; this work
364|Lawrence Smith

suggests that lithograph might have taken over from woodblock the imaginative pictorial
recording of the sights of Tokyo and other major cities had the Creative Print movement
not put woodblock back at the center of its theories after 1900.21

The Influence of Photography

These changes were of course heavily stimulated by the persuasive presence of Japans rap-
idly emerging skills in the still recent technique of photography. Before 1868 there were
already many photographic studios in Japans largest cities.22 The apparent power of the
photographic image to represent literal reality, albeit still in monochrome, began a long
struggle by print artists and technicians to equal or at least outwit photography, which
began with Kiyochika (see below) and was to end finally only with the emergence and
gradual dominance of full-color photography in the post-1945 era.
The example of the new requirement for images of the Imperial Family, which would
make them relatively real to the people of Japans new political order, shows this contest
at its most vivid. The woodblock print at first seemed the natural vehicle; in 1868 (Meiji 1)
the young emperor is shown entering Edo Castle in a traditional diptych by Yoshitoshi (see
below). But already in 1873 a photograph of the emperor seated had been published, and in
the following years it was copied into woodblock, lithograph, and even painted versions.

Emerging Journalism and Historical Recording

Although woodblock prints had occasionally been used during the Edo period to publicize
significant events, it was the American naval and diplomatic incursions beginning in 1853
and the resulting foreign settlements in Yokohama that set off a virtually continual history
of such publications.23 By the beginning of the Meiji era in 1868, these so-called Yokohama
pictures (actually printed in Edo/Tokyo) had already established a fifteen-year-old tradi-
tion of informal public information in graphic formthough still subject to government
censorship, which was to persist up to the 1923 earthquake and even beyond. A new thirst
for perceived verisimilitudewhether based on observation or largely imaginativewas
prompted both by the importance of these new and unexpected foreign activities so close
to the capital and once again by the growing example of photography. This tendency led to
a dramatic expansion of these woodblocks into multiprint panoramas, very often in three
sheets, and sometimes using as many as five or even six.24
The immediate changes caused by the move of the new government to Tokyo are seen
right away in traditional print production. The inherent exoticism of the Yokohama prints
was rapidly replaced by an earnest and officially approved program of propaganda about
the desirability of all things Western. While many such works are staid, some of the art-
ists of the dominant Utagawa school of print designers were able to harness the expansive
landscape and townscape styles of the recent past to produce prints of vivid interest and
impressive structure. Utagawa Hiroshige III was arguably the best of them. His View of the
Balloon Test at the Naval Training Ground in Tsukiji (Tsukiji kigunsh srenj ni oite fsen
-tameshi no zu, 1877) combines long-standing pictorial techniques with lively and seem-
ingly firsthand observation of a real event. He records the early Meiji mixture of spectators
in a manner that speaks of a new confidence about the place of the individual citizen.25
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 365

If the colors are heavy and brooding, that fact only reflects the encroaching palette of
later nineteenth-century Western-style cultural conformity. This was a genre of confident
woodblock reportage, which could in the long run be replaced by photography, but it was
to take another thirty years for that to take full effect.
Similarly, the brief Bshin civil war that saw the defeat of the shguns last supporters
(18681869) was quickly recorded in three-sheet woodblocks published in Tokyo using
the late Edo-period style of the heroic prints of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (17971861) and his
school; these, however, were now intended as up-to-the-minute war news, including the
latest government information. Thus, although the publishers, artists, and basic styles had
not apparently changed, their intentions had become permanently different.
The Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, the last revolt against the new Meiji order, was a heroic
failure in popular terms, but it was recorded in the new press and in old-style woodblock
prints virtually as it happened. This demonstrated the decisive shift toward an urban public
that now expected to be well informed about contemporary events, however much govern-
ment censorship continued to suppress detail and orchestrate response. Yoshitoshis trip-
tych prints on this action were immensely popular and revived his fortunes (see below).26
In spite of challenges from imported techniques, however, woodblock held its place
surprisingly strongly as the preferred medium for recording occasions of ceremonial and
imperial news interest. The visit of an imperial princess to Kyoto in the early 1890s, for
example, was celebrated by an entirely traditional three-sheet woodblock by Hiroshige III
(18411894), referring obliquely to the occasion by depicting the eleventh-century writer
Murasaki overlooking the local beauty spot of Lake Biwa.27 Woodblock continued too to
be favored for tourist literature, seemingly because of its traditional associations, and this
continued until after the Pacific War. Following the Kant Earthquake in 1923, a number
of dignified memorial records came out using the woodblock form, such as the detailed
volume published by Tokyo University on its own aspects of the disaster; it included two
striking woodblock inserts, one directly in the style of Kiyochikas prints of the earlier
Rygoku fire of 1881.28 And as late as 1955, the reissue of Akiyama Aisaburs 1936 English-
language Shinth and Its Architecture was extensively illustrated with woodblock prints by
Kawase Hasui (18831957).29
Woodblock also continued to be widely used throughout the Meiji, Taish, and early
Shwa eras for more practical products. These included maps, educational materials,
votive slips and calendars, games, playing cards, decorative papers, fine stationery, adver-
tising and publicity materials for the Kabuki theater, and, from around 1900, book plates,
which have continued to the time of writing. Although only a small percentage of these
produced prints were of high artistic merit, they remained part of a persistent and tradi-
tional cultural background associated largely with the woodblock medium.30

Innovators within the Old Woodblock Traditions up to 1912

The most inventive print designers in this period tended to have strong connections with
the new journalism. Of them, the most embedded in the Edo period past was Tsukioka
Yoshitoshi (fig. 14.1) (18391892) a pupil of the major Edo period ukiyo-e master Utagawa
Kuniyoshi. After a conventional youthful ukiyo-e career in the late Edo years, he exploded
again from 1879 on the Meiji scene, having recovered his confidence after a period of
366|Lawrence Smith

Figure 14.1. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (18391892), Uesugi Kenshin and the Blind Lutanist (Tanj daihitsu Uesugi
Kenshin), reproduced here from a reprint by Sugiyama Kykichi of an August 1893 triptych color wood-
block print. Tokyo, 353 mm 715 mm. British Museum, London (1991.7-16.01-03).

eclipse, with forward-looking transformations of the Utagawa style and highly charged
subject matter based on the legendary past, which matched exactly the angst and energy of
the age. Typical of these popular prints is the diptych Raiko Tormented by the Demon Spi-
der (Tsuchigumo) from his series Yoshitoshis Manga (1886).31 The composition is dramatic
in the extreme, but with a histrionic movement more Western than Japanese; the facial
expressions are already Westernized too, though this influence is more subtly absorbed.
The colors are somber but clear, and they make a clean break from the ukiyo-e palette
dominated by Prussian blue, which had been in vogue for fifty years previously. The line is
close to brush drawing, and the background is sparsely gray to accentuate the drama. The
style, in fact, is close to what Nihonga painting was to adopt a decade later.
This style in general came to be a norm, for example, in the many prints by younger
artists of the actions of the Sino-Japanese War of 18941895 and the Russo-Japanese War
of 19041905. It was also the basis of the work of the last artists in the true ukiyo-e tradi-
tion working in the late Meiji era, such as Ogata Gekk (18591920) and Mizuno Toshikata
(18661908).32
With many series of this individual type, Yoshitoshi became arguably the most tal-
ented, original, and influential Meiji print artist. With the later Kaburagi Kiyokata (1878
1973) he became the very type of the Meiji man of letters-cum-artist. This stance may
have gone back to the Edo-period ukiyo-e prototype of Sant Kyden (17611816), but
it was nevertheless a remarkable transformation within a completely new and continu-
ously changing society. He was also one of the first print artists to become involved in
modern-style journalism, doing illustrations for newspapers and magazines, beginning
with work for Yokohama mainichi shinbun, Japans earliest daily newspaper, founded in
1871. This work radically differed from his sheet prints and indicated new directions for
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 367

graphic artists. However, his reputation now rests on his extraordinarily dynamic prints
on mythic and warlike subjects dominated by both violence and intensity, such as his cel-
ebrated series A Hundred Aspects of the Moon (Tsuki hyakushi),33 which all proved popular
with the Japanese public, though significantly they were little collected by Western ukiyo-e
enthusiasts. These woodblock sheets used an expressive, nervous line not seen before in
the publisher-produced print, which mirrored the emotional turbulence of the times as
never before. Yoshitoshi is now admired also as perhaps the greatest draftsman in the
ukiyo-e tradition, based on his many surviving preparatory ink sketches.34
Kiyochika is particularly significant because he was the first Japanese artist to trans-
late successfully Western light and shadow into traditional woodblock prints, which are
still admired today.35 His eclectic influences typify the early Meiji cultural melting pot. He
absorbed in Yokohama from 1873 the early photography of Shimooka Renj (18231914),
then, in Tokyo, Western painting and cartoon styles from the Englishman Charles Wirg-
man (18321891), and traditional Japanese painting methods from Kawanabe Kysai (see
below) and Shibata Zeshin (18071891). Both of these had strong connections with wood-
block publishers. By 1876 Kiyochika was having published the first of his prints of Tokyo
townscapes, which combined all these influences into a strikingly successful new style
that broke decisively with ukiyo-e while retaining the old woodblock medium. His use
of chiaroscuro and his feeling for atmosphere and the variations of light and color of the
changing seasons were to inspire landscape and townscape print artists of the next genera-
tion of otherwise opposed schools, for example Onchi Kshir and Fujimori Shizuo of the
Creative Print movement, Yoshida Hiroshi and Kawase Hasui of the Revival Print school,
and the lithographer Oda Kazuma.36
In addition to these innovations, Kiyochika contributed at a later date both to visual
satire and to illustrated journalism. In fact, his gradual change after 1881 from innovative
print artist to cartoonist and illustrator is one of the most notable examples of that shift of
graphic art toward visual journalism that characterized the Meiji era and persisted far into
the twentieth century, for example in the career of the Ssaku Hanga printmaker and car-
toonist Maekawa Sempan (see below). Kiyochika can also be considered the true pioneer
of the modern manga phenomenon.37
If Kiyochika was the first manga artist in the modern sense, he nevertheless took his
cue from the burlesque aspects of the art of his instructor Kawanabe Kysai (18311889),
who was the third important Meiji innovator within the system of the now revived pub-
lishing houses. Like Yoshitoshi, he was initially a pupil of the ukiyo-e grandee Kuniyoshi,
was a superb draftsman, and became involved in journalism early in the Meiji era. Also
like Yoshitoshi, there is a persistently manic element in his work, but in Kysais case it
is always laced with humor of a traditionally wild and savage yet joyous Japanese type,
as in much of the work in book illustration of Katsushika Hokusai (17601849).38 Kysai
had, like Yoshitoshi, been an ukiyo-e print artist and book illustrator during the late Edo
years, but similarly found his true voice in the social turmoil of modernization of the
early Meiji, of which he was an outspoken satirist. His triptych Famous Mirror: The Spirit
of Japan, Newly Published (Meiky Yamatodamashii shimpan, 18741875) lampoons the
new governments pro-Western enthusiasms by mixing Kuniyoshis most virulent histori-
cal sensationalism, bombastic composition, and crowded surfaces with a fleeing figure of
pure caricature, in fact the English Mr. Punch.39
368|Lawrence Smith

This style, full of energetic movement, finds its natural consummation in the prints
recording the Chinese and Russian wars of late Meiji, many of which were by pupils of
Yoshitoshi, such as Gekk, and who included Kiyochika himself. But by now humor had
little place except sometimes savagely to satirize the cowardice of the enemy. By the time of
the Sino-Japanese War of 18941895, three-sheet woodblock prints of the latest action had
become the normal method of visual propaganda. By then, too, the woodblock medium
had learned to accommodate a narrative style that for these journalistic purposes was at
heart Western, traditional though the publishing techniques remained. This was impor-
tant, because battle scenes had to be imaginatively recreated by artists who might or might
not have seen them, and Western realism was a useful tool to that end. Significantly, the
ten years between these wars saw big advances in the offset reproduction of actual pho-
tographs. The prints recording the victories over Russia reached considerable heights of
design and technical brilliance in the hands of artists like Kiyochika and Kajita Hanko
(18701917),40 but there was already big competition from photographic albums from the
scenes of war. Photographs tended to show only the aftermaths of battles, but they carried
more apparent visual conviction.41
This was perhaps the defining moment in the end of genuinely popular ukiyo-e, and it
is surely no accident that the first acknowledged Creative Print by Yamamoto Kanae (see
below) was made in the same year. To try to find ways to keep sales coming, however, pre-
scient publishers had already embarked on hopeful enterprises, mostly aimed at foreign-
ers. One was Hasegawa Takejir (18531938), who specialized in creped woodblock prints
and printed books in Western languages between 1886 and 1912. (He continued up to his
death to publish illustrated books in European languages, notably the Fairy Tale series).42
Some of his artists were Westerners, but one Japanese was the painter Suzuki Kason (1860
1919), the teacher of Ohara Koson, later known as Shson (18771945). Koson became the
artistic provider for another determined effort by a traditional publisher, Matsuki Hei-
kichi of the old Daikokuya firm, to make prints that would sell well in the West. These are
delicate bird and flower subjects in a manner typical of some native painting styles of the
time, sensitively turned into pallidly toned prints, dateable to the late Meiji years.43 They
were only moderately successful outside Japan, and it became clear that what Westerners
wanted from modern Japanese prints did not yet exist. It was for the publisher Watanabe
Shsabur, who was pondering this matter as early as 1907, to find them and institute the
Shin Hanga movement.
In spite of the ventures described above, it was clear that the old woodblock publishing
houses were not likely to survive much longer as providers of prints with artistic preten-
sions. Some ingenious domestic uses were still to be found for them, however, including
the splendid productions of Yamada Naoz of the Unsd house in Kyoto, notably A Thou-
sand Butterflies (Ch senrui, 1903)44 and Grasses of Ten Thousand Ages (Momomomo-yo
gusa, 1909), the latter a dazzling series of neo-Rimpa subjects now recognized as one of the
masterpieces of Japanese graphic art.45
Other craftsmen had been engaged in print reproductions of astonishing intricacy for
early numbers of the art history journal Kokka since its first issue in 1890.46 Such repro-
ductions were to continue to be used in Kokka right up to the post-occupation period
after 1952. Similar skills were used on a large scale in the five-volume work Masterpieces
Selected from the Ukiyo-e School by Tajima Shichi (19061909),47 which recorded for the
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 369

first time in accurate visual form the history of ukiyo-e painting. Other outlets for these
technical marvels were horticultural catalogues.48 These advanced technical woodblock
skills were all but wiped out in Tokyo by the 1923 earthquake, though they continued
in Kyoto and Osaka, where they provided an emergency backup to the capital and again
flourished until after the Pacific War.49

The Stirrings of a New Graphic Art and

the Age of Ideals, 19001941
The apogee of technical excellence in woodblock, and notable advances in intaglio and
lithograph as well as collotype reproduction and photography, led to a reaction around
1900 among print designers and some publishers to seek new directions for graphic art
that would raise both its status and its aesthetic aims. This was to develop much conflicting
idealistic theory, very much on the model of Western developments in the later nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, but with two major differences. One was that the print itself
was to become the subject of a major raising of artistic prestige; the other was the way dif-
ferences of opinion among printmakers and critics realigned themselves along typically
Japanese divisions, such as social groupings and long-standing debates about national
identity. Into these debates themselves, two major factors were constantly to intrude. These
were the ever-present examples of contemporary Western artistic practice and the persis-
tent memories of the ukiyo-e prints of the recent past.
The two biggest influences on the emerging concept of the independent printmaker
were, indirectly, the emergence of the new training systems in the later Meiji era and,
directly, the exchange of ideas with the West through actual travel by Japanese artists to
Europe and the United States.50 The new schools included the Kyoto School of Painting
(1880) and the pre-eminent Tokyo School of Fine Arts (1889). However, these were not to
touch on printmaking as such until the 1930s, and it was individuals, new private groups,
and independent schools which from the earliest years of the twentieth century began to
influence artists, mostly those trained in Western methods, that slowly elevated graphic
art to a status it had rarely achieved in the West.51
Meanwhile, the official art schools led to the emergence of painters, beginning with
Kuroda Seiki (18661924), who saw themselves as part of a much wider world and who
went to Europe to study. From them and their pupils there arose a desireoften explic-
itly expressed, but always impliedfor equality with the independence of Western artists.
This had and has continued to have a profound influence on the subsequent print history
of Japan. In this early period, it was often seen in activities modeled on ideas of what hap-
pened in Europe, such as loose Bohemian groupings of artists who insisted on their inde-
pendence, or participation in sketching tours. The latter impinged on the graphic world,
because of the heightened demand for travel books in the late Meiji and Taish eras, which
created a use for travel illustrators such as Nakagawa Hiromitsu (18741964) and Hirafuku
Hyakusui (see below).
This desire soon translated into a body of idealistic theory about printmaking led by
Yamamoto Kanae (18821946) and his colleagues, especially Ishii Hakutei (18821958)
and Morita Tsunetomo (18811933).52 All three were Western-style painters and all at
370|Lawrence Smith

various times had visited Europe, but the printing link came from Yamamotos early arti-
san years as a wood engraver and Hakuteis father having been a lithographer. Through
his work, Yamamoto came to know limited examples of modern Western printmaking,
such as works by William Nicholson (18721949), and in 1904 he produced the first self-
conceived, self-carved print publicized as such, a simple study of a fisherman smoking,
done in just two blocks. He used a rounded gouge to remove the wood, and the resulting
spontaneous line was to become a frequently used characteristic of the whole movement.
This print was included in the magazine Myj, then edited by Ishii.53 In another short-
lived magazine, Heitan, Ishii further developed the ideas and terms of creative woodblock
prints, suggesting that the woodblock itself could provide a unique artistic experience,
different from painting, and coining the term hanga for an art print.54
In the later (19071911), more ambitious magazine Hsun, the three artists were joined
by others, including Sakamoto Hanjir (18821969), at that time a cartoonist, the painter
and poet Hirafuku Hyakusui (18771933), and the lithographer Oda Kazuma.55
Thus there was fast developing a fellowship of independent-minded artists who made
prints in various techniques, and not only woodblock, which began to produce projects
that became typical of the movement. The first was Ishiis uncompleted series Twelve Views
of Tokyo (Tky jnikei), begun in 1910. This was an abortive attempt to take over an ukiyo-
e theme in an up-to-date Creative Print manner. Each of the nine completed prints fea-
tured a geisha with the district in which she operated featured in a small cartouche.56
However, Ishii himself rarely carved his own woodblocks, being at heart a lithographer,
and he entrusted the cutting to the traditional craftsman Igami Bonkotsu (18751933), a
crucial transitional figure who also also worked for Takehisa Yumeji. A more convincing
collaborative series of twelve prints by Yamamoto and Sakamoto in 1911 was Sketches of
Stage Figures (Sga butai sugata), trying to modernize the old ukiyo-e genre of portraits of
current Kabuki theater actors.57 This too was actually cut by artisans. However, the con-
servative public did not take to the racier style, and Kabuki almost ceased to be a subject
for the Ssaku Hanga movement.
The final production of this group was both more ambitious and more indicative of
the future. This was Print Views of Japan (Nihon fkei hanga, 19171920), the first serious
attempt to express Ssaku Hangas work in typically Japanese group terms. There were
ten portfolios of five prints, each portfolio devoted to a district in Japan by a single art-
ist. One of the districts was Korea, now considered part of Japan even by artistic liberals
such as these. The artists were Ishii (four portfolios), his brother the sculptor Ishii Tsuroz
(18871973) (two portfolios), Tsunetomo (two portfolios), and one each by Sakamoto
Hanjir (18821969) and Yamamotos future traveling companion in France, Kosugi Misei
(18811964). Sakamotos contributions are notably bold, verging on abstract. None of these
was at heart a woodblock artist, so the cutting and printing was again done by Igami. The
style is characterized, typically of travel illustration of the era, by a thin line and expressive
washes.58
A similar collaboration in portfolios was Pictures of Famous Spots in Osaka and Kobe
(Hanshin meisho zu-e), published in 1917 by the Osaka publisher Bunend, again using
artisan cutters; the five artists were all local journalistic cartoonists, and the result was
a minor masterpiece, but of them only Akamatsu Rinsaku (18781953) continued to do
much print work.59 In 1947, his portfolio Thirty-six Views of Osaka (saka sanjrkei) was
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 371

published by the same firman exercise in nostalgia for a ravaged city and in the same
French-based style of a generation earlier.60
In this same decade, other nascent independent print artists were developing in an
increasingly complex scene based in Tokyo. Their growing knowledge available there
of Western trends was part of the process. The aristocrat turned book designer Onchi
Kshir (18891955), inspired by the Bohemian socialist painter Takehisa Yumeji (1884
1934), made his first prints in 1913 in German expressionist style and designed what was
probably Japans first pure abstract composition.61 He joined his friends Fujimori Shizuo
(18911943) and Tanaka Kykichi (18821915) in producing the journal Tsukuhae (1914
1915), which printed mechanically self-cut blocks by the three.62 They display an intense
melancholy spiced with excitement over the new medium and Munch-like imagery. They
mirrored a similar magazine, Kamen (19131915), featuring woodblocks by the equally
melancholic Nagase Yoshio (18911978) and also by Hasegawa Kiyoshi (18981980), who
knew these circles well before he went to France and took up intaglio. These were all
inspired in 1911 by the first Creative Prints to be publicly exhibited as such, by two art-
ists just returned from England, Tomimoto Kenkichi (18861963) and Minami Kunz
(18831950). Minamis Observation Tower (1913?) is the first Japanese print to use blocks in
the manner of a painterly wash and is the predecessor of a whole generation of landscape
and townscape work by Ssaku Hanga artists.63 The potter Tomimoto made prints in an
abbreviated design style suitable for ceramic painting and was a crucial link to the Folk
Craft movement of the 1920s, which was to influence prints so profoundly. He also worked
on ceramics in Japan with the English etcher Bernard Leach (18871979). The lithographer
Oda Kazuma (18811956) was another who continued to work independently during this
decade and produced his townscape series of considerable atmospheric intensity.64
Out of all this excitement, variety, and freedom was to emerge the first form of a typi-
cally Japanese type of organization in the founding in 1918 of the Japanese Creative Print
Society (Nihon Ssaku Hanga Kykai). Oda was a founding member, though most were
woodblock artists.65 This organization was suggested by Yamamoto after his return from
France, and although initially small in numbers, its objective was to gain status for print-
making. It succeeded relatively quickly in this and by 1930 was officially listed in the Year
Book of Japanese Art published under the auspices of the League of Nations. Its objectives
were listed there as follows: This Association was organized . . . for the purpose of devel-
oping and popularizing creative prints . . . furthermore to exert its influence for the estab-
lishment of a section for prints in the Imperial Fine Arts Academy [the Teiten], as well as a
print department in the Tokyo Fine Arts School.66
It certainly gained status for creative printmakers, for a handful of them are the only
ones listed in that Year Books Directory of Artists and Craft Workers; even the very suc-
cessful Shin Hanga printmaker Yoshida Hiroshi is listed only as a Western-style painter.
Admittance to Teiten was achieved in 1927, and informal print instruction began under
Hiratsuka at the Tokyo Fine Arts School in 1935.67 Meanwhile, the society had reorganized
itself in 1931 by amalgamating with a small intaglio group called Yf-kai to become the
Japanese Print Society (Nihon Hanga Kykai), which it has remained ever since. In those
early years the societys offices were in Onchis house. The merger had been advised, indi-
rectly by Hasegawa in Paris, to more easily enable a great exhibition of Creative Prints to
take place there in 1934, with active encouragement of the Japanese government.68 These
372|Lawrence Smith

were placed with old ukiyo-e prints for comparison, but Shin Hanga prints were excluded.
In this way, Creative Prints were now claimed on an international stage as the true succes-
sors of ukiyo-e.
Much of this success must be attributed to the status of Yamamoto and Onchi, to the
energies of the young Hiratsuka, and to the unity of ideals held to by the members. These
theories had been built up in a short time, but their confirmation within the accepted
circles had been confirmed in the founding aspirations of the Japan Creative Print Asso-
ciation in 1918. Already by 1927 they had been stated as accepted thinking by Hiratsuka
Unichi (18951997) in his populist manual Hanga no gih (Print techniques), which nev-
ertheless had the patrician Onchi as its (unacknowledged) book designer.69
In one crucial section, Hiratsuka asks, Are Nishiki-e ssaku hanga?70 thus raising
the great dilemma these artists had of reconciling their modern aims with their respect
(and crucially that of foreigners) for the old ukiyo-e prints. In it he argues, quoting the
sculptor and occasional printmaker Ishii Tsuruz, that old ukiyo-e prints may have been
cooperative in their production but were works of art because of their artistic intent. Onchi
said a similar thing at this period. A print is not a printed picture, but a picture painted
by a block, which makes it a means to creation (ssaku). Artistic function in printmaking
comes from the creative intention. Thus, in the end, all the much-discussed theories of
the Creative Print movement amount to a belief in the artistic integrity of the print itself.71
Only the reproduction fukusei hanga falls outside this definition, as Hiratsuka states
in the same book72including, one must suppose, the technical glories of contemporary
woodblock reproduction described above. It may be seen from these ideas that although
printmakers in all techniques were welcomed into the society, until after 1945 it was over-
whelmingly an agent for creative printing in the woodblock medium.

The Transformations of Ukiyo-e, 18901941

In stark contrast to all this, the desire to preserve or recreate ukiyo-e in its wider context as
a uniquely Japanese multicultural nexus was the second great factor behind printmaking
energies in the last years of Meiji. Still, this too was far from a unified phenomenon and
crossed many cultural boundaries. Changes in the publishing world were one vital influ-
ence. From the 1890s on, the old-style Japanese book, its text carved in woodblock and
with integrated woodblock illustrations, had given way almost entirely to moveable type.
Illustrations, when needed, as in novels, became inserts, and as such provided a quite new
form for the graphic artist, especially the frontispieces known as kuchi-e.73 At the same
time, illustrated magazines began to be popular, and these often had similar requirements
for inserted printed designs. Many artists now devoted their efforts to such illustrations,
of whom the most significant was Kaburagi Kiyokata (18781973). His soulful, nostalgic
studies, like The Morning Dew (1903) from the magazine Bungei kurabu (Literary club),
though little collected at any time, defined a style of feminine grace, fashion, and sentiment
that had as much as or even more influence than sheet prints had in the past.74 By 1907, he
had produced a large body of illustration, but then gave it up to pursue Nihonga painting.75
Soon after, however, this field was taken up by the painter, illustrator, and writer
Takehisa Yumeji (18841934), who similarly devoted much of his output to book and
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 373

magazine illustration and created a notably modern style of fashionable but melancholic
urban woman that remained popular and influential up to and beyond his early death. It
is important to note, nevertheless, that Yumejis influence spread far beyond his own nar-
row field through his briefly flourishing print and decorated stationery business, Minotoya
(which he began in 1914).76 This again produced few actual sheet prints, but it linked the
concept of the Bohemian life with the new style of a modern popularist version of ukiyo-e
and with the idea of the independent printmaker. It was crucially through Yumejis friend-
ship with and encouragement of the young Onchi that these ideals entered the thinking
of the Creative Print movement. In these respects, Yumeji is the pivotal figure in Japanese
graphic culture in that period.77
Neither Kiyokata nor Yumeji produced many collectable sheet prints (although both
did some), and as a result, they did not become well known in the West. But in Japan,
their images came to define a generation of popular female-centered culture, as ukiyo-e
had done in the past. A similar vogue occurred for the fashionable female images of sev-
eral painters, for example Kitano Tsunetomi (18801947) (fig. 14.2), whose dazzling litho-
graphed poster for the sake Kiku Masamune (1912) features a languidly beautiful woman
with an almost Westernized face.78 Such ephemera reached a far wider audience than his
rare woodblock prints, like the gritty and sensual set of four, The Seasons in the Entertain-
ment Districts (Kuruwa no shunsh), clearly aimed at a specialist audience in Osaka.79 Like
Kiyokata, he moved increasingly to Nihonga painting of female beauties.

Figure 14.2. Kitano Tsunetomi (18801947),

woman adjusting her hair comb in the
mirror, about 1930. Color woodblock print
with mica background, published by the
artist. 397 mm 269 mm. British Museum,
London (1987.0707.2).
374|Lawrence Smith

His contemporary Hashiguchi Goy (18801921) was by preference a Western-style

painter and book illustrator/designer who turned slowly to the study of historic ukiyo-e
prints. In 19161917 he supervised a series of comprehensive volumes of very exact repro-
ductions of historical ukiyo-e prints, Ukiyo-e fzoku yamato nishiki-e.80 Under these influ-
ences, he produced from 1915 to 1920 a small body of prints of beautiful women that have
been compared to those of Utamaro but that are much closer to the Western-style images
of real women he knew, just as in the work of Kiyokata and Yumeji; these acquired a simi-
lar iconic, fashionable status.81 Goy did one print for Watanabe (Bath, 1915),82 which has
claims to be the first true Shin Hanga production, but thereafter decided to produce his
prints himself. He seems to have recognized that revival ukiyo-e was not a realistic option
in these new circumstances, and his place as a pioneer of the Shin Hanga movement has
often been overstated.
The whole Shin Hanga movement gestated, like Ssaku Hanga, in the artistically tur-
bulent years from 1904 to 1918. The latter date brought a new confidence as Japan emerged
as the successful ally of the victorious nations in World War I, and it gave a new resolution
to both camps. Shin Hanga might be described as the revivalist cause of a few traditional
publishers keen to preserve and promote their craft and their markets, which appeared
to be vanishing.83 The term itself means literally new prints but can better be translated
as revival prints. Their product was aimed at the same domestic and foreign market
that had come to value so highly Edo period ukiyo-e woodblock prints. But this is not to
belittle their achievement, which in a limited field in a quite short period of time was con-
siderable, both in quantity and quality. Like Creative Prints, too, the movement crossed
and united cultural divides, particularly that crucial one between Japanese-style painting
and Western-style painting (yamato-e and yga). Indeed, the two great promoters of Shin
Hanga were themselves from theoretically opposed camps: the old-style publisher (ham-
moto) Watanabe Shsabur (18851962) and the Western-style painter Yoshida Hiroshi
(18761950).
As already mentioned, Watanabe was virtually the inventor of Shin Hanga.84 From
1906 he had set up as one of a number of Tokyo firms producing reproductions of old
ukiyo-e through the traditional system of draftsman/cutter/printer under a controlling
publisher. He saw that there was a great market in the West for modern but pleasingly
Japanese prints, and from 1907 he published hundreds of mostly landscape designs by
Takahashi Shtei (later called Hiroaki, 18711945), which sold moderately well. But lack-
ing any great distinction and sharing the unexciting palette of the period, they inspired
no devotion among collectors. His one print with Goy in 1915 began to show a renewed
spirit of ukiyo-e, with more emphasis on line, and in 1916 he discovered the young painter
It Shinsui (18981972) and persuaded him to design the vivid and ardent Before the Mir-
ror.85 This impassioned and intimate half-length portrait of a beautiful young woman in
traditional dress set the tone for a generation of Revival Prints by Shinsui and others. They
can claim to be a true ukiyo-e revival, though increasingly Shinsuis female studies were
reworked from his paintings.
It was through young Shinsui, too, that the picturesque landscape print was revived
in his groundbreaking Eight Views of Lake Biwa (mi hakkei, 19171918), which chal-
lenged comparisons with Hiroshige.86 This inspired the older Kawase Hasui (18831957)
to offer to work with Watanabe from 1918; their first great achievement was the set Twelve
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 375

Figure 14.3. Kawase Hasui (18831957), Shirahige in the Snow (Yuki no Shirahige), from the series
Twelve Tokyo Subjects (Tokyo jnidai), winter 1920. Color woodblock print, from an edition of 200, pub-
lished by Watanabe Shsabur, Tokyo. 271 mm 389 mm. British Museum, London (1946.0209.069,
bequeathed by Arthur Morrison).

Tokyo Subjects (Tky jnidai, 19191921) (fig. 14.3). This seemed to herald a new flower-
ing of the old metropolitan ukiyo-e landscape, but it was killed almost at birth by the 1923
earthquake, after which landscapes of rural Japan dominated Hasuis large body of work
with Watanabe up to the artists death in 1957. These can now be seen as one of the notable
achievements of twentieth-century Japanese graphic art.87 The woodblock style was devel-
oped to make the traditional black line of ukiyo-e designs unobtrusive or to disguise it
completely, giving a more contemporary painterly finish.
Watanabe was also quick to revive that original subject of ukiyo-e prints, the Kabuki
theater. By 1916, he had approached the artist Natori Shunsen (18861960) to make his
painting of the actor Nakamura Ganjur I into a print, and from then on regularly made
actor series with him.88
It is significant that Watanabe himself reacted to the idealistic threat posed by the
Creative Print movement; he audaciously incorporated the words ssaku hanga into the
title of a major series of Kabuki actor prints by ShunsenShunsens Collection of Cre-
ative Prints of Actors Portraits (Ssaku hanga shunsen nigao-e sh, 19251929).89 By the
same token, he showed he clearly understood that the historic heart of ukiyo-e lay in those
aspects of Japanese urban culture that were not easily communicable to outsiders, like
the Kabuki theater, Sumo wrestling, the fashions in traditional dress, and above all the
376|Lawrence Smith

subtleties of professional sexuality. Although the vitality of these actor prints made them
popular with the Tokyo public, the inroads of photography in theater magazines stopped
them from becoming a long-term project.90
Yoshida Hiroshi was a Western-style watercolorist and oil painter who had already
visited the United States before 1900 and exhibited there successfully.91 In 1920 he was
approached by Watanabe and did a few designs for woodblock prints for him. When all
the blocks were destroyed in the 1923 earthquake, he went on a longer visit to the United
States in 19231925 to try to sell his work. There he realized that Americans had a great
regard for ukiyo-e prints and liked his own paintings too. On his return he quickly learned
the necessary skills and became in effect an old-style hammoto publisher of his own land-
scapes, but he supervised all aspects of the production with personal care, thus combining
the attitudes of Revival Prints and Creative Prints. The commercial success of his work
was due to the reliability of his prints and their romantic treatments of landscapes from
the New World, India, Egypt, and the mountains of Japan. He developed a woodblock
technique that suggested the movement of the brush in oils or watercolor without losing
the crispness of the print. Even more than Hasui, he created a vision of Japan the beautiful
that went down equally well with Americans and Japanese (his ultraromantic and sensu-
ous series Eight Scenes of Cherry Blossoms [1935] is a typical example).92
Yoshidas close American contacts enabled him to organize, with the American Doro-
thy Blair, two great exhibitions of Shin Hanga in Toledo in 1930 and 1936.93 These featured
his own works, artists published by Watanabe and other Tokyo and now Kyoto publishers,
and some independents, including Oda Kazuma. With good sales and reviews, and exten-
sive acquisitions by the Toledo Museum of Art, the Revival Print movement seemed to
have backed the right horse. But the invasion of China in 1937 and the events that followed
all but ended this relationship. After Yoshidas death in 1950, his son Tshi (19111995)
continued to design a few landscape and townscape prints, but he soon acknowledged the
end of Shin Hanga by turning to other styles, as did other members of his family.

The 1923 Earthquake and Its Aftermath

The interest in the urban scene and the use of prints to depict it had never seriously
declined since the pre-Meiji heyday of Hiroshige and his circle, but mostly, as has been
described, it had been late ukiyo-e artists and their successor Revival Print artists who had
provided the images. Hasui had indeed produced some of his finest designs in the series
Twelve Tokyo Subjects, mentioned above. These were conceived at the same time as his first
series of country subjects, Souvenirs of Travel (Tabi miyage), and seem to be almost a vale-
dictory tribute to his native city before he turned definitively to the Japanese countryside.
The tribute, while cast in a traditional set of twelve, is not however a conventional selec-
tion and shows Hasuis unerring eye for the lesser known romantic spot and for seasonal
atmosphere.
There was to be little scope for such originality in the post-earthquake city. A further
set, The Twelve Months in Tokyo (Tky Jnikagetsu, also 19201921), was abandoned after
five designs, four of them contained in technically and artistically demanding roundels.94
Hasui did return occasionally to Tokyo scenes, but they lack his earlier conviction. Twenty
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 377

Views of Tokyo (Tky nijikkei, 19251930) is overreliant on set pieces such as the Zjji
Temple in snow, and, significantly, his Shin Hanga attempt at A Hundred New Views of
Tokyo (Shin Tky hyakkei) faded in 1936 after only six sheets were published, the first of
them being Zjji still once again.
The cause of this lack of involvement is not difficult to find. The Great Kant Earth-
quake and fire of September 1923 left huge physical, emotional, and in the end political
damage that affected all the arts, most notably prints. Much that had been picturesque was
destroyed in Tokyo, along with most of the old-style graphic printing establishments, their
stock of woodblocks, and, at least temporarily, the wealth to buy their products. While
the traditional publishers and their Revival Print artists were left paralyzed for a time, the
more independent-minded and internationally aware Creative Print groups seized their
artistic and economic chance. They were also more used to being short of money and
extemporizing.95
Their response to the great disaster was crucial, and though there were many,96 it was
the series of prints by the young Hiratsuka that proved definitive. Alongside fear of even
more urbanization with the rebuilding of the city came nostalgia for the loss of familiar
city scenes, which came to characterize much of the urban imagery of Ssaku Hanga.
Hiratsukas Tokyo after the Earthquake (Tky shinsai ato fkei, 19231927) showed, albeit
to limited audience of supporters, that this group of print artists was able to deal with a
major national disaster in a thoroughly convincing manner.97 This lay far outside the capa-
bilities of the Shin Hanga side and could be compared historically only with Kiyochikas
account of the Great Tokyo Fire created several decades earlier (see Plate 23). Hiratsukas
portfolio of twelve prints was published in Kobe by Yamaguchi Hisakunis Hanga no Ie,
which responded to the loss of capability left by the earthquake in Tokyo. The edition of
fifty was relatively large for a printing of such sensibility requiring the close attention of
the artist, and its significance was recognized in the preface by Yamamoto Kanae himself,
who proclaimed that Hiratsukas prints are a new ukiyo-e.98 Circumstances dictated few
color blocks, but such is the artists subtlety that they seem more numerous. Fukagawa
Wood Yards, for example, is an austere scene, but it glows with an inner light due to the
refined shaving of the block to give restrained graduations of tone. The wood yards tell-
ingly represent the rebuilding of Tokyo while referring to Hiroshiges view of the same
subject more than sixty years earlier.99 This technique, much used by Hiratsuka, was in
itself a statement of the print artists potential independence from the old publishing sys-
tem, which had served Hiroshige so well, and of the subtleties possible with apparently
simple means and tools.
The greatest monument to this philosophy and arguably the finest moment of the Cre-
ative Print movement was the woodblock series One Hundred Views of New Tokyo (Shin
Tky hyakkei) produced in the years 1929 to 1932.100 It is a tribute by eight artists to the
renewed city in which they worked, a city now suddenly modern and shifting; it is also a
tribute to Hiroshiges One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo (mid-1850s).101 The art-
ists were Onchi, Hiratsuka, Fujimori, Maekawa Sempan (18881960), Fukazawa Sakuichi
(18961947), Hemmi Takashi (18951944), Suwa Kanenori (18971932), and Kawakami
Sumio (18951972). The styles vary, but there is a unity of purpose and tone that speaks of
a genuine school of art, and each artist seems in top form. Onchi stands out, however, as
the great colorist he had become and through the subtleties of his social comment.
378|Lawrence Smith

Urban series in fact became in the 1930s a major subject for Creative Print move-
ment artists, now contrasted with the mainly rural preoccupations of Shin Hanga. Among
the most interesting are Fujimoris Twelve Views of Great Tokyo (Dai Tky jnikei no
uchi, 19331934),102 100 Pictures of Great Tokyo in Showa (Shwa dai Tky hyakuzue,
19291940), by Koizumi Kishio (18931945),103 and a number of series by Kawanishi Hide
(18941965), including One Hundred Kobe Prints (Hanga Kbe hyakkei, 1935). The war
years cut this genre short, and after 1946 almost no urban series were produced again by
Ssaku Hanga printmakers.

The Folk Art Movement and Its Influence on Prints

The above discussions have centered on differences between artists from larger groupings,
opposed to each other in some instances simply because they were in different groups.
It would be possible also to argue that the real nature of the differences between the two
great movements was the rebirth of old Japanese polarizations, such as that between the
amateur scholar and the professional, or, again, between native and foreign styles. But
in the 1920s completely new factors were introduced that transcended these, of which the
most important was the Folk Art movement (Mingei Und).
This is discussed elsewhere in this volume, but its widespread effects included the
print world, both woodblock and stencil, which had an artistic revival from the 1920s,
when the Folk Art guru Yanagi Setsu (18891961) was publicly setting out his ideas.104
The potter Tomimoto Kenkichi (18861963), one of the founders of the movement with
Yanagi, had been a pioneer printmaker. Yanagi founded the journal Kgei (Crafts) in 1931,
in which he encouraged the stencil dyer Serizawa Keisuke (18951984) to publish designs
and page decorations, and from 1936 the young Munakata Shik (19031975) was doing
the same in woodblock. Major print series and publications by both were advertised in
Kgei. The opening of the Folk Art Museum in 1936 in Tokyo was celebrated by Munakata,
and thereafter many of his larger prints were designed to be mounted on screens or as
scrolls for exhibition there.105
The folk element in Munakatas workembracing legend, Shint, and popular Bud-
dhism (fig. 14.4)gave it energy and a political neutrality that carried him more or less
safely through the Pacific War.106 The spontaneity of his carving of the block, later to
be celebrated on film, was akin to that of the unself-conscious folk potter. The pictorial
energy that was always generated by this was an inspiration to printmakers for several
generations, though none of them could match his extraordinary unself-consciousness;
they include Sasajima Kihei (19061993), Kida Yasuhiko (born 1944), and Matsubara
Naoko (born 1937), who despite living in the West since 1961 has remained closest to
his spirit.107
The stencil work of Serizawa was to have a profound influence on the emergence of the
printmakers Mori Yoshitoshi (18981992) and Watanabe Sadao (19131996), the former
working almost exclusively on native folk subjects, the latter in Christian stories told in the
manner of folk Buddhist art. Both were selected for the portfolio of ten prints The Modern
Japanese Printan Appreciation organized by James Michener in 1962, as were others by
Maekawa and Azechi Umetar (19021999) that showed strong folk influences.108
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 379

Figure 14.4. Munakata Shik

(19031975), the Buddhist
deity Fud My-, from the
portfolio Kegon-fu, 1937.
Monochrome woodblock
print, published by the
artist. 530 mm 725 mm.
British Museum, London
(1983.7-2.08).

Proletarian Art

Another relatively minor movement that managed to stay out of the central print divide
at this time was proletarian art, which became the most direct response to the rapid
urbanization and industrialization of the rebuilt Tokyo area after the 1923 earthquake.109
Inspired by the modernist shows, which for a time flourishedespecially the Russian Art
Exhibition sponsored by the always imaginative Asahi shinbun newspaper in 1927 (and
preceded by the Mavo group before the earthquake in 1923) and also using the expres-
sionist styles for some time known and used by Onchi, Taninaka Yasunori (18971946),
Nagase Yoshir, and other avant-gardistesa spontaneous socialist art movement
developed into the New Print Group (Shin Hanga Shdan) in 1932.110 This was led by Ono
Tadashige (19091990).111 He was to become, especially after the Pacific War, one of the
major figures of graphic art in Japan, in spite of being always on the wrong side of the
political fence throughout his career (a political parallel might be the Soviet composer
Dmitri Shostakovich).
The proletarian art groups were able to survive considerable hostility and police inter-
vention because of their cultural positioning. Like Yamamoto Kanae, who took a benign
interest in them, they believed in prints both as multiple works of art for the masses and
as a means of expression for either proletarian or farming people. In common with most
print artists of the age, however, they avoided direct political statements in their actual
prints. Indeed, the use of direct satire in graphic art had all but disappeared after the
Russo-Japanese War.
The term the dark valley is now conventionally applied to the years 1931 to 1945
(sometimes 1937 to 1945) in a political sense, but it does not seem to have affected print
production in the period leading up to Pearl Harbor, and not even then, to quote another
artistic example, to Nihonga painting. In fact, the decade from 1931 to 1941 demonstrates
only slow constrictions of vitality in the print scene and some very notable advances, even
380|Lawrence Smith

in the field of proletarian art. One instance is the leftist New Print Group, which in 1937
under the pressures of censorship turned itself into the Plastic Print Society (Zkei Hanga
Kykai), still under Ono. From then to late 1943, it continued to flourish and to produce
work of some interest. Ono himself showed early a major talent for expressing industrial
despair, as in his 1938 two-sheet print Rest Day (Kynichi), which masterfully combines
surrealism, expressionism, and social concern, yet within a format that converts oil paint-
ing into woodblock with no sense of strain.112 His inspiration can be felt in the young
Sait Kiyoshis (19071997) Makeup (Kesh)113 and the little-known Hatano Orizs (born
1908) Landscape (Fkei) both from the groups 1940 exhibition. The latter shows the influ-
ence of Azechis gritty landscape style.114 Azechi, though not a New Print Group member,
exerted some influence on them, notably in his ability to convey emotion of whatever sort
through pure landscape. This lesson was not lost on Ono when he had to go emotionally
underground in the late war years and during the occupation, in both instances because
of his politics.
The growing confidence of many printmakers in the 1930s can be seen in the gradual
increase in the dimension of prints; Onos Rest Day (1938) referred to above is a diptych
almost one meter in width. Onchi himself had designed in the previous year the unprec-
edented multicolor print triptych The Sea, which extended far beyond a meter across.115
And the always unpredictable Munakata had by 1939 made his monochrome series Two
Bodhisattvas and Ten Great Disciples of Shaka (Nibosatsu Shaka jdaishi), each around a
meter high.116 This expansionism was soon halted by deepening war shortages and stric-
tures and did not seriously revive until the post-occupation period.

Artists Stay Abroad

While efforts to find a new Japaneseness went on with some vigor in the fields of wood-
block and stencil, the shift to internationalism was already quietly proceeding, though it
was not to gain major recognition until after the Pacific War. It came from a realization
among those artistsboth painters and printmakerswho were less concerned with Japa-
nese identity that there was an international artistic community that was based mainly in
Paris, though also elsewhere in the West (the painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi [18891953], for
example, went to the United States in 1906 and stayed until his death).117
In printmaking, the crucial figures were Hasegawa Kiyoshi (18911980) and Fujita
Tsuguji (Leonard Foujita, 18861968), both living mainly in Paris for their artistic lives
and both etchers of note. Fujita, who first went there in 1913, was mainly a painter, but his
figurative etchings have that foreign and slightly Bohemian atmosphere that earned him a
one-man exhibition in Japan in 1929.118 On his return to Japan in the late 1930s, he turned
briefly to woodblock and work as a war artist, but he was denounced after the defeat and
returned to France, where he received much honor, though his postwar prints are of little
interest. This troubled story is better-documented than that of any other artist who sup-
ported Japans wars.119
Hasegawa, on the other hand, remained in Paris from 1922 and in his printmaking
never deviated from Western style in etching, though his personal mannerintensely
focused studies of small-scale still lifes, birds, and landscapes, increasingly laced with
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 381

fantasyis demonstrably Japanese in mood. His work as time progressed became increas-
ingly reliant on a little light emerging from an intensely dark ground.120 This had great
influence on many successors, notably Hamaguchi Yz (19092000)121 and Komai Tetsur
(19201976). He maintained close contacts and influence with Japanese print circles dur-
ing World War II, which was made simpler by the pro-Axis wartime Vichy government. In
1934, as we have seen, he was the prime mover in organizing the Paris exhibition of Ssaku
Hanga. When artists began to visit Europe again after the war, it was often Hasegawa to
whom they turned for help, as Kitaoka Fumio did in 1954, leading eventually to the redis-
covery in Japan of Hasegawas importance.122

The War Years

Japan was at war continuously from 1931 to 1945, ever more seriously from the invasion of
China in 1937. Inevitably print artists were affected, especially through increasing censor-
ship, but it was only after the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941 that their situation
began to deteriorate drastically. Even then, young conscripts, if attending art schools, were
usually directed into noncombat units to use their skills. Kitaoka Fumio (19182007), for
example, was sent to Manchuria to work for the vaguely defined North East Asia Soci-
ety for the Promotion of Culture (Thoku Ajia Bunka Shinkkai),123 while those slightly
older were often employed in Japan in propaganda, mapping design, and the like; Morita
Dshun was seconded to the Naval Ministry, where he worked on woodblock reproduc-
tions of nationalist historical paintings.124 The real problems came as artistic supplies dried
up and there were few patrons left except the government.
In contrast to earlier victorious wars, the artistic records of Japans invasions, military
occupations, and final defeat went largely underground after 1945, and no clear assessment
is yet possible of the nationalistic output of most print artists, which few had any alterna-
tive but to pursue.125 A few significant works were nevertheless produced. The most iconic
of these has remained Onchis reverberant memorial portrait (1943) of the poet Hagiwara
Sakutar.126 Done originally in an edition of seven (large for Onchi), it became so admired
after the war it was reprinted by Ono (1949) and in an unlimited edition by Hirai follow-
ing Onchis death in 1955.127 In the West it is now one of the best-known Japanese images
of the twentieth century, and as such is a worthy successor to Hokusais celebrated wood-
block print The Hollow of the Deep Sea Wave off of Kanagawa, c. 1830, in maintaining the
profile (at least in international eyes) of graphic art above that of painting.
As the Pacific War turned against Japan and it became more and more difficult for art-
ists to work except in the national cause, a certain artistic coherence among Tokyo-based
printmakers continued to be maintained through the dual (but not unified) leadership
of Onchi and Hiratsuka. Each used his position to entertain groups of printmaking col-
leagues at his own home during a period when such meetings were discouraged. Hira
tsukas group was called the Woodpecker Society (Kitsutsuki-kai) and consisted mainly
of his woodblock pupils at the then Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where his extracurricu-
lar course continued until 1944, and other colleagues mainly from northern and rural
Japan. They included Hiratsuka himself, Azechi, Hashimoto Okiie (18991993), Kitaoka,
Sasajima Kihei (19061993), Maeda Masao (19041974), Kuroki Sadao (19081984), and
382|Lawrence Smith

Shimozawa Kihachir (19011984), who had introduced the young Munakata to Hira
tsuka. In 1943 they managed to publish a group portfolio, Woodpecker Print Collection
(Kitsutsuki Hangash), but nothing after that; it featured typically apolitical subjects.128
These artists, mainly young, were to flourish in the postwar period in similar subjects of
landscape and folk culture; they generally avoided abstraction and urban scenes.
By contrast, Onchis group was far more catholic, reflecting his urban and socially
elevated background and his wide international intellectual and cultural interests, includ-
ing literature and music. His First Thursday Society (Ichimoku-kai) was perhaps the most
influential factor in keeping a sense of coherence among print artists during the war.129
Like Hiratsukas, it was an informal group. Since 1939, it had met on the first Thursday of
each month at Onchis house in the Tokyo suburb of Suginami-ku, which was largely free
from the intense bombing of central Tokyo that began in 1944. Its founding members were
Onchi, his near-contemporary Yamaguchi Gen (18961976), and the young then intaglio
artist Sekino Junichir (19141988). It continued to meet throughout the war, sheltering
under Onchis probably reluctant status as chairman (1942) of the Japanese Public Service
Print Association (Nihon Hanga Hkkai). This was an enforced governmental merger of
all the print societies and publishers to serve the war effort, which gave Onchi access to a
much wider range of artists and techniques.130
Artists to join the First Thursday Society during the remainder of the war included
Maekawa, Azechi, Kawanishi, Wakayama Yasji (19031983), Mori Dshun (19091985),
and Yamaguchi Susumu (18971983). Like those mentioned above, they were all to flourish
during the occupation under Onchis guidance. The society was able to publish in 1944 a
modest portfolioThe First Thursday Collection (Ichimoku-sh)largely funded by Onchi
himself. It was again uncontroversial, except for Onchis own luxuriously international
Window Open to the Sea (Umi no mieru mado), which seems to look at a better past and
a better future.131 Onchis status also ensured that the annual exhibition of the Japanese
Print Association took place in June 1944 and included a memorial show for Fujimori
Shizuo, who had died in 1943. Thereafter there were no more private print exhibitions
until after the defeat.

The Triumph of Ssaku Hanga during

the Occupation, 19451952
One of the unexpected historical effects of the occupation was to prolong the tradition of
collecting Japanese prints, which had existed since the early Meiji period in the United
States and Europe and had included, as we have seen, the collecting of Shin Hanga. All this
might easily have been lost for a generation or more had the Pacific War not ended with
occupation. As it was, prints, this time overwhelmingly of the Ssaku Hanga variety, took
up the role of the most-appreciated aspect of Japanese art among foreign connoisseurs.
Of these, Oliver Statler was the major pioneer, both as collector, writer, and intermedi-
ary; he was by the mid-1950s joined in these roles by James Michener and by the 1960s
by James Austin, Felix Juda, and Robert Vergez. Also in the 1960s the print artist Gaston
Petit, resident in Japan, began through his artistic connections a major collection that went
far beyond Ssaku Hanga, as did his friend James Hildebrand in London. In Tokyo too,
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 383

Charles Mitchell acted from the 1960s as an intermediary, though he did not personally
collect much in the field of contemporary prints.132
These enthusiasts had longer-term effects. Most of them developed active links with
museums and public galleries in the West and encouraged acquisitions of new works. As
a result, such major institutions as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Carnegie Institute
of Art, Pittsburgh, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and the
British Museum, London, had all by the 1980s developed important representations that
in many cases included the collections of their inspirers. A decline in these trends was sig-
naled still later in the 1990s by the dispersal of the Juda133 and some of the Statler collection,
partly and significantly returning to Japan, but by then it had become customary for West-
ern institutions of Asian art to include modern Japanese prints in their scope of activity.
An important factor in the popularity of Creative Prints was their exploitation after
1945 of a new imagery of a peaceful Japan based in picturesque rural landscapes with folk
traditions.134 This now appealed strongly to Western buyers based in Japan and suited the
tentative interactive politics of the occupation. By the time Statler published his influential
book Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn in 1956,135 his choice of then living artists
and subjects was dominated by those working in that mode. Some of them had long fol-
lowed these tendencies, such as Hiratsuka; Maekawa, who found his origins in cartoon
style easily translated into folk simplicity; and Azechi, whose landscape prints in the 1930s
devoted to his native mountains were equally easily translated into larger formats and naf
studies of mountain people. Similarly, Sait Kiyoshi celebrated his austere northern envi-
ronment before proceeding to a more French style after his acceptance in the United States
following his first visit there in 1956.136
In a similar way, Onchis great helper Sekino shifted from his origins in intaglio
(which he never entirely abandoned) to woodblock in portraitsnotably of Onchi and
Munakatachild and doll portraits, puppeteers, traditional tiled roofs, and traditional
landscape views.137 Others in this group include Hashimoto, whose studies of Japanese
castles remained as saleable after the Pacific War as during it;138 Yamaguchi Susumu, a
devoted celebrator of his native mountains who had been one of the commercial successes
of the Creative Print Exhibition in Paris in 1934; Kawanishi, still recording his native Kobe
as a sort of urban idyll; and the nostalgic Kawakami, who succeeded in turning memories
of a Meiji urban childhood almost into a charmed fairy tale.139
The overall stylistic direction of these artists became as strong and dominant in its
way as had that of the townscapists of the 1920s and 1930s. In most cases, they were united
by an increase in the size of their prints, now dictated by customers who wanted prints on
their walls, not just in folders. Many of them had long and prosperous careers ahead with
no great incentive to change.
But the wider world was beckoning again. It is hard to overemphasize the impact on
the Japanese cultural world of the awards at the Sao Paolo Biennale in October 1951 of the
prizes awarded to Sait and Komai.140 This was actually before the San Francisco Treaty
returned autonomy to a then almost friendless Japan in April 1952. It was noted that the
prizes were not only for a woodblock print (Sait), the medium that had taken pride of
place in Ssaku Hanga since 1945, but also for an intaglio work by Komai. From this began
the slow rise in confidence of intaglio artists, a technique that was to become a major
384|Lawrence Smith

aspect of Japanese printmaking from the 1960s onwards. As we shall see, this new confi-
dence in an essentially foreign media was eventually to transform a print scene hitherto
dominated by woodblock.
Before considering these changes, it is necessary to pause to assess those three figures
already touched upon several times who had long worked so hard for the cause of spe-
cifically Japanese woodblock printing, and who now in different ways had come to claim
their heritageOnchi, Hiratsuka, and Munakata. Through their achievements and their
influence, these three are now understood to be the major Japanese print artists of the
mid-twentieth century. Moreover, their opinions, practices, and different spheres of suc-
cess throw some light on two major questions that must be asked about the Japanese print
during the period since 1868. First, why has the print continued to play such an unusually
major role in the wider sphere of Japanese art? Second, why has the print, in spite of that
wide acceptance, been so little used as a vehicle for ideas?
Of these three artists, Onchi had the shortest career left in 1952, but he was neverthe-
less in the midst of a culminating sunset of achievement. His last decade was marked by a
wholehearted embracing of the abstraction he had since his youth tended toward, though
economic and political need had often deflected him into other paths. He had been among
the first of that crucial generation who had identified Western modernism through and
with prints, usually woodblock. A special status, which was never lost among artists and
intellectuals, had attached to prints at that time.141 As a consequence, in the unusual years
following 1945 many artists became celebrated for prints alone.142 Increasingly, they were
abstract artists. The status won for the woodblock was to transfer slowly to other media.
Onchi himself in those last ten years produced woodblock and collage prints of elegance,
clarity, and power that must be accounted among the peaks of twentieth-century Japanese
art. Many are in editions of only one or two, for Onchi believed instinctively in print as a
painting done by a block.143
Almost all are titled Lyric in a series going back to his youth.144 This suggests that his
abstract prints aimed at some of the qualities of poetry and music. As the great colorist
he always was, even his most pastel compositions like Lyric No 29Self Satisfaction (1953)
have a strong chromatic pungency.145 This was a quality none of his followers could quite
emulate, not even Yamaguchi Gen.146 Onchis promotion of the concept of lyricism in the
print eventually contributed another element to its prestige in Japan.147 Partly through
his influence, critics began to see lyricism (joj) as a defining characteristic of the Japa-
nese print; this helped explain and validate their Japaneseness and hence made them more
acceptable to the educated public at home. Vivid evidence of this was provided in 1976
when the prestigious cultural journal Bungei shunj published a deluxe issue devoted to
prints titled Hanga Meihin-sh: Nihon no Joj (Collection of famous prints: Japanese
lyricism).148 The artists included were as various as Munakata and Kawase Hasui. One
article explored the close relationship between poetry and prints in Japan, with special
reference to Onchi and early Ssaku Hanga colleagues.149
Admiration for these late works has obscured the fact that Onchi excelled in every print
genre he addressedlandscape, townscape, semi-abstractionsuch as Mannequin in the
Studio (fig. 14.5) (1936)and portraiture. Most of all, he excelled up to 1930 in convincingly
translating into prints a direct feeling of contemporary urban chic in sets like Beauties of the
Four Seasons (1927).150 This was a feat that evaded almost the entire Revival Print movement.
Figure 14.5. Onchi Kshir (18911955), Mannequin in the Studio, 1936. Color woodblock print, pub-
lished by the artist. 540 mm 416 mm. British Museum, London (1987.3-16.094).
386|Lawrence Smith

Hiratsuka came from humble origins in central Japan and personally was as modest
as Onchi, with whom he professionally collaborated in many ventures in the development
of printmaking. It was as a teacher, organizer, and communicator that he was celebrated in
his time until his departure for a long stay in the United States in 1962. His own woodblock
printsvirtually all landscape, townscape, or views of temples and their imageshave a
gravity, stillness, and sureness of vision that none of his contemporaries could match. He
was as great a colorist as Onchi,151 but it was in monochrome, which he favored his entire
career, that he signally excelled (fig. 14.6). He regarded black-and-white prints as the equiv-
alent of East Asian ink painting; the black was, however, printed repeatedly to give intense
depth without gradation, and through these means alone he produced masterpieces such
as the monumental Hryji Temple in Autumn (1942)152 or the dazzlingly intricate Mon-
key Bridge, Yamanashi (1956).153 Perhaps surprisingly, this style worked well on his later
American scenes such as Tulip Poplar in April, Washington D.C. (1969).154
We have already examined his seminal influence on print practice and theory, but
it was the print itself that engaged him obsessively once he had found it, and it could be
claimed that in his work their are no overt ideas because the work itself is the idea. This
conviction ties in with his feeling that prints are close to crafts, a commonly expressed or
implied view in the Creative Print and Folk Arts movement.155 He is quoted by Matsubara
Naoko as transcribing his poem for her: I just finished carving a woodcut and am about
to plunge into the first printing; this joy and expectation, to whom shall I convey them?156
These are feelings expressed also by potters as they wait for the kiln to cool and reveal what
has been created. The inherent respect for craftsmanship embraces the print.
This too may help explain why so few printmakers have used the medium for con-
troversy or satire. Indeed, there are many examples of print artists in the first half of the
twentieth century who worked as cartoonists, but took none of that into their graphic
works.157 These tendencies have also led to prints finding progressively less place in the

Figure 14.6. Hiratsuka

Unichi (18951997),
The Innermost Temple of
Koya-san, 1941. Mono-
chrome woodblock print,
published by the artist.
428 mm 511 mm. Brit-
ish Museum, London
(1987.0326.394).
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 387

avant-garde, in spite of the important role they played in the Taish era in publicizing
avant-garde painting.158 As already noted, in the important 1986 Paris exhibition Le Japon
des Avant-Gardes, Onchi is the only print artist seriously illustrated, and mainly for his
role as an early abstractionist.
If both Onchi and Hiratsuka achieved great respect as graphic artists both in Japan
and North America (as Yoshida Hiroshi had also done before the Pacific War),159 it was a
new phenomenon for the world Munakata brought with him: the printmaker as celebrity.
He achieved this both in Japan160 and in the West.161 This was crucial to cementing the
prestige of the modern Japanese print and led to its and his own official recognition in its
own land. His stay in New York in 1959 established him as a star in the then art capital
of the world,162 and he never declined from that position. This was important because it
was achieved almost entirely on the strength of his prints and may have been the first
time a graphic artist had made such an impact there. In Japan itself his precedent led
to later printmakers becoming in turn celebrities there. Two examples are Ikeda Masuo
(19341997) and Sawada Tetsur (19351999). The irony has been noticed that the move
to celebrity is just the opposite of the ideal of humble anonymity professed by the Folk Art
movement of which Munakata was a protg.
With him, the contemporary Japanese print came of age in the eyes of the world, and
this in spite of his often difficult and recondite subject matter. But we need to recognize
that it is this subject matter that makes the appreciation of his work within Japan usually
much more profound than elsewhere. He wrote a great deal about the print and his own
work. Some of it varies over the years or is contradictory.163 But art historians need to be
wary of making definitive judgments on the basis of what a major artist writes or says,
because ultimately the art belongs to a nonverbal field of expression.
We have already remarked on the physical scale of some of his earlier work, but it
was only after 1952 that he became, and was slowly recognized as, the major graphic art-
ist of his country. In fact it may be argued that he is the most internationally appreciated
Japanese artist of any kind of the twentieth century. In contrast to his own wish to be a
Japanese Van Gogh,164 Munakata began by achieving success with an international style,
but quickly turned to a more nationalist cultural mode from which he never again devi-
ated, though he also far transcended the limitations that sometimes implies. In that he far
outpaced other visual artists from the Folk Craft movement as well as even the best of his
Ssaku Hanga contemporaries such as his teacher, Hiratsuka himself.
It is worth considering why this is so. Most significantly, he changed the perception of
prints (not only in Japan, but worldwide) from a small-scale art form to one capable of the
grandest expression.165 His tendencies to larger scale from the early 1950s reflect not only
his own expansive and creative visions, but also a complete breaking out of the print mode
and merging into that of traditional Japanese paintingspecifically the hanging scroll
and folding screen formats. To take one example, his six-fold screen Flower Arrow (1961)
had more presence on the walls of the Museum of Modern Art, Hayama, than any of that
museums indisputably fine collection of paintings.166 By giving up-front exhibitability to
the print, he ensured its future status in museums and galleries.
It must be stressed that Munakata was also a notable painter and calligrapher and
that these modes are always present in his prints. Every work pulsates with the energy
and movement with which he famously cut his blocks with designs that seemed to come
388|Lawrence Smith

spontaneously. The satisfaction he felt in his art translates into almost every work in his
vast output. Though ordinary people rarely figure in his prints, a deep humanity can
always be felt within them.167
To sum up, these three figures represent different areas of comprehensive ability.
Onchi was unequaled in his knowledge of and sympathies with the contemporary art and
culture of the international world and was an encourager par excellence. Hiratsuka was
also unequaled in his knowledge of the history and techniques of the printed art of East
Asia and was a teacher of great influence. Munakata seemed effortlessly in touch with all
of nature, the spirits of his country, and the sources of human emotion and energy. He
remains throughout the world the best-known Japanese artist of the twentieth century.

Changing Attitudes after the Occupation

The deaths of Onchi in 1955 and Hasui in 1957 left both the old printmaking camps in
a sense leaderless and open to new influences. The opening of the National Museum of
Modern Art in Tokyo in 1952 led quickly to a greater sense of cohesion within the inter-
national scene among Japanese painters and sculptors, and eventually printmakers, espe-
cially those in the still foreign techniques of intaglio and lithograph. In 1953 the intaglio
artist Hamaguchi returned to France to begin a new and successful foreign career. The
founding of the Tokyo Print Biennale in 1957 opened a new era of international exchange,
with foreign printmakers now beginning regularly to visit Japan.168
One major result was the rapid spread to dominance of abstract subject matter.
Although Onchi himself was almost forgotten for a generation by art historians after
his death, his friends and protgs continued to flourish in the abstraction he had long
espoused, at least in the woodblock medium and in the pastel or monochrome palettes
favored by this last generation of the Creative Print movement. The most important of
these were his old friend Yamaguchi Gen, liberated by the new thinking and expanding
into larger and increasingly expressive and confident compositions,169 as well as arguably
Onchis best pupils170Takahashi Rikio (19171999),171 Iwami Reika (born 1927),172 and
Yoshida Masaji (19171971),173 who seems more and more like the logical last development
of Onchis influence, his prints always inspired by personal and usually tragic emotion (see
Plate 24). One must also mention as a link Hagiwara Hideo (19132000), equally a painter
throughout his career.174 At one time he was a pupil of Hiratsuka, but it was not until 1958
that he moved into a vigorous and searching exploration of woodblock, which continued
up to his death. His subject inspirations were always visual, but his energetic variations on
woodblock techniquescratching the blocks, printing the reversemade him a true suc-
cessor of Onchi in his spirit of adventure.
Hagiwara was also one of those woodblock artists who led the way into full color
after the semipastel dominance of Ssaku Hangas heyday. But they were only some of the
participants in the shift into seemingly full Technicolor that marked the later 1950s and
1960s, as youthful optimism began to overcome the emotional reticence of those who had
worked through darker days.
A good way to understand the changes that were happening then is to consider the
Canadian Gaston Petits (born 1930) landmark 1973 publication 44 Japanese Print Artists.
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 389

Petit was an early postwar immigrant (from the late 1950s) into the Tokyo print scene who
can be compared to Onchi as an encourager, friend, and critic, but this time, crucially, as
an outsider. His forty-four artists, all but one of whom he met and interviewed, include no
practitioners of Shin Hanga, which he regarded as dead. He does include some of the Cre-
ative Print old guard, but most of his printmakers were working in avant-garde and mainly
abstract styles.175 They include some not already mentioned who were to have distinguished
careers in abstract prints of great varietyAmano Kazumi (born 1927); Amano Kuni-
hiro (born 1929); Fukita Fumiaki (born 1926), who had become the first full professor of
printmaking at Tama University of Arts in 1968; Funasaka Yoshisuke (born 1939); Hara
Takeshi (born 1942); Kimura Risabur (born 1924); Kurosaki Akira (born 1937); Kusaka
Kenji (born 1936); Tajima Hiroyuki (19111984); and Yoshida Hodaka (19261995), sec-
ond son of Yoshida Hiroshi.
The British painter and printmaker Stanley Hayter wrote a preface to this collection.
As then perhaps the worlds most influential teaching printmaker from his Atelier 17 in
Paris, Hayter chose to praise the tenets of independence of the Creative Print artists.176 He
already had in his studio the painter Yoshida Kenji (born 1924), who was studying intaglio
and screen and produced a fine body of brilliantly toned abstract work still little known in
Japan due undoubtedly to his long residence abroad,177 as well as Yayanagi G (born 1933)
(see below).
Many other developments were occurring as well, and one of them can be easily
identified in Petits survey. That is the extraordinary rebirthor rather ghostly reappear-
anceof ukiyo-e. We have seen earlier how the old ukiyo-e as a social matrix had been
transformed into a new media world and how its attempted organizational revival as Shin
Hanga had come and gone quite quickly. But by the early 1960s, the actual imagery of
the great Edo period prints of Utamaro, Sharaku, Hokusai, Hiroshige, and the Utagawa
School in particular had begun to be a persistent presence in the works of many artists.
And they have been far too long-lasting to be dismissed as a fashion. Instead, they seem a
long-delayed acknowledgment by younger artists, now sufficiently distanced from the old
disputes, of Japans true print heritage. Such back reference had of course become com-
monplace in all the arts in the twentieth century and had always been a sure sign of a
reputation now beyond question.
Some of the earlier printmakers who incorporated ukiyo-e images into their works
were Ai (Ay-) (born 1931) (Sum prints),178 Petit himself (Utamaro),179 Fukazawa Shir
(19071978) (Sharakus actor portraits), Shinohara Ushio (born 1932) (Utagawa-printstyle
women), and uchi Makoto (19261989), who first used images of Hokusais print The Hol-
low of the Deep Sea Wave mentioned above.180 In his later prints he used contrasting subjects
on the visible facets of represented blocks. Since then, this wave has continued to flow across
woodblock prints by, for example, Kawachi Seik (born 1948)181 and more recently (2001)
in a series based on its variations by the London-based Nana Shiomi (born 1956).182
More obliquely, the allure of mysteriously stylish women, which had been such a major
preoccupation of ukiyo-e, began to be explored anew by artists such as Yoshihara Hideo
(born 1931), Ikeda Masuo, a true inheritor of the Floating World, Yayanagi (in his Genji
series of 1968),183 and the mezzotintist Sait Kaoru (born 1931).184 Later still, a series of
vaguely erotic studies of predatory women of indeterminate race by Hiratsuka Yji (born
1954) have seemed like an unacknowledged neo-ukiyo-e tribute.185
390|Lawrence Smith

In 1985, the cartoonist Takeda Hideo (born 1948) designed a series of screen prints
called Gempei, which became almost the ultimate in neo-ukiyo-e. They used the stylistic
elements of the Utagawa-print school to describe the medieval wars of the Minamoto and
Taira clans in terms of contemporary yakuza culture. Like ukiyo-e in the Edo period, they
depend to a large extent for their effect on the skill and devotion of the printer, in this case
Taninaka Kazuo.186
These ukiyo-e hauntings were not restricted to imagery. Some seriously motivated
printmakers sought to match the great series of the past, such as Munakatas Munakatas
Prints of the Tokaido Highway (1964)187 and Sekinos Fifty-Three Stations on the Tokaido
(from 1961),188 both based on Hiroshiges great original, and Hagiwaras successfully ambi-
tious modern take on Hokusais most famous series Thirty-Six Fujis (19771986).189 Even
Noda Tetsuya (born 1940), after some four decades of the most oblique references to the
artistic traditions of East Asia, could not resist in the twenty-first century depicting the
Millennium Bridge in London as Hiroshige had done 150 years earlier. Noda is one of
those unclassifiable individualists who have tended to flourish among printmakers during
the long years of artistic freedom and economic stability since the late 1950s. His Diary
series (fig. 14.7) has continued for more than forty years; every print combines a mim-
eographed photograph, usually taken by himself, with woodblock. The ordinary is con-
stantly given significance. It seems to his many admirers throughout the world that his
reputation in the future will be very high.190
Further perverse relationships to ukiyo-e practice must be considered. The case of
Kurosaki Akira (born 1937) is one of them. This Manchurian-born artist, educated in
Kyoto, never claimed any direct connection with ukiyo-e, and his changing styles since the
1960s have always been related to abstract fantasy. Yet early in his long career he decided
to produce his woodblock prints with the help of a permanent assistant printer and cutter,
reverting to a system from the Edo period.191 The case of Tsuruya Kkei (born 1946) is even
stranger. The grandson of the prolific Shin Hanga landscapist Nakagawa Hiromitsu (1874
1964), he began in 1979 to make memorial color woodblock prints of the performances at
Tokyos Kabuki-za theater (fig. 14.8). These were produced entirely by himself in small edi-
tions by the most labor-intensive process, after which he would destroy the blocks to ensure
that no reprints would be possible. This was a Creative Print philosophy used to make popu-
lar works in the oldest of ukiyo-e traditions. Kkeis actor portraits are considered the great-
est since Natori Shunsens, yet he abruptly stopped making them early in the year 2000.192
If the print world of the 1960s and early 1970s seemed on its face to be released into
color and exuberance from the darkness, or perhaps pastel grayness, of the recent past,
this was to prove, as often with such predictions, misleading. More quietly through this
period, the prevalence of intaglio was increasing through the growing prestige of artists
such as Hamada Chimei (born 1917)193 and Hamaguchi, through much extended foreign
contact, and most of all through the teaching at art universities by, for example, Komai
and his successor Nakabayashi Tadayoshi (born 1937)194 at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts
and Music. It was tacitly acknowledged at last that the intensity of concentration necessary
in intaglio processes, the high levels of craftsmanship required, and the dominance of the
play of black and white all suited the Japanese artistic temperament. The very process of
working from dark to light in etching and mezzotint in turn darkened the mood of a whole
new generation of printmakers.
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 391

Figure 14.7. Noda Tetsuya

(born 1940), Diary Feb 23rd 02,
in London, 2002. Mimeograph/
silkscreen, with color woodblock,
18/25, published by the artist.
735 mm 524 mm. British
Museum, London (2007.3.006.5,
gift of the artist).

Petit had included almost no work of this sort in his 1973 book. By 1985, however, atti-
tudes were visibly changing. In that year a touring exhibition to the West was organized
by the College Womens Association of Japan, which since 1956 had held an annual sell-
ing exhibition in Tokyo of living Japanese printmakers (and foreign printmakers living in
Japan).195 Of the eighty artists chosen by an international panel, twenty-five were working
in intaglio. Of them, the most distinguished practitioner was Nakabayashi himself, whose
etchings have continued to grow in textural complexity and a very Japanese lyrical inten-
sityhis triptych Transposition 92 Ground VI (The Waterhead) (1992) taking the medium
to new heights of expressiveness.196 Others of importance included Ikeda Ryji (born
1947), a group of mezzotintists who used this relatively new technique with both power
and refinementHamanishi Katsunori (born 1949) and Arichi Yoshito (born 1949) with
their teacher the surrealist Yamanobe Yoshio (born 1936), and the incandescent metallic
visions of Shiroki Toshiyuki (born 1938).197
Figure 14.8. Tsuruya Kkei (born 1946), the Kabuki actor Onoe Baik vii as the wet nurse
Masaoka in Meiboku sendai hagi, from the 8th series of bust portraits, October 1990.
Color woodblock print, unnumbered, from an edition of ninety, published by the artist,
390 mm 250 mm. British Museum, London (1991.7-9.04).
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 393

The dark palettes of such artists had influence on the related technique of wood
engraving, most notably on another surrealist, Kobayashi Keisei (born 1944), and more
surprisingly on woodblock expression itself, which in the hands of the trio of printmak-
ers Tomihari Hiroshi (born 1936), Mori Hidefumi (born 1953),198 and Morozumi Osamu
(born 1958)199 achieved a somber, monochromatic sculptural muscularity amounting
almost to a school of its own (and indeed closely associated with Tama University of Arts
and with Kawachi Seik ).
These artists took part during the 1980s in that physical expansion of prints that
marked the end of the century and beyond. Kawachi led that movement, and his four-sheet
The Flying (1985), each sheet over 160 centimeters high, remains one of the most extraordi-
nary feats of woodblock printing anywhere.200 His example was followed even more star-
tlingly by the etcher Yamaguchi Keisuke (born 1962) in his The Ship Carrying Carbon
(1995), consisting of twelve etched sheets joined together, a considerable feat of precision.201
These tendencies may have arisen in part from the growth of galleries of modern art in
Japan and elsewhere and the need for large prints to compete with paintings on their walls,
but they also indicate the ever-increasing self-confidence of printmakers in their medium.

The Developing Relationship between Painting and Prints

The close relationship between an artists painting and prints, as seen in the Western
model, which had itself begun in Europe in the later nineteenth century (mainly with
color lithography), had begun to be important in Japan during the late 1950s and was to
expand quickly with the spread of screen printing during the decade from 1960 to 1970.
This was a dynamic force toward internationalism. The pioneers in this field were princi-
pally Western-influenced abstract painters working in polished styles easily transferred to
lithography or screen techniquesMurai Macanari (19051999), Sugai Kumi (19191996),
and Ei-Q (19111960), who were among the very earliest. Others included the modern-
ist calligrapher Shinoda Tk (born 1913), Onogi Gaku (19241976), Onosato Toshinobu
(19121986), Yoshihara Jir (19051972), Motonaga Sadamasa (born 1922), and Ay-
(born 1931); most of these had strong Western connections or had worked in Europe or the
United States and were building reputations as painters.202 Eventually, in most cases, these
artists tended to make prints crafted by professional printers to spread knowledge of their
painting styles, though many of them had begun by using their own lithographic presses.
The vogue for prints themselves took stronger hold in the late 1950s and began to be
profitable as the Japanese economy became stronger and stronger. This culminated in the
glossy journal Hanga geijutsu, first published in 1973 and continuing since,203 where mod-
ern prints (Japanese and foreign) have always been promoted as artists collectables and as
fashionable wall adornments (and to be fair, where many have been properly introduced
and discussed). Painters now began to spend more time on designing for them. Onosato
was one of the first, in the late 1950s, to make this shift; he was followed by the abstract
calligrapher Shinoda, whose lithographs eventually came to dominate her work and her
international reputation.204
Yoshihara Hideo (born 1931) went further and made a career from his softly erotic
fantasies, with the actual production of the lithographs carried out by his wife.205 He
394|Lawrence Smith

represented a new mood in printmaking that turned away from the by now established
styles dominated by traditional Japanese landscape, architecture, and folk motifs on the
one hand and pure abstraction on the other, toward contemporary popular culture inevi-
tably dominated by the imagery of advertising. To this, lithography and even more the
silkscreen technique were very well suited. Once again, as in the early years of the century,
poster artists, designers, and print artists were often the same. The most prominent of
these has been Yok Tadanori (born 1936). He extended the preoccupation with ukiyo-e
imagery into the world of poster art.206 Some painters like Masanari, Onosato, and Wata-
nabe Toyoshige (born 1931) have found silkscreen as useful as lithography to make their
prints, or have used them interchangeably. The prolific French-based Fukao Rikizo (born
1946) has built up an impressive body of work in this way, which makes his clean, forceful,
and large-abstract painting style available to a wider public.207

19892007: The Death of an Emperor and the End of an Era

The death in 1989 of the emperor known posthumously as Shwa had been a symbolic
break with a troubled past, but it made little immediate impact in the field of prints, which
since the mid-Meiji era had rarely dealt directly or literally with political events or social
questions (with the general exceptions of wartime propaganda or the radical artists of the
Zkei Group, described earlier.) One exception was Tomiyama Taeko (born 1921), brought
up like several highly original printmakers, such as Shinoda and Kurosaki, in occupied
Manchuria and a passionate recorder of oppression and exploitation in East Asia. Her
lithograph series Free Kwangju (Jiy ksh, 1980) is of extreme and powerful directness
and was also published in conjunction with the Korean artist Hong Sung-dan, surely the
first such cooperation in the history of both nations.208 However, more slanted attacks both
on Japans past and its contemporary society had already become more common among
artists, many of whom used print techniques to spread their messages. These included the
grimly oblique work of Teraoka Masami (born 1936), more a painter, but aware of the need
sometimes to use the print medium to give wider coverage of his critique of the developed
worlds response to AIDS management. He chillingly uses ukiyo-e images to convey this
message, for example adapting Hokusais celebrated print of a woman raped by a giant
octopus.209
But after 1990 a loosening of the constraints on social satire gradually became appar-
ent, perhaps attributable as much to the slow collapse of the Tokyo stock market that year.
It affected all artists, as the inflated prices of the previous generation began to fall. There
was a marked lack of that optimism often expected at the end of a long era. Where artists
from the 1960s like Kawachi and Noda continued their sideways reflections on contempo-
rary society, others, such as Fujita Toshio (born 1949) felt able to be more socially direct by
invoking an older tradition, namely that of using animals, birds, and insects to represent
the follies and plights of contemporary human beings. Fujitas Revolving Metropolis is a
long series of expressionist black-and-white woodblocks on Echizen kz paper, designed
to be mounted as a handscroll. Rats, birds, and people are trapped in the endless circle
of the Tokyo Metro. His series of pastiches of the medieval Scroll of Frolicking Animals
(Chj giga) is a similarly long series of monochrome etchings, stressing the continuity of
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 395

Japanese satire and deliberately overemphasizing the violence of these apparently animal
conflicts. His Insect Mandala (2003) extends the imagery further in a large board print.210
The manic energy of his work, in spite of using quite different print media, is strongly
reminiscent of Munakata. Fujita is representative of those (such as Takeda) who have in
the postwar period turned from other specialties to printmakingin Fujitas case, from
architecture, to painting, to a variety of graphic techniques.
Possibly the most illuminating view of print trends in this period is provided by the
series Message to the 21st Century, organized by the Japanese Print Association between
1989 and 1999.211 This was a conscious attempt to emulate the series One Hundred New
Views of Tokyo, discussed earlier. The association, now unchallenged as the established
face of printmaking, had the problem of rivaling the stylistic, technical, and emotional
unity of its great predecessor. That earlier unity had been greatly helped by its restric-
tion to only eight closely knit artists led by the charismatic and unconventional Onchi, all
working in woodblock. The new series succeeded by recognizing that such unity could no
longer be achieved in the same way, and encouraged one hundred different printmakers in
many different techniques to react individually to the stimulus of the 1990s Tokyo mega-
lopolis. The series was produced in tranches of ten each year.
It is most of all observable that a sense of unease had come to replace the desire to
find picturesque themes within the changing urban scene, which had been an important
motive in 1929. This is summed up in the last of the new series, Tokyo 1999, by the wood
engraver Kobayashi Keisei (born 1944), who was the principal organizer of the undertak-
ing. It shows the National Diet Building lurking beyond the world of nature represented
by the Meguro Nature Education Garden on a hot summers day; it is unclear whether the
little creatures are overwhelmed or overwhelming. The artists text (the last in the pub-
lication) poses the unanswerable and perhaps eternal artistic question: will the unease
continue or not?212 A glance at the one hundred prints shows that the most frequent cause
of this particular angst was the Tokyo subcenter of Shinjuku, with its skyscrapers, espe-
cially the linked towers of the recently completed Tokyo Metropolitan Government Build-
ing. If this series lacks the stylistic unity of its predecessorwhich, given the diversity of
the artists styles and techniques, would be impossible to aim forit does hold together
emotionally. Older contributors, like Yoshida Tshi, show melancholy nostalgia,213 the
middle-aged, such as Wakatsuki Khei (born 1956) express apprehension,214 while among
the younger onesby Japanese reckoningincluding Yagi Nagisa (born 1961), there is
sometimes puzzlement and uncertainty.215 This hints at an unexpected inner coherence in
what had apparently become a fractured grouping.
The position of the Japanese Print Association in this late period has remained
dominant, but in practice it has become increasingly an umbrella organization, as the
ever-greater size of its annual exhibition and catalogue demonstrates. The catalogue for
2003, for example, revealed the continuing extensive interests that by then surrounded
printmaking, with fifty-seven pages of closely packed advertisements for art schools, gal-
leries, exhibitions, publications, and graphic art materials and equipment.216 If the ever-
larger number of artists (520 in 2003) seem all at one time to group themselves into a few
standardized stylesabstraction, fantasy, low-key Japanese landscapethere are within
their number (and by their own definition some who do not join associations) those who
maintain an old Japanese tradition of artists who plow a completely individual furrow.
396|Lawrence Smith

One example is Suizu Yasumi (born 1948), a devoted recorder of Japans mountains in
large, glowing, and completely individual woodblocks.217 Another is Kiyota Yji, similarly
focused on Japans ancient trees in woodblocks of surprising intricacy.218
Finally, it can be observed that from the first international prize won by Sait and
Komai in 1951, Japanese printmakers gained a special international position by their per-
ceived ability to combine awareness of the global artistic scene with an identifiably native
aesthetic and customarily superb craftsmanship. This was of course a foreigners point of
view. Some in 2007 have gone around to the far side of the circle and become seriously
preoccupied with regaining a genuine Japaneseness within the constraints of the interna-
tional print. For example, the mezzotintist Hamanishi Katsunori has gradually added to
his dark, abstracted vocabulary images from yamato-e, such as the moon behind waving
grasses, and areas of applied gold leaf. The results become closer to painting.219 Naka-
zawa Shinichi (born 1956) has come from the other direction, wishing to recreate the
splendors of Rimpa-style painting by combining intaglio with gold and silver leaf in off-
center images, often on fan shapes.220 End Susumu (born 1933) was a pioneer in the use
of offset lithography in highly internationalized subjects in the 1970s, but has since used
digital technology to enhance photographic images toward a totally Japanese nature-based
vocabulary.221 These printmakers have become a school for the early twenty-first century.
Contemporary examples of links with Western artists and institutions have become
continually stronger since the first Tokyo Print Biennale in 1957. But by the turn of the
millennium, this position was challenged by newer arrivals now able to offer the same
qualities, especially from Korea and China. The unself-conscious vigor of many of these
artists resembles that of Ssaku Hanga in its heyday led by Munakata.
Historically, it seems likely that, faced with this competition, some Japanese print-
makers will retreat into what they know they do well, while others will move outwards
again to learn from the newcomers and revitalize their own work. This latter trend had
already in 1980 been pioneered by the great communicator Kitaoka Fumio, who visited
China, this time voluntarily rather than as a soldier and refugee, in order to meet old and
new colleagues engaged in wood engraving. An impressive result was his original series of
six, Connected Topography (Fdo rensaku, 1985).222 These are each two meters by fifty cen-
timeters in the shape of a hanging painting, and describe in generalized terms Kitaokas
favorite landscape features, such as waterfalls or rock formations. Done in woodblock,
they yet recall wood engraving and thus refer both to Chinese landscape painting and to
Chinese graphic techniques.
Thus Kitaoka finally refers back to the land where graphic art began.

Notes

1. Nihon Hanga Kykai (Japan Print Association), Hanga-ten, the 71st Exhibition of the
Japan Print Association (Tokyo, 2003).
2. One example is the intaglio printmaker Hamada Chimei (born 1917).
3.These are the Takehisa Yumeji Ikaho Kinenkan, Ikaho, Gumma Prefecture, and
three Takehisa Yumeji Bijitusukan in, respectively, Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, Sakata,
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 397

Yamagata Prefecture, and Bunky-ku, Tokyo. The popularity of Yumeji, of course, goes beyond
his images. He is also a major icon of Taish-era romantic bohemianism.
4. They are the Munakata Shik Kinenkan, in Aomori, Aomori Prefecture; the Munakata
Shik Hangakan in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture; and the Aizen-in in Fukumitsu, Toyama
Prefecture.
5. The Minami Arupusu Shiritsu Shunsen Bijutsukan in Kushigata, Yamanashi Prefecture.
6. The Yamamoto Kanae Kinenkan Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture.
7. The Ono Tadashige Hanga-kan, Suginami-ku, Tokyo.
8. The Ikeda Masuo Bijutsukan, Nagano, Nagano Prefecture.
9. The Hiratsuka Unichi Bijutsukan, Suzaka, Mie Prefecture.
10. For recent trends in Chinese printmaking, see David Barker, Traditional Techniques
in Contemporary Chinese Printmaking (London: A & C Black, 2005), and Ann Farrer, Chinese
Printmaking Today: Woodblock Printing in China, 19802000 (London: British Museum, 2003).
11.For characteristic print designs by these artists, see Lawrence Smith, Contempo-
rary Japanese Prints: Symbol of a Society in Transition, exhibition catalogue (London: British
Museum, 1985).
12. For related discussions around the nature of Japanese painting, see Ellen P. Conant,
Steven D. Owyong, and J. Thomas Rimer, Nihonga, Transcending the Past: Japanese-Style
Painting 18681968, exhibition catalogue (St. Louis Art Museum, 1995).
13. Strictly speaking, experiments had begun again late in the Edo period in moveable
types. See David Chibbett, The History of Japanese Printing and Book Illustration (Tokyo:
Kodansha, 1977); and Sensui Shji, Nihon no Shomotsu: Kodai kara gendai made (Tokyo:
Bijutsu shuppansha, 1978).
14. Julia Meech-Pekarik, The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions of a New Civilization
(New York and London: Weatherhill, 1986), provides an excellent overall account of the transi-
tion from Edo to Meiji printing, publishing, and graphic activities.
15. Lawrence Smith, ed., Ukiyoe: Images of Unknown Japan, exhibition catalogue (Lon-
don: British Museum, 1988), esp. p. 21.
16.See Kurita Kyoko et al., Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints
(Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publications, 2006).
17.Chibbett, The History of Japanese Printing and Book Illustration; Tim Clark and John
Clark, eds., Japanese Nineteenth-Century Copperplate Prints, British Museum Occasional
Papers 84, London, 1994.
18. Clark and Clark, Japanese Nineteenth-Century Copperplate Prints, pp. 67.
19. Ishida Ynen, Kyoto Meisho Gojukkei, 2 vols. (Kyoto: Dban chkoku insatsujo, 1890).
There is a reproduction of one plate in Maggs Bros. Ltd., Far East Catalogue 1310 (London,
2001), no. 131.
20. For early lithography, see ke no Shz: Meiji Kshitsu Arubamu no Hajimari (Yoko-
hama: Kanagawa Kenritsu Rekishi Hakubutsukan, 2001); and Nomura Ktar, ed., Nihon seki-
han hanga no omoidashi (Tokyo: Fuji seihan insatsu KK, 1992).
21. Work of similar quality can be seen in the fifty-eight anonymous lithographs in Dai
Nihon teikoku gunkan-ch (Albums of warships of the Japanese empire) (Tokyo: Kaijun bunk,
1894).
22.See Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere and Hirayama Mikiko, eds., Reflecting Truth:
Japanese Photography in the Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam: Sainsbury Institute, Hotei
398|Lawrence Smith

Publishing, 2004), especially pp. 1829; and Torin Boyd and Izakura Naomi, Portraits in Sepia
(Tokyo: Asahi sonorama, 2000).
23. Anne Yonemura, Yokohama Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan, exhibition cata-
logue (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1990).
24.Yonemura, Yokohama Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan, pp. 5657.
25.Reproduced in Yonemura, Yokohama Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan, pp.
186187.
26. For Yoshitoshis life and an extensive list and study of his prints, see Roger Keyes,
Courage and Silence: A Study of the Life and Color Woodblock Prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi,
18391892 (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1982).
27. mi hakkei zenzuIshiyama o miru. A copy of this print is in the British Museum,
together with the original blocks.
28. Tokyo Imperial University, ed., The Disaster of September 1 1923 as it Affected Tokyo
Imperial University and Other Places (Tokyo, n.d., probably 1924).
29. Akiyama Aisabur, Shint and its Architecture, new ed. (Tokyo: The Japan Founda-
tion, 1955).
30. For a useful and well-illustrated account of this genre, see Rebecca Salter, Japanese
Popular Prints: From Votive Slips to Playing Cards (London: A & C Black, 2006).
31. Illustrated in Narazaki Muneshige, ed., Hiz ukiyo-e taikan, vol. 3, The British Museum
(Tokyo: Kodansha 1998), color plate 164.
32.Meech-Pekarik, The World of the Meiji Print, passim. For some good reproductions of
the Sino-Japanese War, see Amy Newland and Chris Uhlenbeck, Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga: The
Art of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Lombard, Ill.: The Mallard Press, 1990), ch. 6. A full account
of the prints of the Russo-Japanese War can be found in Sebastian Dobson, Anne Nishimura
Morse, and Frederick Sharf, eds., A Much Recorded War: The Russo-Japanese War in History
and Imagery, exhibition catalogue (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2005).
33. The entire set is reproduced in John Stevenson, Yoshitoshis One Hundred Aspects of
the Moon (Redmond, Wash.: San Francisco Graphic Society, 1992).
34. For reproductions of Yoshitoshis drawings, see Tsukioka Yoshitoshi no zenb-ten,
exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: Seibu Department Store, 1977) (unpaginated); and Eric Van den
Ing and Robert Schaap, Beauty and Violence: Japanese Prints by Yoshitoshi 18391892 (Amster-
dam: Van Gogh Museum, 1992).
35. See Yoshida Susugu, Kobayashi Kiyochika (Tokyo: Kagysha, 1964); and Henry Smith,
Kiyochika: Artist of Meiji Japan, exhibition catalogue (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Santa Barbara
Museum of Art, 1988).
36. Discussed in Edo kara Tokyo e, exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: Odaky Gallery, 1991).
See also Newland and Uhlenbeck, Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga, pp. 191195.
37.See Robert Vergez, Cartoons by Kobayashi Kiyochika, Andon 5, no. 18 (1985):
pp. 711.
38. Kysais life and graphic work are well covered in Timothy Clark, Demon of Painting; the
Art of Kawanabe Kysai, exhibition catalogue (London: British Museum, 1993); and in Kawanabe
Kysai to Edo Tky, exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: Tky-to Edo Tky Hakubutsukan, 1995).
39.Reproduced in Clark, Demon of Painting, p. 120.
40. See Dobson, Morse, and Sharf, A Much Recorded War; and Meech-Pekarik, The World
of the Meiji Print, ch. 5, Japan as World Power.
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 399

41. Dobson, Morse, and Sharf, A Much Recorded War, passim.

42. See Frederick A. Sharf, Takejiro Hasegawa: Meiji Japans Pre-eminent Publisher of
Wood-block-illustrated Crepe-paper Books (Salem, Mass.: Peabody Essex Museum, 1994).
43. Comprehensively covered in Amy Reigle Newman, Jan Perree, and Robert Schaap,
Crows, Cranes, and Camellias: Japanese Prints from the Jan Perree Collection (Leiden: Hotei
Publishing, 2001).
44. Two images are reproduced in Jack Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book, vol. 2 (Lon-
don: Sothebys Publications, 1987), pp. 979980.
45. A complete copy is held by the British Museum. One plate is illustrated in Lawrence
Smith, The Japanese Print since 1900, exhibition catalogue (London: British Museum, 1983);
three others are in Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book, pp. 976 and 979.
46. Kokka has been published continuously until now. Some woodblock facsimiles of
paintings were still used in the early 1950s.
47. These were published by Shimbi shoin, Tokyo.
48.Some reproductions from Unsds catalogue of Western plants, Seiy ska zufu
(1917), can be found in Tanigami Khan, Japanese Woodblock Flower Prints (Mineola, N.Y.:
Dover Publications, 2008). These do not represent, however, the very highest level that could
be achieved at the time.
49. For example, Hiratsuka Unichis Tokyo after the Earthquake (see p. 377) was pub-
lished in Kobe. See Helen Merritt and Yamada Nanako, Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock
Prints, 19001975 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), p. 227.
50. The earliest painter of note to travel abroad was Kuroda Seiki (18661924), who went
to Paris in 1884 to study law and returned in 1893 as an already prestigious painter. See Miya-
gawa Torao, Modern Japanese Painting (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1967), for a general account of
Meiji-period developments in painting.
51. The account presented by Helen Merritt in Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990) remains the most lucid introduction to these
aspirations. See especially chapter 6, Overview of the Movement (i.e., ssaku hanga).
52.Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, chapter 6 and 7 (Yamamoto Kanae).
53.Reproduced in Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, p. 110.
54. This was in the November 1905 issue of Heitan.
55. There is a facsimile of the entire run of Hsun, published in Tokyo by Sansaisha, 1972.
56. Images from this series can be found in Smith, The Japanese Print since 1900, Merritt,
Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, p. 122, and Lawrence Smith, Modern Japanese Prints
19121989, exhibition catalogue (London: British Museum, 1994), plate 4.
57. An image from this series is reproduced in Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early
Years, p. 124.
58. The titles are listed by Merritt and Yamada, Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock
Prints, 19001975, pp. 264265. For reproductions of images by Hirafuku and Sakamoto, see
Smith, The Japanese Print since 1900, plates 5 and 6. A representative example of travel lit-
erature is Shin Nihon kembutsu (A tour of new Japan), 1918, with illustrations by Shimamura
Hgetsu (18711918) and Nakagawa Hiromitsu (18741964). See also Scott Johnson, Sketch-
Tour Books and Prints of the Early Twentieth Century, Andon 37 (1990): pp. 333.
59. Charles H. Mitchell, Hanshin Meisho Zue: A Little-Known Shin Hanga Series, in
Essays on Japanese Art Presented to Jack Hillier, ed. Robert Sawyers (London: Robert Sawyers,
400|Lawrence Smith

1982), pp. 118124. This is a useful account, although few scholars would now agree that this
series could be classified as a Shin Hanga.
60. Described in Smith, Modern Japanese Prints 19121989, p. 26. The image is repro-
duced as plate 26.
61.Reproduced in Onchi: A Poet of Colors and Forms, exhibition catalogue (Yokohama:
Yokohama Museum of Art, 1994), pp. 3748.
62.Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, pp. 7985. Also see Onchi Kshir
to tsukuhae, exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art, 1976), for a more
detailed account.
63.Reproduced in Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, p. 127
64. See Takizawa Kyji, ed., Oda Kazuma-ten (Kazuma Oda: A retrospective), exhibition
catalogue (Machida: Machida City International Print Museum, 2000). Oda did some wood-
block prints as well as the lithographs that made his name.
65.Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, pp. 137141, describes the founding
and the first exhibition.
66. National Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations Associa-
tion of Japan, The Year Book of Japanese Art, 19291930 (Tokyo, 1930), p. 124.
67.Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, p. 149.
68.Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, pp. 146148. For the contents of the
1934 exhibition, see LEstampe Japonaise moderne et ses origines, exhibition catalogue (Paris:
Muse des Arts Decoratifs, 1934).
69. Hiratsuka Unichi, Hanga no gih (Tokyo: Arusu, 1927). Book designers were almost
never acknowledged during this period in Japan; this book, however, bears unmistakable
design elements unique to Onchi. For his book designs, see Onchi Kunio, ed., Shon no shimei
(Tokyo: Abe Publishing, 1991).
70.Hiratsuka, Hanga no gih, pp. 711.
71. This is definitively expressed by Onchi in Onchi Kshir, The Modern Japanese
Print, an Internal History of the Sosaku Hanga Movement, Ukiyo-e Art 11 (1965): p. 4. By its
very nature, the woodblock is a very different medium. It conveys the artists intentions very
clearly. The technical limitations of the process actually result in an increased role of control
by the artist. Each line, each color, depends on a deliberate decision by the artist. In sketching
or painting, on the other hand, there are often careless, casual, or insignificant featuresdue
to the momentary whim rather than a studied decision by the artist. This is perhaps the basic
secret of the woodblock medium. Onchi Kshir, Nihon gendai hanga, trans. Ueda Osamu
and Charles Mitchell (Tokyo, 1953).
72.Hiratsuka, Hanga no gih, pp. 57 (fukusei hanga to ssaku hanga).
73. These have not been much studied until recently, as they either remained in the origi-
nal books and were collected for other reasons by Japanese bibliophiles, or, if detached, do
not have the presence of a purpose-made sheet print in the eyes of foreign collectors. Hillier,
The Art of the Japanese Book, does not even mention the word kuchi-e and refers only once (in
passing) to Kiyokata. Some magazine examples are reproduced in Amy Reigle Stephens, ed.,
The New Wave: 20th Century Japanese Prints from the Robert V. Mueller Collection (London
and Leiden: Hotei Publications, 1993), pp. 106108. There is a wider range of reproductions in
Yonin ga Hajimeru Watashi no Bijutsukan-ten, exhibition catalogue (Yokohama: Yokohama
Museum of Art, 2008), pp. 122135.
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 401

74.Reproduced in Newland and Uhlenbeck, Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga, p. 196.

75. For Kiyokatas wider career, see, among many, Kaburagi Kiyokata-ten, exhibition cat-
alogue (Tokyo: Takashimaya Department Store, 1993).
76. For a comprehensive account of his artistic and design work, see Kawakita Fumiaki
et al., eds., Yumeji bijitsukan, 5 vols. (Tokyo: Gakush kenkysha, 1985), especially volume
4, which describes his important Minatoya Stationery Shop. A more manageable coverage is
found in Kawano Minoru, ed., Takehisa Yumeji-ten, exhibition catalogue (Machida: Machida
City International Print Museum, 1991).
77.Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, pp. 178179.
78.Nomura, Nihon sekihan hanga no omoidashi, p. 44. This publication reproduces a
good selection of Tsunetomis posters and advertisements.
79. For an account of this series, see Smith, Modern Japanese Prints 19121989, p. 52.
80. Published by Nihon fuzoku zukai kank-kai, Tokyo, 1917. There is a complete set in
the British Museum.
81.Reproduced in Newland and Uhlenbeck, Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga, p. 126.
82. For Goys wider career and work, see Hashiguchi Goy-ten, exhibition catalogue
(Tokyo: Odaky Bijutsukan 1995).
83. For a good general account, see Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, ch. 3,
The Watanabe Circle. For a more nuanced study, see Kendall H. Brown and Hollis Goodall-
Cristante, Shin Hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan, exhibition catalogue (Los Angeles: Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, 1996), which has the advantage of a good many reproductions
in a manageable format and a useful critical bibliography.
84.For the Watanabe familys own account, see Watanabe Tadashi, ed., Watanabe
Shsabur (Tokyo: Watanabe mokuhan bijutsu gah, 1994).
85.Reproduced in Newland and Uhlenbeck, Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga, p. 118.
86. This set is reproduced in the complete It shinsui zensh, edited by Hamada Taiji and
Hosono Masanobu, 6 volumes, Sheisha, Tokyo, 19811982.
87. The complete prints of Hasui are reproduced in Narazaki Muneshige, ed., Kawase
Hasui mokuhanga-sh (Tokyo: Mainichi shinbun, 1979); and in Kendall H. Brown, Kawase
Hasui: The Complete Woodblock Prints, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2003).
88. Brown and Goodall-Cristante, Shin Hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan, p. 50.
89.See Natori Shunsen, exhibition catalogue (Yamanashi: Yamanashi Prefectural
Museum of Art, 1981).
90. There are few actor prints of any distinction after the late 1930s until the appearance
of Tsuruya Kkei (see p. 390).
91. There is a good, brief summary of his life in Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early
Years, pp. 7580.
92. His woodblocks are published in The Complete Woodblock Prints of Yoshida Hiroshi
(Tokyo: Abe Publishing Company, 1987), which includes a good bilingual bibliography.
93. Dorothy Blair, A Special Exhibition of Modern Japanese Prints (Toledo, Ohio: Toledo
Museum of Art, 1930). See also Modern Japanese Prints: Woodblock Prints by Ten Artists: The
Work of the Last Five Years (Toledo, Ohio: Toledo Museum of Art, 1936).
94. For examples, see Brown, Kawase Hasui, vol. 2, pp. 299301, nos. 3843.
95. For an account of the earthquake, see Edward Seidensticker, High City, Low City:
Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake (New York: Knopf, 1983).
402|Lawrence Smith

96. A selection of these prints is reproduced in Suihen no modan: Kt Sumida no bijutsu,

Moderns by the Sumida River: Art in Eastern Tokyo from the Late Nineteenth Century to the
Present, exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, 2002),
pp. 4757.
97. Shiba Daimon is reproduced in Lawrence Smith, Victor Harris, and Timothy Clark,
Japanese Art Masterpieces in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1990), p. 238.
98. The complete set in the British Museum includes the title sheet and text by Yama-
moto, dated November 1924.
99. The set is reproduced in Henry D. Smith and Amy G. Poster, Hiroshige: One Hundred
Famous Views of Edo, exhibition catalogue (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn Museum, 1986).
100.Reproduced in full in Kamon Yasuo, Tozaka Kji, and Asahi Akira, Shin Tky
hyakkei (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1978).
101. See Smith and Poster, Hiroshige: One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.
102. This set is reproduced in Kindai hanga ni miru Tkyutsuriyuki fkei, exhibition
catalogue (Tokyo: Edo-Tokyo Museum, 1996), pp. 124131.
103. Forty-one of these are reproduced in Marianne Lamonaca, James T. Ulak, and Fred-
erick A. Sharf, Tokyo: The Imperial Capital: Woodblock Prints by Koizumi Kishio, 19281940
(Miami Beach, Fla.: Wolfsonian-Florida International University, 2003).
104. A useful short introduction to Yanagis ideas can be found in Mingei: The Living Tra-
dition in Japanese Arts, exhibition catalogue (Glasgow: The Burrell Collection, 1991). The items
on exhibition were all lent by the Japan Crafts Museum, Tokyo.
105. A selection of the Munakatas available in the Folk Art Museum, Tokyo, is repro-
duced in The Woodblock and the Artist: The Life and Works of Shiko Munakata, exhibition
catalogue (London: Hayward Gallery, 1991).
106. But see Kendall Brown, Out of the Dark Valley: Japanese Woodblock Prints and
War 19371945, Impressions 23 (2001): pp. 6585, where the censorship of some of Munakatas
prints is discussed.
107. Tree Spirit. The Woodcuts of Naoko Matsubara, exhibition catalogue (Toronto: Royal
Ontario Museum, 2003), edited by Naoko Matsubara and John M. Rosenfield, was a retrospec-
tive. For Moris stencils, see Mori Yoshitoshi Kappa-ban, exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: Matsu-
zakaya, Ginza, 1985).
108. A popular catalogue of the portfolio was published as James A. Michener, The Mod-
ern Japanese Print: An Appreciation (Rutland, Vt., and Tokyo: Tuttle, 1962).
109.Edward Seidensticker, Tokyo Rising: The City since the Great Earthquake (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), gives a good account of reconstruction.
110.Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, pp. 144146.
111. For Onos work and career, see Imai Keisuke and Wanaj Eri, Ono Tadashige Moku-
hanga-ten, exhibition catalogue (Machida: Machida City International Print Museum, 1998).
112.Reproduced in Han no E, no. 7 (1998), no. 4. This is a good short account of the pre-
war activities of the group.
113. Han no E, no. 8.
114. Han no E, no. 10.
115.Reproduced in Onchi Kshir hanga-sh (Tokyo: Keishsha, 1975), plates 187189.
The height of the central panel is 88 cm.
116. The set is reproduced in The Woodblock and the Artist, pp. 6571.
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 403

117. Tazawa Yutaka, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Art (New York and Tokyo:
Kodansha, 1981), p. 159.
118.For extensive reproductions of Fujitas artistic works, see Sylvie and Dominique
Buisson, Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita (Paris: ACR Edition, 1987). The section on the years 1922
through 1930 reproduces a number of his prints.
119.Buisson, Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita, pp. 177204, covers this period of his life.
120.The most detailed study is Sawatari Kiyoko, Hasegawa Kiyoshi no sekai, 3 vols.
(Yokohama: Yrind, 1999). For larger reproductions see Hasegawa Kiyoshi no sekai, exhibi-
tion catalogue (Yokohama: Yokohama Art Museum, 1991).
121.See Yozo Hamaguchi: The Master of the Mezzotint in the 20th Century, exhibition
catalogue (Osaka: National Museum of Osaka, 2002) (bilingual catalogue).
122. This visit is recorded in Sat Tomoyoshi, Kitaoka Fumio: Hikari to kaze no han fkei
(Sapporo: Hokkaid shinbun, 1993).
123. Lawrence Smith, Japanese Prints during the Allied Occupation 19451952 (London:
The British Museum, 2002), p. 17.
124. Ibid., p. 20.
125. Brown, Out of the Dark Valley, explores the constraints on wartime print artists.
126.Reproduced in Smith, Ukiyoe: Images of Unknown Japan, plate 30.
127. The iconic status of this image is discussed in Kuwahara Noriko, Onchis Portrait
of Hagiwara Sakutar: Emblem of the Creative Print Movement for American Collectors,
Impressions 29 (20072008): pp. 120139.
128. See Smith, Japanese Prints during the Allied Occupation 19451952, pp. 1718. Kitsu
tsuki-kai is also recorded by Kitaoka Fumio, Hangi no naka no fkei (Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppan-
sha, 1983), esp. p. 10.
129. For the history and productions of the Ichimoku-kai, see Ichimoku-kai-ten, exhibi-
tion catalogue (Tokyo: Riccar Art Museum, 1979); and Smith, Japanese Prints during the Allied
Occupation, ch. 5, Onchi and the First Thursday Society, 19441950.
130. Brown gives a more detailed account of this organization.
131.Reproduced in Smith, Japanese Prints during the Allied Occupation, p. 65.
132. Through his connections with the Ukiyo-e Society of Japan, which had many foreign
members at that time, Mitchell acted as an agent for selling Ssaku Hanga prints to customers
in the West and to foreigners in Japan.
133.See The Helen and Felix Juda Collection of Japanese Modern and Contemporary
Prints, sale catalogue (New York: Christies, 1998).
134. This process is described in Smith, Japanese Prints during the Allied Occupation, ch. 3.
135.Rutland, Vt., and Tokyo: Tuttle, 1956.
136. Sait Kiyoshi hanga-sh (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1978), reproduces his prints up to that date.
137. For Sekinos work and career, plus a good Japanese-language bibliography, see Sekino
Junichir hanga-ten, exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: Tbu Department Store, 1989).
138. But Brown, Out of the Dark Valley, observes that the text had to be modified in the
1950 edition to alter the emphasis of the castles from the warlike to the picturesque.
139. All of these artists are recorded and illustrated in Statler.
140. These were the beginning of a flood of awards to Japanese printmakers in interna-
tional exhibitions, recorded from 1951 in Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years,
pp. 335339.
404|Lawrence Smith

141. For example, early woodblock prints by Onchi are almost the only graphic works
illustrated in the pioneering study Japon des avant-gardes 19101970, exhibition catalogue
(Paris: Centre Pompidou, 1986).
142. This is generally true of the artists recorded by Statler.
143. The best general introduction to the wide range of Onchis visual art is the bilingual
exhibition catalogue Onchi: A Poet of Colors and Forms (Yokohama: Yokohama Museum of
Art, 1994).
144. The earliest are 1914. See ibid., pp. 48ff.
145.Reproduced in ibid., p. 244.
146. See Yamaguchi Gen Kenshkai, Yamaguchi Gen hanga-sh (Numazu: Yamaguchi
Gen Senshkai, 1983).
147. See Sakai Tetsur, The style of joj (Lyric) in Onchi Koshiros oeuvre, in Onchi: A
Poet of Colors and Forms, pp. 292301 (the Japanese text is pp. 1322). The idea of joj has had
an increasingly wide application to prints, for example Taish joj: Shin hanga no bi-ten, exhi-
bition catalogue (Machida: Machida City International Print Museum, 1989), which applies
the term to Watanabe Shsaburs production of Shin Hanga. At another extreme, the close
association of Shin Hanga prints with lyric poetry in Japan is noted in an essay by Tsuruoka
Yoshihisa in Japon des avant-gardes, Au Coeur de lavant garde litteraire, pp. 175195, and
in an essay by Jean-Jacques Origas, Passage de ligne: Notes sur lemergence de Avant-garde
dans la literature Japonaise, pp. 4189. Yumeji, stylistically in between, has also qualified
for lyricism in Kawano Minoru, Takizawa Kyji, and Sat Yoshihiko, Yumeji: Avangyarudo
to shite to joj (Yumeji, avant-garde lyricism), exhibition catalogue (Machida: Machida City
International Print Museum, 2001).
148. Hanga Meihin-sh: Nihon no joj, vol. 3, no. 3 (1976).
149. It Nobuyoshi, Shi to Hanga, Hanga Meihin-shu, pp. 8285.
150.Reproduced in Onchi: A Poet of Color and Forms, p. 114.
151. Most of these colored prints are earlier works (up to 1960). A selection is reproduced
in Hanga geijitsu 86 (1994), an issue commemorating Hiratsukas one hundredth birthday, and
in Hiratsuka: Modern Master, exhibition catalogue, ed. Susan F. Rossen (Chicago: Art Institute
of Chicago, 2001), pp. 4964.
152.Reproduced in Hiratsuka: Modern Master, p. 41. There is a good selection of his
monochrome prints in this catalogue.
153.Reproduced in ibid., p. 78.
154.Reproduced in ibid., p. 85. Hiratsukas very late monochrome series of female nudes
are the only relatively weak examples in his oeuvre. A few are reproduced in Hanga geijitsu 86
(1994): pp. 116117 and 120121.
155. As demonstrated by the magazine Kgeis exclusive use of woodblock or stencil print
artists for its page decorations.
156.Quoted by Matsubara Naoko, Munakata and Matsubara: An Artists Memoir,
Impressions 26 (2004): p. 93.
157. Maekawa Sempan is a notable example. His prewar townscapes and postwar folk-
like images and prints of hot spring resorts are in contrast to his journalistic caricature. For
reproductions of such prints, see Kamon, Tozaka, and Asahi, Shin Tky hyakkei; Gaston Petit,
44 Modern Japanese Print Artists, 2 vol. (Tokyo: Kodansha 1973); and Kat Junji, ed., Kindai
Nihon hanga taikei, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Mainichi shinbun, 1975), vol. 2, plates 4149.
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 405

158. See Alicia Volk, Yorozu Tetsugor and Taish-Period Creative Prints: When the
Japanese Print Became Avant-Garde, Impressions 26 (2004): pp. 4565.
159. Blair speaks with great warmth of him in both prefaces.
160. His first significant honor in Japan was to become a Buddhist Hokky (1961) and
his most important was his receiving the Imperial Kunsh (Order of Cultural Merit) in 1971.
This was the highest recognition ever given to a printmaker in Japan. See the chronology in
Woodblock and the Artist: The Life and Work of Shiko Munakata (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1991),
pp. 141144.
161. Munakata won a number of prizes in international art exhibitions beginning in
Lugano in 1952, which quickly established his reputation in the West.
162. Critically assessed by Allen Hockley in The Zenning of Munakata Shik, Impres-
sions 26 (2004): pp. 7687, showing how Munatakas cultural complexity was simplified in New
York for the benefit of local customers. However this was in the end a local phenomenon and
was only marginally influential in Japan.
163. Hockley, The Zenning of Munakata Shik, p. 85, relates one such inconsistency and
realistically interprets it to be a result of Munakatas changing perception of what the custom-
ers wanted to hear.
164. See Merritt, Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years, p. 211.
165. Goddesses Multiplying (1957), for example, is mounted on a pair of screens almost
ten meters long. Reproduced in Munakata Shik: Japanese Master of the Modern Print, ed.
Robert T. Singer and Nobuko Kakeya (Chicago: Art Media Resources, 2002), no. 20.
166.See Another History: Contemporary Japanese Art from the Collection of the Museum
of Modern Art, Kamakura and Hayama, exhibition catalogue (Hayama: Museum of Modern
Art, Kamakura and Hayama, 2003), no. 67.
167. Munakatas complete prints can be found in Munakata shik hanga zensh, 12 vols.
(Tokyo: Kodansha, Tokyo, 19741975).
168. The Biennales were held from the beginning in the National Museum of Modern
Art, Tokyo, giving Japanese printmakers a strong sense of belonging again to the international
world.
169. See Yamaguchi Gen Kensh-kai, Yamaguchi Gen hanga-sh. There are also some
good reproductions in Petit, 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists.
170. Onchi only rarely gave any sort of formal instruction, but he was a constant encour-
ager of other artists.
171.Petit, 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists, nos. 215220.
172.Petit, 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists, nos. 7580.
173.See Yoshida Masaji isaku-ten, exhibition catalogue (Wakayama: Wakayama Prefec-
tural Museum of Modern Art, 1974).
174. Prints collected in Hagiwara Hideo hanga-sh (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1982). The later,
imposing Mount Fuji series (19771986) is reproduced in Sanjroku Fuji o hokoru (Tokyo,
1986), published by the author.
175.Petit, 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists. Petit generously illustrates all forty-four art-
ists, and his work provides an important visual resource as well as a document of a specific
time in Japanese graphic art.
176. Hayter was an early visitor drawn by the Tokyo Biennale, winning the International
Grand Prize in 1960. He writes in the preface to Petit, 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists, vol. l,
406|Lawrence Smith

p. 12, the uncommercial attitude of ssaku hanga commands immediate respect, and the
simple statement that one valid print is better than one hundred repetitions of a bad one is
self-evident.
177. Some of Yoshidas prints (color etchings and silk screens) are reproduced in Yoshida
Kenji (London: Jose Ferez Kuri, 1993), although most of the book is devoted to his paintings.
178.Reproduced in Lawrence Smith, Contemporary Japanese Prints: Symbols of Society in
Transition (London: British Museum Publications, 1985), p. 3.
179. Ibid., plate 49.
180. All these artists are reproduced in Petit, 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists. For uchi,
see also Norman and Mary Tolman, Aramusha: Ouchi Makoto, the Artist Warrior (Tokyo:
Sbunsha, 1982).
181.E.g., the four-sheet print Takeoff iii (1991), reproduced in Seiko Kawachi: Graphic
Works, 19881991 (Tokyo: Art Mu, 1991), p. 32.
182. Nana Shiomis prints are to date not substantially reproduced but can be found on
her website, www.nanashhiomi.com. Note particularly her Hokusai WaveHappy Carp (2001)
and her One Hundred Views of Mitate.
183. These are all reproduced in Petit, 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists.
184.Reproductions of Red Illusion SeriesSwallowtails (1983) can be found in Smith,
Contemporary Japanese Prints, no. 51.
185. Visionist and Florist are illustrated in the 46th Print Show, exhibition catalogue, ed.
College Womens Association of Japan (Tokyo: College Womens Association of Japan, 2001),
nos. 4950.
186.Reproduced in full in Tanaka Hideo, Gempei (Tokyo: Kyryd, 1985).
187. Twenty-one of the sixty-two prints in the series are reproduced in Munakata Shik:
Japanese Master of the Modern Print, pp. 168173.
188. Sekino Junichir, Sekino Junichir tkaid gojsan tsugi (Tokyo, published by the
artist, 1974).
189.Reproduced in full in Sanjrioku Fuji o hokoru.
190. Nodas prints have been to date reproduced in four catalogues. See Tetsuya Noda:
The Works (Tokyo: Fuji Television Gallery, 1978, 1992, 2001, 2006). Millennium Bridge is
reproduced in color in catalogue 4 (2006), p. 15.
191. See Shirota Sadao, Akira Kurosaki: Woodblock Prints (Tokyo: Shirota Gallery, 1984).
192. The complete prints are reproduced in Tsuruya Kkei, Zen-mokuhanga 19782000
(Yokohama: Haraki ukiyo-e zaidan, 2000).
193.See Hamada Chimei Complete (Tokyo: Kyryd, 1993).
194.See Nakabayashi Tadayoshi zen hanga 19611983 (Tokyo: Shirota Gallery, 1983).
195. These exhibitions have continued annually up to the time of this writing. The cata-
logues are a useful record of changing styles and tastes, especially among foreign buyers.
196.Reproduced in Walter Jule, ed., Sightlines: Printmaking and Image Culture (Edmon-
ton: University of Alberta Press, 1997), pp. 112113.
197. All these artists are reproduced in Smith, Contemporary Japanese Prints.
198. See Smith, Contemporary Japanese Prints, plates 66 and 39.
199.Reproduced in Smith, Modern Japanese Prints, 19121989, p. 133.
200.Reproduced in Smith, Modern Japanese Prints, 19121989, pp. 135138.
 14. Japanese Prints 18682008 | 407

201.Reproduced in Jule, Sightlines, pp. 7475.

202. The fact that these are all painters has meant that their prints are not consistently
published as such. Among those that have been are Ay- (Kubo Sadajir, ed., Ay-s Collected
Prints [Tokyo: Sbunsha, 1979]), Sugai Kumi (Kumi Sugai: Lithographie, Eau-Forte, Serigra-
phie [Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1970]). Ay-, Onosato, and Murai are covered in Petit, 44
Modern Japanese Print Artists. The lithographs of Shinoda have been chosen annually since
1968 for the CWAJ exhibition and are illustrated in the catalogues. Onogis silk screens are
listed in Gaku Onogi: Landscape (Tokyo: Sugawara Takeshi, 1980), but reproduced only in
small monochromes.
203. Hanga geijitsu is published quarterly by Abe shuppan, Tokyo.
204. This change has been achieved partly through vigorous promotion by print galleries,
especially the Tolman Gallery, Tokyo.
205. Hanga geijutsu, no. 87 (1995) is a special number devoted to his work. Special num-
bers of this sort have been a frequent feature of the journal and are often a good source of
information on the careers of modern or recent artists, as well as on their techniques.
206.For Yoks prints, see Tadanori Yok Print Work (Nishiwaki City: Okunoyama
bijutsukan, 1990).
207. Typically, his paintings are well published, but his prints are not. For the paintings,
see Rizik (Paris: Galerie Tamenaga, 2002).
208. Tomiyama Taeko and Hong Sung-Dam, From the Asians (Tokyo and Seoul: Acting
Committee of the Synergy of Soul Foundation, 1998).
209.Masami is perhaps an even more forceful neo-ukiyo-e practitioner than Takeda
Hideo. See Howard Link, Waves and Plagues: The Art of Masami Teraoka (Honolulu: The Con-
temporary Museum, 1988).
210. Fujitas prints are to date substantially unpublished. His four-sheet drypoint series
A Daydream of Insects is in the collection of the Bristol City Museum, U.K.
211. Tokyo: Message to 21st Century, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Japan Print Association, 1994) and vol. 2
(2000). All the prints are reproduced, and the text is bilingual.
212. Tokyo: Message to 21st Century, vol. 2, no. 100.
213. Tokyo Port Wild-Bird Park, no. 14.
214. Full Moon and Nihonbashi, no. 75.
215. Shinagawa Station, no. 92.
216. Nihon Hanga Kykai, Hanga-ten.
217. Yasumi Susizu and his Works (Tsuwano: Tsuwano Hanga Studio 1993, revised edi-
tion 1997).
218. See Kiyota Yji, Deai no furoshiki (Osaka: Th shuppan, 1998).
219.E.g. Calm No. 4, 49th CWAJ Print Show, Tokyo, 2004, no. 38.
220.E.g. Ratio IV, ibid., no. 126.
221.See Susumu Endo: Space and Space Series 19961999 (Tokyo, 1999, published by the
artist). It must be observed that these artists above all owe a debt to the work of Iwami Reika,
who preceded them in the use of gold leaf and motifs drawn from Japanese rimpa painting
traditions. For Shinoda, see Petit, 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists.
222.Reproduced and described in Sat, Kitaoka Fumio: Hikari to kaze no han fkei, pp.
156158.
 Chiaki Ajioka

15 Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts

The New Craft and Mingei Movements

The most significant development in twentieth-century Japanese craft was the emergence
of awareness in craft makers that their works were first and foremost the creative expres-
sion of an individual. This consciousness represented modernity in Japanese craft, which
will be the subject of this chapter. Accordingly, it will focus on the New Craft movement
(Shink kgei und) and the Mingei movement and will exclude industrial craft and
design, as well as the Western-inspired postwar kurafuto movement, although they are
important components of the story of craft production in Japan. For the purpose of this
chapter, in the following, the term craft will denote the Japanese word kgei and will
refer to objects produced with craft materialsceramics, wood, textiles, metal, bamboo,
etc.and assigned one or more functions of varying kinds, including the decorative func-
tion. Where the term artist is used, it denotes sakka, in contrast to shokunin (artisan).
The discussion will also mainly focus on ceramics, because that medium has enjoyed
greater attention and affection than any other craft in Japan.1

Craft in Transition: The Meiji Period

Prior to the Meiji period, various means of protection and control of the craft industry
within the feudal domain ensured a continuous supply of products. It should also be noted
that there were no separate concepts for art and craft; arts in society existed as indi-
vidual tasks and skills irrespective of the so-called art category, and in the social context
they functioned in tandem with the class system.2 In other words, the status of each art
category was determined by the social standing of its users.3 From the 1870s to around
1900, the nations industrial modernization fundamentally changed this mode of produc-
tion and status of the arts.
For the existing craft industry, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 resulted in a widespread
loss of demand. The unification of the hitherto independent feudal domains in 1871 left
the craft producers, especially the high-end producers who had enjoyed the patronage of
the domain rulers, to fend for themselves in the free market, and the banning in 1876 of
the custom of wearing swords deprived makers of swords and armor of their livelihood.
An often-quoted anecdote from this period is that Kan Natsuo, a famous maker of metal
sword furniture, had to earn a living by making metal parts of tobacco pouches. The policy
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 409

of separating Shinto shrines from Buddhist temples, although temporary, often meant not
only that many existing Buddhist objects were destroyed, but also that their producers
were deprived of new work opportunities.
To counter the economic pressure resulting from the necessity of furnishing a modern
nation with imported goods and services, as well as from unequal trade treaties, the Meiji
government focused on craftworks as an important export item. International expositions,
starting with Londons Crystal Palace in 1851 and spreading across Europe and America,
provided Japan with opportunities to explore overseas markets.4 As is well known, the
Vienna Exposition (Weltausstellung 1873 Wien) was the first international exposition the
new Meiji government participated in.5 Prior to this, the Tokugawa Shogunate and two
domains, Satsuma and Saga, had also taken part in the 1867 Paris Exposition (Exposition
Universelle), resulting in three separate delegations from Japan. For the Vienna Exposition
the government appointed Sano Tsunetami (18221902), as the vice chief administrator in
view of his experience as a member of the Saga delegation at the 1867 Paris exposition. In
preparation for the Vienna Exposition, Sano set out five objectives. They are, in summary:

1. To impress foreign countries with the quality of Japanese products and gain their
recognition.
2. To learn about Western art and industry from their exhibits.
3. To prepare for the establishment of a museum and domestic expositions.
4. To pave the way for the development of export industries.
5. To learn about foreign products and foreign demand for Japanese products.6

Clearly, those objectives were meant as a long-term strategy rather than a strategy for one
occasion. To achieve the first goal, the government followed the valuable advice of Gott-
fried Wagener (18311892), a German scientist and one of the foreign specialists employed
by the Japanese government at the time, in selecting entries.7 For the second objective,
a number of technical training students (gijutsu denshsei), experts in their respective
industries, were sent with the delegates to study Western techniques and systems. Wagener
made arrangements for them to obtain the best results within the limited periods.8 The
museum and domestic expositions were to serve as a means of education for the industry.
Its implication was significant: various techniques, previously kept within the domain,
were to be shared nationally.9 To achieve the fourth and fifth objectives, the government
implemented a series of measures. It summoned makers and producers of key crafts and
committed a salary of about five yen per month to the dealers/producers who took the
supervisory role.10 The government also established the Company for Founding Indus-
try and Commerce (Kiry Ksh Kaisha)11 in 1874. The company, headed by merchants
Matsuo Gisuke and Wakai Kenzabur and lasting until 1891, was to act as the official
vehicle for handling art and craft export products.12 The Kiry Ksh Kaisha commis-
sioned products from around Japan as well as managing its own workshop with an army
of highly distinguished craftspeople, including Miyagawa Kzan (ceramics: 18421916)
and Suzuki Chkichi (metalwork: 18481919).13 After its first venture, the 1876 Centennial
International Exhibition in Philadelphia, the company established branch offices in New
York (1877) and Paris (1878). Japonisme in Europe was at its peak around the 1878 Paris
Exposition, and the company prospered for the following few years. Those branches also
410|Chiaki Ajioka

served as outposts for obtaining information for the company workshop on Western cus-
toms and changing tastes.14 As well as the government-run company, a number of private
workshops/companies such as Hychien also emerged in the 1870s.
To support various export industries, the government also held the Domestic Exposi-
tion for the Promotion of Industry (Naikoku Kangy Hakurankai).15 To encourage compe-
tition, the government offered prizes, and to improve quality it provided model designs for
an extensive range of crafts.16 From around 1881, the government instigated regional devel-
opment by means of industrial fairs organized by local administrations. Official examin-
ers were sent to these fairs.17 By linking these three tiers of expositions, the government
cultivated Western demand, ensured the supply of quality products, and promoted the
regional craft industry.18 From the individual producers point of view, these expositions
provided employment as well as opportunities to show their skills in the public domain.19
Alongside expositions and exhibitions, schools played a vital role in modernizing
the production of crafts. The newly established art, craft, and industrial schools provided
accomplished producers with employment and the younger generation of aspiring craft
makers with an alternative to the old apprenticeship system. By the 1880s, the craft indus-
try had grown out of the governments direct initiative and control. In some cases this
led to poor product quality. The government responded to the problem by imposing self-
regulating trade organizations in 1884.

Division of Art and Craft

In his groundbreaking book Me no shinden (1989), Kitazawa Noriaki analyzed the process
through which the term bijutsu (art) was coined in 1871 as a translation for Schne Kunst
during preparations for participating in the Vienna Exposition,20 and how this heralded
the beginning of a new hierarchy in arts administration in Japan.
As for kgei (craft), the early use of the term in the 1870s referred to the arts in general,
including industrial products.21 International exposition rules demanded that Japanese
products be divided into art and craft, with a clear connotation that art was superior
to craft.22 As mentioned above, Japan had not developed the concept of creative art. So
it was understandable that craft producers tried to make their products art by submit-
ting, for example, ceramics decorated with pictures (not patterns) as painting so they
would be included in the higher classification. At the same time, there was an increasing
need to distinguish objects that were made for aesthetic pleasure from the expanding vol-
ume of machine-made practical products.23 Also influential was a strong desire of some
art administrators, such as Kuki Ryichi (18521931) and Okakura Tenshin (Okakura
Kakuz, 18621913), to have Japanese art craft internationally recognized as art. They
put forward this argument successfully at the 1893 Chicago exposition (Worlds Colum-
bian Exposition).24 In the end, however, Japan had no choice but to follow the interna-
tional convention according to which the category of art was reserved only for creative
works of individuals. After all, most Japanese art craft pieces were products of compa-
nies and workshops, similar to the French ceramics created at Svres toward the end of the
nineteenth century, whose very purpose was to dramatize skill, to show just how much
labor has been expended.25 Furthermore, from the beginning of Japans participation in
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 411

international expositions, it had been a common practice for art craft producers such as
Kawashima Jinbee, a seminal figure in the textile industry who played the role of a direc-
tor while taking no part in the actual production, to submit works in their name (fig. 15.1).
The 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris decisively settled the debate over the defini-
tion of art and craft in Japan. This debate led to the replacement of the chief secretary for
the Temporary Exposition Office with Hayashi Tadamasa (18531906), who had worked
for the Kiry Ksh Kaisha and had then become an independent art dealer in Paris.
Hayashi, who had forged strong working relationships with many French artists, collec-
tors, and dealers, was sensitive to the perception gap between Japan and the West over
what the term art meant.26 He argued:

According to the rules of the French art world, truly artistic works are products in
which the artist employed his own philosophy and creativity from the initial idea to
the finish. Works that were made to other peoples designs, therefore, are considered
to be craft, to which art was applied, and their excellence is regarded as that of craft
rather than art, however splendid it might be.27

Figure 15.1. Kawashima Jinbee II (18531910), design by Asai Ch (18561907), wall hanging Samurai
hunting, c. 1909. Embroidery, 134.0 178.0 cm. Kawashima Orimono Serukon Co. Orimono Bunkakan,
Kyoto.
412|Chiaki Ajioka

With Hayashis appointment, the submission rules were changed: The original rule that
[a]rt objects are limited to those that demonstrate individual excellence without losing the
uniquely Japanese spirit28 was changed to a work of art is an object in which each [art-
ist] follows the principles of pure aesthetics and displays ones own design and technique.
Exhibits, therefore, are limited to the artists original design and creation.29 In addition,
the term bijutsu kgei (art craft) was changed to yt kgei (superior craft), clearly separat-
ing art from crafts. This hierarchy was accepted relatively smoothly, Sat Dshin points
out, because most of the craft makers came from the common rank in the previous era,
while prominent painters, like the leaders of the new government, were largely from the
ruling samurai rank.30 Bijutsu [art as a category] eventually settled as a combination of
the notion of traditional class status and the newly introduced categories.31 On the other
hand, in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War (18941895), the light industry expanded its
export market, accelerating the growth of mechanical industry in craft production. This
was supported by a large number of newly established industrial and craft schools, quick-
ening the pace of separation of mass-produced wares from handmade pieces.32 Thus, at the
end of the nineteenth century:

The modern European notions of art and creativity, as well as classifications, became
firmly established. As a result, mechanical industry (kgy) became an independent
category, and art and craft were now separated. Thus, without logical verification,
craft had come to be identified as an area between mechanical industry and art, where
the two categories vaguely overlap.33

Another impact of the 1900 exposition was its dominance of Art Nouveau style, against
which the same old traditional Japanese designs seemed stale and dark. Since 1878
French potters had studied Japanese classical ceramicsthose by Ninsei and Kenzan and
regional wares such as Iga and Satsumathat demonstrated different aesthetics from that
of the contemporary art craft and had incorporated these aesthetics into their work,
as seen, for example, in the ceramics by Emile Decoeur (18761948), Edmund Lachenal
(18551948), and Jean Carris (18551894).34 The Japanese official report noted that many
lacquerware products were impractical and luxurious items and decorative metalwork
vases were mostly similar in shape, with no indication of efforts, while their decorations
were monotonous in disposition and pattern structure.35 In 1904 Fukuchi Fukuichi, a
design instructor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (est. 1888) who was at the Louisiana
Purchase International Exposition in St. Louis, summed up the situation in Bijutsu shinp
(Art news) (August 29), writing that Japanese art craft had become outdated for several
years, while new designs were being developed in Europe and America in response to
new tastes and technology. Efforts to improve craft design began at the turn of the twen-
tieth century. The Tokyo School of Fine Arts produced its first two design graduates in
1898, and design study groups sprang up in the following years, in which designers (zuan-
ka) and painters provided fresh designs to the craft producers in textiles, ceramics, and
lacquerware.36
As seen above, the high end of the craft makers at the close of feudal Japan became
key players in the new regimes bid to earn foreign currency, and the government and the
Imperial Household, as well as dealers and producers, shaped the art craft of the Meiji
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 413

period through financial support and artistic direction. The role of the Imperial House-
hold was crucial in the latter. Imperial commissions, such as the decoration of newly built
palaces and reception halls, were to be the highest cultural expression of the nation and
thus the most prestigious.37 In line with Japans self-image as a modern nation with a rich
and unique culture and heritage, these commissions demanded an aesthetic derived from
the Heian court traditions interpreted to suit the modern, international context. The Meiji
art craft, in other words, was an embodiment of the makers conscious efforts to cre-
ate art, and their concept of art was dictated by both the Imperial taste as well as the
perceived Western taste.38 It was those high-end art craft makers who were appointed as
instructors at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and other schools. Inevitably, their work was
often based on conventional Japanese designs and motifs, in line with government instruc-
tions for exposition submissions that they should express our national characteristics. To
preserve Japans perceived cultural integrity, as Ellen Conant said of Nihonga (Japanese-
style painting of the modern period), the craft students were encouraged to go forward by
looking backward.39 This direction had been established as academism at the turn of the
twentieth century, represented by such people as Katori Hotsuma (metalwork, 18741954),
Rokkaku Shisui (lacquerware, 18671950), and Itaya Hazan (ceramics, 18721963). Itaya
was the first graduate of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts to turn to ceramics (he studied
sculpture). As Arakawa Masaaki points out, throughout his career Itaya continued to pur-
sue a formal (shin) beauty, transforming classical Chinese and Japanese vocabulary into
manifestations of sophistication and elegance.40
Against this academism, a new concept of craft was emerging. The government
actively sent promising young people overseas in its bid to modernize Japanese culture
and learning. Some of them upheld Western ways while others adhered to the old Japanese
values with renewed vigor.41 But there were those who began to question both and search
for a new set of values for themselves. This position was elucidated in a lecture called My
Individualism, by Natsume Sseki,42 who was sent by the government to London between
1900 and 1903 to study English literature. In craft, this individualism found its voice in the
Bijutsu shinp, which became a venue for lively discussions on crafts, mainly by Western
art practitioners and art historians.

Iwamura Tru, Bijutsu shinp,

and New Ideas on Crafts
The Bijutsu shinp was published between 1902 and 1920 as an inexpensive journal pro-
viding information on art.43 Its most prolific and influential writer was Iwamura Tru
(18701917), son of a baron. Iwamura is best known as one of the leaders of Hakubakai, a
yga painters society, along with Kuroda Seiki and Kume Keiichir, and as a progressive
teacher at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, supportive of new ideas among young artists. He
studied English from an early age, and later French and Italian. Iwamura was well versed
in Western art and culture through his four trips.44 During his five-year sojourn in Paris
(18881892), where he studied oil painting, he became friends with Kuroda and Kume,
and this acquaintance eventually led him to join Hakubakai in 1896 and then to teach at
the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1899.45
414|Chiaki Ajioka

Iwamura interpreted and adapted the ideas of British thinkers John Ruskin (1819
1900) and William Morris (18341896) to Japan. Ruskin attached moral values to art and
craft objects, claiming in writings such as The Nature of Gothic that men had to be
happy to create beautiful objects. This was an eye-opening concept for the Japanese at
a time when craftsmanship was seen as a means to an end and to national pride. Mor-
ris put Ruskins idea into practice; he disregarded conventions of his time and created
objects relying solely on his own taste and judgment. To beautify life was his purpose for
creative activities. Furthermore, the pursuit of beauty in society as a whole led Morris to
commit himself to socialism.
In the first issues of Bijutsu shinp, Iwamura wrote a three-part summary of Ruskins
Oxford lecture.46 But his initial activities with the magazine came to a halt due to his
third trip to Europe (19041905). He returned to the magazine in 1909, when his close
friend and Western art historian Sakai Yoshisabur (Saisui) became the chief editor, just
at the moment when the magazine ran into financial difficulties.47 From around this time,
there was a marked increase in articles relating to crafts in the magazine, encouraging
artists to take up decorative arts or minor arts. In 1913, two issues were dedicated
to art craft. As Nakamura points out, Iwamura had reached Morris via Ruskin; he
believed that art is inextricably linked with social issues and that no distinction in status
should exist between fine art and applied art.48 The strength of his argument, com-
pared with that of Okakura two decades earlier, was that it provided Japanese craft at the
time with a new and relevant interpretation of the relationship between the craft material
and the maker.
Iwamura was not so much an art academic as a critic and gifted communicator. [H]e
had a power to attract others: he always defended young people, was very informal, quick-
witted, proficient in foreign languages, well read and informed, and extremely eloquent.49
For the nascent modern Japanese craft, Iwamuras presence at the Tokyo School of Fine
Arts was crucial. Perhaps more than any other time in the history of Japanese craft, an
intellectuals personal qualities proved most effective in nurturing a new concept of crafts
among future producers by guiding them to believe in themselves rather than their teach-
ers.50 Takamura Toyochika (18901972), a metalwork (casting) artist and a younger brother
of the sculptor/poet Ktar (18831956), is a case in point. Toyochika recalls how excited
he and his friends were when Iwamura visited their first exhibition after graduation:

[Iwamura] saw Ogura Juns chintz with design of grapevine, and poured praise over
it: This chintz is wonderful. There has been nothing like this in Japan. Id say this is a
Japanese William Morris. Keep up the good work. Ogura was ecstatic. To begin with,
around that time in 1915, I dare say, no craft teacher would have known of William
Morris. At such a bleak time, someone compared us with William Morris. Our young
hearts were exuberant. [Iwamura] was clearly over-complimentary, but how his words
encouraged us young students!51

Although Iwamura was unique in his role in interpreting Ruskin and Morris, there
were others who were also eager to foster a modern concept of crafts. Among them was
Okada Sabursuke (18691939), also a Hakubakai painter and the professor at the Tokyo
School of Fine Arts from 1902. Okada, who was experimenting in leatherwork and other
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 415

handcrafts, began a study group called the Mutual Amusement Society (Gorakukai) within
the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1909. Its members ranged from yga and Nihonga painters
to designers, as well as Iwamura and Masaki Naohiko (18621940), a long-serving head of
the school from 1901 to 1932. Their ideas and activities were propagated in Bijutsu shinp.
They considered that the state of crafts was unsatisfactory because the makers were simply
following old examples: the subjects were old-fashioned and clichd, the product range
static, and some new designs were superficial imitations of Western trends.52 The purpose of
Gorakukai, therefore, was for artists to create objects for their own enjoyment, which, it
was hoped, would cultivate good taste in society as well as inspiring the craft makers to
strive for improvement.53 But their sentiments were not shared by the craft academe. The
gap between the two approaches can be illustrated in an anecdote told by Takamura Toyo-
chika. In 1917 at the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce Craft Exhibition, he created
a bronze vase with a design of grapes and a naked child. It was almost rejected because
the craft selectors, Katori Hotsuma, Itaya Hazan, and Rokkaku Shisui, considered that the
Western flavor (batakusai) of the work was inappropriate for Japanese crafts. But Okada
and Wada Sanz, selectors of painting, intervened and highly recommended it. The vase
ended up winning a third prize.54

Pioneers of Modern Craft

In 1910, Takamura Ktar, sculptor and poet, published the famous essay A Green Sun
(Midori iro no taiy), in which he claimed that artists should be completely free to express
themselves.55 Ktars contributions to modern craft may have been unintended, but they
were nevertheless significant. First, he was the direct catalyst for Bernard Leachs visit to
Japan through his friendship with him in London; second, he shared his newly acquired
knowledge on art with Toyochika, who came to play a seminal role in the New Craft
movement; and third, in 1910 he opened Rkand, the first art gallery in Japan, where he
displayed and sold objects without discriminating crafts from fine art objects.56 Prior
to the opening of the gallery, his sculptor friend Ogiwara Morie (18791910) wrote in a
newspaper:

My friend Takamura Ktar is going to open an art gallery. . . . Its principle is very
advanced, and I totally agree with him: he will display any art objectsfrom paint-
ing, sculpture and bronze to rings or cufflinksas long as they are works of art. On
the other hand, unless he recognizes their [artistic] value, he will refuse [to display]
them. Even if they are not sold, if good works are displayed people will see them,
which will bring the public taste closer to art. I think it is a great plan.57

Although Takamura sold the gallery in less than a year, it continued to operate under dif-
ferent management for some years at a prime location in Tokyos busy cultural district.58
Also from around 1910, some artists independently began making crafts in the new
spirit. Among them were Fujii Tatsukichi (18811964) and Tsuda Seif (18801978). Fujii
is generally known as one who created the concept of shugei (home craft) for women in
the home. As a designer and craft activist, his unconventional approach to craft inspired
416|Chiaki Ajioka

a number of people who became prominent craft artists. Fujii never studied at the Tokyo
School of Fine Arts, but he worked for a cloisonn company that sent him to the 1904 St. Louis
exposition, and he used the opportunity to study art at the museums in Boston.59 After
returning to Japan Fujii left the company and moved to Tokyo. Around 1909 or 1910, he
became acquainted with other artists, among them Bernard Leach (18871979), Takamura
Ktar, and Tomimoto Kenkichi (18861963).60 Possibly through Ktars recommenda-
tion, he was invited to join Gorakukai.
Tsuda Seif was a designer/painter from Kyoto who worked at Takashimayas design
department and later at the Kyoto Ceramics Testing Institute. On his return from the
Russo-Japanese War (19041905) he went to Paris for three years as a business student
of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, where he studied oil painting with Yasui
Star (18881955).61 Tsuda moved to Tokyo, probably in 1911, the year his oil painting
was first hung at Bunten. Takamura Toyochika sums up their influence on him: Tsuda
showed the direction for flat design and Fujii created with total freedom from conventions
in material and methods.62
The first Tokyo School of Fine Arts student to embrace the new concept of craft was
Tomimoto Kenkichi (18861963), who studied design from 1904 to 1908. He went to Lon-
don (19081910) where, after a brief stint at making stained glass, he spent his time absorb-
ing aspects of British cultural heritage at various museums. Tomimoto claimed that the
reason for going to London was to see first hand the works of William Morris, artist and
socialist.63 Although he did not say how he first came to know about Morris, Iwamuras
influence must have been crucial: shortly after entering the Tokyo School of Fine Arts
Tomimoto joined the schools mandolin club, which was organized by Iwamura, though
Iwamura went abroad soon after Tomimoto had joined it.64
Perhaps the best-known writing by Tomimoto today is the richly illustrated The Story
of William Morris (Uiriamu Morisu no hanashi), published in two parts in the Bijutsu
shinp in 1912. In narrating Morris life and achievements, Tomimoto repeatedly expressed
his admiration for Morris energy and determination to challenge the poor taste of his
time. He praised Morris for always believing in himself and being faithful to himself in
whatever he took up:

[Qualities such as] the appeal of the artists individuality and eternal beauty must
be recognized, not only in paintings and sculpture but also in weaving, metalwork,
and all other craftwork. Morris was a forerunner like no other in perceiving this. And
I feel that he showed us the way through his own practice. (March 11, 1912)

Tomimotos claim of individuality and beauty echoes Takamura Ktars A Green Sun.65
Both Tomimoto and Takamura believed that there should be no distinction between fine
art and craft. Tomimoto wrote in Bijutsu shinp that he had become aware of this while
visiting the South Kensington Museum, where he saw paintings such as Jean-Franois
Millets Woodcutters or Edward Burne-Jones Watermill hanging alongside Persian pot-
tery or Egyptian or Roman textiles, with equal respect paid to all objects.66 He put this
concept into practice on his return to Japan in 1910, experimenting in furniture design and
new craft; the latter included trying his hand at weaving on his great-grandmothers old
loom, which he had pulled out from the family storehouse.67 He also produced a number of
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 417

woodcuts, in which jugs, jars, and bottles frequently appear as motifs. The series of creative
activities that Tomimoto undertook following his return to Japan, including his essays in
the Bijutsu shinp, was to have a significant impact on younger craft producers and print
artists.
Through his encounter and subsequent friendship with Bernard Leach, Tomimoto
took up ceramics in 1912. His major concerns were the notion of originality in designs and
their applications. As Yamada Toshiaki notes, Tomimoto carefully captioned each image
in his article on Morris: design drawn by Morris, original idea by Morris, designed by
Morris, produced by Morris & Co., and so on. Yamada rightly surmises that Tomimotos
main object in writing on Morris was to show not only Morris designs but also the varied
ways he applied them to the products.68
Tomimotos approach to ceramics signaled a decisive break with the past in that from
the beginning he conceived of the process of clay molding and firing as an uncompromis-
ing creative process (see Plate 25).69 As Tomimoto was determined to create his own design
and shape as self-expression, the conventional step of learning from a master potter was
out of the question. He began with trial and error at his home in Nara through correspon-
dence with Bernard Leach, who was studying ceramics with Ogata Kenzan VI in Tokyo.
For Tomimoto, creating ceramics was not simply a means of self-expressionhe was also
conscious of his role in changing the Japanese societys attitude toward originality and
good taste. The advent of Tomimotos new attitudes toward ceramics was paralleled by
an important development in the artistic climate: the Hyzankai exhibitions (1912 and
1913), the first anti-academic art exhibition, which included prints and crafts among the
exhibits.70
Thus the modern concept of craft as a creative process of self-expression was developed
and first practiced outside the traditional industry, among the practitioners of Western art.
These artists perception of modern Japan had been shaped in the postRusso-Japanese
War context of Japans relationship with the West, a relationship that was no longer that
of the consumer and provider of exotic culture, but, at least in the young artists minds, a
relationship of equals. In this context, one cannot overestimate the importance of Bernard
Leachs presence as one of them.71
Leach first tried his hand at raku pottery in 1911, then began studying under Kenzan
VI in 1912. Some of his early works were highly referential . . . in the manner of the
Kenzan tradition, while others were direct interpretations: one porcelain ginger jar with
blue cobalt decoration . . . [a]nother stoneware jug has European heraldic motifs of a ram-
pant lion and shields with crests with revealing allusion to German pottery.72 Leach him-
self admits that he and Tomimoto carried many a suggestion from the illustrations in the
late Charles J. Lomaxs [Quaint] Old English Pottery into our early raku pieces.73 From the
beginning of their careers, Leach and Tomimoto showed their pottery at various group
exhibitions alongside their prints, sketches, engravings, and furniture. These displays cre-
ated a new context for ceramics that in turn demanded a new approach to appreciation
from the audience.
In February 1912, the coterie members of the magazine Shirakaba (see below) held an
exhibition to show the three bronzes by Rodin and original prints by Heinrich Vogeler,
both of which were sent to them by the artists. Included in the exhibition were Yamawaki
Shintokus painting and Leachs drawings, etchings, and pottery.74 Leachs pottery, shown
418|Chiaki Ajioka

in this context, had a lasting impact on Kawai Kanjir (18901966), an aspiring pot-
tery student at the Tokyo Industrial High School (Tokyo Kgy Kt Gakk). He later
recalled:

This Westerner, who had made a step toward a new pottery, was a great astonishment
to me. I felt indignant to see an alien kind of life thrown into ceramics, which we had
thought we knew. I was incensed at seeing someone had beaten me to it . . . our earth-
enware teacup had been given a handle to become a [Western] teacup . . . the Chinese
ginger jar had turned into a vase. Our traditional pieces had been reborn.75

Kawais complex emotions are telling. It is one thing to see objects made by a Westerner, it
is quite another to see a Westerner making objects on Japanese soil, with happy ignorance
of, and disregard for, the context and concept of Japanese traditions. At the same time,
Kawais candid confession that he felt incensed reveals that an urge to create something
new was simmering within this ambitious potter. Hamada Shji (18941978), Kawais fel-
low student and lifelong friend, felt a similar impact. It was not the elegance, refinement,
and technical perfection of his teacher Itaya Hazan that attracted him. The two grand
champions of pottery were Leach and Tomimoto, Hamada recalled his thoughts at the
time, and he decided that the work of Leach and Tomimoto had shown me the direction
I wanted to follow.76 Hamada first approached Tomimoto, then visited Leach in 1919 at
Abiko, west of Tokyo, where Leach had built a kiln on the property of his friend Yanagi
Setsu (Muneyoshi, 18891961). When Leach was invited to start a kiln at St. Ives, Hamada
offered his help in setting it up. Hamadas Japanese patron provided him with expenses for
his passage to Britain, and the two potters left Japan in 1920.

The Magazine Shirakaba and Craft

It is often overlooked that the Bijutsu shinp was usually ahead of Shirakaba (19101923)
in introducing modern Western art and ideas; it featured important modern artists such
as Czanne and Rodin firstits special issue on Rodin was published months earlier
than Shirakabas famous November issue in 1910.77 Shirakaba, however, represented a
new voicethe voice of an optimistic and carefree generation, which took Japans social,
economic, and cultural progress after the Russo-Japanese War for granted. Three points
concerning this magazine and its coterie members are relevant to the present discussion.
First, if the magazine was not the first to say that art and craft should both be self-expres-
sion, it certainly propagated this urbane notion to the young artists and intellectuals
outside the metropolis and all around Japan, as the magazine enjoyed a wide readership
among the intellectuals in provincial cities. Second, the group provided wholehearted sup-
port to its friends, particularly Bernard Leach, through exhibitions and writings. Third,
it created a new kind of art criticism based on personal perception. The groups unabashed
egocentricity in its judgment of art, which often drew criticism from more cautious sec-
tions of the intellectuals of the same generation,78 was also at the core of the theory of
folk crafts developed by Yanagi Setsu, the magazines youngest coterie member, as will
be discussed below.
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 419

Folk and Earlier Japanese Crafts as Inspiration

In his discussion of modern crafts, de Waal quotes the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

[M]odern art, in the process of becoming Dissociated from all big-sounding, preten-
tious and capricious phraseology . . . suddenly appears to take its place in the sober
and inconsiderable life of everyday, among the crafts.79

Rilkes observation applies equally to modern Japan. In seeking beauty outside the estab-
lished academism of the court taste, the advocates of the New Craft (see below) turned to
the everyday folk traditions or primitive art within and outside Japan, as seen in Leachs
and Tomimotos experiments.80 Folk crafts of various origins provided a fresh paradigm,
an inspiration for the alternative to the academic crafts. During his sojourn in London
and through his trip to the Middle East as an assistant to a Japanese architect, Tomimoto
developed an affinity with medieval Persian pottery, which he found to have a finesse of
the smart urbanite (Bijutsu shinp, April 15, 1912). Folk crafts also drew a sympathetic
response from the popular notion of humanism, which the Shirakaba writers keenly advo-
cated and which was manifested in art movements such as the Farmers Art Movement
initiated by the artist Yamamoto Kanae (18821946). As Sandberg argues in his discussion
of Scandinavian folk museums, however, the taste for folk crafts should not be understood
as simply a nostalgia for lost innocence or anti-modern. Rather, the modern lifestyle
provided a new context for the rustic to be appreciated within the modern.81 The past
became a commodity to the modern urbanite who desired to control and own it.
The growing taste for folk crafts coincided, and sometimes merged, with the revival of
the aesthetic of the centuries-old tea ceremony (chanoyu). As Guth points out, [m]any of
the qualities that distinguish Japanese art from that of other cultures are manifestations of
tea taste.82 The premodern tea practitioners were mostly feudal lords and their associates,
whose fall in the wake of the Meiji Restoration severely affected the producers and dealers
of tea utensils and other associated arts. As Japans industry grew, particularly following
the successful military campaigns against China and Russia, the tea ceremony re-emerged
as an accomplishment for wealthy men of taste and for young women from the comfort-
able middle classes.83 Among the former were industrialists, whom Guth calls the new
daimy,84 such as Masuda Takashi (the founder of Mitsui Bussan), Hara Tomitar (silk
trader/producer and industry leader), and Matsunaga Yasuzaemon (a giant in the electric
power industry), who became major patrons of the arts in the private sector. Unlike their
conservative predecessors of the Edo period, they embraced aesthetic freedom and found
their model in the innovative Momoyama period. This led to an intense interest in the tea
utensils of the period.
Up to that time, ceramics appreciation had been in the sphere of connoisseurship,
mixed with legends and heresy, but two modern developments changed this. One was the
emerging scholarship of a group based at the Imperial University, which took a scientific
approach to the study of ceramics. The group, the Colored Jar Society (Saikokai), founded
in 1914, began publishing the results of their research on Japanese and other Oriental
ceramics.85 The other was the search for, and subsequent discovery of, Momoyama period
kilns. In 1930 Arakawa Toyoz (18941985) located the site of the long-forgotten old Shino
420|Chiaki Ajioka

kiln and began making tea ceramics with the local clay, prompting other excavations.
As the practice of the tea ceremony grew among the urban population, a strong demand
developed for ceramic, lacquer, and bamboo utensils, both antique and new.
For the new generation of craft artists, these developments meant that individual
expressions and aesthetic experiments found appreciative patrons who were willing to
support and encourage them.86 The New Craft was born from the spirit of the new age, and
its main consumers were no longer the government or the Imperial Householdor, to a
lesser extent, overseas collectorsbut the growing members of the wealthy urban middle
and upper classes. Takamura Toyochika recorded that at his groups 1918 exhibition at the
Ruisseau Gallery (Ruis), the gallerys regular customers with sophisticated taste were
sympathetic to their venture and purchased many of their works. His list included promi-
nent businessmen and a member of the Diet (parliament) as well as the influential artist/
administrator Kuroda Seiki.87

The New Craft Movement and Inclusion of Crafts in Teiten

Working in Kyoto in the 1920s, Kawai Kanjir first sought his expression in the wide
and deep traditions of Chinese ceramics and was earning recognition among the most
prominent ceramics connoisseurs such as the members of Saikokai. Around him in the
traditional craft capital, new movements were also emerging among the younger genera-
tion of the traditional ceramic industry. In 1919, the Red Clay Company (Sekidosha) was
formed by a group of young potters. One of its founders was Kusube Yaichi (18971984),
whose family owned a pottery workshop and who studied ceramics at the Kyoto Ceramics
Testing Institute, where he met Hamada and Kawai.
At Sekidoshas first exhibition in 1920, held at the department store Takashimaya,88
Kusube challenged the conventional perception of ceramics with the naming of his works.
Instead of giving the customary descriptive titles, he bestowed on them titles that con-
veyed his emotional attachment to them, such as Dusk, White Magnolia Blooms, or
Smoking Rain. His most important work from this show was a square-shaped bottle
Dusk at Lakeside (fig. 15.2).
It depicts a scene Kusube had seen by chance outside Kyoto; the lake is represented by
the light celadon glaze. Dusk is suggested by the surrounding deep red copper glaze. In
the center, in a dream atmosphere of the time of the day when forms seem to dissolve in
their surroundings, are a farmer washing a horse and some water plants, depicted in iron
glaze.89 The bottle is striking in its compelling presence of deeply personal expression, a
convincing statement of individuality in the stronghold of traditional craft.
At the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, Japans mainstream art institution, a new development
was gathering momentum. In 1917 Takamura Toyochika and his friends, most of whom
were involved in various design activities, formed a group called Statue Column Company
(Chjinsha), a name coined by Ktar as a translation of caryatid.90 After an exhibi-
tion in the following year, in 1919 the group joined others to form the Decorative Artists
Association (Sshoku Bijutsuka Kykai), led by Okada Sabursuke and Nagahara Ktar
(18641930), yga painters and Tokyo School of Fine Arts teachers.91 With the exception
of Fujii and Watanabe Sosh, the members were all from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts.
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 421

Figure 15.2. Kusube Yaichi

(18971984), vase Dusk at
Lakeside 1920. Stoneware,
25.2 14.2 cm. The National
Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.
KUSUBE Atsuko.

In naming this association, they avoided the word craft in order to emphasize the artistic
nature of their works. The groups first exhibition catalogue claimed, The purpose of this
society is to raise the dignity of the so-called craft art (kgei bijutsu) objects and indicate
their ultimate nature by creating and exhibiting works of art.92 This was probably the first
public statement that claimed craft objects to be works of art. Thus the societys exhibition,
though short-lived, became a landmark in the move toward a wider recognition of craft as
creative art. These series of activities during the Taish period (19121926) are often called
the New Craft movement (Shink kgei und). In the following, New Craft will be used
for the craft objects made in this context.
Tsuda Shinobu (18751946), according to Takamura Toyochika, one of the two
progressive craft teachers at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts along with Akatsuka Jitoku
(lacquerware, 18711936), was appointed as an international judge for the 1925 Paris
decorative and industrial arts exposition (Exposition Internationale des Arts Dcoratifs
et Industriels Modernes). At the exposition he witnessed how obsolete Japanese entries
looked compared to the refined modernism of Art Deco designs, including those by Ren
Lalique (18601945).93 On his return, he embarked on two projects, the first of which was
to encourage younger generation of craft artists. In 1925 Toyochika, Sugita Kad (1886
1955), Yamamoto Azumi (18871946), Sasaki Shd (18821961), and Kitahara Senroku
(18871951) formed a study group around Tsuda. This group was reorganized as the Soci-
ety for Formlessness (Mukeikai) in the following year, launching a formal challenge to the
old values and practices in craft. Its provocative manifesto was printed in the first issue of
its newsletter, published in February 1926:
422|Chiaki Ajioka

The Birth of Mukei

Mukei is no-form, the formless. We do not have a style. Every one of us is free, and has
a style of his own. Would anything go, then? No. There must be an invisible thread
linking us through our individual styles. A burning passion, a raw and earnest enthu-
siasm, a cow-like patience and a yearning for the beautiful futurethese must be
present among us.
Retrospective mind, hesitation, shrinking, repose, death, emptiness, silence, mainte-
nance of the present and prudence.
They are what we despise most.
Freshness, vividness, the future, and a cheer.
We brandish our flag toward the distant light.
Now is now, the moment that will fly away. Love this moment. Create the craft art that
breathes in this moment, and defend it. Those who long for the past when courtiers
walked about praising the cherry blossom, Die Out!94

Tsudas second project was to obtain official recognition of New Craft made by individuals
by getting New Craft included in Teiten (Imperial Academy Art Exhibition, the govern-
ment-sponsored annual art exhibition, which originally began as Bunten or the Ministry
of Education Art Exhibition in 1907), thereby separating them from mass-produced crafts.
At that time crafts were excluded from the government-run annual exhibition and were
shown instead at the annual applied arts exhibition organized by the Ministry of Agricul-
ture, Commerce, and Industry (Nten), alongside industrial products. This separation,
they argued, did not recognize the creative art of modern craftmaking. By 1926 Tsuda and
Akatsuka managed to gather producers and supporters of both New Craft and academic
craft to form the Japan Craft Art Society (Nihon Kgei Bijutsukai). As part of its lobbying
tactics, it held an exhibition concurrently with Teiten, and the members of the Mukei were
active in the preparation of this exhibition. As a result, the decision was made that Teiten
was to have a fourth section to display crafts the following year.
Mukei held an exhibition in March 1927, ahead of the first Teiten with a craft section.
According to Toyochika, the exhibition, the first major New Craft exhibition, was a great
success, and they received many letters of support from craft artists around Japan. The
members of the group were also successful at the first craft section of Teiten; Takamura,
Sugita, Kitahara, and Sasaki submitted two pieces each, all of which were accepted, with
Takamura, Sasaki, and Kitahara also winning the first prize.95 By this time the Mukei
members were progressive teachers themselves. Inspired by their activities and the
developments in craft, some metalwork students at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts formed
the Craftsmen Company (Kjinsha) around Kitahara Senroku in 1927. Kjinshas principle
was to create freely works that are firmly rooted in the modern life.96
The inclusion of craft in Teiten was far from the final solution to the problems of craft. In
addition to the obvious problem of selectors preferences, there emerged a trend to make eye-
catching exhibition pieces. In addition, as years went by, the academic craft makers began
to dominate the selection committee.97 This prompted Takamura Toyochika and some of the
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 423

ex-Mukei members to discard their earlier pledge of beauty above utility and adopt a new
motto, utility equals beauty. Under this motto they formed the Actuality Craft Art Associa-
tion (Jitsuzai Kgei Bijutsukai) in 1935. Its founding statement reflects the changed attitude:

Whether it is to be mass-produced or to be made as one-off pieces, the utilitarian pur-

pose of craftwork must not be subordinated to beauty, nor must its utilitarian purpose
merely coexist with beauty. Only when utility equals beauty as a unified whole can the
truth of craft be found. This applies equally to craft art and industrial craft. Our road
makes a fresh start where the search for this truth begins.98

To be true to the claim, the Actuality Craft exhibition in 1936 opened its doors to a wider
variety of submissions than had ever been seen before, from toys to furniture, book design,
and posters. The stated goal of the second exhibition emphasized two important criteria
for the admission and selection of works: that the motivation for their production was
based on present-day life, and that their structure was rational so that their functions
could be fully realized.
In line with those principles, the Actuality Craft exhibition adopted many unconven-
tional display styles. First, in contrast to the usual practice of the time, the exhibits were not
displayed in glass cases. Second, objects were placed in appropriate settings, and plinths of
different heights and sizes were built for the purpose. Flowers were arranged for each vase,
and carpets were exhibited spread on the floor rather than hung on the wall. Third, model
rooms with furniture settings were prepared by the members and participating department
stores. And fourth, public craft institutions were invited to display their industrial craft.
The innovative display was widely welcomed. In his review of the second Actuality
Craft exhibition in the art magazine Atelier, Yokokawa Kiichir summed up the signifi-
cance of the new approach to craft. He identified the prevailing problem of craft at Teiten
as a deviation from the utilitarian nature of craft and a tendency to become an exhibition
art, while Actuality Craft, through their program and practice . . . [and] with their mod-
ern intelligence, regained utility, which is the legitimate nature of craft.99 Yokokawa saw
that while the groups principle utility equals beauty was nothing new, it appeared new
because Japanese craft in general was detached from the nature and principle of craft. He
thus hailed the groups display as an effort to solve the dilemma of the conventional display
that treated craft only as visually appealing objects.100 The Mukei members traveled to old
and newly established craft districts around Japan to propagate the ideas and principles of
the New Craft.
While the New Craft was gathering momentum, the governments efforts were directed
to promoting the export of craft on the commercial, industrial level around its research
institution Ministry of Commerce and Industry Craft Instruction Center (Shksh Kgei
Shidsho). In response to these developments, various craft theories were put forward as
scholars and craft practitioners recognized the need to address the problem of overlapping
concepts of art, craft, and industry. Western ideassuch as Bauhaus and Vienna Work-
shopwere also considered, as well as a number of home-grown theories on improving
the quality of mass-produced industrial designs for export. While each of these theories
contributed to the discussion on various forms of craft, they failed to achieve a fundamen-
tal consensus on the nature of craft. Kaneko Kenji argues that this was because all were
424|Chiaki Ajioka

trapped in the paradigm that craft was utility plus beauty rather than the process of the
material and technique, wrapped in the mist called utility.101

The Mingei Movement

The Mingei movement is one of the best-known modern Japanese craft movements outside
Japan, largely due to Bernard Leachs advocacy. Too often, however, it is discussed in iso-
lation and as a movement that evolved around Yanagi Setsu and his Mingei theory. The
following is an attempt to examine it within the wider environment of craft production.
Yanagi Setsu, a religious philosopher, played an important role in the magazine
Shirakaba, publishing a number of essays on religion, mysticism, and art, as well as corre-
sponding with overseas artists and attending to the magazines overall layout design.102 In the
late 1920s, after Leach had departed Japan, he wrote The Beauty of Ceramics (Tjiki no bi),
published in the magazine Shinch in January 1921. In this essay, Yanagi discusses Korean
white porcelain of the Choson period as well as the works of Leach and Tomimoto. Yanagi is
modest when discussing beauty in this early writing, qualifying it as his personal percep-
tion, or taste.103 Tomimoto also shared Yanagis interest in Korean ceramics. They were in
Korea together in 1922, conducting research and working on the first exhibition of Korean
ceramics in Korea. In a special issue of the art magazine Ch bijutsu (Central art) on Tomi-
moto, Yanagi described Tomimoto as the one and only Japanese potter that is proceeding
along the main path toward beauty and that the depth of beauty always springs from an
element that is essential to true art, and Tomimoto firmly possesses the element.104
Hamada Shji, another protagonist in the movement, returned from St. Ives on the
news of the Great Kant Earthquake of September 1923. He arrived in Japan in 1924 to
stay in Kyoto with his friend Kawai. Kawai, for his part, was anxious to see Hamada; his
own success in recreating Chinese imperial ceramics left him unsatisfied. Hamada recalls:

[original in English] He had tried imitating Chinese techniques, but he could not
outdo the Chinese pots; his work always fell short of what he was trying to emulate,
and because of this [his work] became louder and louder. Kawai probably knew this.105

Yanagi also moved to Kyoto in 1924. Hamada eventually introduced Kawai to Yanagi, and
they quickly became close friends. They shared their admiration for the slipware, which
Hamada collected in Britain, and for Yanagis recent discovery, the carved Buddhist stat-
ues by Mokujiki Shnin, a wandering monk of the eighteenth century. It would be wrong,
however, to think that Kawai had been influenced by Yanagi, as their relationship is
popularly understood. On the contrary, it seems more likely that Kawai had more influ-
ence on Yanagi than Yanagi had on Kawai. For example, in his lecture titled The Heart
of the First-Born Ceramics (Tki no shosanshin), delivered in 1924 at the Kyoto Imperial
Museum (now the Kyoto National Museum), Kawai describes how a potter who makes
hundreds of everyday wares to make a living mechanically draws the same pattern over
and over until the pattern begins to take its own life.106 This image of the nameless pot-
ter and his designs became well known since Yanagi made it an example of unintentional
beauty in his later writing. However, this kind of observation could only have been made
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 425

by a practicing potter, particularly a thinking potter like Kawai, and it would make better
sense that this image was one of Kawais contributions to Yanagis Mingei theory.
In Kyoto, Yanagi, Kawai, and Hamada often visited local ceramics markets to rum-
mage for wares. While visiting the stalls at the markets, they learned that the sellers were
calling their cheaper commodities, from which the three men found their favorite objects,
getemono (low-grade objects), as opposed to jtemono (high-grade items), which were pur-
chased by the more upmarket shop owners. So when Yanagi first wrote an essay on the
beauty of folk crafts, he gave it the title Getemono no bi (The beauty of low-grade objects).
Around late 1925, they coined the word mingei (as the abbreviation for minsh teki
kgei or folk-style craft) and this word was used in the Prospectus of the Establishment of
a Japan Folk Art Gallery (Nihon Mingei Bijutsukan Setsuritsu Shuisho), which was drawn
up on January 10, 1926, when Yanagi, Kawai, and Hamada were staying at Mount Kya,
one of Japans major Buddhist temple establishments since the ninth century, and signed
by Tomimoto, Kawai, Hamada, and Yanagi. The prospectus consists of three short sec-
tions: the purpose, the project, and the funds.107 It also indicated that four supporters had
already committed to provide funds to the project. Thirty copies of the prospectus were
privately published and circulated among prospective supporters.
It is important to note that at this point in time Yanagi had not developed his Mingei
theory, in which he would claim that the beauty of folk crafts surpassed that of crafts made
by individual craft artists (sakka). Of the four committed supporters, two were Tomimotos
patrons. One of them, Nojima Yasuz, was a seminal figure in modern Japanese photog-
raphy who regularly held exhibitions of Tomimotos works at his gallery Kabutoya and at
his home. Another was Hamadas patron, who paid for the potters passage to Britain in
1920. In other words, these supporters offered to assist the project not because they were
converted to Yanagis theory but possibly because they were sympathetic to the groups
aesthetic and their cause.
Beside the four men who signed the prospectus proper, three other names are included
in the document: Aoyama Jir (19011979) is named as an additional selector; the account-
ing work was assigned to Aoyama, Ishimaru Shigeharu, and Uchiyama Shz. Aoyama
is today known as a ceramic connoisseur, a book designer, and as a literary critic, whose
associates included some prominent writers of the Shwa period. Aoyama began collect-
ing antique ceramics at an early age,108 and by 1927 was involved in publications on ceram-
ics. His writings were published by Kseikai, a publisher run by Kurahashi Tjir, a busi-
nessman and ceramics enthusiast. In the 1920s Aoyama and Yanagi frequently discussed
Korean and Japanese folk crafts, showing one another their latest acquisitions. Yanagi and
others clearly considered Aoyamas discerning power sufficiently high to include him as a
selector of objects for the proposed folk gallery.109 Ishimaru, an academic and a nephew of
Yanagis, ran a literary coterie magazine called Yamamayu, of which Aoyama was a mem-
ber, and Aoyama promoted Hamadas works through the magazine.110 This brief sketch of
relationships provides a profile of a circle of friends supporting and stimulating each other
through the aesthetic appreciation of objectsor the discovery of beauty. And on the sub-
ject of beauty, Aoyamas view was clear:

No great painter ever painted beauty. No great poet has ever sung of beauty. Beauty
cannot be painted or sung. It is a discovery, a creation, of those who see it.111
426|Chiaki Ajioka

Some Characteristics of Yanagis Mingei Theory

Yanagi revised Getemono no bi and included it in a collection of his essays Zakki no bi

(The beauty of ordinary wares),112 published by Kseikai.113 This developed into the theory
that is now familiar to the students and scholars of the Mingei movement when it was pub-
lished as Kgei no bi (The beauty of craft), a part of a series titled The Way of Craft (Kgei
no michi) in the magazine Daichwa (Great harmony) between 1927 and 1928.114 The major
content of Kgei no bi is an aesthetic re-evaluation of folk crafts. Its contents have been
closely studied and analyzed in English publications, so I will not repeat them here, but I
will merely point out its two characteristics.115 The first is Yanagis categorization of crafts
into art crafts and folk craftsthe former by individual craft artists and the latter by
ordinary people for everyday use. He subdivides art crafts into individualistic crafts,
which are expressions of the individual, and aristocratic crafts, in which the show of
skills is the priority. He also subdivides folk crafts into guild crafts, which are imbued
with creativity of the people, and capitalist crafts, which are mechanical in nature. Of
those, Yanagi insists, it is the guild crafts that express the supreme beauty of craft, with
its characteristics of warmth, simplicity, and familiarity.
The second striking feature of the article is the oratorical and decisive tone of his argu-
ment, which echoes Shirakabas subjective art criticism of the previous decade. Clearly by
this time Yanagi had vested his personal aesthetic with universal authority. In fact, in the
discovery of the beauty of craft Yanagi brought together his preceding intellectual inqui-
ries into spiritual truth in religious philosophy and, through his discovery of Mokujiki
Shnins carvings and the Korean white porcelain of the Choson period, his confidence in
his own discernment.
At this point Yanagi had turned his back on the contemporary crafts. Accordingly, his
estimation of Tomimotos work changed from the unconditional praise of 1922 to a carefully
worded criticism in his comments in 1927: [Tomimotos] patterns approach the spirit of
nanga [literati-style painting], and I cannot help but feel that the beauty of their brushwork
surpasses that of his ceramics.116 Yanagi uses this argument to support his claims: that the
works of craft artists are not craft proper (jun kgei) but art; that because their works are
craft art, they are impure craft (fujun kgei); and that the beauty of craft art is infe-
rior to that of craft proper.117 Since no radical change in Tomimotos work can be observed
between 1922 and 1927, one has good grounds to argue that Yanagi changed his aesthetic
evaluation of Tomimotos work after he had established his canon of beauty, in which the
beauty of ordinary wares was to have supremacy, perhaps even against his own perception.
Some heated exchanges between Yanagi and members of the New Craft movement over
his claims also echo similar debates in which he took part during his Shirakaba period.118
At the time Yanagi was polishing his Mingei theory, the Mukei artists were focusing
on creating objects that would decorate the modern homes of the young bourgeois.119
In 1928 Takamura Toyochika (fig. 15.3) expressed his irritation toward some critics who,
quoting William Morris, claimed that crafts should be for people:

We thought about [Morris] fifteen years ago, and we have grown out of it. We the
makers are much ahead [of the critics]. How deeply I was moved by Morriss work and
his words! But I am not moved now. It makes me laugh to think of a critic who happily
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 427

tries to lecture us on Morris. Look at the works of good craft artists. They express the
spirit of new Japan. Sugita Kad, Kitahara Senroku, Nait Haruji are definitely Japa-
nese artists. They cannot be anywhere outside Japan.120

Clearly, Toyochika and others were confident of their place and role in modern Japa-
nese society. The humanist ideas of Ruskin and Morris had freed them from the con-
ventional craft values and helped them focus on their own environment and their roles
in it. Toyochika was now teaching at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. The New Craft was
becoming the mainstream; it had found its feet thanks to Ruskin and Morris, but now they
had become unnecessary in the new environment in which the artists found themselves.
Tomimoto, on the other hand, was not so sure of the future direction of Japanese crafts.
He did not submit his work to Teiten. Instead, he joined yga painter Umehara Ryzabur
(18881986) in his National Painting Society (Kokugakai) in 1928.121
Tomimoto was more enthusiastic than any other craft artist around Yanagi about pro-
ducing good and cheap products in large quantities, and he showed no hesitation about
incorporating machine production for the purpose. The reason he was closer to the Mingei

Figure 15.3. Takamura

Toyochika (18901972),
flower vase with two
handles, 1920. Bronze cast-
ing, 22.8 12.6 cm. Craft
Gallery, National Museum
of Modern Art, Tokyo.
TAKAMURA Tadashi.
428|Chiaki Ajioka

group than to the mainstream New Craft artists despite his earlier association with the
latter may have been that he saw a potential in the former to develop a new philosophy of
craft, which would be able to carry the groups aesthetics into a new social and industrial
environment. This was certainly the purpose of the group when it signed the prospectus.
Yanagi, however, was hesitant about sharing Tomimotos urge for a craft revolution, par-
ticularly after the failure of the Kamigamo Craft Cooperative in the late 1920s. In the
mid 1930s, when Tomimoto saw where the Mingei movement was heading, he left the
group and went his own way.
In 1931, Yanagi, Aoyama, and Ishimaru began the publication of Kgei (Craft) as a
mouthpiece for the Mingei group to publish its research and discussion on crafts. Before
the first issue came out, however, Yanagi and Aoyama clashed, and Yanagi took over the
editorship.122 It is not difficult to surmise that Aoyama wanted to keep Yanagis canon of
beauty at arms length and retain a wider scope for craft in general, while Yanagi intended
to devote the magazine to folk craft (hence Aoyama insisted on the title Kgei, while Yanagi
wanted to call it Mingei).123

The New Mingei Movement

Yanagi had been known among the provincial intellectuals around Japan through
Shirakaba and his subsequent travels in his quest for Mokujiki Shnin from 1924 to 1926.
He followed the footsteps of the wandering monk who had left his carved statues all over
Japan and as a result had developed personal relationships with people of various inter-
ests and means. His Kgei no michi, with its oratorical tone, also converted a number of
people, who took it as a kind of gospel. The most prominent of them was Yoshida Shya
(18981972), an ear, nose, and throat doctor in Tottori. Yoshida went to the medical school
in Niigata Prefecture between 1917 and 1921. There, through a literary activity, he met
Shikiba Ryzabur (18911975), who later became a psychopathologist.124 They were ardent
readers of the magazine Shirakaba. Yoshida then volunteered for military service and
worked at hospitals around Japan, returning to Tottori to open a clinic in 1931. Inspired
by Yanagis writings on folk crafts, he had been collecting local crafts when a group of
earthenware bowls in a local shop attracted his attention. They were fired at Ushinoto,
some seventeen kilometers south of Tottori City. Yoshida visited the kiln and soon decided
to revive it by selecting some traditional designs or creating new designs to match the
modern lifestyle. Yoshida then expanded the scheme to include textiles, woodwork, and
other crafts in the region. His aim was to put Yanagis theory into practice, to create a New
Mingei (Shin Mingei) that would preserve the best of tradition but also produce items that
would respond to contemporary demands. He raised funds to provide the necessary capi-
tal and soon opened a shop called Takumi (workmanship) in Tottori. To create demand
for the New Mingei, he organized the Tottori Mingei Promotion Society to spread Yanagis
ideas on Mingei and to promote the products of his workmen.
Yoshidas perception of the Mingei movement was shared by many othersthe second
generation Mingei group, as it weremany of whom were also engaged in collecting and
instigating similar revivals. Under their initiative the magazine Mingei Monthly (Gekkan
Mingei) was published in 1939. Shortly after its launch, Yoshida wrote:
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 429

The Mingei movement is a social reform movement based on beauty. . . . The origin
of the Mingei movement is traced to the writing Kgei no michi by Master Yanagi
Setsu. . . . Later some craft artists emerged who agreed with the view of Mingei and
who attempted to acquire the truth of the healthy beauty of ordinary crafts and to
recreate it in their work. Next, the Japan Folk Craft Association was established and
the magazine Kgei was published, and the movement began to take shape. . . . The
future of the Mingei movement will be centered around Takumi.125

Yoshidas view, to look up to Yanagi as the single source of inspiration and see the aim
of the movement as a kind of spiritual liberation, has since been held by most Mingei
activists. The religious implications of Yanagis arguments were accepted and reinforced
by some influential Christian members such as Tonomura Kichinosuke, Muraoka Kageo,
and Yuasa Hachir. This new group extended its influence within the movement after the
formation of the Japan Folk Crafts Association in 1934.
The associations main function was to be the point of contact and exchange for
the growing New Mingei production centers and their outlet Takumi, which now had a
shop in Tokyo.126 With the association established, the New Mingei group in fact became
the Mingei movement. Consequently, until recent years, the official history has largely
failed to explain why Aoyama, Ishimaru, and Tomimoto were there in the first place, or
why they left.
Tomimoto was dismayed when Yanagi began to admit New Mingei works into the
Kokugakai exhibition in the 1930s.127 The New Mingei was developing in various sites
around Japan. The producers sought guidance from Yanagi, Hamada, Kawai, and some-
times Leach, who visited the sites. It soon became apparent that Yanagi, whose sharp eye
made him discard a vast number of Mingei before selecting extraordinary objects among
them, was now compelled to compromise his standard in order to encourage the New
Mingei to grow. When the Japan Folk Crafts Museum opened in 1936, the Mingei group
of craft artists left Kokugakai. However, in 1946 its leader Umehara Ryzabur recalled
Yanagi and his group. This time, Tomimoto left the association in protest. Kokugakai has
since been the main exhibition venue, alongside the Japan Folk Crafts Museum, for the
craft artists associated with the Mingei movement.

The Japan Folk Crafts Museum and the hara Museum of Art

From the time when he wrote the prospectus of the Japan Folk Art Museum, Yanagi
wanted a venue to display his and his friends collections as the physical evidence of his
aesthetic: a connoisseurs oeuvre is his collection. It was not until 1931 that the first Japan
Folk Crafts Museum opened in the property of Takabayashi Hye, a wealthy collector of
Japanese clocks from Shizuoka Prefecture.128 This first museum was unsuccessful due to
its remote location and growing disagreements between Takabayashi and Yanagi. A few
years later, however, the Kurashiki textile giant and philanthropist hara Magosabur
(18801943) offered to build a museum in Tokyo.129 The Japan Folk Crafts Museum (Min-
geikan) at Komaba, Tokyo, was completed in 1936. It represents Yanagis connoisseurship
and taste, both in the collection and the museum building itself.130 Its display includes
430|Chiaki Ajioka

works by Mingei sakka, as Hamada, Leach, Kawai, and other individual artists of folk-
style craft of the movement were called. This term, literally individual artists of folk craft
is somewhat contradictory, and the term djin sakka (coterie artists) has been adopted in
recent years.131 The new term implies that the artists were associates of the movement
rather than a focus on the unknown craftsman. However, a change of term would mean
little unless their position in relation to the movement is properly understood.
While the Mingeikan was Yanagis oeuvre, some outstanding works of the Min-
gei sakka are housed in the three annex buildings at the hara Museum of Art, built
by hara Sichir (19091968), Magosaburs son and a well-known patron of arts and
music. Magosabur had discovered Hamadas pottery in 1931 through his personal doctor
and friend. Immediately attracted by the simple yet bold expression of Hamadas works,
he began collecting them.132 Through Hamada, he became acquainted with the Mingei
group and came to be one of the movements most generous supporters. After his fathers
death, Sichir continued to support Yanagis activities and sponsored the craft artists of
the group. In the hara Museum, Tomimoto, Leach, Hamada, and Kawai are represented
in the annex built in 1961; it was expanded two years later to house works by Serizawa
Keisuke (18951984) and Munakata Shik (19031975). The annex buildings themselves,
refurbished traditional rice storehouses in the region, were designed to blend into the sur-
roundings, part of which has been preserved due to Sichirs passionate plea.133 This col-
lection in the annex buildings represents some of the most compelling works by the five
modern craft artists and a print artist, as well as the taste of the two generations of the
hara family.134 According to Inoue Tar, Sichirs biographer, while the father and son
shared a passion for Mingei and works by the Mingei sakka, they did not always agree on
other art or music: While the father practiced the tea ceremony and collected tea utensils,
the son did not; the father, on the other hand, showed little interest in the Western or
modern art that the son adored.135 Their sympathy with Mingei (as selected by Yanagi and
others) and Mingei sakka, therefore, may indicate the scope of their aesthetic appealthe
synthesis of the rustic and the modern.136

The Mingei Artists and Yanagis Theory

As mentioned above, for the early craft artists of the Mingei groupLeach, Tomimoto,
Hamada, and Kawaithe individualistic pursuit of their craft happily coexisted with
their admiration for the old folkware that their eyes discerned. Also, as much as Yanagis
persuasive writings, it was the high profile of those craft artists that promoted the Min-
gei movement as a whole. This raises the question as to the nature of the interrelation-
ship between Yanagis theory and the Mingei sakka, particularly those who had joined
the movement after Yanagi had formulated his Mingei theorysuch as Serizawa Keisuke,
Munakata Shik, and the woodwork artist Kuroda Tatsuaki (19041982). Let us briefly
consider Kurodas case as an example.
Kuroda was born the son of nushi, a woodwork artisan who produced the base for
maki-e (sprinkled gold on lacquer), and Kuroda learned the family business.137 The goal of
a nushi was to make a faultless base for the maki-e maker, who took all the credit for the
finished piece, and his father taught him to accept this. Seeing Kawais work in 1921 as well
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 431

as reading Tomimotos essays, however, Kuroda realized that there were artists in the craft
industry, and he was determined to become one himself. He met Kawai and, through him,
Yanagi. In 1927, in response to Yanagis writing, Kuroda embarked on a short-lived guild-
style workshop in Kamigamo, Kyoto, together with two others.
A small anecdote illustrates Kurodas attitude to his work. When Kuroda held a solo
exhibition, possibly his first one in 1935, his older brother commented that he was embar-
rassed by the exhibits because, in his eyes, they were toys, that is, less than professional
work. Kurodas answer to his brother was skills can be measured by a ruler, but expression
cannot be measured.138 Seen in this light, Kurodas admiration for Kawai was based on the
latters expressive art (fig. 15.4), with which Yanagi was becoming uncomfortable.
Kurodas work, inspired by Western as well as Korean folk furniture designs,139 is
characterized by boldness that brings out the liveliness of the material. Even in his small
shell-inlayed work (raden), which he made from the early years of his career, his treatment
of the material was unconventional; one may say that the shell fragments are used, in the
Greenbergian sense, to draw attention to art, rather than to conceal art (see Plate 26).
In the Japanese context, however, it is reminiscent of some preEdo-period works. One
is inclined to think that the talented craft artist needed directional inspiration but not
artistic instruction from Yanagi, who was a nonpractitioner. On the other hand, the artists
of the Mingei groupKawai, Hamada, and Leach, and to a certain extent Tomimotoas
well as their patrons, including the haras, provided mentorship and practical support to
younger artists such as Kuroda, Munakata, Serizawa, and others. Kurodas description of
the groupa kind of brotherhood searching for truth, which later came to be called the
Mingei movementis telling in its distinction between what it was for the artists and how
it was perceived from outside.140

Figure 15.4. Kawai Kanjir

(18901966), lidded jar, iron
glaze, 1943. Stoneware,
17.2 19.8 cm. hara
Museum of Art, Kurashiki.
K AWAI Suyako.
432|Chiaki Ajioka

From the late 1930s, Japanese artists found themselves in a restricted environment.
The military authority tightened its control over all cultural organizations through amal-
gamating groups and publications, as well as through rationing art and craft materials.
The Japan National Service Art Society (Nippon Bijutsu Hkokukai) was organized as
the only channel through which the artist could obtain materials. The Nihonga painter
Yokoyama Taikan (18681958) was appointed as the president and Takamura Toyochika
as the secretary general.141 The appointment of Toyochika, who did not share Yokoyamas
unconditional support for the national cause, suggests that the New Craft had been estab-
lished in the mainstream alongside the conservative current.

Postwar Developments in Crafts

Perhaps the most significant creative development in the wake of World War II, nota-
bly the birth of the object ware in ceramics, was initiated by Sdeisha. This group was
formed in Kyoto in 1948 by three young potters, Yagi Kazuo (19181979), Yamada Hikaru
(19242001), and Suzuki Osamu (19262001).142 These young potters, de Waal claims,
were returning to clay, being effaced by it: in doing so they expressed their feeling
that the older generation of potters had betrayed and smothered the material.143 In other
words, they turned their focus from the vessel (i.e. utility or suggestion of it) to the mate-
rial itselfclay and the process of pottery.
The object ware, as exemplified in Yagi Kazuos Mr. Samsas Walk (1954) (fig. 15.5),
signaled a departure from the centuries of ceramic tradition. By ignoring utility, it
opened up immense possibilities to the potter. As symbolized in the title of the work taken
from Kafkas novel Metamorphosis, the Sdeisha artists aimed to metamorphose the clay
material rather than let the form dictate the material. This tension between the form and
material is perhaps the most compelling feature of their work. As Kaneko points out, how-
ever, they did not deny utility: it was the crossing of the border into a completely alien
world called a new logic of plastic art.144 Alongside the object ware, they continued to
produce ceramics for use.
As much as a result of their search for new expression, their work was a response to
the new postwar environmentthe sudden release from the restricting themes and styles,
the large influx of new Western art, particularly abstract art, and the visit by the Japanese-
American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (19041988). Noguchi was working beyond the con-
ventional boundary of sculpture and stimulated Japanese artists across media. As their
predecessors had done in the early twentieth century, they began seeking their place in the
newly opened international context. One result was the discovery of Japans oldest clay
objects of the Jmon period (10,000300 BCE). Artist Okamoto Tar was the strongest
advocate of their primordial energetic forms. Suzuki Osamu drew his inspiration from
them, which was reflected in his choice of the title as well as the form and the texture of
unglazed clay.
If the Sdeisha artists freed clay from the tyranny of the vessel and confronted the
materiality of the medium, they were not alone. In art, the year after Mr. Samsas Walk
appeared, Yoshihara Jir (19051972) formed his now famous Gutai group. In the groups
manifesto, Yoshihara wrote, In Gutai Art the human spirit and the material reach out
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 433

Figure 15.5. Yagi Kazuo

(19181979), Mr. Samsas Walk
(Zamuza-shi no sanpo), 1954.
Stoneware, 27.5 27 14 cm.
Private collection (permanent
loan to the National Museum
of Modern Art, Kyoto). YAGI
Akira. PhotoMORIKAWA
Noboru.

their hands [toward] each other, even though they are otherwise opposed to each other.
The material is not absorbed by the spirit. The spirit does not force the material into sub-
mission.145 The young artists around Yoshihara tackled the material in various original
ways. In another new development of old traditions, Teshigahara Sf (19001979), who
founded the avant-garde ikebana (flower arrangement) school of Sgetsu, also took advan-
tage of the imaginative potters such as Suzuki Osamu and Yasuhara Kimei (19061980)
and commissioned unconventional vases for ikebana.146
The loss of the Nara period mural from fire at Hryji, Nara, in 1949 prompted a call
for a national law for the preservation of traditional arts, resulting in the enactment of the
Protection for Cultural Properties Act in 1950. The term cultural properties (bunkazai)
included intangible cultural properties, that is, performance art and craft techniques.
The protection of these intangible properties took the form of nominating and support-
ing individuals such as the Holders of Important Intangible Cultural Property (popularly
known as the Living National Treasures).147 The government also founded the Traditional
Craft Association (Dent Kgeikai) in 1955, with its office in the Tokyo National Museum,
and began hosting the annual Japan Traditional Craft Exhibition (Nihon Dent Kgeiten),
which continues today.148
While the government took active steps in supporting traditional craft, some young
craft artists have taken up the challenge of reviving old techniques that had been lost due
to the unwillingness of the holders to pass them on, or to the lack of successors. An exam-
ple of this trend is Kitamura Tatsuo (art name Unryan, born 1952), whose lively maki-e
lacquer pieces are imbued with the aesthetic and humor of premodern Japan, underpinned
by some extraordinary techniques he has mastered through studying old works. Kitamura
does not belong to established craft associations; his works are purchased by Japanese con-
noisseurs as well as by overseas collectors and museums.
434|Chiaki Ajioka

The establishment of the Japan Traditional Craft Exhibition provided the makers of
traditional craft with a dedicated venue and status. This eventually led to their departure
from Nitten, which became a nongovernment corporation in 1957. As a result, the New
Craft successorsthe Contemporary Craft (Gendai kgei) artistscame to dominate the
largest annual national exhibition. Department stores usually provide solo exhibition ven-
ues for established Contemporary Craft artists, and their works are often purchased by
large corporations. A number of other craft associations exist today. Kokugakai remains
the main exhibition society for the Mingei group of contemporary craft artists, including
Takita Kichi (born 1927), who studied ceramics at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and
Music (formerly the Tokyo School of Fine Arts), then under Tomimoto and Hamada. His
works such as the recent Plum Blossom White Porcelain (2000) (fig. 15.6) represent quali-
ties in craft that Yanagi would have cherishedunpretentious and disarming yet with a
strong sense of individuality.

Redefining Craft for the New Era

One may argue that the mid-1950s was the beginning of a new era for the history of Japa-
nese craft. If craft was understood at the start of the modern era as a category somewhere
between mechanical industry and art, where the two categories vaguely overlap, even this
vague notion was overthrown in the Sdeisha years. This new era is characterized by the
now widespread belief and attitude, held by both the public and the makers, that creativity
and individual expression are as vital to craft as to any other form of art. To analyze the
implications, however, one would require a different framework for the concept of craft,
and such a concept must be informed by the fundamental change in the environment for
Japanese crafts: globalization.

Figure 15.6. Takita

Kichi (born 1927),
white porcelain bowl
with celadon glaze,
h 8.5 dia 22.0 cm.
Private collection,
Takita Kchi.
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 435

The 1950s saw the beginning of movements and communication among craft mak-
ers across national and cultural boundaries on an unprecedented scale. In the postwar
years a number of young people in Western countries were inspired by Leachs idea of the
independent studio potter, and they took up ceramics with A Potters Book beside them
as their bible and The Unknown Craftsman as their theoretical/aesthetic guide. Also, as
Edmund de Waal points out, there was a surge of interest in Zen among Western art-
ists and musicians through the writings of D. T. Suzuki.149 It seems that Leachs writ-
ings not only resonated Zencloseness to nature, honesty of materials, pursuit of simple
and healthy beauty, and so onbut also brought the worlds attention to the works of
the individual artists of the Mingei group, including Serizawa Keisuke, but particularly
Hamada, whose ceramics appeared to embody both the Zen ideals and the power of a
great artist. The tour of the United States by Leach, Hamada, and Yanagi in 19521953
left a profound impact on craft in America and beyond. When Hamada visited Montana,
Peter Voulkos (19242002) saw him demonstrate throwing. Voulkos in turn became a
legend himself with his abstract ceramic sculpture that exudes the power of the clay mate-
rial. For many Western artists, the idea of Zen in its secular (and popular) form was to
serve as an excuse to free themselves from all conventions by which they were condi-
tioned. It is telling that this new approach to clay occurred in Japan and the United States
simultaneously.150
The Tokyo Olympic Games (1964) and the Osaka World Expo (1970), as well as the
international art and cultural programs around that time, resulted in further cross-fertil-
ization of craft producers as well as artists and designers. Perhaps the most visible instance
in craft was the introduction of Scandinavian-inspired practical crockery kurafuto (as
craft in English) promoted by Uchida Kunio (19101994). There was also an influx of
foreign potters, many of whom worked with Mingei group pottersHamada, Kawai
Kanjir and his nephew Takeichi (19081989), and othersbut they also embraced the
revival Momoyama wares and regional ceramics, including Bizen.151 Yanagihara Mutsuo
(19342004), on the other hand, went to the United States from 1966 to 1967 to teach at the
University of Washington, where Howard Kottler (19301989) gave him a bottle of metal-
lic glaze and suggested that Yanagihara explore new techniques.152
Japanese crafts, for their part, had a great deal to offer the world. Of particular impor-
tance was the respect craftworks commanded in Japan, as expressed by their market value.
Such a level of respect seemed to have positively contributed to the image of craft in West-
ern as well as non-Western countries. Such interest was reflected in the book In Praise
of Hands, published in 1974 by the World Crafts Council (established in 1954), which
featured a full-page photograph of Hamada Shji at the potters wheel and an extract of
Yanagis text The Kizaemon Tea-bowl from The Unknown Craftsman, in which Yanagi
emphasizes that Kizaemon, one of the most celebrated tea bowls in Japan, was an ordi-
nary Korean food bowl.153
In this new environment, two major trends in the conceptualization of modern Japa-
nese crafts have emerged among Japanese scholars. One is to adopt the international con-
cept to Japan and categorize craftworks according to media, as claywork, fiberwork,
and so on. This medium-based approach does not distinguish craft from contemporary
art.154 The other considers that craft differentiates itself from contemporary art by the
material and the process. Kaneko Kenji has coined the term crafting formationthe
436|Chiaki Ajioka

self expression through the process (e.g. in ceramics, potters wheelclay formation
dryingglazingfiringfinish)to distinguish the post-Sdeisha works both from the
Western concept of studio craft and from contemporary art.155
During the early decades of the modern period, Japanese craft reinvented itself by
ingesting and responding to outside influences. Craft in Japan had been highly developed
both in technique and connoisseurship when it entered the world stage. The adoption of
the Western concept of craft, as against fine art, was a necessary process for Japanese craft
to join the Western world, and while the concept of craft may have suffered from an iden-
tity crisis because of the new international context in which it found itself, the makers
continued to produce and reinvent. The dissolution of Sdeisha in 1998 after its fiftieth
exhibition prompted one to question the twentieth-century mantra of individual creativ-
ity and expression in craft. At the same time, Japanese craft itself has become fluid. It
can no longer be defined by geography, nationality/cultural background of the maker, or
the material/technique involved. In this global environment, Japan can contribute to the
intercultural communities by way of conceptualizing craft in two ways: one from univer-
sal perspectives, as the two strains mentioned above, and the other from national par-
ticularities, or as Tsuruoka Mayumi says, expressions of Japanese aesthetic sensibilities in
Japanese language, with global currency.156 Perhaps it is time to re-examine what elements
have been marginalized by the cult of the individual.

Notes

1. A good example of this position is that Japanese aesthetics are commonly described
in terms of the two prototypes of prehistoric earthenware: Jmon and Yayoi. See Tani-
kiawa Tetsuz, Jmon teki genkei to Yayoi teki genkei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1984).
2.Sat Dshin, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu: Bi no seijigaku (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
kbunkan, 1999), p. 50.
3. Perhaps the most striking reminder of the premodern hierarchy of the arts at its
high end is the Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya. Its display plan, beginning with swords
and armor, reflects the value of the objects for the daimy.
4. Various records of the international and domestic expositions have been published
over the last decades, mainly by the Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Proper-
ties and the Tokyo National Museum. For their analysis in the context of cultural policy of
the Meiji period, see Kitazawa Noriaki, Me no shinden (Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha, 1989);
Kitazawa Noriaki, Kkai no bijutsushi (Tokyo: Brcke Inc., 2000); Sat Dshin, Nihon
bijutsu tanj (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1996); Sat Dshin, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu (Tokyo,
Yoshikawa kbunkan, 1999).
5. The first exposition to show Japanese products as a group was in London in 1862,
when Rutherford Alcock, the first British minister to Japan, collected and submitted local
objects. Japan was not an active participant in this exposition. For the official title of world
expositions in this paper, I followed the exhibition catalogue Tokyo National Museum et
al., Arts of East and West from World Expositions: 18551900: Paris, Vienna and Chicago
(Tokyo: NHK, NHK Promotions Co., Ltd., Nihon keizai shimbun, Inc., 2004).
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 437

6. Tanaka Yoshio and Hirayama Narinobu, eds., koku hakurankai sand kiy, vol. 1
(Tokyo: Moriyama Haruyasa, 1897), pp. 1112.
7. Sano acknowledges Wageners contribution in the koku hakurankai sand kiy
(vol. 1, p. 4). The document also includes Wageners biography (vol. 2, pp. 5372). Other
references include Urasaki Eishaku, Kindai bijutsu hattatsu-shi (Tokyo: Tokyo bijutsu,
1974), pp. 5357; Kaneko Kenji, ed., Bessatsu taiy: Meiji no sshoku kgei (Tokyo: heibon-
sha, 1990), pp. 131135.
8. Tanaka and Hirayama, koku hakurankai sand kiy, vol. 3, pp. 4850; Kaneko
Kenji, Bessatsu taiy, p. 5.
9. Tokyo National Museum et al., Arts of East and West, p. 10.
10. Tanaka and Hirayama, koku hakurankai sand kiy, vol. 1, pp. 1415.
11. Also written Kiritsu Ksh Kaisha in English. See The Committee of Hayashi
Tadamasa Symposium 2007, ed., Hayashi Tadamasa: Japonisme and Cultural Exchanges
(Tokyo: Brcke Inc., 2007), p. 194.
12.Hida Toyojir, Meiji no yushutsu kgei zuan (Kyoto: Kyoto shoin, 1987), pp.
341345.
13.Hida gives a list of people employed or commissioned by the company in Meiji no
yushutsu kgei zuan.
14.Wakai left the company in 1888 and established a partnership in Paris with
Hayashi Tadamasa (18531906), who was to be known as a dealer and collector and was
later appointed the Japanese chief secretary for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, Paris.
15. See Sat, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu, pp. 89, 96101; Tokyo National Museum et
al., Arts of East and West, pp. 4041.
16. Onchi zuroku, one of the compiled designs, was identified in 1993 in the collection
of the Tokyo National Museum. See Sat, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu, p. 101. Some images
from the catalogue and their applications are reproduced in Tokyo National Museum et
al., Arts of East and West, pp. 4447.
17.Urasaki, Nihon kindai bijutsu hattatsu shi, p. 163.
18.Sat, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu, p. 102.
19.Hida, Meiji no yushutsu kgei zuan, p. 350.
20. Kitazawa Noriaki, Me no shinden, pp. 140145. According to Kitazawa, the origi-
nal word in the German publication is Kunstgewerbe, yet the Japanese word came to be
known as a translation of Schne Kunst (p. 45).
21. Kume Kunitake, Tokumei zenken taishi bei kairan jikki, vol. 2 (Tokyo: 1878),
ch. 23, p. 53. A five-volume paperback edition has been published (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
19771982); Yamazaki Tsuyoshi, Kgeika tachi no Meiji Ishin (Osaka: Osaka Municipal
Museum, 1992), pp. 1516.
22.Kitazawa, Kkai no bijutsushi, pp. 218241.
23. The process of reclassification of products can be traced through the changing
entry rules for domestic expositions between 1877 and 1903. See also Suzuki Kenji, Gen-
shoku gendai Nihon no bijutsu: 14 kgei (Tokyo: Shgakukan, 1980), pp. 130134; Suzuki,
Kindai kgei no akebono, in Kaneko, Bessatsu taiy, pp. 69; Sat, Meiji kokka to kindai
bijutsu, pp. 104105.
24. Tokyo National Museum et al., Arts of East and West, pp. 1213; also see Suzuki,
Genshoku gendai Nihon no bijutsu, p. 153.
438|Chiaki Ajioka

25. Edmund de Waal, 20th Century Ceramics (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), p. 13.
26. The bilingual proceedings of Hayashi Tadamasa symposium (2007) contain illu-
minating papers on Hayashis activities in Paris and Japan.
27. Quoted in Suzuki, Kindai kgei no akebono, p. 8.
28. 1900-nen Pari bankoku hakurankai rinji hakurankai jimukyoku hkoku, vol. 1
(Tokyo: Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, 1902), p. 674.
29. Ibid., p. 667.
30.Sat, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu, pp. 6970.
31. Ibid., p. 53. This explains that while the curriculum of the Tokyo School of Fine
Arts included crafts, printmaking was completely disregarded. Also, before art was
established as high culture, some early oil paintings, because of their realistic repre-
sentation, were displayed as public entertainment. See Kinoshita Naoyuki, Bijutsu to iu
misemono (Tokyo: Chikuma shob, 1999); Sat, Nihon bijutsu no tanj, pp. 7073.
32.Urasaki, Kindai Nihon bijutsu hattatsu-shi, pp. 434436.
33.Suzuki, Genshoku gendai Nihon no bijutsu, p. 134.
34. These classical Japanese ceramic pieces were given to France at the 1878 Paris
exposition in return for a pair of Svre vases. See Tokyo National Museum et al., Arts of
East and West, pp. 156159; de Waal, 20th century Ceramics, pp. 2728.
35. Ibid., p. 493, 495.
36. See for example, Urasaki, Kindai Nihon bijutsu hattatsu-shi, pp. 434437.
37. Takamura Kun, Bakumatsu ishin kaikodan, pp. 263274.
38.Yamazaki, Kgeika tachi no Meiji ishin, pp. 1920; Ueno Naoteru, ed., Japanese
Arts & Crafts in the Meiji Era, Engl. adaptation by Richard Lane (Tokyo: Pan-Pacific Press,
1958), p. 118.
39. Ellen P. Conant, Nihonga: Transcending the Past, Japanese Style Painting 1868
1968 (St. Louis: The St. Louis Art Museum, 1995), p. 29.
40. See, for example, Arakawa Masaaki, Itaya Hazan no kgshiki tji sekai (Tokyo:
Shgakukan, 2001).
41. See Hirakawa Sukehiro, Wakon ysai no keifu (Tokyo: Kawaide shob shinsha,
1971).
42. See Watashi no kojin-shugi, in Sseki bunmei ron sh (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
1990), pp. 98138. The lecture was delivered in 1914 for Hojinkai, an association attached
to Gakushin (Peers school, now Gakushuin University). The members of the Shirakaba
group were its graduates.
43. For the following outline of the Bijutsu shinp and Iwamura Tru, I referred to
Azuma Tamaki, Bijutsu shinp to sono jidai, Bijutsu shinp: bekkan [reprint] (Tokyo:
Yagi shoten, 1985), pp. 267287.
44. The dates of Iwamuras second trip differ in some sources. Nakamura Giichi gives
19011902 in his Kindai Nihon bijutsu no sokumen: Meiji yoga to Igirisu bijutsu (Tokyo:
Zkeisha, 1976), p. 62. Since I wrote this chapter, a thorough biography of Iwamura has
been published, including a chronology: Tanabe Tru, Bijutsu hihy no senkusha Iwamura
Tru: Rasukin kara Morisu made (Tokyo: Fujiwara shoten, 2008). Tanabe gives the follow-
ing dates for Iwamuras trips: 18881992, 19001901, 19041905, 1914.
45.He was made professor in 1903. Nakamura, Kindai Nihon bijutsu no sokumen,
p. 79.
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 439

46. The articles are unsigned, but both Nakamura (Kindai Nihon bijutsu no sokumen,
pp. 7980) and Azuma (Bijutsu shinp to sono jidai, pp. 273274) identify the writer as
Iwamura.
47. See Tanabe Tru, Bijutsu hihy no senkusha Iwamura Tru, p. 268.
48.Nakamura Kindai Nihon bijutsu no sokumen, pp. 103105; Iwamura, Editorial,
Bijutsu shinp, February 5, 1912.
49. Takamura Toyochika, Jigaz (Tokyo: Ckron bijutsu shuppan, 1968), p. 150.
50. Perhaps the most candid expressions of his opinions are found in his Art Stu-
dents in Paris (Pari no bijutsu gakusei), published in 1903 after his second trip to France.
Takamura Ktar recalls how Iwamura, on his appointment at the school, stirred up
the whole school with his unconventional ways. See Takamura Ktar, Bijutsu gakk
jidai, in Takamura Ktar, Hagiwara Sakutar sh (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1953),
pp. 149150.
51. Takamura Toyochika, Jigaz, p. 151.
52. Sakai Saisui, Waga bijutsu kgeikai wa shin zun o yky su, Bijutsu shinp,
December 7, 1911.
53.Ibid.
54. Takamura Toyochika, Jigaz, pp. 224225.
55. It may be noted that it was Iwamura who recognized Ktars talents and per-
suaded his father Kun, professor of sculpture (woodcarving) at the Tokyo School of Fine
Arts, to send his son to France to study. See Takamura, Bijutsu gakk jidai, p. 150.
56. In reality, Ktar was forced to compromise in regards to some items. According
to the Takamura family record, the sold items included ceramic seals, Kuns woodcarv-
ings, Itaya Hazans vases, poem cards by the poets Yosano Tekkan and his wife Akiko,
woodcuts by Ssaku Hanga artists, and Ktars and his friends sketches and oil paint-
ings. See Takamura Toyochika, Ktar kais (Tokyo: Yshind, 1962), pp. 107110.
57. From the Tokyo nichinichi shinbun, quoted in Nitten-shi Hensan Iinkai, Nitten-
shi, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Nitten-shi hensan iinkai, 19801982), p. 189.
58. Takamura Toyochika, Ktar kais, p. 112.
59. Yamada Mitsuharu, Fujii Tatsukichi no shgai (Nagoya: Fbaisha, 1974), p. 47.
Fujii seems to have mentioned Los Angeles and Portland in separate occasions (p. 47).
There was a world exposition at Portland in 1905, at which Fujii may have been, but
according to available records his employer Hattori Tadasabur exhibited only at St. Louis.
Nagoya City Museum, Meijiki hakurankai shuppin shipp-k sran (Nagoya: Nagoya City
Museum, 1996), p. 63. Yamadas biography of Fujii also includes a photograph of him at
orange orchard, California, 1905. Unless noted otherwise, I have referred to this publica-
tion for Fujiis life.
60.Takamuras Rkand was selling Fujiis pieces in 1911. Takamura Toyochika,
Ktar kais, p. 109.
61. Most recent sources have the dates of his trip as 19071910, but Nitten-shi and
Tsudas autobiography Rgaka no issh (Tokyo: Chkron bijutsu shuppan, 1963) have
them as 19061909.
62. Takamura Toyochika, Jigaz, pp. 125126.
63. Tomimoto Kenkichi, Tomimoto Kenkichi jiden, Iroe jiki: Tomimoto Kenkichi
(Tokyo: Bunkacho, 1969), p. 72.
440|Chiaki Ajioka

64. Fukuyama Museum of Art et al., 1908/09 Rondon no seishun zengo: Shirataki Iku-
nosuke Minami Kunz Tomimoto Kenkichi to sono shhen (Fukuyama, Hiroshima: Fuku-
yama Museum of Art, 1989), p. 5.
65. Bijutsu shinp published a reprint of Ktars essay in its first issue after the article
appeared in the literary magazine Subaru.
66. April 15, 1912.
67.Ibid.
68.Tomimoto Kenkichi Kinenkan, Sog Bijutsukan, Nara Sog Bijutsukan, and
Asahi Shinbunsha, eds., Modan dezain no senkusha Tomimoto Kenkichi ten (Osaka: Asahi
shinbunsha, 2000), pp. 1517.
69. Kaneko Kenji, in Yabe Yoshiaki, Nihon yakimono-shi (Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha,
1998), pp. 165166.
70. The second show was given a slightly different title, Fyzankai.
71. For a thorough account of his life and work, see Suzuki Sadayuki, Baanaado Riichi
no shgai to geijutsu: Higashi to nishi no kekkon no vision (Kyoto: Minerva shob, 2006).
72. Edmund de Waal, Bernard Leach: St Ives Artists (London: Tate Gallery Publish-
ing, 1998), p. 13.
73. Bernard Leach, A Potters Book (London: Faber & Faber, 1976), p. 33.
74. Shirakaba, February 1912, p. 161.
75. Kawai Kanjir, Hi no chikai (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1996), p. 64.
76. Bernard Leach, Hamada: Potter (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1975), pp. 9394.
77. Azuma Tamaki, Bijutsu shinp kaidai, Bijutsu shinp: bekkan, p. 282.
78. Nakamura Giichi documents these instances in Nihon kindai bijutsu ronsshi
(Tokyo: Kyryd, 1981), pp. 151174, and Zoku Nihon kindai bijutsu ronsshi (Tokyo:
Kyryd, 1982), pp. 79103.
79. Edmund de Waal, 20th Century Ceramics, p. 14.
80. In 1913 Bijutsu shinp published two special issues on crafts (April 5 and May
5). Included were articles on Russian farmers crafts (by Tsukamoto Yasushi), on Masaki
Naohikos collection of primitive art objects, on Italian Majolica (by Iwamura) and on
Pacific Islander crafts (by Asakura Fumio).
81. Mark B. Sandberg, Effigy and Narrative: Looking into the Nineteenth-Century
Folk Museum, in Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, ed. Leo Charney and Vanessa
R. Schwartz, p. 333 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press,
1995).
82.Christine Guth, Art, Tea and Industry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1993), p. 7.
83. Taiy, a popular magazine for the upper middle class published from 1895 to 1928,
carried regular articles on the subject both in the arts and family sections, beginning
with its first issue.
84. See Guth, Art, Tea and Industry, p. 129.
85. The society became the Ty Tji Kenkykai, which has been the major body in
researching and publishing scientific studies of ceramics today.
86.One example of such relationship is Itaya Hazan and the industrialist Idemitsu
Saz (18851981), the oil giant and founder of the Idemitsu Museum of Arts.
87. Takamura Toyochika, Jigaz, p. 159.
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 441

88. Department stores have played a significant role with their art galleries, particu-
larly in the early twentieth century when commercial galleries were rare.
89. See Nakanod Kazunobu, Kindai Nihon no tgei-ka (Kyoto: Kawahara shoten,
1997), pp. 115116.
90. The female standing figure is pure sculpture, a fine art, while at the same time it
is functional. Likewise, craft has both useful and artistic aspects. Takamura Toyochika,
Jigaz, p. 158.
91. Suzuki Kenji, Genshoku gendai Nihon no bijutsu, pp. 175176.
92. Takamura Toyochika, Jigaz, pp. 165166.
93.Suzuki, Genshoku gendai Nihon no bijutsu, p. 179.
94. Takamura Toyochika, Takamura Toyochika bunsh, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Bunchid sho-
ten, l992), p. 13; Zensh, vol. 2, p. 13.
95. Nitten-shi Hensan Iinkai, Nitten-shi, vol. 8, pp. 244247.
96. Sumiya Kichir, Kjinsha to sono shhen, in Hokkaidritsu Kindai Bijutsu-
kan et al., Nihon kgei no seishunki 1920s1945 (Tokyo: Bijutsukan renraku kygikai and
Yomiuri shinbunsha, 1996), p. 124.
97. Takamura Toyochika, Jigaz, pp. 274275; Fk Shibazaki, ed., Kanki (Tokyo:
Han kgeisha, 1963), p. 10.
98. Takamura Toyochika, Jigaz, p. 278.
99. Gendai kgei bunka no dankai to Jitsuzai Kgei-ten no genjitsuteki yakuwari,
reprinted in Takamura Toyochika, ed., Dai nikai jitsuzai kgei-ten hkoku, p. 16 (Tokyo:
Jitsuzai kgei bijutsukai, 1937).
100. Ibid., p. 19.
101. Kaneko Kenji, Ekky monogatari (aruiwa seit no kgei) 1, Kgei gens 1
(1991): p. 29. I am grateful to Mr. Hida Toyojir for a copy of this important publication.
102. Shirakaba no. 10 (January 1911): p. 131; no. 21 (December 1911): p. 113.
103. Although some of Yanagis critics, such as Kitaji Rosanjin, had implied that
what Yanagi called beauty was nothing more than his personal taste, Idekawa Naoki
was the first to analyze the issue critically in his Mingei: Riron no hkai to yshiki no tanj
(Tokyo: Shinchsha, 1985), pp. 104114.
104. Ch bijutsu 8, no. 2 (1922): p. 88.
105.Leach, Hamada: Potter, p. 150.
106. Mrs. Tamae Sagi, curator of Kawai Kanjirs House, kindly presented me a copy
of the lecture paper.
107. According to the chronology in the Tomimoto exhibition 2000, Tomimoto signed
the prospectus when Yanagi, Hamada, and Kawai visited him in Nara in January 1926.
108. It is well known that Aoyama purchased a small Song cup at Kochkyo, one of
the most established antique shops in Tokyo, when he was fourteen. The following bio-
graphical notes are taken largely from the chronology in Aoyama Jir, Kamakura bunshi
kott kidan (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1992); Aoyagi Keisuke, Aoyama Jir nenpu, Shinch 90,
no. 6 (1993): pp. 96157.
109.Ogy Shinz, Aoyama Jir to Mingei und, Bessatsu taiy, no. 87 (1994): pp.
133138.
110. Aoyama Jir, Kamakura bunshi kott kidan, pp. 238239, 256257.
111. Ibid., p. 118.
442|Chiaki Ajioka

112.He changed the term getemono to zakki, because the former was increasingly
associated with vulgar meanings.
113. Ebina Tadashi, Kgei, Chawan sonota, Gepp, in Yanagi Setsu zensh, no.
20, ed. Mizuo Hiroshi, pp. 35 (Tokyo: Chikuma shob, 1982).
114. Daichwas chief editor was Mushanokji Saneatsu, one of the main writers of
Shirakaba, which ceased publication with the Great Kant Earthquake in 1923.
115. See, for example, Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman (Tokyo and New York: Kodan-
sha International, 1972); Japan Folk Crafts Museum and Glasgow Museums, Mingei: The
Living Tradition in Japanese Arts (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1991); International
Programs Department, Japan Folk Crafts Museum, Mingei: Two Centuries of Japanese Folk
Art (Tokyo: Japan Folk Crafts Museum, 1995); Kikuchi Yko, Japanese Modernization and
Mingei Theory (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004); Kim Brandt, Kingdom
of Beauty: Mingei and the Politics of Folk Art in Imperial Japan (Durham, N.C., and Lon-
don: Duke University Press, 2007). There are also many articles, including Brian Moeran,
Orientalism and the Debris of Western Civilisation: Popular Art Movements in Britain
and Japan in Europe and the Orient, ed. D. Gerstle and A. Milner, pp. 1950 (Canberra:
The Australian National University, 1994); Kikuchi, The Myth of Yanagis Originality:
The Formation of Mingei Theory in its Social and Historical Context, Journal of Design
History 7, no. 4 (1994): pp. 259262; Kikuchi, The Oriental Orientalism of Yanagi Setsu
and Mingei Theory, in Obscure Objects of Desire? Reviewing the Crafts in the Twentieth
Century, ed. Tanya Harrod, pp. 7380 (London: Crafts Council, 1997).
116. Kgei no michi, in Yanagi Setsu zensh, vol. 8 (Tokyo: Chikuma shob, 1980),
p. 116.
117.Ibid.
118. Tomana Makoto, Nihon kgei no seishunki 1920s1945, pp. 1718.
119. Takamura Toyochika, Takamura Toyochika bunsh, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Bunchid,
1992), p. 166.
120. Ibid., pp. 6263.
121. Kokugakai was originally founded by Nihonga artists as Kokuga Ssaku Kykai
(Society for Creation of National Painting) in 1918 as an anti-academic exhibition society.
The Nihonga section dissolved in 1928, leaving the yga and craft sections.
122.See Yanagi Setsu zensh, vol. 21-I, pp. 408410; Mizuo Hiroshi. Hyden Yanagi
setsu (Tokyo: Chikuma shob, 1992), pp. 177178.
123. Yanagi Setsu zensh, vol. 21-I, pp. 404407.
124.For Yoshidas biographical details, I consulted Sakamoto Akeimi, Yoshida
Shya to Mingei undo (diploma thesis, Tottori University, 1990); Suzuki Minoru, Senda-
chi hachinin no ashioto: Tottori meiyo shimin shinobugusa (Tottori: It shuppan jimusho,
1982), pp. 183199. I am grateful to Mrs. Yuasa Junko, the manager of Takumi, for making
the above material available to me.
125. Yoshida Shya, Mingei und ni tsuite no watashi no shinnen, Mingei Monthly,
no. 6 (1939): pp. 2021.
126.Mizuo, Hyden Yanagi setsu, p. 195.
127. Yanagi and Kawai were invited by Umehara Ryzabur to join the selection
committee. Yanagis letter to Hamada indicates that Hamada was already a judge by then,
and that it was also Tomimotos wish that Yanagi and Kawai should join Kokugakai. See
 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts | 443

Yanagi Setsu zensh, vol. 21-I: p. 402; Mr. Yamamoto Shigeo, deputy director of the Tomi-
moto Kenkichi Memorial Museum, generously informed me about the material relating to
the row between Tomimoto and Yanagi in relation to Kokugakai submissions.
128.Mizuo, Hyden Yanagi setsu, 190.
129. hara had built hara Museum of Art, Japans first museum of Western art, in
1930 to house paintings and other objects purchased through the painter Kojima Trajir,
his protg who had died in the previous year. Kojima urged hara to purchase Western
art for the purpose of educating Japanese painters.
130.Mizuo, Hyden Yanagi Setsu, p. 192.
131. For example, Bessatsu taiy: Yanagi Setsu no sekai, ed. Ogy Shinz (Tokyo:
Heibonsha, 2006).
132. Fujita Shinichir, hara bijutsukan kgeikan to yonin no tk tachi, Gepp,
Gendai Nihon no tgei 2 (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1984), p. 1.
133. Inoue Tar, Hekotarenai ris shugisha: hara Sichir (Tokyo: Kdansha, 1993),
pp. 248251.
134. For a detailed description of the annex building, see Imaizumi Atsuos account
in hara Bijutsukan, hara Bijutsukan V: Tjiki to hanga to senshoku (Kurashiki: The
hara Museum of Art, n.d.).
135.Inoue, Hekotarenai ris shugisha, p. 174; also Fujita, hara bijutsukan kgeikan
to yonin no tk tachi, pp. 13.
136. In fact, most criticism of Mingei is directed toward Yanagis theory and its impli-
cations rather than toward the objects he had selected.
137. For Kurodas biographical details, see Crafts Gallery, the National Museum of
Modern Art, Tokyo, Kuroda Tatsuaki: Master Wood Craftsman (Tokyo: Crafts Gallery, the
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 1983). Further information was provided by the
late Kenkichi Kuroda, Tatsuakis son, through personal contact on May 17, 1993.
138. Kuroda Kenkichi, personal contact, May 17, 1993. Kurodas brother was more
than twenty years older than Kuroda, and Kuroda learned much of his trade from him.
139. While the Korean inspiration on Kurodas work is well known and discussed
(see, for example, Hida Toyojir, Guri in modern times, in National Museum of Modern
Art, Kuroda Tatsuaki: Master Wood Craftsman), his son showed the author an illustrated
book of German furniture, Das Mbelwer, as a book Kuroda always cherished. According
to Kurodas widow, Yanagi gave the book of more than six hundred photographs to Kuroda
while the latter was working at Kamigamo Craft Cooperative, formed under Yanagis con-
cept of a contemporary craft guild. Kuroda Kenkichi, personal contact, May 17, 1993.
140. Kuroda Tatsuaki, Kaigan no en, reprinted in The Mingei, no. 495 (1995): p. 4.
141. Takamura Toyochika, Jigaz, pp. 311312.
142. Yagi Kazuos father Yagi Iss (18941973) formed Sekidosha with Kusube and
others in 1920; Yamada Hikarus father Yamada Tetsu (18981971) was a member of Tomi-
motos New Craftsmanship Art Craft Association (Shinsh Bijutsu Kgeikai) after the
war; and Suzuki Osamus father was a potters wheel technician at the workshop of Eiraku
Zengor, Kyotos distinguished generations of tea utensil potters. Kadokawa shoten, ed.,
Kadokawa Nihon tji daijiten (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 2002).
143. De Waal, 20th Century Ceramics, p. 109.
144. Kaneko, Ekky monogatari, p. 13.
444|Chiaki Ajioka

145.Hirai Shichi, Gutaitte nanda?/Whats Gutai? bilingual catalogue, trans. Chris-

topher Stephens (Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha, 2004), p. 14.
146. Prof. Yasuhara Yoshitaka, personal contact, April 27, 1999.
147. As predicted, however, the official line between techniques and art was not
a clear-cut one but shifted with time. According to Suzuki Kenji, not only did the selec-
tion became favorable to artistic craft makers (such as Kuroda Tatsuaki), but also some
craftmakers were appointed as members of the Japan Art Academy (Nihon Geijutsuin)
alongside painters and sculptors (such as Kusube Yaichi). Takamura Toyochika became
both, while Kawai Kanjir declined the Living National Treasure title.
148. The association is now a corporate body under the jurisdiction of the Depart-
ment of Education and Science. For a detailed account at the time of its establishment, see
Suzuki, Genshoku gendai Nihon no bijutsu, pp. 204205.
149. See Helen Westgeest, Zen in the Fifties: Interaction in Art between East and West
(Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 1996); also, the documentary film A Zen LifeD. T. Suzuki,
directed by Michael Goldberg (International Videoworks, Inc., 2005), includes interviews
of notable people who had close contact with Suzuki, including John Cage. At the time
of the final proofing of this chapter, a groundbreaking exhibition catalogue has been
published: Alexandra Munroe, ed., The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia,
18601989 (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2009). Although the exhibition excluded
crafts because Asian influences have already been well acknowledged in the craft media as
compared to fine art, the catalogue describes various histories and aspects of transmis-
sion of ideas from Asia to the West that equally apply to craft.
150. De Waal, 20th Century Ceramics, pp. 156157. See also, for example, Paul Soldners
words in Peter Voulkos: Echoes of the Japanese Aesthetic, a website exhibition publication
by the American Museum of Ceramic Art, http://www.ceramicmuseum.org/archive-peter-
voulkos-echoes-of-the-Japanese-aesthetic.htm (2005 and accessed June 13, 2010) and the
text from the exhibition. I am grateful to the museum for making the texts available to me.
151. Peter Rushforth, interviewed by Martin Thomas, sound recording, 2005; Les
Brakebrough, personal contact, Sydney, August 8, 2008; Australian potter Janet Barriskill,
Visiting the Mino Kilns: With a Translation of Arakawa Toyozs The traditions and tech-
niques of Mino pottery (Broadway, N.S.W.: Wild Peony, 1995).
152. Information provided by Catherine Roche, assistant curator of the Seattle Art
Museum. From this point onwards, Yanagihara developed his metallic-organic style, and
his innovative work in turn inspired some foreign artists, including the Australian potter
Les Blakebrough.
153. In Praise of Hands: Contemporary Crafts of the World (Greenwich, Conn.: New
York Graphic Society, 1974), p. 7. Marea Gazzard, sculptor and president of World Crafts
Council (19801984), kindly lent me this book.
154.See for example, Claywork: Yakimono kara zkei e, exhibition catalogue to
accompany the general assembly of the International Academy of Ceramics in Kyoto, 1980.
155. Kaneko Kenji, Kgei to craft (kurafuto): Kindai kgei no rekishi no nakade,
in Traditional Japanese Arts and Crafts in the 21st Century, ed. Inaga Shgemi and Patricia
Fister, pp. 253261 (Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2007).
156. In Fukumoto Shigeki, ed., 21 seiki wa kgei ga omoshiroi (Tokyo: Kyryk,
2003), p. 68.
 Stephen Addiss

16 Japanese Calligraphy since 1868

In many ways, calligraphy (sho) has been the most traditional and conservative of Japa-
nese arts since 1868, in part due to comparatively less influence from the West than in
other media. At one time this led some modernizing Japanese to dismiss calligraphy since
it did not fit into the Western artistic pantheon. During the artistic debates of the early
Meiji period, an oil painter named Koyama Shtar wrote an essay in 1883 titled Sho
wa bijutsu narazu (Calligraphy is not art) for Ty gakugei zasshi (Eastern arts maga-
zine). He claimed that Chinese characters (kanji) and Japanese syllabaries (kana) were the
equivalents of the Western alphabet, merely symbols of a spoken language, and did not
possess the same range of artistic potentials as painting and sculpture.1 This extreme view
was quickly challenged and did not seriously affect the practice of calligraphy, but a simi-
lar Western influence in scholarship later led to calligraphy being largely or completely
ignored in many texts on Japanese art history.2
Calligraphy has also had a mixed reception in official art circles during the modern
age. It was included in some major national and international exhibitions, such as the
Taish exhibition of 1914, but it was not allowed in others, including the Peace Exhibition
of 1922. Certain art groups tried to exclude calligraphy from the Tokyo Metropolitan Art
Museum (Tokyo-to Bijutsukan) in the mid-1920s, but they were stymied by a businessman
who had helped fund the museum.3 After the Second World War, calligraphy was once
more called into question, partly because (like painting and prints) it had sometimes been
conscripted into the Imperial movement. Even more fundamentally, the use of Chinese
kanji and even of Japanese kana was debatedsome reformers argued, ultimately in vain,
that an alphabet would be more useful to the goal of democratic and universal education.
Despite these controversies, calligraphy has remained popular both as an art form and
as a method of personal cultivation, and it has continued to be practiced by increasingly
larger numbers of both professionals and amateurs to the present day. While many brush-
work traditions from the past have been continued, the development of such movements
as abstract calligraphy, plus occasional influences from Western painting and other arts,
have also helped to lead calligraphy in new directions over the past 140 years.
Before 1868, simply learning to write meant utilizing the flexible brush, with thinning
and thickening lines, on a variety of handmade papers, as opposed to using fixed-point
instruments such as the pencil and pen on machine-produced paper. Does this mean that
all pre-1868 writing is calligraphy? At this point we reach the problem of definition, but
in the broadest view, the answer could be yes, at least potentially. The intention to write
446|Stephen Addiss

was not necessarily present in all works that we now view as calligraphy, but intention is
difficult to substantiate and may not necessarily precede the appreciation of any particular
piece of writing as art.
Perhaps more meaningfully, we can speak of calligraphy as any writing seen by either
the creator or viewers as calligraphyas in all art, it is the activity and interaction that
counts, not simply the physical product. Some works have proven to convey artistic expres-
sion to viewers over time, and it is these that we usually dignify with the term calligra-
phy, but different viewers in different eras (including our own) may not always agree, so
it is dangerous to have too rigid a definition. In any event, many writings of visual interest
have been created since the dawn of the Meiji era; to understand them, we must examine
the changing role of calligraphy in Japan, both in terms of artists and audience.
One major factor in the history of modern calligraphy has been the Japanese educa-
tional system. For the first time, all children are expected to read and write, but this has
sometimes been with the brush, sometimes with the pen or pencil, later with a form of
typewriter, and more recently also with the computer. In the early Meiji period, the govern-
ment promoted the use in schools of a brushwork style developed by Maki Ryk (1777
1845) based on Chinese Tang dynasty prototypes.4 Calligraphic training was considered at
this time a practical skill, but it also contained overtones of spiritual and mental training
(seishin shry).5 In 1881, the literatus Yang Shoujing arrived in Japan as the special advisor
to the Chinese minister; he brought with him thousands of reproductions of Chinese clas-
sics including rubbings from the Six Dynasties period of the third to sixth centuries. These
early works were very influential, presenting a new Chinese style compared with what
had been known and practiced in Japan up to that time. This trend was part of a back to
origins movement in both Chinese and Japanese calligraphy that will be discussed later.
In order to study the multiple facets of modern calligraphy, it can be useful to divide
the artists into categories. These include traditional waka poet-calligraphers, haiku mas-
ters, Chinese-style literati, Zen monks, and professional calligraphers. Each of these devel-
oped from different traditions, and each has reached different audiences and patrons.
While the boundaries between the groups sometimes overlap, they provide a method of
approach that helps to make some sense of the vast number of artists, schools, trends,
styles, and works that have appeared in the world of Japanese calligraphy since 1868.

Waka (Tanka) Poet-Calligraphers

At the time Japan opened to the West, the 5-7-5-7-7syllable waka (now often called tanka)
poem tradition remained a significant force in cultural life, particularly in Kyoto. This was
in large part true because over the preceding three hundred years it had passed from the
hands of courtiers to a much wider group of poet-calligraphers, perhaps losing some of its
delicate refinement but certainly gaining in vitality.6 This is not to say that courtiers did
not continue to write poetry, but rather that they were joined in this art by people from
many different stations in life. For example, one of the leading poets active in 1868 was a
Buddhist nun named Otagaki Rengetsu (17911875), who also created handmade pottery
upon which she would incise or glaze-brush her poems. Her work, intended to provide her
some modest financial support, became so popular that she had to move from one outlying
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 447

temple to another to avoid an excess of customers. As well as her calligraphy on paper for-
mats such as tanzaku (narrow poem-slips) and on pottery, she also inscribed paintings by
herself or other artists, thereby helping the literatus Tomioka Tessai (18361924) during
his days as a struggling young artist.
Rengetsus calligraphy shows clearly defined Chinese kanji and Japanese kana shapes,
with broad spacings and unadorned but fluent brushwork. Some scholars feel her gently
expansive style was influenced by her practice of incising and glazing her poems on hand-
made pottery, where small or tight forms might become confused or illegible. It seems
more likely, however, that her style is a result of her own life and character; widowed twice
in her young adulthood, she became a nun and devoted her life to Buddhism and the arts.
The modesty and serenity that her work conveys is matched by its sense of inner vitality
made visible by the subtle transitions from thinner to slightly thicker and back to thinner
linesand confident asymmetrical compositions. The brushwork conveys a sense of deli-
cacy, but underneath the gracefulness, its tensile strength is never compromised.
A characteristic example of Rengetsus fluent calligraphy is given as figure 16.1, with
her poem:

Umazake no Good sake, when its

miwa no sugizuba better than wine for the gods,
kore zo kono becomes medicine
fur fushi no to keep us from growing old
kusuri naramashi and to save us from dying7

Figure 16.1. Otagaki Rengetsu (17911875), Tokuri,

1875. Inscribed poem on glazed ceramic. Private
collection, 12.8 cm tall.
448|Stephen Addiss

Appropriately, this poem is inscribed upon a tokuri sake server in which one may see
the imprint of Rengetsus small fingers in the creation of the form. A brown glaze covers
most of the vessel, and its irregularities make it much more personal than a perfect form
would be. This seemingly simple work becomes a powerful aesthetic experience: holding
the tokuri, one can feel Rengetsus hands; viewing it, one can enjoy her calligraphy; reading
the poem, one can sympathize with her feelings. At the end of the verse, Rengetsu signs her
name plus her age of eighty-five; she died the following year.
One feature of tanka in the twentieth century was to look back to the great eras of
the Japanese courtly past, in part as a reaction to the rapid modernization that was tak-
ing place in many aspects of Japanese life. A school of poet-calligraphers developed the
Jdaiy (ancient style), including the masters Tada Shinei (18401905), Ban Masatomi
(18551931), Ono Gad (18621922), and guchi Shgyo (18641920). Countering this
trend was the most influential of all tanka poet-critics, Masaoka Shiki (18671902), who
determined that Japanese poetry needed to be reconsidered and refashioned. During the
course of his short life he was able to emphasize shasei, the sketching from life that had
begun as a term for painters following Western styles during the preceding Edo period.
Among his criticisms of tanka poets was their excessive reliance upon earlier models
and ignorance of either haiku or Chinese poetry, much less the literature of the West.
He believed that most tanka were overly confined in their style, tone, and vocabulary to
poems composed in the tenth century. In particular, he advocated a simple rather than an
ornate style, a forceful rather than a gentle tone, and the use of any words that could be
expressive. Criticized for being too revolutionary in his views, Shiki replied,

I have no intention of destroying the national poetryI only want . . . to keep import-
ing the literary thought of foreign countries, which we can purchase for a song, to
strengthen the ramparts of Japanese literature. In the tanka, I am also trying to
destroy old patterns of thought and find new ones. Consequently, in vocabulary, too,
I intend to use such words as are necessary, whether literary, colloquial, Chinese, or
Western.8

One example of one of Shikis new tanka is dated to 1898, and the introduction tells us that
this is a scene outside Jinzhou City, which Shiki had visited in 1895 in the aftermath of the
Sino-Japanese War.

Mononofu no No one gathers

shikabane osamuru the bones of soldiers
hito mo nashi who fell in battle
sumire hana saku violets bloom along
haru no yamamichi the mountain road in spring

This poem, powerful in English, has even more resonance in Japanese, especially the
mournful repeated syllables and dark vowels of the first line mononofu no (warriors/
soldiers).
Despite the profound influence of Shiki, perhaps the most admired tanka master of
the early twentieth century has been Yosano Akiko (18761942), whose powerful and
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 449

highly personal verses in her collection Midaregami (Tangled hair) created a sensation in
Japan in 1901. By adding elements of sexual passion, especially daring for a woman poet,
she gave tanka poetry a new direction that made it relevant to young people who were less
concerned with highly refined sentiments than with their own emotional lives. Her cal-
ligraphy, however, is surprisingly delicate compared with her often stormy verses and does
not reproduce well in illustrations.9 Perhaps her attitude is best summed up by these tanka
from Midaregami:

Shirakabe e On my two-hundred-mile journey

uta hitotsu somen without a bamboo hat
negai nite my one wish
kasa wa arazariki to dye this white wall
ni hyaku ri no tabi with a single poem

Noroi uta Picking up these

kaki kasanetaru scraps of paper
hogo torite with my accursed poems
kuroki koch^o wo I pin down
osaenuru kana a black butterfly

Utafude wo Borrowing the frozen tip

beni ni karitaru of my tanka brush
saki itenu to paint my lips red
nishi no miyako no this chilly spring
haru samuki asa morning in Kyoto

Since the Second World War, tanka has divided two main streams. This first is tradi-
tional, with a strong influence from the golden era of the Heian period, using lyrical and
naturalistic imagery. The second is influenced by Western poetry, and not only breaks with
the characteristics of traditional tanka, but also becomes more complex and frequently
more difficult to understand and interpret. Similarly, tanka calligraphy can be evocative of
the past or more experimental, but no major force or significant poet has yet determined
the directions for the future. At present, tanka poets are not among the leaders in forging
new calligraphic styles or trends for the twenty-first century.

Haiku Masters

By all accounts, the most significant haiku poet during the Meiji period was Masaoka
Shiki, who did for haiku what he had done for tanka, giving the form a new interpretation
and, in the process, new life. It was Shiki who popularized the word haiku; previously
the poems had been called hokku (when they served as the starting verse for a longer com-
posite poem) or haikai. It is a testament to his importance that the term he used, haiku,
has become known throughout the world despite the objections of some scholars that it is
only appropriate for poems written in the last hundred years.
450|Stephen Addiss

Insisting that haiku could be a serious form of literature, Shiki began promoting the
reforms he wished as early as 1892 as haiku editor of the Nihon newspaper. He also car-
ried his views to a broader public through the magazine Hototogisu (Cuckoo), which he
founded in 1897. Shiki felt that haiku had become stale through imitating the masters
of the past, relapsing into cleverness and wordplay rather than the honest expression of
observation and feeling. Again stressing shasei (sketching from life), he wrote,

When one sees a certain scene or human happening and thinks it is interesting, and
wants to put it into words which will make the reader feel the same interest as myself,
one should not employ verbal decoration or exaggeration but should simply depict
the thing itself as it is, as one sees it. . . . A single red camellia discovered amidst the
obscure and frightening darkness of a forest is extremely beautiful and creates a feel-
ing of joy.10

One example of Shikis poetry that shows the power of direct observation when con-
centrated into a haiku form is his verse of 1896:

furu niwa ya old garden

tsuki ni tanpo no emptying a hot water bottle
yu o kobosu into the moon

Although Shiki had occasionally criticized the veneration of Bash, there is an obvi-
ous allusion in the first line to the masters furu ike ya (old pond), yet the image is com-
pletely fresh. Watching someone emptying a hot water bottle into the garden, Shiki notices
how the water pours into its own reflection of the moon, creating a powerful poem in
which a simple everyday action becomes resonant with the larger universe. Yet the inclu-
sion of a hot water bottle in the poem is an example of how Shiki could write about an
object that might not have appeared before in Japanese poetry.
Another Shiki haiku is even more colloquial, and suggests, beyond its humor, his
weakened state due to a debilitating disease.

ha ga nukete my tooth falls out

take no ko kataku hard bamboo shoots,
ika kowashi impregnable squid

Shiki, like all poets of the time, often wrote out his verses as calligraphy and also cre-
ated a number of tanka paintings and haiku paintings (haiga). His writing on such forms
as tanzaku (narrow poem-slips) is bold and relaxed, while his notebook and sketchbook
entries are usually smaller and more modest. A large number of his visual works can be
seen in volume 7 of Haijin no shoga bijutsu (Calligraphy and paintings by haiku poets).11
Followers of Shiki took two main directions. One was to write new haiku retaining most of
the traditional haiku characteristics (it is not quite proper to call them rules), such as the
5-7-5syllable scheme and the use of a seasonal reference. Most prominent among these
conservative poets was Takahama Kyoshi (18741959), who became editor of Hototogisu
in 1898 and continued after Shikis death. Although at one point he stopped writing haiku,
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 451

when he took up the form again he became a leader for those who believed in traditional
values and forms, and his work continued to be appreciated through the first half of the
twentieth century His calligraphy and haiga show a simple but expressive style, with a
thick-line calligraphy that tends not to flow as much as Shikis since the kanji and kana
rarely touch each other, each standing as a discrete element.12
A second direction taken by followers of Shiki was more innovative. Some tradi-
tional conceptions about haiku, such as 5-7-5syllable counts, were abandoned in favor
of a blank verse style in which the content was crucial, whatever the form. Influenced
by modernist poetry from the West, this trend produced controversy, but also some fine
poetry. Leading the revolution was Kawahigashi Hekigot (18731937), who succeeded
his teacher and friend Shiki as haiku editor of the newspaper Nihon. Becoming the most
influential haiku poet and theorist in the early years of the century, he moved further
and further away from traditional approaches and eventually considered himself a poet
of short verses rather than a haiku master. In advancing the shasei legacy of Shiki,
Hekigot believed that free sketching from life was impeded by set syllable counts, and
he insisted that a fresh expression of daily existence, just as it is, should be emphasized over
any other factor.
Not surprisingly, the innovative poets were also more likely than the conservatives to
develop new directions in calligraphy. Hekigots own style is the most distinctive of all
modern haiku masters, somehow achieving a balance between bold exuberance and child-
like simplicity. He frequently wrote on tanzaku, especially when decorated paper could
contrast with his blocky characters to create an effect of dramatic innocence. In one such
example, he praises a natural scene just outside of Kyoto (see Plate 27).

hara nara If its hara

Yamabe no taki ya then the Yamabe waterfall
den tsukuri building a shrine

The calligraphy is typical for Hekigot, with thick, wet lines, simple kanji forms in loose
regular script, occasional equally bold kana syllables, and a slightly irregular rhythm
in the sizing and spacing of the forms. After the first two characters (hara), he moves
the calligraphy to the left in a single column, leaving room for the abbreviated signature
Heki on the right. In addition, he gives certain characters prominence through heavier
inking and more complex compositions. The result is to emphasize the main theme,
hara, as well as the character waterfall () and the final three graphs presenting the
poems final line, building a shrine. Also notable is the only empty space in the column,
just after the haikus first line. As one examines this work, the seemingly spontaneous
calligraphy begins to take on more subtleties. Although Hekigot uses the pause sound
ya at the end of the second line, the calligraphy itself pauses after the first line. Along
with the more strongly brushed forms, this creates a contrapuntal rhythm that might be
expressed as:

HARA nara If its HARA

Yamabe no TAKI ya then the Yamabe WATERFALL
DEN TSUKURI BUILDING a SHRINE
452|Stephen Addiss

In this manner calligraphy is able to enhance and add shades of meaning to its texts.
The double patterns of clouds on the tanzaku, in blue, purple, and gold, also convey a hint
of natural splendor to the scene being described in the poem. While the haiku at first may
seem to be of no great interest, its formulation in this small work of art shows how cal-
ligraphic presentation can add a great deal to the written text.
In terms of revolutionizing haiku, Hekigots follower Ogiwara Seisensui (18841976)
took matters further by discarding seasonal references even more often and emphasizing
the inner perception of the poet, no matter how personal this might be. It was one of his
followers, however, the monk-poet Taneda Santka (18821940), who became the best-
loved of all Japanese free-verse haiku poets.13 An alcoholic who could not maintain a job or
a marriage, Santka eventually became a wandering Zen monk, and his verses express his
life of walking and begging in a totally plain and unadorned manner that gives them, para-
doxically, a deep resonance. Although his calligraphy is not as unusual as that of Hekigot,
it conveys his own personality very clearly.
From his journal entries it becomes apparent that Santka had his own views about
calligraphy. He liked the unskillful nature of children writing in their first-grade classes,
but he felt that by the time they reached the fourth grade, they had already gained too
much skill. One could not fake unskillfulness, however, for that was even more odious
than too much skill. From time to time, Santka was asked by friends and patrons to write
out his own poems, and this tended to worry him. He did not admire his poor handwrit-
ing and evil brushwork, and in 1932 he commented that from dawn to dusk I have
flung about a large brush, but I wonder at the clumsy characters I produce! Perhaps clumsy
is not so bad, but I am startled at such vulgar characters. Even a happy mind would be cast
down by them, like fine weather clouded over.14
Was he being too self-deprecatory? His calligraphy should be taken in conjunction
with his poetic expression, and in one bold example of Santkas writing (fig. 16.2), his
poem characteristically avoids most of the traditional conceptions of haiku, such as three
sections of 5-7-5 syllables, seasonal references, or observations about nature.

Kane ga nai No money

mono ga nai no things
ha ga nai no teeth
hitori just me

Is this poem a haiku? The answer depends on ones definition of the term, but for
admirers of Santka it represents a meaningful variation and modernization of the tra-
ditional form. Here the verse naturally breaks into four sections of 5-5-4-3 syllables, and
Santkas calligraphy follows this structure by being composed in four columns, with
his signature in smaller characters to the lower left. The first word money () is given
the most prominence, in part due to the wetness of the brush as it first hits the paper
and in part to its large size and more dramatic presentation. Each of the four columns
begins with a different character, but the repetition of ga nai (not have) that follows
them is partially reinforced and partly varied in the calligraphy, especially since the kana
for na () is changed each time it is written. The paired dots that stand for the sound
i () are more similar in brushwork but nevertheless full of motion as they rise up toward
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 453

Figure 16.2. Taneda Santka (18821940), No Money, date unknown. Ink on paper, 49.4 69.3 cm.
Chikusei Collection.

the right. The final line, literally one person (), is presented in large size and drier
brushwork, and the fact that only three strokes are needed to create the two characters
reinforces the simplicity of the poem and echoes Santkas life as a solitary mendicant
monk-poet.
The poet Nakatsuka Ippekir (18871946) took this freedom of composition even fur-
ther; Hekigot called him a genius in 1909 after an intensive haiku session. One of Naka
tsukas better-known poems is a single image in five parts, and could therefore be trans-
lated in two different formats:

Aki no hi no The autumn days

hinaka no noontimes
no no fields
ishi no stones
nukumi warmth

Aki no hi no hinaka no no no ishi no nukumi

The autumn days noontimes fields stones warmth

Among the remarkable features of this poem are the way the opening line is five syl-
lables, suggesting a traditional haiku, after which the rhythm becomes totally free, and
also the sound no occurring five times (including three successive syllables) in the poem.
454|Stephen Addiss

Among the Hototogisu poets, from 1916 the leading woman was Sugita Hisajo (1890
1946), who also founded her own magazine, Hanagoromo (Flowered kimono), in 1932.
Unhappily married to a high school painting teacher, she was troubled by mental problems
and finally died in a hospital. In her haiku she followed the lead of Heian-era women waka
poets such as Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu in expressing romantic feelings, often
through natural images. Her visual art includes both haiga and idiosyncratic calligraphy.15
Other haiku poet-calligraphers of the time include Mizuhara Shshi (18921981), who
took the bold step of revolting against the Hototogisu group, Nakamura Kusatao (1901
1983), a follower of Kyoshi, and Ishida Haky (19131969), who stressed the humanistic
and poetic nature of haiku.
In the past sixty years, haiku poets have had to consider the devastation of Japan
after the war, the modernization and urbanization of the country, and for many people
the subsequent loss of direct daily interactions with nature. Some poets still try to find
natural images through which to express their personal experiences, while others have
attempted to express the extraordinariness of the ordinary within a modern and urban
world. There have been new media as well for haiku, including the Internet, where poets
can exchange their verses without ever writing them with brush, pen, or pencil. Haiga
have also expanded to combining photography and computer images with haiku; in these
cases, calligraphic brushwork no longer unites text and image as in the past. Nevertheless,
there are a number of poets who take up brush and ink for the kind of personal expression
they can make, and since haiku itself has remained extremely popular in Japan, we can be
sure that haiku calligraphy will continue to be practiced by large numbers of people in the
future. Out of these may well appear a new Hekigot or Santka, but she or he has not yet
become apparent.

Literati

Although prevailing opinion sees the Meiji period as representing a discarding of Sino-
phile values in favor of influences from the West, there was a current of Chinese studies
and culture that also remained strong through the end of the nineteenth century and into
the twentieth. The statesman Kid Takayoshi (18331877), for example, practiced Chinese
poetry and calligraphy and befriended several literati artists, while the early Meiji prime
minister It Hirobumi (18411909) was a noted poet and calligrapher in Chinese. In his
book Kaikoku gojnen shi (Fifty years of new Japan, 1909), the twice prime minister and
democratic modernizer kuma Shigenobu (18381922) writes of the time-honored pres-
tige of Chinese ideographs, even in our progressive age, and comments that although the
national literature of a people should be in their native tongue . . . most of our philosophi-
cal, biographical, historical, and geographical works, nay even our lyrics, were written in
Chinese. This custom . . . is still far from being abandoned.16
The situation has changed in some respects in the past hundred years, but a large num-
ber of calligraphers have continued to write in Chinese even though the influence of China
itself has consistently waned during this time, especially after Japan proved to be a stron-
ger country militarily during the 1930s and 1940s. Why should Chinese be so attractive to
Japanese calligraphers? One reason must surely be the influence of the past, reaching back
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 455

to the era when Chinese was the only written language available in Japan. A more press-
ing artistic reason, however, has been that there are more than fifty thousand characters
(kanji) and five major script forms in Chinese, as opposed to the limited possibilities of
kana syllabaries. The development of kanjis immense potential for varied artistic expres-
sion has lifted East Asian calligraphy into a high form of art (some would say the highest)
in comparison to calligraphy in the Western world. Therefore, despite the innovations that
Japanese made in decorated paper and calligraphic composition (using uneven columns,
for example, when writing tanka and haiku), Chinese has retained its attraction for many
of the finest Japanese calligraphers to the present day.
There have been basically three groups of masters who preferred to write in Chinese:
literati, Zen masters, and professional calligraphers. Literati poet-painter-calligraphers
such as Ike Taiga (17231776) and Rai Sany (17801832) had been major artistic forces
in the preceding Edo period, and there were several important artists who continued their
tradition into the modern era, including Murase Taiitsu (18041881), Di Goga (1817
1880), and Yamanaka Shinten (18221885).17 Although in China such literati had usually
held government positions, which allowed them to create paintings and calligraphy freely
without professionalism, in Japan masters such as Taiga often had to make their living
through their art. Nevertheless, Taiitsu, Goga, and Shinten were all teacher-scholars who
could turn to brushwork as amateurs, in full literati tradition. In this way they were able to
maintain an idealistic attitude in which they composed poems, calligraphy, and paintings
as expressions of their individual (and very cultivated) personalities. With their skills in
the three arts, deep interest in the literati past, and powerful responses to nature, poet-
painter-calligraphers contributed a great deal to the artistic world of early modern and
modern Japan.
Although several notable masters of Chinese calligraphy, such as Nakabayashi Gochiku
(18271913), Iwaya Ichiroku (18341905), Sanj Sanetomi (18371891), and Kusukabe Mei-
kaku (18381922), worked in the Meiji and Taish eras, the most successful literati artist of
the time was Tomioka Tessai. When one studies early twentieth-century culture, his name
comes up again and again since he seemed to take part in almost every artistic activity in
Kyoto and Osaka, as well as having some influence in Tokyo. Tessai utilized running and
cursive scripts, but he also often wrote in ancient seal script with a modern thrust. He fol-
lowed the lead of Chinese calligraphers of the preceding century who looked back to some
of the oldest traditions in Chinese history to give them new inspiration. Unlike early seal
script, however, Tessais lines are not even in width, the characters are not compositionally
balanced, and the beginnings and ends of the strokes are readily visible and often scratchy.
Tessai was highly admired in his day and has often been considered the last important art-
ist of the Japanese literati tradition.
More recent studies, however, have found this latter claim to have been hasty. A sec-
ond major artist in this tradition, although much less famous, was Fukuda Kodjin (1865
1944). Adept in poetry in all three genres of haiku, tanka, and Chinese-style kanshi, his
personality was much more reclusive than Tessais. Living the life of a quiet scholar-artist,
Kodjin produced poetry, calligraphy, and painting for his own enjoyment and for that of
his friends. Almost forgotten after his death at the height of World War II, he has recently
been rediscovered.18 Appropriate to his personality, Kodjins calligraphy is less dramatic
and overtly expressive than that of Tessai, but more attuned to the great masters of the
456|Stephen Addiss
Figure 16.3. Fukuda Kodjin
(18651944), Walking Alone, 1909.
Ink on paper, 136 32.5 cm.
Private collection.
past; Kodjin represents the more tranquil and classi-
cal style of literati calligraphy.
One example of Kodjins work that displays his
unassuming nature is his 1909 poem Walking Alone
(fig. 16.3). Both the quatrain and the calligraphy are
deliberately simple and direct.
Walking alone in the empty mountains,
Quiet and lonely, I hear the chirping of a bird.
Returning, there is no one to be seen;
Above me, blossoms are radiant on a single
tree.
The verse in four lines of five characters each is
written in two columns of ten, with the signature
Kodjin (Old Taoist) to the left. The clarity of the
poem is enhanced by the use of standard script, the
most easy to read of the five (seal, clerical, standard,
running, and cursive) Chinese scripts, as though
the artist were more intent on presenting his view
of the solitary human in nature than in demonstrat-
ing his prowess as a literatus. Compared with Tessai,
Kodjin is extremely modest in his brushwork, but
there is more present than immediately strikes the
eye. The style harks back to the regular script of the
major painter-calligrapher Ike Taiga, notably in the
lightness of touch, created in part by spaces between
brushstrokes where they would usually join. Like
Taigas regular script, there is also a childlike qual-
ity to the brushwork (that Santka would have prob-
ably enjoyed), adding a special resonance to the work.
Finally, there are areas where the lines deliberately
wriggle or break, such as single stroke of the charac-
ter one () near the bottom of the second column,
suggesting how Kodjins artistic sophistication is
hidden beneath the basic simplicity of his style.
The literati tradition continued in Japan after
Kodjins death in 1944, but it became intertwined
with other developments in Japanese culture rather
than remaining the familiar Chinese-style poet-
painter aesthetic. While many calligraphers con-
tinued to work with kanji rather than in Japanese,
notably such masters as Nishikawa Yasushi (1902
1982), Murakami Sant (19121993), and Aoyama
Sanu (19121993), the trend has moved toward new
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 457

lifestyles that did not emulate poet-sages of the past, instead finding new interactions with
the changing world of Japanese society and culture.
To some extent, the world of literati has moved from Chinese-style poets to Western-
style novelists. Among the fine calligraphers of the modern period have been Natsume
Sseki (18671961), who was also a fine haiku and kanshi poet,19 Akutagawa Rynosuke
(18921927), and Kawabata Yasunari (18991972). In particular, Kawabata became a mas-
ter of large-scale cursive calligraphy that has a bold power all his own.20
Other leading cultural figures of the twentieth century who might be considered lite-
rati in that they were expert in more than one art include Kitao Rsanjin (18831959). He
began his life as a calligrapher, evolved into a gourmet and then a restaurateur, became
dissatisfied with the dishes available, and started making pottery to fill the need. He came
full circle by sometimes utilizing his calligraphy upon his ceramics, which many experts
feel are the finest of the twentieth century.
The field of woodblock prints also had an internationally recognized leading master,
Munakata Shik (19031975). It is not always recognized how often Munakata used callig-
raphy in his prints, but he frequently carved Buddhist sutras as well as other texts upon his
woodblocks, and the bold freshness of the resulting calligraphy fully matches the strength
of his dynamic images. His brush-and-ink calligraphy is even more powerful, almost fill-
ing all the space in his scrolls.

Zen Masters

Of all the calligraphers in the modern era, Zen masters have probably been influenced
least by new conceptions of art, although paradoxically they have helped influence new
movements themselves. Their continuous artistic tradition occurs in part because the
audience for Zen calligraphy has remained remarkably constant; followers of the monks
have desired brush traces that express their Zen spirit, and to this day this remains the
primary purpose (and major patronage) of Zen calligraphy. Both the first monk to be dis-
cussed here, Nakahara Nantemb (18391925) and the last, Fukushima Keid (born 1933),
have had lists of requests that exceeded three thousand works, and both responded with
an outpouring of calligraphy. Although these may have sometimes been used as gifts to
patrons who supported their temples, in the main they were given to monks and lay fol-
lowers as Zen teachings. There was no need for totally new styles, since the Zen beliefs were
basically unchanged from before, and therefore the works tended to be largely similar to
Zen calligraphy of previous eras, although one might see an extra boldness in some of the
personal styles.
The most dramatic of all Zen masters of the Meiji and Taish eras, in both his life and
his calligraphy, was Nantemb. Born of a samurai family, he resolved to become a monk at
the age of seven when his mother died; four years later he took Buddhist orders in his home
town of Karatsu, in Kyushu. At the age of eighteen he journeyed to Empuku-ji, just south
of Kyoto, for further training, and there he received the kan (Zen conundrum) that he
later insisted that his followers penetrate: Zhaozhou (J: Jsh), asked by a monk whether a
dog has Buddha-nature, replied mu, meaning no, not have, or nothingness. Since all
beings are believed to have Buddha-nature, what is this mu?
458|Stephen Addiss
Figure 16.4.Nakahara Nantemb
(18391925), Mumonkan, 1917.
Ink on paper, 67.2 32.7 cm. Chi-
kusei collection.
Mu is the first kan in the 1228 Chinese collec-
tion Mumonkan (No-gate barrier), and mu remains
the fundamental conundrum given Zen pupils to
this day; Nantemb even once wrote that his favor-
ite poem was simply twenty-eight repetitions of this
word. One of his most dynamic calligraphic works
is Mumonkan (fig. 16.4). The first character, mu (),
has a compressed, powerful geometrical form, the
next graph mon (gate, ) is simplified from eight
strokes to one, and the final character kan (barrier,
) ends with a concluding long vertical stroke. The
result is balanced visually, with more complex and
angular characters above and below the central cir-
cular form; the signature and date, age seventy-nine,
are on the left.
Nantembs powerful calligraphy was matched
by his strength of character. In fact, he caused trouble
several times in his career, especially when challeng-
ing all Zen masters in Japan to dharma combat, with
the purpose of weeding out those who were unworthy.
His great energy led him not only to teach a number
of monk pupils, but also to give public Zen meetings
all over the country; he sometimes traveled all night
on the train from one session to the next. As a way of
reaching a larger public, he created many thousands
of works of painting and calligraphy to give to follow-
ers, and as a result he is the best-known Zen calligra-
pher of the early twentieth century.
The process of creating ink works to give to fol-
lowers meant that all the leading Zen monks of the
century were asked for their calligraphy, and they
responded whether or not they were personally
drawn to the medium. Among the many Zen mas-
ters who did especially fine calligraphy were Nishiari
Bokuzan (18211910), Nantembs successor Deiry
Kutsu (18951954), Yzen Gentatsu (18421930) and
his follower Takeda Mokurai (18541930), Shan
Gemp (18481922), Rozan Ek (18651944), and
Seki Seisetsu (18771945), all of whom were included
in the recent exhibition and book catalogue The Art of
Twentieth-Century Zen.21
One monk who enjoyed writing despite (or per-
haps because of) near blindness through his adult life
was Yamamoto Gemp (18661961). His failing eye-
sight at the age of twenty was one of the reasons he
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 459

turned to religion, and he eventually took the path

of Zen after being told that the eyes of his mind
need never fail. Training diligently, he read Bud-
dhist texts with an oil lamp and magnifying glass
after meditation sessions, and he finally received
his certificate of enlightenment at Empuku-ji when
he was forty-nine, late for a Zen master. It was only
when he started serving at Rytaku-ji in Mishima
that Gemp had time for calligraphy; he took les-
sons from a lay teacher and explained that he had
waited a long time to start but wanted to use cal-
ligraphy as way of reaching and helping people.22
In true Zen style, he commented that when I write
wind, I have the feeling of becoming the wind.
When I write water, I become water.23
Gemp became greatly beloved as a Zen mas-
ter, and his ink works were therefore highly appre-
ciated. In the single-column calligraphy he wrote
at the age of ninety, White Clouds Embrace Hidden
Rocks, he was able to make each character come
alive (fig. 16.5). The phrase was already a thousand
years old when Gemp wrote it out, having been
composed by the eccentric Tang dynasty recluse-
poet Hanshan (J: Kanzan). Here the first word,
white (), is square and solid, which allows
more dramatic contrast in the following clouds
(), which swirls and fades in and out like clouds
themselves. Embraces () is notable for the thick
curving stroke that seems to enclose the two strokes
beneath it, while hidden () emphasizes a con-
trasting long vertical stroke. The final character
rocks () is appropriately solid, with a powerful
diagonal giving life to the horizontal and vertical
strokes that each slightly lean and move, as though
the rock itself were energized by the calligraphy. In
this way, Gemp has become each of the words in
his calligraphy.
There are additional levels to this apparently
simple text, since in Japan white clouds is also
known as the way of the monk, free of encum-
brances or attachments and not tied to any par- Figure 16.5. Yamamoto Gemp
ticular place. Further, because the penultimate (18661961), White Clouds
and largest character can not only mean hidden Embrace Hidden Rocks, 1955.
but also secluded, mysterious, or deep, the Ink on paper, 121 32 cm.
entire calligraphy goes beyond the appreciation of Private collection.
460|Stephen Addiss
Figure 16.6. Fukushima Keid
(born 1933), Mu, date unknown.
Ink on paper, 124.5 35 cm.
Private collection.
nature. On one hand, the white clouds physically
float high over the hidden rocks, as though the
free Zen spirit were almost out of reach of earthly
beings. Yet they are joined, not only by the word
embrace between them, but also because the first
word white is written in the same bold angular
blunt style as the final rocks. In this way Gemp
uses calligraphy to suggest Zen meanings that go
beyond the words, accomplished through visual
and artistic means.
In Japanese monasteries, Zen training, Zen
life, and Zen calligraphy have not greatly changed
from the ages of Nantemb and Gemp to the pres-
ent day. The current Zen master and chief abbot of
the major Kyoto monastery Tfuku-ji is Fukushima
Keid (born in 1933), who also uses calligraphy as
a Zen activity and teaching tool. Although his cal-
ligraphy is traditional, there is one unusual feature
in his life compared with most traditional monks.
Following the lead of D. T. Suzuki (18691966) and
Shibayama Zenkei (18941974), Fukushima has
made yearly trips to the United States to watch over
and encourage Zen practice. During these trips, he
has given calligraphy demonstrations (which he
would never do in Japan) as a way of transmitting
both Japanese culture and Zen mind.
Like Nantemb, Fukushimas difficult early
life led him toward a religious life. Not only did he
live through the American bombing of his native
city of Kobe, but his beloved grandmother died
when he was twelve, and his sister the next year.
At fourteen he entered the temple Hfuku-ji and
later studied with Shibayama Zenkei at Nanzen-ji,
accompanying his teacher to America as a young
monk. Fukushima had enjoyed calligraphy in his
school days but did not have time to practice as a
training monk. He did assist Shibayama, however,
and absorbed some of his brushwork style just by
watching. By the time Fukushima became a Zen
master, he was ready to renew his practice of callig-
raphy, and when he became chief abbot of Tfuku-ji
(which administers more than 370 branch temples),
requests for his writing grew plentiful. Like his
teacher, Fukushima prefers a broad and powerful
style with short-bristled brushes.
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 461

Chart: Calligraphic variations of the character mu.

Comparing Fukushimas calligraphy of the word mu () with that of Nantemb, we

can see that the brushwork is now in fully cursive script (fig. 16.6). In both cases the visual
form is based upon a primarily symmetrical variation of the original character, but in
each case there is a sense of movement that does not allow the form to remain static. In
Nantembs scroll there are two more large characters to contrast with mu, while Fuku-
shimas mu is accompanied only the eight small kanji of his temple rank and signature. It
is as though Nantemb wrote MU! while Fukushima has written MUUuu. This is an
outstanding characteristic of calligraphy; each character can be endlessly reinterpreted in
different scripts, styles, and compositions. Here the two forms for mu are extremely differ-
ent, and yet they both convey the power of this concept in Zen.
The immense potential for variety and creativity in Chinese-character calligraphy is
fully represented in the two versions of mu, since neither is exactly like any in a typical
dictionary of scripts and styles (see chart).24 Both Nantemb and Fukushima naturally
developed their own personal variations of this and other characters, expressing their own
vision of the words form and meaning.

Experimental Calligraphers

After the Second World War, when many aspects of Japanese culture were in serious disar-
ray, there was a questioning of many traditional values related to calligraphy. For example,
462|Stephen Addiss

there was a debate whether to write Japanese only with an alphabet, or only with kana,
and for a time it seemed as though Chinese characters might be eliminated. After all, the
old system was extremely difficult to learn, and kanji had been borrowed from a writing
system that never fit the Japanese language very well. But there was an appeal to Chinese
characters that could not be denied, and in the end the government merely simplified some
kanji, tried to adopt a system of about two thousand basic characters for students to learn,
and did not ultimately change the basis of the written language.
Although the old writing system was basically retained, that did not stop experimen-
tal artists from taking new and radical approaches to calligraphy. In 1949, the U.S. occupa-
tion tried to ban the teaching of calligraphy in Japanese schools due to its associations with
the Imperial movement, but this ban was soon rescinded by the Japanese government, and
in any case it had never been completely effective. Meanwhile young calligraphers were
looking for new ways of approaching their traditional art that would remove any stigma of
authoritarian or otherwise discredited values, and a new avant-garde was born.
Like everything new, experimental calligraphy in Japan had roots in the past. A dis-
ciple of Kusakabe Meikaku named Hidai Tenrai (18721939) had been a student of the
early Chinese styles based on the works brought to Japan by Yang Shoujing in 1881, and
in 1930 he formed an organization to publish some of these models. Three years later he
formed the Calligraphic Art Association (Shod Geijutsusha) with the aim of rethink-
ing traditional values and incorporating some artistic ideas from the West. After Tenrais
death in 1939, his followers continued his ideas, such as creating characters in unusual
ways and using tonal shadings rather than just black ink.25 This organization was dis-
solved in 1940 by Ueda Sky (18991968), who then formed his own groups, notably
the Calligraphy Reform Council in 1941. The members of this group experimented with
stippled patterns and soft brushes made of wool, as well as with light ink and new forms
of compositions featuring scattered placement of forms, leading toward total abstractions
of characters.26
Avant-garde calligraphy (zenei shod) is considered to have truly begun in 1945. It was
in this year that Hidai Nankoku (19121999), a son of Tenrai who had served in a govern-
ment office during the war and then escaped to a mountain village, followed his fathers
dying words to return to the past while creating new forms.27 Nankoku was inspired by
the Chinese character for lightning (), and his calligraphic variations on this word,
as well as other examples of what he called heart-line works, were exhibited in a mod-
ern art exhibition in 1946.28 They caused a great deal of controversy in the public (were
they really calligraphy?) and also a good deal of admiration from other artists. The fol-
lowing year, a group including Ueda Soky and Morita Shiry (19121998) founded the
Calligraphy Art Institute and began publishing their ideas and teaching methods as well
as their works.
In 1952, five artists in Kyoto established the Men of Ink Society (Bokujin-kai), an even
more experimental group that had the aim of creating calligraphy as a contemporary form
of expressionist painting. The leader of this group was Morita, who went on in 1951 to
found the magazine Bokubi (Ink beauty), which promoted calligraphy as a traditional Jap-
anese art that had close ties with modern Western movements including abstract expres-
sionism.29 On the cover of Bokubis first issue, Morita reproduced a painting by Franz Kline
to show how contemporary Western art was closely akin to calligraphy. In the succeeding
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 463

issue, Morita wrote that calligraphy (sho) must go beyond Japanese culture and speak to
universal human values and concerns.

If we stick narrow-mindedly to our specific role as calligraphers [shoka] and live

and create only within our own environment, we cannot make our art relevant to
Japanese society, let alone the world. . . . I stress the world relevance of sho, so that
we contemporary calligraphers will not wall ourselves in. . . . [T]he calligraphers of
the Han and Jin dynasties, and Hakuin and Rykan in Japan, achieved world rel-
evance in their work because they could go beyond characters and literary content
and express human integrity in their creation of form. . . . Painting and sculpture
and sho may appear to assume different forms but they share the same essen-
tial formal qualities. . . . If we can create forms that spring from the naked human
heart, everyone will understand them without regard to time and place, race
or occupation.30

Over the next decades Bokubi became influential in its rigorous advocacy of calligraphy
as an expression of human values, including Zen works by artists such as Hakuin Ekaku
(16851768), Daigu Rykan (17581831), and Nantemb. This interest in Zen art was not
confined to calligraphers; the avant-garde Gutai master Yoshihara Jir (19051972) several
times took artists to Kaisei-ji monastery near Kobe to look at large works of calligraphy by
Nantemb, which often featured spatters of ink as his brush hit the paper.31
Moritas own work did not move completely into abstraction, as did some by other
calligraphers of his time, but it took formal elements to their extreme.32 He often worked
in gold lacquer on black lacquer screens, a dramatic form of presentation that allowed for
expressive brushwork. In such a work as Dragon Knows Dragon ( ; see Plate 28),
the characters are barely readable, perhaps legible only if one knows what they are before-
hand since the cursive forms have almost reached the point of abstraction. The movement
and energy of the brushwork, the dynamic use of asymmetry, and the rare use of color in
calligraphy all work together to make this work the equivalent of abstract expressionism;
the viewer is encouraged to be drawn to the pure visual excitement without any great need
to know the text. Yet the dragon forms leap and writhe much as we might imagine a
dragon, so the meaning of the character does emerge through the calligraphy. In this way
Morita maintains his position in the long history of the art, in which the purport of the
words joins the visual expression of brushwork to create something that not only com-
bines, but at best transcends, each of them singly.
Dragon knows dragon was an important phrase for Morita, having been given it by
a teacher he greatly respected in grade school. He often wrote these kanji as the final work
when giving calligraphy demonstrations in Europe and America; his art name Shiry
itself can mean Child of the Dragon.
Moritas approach to calligraphy was influenced by Zen. For example, during a talk
given in New York City in 1963, he discussed the need to go beyond intention while main-
taining intention:

Neither intention nor non-intentions serves . . . the need is to attain a moment of

complete mu. . . . Now, mu in the use of the brush does not mean throwing the brush
464|Stephen Addiss

away or forgetting it, but rather when the artists inochi [the totality of his life] occurs
as brush, as instrument, so the artist with brush in hand will find himself unrestricted
with it, open to it. The brush, at such a moment is not distinguishable from inochi:
there is no object and no consciousness of it as such. . . . [T]o conclude, sensibility and
skill do not constitute genius in sho. The genius becomes only when one has found
release through realization through living circumstance. . . . [it comes] only when the
work of art is the work of life.33

A decade later, Morita elaborated his thoughts on calligraphy for Chanoyu Quarterly, writ-
ing that his experience of sho combined his involvement with the character form, brush,
ink, paper, hand, mind, history, and society. Calligraphy for Morita had the potential for
destroying duality, such as between the brush and himself. When he achieves this unified
state, in Zen it is said that I become mu, nothingness or no-mind, in the brush. The brush
is me. I am no longer bound by the brush. Here and now the brush constitutes the external
world. The limitations outside of myself have disappeared, I am free. I am fully alive. I have
become I. At this moment I am truly man for the first time.34
Morita, although using lacquer as well as ink, almost always chose traditional brushes
for his calligraphy. A more radical approach was taken for a time by Inoue Yichi (1916
1985), who worked in 1955 with a bundle of dry reeds and bucket of enamel. Avoiding any
reference to actual characters, his aim was, as he wrote, to [t]urn your body and soul into
a brush. . . . Spread your enamel and let it gush out! Splash it into the faces of respectable
teachers of calligraphy. Sweep away all those phonies.35 At this point the question arises
whether the result is calligraphy or painting, and, perhaps as a consequence, the next year
Inoue returned to the use of characters in his work.
One of the most interesting artists of the past half-century has been Shinoda Tk.
Born in 1913 in Manchuria to Japanese parents, she began calligraphy practice with her
father in Tokyo at age six, and over the following two decades she became expert with the
brush, especially in the writing of tanka. At the end of the Second World War, however, she
was strongly influenced by abstract painting and changed course in her career, bringing a
special style and touch to her work. Her paintings were shown at New Yorks Museum of
Modern Art in 1954, and she moved to New York City for two years in 1956. After return-
ing to Japan, Shinoda developed the use of calligraphic shapes and techniques to produce
works that seem to straddle the boundary line between painting and calligraphy; her pow-
erful and elegant forms, somewhat minimalist aesthetic, and dramatic use of space have
combined to make her one of Japans most successful artists of the past half-century. As of
this writing, she is still creating works including graphic art in her nineties.36

Professional Calligraphers

Perhaps the outstanding trend in calligraphy over the past fifty years has been the increas-
ing professionalization of teaching, with many schools formed under particular masters.
These operate as self-contained organizations, much as do schools of tea, flower arranging,
and many other arts and pastimes. Of the estimated sixteen million Japanese who now
practice calligraphy, a large percentage belong to one school or another, exhibiting with
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 465

Figure 16.7. Yanagida Taiun (19021990), Hanshan Poem, date unknown. Ink on paper, 67.5 136 cm.
Private collection.

their own group and following styles that their own master has approved, if not directly
provided.
With this kind of specialization, many calligraphers excel technically, and they are
occasionally innovative despite the system that encourages a masters style to be estab-
lished clearly and then followed. However, the danger of stultification among myriad fol-
lowers is certainly great, and the fact that large numbers of people become relatively skill-
ful has both advantages and disadvantages in terms of furthering the art. Nevertheless, the
great popularity of calligraphy, in an age when Japan seems to be becoming more modern
and Westernized every minute, is a significant feature of contemporary culture. Looking
back, this may not be surprising since Japan has long had the ability to accept the new
while preserving the old; to discover ancient wooden Buddhist temples or the remains of
eighth-century Chinese court music, it is still to Japan that one must turn.
Among the leading professional masters of the twentieth century was Yanagida Taiun
(19021990). His grandfather and father had both been fine calligraphers, and he studied
with them both as well as learning oil painting from 1918 to 1927 to give him insight into
Western aesthetics and artistic practices. Referring to his own work in a catalogue for an
American exhibition, he commented about the need for ruthless destruction as well
as an unfailing pursuit of creation.37 His expertise extended from small regular script
(which he stressed was crucial for calligraphers to learn) to uniquely flavorful versions
of ancient seal script that can resemble the paintings of Joan Miro in their free-floating
forms and compositions. One example of this style can be seen in the Hanshan Poem
(fig. 16.7).
Here the return to the Chinese past is enhanced not only by free brushwork but by
a playfulness that is characteristically Japanese. Yanagida takes advantage both of thin,
spindly strokes and thick fuzzing wet ink to create an accented and animistic work that
466|Stephen Addiss

resembles modern painting more than ancient calligraphy. The poem is by the Tang
dynasty recluse-monk Hanshan (J: Kanzan), and the artist commented, The characters
have been arranged in decorative positions, with a rhythmical emphasis upon brush move-
ment, thickness of line applied, and space and line.38

Cold Mountain so frigid that ice binds the rocks,

Hiding mountain greenery to reveal the whiteness of snow.
The sun comes out to shine for an hours benediction,
From this warmth, an old man is nourished.

In and beyond his own work, Yanagida faced the problem inherent in the professionaliza-
tion of calligraphy by stating, In modern Japan, the emphasis is placed on aesthetic sense
and technical skill to the exclusion of the spiritual and research aspects of calligraphy. As
a result, the magnanimity and dignity [have] been ignored.39
In 1984, an exhibition from Japan was held at the Library of Congress in Washington,
D.C., titled Words in Motion: Modern Japanese Calligraphy, with the work of twelve cel-
ebrated living masters including Yanagida and his Hanshan Poem. None of the artists was
born later than 1912, so the exhibition did not include any younger calligraphers, but it
did represent the most famous masters of kanji, kana, and even seal carving, itself a form
of calligraphic art. The level of expertise was therefore extremely high, and the styles had
a wide range. The influence of movement that returned to early Chinese prototypes could
be seen, as in the work of Yanagida, but self-expressive brushwork was also apparent, with
rough edges, irregular compositions, and individualistic brushstrokes predominating. The
same influences could be seen in a later exhibition sent from Japan, Eloquent Line: Con-
temporary Japanese Calligraphy, shown at the International Sculpture Center in Washing-
ton, D.C., in 1993. Again it was professional and well-established calligraphers that were
featured.40
There are still experimental calligraphers working in Japan, among whom is Kawabe
Tsutsumi (born 1955). She is the daughter of a professional calligrapher but has explored
new directions, and her work has been consistently imaginative. For example, she took the
character for same, changeless (onaji, ), and wrote it eleven times in eleven different
shapes on a hanging scroll. The result is Same Is Not the Same (fig. 16.8), in which her
fresh approach to characters and brushwork is evident. Yet her ultimate goal is the same as
it has been for calligraphers for more than a millennium; she writes that when calligraphy
is avant-garde and unconfined, it is akin to abstract painting, but . . . one major point of
difference is the essence of the line. While painters create shapes and forms in color, we
create ink traces with a variety of brushes and the colors of ink, and each stroke must be
alive; this is the kind of work that I try to originate.41

Calligraphy Today

The place of calligraphy in Japanese life is strong today, perhaps in some ways stronger
than ever before considering the large number of calligraphers and the more than four
hundred yearly exhibitions devoted to the art. However, it has evolved into an activity that
Figure 16.8. Kawabe Tsutsumi (born 1955),
Same Is Not the Same, date unknown. Ink
on paper, 102 22.5 cm. Private collection.
468|Stephen Addiss

does not always maintain close connections with everyday life; a great deal of calligraphy
seems to be created more for exhibitions than for personal interactions. In this sense it
has become closer to a Western definition of high art (no practical use), which has had
both advantages and disadvantages. The former include the high cultural standing that
calligraphy still possesses in Japanese society, and the new regard given it internationally.
Calligraphy also forms a major section of the yearly major government- and newspaper-
sponsored art exhibitions in Japan, although it is has been slow to penetrate most art his-
torical texts and college classes. However, the number of specialized books and magazines
about calligraphy and calligraphers is enough to keep bookstores (which sometimes sell
nothing else) in business.
On the less favorable side, calligraphy has developed in many cases into a cultural
hobby rather than a vital part of calligraphers lives. In the past, writing artistically was
crucial not only for poets, scholars, or monks, but for the entire educated section of the
population. Now there is a choice; in almost every segment of society, one can use the pen
or computer and never touch the brush. There are some exceptions: Zen masters, tradi-
tional poets, and remaining members of the nobility are routinely asked for examples of
their brushwork, and, as in the past, poor calligraphy can be a matter of shame.
There are also advantages as well as problems in the exhibition structure in Japan.
A large number of calligraphers have their work shown in public exhibitions, which is
certainly what they seek. To be accepted in a major national exhibition, however, one must
generally come from an accepted calligraphic lineage with the imprimatur of an impor-
tant master, and most of the smaller shows are entirely made up of one particular group
headed by one of the same masters. Therefore, independent calligraphers have a difficult
time being shown unless their work is so experimental that it appears in galleries of con-
temporary art. In addition, there is a natural tendency for semihobbyist calligraphers to
follow the style of their teacher. Of course this has always been true to some extent, but
now it has the reward of leading toward modest public success, which nevertheless must
be always less than that of ones teacher. In short, a calligrapher today can find a clear path
to a certain amount of recognition, but only within a structure that discourages individual
exploration and creativity.
Beyond being taught in many public schools, calligraphy has established itself today
as an art akin to tea ceremony and ikebana; large private schools are led by major masters,
almost always men, while being studied by groups of adults, often women. Visually, the
excitement of the late 1940s has gone, but some of the results remain. While there is little
total abstraction to be seen, the bolder use of character formation, freedom of brushwork,
and dramatic use of space have all been incorporated into many masters works, while
the criteria of readability is seldom an important issue. A cynic might complain that cal-
ligraphy has to some extent been institutionalized and stylistically homogenized, yet the
artistic potential offered by the seemingly infinite variations of kanji and kana in a variety
of scripts continues to excite and stimulate a large number of cultivated Japanese. It may be
that the next advances will be made outside the professional schools, and indeed interest-
ing writing can often be seen from potters, poets, and Zen masters. Whatever the future of
Japanese calligraphy in the twenty-first century, it has clearly overcome the challenges of
changing societal and aesthetic values and emerged as a popular and strongly entrenched
form of art today.
 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868 | 469

Notes

1. See John M. Rosenfield, Western Style Painting, in Tradition and Modernization in Jap-
anese Culture, ed. Donald H. Shively, p. 209 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971).
2. This has also been true in most Western studies. For example, Penelope Masons stan-
dard text, History of Japanese Art (New York: Abrams, 1993), has 433 illustrations, of which
only one is calligraphy.
3. See Cecil H. Uyehara, The Rite of Japanese Calligraphy and the Modern Age, Orien-
tal Art XXXIII, no. 2 (Summer 1987): p. 178.
4. Among Ryks many woodblock books published during and after his lifetime are
H-ch (Phoenix album) in large clerical, seal, and running scripts; Tshi dainin-ch (Tang
poetry album) in large running script; Shsei-fu (Autumn voices ode) in large standard script;
Tgen-k (Journey to peach-blossom spring, 1841) in running-cursive script; and Yontai senji-
bon (1,000 character essay in four scripts, with Murata Kaiseki, 1877).
5. Uyehara, The Rite of Japanese Calligraphy, p. 177.
6. See Stephen Addiss, 77 Dances: Japanese Calligraphy by Poets, Monks, and Scholars,
15881868 (Boston: Shambhala, 2006), pp. 1351.
7. Translations of poems in this article are by Stephen Addiss.
8. Quoted in Janine Beichman, Masaoka Shiki (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1982),
p. 86.
9. A number of her works are reproduced in the catalogue Yosa no Akiko ten (Kyoto: Shi-
bunkaku, 1989).
10.Beichman, Masaoka Shiki, pp. 110, 109.
11. Haijin no shoga bijutsu, vol. 7, Shiki (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1979). See also the exhibition
catalogue Masaoka Shiki (Itami: Kakimori bunko, 2002).
12. Calligraphy and paintings by Kyoshi are gathered and reproduced in volume 10 of
Haijin no shoga bijutsu.
13. The calligraphy and haiga of Hekigot, Seisensui, and Santka are gathered and repro-
duced in volume 9 of Haijin no shoga bijutsu.
14. For more references, see Stephen Addiss, Three St Zen Responses to the Twentieth
Century, in Audrey Yoshiko Seo, with Stephen Addiss, The Art of Twentieth Century Zen
(Boston: Shambhala, 1998), p. 124.
15. For examples of Hisajos work, see Taiy, no. 16 (Autumn 1976), special issue on
Haiku, p. 153.
16. Shigenobu kuma, Kaikoku gojnen shi (Fifty years of new Japan), trans. Marcus B.
Huish (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1909), pp. 422423.
17. For more on these three artists, see Stephen Addiss, Nanga koki no sannin no kojin
shugi gakkatachi (Three individualist painters of the late Nanga tradition), in Bakumatsu
Meiji no gakkatachi (Painters of the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods), ed. Tsuji Nobuo, pp. 197
232 (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1992), also published in Sansai No. 524 (1992): pp. 6065; and 525
(1992): pp. 7076.
18. For a full study, see Stephen Addiss and Jonathan Chaves, Old Taoist: The Life, Art,
and Poetry of Kodjin (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
19. Calligraphy and paintings by Sseki are gathered and reproduced in volume 8 of Hai-
jin no shoga bijutsu.
470|Stephen Addiss

20. For examples of calligraphy by novelists such as Kawabata and Akutagawa, see Hito
to shoseki: Meiji, Taish, Shwa ten (Man and his handwriting: Modern figures 1868present)
(Tokyo: Suntory Museum of Art, 1987).
21. Audrey Yoshiko Seo, with Stephen Addiss, The Art of Twentieth Century Zen (Boston:
Shambhala, 1998).
22. See Soch Suzuki, Shi tan, in Yamamoto Gemp rshi ten (Yamamoto Gemp Exhi-
bition) (Mishima: Nakayama kaisha, 1982), p. 46, quoted in Seo, The Art of Twentieth Century
Zen, p. 96.
23. See Cecil H. Uyehara, The Origins and Evolution of Japanese Calligraphy, in Elo-
quent Line: Contemporary Japanese Calligraphy (Washington, D.C.: International Sculpture
Center, 1993), pp. 1314, for further discussion.
24. Zen masters sometimes seem to be among the most free in reinventing characters.
25. See Cecil H. Uyehara, The Origins and Evolution of Japanese Calligraphy, in Elo-
quent Line: Contemporary Japanese Calligraphy (Washington, D.C.: International Sculpture
Center, 1993), p. 1314, for further discussion.
26. Ichir Hariu, The History and Present Status of Japanese Calligraphy, in Eloquent
Line: Contemporary Japanese Calligraphy (Washington, D.C.: International Sculpture Center,
1993), p. 31.
27. Ibid., p. 32.
28. For a reproduction of Nankokus Variations on Lightning, see Alexandra Munroe,
Japanese Art Since 1945: Scream against the Sky (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), p. 130.
29. Morita Shiry to Bokubi (Hygo: Hygo Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 1992).
30.From Bokubi, no. 2 (July 1951), translated by Reiko Tomii, as quoted in Munroe, Japa-
nese Art since 1945, p. 373.
31. Ibid., p. 94.
32. For an interesting study of Moritas changing ideas about the relationship of calligra-
phy to the West, see Bert Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations (Honolulu: Univer-
sity of Hawaii Press, 2001), pp. 7489.
33. Translated by Cid Corman and Tetsuo Yamada and printed in a bilingual large pam-
phlet, Morita Shiry sakuhin ko shu/Morita Shiry, Work and Thought (no publisher or date
given, circa 19641965?), unpaginated.
34. Morita Shiry, Sho as Creative Transformation of Self Chanoyu Quarterly, no. 10
(1974): pp. 1724, quote from p. 23.
35.Munroe, Japanese Art since 1945, p. 131.
36. For further information and illustrations of her work, see Mary and Norman Tolman,
Toko Shinoda: A New Appreciation (Rutland, Vt.: Charles Tuttle, 1993).
37.From An Exhibition of Modern Japanese Calligraphy (Tokyo: Asahi shimbun, 1963),
p. 52.
38. Words In Motion: Modern Japanese Calligraphy (Tokyo: Asahi shinbun, 1984), p. 77.
39. Ibid., p. 69.
40. Eloquent Line: Contemporary Japanese Calligraphy (Washington, D.C.: International
Sculpture Center, 1993).
41. Private letter, August 2004.
 Audrey Yoshiko Seo

17 Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation

The Cultural and Aesthetic Transformations of
Fashion in Modern Japan

Is fashion art? Many would argue no. Fashion is functional; it affects society too broadly,
too generally, too arbitrarily. Fashion is too commercial, merely a commodity. By its very
definition, it is fashion, a fleeting trend, constantly changing, ethereal, and therefore too
fickle to be considered classical and timeless as proper art should be.
Others would argue yes. Its forms are sculptural, as in the gowns of Christian Dior
and Charles James. Its lines are pure and elegant, as in the work of Cristobal Balenciaga.
Its designs relate to traditional arts such as Grecian sculpture, African masks, surrealism,
and pop art. And its surface textures and color play can rival any painting or collage. But
the fact that fashion is worn and is therefore viewed as functional leads others to deem it a
craft. Even within the fashion world itself, there is disagreement; some designers proudly
declare themselves artists, while others vehemently assert that they are not. There is a long
history of discussion about whether or not function somehow negates artistic status, but if
color, form, line, balance, proportion, beauty, and the creative manipulation of these ele-
ments contribute to what we broadly identify as art, then fashion qualifies.
Moreover, if in the twenty-first century we are concerned with the idea that art must
make a statement, must mean something, must question something, and must elicit dis-
cussion over its quality, purpose, and aesthetic value, then the work of contemporary Japa-
nese fashion designers is not only art, but is in fact the very definition of art. These design-
ers, however, did not appear out of a vacuum. Instead, they represent the latest chapter of
an ongoing sartorial saga that began with the advent of Western styles of clothing in the
Meiji period.

New and Newer

A man in a swallowtail coat walks with a woman in crested kimono. His silk top hat
is as shiny as her marumage hair-style. Where is this society headed, I wonder. Is tra-
ditional Japanese clothing gradually dying out? Will the entire Japanese race switch
over to purely Western styles? Or, perhaps, is this just a passing fad that will be fol-
lowed by a return to the clothing of our origins? Yet again, could it be that some new
hybrid blend of Japanese and Western clothing will emerge and dominate the future?1
472|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

The Meiji Restoration brought a flood of cultural, political, economic, and philosophical
changes to Japan, greatly influenced by new access to the West. As Japan opened itself up
to these new influences, it wrestled with how it was going to present itself to Western eyes
in order to advance its status. To a certain extent, Meiji Japan eagerly adopted Western
notions, innovation, and aesthetics; in particular, Western dress was adopted by many
Japanese eager to appear refined, sophisticated, modern, and civilized. The adoption of
Western dress for both men and, more slowly, women also reflected social and political
connotations in a country trying to redefine itself to the world. Clothing is always a reflec-
tion of personal ideals, status, values, and aspirations, and in Meiji Japan this was no dif-
ferent, except that it was reflected by an entire nation going through major political, social,
and cultural transitions strongly influenced by outside forces.
A little more than a century later, while Japan reached the peak of its economic mir-
acle in the 1980s, the Western fashion world was rocked by a group of Japanese designers,
led by Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto, who completely questioned,
redefined, and transformed the meaning of fashion, the methods through which clothing
could be made, and what garments represent and reflect, blurring cultural lines.
How did the Japanese, who had adopted Western dress only a hundred years earlier,
come to have such a profound and revolutionary effect on the aesthetics and definition of
fashion in the later twentieth century? Japanese represent the only non-Western design-
ers to have made such a significant, consistent, and thorough impact on Western fashion,
giving rise to an avant-garde movement in fashion that would culminate in Western
designers also raising questions about the meaning of fashion. But why was it Japanese
designers who provided new impetus to Western design at this time? Were they redefining
the cultural and aesthetic conflicts from the past? Or were they now resolving them on
their own terms?

Western Dress in Meiji Japan

The introduction of Western clothing to Japan just after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 was
both culturally and, according to some, politically motivated.2 Some Japanese at the time
attempted to demonstrate that they too were civilized and therefore worthy of being
treated as equals despite the inequalities of the Harris Treaty, which involved extraterri-
toriality for treaty ports, low import levies, and a most-favored-nation clause. The slogan
of the 1870s was bunmei kaika (civilization and enlightenment) as some Japanese looked
to anything Western as superior and innovative. Leading the movement were fashionable
men associated with government, the sophisticated, educated elite who attired themselves
in frock coats, neckties, and white shirts. Hoping to improve Japans international position
in the eyes of foreigners, many of them believed that the adoption of Western dress was
necessary to promote Japan as a civilized, modern nation.
While many of these fashionable men of Meiji were influenced by their travels abroad,
others relied on numerous etiquette books published in the final years of the Edo period
(16001868) and the early years of Meiji. Some of the earliest such books were written
by Fukuzawa Yukichi (18351901), who founded a center for Dutch studies in Tokyo in
1858. Fukuzawa traveled to Europe in 1862 and America in 1867 as an official envoy for
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 473

the shogun and became an authority on Western culture, publishing a series of books on
the subject between 1866 and 1870; the first volume, Seiyishokuj (Western living), sold
an astonishing 150,000 copies in its first year. The work included numerous woodblock
printed images of Western-style clothing, furniture, and objects. The images are simple
line drawings of individual garments merely conveying their basic shapes, and each gar-
ment is described in Japanese as well as labeled in phonetic Japanese characters (katakana)
providing the English pronunciation of the objects. The text provides detailed instruction
on Western manners and how to wear certain garments, although only for men.3
By the 1870s certain prominent Japanese women also began wearing Western clothes,
and their images are preserved in photographs and woodblock prints.4 But these women
had to obtain garments in order to demonstrate their fashion initiative. Some of them
purchased their Western clothing during travels to America or Europe, and many of them
even left their measurements in Paris to order a new wardrobe each season. Of course,
the Westernization of dress affected primarily the upper classes, including the Imperial
Court, generally the bastion of conformity and tradition. In November 1872, the court
abolished some of its ancient regulations and decreed that the specified dress for court
would be Western.5 But this was mainly for men, and court women continued to wear
traditional dress.

The Empresss New Clothes

Despite the focus on Western dress for men in court, there is a photograph of Empress
Haruko dated 1877 wearing a Western-style cloak for an important ceremony. The empress
had a great passion for things Western, including science, and in January 1887 she wrote
Fukusei ni kansuru oboshimesho (Opinions on the wearing of Western clothing), pub-
lished in the Chya shinbun, in which she encouraged the combination of Western styles
with the use of Japanese products. She often wore Western dress and there are a number of
photographs of her dressed this way. The empress stated,

if we look at contemporary Western womens wear, we find that it combines a top or

jacket [kimono] and a skirt in the manner of our ancient Japanese system of dress.
This is not only suitable for the formal standing bow but is also convenient for action
and movement and makes it only natural to adopt the Western method of sewing. In
carrying out this improvement, however, be especially careful to use materials made
in our own country. If we make good use of our domestic products, we will assist in
the improvement of techniques of manufacture on the one hand, and will also aid the
advancement of art and cause business to flourish.6

There are delightful prints from 1887 by Hashimoto Chikanobu (18381912) and Adachi
Gink (fl. 18741897) of court women in Western dress cutting cloth and using sewing
machines. Chikanobu even included the empress looking on as the women work (fig. 17.1).
The print includes instructions on how to make Western clothing, although it is
highly unlikely that these women would have ever been inclined to actually do so. The
images do, however, reflect some sense of reality; the first sewing machine was exhibited
in Tokyo in 1871, although they were not widely used during the Meiji period. However,
474|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

Figure 17.1. Hashimoto Chikanobu (18381912),

Picture of Court Ladies Sewing Western Clothing,
August 23, 1887. Private collection.

an advertisement appeared in the Tokyo nichinichi shinbun by a foreign woman living in

the Tokyo suburb of Tsujiki offering lessons in Western sewing for two yen a month, three
hours per day.7
In 1884 the court issued regulations on the wearing of Western dress in court that
included when and where certain garments would be appropriate: for instance, a formal
court dress with low neck for parties and banquets; a semiformal court dress with demi-low
neck for parties and banquets; and simple court dress with high neck and skirt with train for
lunches at the palace. The most formal court dresses were based on European models that
included a cloak with a long train. There are two examples of these garments that belonged
to the empress, one dated to 1895 and the other to 1906. The example from 1895 is made
up of a two-piece fitted gown with white satin skirt and a bodice of orange velvet with leg-
of-mutton sleeves (fig. 17.2). The garment has a matching twelve-foot train of orange velvet
which attaches to the back of the waist like a bustle. The entire dress and train are embroi-
dered with silk and gold threads creating purple, white, and yellow chrysanthemums, the
emblem of the Imperial House.8 Although the silhouette of the gown is clearly Western,
the theme and application of the embroidery reflects a Japanese aesthetic reminiscent of
traditional kimono textiles. The dress in many ways demonstrates the odd balance and
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 475

combination of aesthetics in Meiji Japan; the gown appears in so many ways Western with
its hourglass silhouette, corseted structure, and emphasis on molding the shape of the body
into a preconceived ideal. Yet the large scale and bold placement of the chrysanthemum
pattern would seem out of proportion on a purely Western gown, especially on the sleeves.
While the Japanese court adopted the wearing of Western dress, it also adapted it. Jean
Philippe Worth, son of the great couturier Charles Frederick Worth (18251895), noted in
his biography:

One of the most difficult sovereigns to dress was the Empress of Japan. The Nipponese
Protocol, which may have been changed since, was very strict in the eighties. Certain
parts of the body had to be covered, and no bodice could be dcollet. Price, how-
ever, never bothered them. I recall one envoy entrusted with the mission of buying
Her Majesty a set of sables, who insisted upon my assurance that they were the best
that could be had. Another time the Japanese ambassador asked me to make a court
mantle dress of material manufactured according to French process and designs in
Japan. He specified no price limit, so I trimmed it with sable tails, and Her Majesty
expressed herself as completely satisfied.9
476|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

Figure 17.2. Formal gown

worn by Meiji empress,
c. 18881890. Satin and
velvet with silk embroi-
dery gold threads. Bunka
Gakuen Museum, Tokyo.

Backlash and Satire

Cost may not have been an issue for the empress, but it was for everyone else. An article in
the Japan Weekly Mail, an English-language newspaper published in Yokohama, criticized
the government for its promotion of Western dress as practical and functional. The cost
of Western clothing was still prohibitive for most women; government employees such as
schoolteachers were required to wear Western dress both for state occasions and on the
job, but their salaries simply did not support this extravagance.
In 1904, Dr. Erwin Baelz, a German doctor living in Japan, expressed his concern for
Japanese women in cumbersome Western dress. He wrote of a meeting with Prime Min-
ister It Hirobumi at a New Years reception at the Imperial Palace. When It explained to
him that Western dress was to be adopted at the palace, I urged strongly against it for the
reasons that Western clothing is unsuitable for the Japanese physique and wearing a corset
would be harmful to the ladies. I pointed out that it was abominable from both the cul-
tural and aesthetic standpoints. He then notes that It replied, You cannot understand
the demand of high-level politics. What you say may be true. But when Japanese women
appear in native clothing in front of others, the upshot of the matter is that they will be
looked at as hollow dolls or festival dolls.10
Between 1890 and 1899 there was some backlash against Western dress and influence,
due in part to the slow withdrawal of Western nations from extraterritoriality rights.
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 477

An 1890 issue of Fzoku gah (Customs pictorial) noted, If we look at what women are
wearing these days, the breeze called restore antiquity is definitely blowing in the cities.
Except for a few ladies of the nobility, hardly any women are wearing Western clothes this
year.11 In general, most women wore traditional clothes because they were still at home,
working and sitting on the floor. The oddities of Western dress did not escape the empress
either, despite her desire to transform court attire. She wrote a waka (thirty-one-syllable
poem in classical style) making light of the situation,

Niigoromo With these new clothes

Tachii ni narezu I am not used to standing or sitting
To mo sureba What if
Kazari no tama no the beads of my necklace
Koborekeru ka na were to spill.12

Meiji Dandy, Meiji Punk

The introduction of Western dress and influences was therefore by no means smooth or
easy. Government officials in their Western finery were increasingly criticized for an inter-
est in form over function, exemplified by extravagances such as lavish parties and masked
balls that provided lively ammunition for satirical writers, critics, and illustrators at a time
when the government was promoting thrift, diligence, and moral reform among the lower
classes. Dress and appearance became a primary way for journalistic critics to attack gov-
ernment because it was still the most immediate, direct, and obvious distinction between
the classes of Meiji Japan. Satirical journals such as Maruchin lampooned government
officials by depicting them in oversized top hats, high collars, and rumpled suits. Antigov-
ernment forces strove to promote Meiji officials as frivolous dandies too concerned with
appearance and Western superficiality to govern efficiently.
In 1898 the journalist Ishikawa Yasujir (18721925) used the term haikara (high-
collar) to denote followers of Western fashion. He wrote in the Mainichi shinbun, Those
pretentious fellows who go overseas return having learned more about the way to wear
neckties and high collars than they have about their area of study. They are creatures of
neckties and high collars.13 By the late Meiji period the term haikara was also applied to
women who were concerned with Western style and dress, and by 1902 there was a popu-
lar hairstyle called the high-collar pompadour (haikara hisashigami).
The fashion antithesis of the government dandy in the Meiji period were the bankara
(ban, meaning savage replacing the high of the haikara) and the sshi. Both rejected the
material concerns and frivolities as well as the Western novelties associated with govern-
ment officials. They reflected a growing disillusionment and resentment by youths toward
what they viewed as the shameful behavior of government, and who instead promoted the
rights and political freedoms of the people. Both groups were distinctly antifashion. The
sshi wore purposely torn kimonos with the sleeves tucked up, long hair, geta (clogs) with
thick thongs, and they generally carried large clubs. Their attitude, their dress, their very
being was in direct defiance of the elegant and international qualities represented by Meiji
officials.14 Of course, by making a distinctly antifashion statement, they too were defining
fashion in their own terms.
478|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

New Looks and Old at the Depaato

By the early 1880s shops selling Western clothes for women began appearing in Tokyo,
followed in 1885 by the large, long-established store Shirokiya, purveyors to the Impe-
rial Household. It announced in the Tokyo nichinichi shinbun on November 7, 1886, the
employment of Mrs. Vaughn Curtiss, who is famous in England as an expert in the sew-
ing of womens dresses, along with several other foreigners, and we shall henceforth accept
orders not only for dress clothes and dancing dresses, but for all sorts of womens apparel,
which we will tailor without the slightest mistake.15
Perhaps the grandest and most influential of the early Japanese department stores
(known as depaato), however, was Mitsukoshi. Founded in 1683 by Mitsui Takatoshi, it
opened as a dry goods store called Echigoya in Tokyo and began selling Western-style
clothes in 1888. Following the Sino-Japanese War (18941895), the store took an innova-
tive turn by hiring men who had studied department store management in the United
States and by employing in-house designers to produced kimonos utilizing the latest tex-
tile patterns.16 The name of the store was changed to Mitsukoshi in 1904, and it began
promoting its goods with innovative designs on postcards and posters. It also published its
own in-house journal called Hanagoromo (Flower robe) with advertisements of its latest

Figure 17.3. Womans kimono,

Taish period (19121926).
Machine-spun ponge silk,
plain weave. Stencil-printed
warp threads (hogushi-gasuri
meisen). 58.5 46.5 inches
(148.5 118 cm). Montgomery
Collection.
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 479

products as well as articles and stories to entertain and inform its clientele. It should also
be noted that the cosmetics company Shiseid also established itself at this time, opening
as a Western-style pharmacy in 1872 and selling cosmetics beginning in 1897.
In 1905, following the Russo-Japanese War, Mitsukoshi increased the number and
range of foreign goods it offered and began sponsoring the Society for Fashion (Rykkai)
in an effort to promote Western dress for women in place of kimonos. In 1906 Mitsukoshi
opened a Western clothing emporium with cloth cutters from England. However, it was
always careful not to alienate Japanese consumers, and it consistently juxtaposed Western
modernization with familiar Japanese aestheticsvisual reminders that the company was
Japanese.
During this period of transition, Mitsukoshi promoted traditional Japanese aesthet-
ics of the past, reinvigorating interest and appreciation of traditional kimono textiles. In
1908, the store held a festival in honor of the Edo-period Rinpa artist Ogata Krin (1658
1716) and sponsored a contest for designs based on his decorative style. It did not hurt
that Krins style suited the tastes of the time, as Rinpa designs largely influenced the art
nouveau artists of Europe whose designs were in turn being appreciated and emulated in
Japan. A stunning example of this aesthetic cultural exchange is seen in a Taish period
(19121926) kimono with a rose and lattice motif (fig. 17.3). Here the bold abstraction and
simplification of design associated with Rinpa artists is combined with the bright colors
and slightly more geometric approach of the West. The rose motif was particularly popular
in French couture, associated with textile designers such as Raoul Dufy and couturiers
such as Paul Poiret (18791944), who used the flower on his dress labels as his couture
houses emblem.

Japonisme

While the Japanese were busy adapting to Western dress, Europeans were eagerly embrac-
ing Japanese aesthetics of all kinds; this frenzy for things Japanese came to be known
as Japonisme. But kimonos had already been popular in Europe since 1639, when the
Dutch East India Trading Company brought goods out of Japan through the port of Naga-
saki and into Europe. Some traders and foreign visitors such as Dr. Engelbert Kaempfer
(16151716) were given padded silk kimonos as gifts; these robes came to be known and
prized in Holland as Japonse rocken (Japanese dressing gowns). By 1692 the Dutch East
India Trading Company had already begun manufacturing its own version of these gar-
ments to meet popular demand.
In 1859 the port of Yokohama opened and was used by the Shiino Shobey Company
to export its silk and silk garments to Europe. Artists such as James McNeill Whistler
began including Japanese objects in their paintings and dressing their models in kimonos
as a reaction to the growing fascination with Japanese aesthetics. Stylish and artistically
inclined women in Paris also began wearing kimonos as an accompanying accessory to
their Western garments. The fashion magazine Harpers Bazaar began promoting this aes-
thetic in the 1880s, and the Japonisme rage was further boosted by theater productions of
the Mikado in London in 1885 and the publication of the novel Madame Chrysanthme
by Pierre Loti in 1887.
480|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

Figure 17.4. Gold

lam and silk
evening coat with
padded velvet
collar, circa 1920s.
Private collection.

After the turn of the century, designers such as Paul Poiret, the Callot Soeurs (1895
1937), and Madeleine Vionnet (18761975) adapted many aspects of the kimono and Japa-
nese aesthetic (as well as Chinese influences) in their design and construction of garments.
In 1903, while working at the House of Worth, Poiret introduced his manteau kimono
(kimono coat), which he described in his autobiography: It was a great square kimono
in black cloth, bordered with black satin cut obliquely; the sleeves were wide right to the
bottom, and were finished with embroidered cuffs like the sleeves of Chinese mantles.17
By the 1910 and 1920s voluminous cocoon-style coats, based on Poirets manteau kimono,
became fashionable with their simple construction featuring wide kimono sleeves and
cocoon shape (fig. 17.4). None of this went unnoticed by the Japanese, who continued to
follow Western fashion. The irony was expressed in 1908 in the Osaka mainichi shinbun:

It is safe to say that the dress of society women at fashionable gatherings or parties is
now entirely Western. And the fashion that parades before ones eyes is limited to the
new kimono sreebu style. What everyone is calling kimono sreebu means simply the
sleeve of our kimono. . . . All are embroidered and painted with chrysanthemum and
cherry sorts of japanoiserie on shoulder and sleeve.18
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 481

The Age of Modernism: Taish (19121926)

and Shwa (19261989)
The death of the Meiji emperor on July 29, 1912, marked the beginning of another period
of profound change and transition for the Japanese people. This time they would adopt
Western dress and beauty ideals with the energy and excitement befitting the modern
age and their own growing confidence through industrial development, not as a means of
appearing civilized to the outside world.
During the early twentieth century, new media such as film, radio, and gramophone
recordings joined popular novels, magazines, and newspapers as forms through which the
Japanese could experience and adopt new aesthetics and ideas. Moreover, the interest in
Western aesthetics that had waned slightly in the 1890s re-emerged within Japanese cul-
ture with a new intensity and impact. While much of the Western world spent the 1910s
dealing with World War I, Japan exported military supplies to European countries and,
as a result, its economy grew rapidly, and more people had money to spend on clothing,
luxury goods, and leisure activities. Although men continued to be strongly influenced by
the West socially and aesthetically, the cultural changes and the resulting conflicts that
emerged revealed themselves most prominently through women. An air of excitement,
activity, and even frivolity returned to Japan, reflected by bright colors and bold patterns
in kimono textiles. It was a period of lavish and frivolous spending for some, despite gov-
ernment campaigns promoting thrift and diligence.19
In 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake changed traditional Japanese life forever.
When Tokyo was rebuilt after the earthquake, Western-style concrete and steel buildings
replaced traditional wooden structures. Many people lost their wardrobes in the disaster
and replaced them with Western-style clothing as a reflection of practicality, rationality,
and the changing times.20 As inflation grew with the end of World War I, many reform
groups also encouraged the adoption of Western dress as a point of frugality due to what
was now its lower cost and greater durability compared to the kimono. Because Western
dress designs in the 1920s were simple, column-like shapes with drop waists and little
embellishment, they required less fabric to make than a kimono and were fairly easy to sew
due to their simple lines and construction.
Most importantly however, in silhouette and structure the shift dresses of the 1920s
draped over the body even more simply than either earlier Western clothes or the kimono.
They neither emphasized bust, hips, or waist nor required the complicated and constric-
tive undergarments that Meiji-period women had encountered with Western-style clothes.
The dresses show the transformation in silhouette and ornamentation between the Meiji
and Taish periods (fig. 17.5). The fitted bodice, tight sleeves, and bustle train of the Meiji
period (right) has given way to a loose column of fabric from which the ornamentation and
train fall naturally (left). This clothing offered women a new sense of ease and fluid move-
ment, enhanced by the fact that the weight of the fabric now hung from the shoulder, not
from the waist as in the previous silhouette.
The change, however, did not come immediately. Japanese men had already adopted
Western attire appropriate for work in offices and factories as a matter of practicality and
modernization, but women were still viewed by many as symbols of tradition and native
aesthetics. In 1925 Kon Wajir, a professor of architecture and design at Waseda University
482|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

Figure 17.5. Meiji period

(18681912, right) and Taish
period (19121926, left)
dresses. Private collection.

with interests in modernity and urban planning, conducted a study by observing 1,180
people on a busy Ginza street during one day in July. Among his numerous observations,
he noted that 67 percent of the men wore Western dress, as opposed to only 1 percent of
the women. His findings are captured in a cartoon of a man and woman with split fashion
personalities (fig. 17.6). The various numbers surrounding the figures are explained in the
text as variations on different garments.21

Modern Girls, Modern Women

Modernity for Japanese women was a serious point of contention for many, and moral,
social, and cultural conflicts manifested themselves in visual form. New values, styles,
and tastes were condensed and symbolized by the modern girl, modaan gaaru or moga for
short.22 She attired herself in short, Western-style dresses and high-heeled pumps, bobbed
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 483

Figure 17.6.Kon Wajiros Study

of Fashion, July 1925. Repro-
duced from Miriam Silverberg,
Constructing the Japanese
Ethnography of Modernity,
Journal of Asian Studies 51,
no. 1 (February 1992): p. 38.

her hair, and spent her time at cafes smoking cigarettes, reflecting the height of urban
modernism. Maintaining an air of freedom and availability, plus a sense of worldly wis-
dom mixed with a hint of innocence, she was sometimes seen as a brazen disruption to the
continuity and stability of society. Meanwhile, her counterpart, the traditional Japanese
woman, stayed at home, looked after her husband, ran the household, and raised her fam-
ily, thus reflecting traditional values and aesthetics.
Moga were often portrayed as young women of questionable morals who lived for fun,
pleasure, and fashion. Novels such as Naomi (Chijin no ai, 1924), by Tanizaki Junichiro,
captured the spirit, defiance, and uncertain circumstances of these women. Naomi is said
to resemble Mary Pickford: there is definitely something Western about her appear-
ance.23 With an offer to buy her Western clothes, her male companion bribes her to visit
the local beach instead of the more attractive one she prefers. She is petulant, flirtatious,
manipulative, and stubbornand she gets what she wants in this world of new standards,
experiences, and aspirations.24
However, it was not merely the lifestyle and behavior of moga that disturbed authori-
ties. Their mere appearance and image were also viewed as a threat to proper society. Short,
curled hair, introduced to Japanese women in 1921 by a photo in Fujin gafu magazine, was
followed by the importation of a permanent hair wave machine in 1923. The government
discouraged women from getting permanent waves on the grounds that the service wasted
484|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

Figure 17.7. Modern Women,

1924. Private collection.

electricity and promoted the wrong message during a time when the nation was politically
unstable and entering the Sino-Japanese War (19371945).
This new young modern woman also represented a new sense of activity and healthi-
ness. Women were often shown participating in sporting activities such as tennis, swim-
ming, and golf, or just enjoying the freedom and beauty of the outdoors by sunning them-
selves at the beach or touring around in automobiles (fig. 17.7). The women pictured here
are outdoors, having a good time and celebrating their independence, here represented by
the freedom of driving a convertible. Although the passenger appears a bit demure in her
straw hat and parasol, the driver is clearly having a good time, sleeves rolled up, waving,
and showing off her bobbed hair, fashionable hat, and made-up face. In the mainstream,
Japanese society seemed to be able to settle on an uneasy mingling of the traditional and
modern aspects of women. Although modernism, especially as represented by the West,
was not encouraged, most Japanese accepted that the role of women had to evolve and
change according to the times.
In the years leading up to World War II, ultranationalistic tendencies and Japans
rapid military expansion led many to discourage the wearing of foreign clothing and for-
eign behavior in favor of a return to native practices. The use of cosmetics was banned and
hairstyles featuring permanent waves were denounced.25 Despite this nationalistic turn,
the wearing of kimonos was not encouraged; in fact, because of its cost, excessive use of
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 485

material, and delicate nature, the kimono was denounced as an expression of unpatriotic
indulgence in luxury.26 In the 1940s, as Japans involvement in the war increased, material
and supplies became scarcer. By 1942 food, clothing, and fabric were all being rationed,
and by 1943 there was little fabric left in the country to be rationed. Women began wearing
mompe, baggy trousers, over a shirt or an old kimono. This functional garment became
the uniform for women during the war while silk kimono were stored or traded away in
exchange for food; mompe are still worn by some farmers and workers in Japan today.
As Japan began to rebuild after the war, the kimono made a slow comeback in the mid-
1950s as a special garment for ceremonies and holidays, and they were still worn at home
by many women. However, times had changed and most Japanese wore Western clothes,
especially out on the street. Womens magazines displayed the latest suits and dresses fea-
turing the New Look silhouette introduced by Christian Dior (19051957) in 1947. In
reaction to years of rationing, tight bodices, tiny waists, and full skirts that required many
yards of fabric were the rage. By the 1960s, as the countrys economic boom was in motion
and the Japanese turned even further to Western trends and fashions, movies stars such
as Audrey Hepburn represented the ideal sense of beauty and style. As Japan continued to
rebuild physically, psychologically, and economically, Japanese society in general became
almost completely Westernized in terms of dress, and Tokyo became one of the most fash-
ion-conscious cities in the world.

Postwar Fashion: The Designers

The postwar recovery and economic expansion of Japan is understood primarily in terms
of industrial growth and innovations in electronics and technology, but from the late
1960s a creative group of individuals placed Japanese design at the forefront of avant-
garde fashion.

Hanae Mori (born 1926)

Hanae Mori opened her atelier in Shinjuku in 1951 and three years later began designing
costumes for several movies, working for directors such as Yasujir Ozu (Early Autumn,
1958) and Nagisa shima (A Cruel Story of Youth, 1960). Mori continued to design for
more than five hundred movies, theater productions, ballets, and operas throughout her
career in Japan, Paris, and other European cities. This stage and screen experience may
have influenced her couture designs as well; her garments are known for their bold, visu-
ally direct patterns in striking colors and fluid lines.
Mori presented her first collection overseas in New York in 1965 with the theme of
East Meets West, an idea she remained conscious of through her career, and the collec-
tion included fabrics from Japanese cushions and silk obi (sashes used on kimonos). In
1977 she opened her haute couture house in Paris and was the first Asian designer invited
to become a member of La Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture; she eventually opened
a prt-a-porter line in 1987.
Although Moris clothes incorporate Japanese cultural influences, they are not con-
troversial or challenging to Western aesthetics; she was careful to fit her aesthetic to the
Paris ideal, noting,
486|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

Japan is a nation where people wore kimono so its very natural that people think that
Japan is backward in designing Western clothes that come out of the Western tradi-
tion and lifestyle. Its true. But by adding Eastern tradition to the Western clothing
system, we can expand the meaning of clothes. I think that is what is expected of me
as an Asian couturiere in Paris.27

Although sophisticated and refined, Moris clothes are also often infused with a sense of
fun and playfulness in their patterns and details. She applies bright colors and bold pat-
terns to traditional Western silhouettes, creating a unique vision. For instance, her trade-
mark butterflies have appeared throughout the years in prints, as appliqus, and as parts of
the garments, such as a butterfly-shaped bodice on an evening gown. She has also applied
Japanese imagery to surfacescalligraphic characters in black and white sweeping across
floating layers of chiffon in grand gestures (spring 1989), images of Mount Fuji inspired by
Hokusais prints (spring 1996), and images of Kabuki actors entwined with dragons (fall
1993). Many of these images originated in the Edo period, described by Mori as an era
of great cultural richness and exhilaration, which succeeded one of great discipline and
sobriety. And unlike some of the younger Japanese designers, I feel it is natural to draw on
both those aspects of our traditionthe rich and the plain.28 Emerging out of a decade
when Japan was reasserting itself economically but still looking to the West for commer-
cial guidance, Mori established herself as a businesswoman and creative influence and,
more importantly, opened the door to East-West fashion.29

Kenzo Takada (born 1939)

Growing up, Kenzo made clothes for his sisters dolls and read her fashion magazines while
she attended sewing classes that were not open to men. Then in 1958, he saw an advertise-
ment that the Bunka Fukuso Gakuin, the prestigious school of fashion design in Tokyo,
was going to admit men; he enrolled as its first male student. After graduation, Kenzo set
off for Europe, stopping at various port cities during the month-and-a-half-long sea voy-
age and arriving in Marseille on January 1, 1965.
Kenzo was determined to live and work in Paris, and he eventually got a job at Pisante,
a ready-to-wear manufacturer, where he practiced draping and putting designs on paper.
But he felt restricted working for someone else, with the rules and expectations of Paris
fashion. Eventually Kenzo opened a shop called Jungle Jap and presented his first collec-
tion of clothes on April 14, 1970, in the boutique. The fabrics for the collection were pur-
chased at flea markets and mixed and matched with Japanese fabrics, plaids next to florals,
giving birth to a signature Kenzo look.
In 1971 Kenzo showed his collection in New York and Japan as well. He decided to
return to Japan in part to rediscover his culture, and on this visit he gained a renewed
appreciation for the simple lines and refined beauty of the kimono. He began to see the
sophisticated, technically constructed Western garment as restrictive to the body, whose
form it worked so hard to fit perfectly. Returning to Paris, Kenzo was determined to dem-
onstrate more of himself in his work by eliminating darts, zippers, and constraintsthe
essential tools in creating the Western silhouette. No more darts. I like bold straight lines.
Use cotton for summer and no lining for winter. Combine bright colors together, combine
flowers, stripes, and checks freely. This was the beginning of my style.30 Kenzo produced
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 487

sinuous, fluid garments, based on the straight lines of the kimono, that when placed on the
curves of the body hung loose and created a new sense of volume and movement. Unlike
Hanae Mori, Kenzos clothes were not mainstream or fashionable in either Japan or Paris;
they were innovative in both cultures.

Kansai Yamamoto (born 1944)

Kansai Yamamoto appeared on the Japanese fashion scene with a radical new approach to
color and scale, reflecting yet another aspect of the changing times and growing emphasis
on youth culture. He graduated from the Bunka Fukuso Gakuin in 1967, then apprenticed
with Japanese designers Junko Koshino and Higashi Hosomo. In 1971, Kansai opened
his own company and showed his first collection in London; it included large red clown
faces on the fronts of white satin capes and knit dresses.31 David Bowie became aware
of Kansais work and purchased a piece from the boutique that he subsequently wore on
stage at the Rainbow concert in 1972. Kansai presented Bowie with two costumes during
a meeting in New York, and in 1973 Bowie commissioned Kansai to design nine more
costumes based on Japanese n theater costumes. These costumes became the wardrobe
for Bowies stage personas Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, the icons of glam rock in the
early 1970s.
These costumes reflected a mixture of science fiction, Kabuki theater, and rock and
roll. Many of the jumpsuits had extremely wide pant legs that flared out, revealing bold
patterns of concentric shapes, not unlike the pattern of concentric squares worn by Kabuki
actor Ichikawa Danjur. Kansai designed one of Bowies most famous garments from this
period, Rites of Spring, a black jumpsuit with pant legs that flared out to the side in large
curves. It was ornamented with silver lines flowing over the surface of the suit in a concen-
tric pattern. This jumpsuit came with a tearaway side panel in red, an idea borrowed from
Japanese theater costumes.
In 1975 Kansai showed his collection in Paris, opening a boutique there in 1977. His
designs and use of color, even for his ready-to-wear collections, were over the top in a
completely otherworldly way; he often embellished coats and jackets with bold, fresh
images from Japanese popular culture such as manga (comics) and anime (see Plate 29).
While Mori provided traditional Western gowns and dresses and Kenzo added a youthful
approach with an earthy, ethnic spirit, Kansai created an edgy, pop culture world with new
heroes in a bright, shiny, larger-than-life atmosphere.

Issey Miyake (born 1938)

The first years of the 1970s were groundbreaking years for Japanese designers. Kenzo
showed his collection in New York, Kansai Yamamoto opened his boutique in London,
and Issey Miyake showed his first collection. Miyake grew up in Hiroshima; surviving the
devastation of World War II, he graduated from Tama Art University in Tokyo in 1964
and the following year went to Paris, where he was confronted with the changing world
and contradictory nature of Paris fashion in the 1960s. He studied the rules of couture at
the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture and apprenticed to the major French designers Guy
Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy. While the traditional French training was invaluable,
it was also oppressive, and like many young designers of his day Miyake aspired to some-
thing more.
488|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

In 1969 he moved to New York, intent on settling there permanently, and worked in
the studio of the American designer Geoffrey Beene, whose clothes revealed a sense of
irony and playfulness that Miyakes creations would also reflect. After six months, Miyake
returned to Japan for a visit and found his homeland going through major social and eco-
nomic transformations. 1970 was the year of the Osaka Expo, and Japan was revealing a
new confidence, ready to become an economic power.
Motivated by this energy and the new forms of casual expression in dress, Miyake
wanted to find a Japanese equivalent to denim jeans. As a result, his first collection in 1970
included garments made of sashiko (a quilted cotton fabric, topstitched with geometric
patterns based on rural farm textiles). This interest in traditional Japanese textile tech-
niques led him to the Japanese countryside, where he visited the workshops of weavers
and dyers; he also studied the work clothes of peasants and carpenters in terms of both
beauty and functionality. In the first four or five years, I was interested in other cultures,
but what took time and energy was digging out the old, sleeping, good ideas of Japan.32
In 1978 Miyake published East Meets West, a manifesto of sorts celebrating the inter-
action of two cultures in which he explained,

My challenge as a clothing designer has been to create something different, not tra-
ditionally Japanese, not purely Western, but something which has the best of both: a
new genre of clothing.33

Miyake therefore rejects the idea of being a Japanese designer, stating, My ass may be
Japanese, but my brain is international.34 With this approach, he has also tried to start at
the most basic point of fashion, the fabric: I always try to get all my answers by returning
to one piece of cloth, the most basic form of clothing.35 Miyake did not copy kimono-
shaped garments; this would be too conventional. His point was the feeling and movement
of the body beneath the garmentthe lightness, movement, and freedom of cloth sus-
pended by the body. I create by wrapping a piece of fabric around myself. Its a process of
manual labor. My clothes are born out of the movement of my hands and body.36 His work
is about breaking boundaries and assumptions in both culturesthe blind acceptance of
things Western in Japan, and the stereotypical notions of things Japanese in the West.
In 1988 Miyake started work on the major theme of pleats, the next step in his fas-
cination with texture and fabric surface. He experimented with cotton, then polyester,
and finally tricot jersey, which allowed stretch along with the movement of the pleats. He
said, Pleats move and change with the wearers body movements. As the pleats move they
change colors, giving an optical illusion like a kaleidoscope.37 Unlike traditional methods
in which patterns are cut from already pleated fabric, Miyake made the shape of the gar-
ment first, cutting it two and a half to three times its actual size, then pressing the garment
between two sheets of paper. The flat garment is then fed through the pleating machine
and emerges with permanent pleats. Miyake described the result by saying, The blouses
emerge like big muffins from the oven.38
In 1990 Issey Miyake Pleats Please was exhibited at the Touko Museum of Contem-
porary Art, Tokyo. The garments were displayed flat in recessed holes in the floor and also
on mannequins to show variety of shape and transformation of structure. These garments
were from his Rhythm Pleats collection, with which Miyake established himself as a
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 489

designer for whom traditional approaches to cutting cloth and fitting the body were irrele-
vant and uninteresting (see Plate 30). The astonishing variety of geometric shapes cut from
pleated fabric and laid flat with slits in seemingly odd places was not like anything before
associated with clothing, tailoring, or dressmaking. When placed on the body, the shapes
came to life, taking on dimension in unbelievable ways; neither tailored nor wrapped, they
covered the body, but did not fit in either the Western or Eastern convention. It is fabric
suspended on the body, taking shape purely through cut, texture, and body movement.
In his desire to reach beyond cultural boundaries as well as the preconceived ideas of
fashion and clothing, Miyakes clothes are also about humor, playfulness, and creativ-
ity for both the designer and the wearer. They allow the imagination to run wild, leading
to a myriad of cultural associations. In 1995 he created his Futon Coat, taking the flat,
quilted rectangular form of a traditional Japanese bed cover and simply attaching sleeves.
Like the pleated dress, the coat lies flat, but when placed on the body it transforms itself
into new shapes.
In 1998, remaining innovative as the twentieth century was coming to a close, Miyake
continued to look to the future and technology. He produced A-Poc, which stands for A
piece of cloth, based on a theory he developed in the early 1970s when he designed gar-
ments that enveloped a form in a single stretch of cloth, indifferent to the shape of the
body beneath it. The A-Poc line of clothes consists of a long tube of jersey from which one
can cut, without wasting any material, a large variety of different garments, like paper doll
clothes. The rolls of fabric are made with an old knitting machine controlled by a com-
puter, and the clothes can be made in large quantities, reflecting an economy of time and
material. Most importantly, it takes the communication and interaction between designer
and wearer a step closer; now the wearer must decide not only which garments she wants,
but must also cut them herself.39

Without the wearers ingenuity, my clothing isnt clothing. These are clothes where
room is left for wearers to make things their own. That may need courage at first, but
once you get the trick, its not difficult.40

Yohji Yamamoto (born 1943)

Just as 1971 had been a groundbreaking year for the first generation of Japanese designers,
1981 brought a second revolution: Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo presented collec-
tions together in Paris.
When Yamamoto was two years old, his father died, and his mother, Fumi, a dress-
maker, resolved not to marry again and concentrate on raising her only child alone. In
1966, he graduated from Keio University with a law degree, but without the necessary fam-
ily connections so important in Japanese society, he decided to change paths and enrolled
in Bunka Fukuso Gakuin, the same fashion school attended by Kenzo and Kansai Yama-
moto. I just wanted to help my mother. I didnt know there was a kind of business called
designer.41
After graduating in 1968, Yamamoto headed to Paris, where he made the rounds with
little success. The following year he returned to Tokyo, assisting his mother and making
clothes for nightclub performers. In 1972 Yamamoto decided to start his own ready-to-
wear business. The first few years were difficult, but in 1977 he presented his collection
490|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

at the Bell Commons in Tokyo to rave reviews. Four years later, Yamamoto presented his
first collection in Paris with Rei Kawakubo, and the following year he showed his clothes
in New York. Since then, Yamamoto has gained rapid and consistent notoriety for his
designs, gradually developing a distinct style and visual language.
Of the current Japanese, Yamamoto is perhaps the one whose designs can be described
as most classical. They are by no means conventional or conservative, but they reflect an
elegance and classical beauty that harks back to the era of Dior and Cristobal Balenciaga
(18951972), while at the same time continuing to create innovation in modern design.
Yamamoto has often been accused of being too somber with his continued used of black as
the overriding color in his collections, but black forces the viewer to focus on the cut and
form of the clothes, the stunning sculptural shapes that envelop and frame the wearer in
sharp angles or graceful curves. There are no tricks or embellishments, just the masterful
cutting of black cloth, sometimes as plain and humble as heavy wool felt.

I try to eliminate all excess by cutting. I have the feeling that this process (of cutting
off) is linked in some way to elegance. Elegance and so-called eliminating excess,
or the beauty that remains after excess has been eliminated.42

Yamamoto has created an aesthetic that is quiet, haunting, and often mysterious, a lyric
sense of fluid movement. He creates long, sinuous gowns of twisted fabric and pairs them
with wide, floating hats, sending models strolling down the runway like the grand women
of the Belle Epoque.
Yamamoto seems to question where Western fashion has come from and how it can be
adapted. As a result, past collections have made clear references to Chanels classic tweed
suit (spring/summer 1997), Pierre Cardins modernism (fall/winter 1989/90), and the sim-
ple A-line gowns of Balenciaga with hemlines that fall gracefully front to back (spring/
summer 1989). Yamamotos bold approach to cut and construction often bears a special
resemblance to Christian Dior, who revolutionized modern fashion in 1947 with his New
Look silhouette, but he updates ideas by loosening and relaxing Diors rigid New Look
silhouette. I think to fit clothes tight on a womans body is for the amusement of man. It
doesnt look noble. Also it is not polite to other people to show off too much.43
Beyond paying homage to some of the great couturiers of the past, Yamamoto also
plays with the basic themes and aspects of fashion. In spring/summer 1999, his Moulin
Rouge Collection celebrated brides and grooms but blurred the gender lines of dress and
the conventional idea of scale by sending out a bride under a huge canopy hat carried
by stage hands dressed in black (a theater technique borrowed from Kabuki). And in the
spring/summer of 2001 he took the notion of le sac (the bag), that basic, utilitarian object
that conceals the belongings of a woman, and incorporated it into the design of garments
(fig. 17.8). In these garments, the bags with their large metal clasps do not serve as mere
decorative accents to the garments; they are prominent motifs around which the garments
are designed and constructed, hanging off the fronts and backs of dresses and provid-
ing large, cavernous recesses in which to drop possessions. In one example, the garment
drapes over the neck with the large purse hanging in the front like a bib. The entire front
of the garment serves as the body of the bag, and the bag becomes the garment. Ironically,
Yamamoto also deemed it necessary to add a small zippered pocket to one side.
Figure 17.8. Yohji Yamamoto (born 1943), Womens Top based on
Le Sac 2001. Private Collection.
492|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

Rei Kawakubo (born 1942) and Comme des Garons

After graduating from Keio University with a degree in fine arts in 1964, Rei Kawakubo
took a job with a chemical company in its advertising department. After three years she
decided to change directions and become a freelance stylist (a novel idea at the time),
working on advertising photo shoots. Occasionally when she was unable to find the kinds
of clothes she wanted to use for a shoot, she would make them herself, and by 1969 she was
using the name Comme des Garons for them.
In 1973 Kawakubo formed her own clothing company. Two years later she showed
her first collection in Tokyo, then in 1981 went to Paris and caused a furor. The collection
she showed was dubbed Hiroshima chic, and Kawakubo was called Japans answer to
the atomic bomb.44 Kawakubos clothes were dark, unstructured, oversized, and torn, and
simply unlike anything Paris fashion had ever seen before. But what at first may seem
randomly tattered and carelessly draped is not. Upon close inspection, it can be seen that
the garments are meticulously thought out and ingeniously cut, draped, and constructed,
often with mind-boggling complexity. A coat circa 1983 reflects this seemingly haphazard,
but deceptively complicated quality. The coat appears be a tattered bundle of loosely woven
and pulled wool, draped and wrapped casually like a beggars coat (fig. 17.9). However,
the coat is actually a beautifully constructed work of finely woven fabric with each hole
meticulously placed. This is not about improvisation or shredding fabric for the sake of
nonconformity or making an antifashion statement; it is not about destruction, but about
construction at its most innovative and sophisticated level.
Of the designers discussed here, Kawakubo is probably the most strikingly rebel-
lious in essence. Although she uses many of the same aesthetic ideals as Miyake and Yohji
Yamamotoasymmetry, unfinished edges, loose, unstructured construction, architec-
tural silhouettes, and unique and innovative materialssomehow when she brings it all
together there is something agitated in the energy; it is not playful and joyful like Miyake,
nor is it mysteriously lyrical like Yamamoto. Instead it directly questions the wearer and
the viewer about what clothing can be. Yet the reticent Kawakubo does not explain her
statements, nor will she acknowledge anyone elses interpretations. This makes her and her
work all the more challenging and elusive. One feels compelled to understand her designs,
to finding the meaning in them, but it may be more useful to simply accept them for their
wonderful and complex cuts, influences, and use of material and enjoy the changing quali-
ties Kawakubo presents from season to season.
For Kawakubo the process is about new ideas, not a continuous message. Some of her
many changing themes have been dresses with wide elastic bands sewn into the body of
the garment, creating tension and pull in the fabric (1984); silk chiffon and organdy layers
in sherbet colors (1989); silk taffeta gowns with large skirts hand-painted with images of
cranes and pine trees and heavy wadded hems reminiscent of Japanese fuki (padded hem)
in kimonos (1991); and long white dresses with lacy cutout motifs of waterwheels and
maple leaves, reflecting a combination of Japanese paper textile stencils and Western paper
doilies (1992). She is famous for unfinished garments and has said, Whereas completion
can sometimes be static, here I saw an energy and beauty in the unfinished state.45 Perhaps
her most infamous design in recent years is her body meets dress, dress meets body, in
which tight, form-fitting dresses are accentuated with large bumps placed at different
points of the body (1997).
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 493

Figure 17.9.Rei Kawakubo

(born 1942), for Comme
des Garons woven wool
Beggars Coat circa 1983.
Private collection.

Ironically, Kawakubo, who has no formal training in fashion design, often creates
some of the most complex shapes. She relies on a team of people who can intuit her ideas
without detailed sketches or long descriptions. This process can be a challenge for even the
best pattern cutters. One explained,

Once she gave us a piece of crumpled paper and said she wanted a pattern for a gar-
ment that would have something of that quality. Another time she didnt produce
anything, but talked about a pattern for a coat that would have the qualities of a pil-
lowcase that was in the process of being pulled inside-out. She didnt want the exact
shape, of course, but the essence of that moment of transition, of half inside, half out.46

Thirty years after her first shows, Kawakubos designs are less threatening to the West-
ern fashion world. Many Western designers, particularly in Belgium, have begun their
own avant-garde movements. Meanwhile, another generation of designers in Japan, in
494|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

particular Junya Watanabe, who has his own label under Comme des Garons, continue
to create innovative clothes that allow the wearer and the viewer to ponder the meaning
of clothes and the making of clothes and, most importantly, to experience the joy and
creative expression of clothes.

Conclusion

Once opened to the West during the Meiji era, Japanese society made great strides absorb-
ing and incorporating some of the aesthetic, cultural, economic, and political influences
deemed necessary in the face of a rapidly changing world. Since that time, Japanese fash-
ion has maintained an aesthetic and cultural give and take with the West. Men, and more
gradually women, began to wear Western dress over the decades, until it is now nearly
ubiquitous. At the same time, however, the West has been influenced by Japan, first with
kimono design and structure and more recently with avant-garde fashion. The interplay
between the cultures has enhanced creativity on both sides, leading to fashion that is nei-
ther stereotypically Japanese nor completely Western in style. Meanwhile, the develop-
ment and integration of new forms and high-tech materials has enabled designers in both
cultures to even more fully express their creativity and ideas about what clothing repre-
sents and means to everyone.
Just as the designs of Japanese architects stand side-by-side with their Western coun-
terparts in major world cities, the work of contemporary Japanese fashion designers influ-
ences the catwalks of the world, broadening, questioning, and changing the concepts of
what fashion design can be. In fashion, as in other arts, Japanese innovation, design, aes-
thetics, and creativity have been brought to a world audience, and the names of Japanese
fashion designers have become part of the international design vocabulary.

Notes

1. From an article in Fujin sekai (Womens world), March 1914. Quoted in Liza Dalby,
Kimono (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 107.
2.Shibusawa Keiz, Japanese Life and Culture in the Meiji Era, trans. Charles S. Terry
(Tokyo: bunsha, 1958), p. 21. There were some reports that as early as 1861 some people were
secretly making Western-style clothing despite laws prohibiting it.
3.See Julia Meech-Pekarik, The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions of a New Civilization
(New York: Weatherhill, 1986), for a translation of the entire text.
4. In 1870 the blackening of teeth and the shaving of eyebrows were outlawed, the first
major rejection of traditional Japanese beauty traditions for women. The empress appeared in
public with eyebrows and white teeth in 1873.
5. It still preserved the wearing of traditional kanmuri (sacred dress) for ceremonies.
6.Meech-Pekarik, The World of the Meiji Print, p. 129.
7.Shibusawa, Japanese Life and Culture in the Meiji Era, p. 28.
8.See Meech-Pekarik, The World of the Meiji Print, plate 26, for a color image of this dress.
 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation | 495

9. Jean Philippe Worth, A Century of Fashion (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1928), pp.
206207.
10. Mitsukuni Yoshida, Japans Modern Period and the Significance of Western Cloth-
ing, in Inventive Clothes: 19091939 (Kyoto: Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
1975), p. 25.
11.Dalby, Kimono, p. 86.
12.Meech-Pekarik, The World of the Meiji Print, p. 137.
13. Jason G. Karlin, Gender of Nationalism: Competing Masculinities in Meiji Japan,
Journal of Japanese Studies 28, no. 1 (2002): p. 61.
14. Ibid., p. 59.
15.Shibusawa, Japanese Life and Culture in the Meiji Era, p. 29.
16. The information concerning Mitsukoshi is largely from Kendall H. Brown, Post-
cards, Commerce, and Creativity in Japan, 19041940, in Art of the Japanese Postcard (Bos-
ton: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2004).
17. Paul Poiret, King of Fashion: The Autobiography of Paul Poiret, trans. Stephen Haden
Guest (London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1931), pp. 6970.
18.Dalby, Kimono, p. 106.
19.See Sheldon Garon, Fashioning a Culture of Diligence and Thrift: Savings and Fru-
gality Campaigns in Japan, 19001931, in Japans Competing Modernities: Issues in Culture
and Democracy 19001930, ed. Sharon A. Minichiello, pp. 312334 (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1998).
20. It has been estimated that two years after the earthquake, 500,000 people in Tokyo
wore Western clothes. Mitsukuni, Japans Modern Period, p. 29.
21.Kons work was published in the article, Record of Tokyo Ginza Mores in the Early
Summer of 1925, in the July 1925 issue of Fujin kron (Womens opinion). See Miriam Silver-
berg, Constructing the Japanese Ethnography of Modernity, Journal of Asian Studies 51, no. 1
(February 1992): 3054, for a discussion of Kons work.
22.See Miriam Silverberg, The Modern Girl as Militant, in Recreating Japanese Women
16001945, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein, pp. 239266 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991),
for a detailed discussion of the complexities of defining the modern girl.
23.Junichiro Tanizaki, Naomi, trans. Anthony H. Chambers (San Francisco: North
Point Press, 1990), p. 4.
24. The attitudes and lifestyles of moga should not be viewed as representing all modern
working women such as office clerks and shop girls, who often wore Western clothing. The sec-
ond half of the 1920s employed about 8,200 women in secretarial and service jobs in Japanese
urban centers. By 1924, women made up 3,500 of 30,000 white-collar commuters working in
the Marunouchi district of Tokyo. Miriam Silverberg, The Working Girl as Militant, in Rec-
reating Japanese Women 16001945, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein, pp. 256257 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1991).
25.Dalby, Kimono, p. 130.
26. Ibid. The textile industry was hit hard in the years following the Depression and lead-
ing up to the war. In 1937 the Nishijin weaving center shortened its hours of operation, and the
following year materials such as silk, cotton, and artificial silk were rationed.
27. Yuniya Kawamura, The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion (New York: Berg, 2004),
p. 158.
496|Audrey Yoshiko Seo

28.Judith Thurman, Hanae Mori: Her House in Tokyo Designed by Kenzo Tange,
Architectural Digest 45, no. 9 (September 1988): pp. 236237.
29. Hanae Mori officially retired from her couture house after presenting her fall/winter
2004 collection.
30.Kawamura, The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion, p. 116.
31.See Linda Watson, Vogue Twentieth Century Fashion: 100 Years of Style by Decade and
Designer (New York: Conde Nast, 1999), p. 63, for photographs of these outfits.
32. Mildred Friedman, Issey Miyake: The Third Way, I.D.: The International Design
Magazine, March/April 1997, p. 59.
33. Mark Holborn, Issey Miyake (Koln: Taschen, 1995), p. 44.
34. Georgina Howell, Sultans of Style: 30 Years of Fashion and Passion 19601990 (Lon-
don: Ebury Press, 1990), p. 48.
35.Holborn, Issey Miyake, p. 42.
36.Kawamura, The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion, p. 147.
37.Holborn, Issey Miyake, p. 82.
38. Issey Miyake Making Things (Paris: Cartier Foundation Pour Lart Contemporian,
1998), p. 23.
39. In 1999 Miyake stepped down from designing his signature line of clothing, turning
design duties over to Naoki Takizawa. Miyake now concentrates on the A-Poc line and other
projects.
40. Jay Cocks, The Man Who Is Changing Clothes, Time, October 2, 1985, p. 76.
41.Harriet Shapiro, Yohji Yamamoto, Japans New Fashion Luminary, Has Serious
Designs on the West, People Weekly, October 11, 1982, p. 62.
42.Kiyokazu Washida, The Past, the Feminine, the Vain, in Yohji Yamamoto, Talking
to Myself (Milan: Carla Sozzani Editore, 2002). Pages are not numbered.
43.Shapiro, Yohji Yamamoto, p. 60.
44. Lise Skov, Fashion Trends, Japonisme and Postmodernism, or Whats So Japanese
about Comme des Garons? in Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, ed. John Whittier
Treat, p. 137 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996).
45. Hamish Bowles, Fashions Visionary, Vogue, March 1993, p. 426.
46. Deyan Sudjic, Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garons (New York: Rizzoli, 1990), p. 34.
 Contributors

Stephen Addiss is Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and pro-

fessor of art at the University of Richmond in Virginia. He has exhibited his ink paintings and cal-
ligraphy in Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, England, Germany, and in many venues in the
United States. He is also the author of more than thirty books and catalogues about East Asian art,
including Old Taoist, 77 Dances, Japanese Calligraphy, The Art of Zen, Tall Mountains and Flowing
Waters, Haiga: Haiku Painting, The Art of Chinese Calligraphy, Zen Sourcebook, and How to Look
at Japanese Art.

Chiaki Ajioka graduated from Musashino Art University in Tokyo. She

obtained her MA in fine arts from the University of Melbourne in 1985 and her PhD in art history
from the Australian National University in 1996. She was curator of Japanese art at the Art Gallery
of New South Wales, Sydney, from 1996 to 2003. She has lectured on Japanese art at the University of
Sydney while continuing her research on modern Japanese crafts and prints.

John Clark is professor of art history at the University of Sydney and the
founding director of the Australian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology. Among his books are
Modern Asian Art (University of Hawaii Press, 1998), Eye of the Beholder (coeditor) (Wild Peony,
2006), Modernities of Chinese Art (Brill, 2010), and Modernities Compared: Chinese and Thai Art
in the 1980s and 1990s (Power Publications, 2008). From 2004 to 2006 he was working on the new
Biennales in Asia under an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. From 2008 to 2012
he will commence a new comparative study of The Asian Modern under an ARC Professional
Fellowship.

Ellen P. Conant has written extensively on East-West artistic exchange in

the modern era. Her major areas of interest are the foreign employees (yatoi) of the Meiji govern-
ment and Japans participation in international expositions. She organized an exhibition of modern
Japanese ceramics for the Art Institute, Chicago, modern Korean art for the World House Galler-
ies, New York, and more recently was guest curator and general editor of Nihonga, Transcending
the Past: Japanese Style Painting 18681968, held at the St. Louis Art Museum in 1995. She recently
served as editor and contributor for Challenging Past and Present: The Metamorphosis of Nine-
teenth-Century Japanese Art (University of Hawaii Press, 2006).
498|Contributors

Mikiko Hirayama is associate professor of Asian art history at the University

of Cincinnati. Her publications include Modernit in Art: Kojima Kikuos Critique of Contempo-
rary Japanese Painting 19311940 in Inexorable Modernity: Japans Grappling with Modernity in
the Arts (coeditor), and Ishii Hakutei and the Future of Japanese Painting, Art Journal (Fall 1996).
She is a cotranslator of material included in various books and exhibition catalogues, including Not
a Song Like Any Other: An Anthology of Writings by Mori gai and Kazari: Decoration and Display
in Japan: The Fifteenth through the Nineteenth Century, as well as The Rise of Modern Japanese Art.

Michael F. Marra was professor of Japanese literature, aesthetics, and herme-

neutics at UCLA until his death in 2011. He was the author of The Aesthetics of Discontent: Politics
and Reclusion in Medieval Japanese Literature (1991); Representations of Power: The Literary Poli-
tics of Medieval Japan (1993); Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader (1999); A History of Modern
Japanese Aesthetics (2001); Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation
(2002); Kuki Shz: A Philosophers Poetry and Politics (2004); and The Poetics of Motoori Norinaga:
A Hermeneutical Journey (2007), all published by the University of Hawaii Press. His most recent
publication was Essays on Japan: Between Aesthetics and Literature (Brill, 2010).

Jonathan M. Reynolds is associate professor in the Department of Art

History, Barnard College, Columbia University. His research focuses on modern Japanese architec-
tural history and Japanese photography. His publications include Maekawa Kunio and the Emer-
gence of Japanese Modernist Architecture (University of California Press, 2001) and Ise Shrine
and a Modernist Construction of Japanese Tradition, Art Bulletin (June 2001). He has received
research fellowships from the Getty Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the Center for Advanced
Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the National Endowment
for the Humanities.

J. Thomas Rimer is professor emeritus of Japanese literature the University of

Pittsburgh and has written widely on various aspects of Japanese literature, theater, and the fine
arts. Among his most recent publications are the two-volume The Columbia Anthology of Modern
Japanese Literature (Columbia University Press, 2005 and 2007), for which he served as coeditor
and contributor, and as coeditor of Traditional Japanese Arts and Culture: An Illustrated Source-
book (University of Hawaii Press, 2006).

Audrey Yoshiko Seo received her PhD in Japanese art history from the Uni-
versity of Kansas. Her primary areas of study are painting and calligraphy by Japanese Zen masters
and Japanese fashion in the twentieth century. She is the author of Ens: Zen Circles of Enlighten-
ment (Weatherhill, 2007) and the primary author of The Art of Twentieth-Century Zen (Shambhala,
1999). Along with Steven Addiss, she is currently cocurating the 2010 exhibition The Sound of One
Hand: The Art of the Zen Master Hakuin, and coauthoring the accompanying book/catalogue.

Eric C. Shiner is the director and Milton Fine Curator of Art at the Andy War-
hol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His scholarly focus is on the concept of bodily transfor-
mation in postwar Japanese photography, painting, and performance art. He served as an assistant
curator of the Yokohama Triennale 2001, Japans first ever large-scale exhibition of international
contemporary art, and in 2007 he served as curator for Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary
 Contributors|499

Artists in New York, at the Japan Society in New York. He is an active writer and translator, a con-
tributing editor for ArtAsiaPacific magazine, and was most recently adjunct professor of art history
at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lawrence Smith worked at the British Museum from 1962 to 1997. He was
successively keeper of oriental antiquities (19771987) and Japanese antiquities (19871997). He was
responsible for building up one of the largest collections of twentieth-century Japanese prints out-
side Japan. He was the curator for many exhibitions, especially on twentieth-century Japanese arts
and crafts. His publications include The Japanese Print Since 1900, Contemporary Japanese Prints,
Modern Japanese Prints 19121989, and Japanese Prints during the Allied Occupation 19451952.

Shji Tanaka is associate professor of art history in the Faculty of Education

and Welfare Science at Oita University in Japan. His studies focus on the modern Japanese sculp-
ture and the development of modern Nihonga in Kyoto. His publications include Kindai Nihon no
chkokuka (The first sculptors in modern Japan) (Yoshikawa kbunkan, 1994), and Shinkai Taketar
ron (A study on Shinkai Taketar) (Thoku shuppan kikaku, 2002), and he is the coauthor of Takeu-
chi Seih to sono deshi-tachi (Takeuichi Seih and his disciples) (Shibunkaku-shuppan, 2002).

Reiko Tomii is an independent scholar and curator who investigates post-1945

Japanese art in global and local contexts. Her cocurated exhibitions include Global Conceptualiza-
tion (Queens Museum of Art, 1999) and Century City (Tate Modern, 2001). She coauthored with
Eric Shiner Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York (Japan Society, 2007) and
contributed to the volume Collectivism after Modernism (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), Art,
Anti-Art, Non-Art (Getty Research Institute, 2007), and Cai Guo-Qiang (Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, 2008). She is a cofounder of PoNJA-GenKon, an e-mail list of specialists interested in
contemporary Japanese art.

Mayu Tsuruya received her PhD in art history at the University of Pitts-
burgh in 2005. She is presently an independent scholar, whose interests include modern Japanese
art and visual culture with particular reference to war, national identity, and interactions with
the West.

Toshio Watanabe is professor of history of art and design at Chelsea Col-

lege of Art and Design, the University of the Arts London, and the director of the Research Cen-
tre for Translational Art, Identity, and Nation (TrAIN). His publications include High Victorian
Japonisme (Peter Lange, 1991) and Ruskin in Japan 18801930: Nature for Art, Art for Life (Cognito,
1997). His current research interests include the modern Japanese garden in a transnational con-
text, Japonisme from the 1920s to the 1950s, and the historiography of Japanese art history.

Gennifer Weisenfeld is associate professor of Japanese art history and

director of graduate studies at Duke University. She received her PhD from Princeton University
in 1997. Her main field of research is nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japanese visual culture,
particularly the impact of Japans modern social and political transformations on artistic produc-
tion and practice. Her study Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 19051931 (University of
California Press, 2002) addresses the relationship between high art and mass culture in the aesthetic
500|Contributors

politics of the avant-garde in 1920s Japan. She is currently working on two new book projects, one on
modern Japanese commercial design titled The Fine Art of Persuasion: Commercial Design in Twen-
tieth-Century Japan and the other on cultural responses to the Great Kant Earthquake of 1923,
titled Imagining Disaster: Japanese Art and Design in Tokyo after the Great Kant Earthquake of 1923.

Bert Winther-Tamaki is associate professor in the Department of Art His-

tory and the Visual Studies PhD Program at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of
Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and American Artists in the Early Postwar Years (Univer-
sity of Hawaii Press, 2000) and coauthor with Louise Court of Isamu Noguchi: A Close Embrace of
the Earth (University of California Press, 2003). His current work focuses on the global context of
images of the body in the Western-style painting (yga) of Japan.

Emiko Yamanashi is head of the Modern/Contemporary Art Section of the

National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Tokyo. Her publications include several short
essays in the catalogue for paintings at the exhibition Paris in Japan (Washington University Gal-
lery of Art, 1987); The Japanese Encounter with Western Painting in the Meiji and Taish Eras, in
the catalogue of Japan & Paris: Impressionism, Postimpressionism, and the Modern Era (Honolulu
Academy of Art, 2004); Takahashi Yuichi and the Western-Style Paintings in the Early Meiji Era,
(Nihon no Bijutsu #349, Shibund, 1995); and Kobayashi Kiyochika and Meiji no Ukyoe (Nihon
no Bijutsu, #368, Shibund, 1997).
 Index
Page numbers in boldface type refer to illustrations.
Action (Akushon), 7677
Actuality Craft Art Associa-
tion (Jitsuzai Kgei
Bijutsukai), 423
Adachi Gink, 473
Aeba Kson, 261263
aesthetic nationalism, 213217
aesthetics, 196201, 206, 212,
230, 234, 243; Fenollosa
on, 200203. See also
bijutsu
AIDS, 180, 184, 394
Aimitsu, 131132, 142; Self-
Portrait with Hat, 131, 132
Ai (Ay-), 389, 393
Akamatsu Rinsaku, 370;
Thirty-Six Views of Osaka,
370371
Akasegawa Genpei, 152;
Unruly Anpan-Eating
Competition! Rushing
Straight to Self-Destruc-
tion, 149, pl. 13
Akira the Hustler, 180, 184
Akita Ranga school, 19
Akiyama Kunio, General, 101
Akutagawa Rynosuke, 457
American occupation, paint-
ings of, 138142
And Hiroshige, 363, 390;
One Hundred Views of
Famous Places in Edo, 377
And Tadao, 331, 337; Koshino
House, 331332; Times
Building, 332333, 332
And Teru, 309
Andre, Carl, 155, 159
anime, 170172, 180
Anti-Art (Han-geijutsu),
144145, 148150,
151152, 156, 159
Ad Denzen, 19
Aoshima, Chiho, 183
Aoyama Jir, 425, 428
Aoyama Sanu, 456
apartment buildings, 326327
Arakawa Shsaku, Site of
Reversible Destiny-Yoro,
355356
Arakawa Toyoz, 419420 Association of Eleven (Jichi
Araki Juppo, 47
Araki Kankai, 47
Araki Kanp, 47
Araki Sueo, 268, 269, 270,
271272
Archipenko, Alexander, 305,
306
Army Art Association (Riku-
gun Bijutsu Kykai), 103,
133
Art Culture Association
(Bijutsu Bunka Kykai),
129
Art Nouveau, 29, 412
Artists Joint Struggle Council
(Bikyt), 145, 162
Asahi Gyokuzan, 283, 284;
Human Skeleton, 285
Asai Ch, 20, 22, 29, 107, 132,
261; Harvest, 23; On the
Jinzhou Palace Walls, 107
Asakura Fumio, 297, 304, 306,
309; Acting as Katisha,
297, 298; The Keeper of
a Cemetery, 297
Asano Mfu, 73, 304
Association of Commercial
Artists (Shgy Bijutsu
Kykai), 85
Kai), 22
Association of Japanese Paint-
ing (Nihon Kaiga Kykai),
260
Association of Spring Sun
(Shunykai), 29
Asuka Tetsuo (Takahashi
Tetsuo), 73, 75, 87
Atorie, 267, 271, 273
Austin, James, 382
502|Index
Azechi Umetar, 378, 381,
382, 383
Balenciaga, Cristobal, 490
Ban Masatomi, 448
bankara, 477
Barrack Decoration Company
(Barakku Sshaku Sha),
7376, 304; Caf Kirin,
7475, 74
Big Fight (exhibition), 153
bijutsu (fine arts), 26, 193196,
205206, 234, 410. See
also aesthetics
Bijutsu Bunka Kykai (Art
Culture Association),
129
Bijutsu hyron (Art criticism),
263264
Bijutsu shinp (Art news),
266267, 418
Bijutsu tech (Notebook on
art), 273
Bijutsuen (Garden of art), 260
Bikyt, 145, 162
Bing, Siegfried, 50
Biters, the, 184
body art, 153
Bokujin-kai (Men of Ink
Society), 462
bomb shelters, 345, 346
Botticelli, Sandro, La Prima
vera, 179
Bourdelle, Antoine, 301302,
306
Bruegel, Pieter the Elder, The
Parable of the Blind Lead-
ing the Blind, 175
BuBu de la Madeleine, 180, 184
Buddhist paintings, 48
Buddhist sculpture, 8, 286,
292, 294, 299, 300
Bunriha Kenchikukai (Seces-
sionist Architectural
Society), 75, 321323
Bunten exhibitions, 13, 2829, (Rokumeikan), 318; Land-
47, 146, 265, 294, 298, 302 scape Gardening in Japan,
butoh, 170 350
constructivism, 305306
Callias, Horase de, 20 Contemporary Craft (Gendai
Calligraphic Art Association Kgei) group, 434
(Shod Geijutsusha), 462 Craftsman Group (Kjinsha),
calligraphy: back to origins 306, 422
movement, 446; in Creative Print (Ssaku Hanga)
Chinese, 454456; movement, 364, 368,
exhibitions, 466, 468; 370, 371372, 382383;
experimental, 461464, rivalry with Revival Print
466; haiku, 449454; movement, 362, 367, 376,
professional, 464466; 377378
status as art, 234235;
waka, 446449; Zen, Dada, 8081, 173. See also
457461 Mavo; Neo Dada
Calligraphy Art Institute, 462 Daiichi Sakka Dmei (First
Calligraphy Reform Council, Artists League), 77
462 daimy gardens, 343, 350
Cappelletti, Giovanni Vin- Decoeur, Emile, 412
cenzo, 20, 37, 205 Decorative Artists Associa-
Carris, Jean, 412 tion (Sshoku Bijutsuka
censorship, 129130, 272273 Kykai), 420421
ceramics, 312, 413, 417, 420, Dior, Christian, 485, 490
435; Korean, 424; object Di Goga, 455
ware, 432; tea ceremony doll making, 284286, 300
and, 419420 Domestic Industrial Exhibi-
Chkkai (Society of Carvers tion (Naikoku Kangy
and Craftsmen), 284 Hakurankai), 24, 28,
Chsokai (Society for Sculp- 235236, 259, 342, 410
tors), 291 Domestic Painting Exhibi-
Chjinsha (Statue Column tion (Naikoku Kaiga
Company), 420 Kyshinkai), 22, 50, 259
Cloudlike Society (Joun-sha), Domon Ken, 92
41, 42 Duchamp, Marcel, Nude
Collin, Raphal, 2526 Descending a Staircase, 82
Colored Jar Society (Saikokai), Dumb Type, 180, 184; OR, 180;
419 pH, 180; S/N, 180
Comme des Garons, 174, 492, Dyer, Henry, 37
494; Beggars Coat, 492,
493 Earth and Soldiers (Tsuchi no
commercial art, 8391 heitai), 118
Conder, Josiah, 37, 318, 324, Egawa Kazuhiko, 268, 271
342; Deer Cry Pavilion Ei-Q, 393
 Index|503

End Susumu, 396 Folk Craft movement (Mingei Fukuda Toyoshir, 133
Epokku (Epoch), 77, 78 Und), 93, 371; and print- Fukushima Keid, 457, 460;
exhibition hall art (kaij making, 378, 386, 387 Mu, 460, 461
geijutsu), 109110 Fontanesi, Antonio, 19, 22, 37, Fukuzawa Ichir, 129, 272;
Expo 70 (Osaka), 156, 220, 44, 205 War Defeat Group, 138
435, 488 Formless Group (Mukeikai), 140, 139, 141142
Exposition Universelle (Paris): 306, 421422, 423, 426 Fukuzawa Yukichi, 472473
1867, 345, 409; 1900, 29, Freer, Charles Lang, 50 Fumon Gy, 306
263, 292, 411412 Frolicking Animals Scrolls, 169, Funakoshi Katsura, 310
394395 Furuhashi Teiji, 180
Farmers Art Movement, 419 Fuji Masaz, 22, 25 Furukawa Narutoshi, 92
fashion design, 174175, 183, Fujii Ky, 300
471472, 480; dresses of Fujii Tatsukichi, 415416 gardens: with bomb shelter,
Meiji and Taish periods, Fujikawa Yz, 302; Blonde, 345, 346; created abroad,
481, 482; Kon Wajirs 302; Poet M, 302, 303 349350; daimy, 343,
Study of Fashion, 481, 482, Fujimori Shizuo, 367, 371, 377, 350, 352; exhibited
483; postwar, 485494 382; Twelve Views of Great abroad, 345348, 347;
Fazzini, Pericle, 310 Tokyo, 378 in Japanese American
Fenollosa, Ernest F.: art-idea, Fujimoto Shihachi (Yonpachi), internment camps, 351,
201204; and Japanese art 92 356; in the Japanese
history, 233; lectures on Fujishima Takeji, 11, 104; colonies, 350351, 356;
art and aesthetics, 22, 52, Morning Sunrise at modernist, 352355; and
200203, 234236; and Rikug, Mongolia, 126 outdoor performances,
literati painting, 46; and Fujita Toshio, 394; Insect 356; private, 343345; in
modern Japanese paint- Mandala, 395; Revolving public parks, 342; texts
ing, 3435, 5152, 5354; Metropolis, 394 on, 350; transnational,
and Okakura Kakuz, 50, Fujita Tsuguharu, 136, 138, 356357; Zen, 352
223, 230, 237; The True 142; Attu Island Gyokusai, Gardner, Isabella Stewart, 217,
Meaning of Fine Art, 136, 137; Sacred Soldiers 219, 226
201202, 206 to the Rescue, 136137 Gay sekichin (Beauties of art
Fenollosa, Mary McNeil, 52 Fujita Tsuguji (Leonard and scholarship), 260
Fenollosa-Weld Collection Foujita), 1, 104, 110111, geijutsu (artistic skills),
(Boston Museum of Fine 380; The Earth (Daichi), 204205
Arts), 52 111, 111; One-Thousand Geijutsu shinch (New cur-
Field Group (Kgensha), 298, Stitches (Senninbari), 112 rents in the arts), 273
299, 303 Fukao Rikizo, 394 Gendai Kgei (Contemporary
film, 118 Fukazawa Sakuichi, 377 Craft), 434
First Artists League (Daiichi Fukazawa Shir, 389 getemono (low-grade objects),
Sakka Dmei), 77 Fukuchi Mataichi, 231, 233 425
First Thursday Society Fukuda Kodjin, 455456; Gins, Madeline, Site of
(Ichimoku-kai), 382 Walking Alone, 456, 456 Reversible Destiny-Yoro,
flower arrangement, 312, 433 Fukuda Miran, 178; Danae 355356
Fluxus, 170. See also Kubota Receiving the Shower of Ginza, architecture of, 317
Shigeko; Ono, Yoko; Gold, 179; Portrait, 178; Gorakukai (Mutual Amuse-
Folk Art Museum (Tokyo), 378 Woman with a Letter, 178 ment Society), 415, 416
504|Index

Goseda Hry, 44, 4546; Por- Harada Naojir, 260261; Herter, Ernst, 292
trait of an Elderly Foreign Kannon Bodhisattva on Hibiya Park (Tokyo), 342, 356
Woman, 46, 46; portrait Dragonback, 262, 263 Hidai Nankoku, 462
of the Meiji emperor, 46 Hartmann, Eduard von, 203, Hidai Tenrai, 462
Got Sadayuki, 289, 292 206, 290 Hijikata Tatsumi, 170
Grass and Earth Society Haruko, Empress, 473, 477; Hikosaka Naoyoshi, 160, 162;
(Sdsha), 29 formal gown worn by, Floor Event, 162
Great Kant Earthquake, 67, 474475, 476 Hinago Jitsuz, 303305;
Hary Ichir, 148
72, 76, 303, 365, 377, 482; The Founding Pillar of
Memorial Hall, 320321, Hasegawa Kiyoshi, 371, Heaven and Earth (Tower
320 380381 of Peace), 305; Monument
Group I, Hole, 153, 154 Hasegawa Nyozekan, 92 to a Burned Culture, 304;
Group of Three-Four, 300 Hasegawa Takejir, 368, 371 A Tower of Death, 304
Group of Three-Three Hashiguchi Goy, 374; Bath, Hino Ashihei, Earth and
(Sansankai), 291292 374 Soldiers, 118
Group Ongaku, 149 Hashimoto Chikanobu, 473 Hirafuku Hyakusui, 291, 369,
Gutai, 144, 152, 170, 432433 474; Picture of Court 370
Ladies Sewing Western Hiraga Gennai, 19
Hagiwara Hideo, 362, 388, 390 Clothing, 473, 474 Hirakushi Dench, 300, 307
haiga (haiku paintings), Hashimoto Gah, 34, 50, 291; Hiratsuka Unichi, 361, 371,
450451 Shkei sansui (Autumn 372, 381, 383, 386, 388;
haikara (high-collar), 477 landscape), 261262 Hryji Temple in
haiku, 449454 Hashimoto Heihachi, 307; Autumn, 386; The Inner-
Hakubakai (White Horse Celestial Nymph Playing most Temple of Koya-san,
Society), 2829, 85, 264, in the Flower Garden, 386; Monkey Bridge,
413 307, 308 Yamanashi, 386; Tokyo
Hamada Chimei, 361, 390 Hashimoto Kenkichi After the Earthquake,
Hamada Masuji, 8586; (Kitasono Katue), 77 377; Tulip Poplar in April,
Suprematism and direc- Hashimoto Okiie, 381, 383 Washington D.C., 386
tions for its practical Hashimoto Yaoji, New Shift Hiratsuka Yji, 389
application, 8687, 87 (Ktai jikan), 112, 113 Hirokawa Matsugor, drawing
Hamada Shji, 418, 424425, Hasumi Shigeyasu, 268, 271 for Ka Soap design com-
429, 430, 435 Hatano Oriz, 380; Landscape, petition, 88
Hamaguchi Tomiharu, 149 380 Hiroshige, 363, 390; One Hun-
Hamaguchi Yz, 381, 388, Hayashi Itoko, 345 dred Views of Famous
390 Hayashi Senjr, 124125 Places in Edo, 377
Hamanishi Katsunori, 391, 396 Hayashi Tadamasa, 25, 263, Hishida Shuns, 53, 232;
hanami (cherry blossom 411412 Returning from Fishing,
viewing), 342343 Hayter, Stanley, 389 pl. 16; Smile to a Flower, 8
Hara Hiromu, drawing Heartfield, John, 173 history painting, 2425, 27, 99
for Ka Soap design Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Hokusai, 51, 367, 394; The
competition, 8889, 88 Friedrich, 223, 230, 237 Hollow of the Deep Sea
Hara Takeshi, 362, 389 Hemmi Takashi, 377 Wave off of Kanagawa,
Harada Jir, The Gardens of henshin (bodily transforma- 381, 389; Thirty-Six Fujis,
Japan, 350 tion), 175177, 179, 185 390
 Index|505

Honda Kinkichir, Celestial in impressionistic criticism, Tsukuba Center Building,

Feather Robes, 24, 25 268269 333335, 334
Honda Seiroku, Hibiya Park, Inamura Sanpaku, 193, 194 Itaya Hazan, 413, 415, 418
342 individualism, 200201 It Chta, 319320, 324, 337;
Hong Shin, 307; Voices from Inokuma Genichir, 355 Great Kant Earthquake
the Sea, 310 Inoue Kaoru, 318 Memorial Hall, 320321,
Hori Shinji, 292 Inoue Yichi, 464 320
Horiguchi Sutemi, 323, 350, Institute for Western Studies, It Hirobumi, 19, 37, 454, 476
353 19, 44 It Shinsui, 374; Before the
Horino Masao, 92 intaglio, 363, 383384, Mirror, 374; Eight Views
Horiuchi Masakazu, 302, 390391 of Lake Biwa, 374
311312 Inten (Japan Art Institute), 29, Iwami Reika, 388
Hosoe, Eikoh, 187, 188; 5354, 292, 300, 307 Iwamura Tru, 263, 413415,
Barakei, 187 International Association of 416
Hyzankai exhibitions Art Crtitics, 273 Izima Kaoru, 181; Twenty
(1912 and 1913), 417 Internet, 454 Landscapes with a Corpse,
Isamu Noguchi, 312, 336, 432; 181183
Ichimoku-kai (First Thursday California Scenario, 355;
Society), 382 garden of Isamu-ya, 354, Japan Art Academy, 77, 213,
Igami Bonkotsu, 370 355; Moerenuma Park, 236237
Iizawa Shji, 234 355 Japan Art Institute (Inten), 29,
Ike Taiga, 455, 456 Ise Shrine, 330, 353 34, 5354, 292, 300, 307
Ikeda Masuo, 361, 387, 389 Ishida Haky, 454 Japan Association of Art
Ikeda Ryji, 391 Ishida Ynen, Fifty Famous Critics (Nihon Bijutsu
Ikeda Ysai, 235 Scenes of Kyoto, 363 Hihykai), 271
Ikemizu Keiichi, Homo Ishii Hakutei, 29, 104, 369 Japan Cartoonists Association
Sapiens, 153, 155; 370; on Miyamotos Meet- (Nihon Mangaka
I Became an Elephant ing of General Yamashita Renmei), 83
This Summer, 162 and Percival, 134; Patrol Japan Craft Art Society (Nihon
Imaizumi Yoshihiko, Send on the Russo-Manchurian Kgei Bijutsukai), 422
the Independent Exhibi- Border, 115, 116; Twelve Japanese Print Association
tion Black Mourning Views of Tokyo, 370 (Nihon Hanga Kykai),
Armbands, and You Go Ishii Tsuruz, 300, 307, 370, 361, 371, 382, 395;
Out of the Museum, 150 372 Messages to the 21st
Imao Keinen, 44 Ishikawa Kmei, A Wooden Century, 395
Imperial Art Academy Relief Plate Seated Japanese Public Service Print
(Teiten), 267, 298, 307 Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva Association (Nihon
309, 371, 422 with Pendant Legs, 288 Hanga Hkkai), 382
Imperial College of Engineer- Ishikawa Toraji, 104 Japan Folk Crafts Association,
ing (Kobu Daigaku), 37, Ishikawa Yasujir, 477 429
38, 317318 Ishiko Junz, 156 Japan Folk Crafts Museum
Imperial Household Museum, Ishimaru Shigeharu, 425, 428 (Mingeikan), 429430
212, 225, 230; design com- Isozaki Arata, 333, 337; Fujimi Japan Independent Exhibi-
petition, 324325, 324, Golf Clubhouse, 333; tion, 147. See also Yomiuri
325 Kamioka Town Hall, 333; Independent Exhibition
506|Index

Japan National Service Art Kan Hgai, 34, 4850; Colt 424425, 429, 430, 431;
Society (Nippon Bijutsu and Cherry Blossoms, 50; lidded jar, 431
Hkokukai), 431 Kannon as Compassionate Kawaji Ryk, 7778, 268,
Japan Proletarian Arts Associ- Master, 48, 49, 50 269270, 271
ation (Nihon Puroretaria Kan Natsuo, 408 Kawakami Sumio, 377, 383
Geijutsu Renmei), 83 Kan painting school, 22, 35, Kawakami Togai, 19, 42, 44
Japan Sculpture Society 45, 4850 Kawakubo, Rei, 174, 472, 489,
(Nihon Chkokukai), 299, Kano Yasunobu, Gad yketsu 490, 492493; Beggars
300 (Secret keys to the way of Coat,492, 493
Japan Traditional Craft Exhi- painting), 224 Kawamura Kiyoo, 20, 44
bition (Nihon Dent Kanokogi Takeshir, 21, 29; Kawanabe Kysai, 48, 367;
Kgeiten), 433, 434 Portrait of a Woman, 30 The Bodhisattva Kannon,
Japonisme, 479480 Ka Soap Company, 8789; 48, 49; Famous Mirror:
Jikan-ka (Time School), 149 drawings for design com- The Spirit of Japan, Newly
Jitsuzai Kgei Bijutsukai petition, 88; New and Published, 367
(Actuality Craft Art Improved Kao campaign, Kawanishi Hide, 382, 383; One
Association), 423 89, 90 Hundred Kobe Prints, 378
Joun-sha (Cloudlike Society), Kasagi Sueo, 310 Kawase Hasui, 365, 367,
41, 42 Katagiri Tin, 47 374375, 384; A Hundred
Juda, Felix, 382, 383 Katori Hotsuma, 413, 415 New Views of Tokyo, 377;
Jichi Kai (Association of Katsura Detached Palace, 352 Shirahige in the Snow,
Eleven), 22 Katsushika Hokusai. See 375; Souvenirs of Travel,
Hokusai 376; The Twelve Months in
Kabuki, 365, 370, 375, 390, Kawabata Gyokush, 42 Tokyo, 376; Twelve Tokyo
392, 486, 487 Kawabata Ryshi, 54, 104, Subjects, 374375, 376;
Kaburagi Kiyokata, 366, 372; 109110, 133, 142; Con- Twenty Views of Tokyo,
The Morning Dew, 372 querors of the Seas, 110, 376377
Kadowaki Shinr, 68 pl. 8; Episodes in the Kawashima Jinbei (Jinbee),
kaij geijutsu (exhibition hall Southern Territories, 344, 411; Samurai hunt-
art), 109110 133, 137; Heroic Death by ing, 411
Kajita Hanko, 368 Explosion, 137138, pl. 11; Kawazoe Noboru, 329
Kamakura Ysaku, The Naruto Channel, 110; Kazakura Sh, 149
Manchukuo cover Torpedo Spirits, 137 Kenk, Tsurezuregusa (Essays
design, 9495, pl. 7 Kawabata Yasunari, 457 in idleness), 204205
Kambara Tai, 73, 76 Kawabe Tsutsumi, 466; Same Kida Yasuhiko, 378
Kanagawa Prefectural Is Not the Same, 466, 467 Kid Takayoshi, 454
Museum of Modern Art, Kawachi Seik, 389, 393; The Kikuchi Hbun, 42
327, 328 Flying, 393 Kikuchi Kazuo, 302, 311;
Kanamaru Shigene, 91; pho- Kawada Kikuji, Maps series, Childrens Peace
tograph for New and 174 Monument, 311, 311
Improved Kao campaign, Kawahara Keiga, 19 Kikuchi Keigetsu, 302
89, 90 Kawahigashi Hekigot, 451, Kikuchi Ysai, 3839; For-
Kaneko Kuheiji, 302, 306 453; hara, 451452, mer Worthies and Old
Kanga-kai (Painting Apprecia- pl. 27 Customs, 39; The Mongol
tion Society), 51 Kawai Kanjir, 418, 420, Invasion, 39, 40
 Index|507

Kikutake Kiyonori: Expo 70 Kiyota Yji, 396 Japanese Armys Attack

Tower, 330; Ocean City Kobayashi Keisei, 391; Tokyo on Pyongyang in the Sino-
Project, 329330 1999, 395 Japanese War, 108, 109;
kimonos, 478, 479480, Kobayashi Kiyochika, 364, students of, 29
484485; kimono coat, 365, 367, 368; The Great Kzsha (Structure Group),
480, 480 Rygoku Fire Sketched in 304, 309
Kimura Ihee, 92 Hamamachi, 377, pl. 23 Kubota Beisen, 44
Kimura Tsunehisa, 172173; Kbu Bijutsu Gakk. See Tech- Kubota Shigeko, 170; Vagina
Cola, 173, 173174, 175 nical Art School Painting, 170
Kinoshita Mokutar, 265, 266 Kgei (Crafts), 378 Kud Tetsumi, 148149;
Kinoshita Shichir, 80 Kgensha (Field Group), 298, Distribution Map of
Kinouchi Yoshi, 302 299, 303 Impotence and the Rise
Kiry Ksh Kaisha (Com- Koiso Ryhei, 104; Marching of Protection Dome at
pany for Founding Indus- through Niangzi-guan, the Saturation Point, 149,
try and Commerce), 409, 115, pl. 9 159
411 Koizumi Kishio, 100 Pictures Kuhn, Alfred, The Neuere
Kishi Chikud, 4243; of Great Tokyo in Showa, Plastik, 305
Moon Emerging from 378 Kuki Rychi, 216, 225226,
Maruyama, 43; tsu Kojima Kikuo, 266267, 268, 230231, 233, 310
Karasaki, 43, 43, pl. 4 270 Kuki Shz, 212, 215, 226
Kishida Rysei, 29; Still Life Kjinsha (Craftsman Group), Kume Keiichir, 21, 25, 263,
(Three Red Apples, Cup, 305306, 422 413
Can, Spoon), 31 Kokinsh, 193, 198, 204 Kunisawa Shinkur, 20
Kitahara Senroku, 421, 422, Kokugakai (Society for Kurata Chikatada, After Rodin,
427 National Painting), 305, 306
Kitamura Seib, 298, 306; 306307 Kurihara Shin, 104
Peace Statue, 309 Komagata Jkichi, 155 Kuroda Seiki, 2021, 2529,
Kitamura Shikai, 283, 284, 292 Komai Testsur, 381, 383, 390 102, 132, 290, 369, 413,
Kitamura Tatsuo (Unryan), Kon Wajir, 304, 482; and the 420; Femme, 26; Le Lever
433 Barrack Decoration Com- (Morning Toilette), 26,
Kitamura Tkoku, 291 pany, 73, 7576; Study of 26, 28; Telling an Ancient
Kitano Tsunetomi, 373; Fashion, 482, 483 Romance, 27, 27
The Seasons in the Enter- Konno Hisashi, 310 Kuroda Shigeki, 362
tainment Districts, 373; Kno Bairei, 42 Kuroda Tatsuaki, 430431; box
woman adjusting her hair Kno Takashi, 92 with diamond pattern,
comb in the mirror, 373 Kose Shseki, 42 pl. 26
Kitao Rsanjin, 457 Kosugi Misei, 29, 370 Kuroda Tengai, 344
Kitaoka Fumio, 381, 396; Con- Kosugi Takehisa, Chamber Kurokawa Kisho, 330, 337;
nected Topography, 396 Music, 149; Instrument, Nakagin Capsule Tower,
Kitasono Katsue (Katue) 149 331, pl. 19; Takara Beau-
(Hashimoto Kenkichi), 77 Kottler, Howard, 435 tillion, 330
Kitsutsuki-kai (Woodpecker Koyama Sanz, 44 Kuroki Sadao, 381
Society), 381382 Koyama Shtar, 20, 22, 44, Kurosaki Akira, 390, 389
Kiyomizu Kyhei, 312 108, 132, 234235; on Kurosawa Akira, Rashmon, 7
Kiyomizu Rokube V., 42 calligraphy, 445; The Kusama Yayoi, 152
508|Index
Kusube Yaichi, Dusk at
Lakeside, 420, 421
Kusukabe Meikaku, 455, 462
Kusunoki Masashige, statue of,
by Takamura Kun, 289
Kyoto Art Association (Kyoto
Bijutsu Kykai), 42
Kyoto City University of Arts,
311312
Kyoto Modern, 156; Tendency
of Contemporary Art,
156, 159, 161
Kyoto painters, 34, 4042,
44, 46
Kyoto Prefectural Paint-
ing School (Kyoto-fu
Gagakk), 42, 46, 236
Kysh-ha (Kysh School), Manet, Edouard, Le Djeuner
148
Lachenal, Edmund, 412
lacquer works, 3940, 41, 433
Lalique, Ren, 421
Laurens, Jean-Paul, 29
Le Corbusier, 324, 329; Unit
dHabitation, 327; Voisin
Plan, 330
Le Japon des Avant-Gardes
(Paris, 1986), 387
Leach, Bernard, 371, 415, 416,
417418, 424, 435
Lederer, Hugo, 306
Ledoux, Claude, 335
Lee Ufan, 157, 159, 161; Rela-
tum, 161; roundtable
discussion A World
Revealed by Mono, 159
Left Hook (exhibition), 153
Lessard, Suzannah, 336
Li Meishu, 11; Girl at Rest, 12
Lissitzky, El, 89
literati painting, 4647
lithography, 363364
living doll (iki ningy),
284286
machi eshi (town painters), 36
Maeda Masao, 381
Maekawa Kunio, 326; compe-
tition entry for Imperial
Household Museum,
324325, 325; Harumi
Apartments, 326327;
Thai-Japan Cultural
Center entry, 326
Maekawa Sempan, 367, 377,
378, 382, 383
Mainichi Contemporary exhi-
bitions, 157159 Metrovi, Ivan, 305
Malevich, Kasimir, 86
Manchukuo, cover design
by Kamakura Ysaku,
9495, pl. 7
Michelangelo, 135, 335
sur lHerbe, 179; Olympia,
175
manga, 170172, 367
Manysh, 193, 194, 198, 205 Minami Kunz, 371; Observa-
Mapplethorpe, Robert, 178
Masaoka Shiki, 297, 448,
449450
Mass and Human Group
Society (Kaijinsha), 309
Matsubara Naoko, 378
Matsuda Masashi, 92
Matsuda Rokuzan, 363
Matsuda Tetsuo, Unruly
Anpan-Eating Competi-
tion! Rushing Straight to
Self-Destruction, pl. 13
Matsumoto Fko, 39
Matsumoto Kisabur, 286
Matsumoto Shunsuke: Land-
scape with National Diet
Building, 130131, 130;
The Living Painter, 131; Miyagawa Kzan, 344, 409
mentioned, 142
Matsuoka Hisashi, 20, 22, 44
Matsuzawa Yutaka, Indepen-
dent 64 in the Wilderness,
153
Mavo, 6773, 83, 85, 95,
169170; cover designs
for journal, 71. See also
Okamoto Tatsuo; Sanka
Meiji Art Society (Meiji Bijutsu
Kai), 28, 47, 102, 203,
236, 259; exhibition, 260;
sculptors, 290
Meiji Picture Gallery, 100,
113114
Men of Ink Society (Bokujin-
kai), 462
Metabolism, 329331, 333
metal casting, 289
Metzner, Franz, 305; Peoples
Battle Monument, 306
Michener, James, 382
military art. See war docu-
mentary painting
tion Tower, 371
Minami Nobuhiro (Shinb),
Unruly Anpan-Eating
Competition! Rushing
Straight to Self-Destruc-
tion, pl. 13
Minemura Toshiaki, 160
Mineta Toshir, 310
Mingei movement, 424425,
426, 427429, 431
Minsh Bijutsu Und (Peoples
Art Movement), 81
Mishima Yukio, 169170, 177,
187188
Mitsukoshi department store,
478479
Mitsutani Kunishiro, 21, 29
Miyakawa Atsushi, 145, 151,
159
Miyake, Issey, 174, 472, 487
489; A-Poc, 489; Futon
Coat, 489; Rhythm

Pleats Collection, 488
489, pl. 30
Miyake Yonekichi, 229230
Miyamoto Sabur, 104, 138;
Meeting of General
Yamashita and Percival,
134, 135
Mizuhara Shshi, 454
Mizuno Toshikata, 366
Mizusawa Tsutomu, 135
Mochizuki Gyokusen, 44
Mochizuki Katsura: Are
Machines Alright? (Kikai
wa daijobu ka), 82, 82;
Factory Girl (Shjo),
8182; Illness and Pain
(Byku), 82; Manbun
manga, 81; portraits of
sugi Sakae, 81
modernist architecture, 323,
324325
modernology (kgengaku),
73
moga (modern girl), 482484,
484
Mokujiki Shnin, 424, 426,
428
Mombusho Bijutsu Tenrankai.
See Bunten exhibitions
mono no aware (the pathos
of things), 195
Mono-ha, 156, 157, 159,
312313
Moore, Henry, 310
Mori Dshun, 381, 382
Mori, Hanae, 485486
Mori Hedefumi, 391
Mori Ipp, 42
Mori Kansai, 42
Mori gai, 25, 203, 212, 260
261, 263, 290
Mori Osamu, 352
Mori Yoshitoshi, 378
Moriguchi Tari, 268, 270, 271,
345
Index|509
Morimura Yasumasa, 175, 178, Murai Macanari, 393
184, 187188; Actresses, Murakami Hidetoshi, Sango
176; Art History series, benran (Handbook of
175176; Beyond Ordeal three languages), 194195
by Roses, 187188, 187; Murakami Sant, 456
Futago, 175; as Marilyn Murakami Takashi, 11, 183,
Monroe, 177; Portrait 313; Little Boy exhibition,
(Van Gogh), 175176, 183
pl. 15; Psychoborg, 176; murals, 99100, 110, 111
Sisters series, 176 Muramatsu Gallery, Tricks
Morinaga Confectionary and Vision, 156
Company, 8991; Muraoka Kageo, 429
Morinaga Great City Murase Taiitsu, 455
Tokyo Commemorative Murayama Tomoyoshi, 81, 169,
Cookies, 91, pl. 6 306; collage construction,
Morita Shiry, 462464; 86, 87; conscious con-
Dragon Knows Dragon, structivism, 68; drawing
463, pl. 28 for Ka Soap design com-
Morita Tsunetomo, 29, 369 petition, 88, 88; Women
mr-tai (hazy style) paint- Friends at the Window,
ings, 41, 43 70, 70
Morozumi Osamu, 393 Musansha shinbun (Proletar-
Morris, William, 8, 414, 416, ian times), 83
426427 Museikai (Voiceless Society),
Motoori Norinaga, mono no 291
aware, 195 Museum of Contemporary Art,
Mount Fuji, 92; painted by Nagaoka, 153154, 157
Yokoyama Taikan, 125, Museum of Contemporary
126, 138 Art, Tokyo, 161
Mukai Rykichi, 310 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
Mukeikai (Society for Form- 5152, 109, 383; Okakura
lessness), 306, 421422, Kakuz and, 217, 239
423, 426 Mushanokji Saneatsu, 295
Munakata Shik, 361, 378, Mutual Amusement Society
383, 387388, 395, 430; (Gorakukai), 415, 416
the Buddhist deity Fud
My-, 379; The Bud- Nagahara Ktar, 420
dhist Disciple Subodai, Nagaoka Contemporary, 153
10; Flower Arrow, 387; 154, 157
Munakatas Prints of the Nagasaki school, 19
Tokaido Highway, 390; Nagase Yoshir (Yoshio), 371,
Two Bodhisattvas and 379
Ten Great Disciples of Naikoku Kaiga Kyshinkai
Shaka, 380; use of (Domestic Painting Exhi-
calligraphy, 457 bition), 22, 50, 259
510|Index
Naikoku Kangy Hakurankai
(Domestic Industrial
Exhibition), 24, 28, 235
236, 259, 342, 410
Naiqua Gallery, 153; Room in
Alibi, 156
Nait Shin, 299300
Nakabayashi Tadayoshi,
390, 391; Transposition
92 Ground VI (The
Waterhead), 391
Nakada Sadanosuke, 305306
Nakae Tokusuke (Chmin),
200, 205
Nakahara Nantemb, 457458,
463; Mumonkan, 458,
458, 461
Nakahara Teijir, 292, 300,
301; Young Caucasian,
301, 301
Nakahara Ysuke, 155, 156,
159, 160
Nakajima Raish, 42
Nakamura Fusetsu, 29
Nakamura Kenichi, 104
Nakamura Kusatao, 454
Nakanishi Kseki, 46
Nakatsuka Ippekir, 453
Nakazawa Hiromitsu, 369, 390
Nakazawa Shinichi, 396
Nana Shiomi, 389
Nantemb Tj, 8; Procession
of Monks, 9
Nara Yoshitomo, 183, 313
National Diet Building,
depicted by Matsumoto
Shunsuke, 130131, 130
National Exhibition Aca-
demism, 299
National Museum of Modern
Art (Tokyo), 156, 159, 361,
388
National Painting Society
(Kokugakai), 427
Natori Shunsen, 361, 375, 390
Natori Ynosuke, 91
Natsume Sseki, 290, 457;
My Individualism, 413
naturalism (shinzen shugi),
291, 293, 297, 299
Neo Dada, 148, 161
neo-pop, 183184
New Craft movement, 415,
419420, 421424,
428429
New Nihonga, 53, 133
New Order Policy, 272273
New Print Group (Shin Hanga
Shdan), 379, 380
Nicholson, William, 370
Nihon Kaiga Kykai (Associa-
tion of Japanese Painting),
260
Nihonga, 48, 5354, 104, 133,
234236, 259260
Niiro Chnosuke, 292
Niiumi Takez, Okakura
commemorative stone,
232
Nikakai (Second Division
Group), 29, 76, 302, 305
NIPPON, 9194; cover design
by Yamana Ayao, 93;
Manchukuo cover design
by Kamakura Ysaku,
9495, pl. 7
Nippon Kb (Japan Studio),
9194, 95
Nishi Amane, 196200, 203,
206, 212; Theories of
Aesthetics, 234
Nishikawa Tomotaka, 345
Nishikawa Yasushi, 456
Nishimura Isaku, 305,
344345
Nishio Ichiz, 153
Nivedita, Sister (Margaret
Noble), 222, 234, 240241
Noda Tetsuya, 390; Diary
series, 390, 391
Nogawa Ry, 77
Nojima Yasuz, 425
Nomura Bunkyo, 42
Nomura Hitoshi, Iodine, 161
162, 161
Non-Art (Hi-geijutsu), 144
145, 148, 156159
nudes, 2728, 310
Numano Ken, 92
Numata Ichiga, 292, 312
O Chi-ho, 11; A House Facing
the South, 12
Oda Kazuma, 367, 370, 371,
376
Odaiba, 331
Odano Naotake, 19
Oelsnitz, Herman d, 305
Off Museum (exhibition), 153
Ogata Gekk, 366, 368
Ogata Kamenosuke, 68
Ogata Kenzan VI, 417
Ogata Krin, 479
Ogawa Jihei (Ueji), 343;
Murin-an, 343344, 356,
pl. 21
Ogawa Takei, 268, 272273
Ogishima Yasuji, 304
Ogiwara Morie, 294295, 300,
301, 415; Mongaku, 294;
Portrait of Hj Torakichi,
295; Woman, 294; Worker,
295, 296
Ogiwara Seisensui, 452
guchi Shgyo, 448
Ogura Jun, 414
Ogura Uichir, 297
Ohara Hun, 312
hara Magosabur, 429430
hara Museum of Art, 430
hara Sichir, 430
hira Akira, 268, 269, 270
Okada Sabursuke, 11, 21, 29,
414415, 420
Okada Shinichir, plan for

Tokyo Metropolitan Art
Museum, 146
Okada Tatsuo, Gate Light
and Moving Ticket
Selling Machine (Mont
ken id kippu uriba),
7879, 80
Okakura Kakuz (Tenshin):
and art history, 3435,
223225, 229234; mura Seigai, 263, 264, 290
Awakening of Japan, 228,
237, 244; Awakening of the
East, 223, 225, 226229,
232, 238, 241; biography
of, 225226; Book of Tea,
220, 243245; in Boston,
217, 220; on calligraphy
as art, 234235; and cat-
egories of art, 234236;
on China, 239; conception
of cultural continua and
the East, 236241; and
crafts, 414; and Hashi-
moto Gah, 5051; Ideals
of the East, 215, 220223,
228, 232, 234, 240241;
and Japan Art Institute,
34, 53, 292; mentioned,
37, 38, 43, 5254, 260, 291,
299; photos of, 218219;
significance of, 212213;
at Tokyo School of Fine
Arts, 42, 53; and ultrana-
tionalism, 212213, 232,
236; and the West, 217
220, 242243; The White
Fox, 226; worldview of,
214215. See also aesthetic
nationalism; Japan Art
Institute
Okamoto Tar, 432; Tower of
the Sun, 312
Okamoto Tki, 112
Okamoto Toyohiko, 39, 41
Okazaki Sessei, 289
Okuda Masanori, 87; drawing
for Ka Soap design
competition, 88
kuma Shigenobu, 38, 454
kuma Ujihiro, 287, 290;
A Monument to mura
Masujir, 287288, 289,
pl. 18
kura Kihachir, 108
Pacific Painting Society
291, 293
muri Ich, 201, 202
On Kawara, 152
Onchi Kshir: Beauties of the
Four Seasons, 384; and the
Creative Print movement,
367, 371372, 373, 388;
exhibited, 387; and First
Thursday Society, 382;
Lyric series, 384; Man-
nequin in the Studio, 384,
385; memorial portrait
of Hagiwara Sakutar,
381; mentioned, 379, 388;
One Hundred Views of
New Tokyo, 377; postwar
career, 384; The Sea, 380
nishi Chinnen, 44
nishi Yoshinori, 196
Ono Gad, 448
Ono Kazuo, 170
Ono Tadashige, 379, 380;
Rest Day, 380
Ono Tadayoshi, 361
Ono, Yoko, 170; Cut Piece, 170;
Grapefruit, 152
Onosato Toshinobu, 393
Order of Culture, 124125
Orozco, Jos Clemente, 111
Ortega, Martin Rico, 20
sugi Sakae, 81
ta Hideshige, 87, 94
Otagaki Rengetsu, 446448;
Tokuri, 447, 448
tsuka Yasuji, 206
Index|511
uchi Makoto, 389
ura Shz, 68
Ozawa Keijir, draft design
for garden at Hibiya Park,
342
Pacific Art Association
(Taiheiy Bijutsu Kai),
2829
(Taiheiy Gakai), 85, 292,
301
Painting Appreciation Society
(Kanga-kai), 51
Painting Society of the New
Man (Shinjin Gakai), 131,
132, 140
Panama-Pacific International
Exposition (San Francisco,
1915), 349
Pandora Sha, 297
panorama painting, 99100,
107109
Peace Park (Hiroshima), 327
329, 328
Peoples Art Movement
(Minsh Bijutsu Und), 81
Petit, Gaston, 382; 44 Japanese
Print Artists, 388389
photography, 364, 367
Plastic Arts (Zkei), 112, 394
Play, The: Current of Contem-
porary Art, 162; Voyage:
Happening in an Egg, 162
Poiret, Paul, 479, 480
political cartoons, 83
pop art, 174, 184. See also
neo-pop
poster art, 83, 394
prefabricated housing, 326, 331
proletarian art movement,
8183, 112, 304, 305306,
379380
Protection for Cultural Prop-
erties Act (1950), 433
512|Index
public parks, 341343, 355, 356
Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre-
Ccile, 109
Ragusa, Vincenzo, 20, 37, 38,
205, 287, 292
Rai Sany, 455
realism, 271
Red Clay Company
(Sekidosha), 420
Rembrandt van Rijn, The
Anatomy Lesson of
Dr. Tulp, 175
rental galleries, 153
residential housing, 326327,
331
Revival Print (Shin Hanga)
movement, 368, 374, 376,
382, 384, 389; rivalry with
Creative Print movement,
362, 367, 377378
Rikugun Bijutsu Kykai
(Army Art Association),
103, 133
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 419
Rinpa school, 35, 40, 479
Rivera, Diego, 111
Rodchenko, Alexandr, 89
Rodin, Auguste, 283, 294297,
300, 302, 306307, 417;
The Kiss, 305; The Thinker,
294, 295, 301
Rodinisme, 294. See also
Ogiwara Morie;
Takamura Ktar
Rokkaku Shisui, 413, 415
Running on the Mud Society
(Sdeisha), 312, 432, 436
Ruskin, John, 414, 427
Ryanji, 352
Saig Takamori, statue of, by
Takamura Kun, 289
Saikokai (Colored Jar Society),
419
Sait Kaoru, 389 Schoyer, Anna, 44
Sait Kiyoshi, 380, 383; scientific criticism, 269270
Makeup, 380 sculpture: abstract, 306,
Sait Sogan, 304 310311, 312; with archi-
Sakakura Junz, 326; tecture, 304305; ceramic,
Kanagawa Prefectural 312; concept of, 283, 286,
Museum of Modern Art, 290, 312; and craft, 306;
327, 328 figurative, 310; men-
Sakamoto Hanjir, 370 tioned, 265; metal casting,
Sakuma Bungo, The Message 289; postwar, 309313;
from the Usa Hachiman wood, 299300; works in
Shrine to the Empress, 25 cement, 309, 310. See also
Sakurai Yichi, 307 Buddhist sculpture; wood
San Giovanni, Achille, 38 carving
Sanka (Sanka Zkei Bijutsu Secessionist Architectural
Kykai; Third Section Society (Bunriha
Plastic Arts Association), Kenchikukai), 75, 321322
7681, 83; exhibitions, Second Division Group
76, 7778, 80; Gate Light (Nikakai), 29, 76, 302, 305
and Moving Ticket Selling Seike Kiyoshi, Mori House, 326
Machine (Mont ken id Sekidosha (Red Clay Com-
kippu uriba), 7879, 80; pany), 420
Sanka Exhibition Entrance Sekine Nobuo, 157158; Great
Tower (Sankaten mont), Earth Phase, 312; Phase:
7879, 79; Sanka in the Mother Earth, 157, 158
Theater, 76, 8081 Sekino Junichir, 382, 383;
Sano Tsunetami, 409 Fifty-Three Stations on
Sansai (Three colors), 273 the Tokaido, 390
Sansankai (Group of Three- Senshi Naishinn, 198
Three), 291292 Serizawa Keisuke, 378, 430,
Sant Kyden, 366 431
Sasajima Kihei, 378, 381 shasei (sketching from life),
Sasaki Shd, 421, 422 297, 450, 451
Satake Shozan, 233 Shiba Kokan, 19; The Coopers,
Sat Chzan, 300, 301302, 20
307 Shibata Zeshin, 3840, 367;
Sat Chry, 307 Four Elegant Pastimes, 40,
Sawa Hajime, 268, 269, 270, pl. 3
271, 272 Shibayama Zenkei, 460
Sawada Tetsur, 362, 387 Shigemori Mirei, 352353, 354;
Sawada Tomoko, 185; Costume North Garden, Hj, 352,
series, 185; ID400 series, 353
185, 186; Omiai series, Shij school, 40, 41
185; School Days series, Shimizu Kisuke II, Mitsui
185 House, 316, 319, 316
 Index|513

Shimizu Sanjir, Picture shugei (home craft), 415 Suzuki Hyakunen, 44

Album of the 36 Gates to Shunykai (Association of Suzuki Kason, 39, 368
Edo during the Tokugawa Spring Sun), 29 Suzuki Nanrei, 39
Bakufu, 363364 sketching from nature Suzuki Osamu, 312, 432, 433
Shimizu Takashi, 302, 307 (shasei), 297, 450, 451 Suzuki Ryz, Evacuation
Shimizu Toshi, Engineers Society for National Painting of the Wounded and the
Bridge Construction in (Kokugakai), 306307 Hardworking Relief Unit,
Malaya, 115, 117 Society for Sculptors 115, 116
Shimomura Kanzan, 53, 232 (Chsokai), 291 Suzuki Shnen, 44
Shimooka Renj, 367 Society of Carvers and Crafts- Sweet (exhibitions), 153
Shimozawa Kihachir, 382 men (Chkkai), 284
Shin Hanga. See Revival Print Sdeisha (Running on the Mud Tabaimo, 185187; Japanese
movement Society), 312, 432, 436 Bathhouse, 187
Shinjin Gakai (Painting Soci- Sdsha (Grass and Earth Tada Shinei, 448
ety of the New Man), 131 Society), 29 Taenouchi Hisakasu, 290;
Shinjuku Gyoen, 356 Sgetsu Art Center, 152 Mahasvara, Goddess of
Shinkai Taketar, 283, 292, Soldiers Public Hall (Gunjin Art (Gigeiten), 288
295, 301; Bathing (Yuami), Kaikan), design competi- Tagore, Rabindranath, 246
292293; Warming tion, 323 Taiheiy Bijutsu Kai (Pacific
Their Frozen Hands, 293, Ssaku Hanga. See Creative Art Association), 2829
293; wooden model for Print movement Taiheiy Gakai (Pacific Paint-
A Monument to Prince sshi, 477 ing Society), 85, 292, 301
Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa, Sshoku Bijutsuka Kykai Taine, Hippolyte, 270
292 (Decorative Artists Tairy Sans, garden of, 344
Shinkai Takez, Kinuta, 307, Association), 420421 Taish Park (Hong Kong), 351,
310 Statler, Oliver, 382, 383 351
Shinoda Tk, 393, 464 Statue Column Company Takada Kenzo, 486487
Shinohara Ushio, 389 (Chjinsha), 420 Takahama Kyoshi, 450451
Shint, 286 Structure Group (Kzsha), Takahashi Genkichi, 22, 260
Shiokawa Bunrin, 38, 39, 304, 309 Takahashi Rikio, 388
4042; Summer and Subaru (Pleiades), 265 Takahashi Shtei, 374
Winter Landscape, 41 Sugai Kumi, 393 Takahashi Yuichi, 19, 21, 23,
Shirahata Yzabur, Daimy Sugita Hisajo, 454 4445, 260; Beancakes, 19;
teien (The daimy gar- Sugita Kad, 421, 422, 427 Kusanoki at the Nyirin
den), 343, 352 Sugiura Hisui, drawing for Temple, 45, 45; Salmon,
Shirai Unzan, 290, 291 Ka Soap design competi- 19, 21, pl. 1
Shirakaba (White birch), 265, tion, 88, 88 Takamatsu Jir, 157
295, 417, 418, 426, 428 Suizu Yasumi, 396 Takamura Ktar, 291, 294,
Shiroki Toshiyuji, 391 sukiya, 327 295, 307; A Green Sun,
Shod Geijutsusha (Calligraphic Sunayama Norico, 184 6, 265, 415, 416; review
Art Association), 462 Sunazawa Bikki, 311 of Buntens sculpture
Shgy Bijutsu Kykai (Asso- surrealism, 128129, 267 division, 265266; small
ciation of Commercial Suwa Kanenori, 377 wooden sculptures of,
Artists), 85 Suzuki Chkichi, 409 300; The Words of Rodin,
Shtetsu, 204 Suzuki, D. T., 352, 435, 460 295297, 306
514|Index
Takamura Kun, 283, 286287,
290; Aged Monkey (Ren),
288289, 288; statue of
Kusunoki Masashige, 289;
statue of Saig Takamori,
289; students of, 283284,
289
Takamura Toyochika, 414, 416,
420, 426427, 432; flower
vase with two handles,
427; mentioned, 415, 421,
422
Takarazuka Revue, 171
Takata Hiroatsu, 307
Takayama Chogy, 263
Takeda Hideo, Gempei, 390
Takehisa Yumeji, 361, 370, 371,
372373
Takenouchi Hisakazu
(Kyichi), 283, 284
Takeuchi Seih, 42, 242
Taki Katei, 47; Shki and Oni
before a Pine Tree, 48
Takiguchi Shz, 129, 147, 272
Takita Koichi, 434; Plum Blos-
som White Porcelain, 434
Tama Art University, 157, 159,
361, 393
Tamamura Zennosuke
(Hokut), 77
Tamura Knosuke, 104
Tamura Sritsu, 44
Tanabe Itaru, 104
Tanaka Kykichi, 371
Taneda Santka, 452, 456;
No Money, 452453, 453
Tange Kenz, 326, 329, 337;
garden of Kawagawa Pre-
fectural Office, 353354,
355, pl. 22; Hiroshima
Peace Park, 327329, 328;
Takamatsu garden, 355
Taniguchi Aizan, 46
Taniguchi Kky, 42
Taniguchi Yoshio, 335; Domon
Ken Museum, 335336, Tokyo Metropolitan Art
pl. 20; Museum of Mod- Museum, 145, 146148,
ern Art (New York), 11, 150, 160; Guidelines for
336, 337 Specifications of Works to
Taninaka Yasunori, 379 Be Displayed, 148, 149,
Tanizaki Junichiro, Naomi, 160; inclusion of calligra-
483 phy, 445; plan for, 146.
Tanomura Chokuny, 46; See also Tokyo Biennale
A Panorama of the West Tokyo Metropolitan Craft
Lake at Hangchow, 46, 47 School (Tokyo Furitsu
Tatehata Kakuz, 310 Kgei Gakk), 88
Tatehata Taimu, 298, 299 Tokyo Print Biennale, 388
Tatsuno Kingo, 318, 337; Tokyo School of Fine Arts, 34,
Tokyo Train Station, 206, 369, 420; curriculum,
318319, 319 38, 114, 236, 371, 412; fac-
Taut, Bruno, 352 ulty, 42, 47, 189, 290, 413,
Tawara Kseki, 283284 414; mentioned, 85, 217,
tea ceremony, 419420 291, 297, 304; Okakura
Technical Art School (Kbu and, 225, 230231, 242
Bijutsu Gakk), 7, 1920, Tomihari Hiroshi, 391
22, 3738, 4445, 52, 234; Tomimoto Kenkichi, 371, 378,
and sculpture, 283, 287, 416417, 424, 426, 427,
290 429; jar with trailing pat-
Teiten, 267, 298, 307309, 371, tern of wild grapes, pl. 25;
422 The Story of William
Teraoka Masami, 177, 184, Morris, 416417
394; AIDS series, 177178; Tominaga Sichi, 268
Hanging Rock, 178, 178 Tomioka Tessai, 46, 447, 455,
Teshigahara Hiroshi, 336 456
Teshigahara Sf, 312, 433 Tomiyama Takeo, 394; Free
Tezuka Osamu, 170172; Atom Kwangju, 394
Boy, 171; Princess Knight, Tno Yoshiaki, 148, 151, 153,
171, 171 159
Thai-Japan Cultural Center, Tonomura Kichinosuke, 429
design competition, 326 Toyama Masakazu, 25; The
theatrical performances, 76, Future of Japanese Art,
8081 203
Tobari Kogan, 300, 301 Toyohara Chikanobu, 363
Tdai Sculpture Society Tsubouchi Shy, 203
(Tdai Chso Kai), 297, Tsuda Seif, 415, 416
298, 299, 303 Tsuda Shinobu, 421422
Tokunaga Ikusuke, 267, 268 Tsuji Kak, 42
Tokutomi Soh, 291 Tsuji Shind, 311312; Poet,
Tokyo Biennale, 145, 148, 156, a Study of tomo no
159 Yakamochi, 307
 Index|515

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 39, 365 Van Doesburg, Theo, 86 Watsuji Tetsur, Koji junrei
366; diptych of young Vela, Vincenzo, 287 (A pilgrimage to ancient
emperor entering Edo Velazquez, Diego, 179; Las temples), 299
Castle, 364; A Hundred Meninas, 179 White Birch Society. See also
Aspects of the Moon, 367; Vergez, Robert, 382 Shirakaba
Raiko Tormented by the verismo, 287 White Horse Society
Demon Spider, 366; trip- Vron, Eugne, LEsthtique, (Hakubakai), 2829, 85,
tych prints on Satsuma 200 264, 413
Rebellion, 365; Uesugi Vienna Exposition (1873), 39, Wilcome, John, 20
Kenshin and the Blind 409; Japanese garden at, Wirgman, Charles, 19, 42, 46,
Lutanist, 366 347348, 347 367
Tsuruoka Masao, 140142; Vivekananda, Swami, 220, wood carvings, 288289
Beginning, 140; Evil 222, 240241 woodblock prints, 362, 363,
Omen, 140; Heavy Hands, Vogeler, Heinrich, 417 364369, 388. See also
140, 141142, 141 Voulkos, Peter, 435 Creative Print movement;
Tsuruya Kkei, 390; Kabuki Revival Print movement
portraits, 390, 392 Wada Eisaku, 21, 29; Evening Woodpecker Society (Kitsu
Tunnard, Christopher, Gar- at the Ferry, 264, pl. 2 tsuki-kai), 381382
dens in the Modern Land- Wada Sanz, 415 Worlds Columbian Exhibition
scape, 350 Wagener, Gottfried, 409 (Chicago), 288, 410
waka (tanka), 446449 Worth, Jean Philippe, 475
Uchida Kunio, 435 Wakabayashi Isamu, 313
Uchiyama Shz, 425 Wakatsuki Khei, 395 Yada Shigeru, 75
Ueda Sky, 462 Wakayama Yasji, 382 Yagi Kazuo, 312, 432;
Ueki Shigeru, 310 war documentary painting, Mr. Samsas Walk, 432,
Uemura Takachiyo, 134 99103, 114119, 135137; 433
Ueno Park, 342343 exhibitions, 105106, 133; Yagi Nagisa, 395
ukiyo-e, 36, 368369; and Meiji imperial inspection of, Yamabe no Akahito, 198
print art, 361362, 363, 106, 119; military service Yamada Hikaru, 432
366367, 372, 374375; painters, 103105, 132 Yamada Kisai, 283, 284;
revival of, 389390 134; yga and Nihonga, A Wooden Relief Plate
Umehara Ryzabur, 4, 127 102103, 104, 107, 110. See Tale of Heiji, 288
128, 138, 427, 429; Forbid- also panorama painting Yamada Mamoru, Tokyo
den City, 127, pl. 10 war films, 118 Central Telegraph Office,
urban planning, 329330, 333 Warhol, Andy, 174 322323, 322
Ushio Shinohara, 148, 151, 153 Watanabe Jin, competition Yamada Naoz, Grasses of
Utagawa Hiroshige III, 365; entry for Imperial House- Ten Thousand Ages, 368;
View of the Balloon Test hold Museum, 324, 324 A Thousand Butterflies,
at the Naval Training Watanabe, Junya, 494 368
Ground in Tsukiji, 364 Watanabe Osao, 291, 297 Yamagata Aritomo, 343344
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 45, 48, Watanabe Sadao, 378 Yamaguchi Gen, 361, 382, 384,
365, 367 Watanabe Shsabur, 368, 388
Utagawa school, 363, 364, 366, 374376 Yamaguchi Keisuke, Ship
390. See also Hiroshige; Watanabe Yoshio, 92 Carrying Carbon, 393
Utagawa Kuniyoshi Waters, Thomas, 317 Yamaguchi Susumu, 382, 383
516|Index

Yamamoto Azumi, 421 Yanagihara Mutsuo, 435 Paintbrush Patriotism

Yamamoto Gemp, 458459; Yanagihara Yoshitatsu, 307 (Saikan hkoku Yokoyama
White Clouds Embrace Yanase Masamu, 68, 72, 83; Taikan), 127
Hidden Rocks, 459460, illustrations for From Yomiuri Independent Exhibi-
459 Midnight to Morning, 83, tion (Yomiuri Anpan),
Yamamoto Kakuji, 311312 84; poster for Musansha 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 153
Yamamoto Kanae, 361, 368, shinbun (Proletarian Yonehara Unkai, 292, 299, 300
369370, 371372, 377, Times), 66, 83, 94, pl. 5; Yosano Akiko, 448449;
379, 419 Yanase Masamu gash Midaregami, 448
Yamamoto, Kansai, 487; mens (Collected drawings of Yoshida Hakurei, 300
jacket with silk dragon Yanase Masamu), 83 Yoshida Hiroshi, 367, 371, 374,
appliqu, pl. 29 Yang Shoujing, 446, 462 376, 387; Eight Scenes of
Yamamoto Shunkyo, 42 Yanobe Kenji, 179180; Foot Cherry Blossoms, 376
Yamamoto Toyoichi, 302, 307 Soldier (Godzilla), 179, 179 Yoshida Kenji, 389
Yamamoto, Yohji, 472, 489 Yashiro Yukio, 128, 266267 Yoshida Kenkichi, 73; drawing
490; womens top based Yasuda Rymon, 301 for Ka Soap design com-
on Le Sac, 490, 491 Yasuda Star, 416 petition, 88, 88
Yamana Ayao, cover design for Yasuhara Kimei, 433 Yoshida Masaji, 361, 388;
NIPPON, 92, 93 Yasunao Tone, 149 Silence No 74 (Shizuka
Yamanaka Shinten, 455 Yayanagi G, 389; Genji nagare), pl. 24
Yamao Yz, 37 series, 389 Yoshida Shya, 428429
Yamashita Shintar, 29, Y Kanji, 304; Embracing Yoshida Tshi, 376, 395
Offering, 31 under the Light, 303, 304 Yoshihara Hideo, 389, 393394
Yamazaki Chun, 283, 284, yga, 24, 102104, 107, 134, Yoshihara Jir, 73, 393, 432
292, 299, 300 236, 260, 265. See also 433, 463
Yanagi Miwa, 180, 184; Eleva- history painting; Yoshinaga Masayuki, 185
tor Girls series, 180181; panorama painting Yoshioka Kenji, 104
White Casket, 181, 182 Yok Tadanori, 394 Yuasa Hachir, 429
Yanagi Ry, 134 Yokohama artists, 46, 364 Yki Somei, 291
Yanagi Setsu, 93, 295, 378, Yokokawa Kiichir, 271, 422 Yumoa (Humor), 83
418, 424425, 428, 429; Yokoo Tadanori, 172; A La yzen, 35
The Beauty of Ceramics, Maison de M. Civecawa,
424; Getemono no bi, pl. 14 Zadkine, Ossip, 305
425, 426; and the Japan Yokoyama Taikan, 34, 53, Zeami, 195, 196, 198199, 203,
Folk Crafts Museum, 77, 232, 291, 431; Float- 205
429430; The Kizaemon ing Lanterns, pl. 17; Zen calligraphy, 457461
Tea-bowl, 435; Mingei Japanese spirit, 125, 142; Zenei Tosa-ha (Avant-Garde
theory, 426, 430431 Resplendent Signs, 125, Tosa School), 149
Yanagida Taiun, 465466; 126; views of Mount Fuji, Zero Jigen, 149; Bathing Ritual
Hanshan Poem, 465466, 138; The Wheel of Life, in Full Dress, 152, 152
465 53; Yokoyama Taikans Zkei (Plastic Arts), 112, 394
Production Notes for Rimer / since meiji

Interior design by Mardee Melton, in 10.5-point Minion Pro,

with display type in ITC Cerigo.

Composition by Mardee Melton

Printing and binding by Sheridan Books, Inc.

Printed on 50# House Opaque, 606 ppi

Japanese visual arts and culture

Of related interest

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Maximum Embodiment presents a compelling thesis articulating the histor-

ical character of Yo ga, literally the Western painting of Japan. The term
encompassed both establishment ne art and avant-gardist insurgencies,
but in both cases, as the term suggests, it was typically focused on tech-
niques, motifs, canons, or iconographies that were obtained in Europe and
deployed by Japanese artists. This study denes a paradigm of embodied
representation unique to Yo ga painting that may be conceptualized in
four registers: first, the distinctive materiality of oil paint pigments on the
picture surface; second, the depiction of palpable human bodies; third, the
identication of the act and product of painting with a somatic expression
of the artists physical being; and nally, rhetorical metaphors of political
and social incorporation.

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Long awaited and much anticipated, Challenging Past and Present offers
readers a wide range of case studies addressing aspects of continuity and
change attending the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the establish-
ment of Meiji. . . . That the material presented here is so rich and timely
attests to the continuing needs of a eld in art history that has seen rela-
tively little scholarly attention. . . . Conant and her coauthors have done an
immense service to the eld. Specialists and nonspecialists will nd much
of interest. Journal of Asian Studies

Front jacket illustration: Yoshida Masaji (19171971), Silence No 74 (Shizukanagare), 1958. Color woodblock
print, 3/50, published by the artist. 831 551 mm. (JA1985, 10-23.24). The Trustees of the British Museum.
Reproduced courtesy of the British Museum.

ISBN 978-0-8248-3441-8
90000
University of Hawaii Press
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