Japan 1868-1945: Art, Architecture, and National IdentityAuthor(s): Christine M. E. GuthSource: Art Journal, Vol. 55, No. 3, Japan 1868-1945: Art, Architecture, and NationalIdentity (Autumn, 1996), pp. 16-20Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777761 .

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.0i S . ?' Y U UII~i

Japan 1868-1945 Art, Architecture, and National Identity

Christine M. E. Guth

rT his issue was prompted by the conviction that there is a

need for critical reflection on developments in Japanese art and architecture between 1868 and 1945, as well as

16 by the desire to engage both specialists and nonspecialists of

Japan in this emerging field of study. During this roughly seventy-

five-year period-embracing the reigns of the emperors Meiji (1868-1912), Taisho (1912-26), and Showa (1926-89)-Japan- ese culture underwent far-reaching changes, many of which had

profound implications for the formation of modern Japanese national identity. The role of art and architecture in this dynamic and extraordinarily complex process has never been systematically

explored. One cannot do justice to such a broad topic in the space allotted here, and the seven articles that follow do not attempt to

present a seamless or coherent narrative. They aim instead to pull the reader into some of the vigorous artistic and ideological debates of the period by examining the activities of those who,

individually and collectively, addressed this sensitive issue. While

the articles encompass a variety of topics, media, and approaches, all throw light on the symbolic means used to shape and sustain

the myth of a shared culture and the effects of this process of rep- resentation on those who either challenged or did not participate in it. In seeking to rectify the often stereotyped and narrow read-

ing of the art of this period, they also illuminate its many inco-

herencies and contradictions.

Japan is often relegated to the margins of European and

American art historical discourse. Even developments after 1868, which unfolded within full view of the outside world and whose

character simultaneously shaped and mirrored those in the West, are often ignored or treated in a parochial manner. Japanese art, when it is included in Western art historical discourse about the

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is often valued only in as

much as it contributed to japonisme. And yet, just as it is important

FIG. 1 Hashimoto Chikanobu, A Concert of Western Music, 1889, woodblock print, triptych, each section 141/2 x 29 inches. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of Lincoln Kirstein.

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to study Japanese art during this period in relation to developments in Europe, so too an understanding of those in Japan is essential to

assessing the nature of the Japanese impact in the West. The role of art and architecture in the construction of

Japanese national identity is a particularly fertile field for such

cross-cultural exploration since Japanese developments throw

light on many of the problems attendant on the creation of

modernity in other parts of the world. Many of the strategies

adopted by Japanese cultural authorities to advance their interests,

moreover, closely paralleled or were informed by those in Europe and the United States. Although the authors in this issue do not try to make the West the measure of interpretation or explicitly include a comparative perspective, they do raise compelling ques- tions that transcend national boundaries.

While cultural developments are not necessarily synchro- nous with political ones, the accession of Emperor Meiji in 1868 is a useful starting point for a consideration of national identity because it was during his reign that the modern concept of nation

(kokka) first gained currency in Japan. Meiji Japan's emergence as

a cohesive political entity does not mean that an awareness and

expression of native identity were lacking before this time. A keen

sensitivity to the issue, framed in such dichotomous terms as yam- atoe (pictures of Japan) and karae (pictures of China), was mani- fest in Japanese writings as early as the ninth century and, fueled

by nativist writers, continued to animate the thinking of artists and

intellectuals well into the modern era.1 In many respects this

dialectical relationship with China, Japan's traditional cultural men-

tor, set the stage for Japan's response to the West. The Meiji era witnessed intense efforts to transform Japan

into a modern nation, a process that went hand-in-hand with efforts to mold a sense of nationhood as a means of stabilizing the

country and instilling pride and loyalty in its citizens. Following a

pattern with deep historical roots, the Meiji government adopted measures to legitimate its authority both domestically and interna-

tionally through art and architecture. The resulting rhetoric of cul- tural orthodoxy was by no means universally accepted, however.

Although the Japanese archipelago did not experience the pro- tracted regional or ethnic strife common in many other emerging nations, after the turn of the century there arose many competing visions of what constituted Japanese art and architecture and who

should have the authority to shape its course.

During the early Meiji era, many structural reforms were undertaken by the government under the slogan bunmei kaika

(civilization and enlightenment), a framework that positioned art not within the realm of aesthetics but rather within that of com-

merce, science, and technology. Japan's first national museum was founded in 1872 to educate the public in natural sciences and

technology, and the coining of the term bijutsu (art) was prompt- ed by classificatory requirements attendant on Japanese participa- tion in the Vienna International Exposition of 1873. Although the term bijutsu assumed more idealistic overtones over the course of

the Meiji era, the view of art as an intimation of transcendent har-

mony and a key to the national spirit only came into vogue in the

1910s and 1920s. This development was emblematic of a larger

FIG. 2 Takamura Koun, Kusunoki Masashige, 1900, bronze, ca. 132 inches high. Niju bashi, Tokyo.

shift, from the Meiji equation of civilization with industrial produc- tion to the Taisho equation of culture (bunka) with consumption.2

The appropriation of European architectural techniques and

styles was part of the new government's campaign to adopt West-

ern institutions deemed essential to Japan's survival as a sovereign nation. The so-called unequal treaties of 1858-granting foreign nations extraterritorial rights and tariff autonomy, revision of which was a central objective of Meiji diplomacy-were potent reminders of Japan's precarious status vis-a-vis the West. Toshio

Watanabe's discussion of the Rokumeikan, or Deer Cry Pavilion,

designed by the British architect Josiah Conder as a residence for

foreign dignitaries and the site of many international gatherings, focuses on the brief period during the 1880s when Japan mea-

sured its respectability as a nation by its ability to dress itself, both

literally and figuratively, in Western costume (fig. 1). Within years of the Rokumeikan's completion, many intellectuals began voicing concern about the implications of making modernization synony- mous with westernization. The debates surrounding the planning and eventual construction of the National Diet Building that con-

tinued from the 1880s until 1936 highlight the protracted conflicts

engendered by the drive to master, assimilate, and transform

European institutions to suit Japanese requirements. This is the

focus of Jonathan Reynolds's study.

Japan's modernization did not consist simply of a triumph of the new over the discredited old, but also involved a self-

conscious and highly selective recasting of the culture of the past. The activities of figures from myth and legend celebrated in the arts of the Meiji era served to explain not only how Japan had

come to be, but also helped to situate native distinctiveness in

imperial culture. This message was communicated in ceramics, lac-

quer, and metalwork made for sale at international expositions, as

well as in public statuary such as the bronze figure of Kusunoki

Masashige by Takamura Koun (fig. 2). Installed before the Imperi- al Palace in Tokyo in 1900, this statue of a fourteenth-century warrior considered to personify loyalty to the emperor remains a

symbol of Japanese allegiance to imperial rule.

Efforts to generate a sense of nationhood by preserving,

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FIG. 3 Hishida Shunsb, Bodhisattva Genjui, 1907, color on silk, 1853/8

x 991/4 inches. National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

strengthening-and even creating out of whole cloth-a unified

sense of the past were directed by the government from its head-

quarters in Tokyo, but they inevitably had implications for other

parts of the country as well. Although regional participation in this

process was limited during the Meiji era, the modern image of cities such as Nara and Kyoto (Japan's capitals during 710-784

and 794-1185, respectively) was profoundly influenced by the

Meiji campaign to reinvent Japan's artistic and religious traditions.

Kyoto was in fact the site of considerable artistic innovation, but, like Nara, it came to be officially defined and confined by its cul-

tural heritage. The construction of Kyoto's Heian Shrine in twelfth-

century palace style in 1895 to commemorate the anniversary of the city's founding was an important step in this process. So, too, was the enactment two years later of the Law for the Protection of

Cultural Properties (Kokuho hozon ho) establishing a national reg- istry of ancient architectural and artistic monuments primarily in

and around Kyoto and Nara. These and related activities are the

backdrop for Cherie Wendelken's discussion of Kigo Kiyoyoshi, a

pioneer in Japan's architectural historical preservation movement. The creation of a canon of traditional art through the classi-

fication and conservation of designated national treasures

(kokuho) went hand-in-hand with efforts to create a canon of

modern art through the institution of official art schools and the

inauguration of government-sponsored exhibitions.3 The Tokyo School of Fine Arts (Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko), which opened its doors

to students in 1889, was symptomatic of the growing nationalism

at the time. Initially the school excluded y6ga (Western painting) and instead offered a curriculum in nihonga (literally, Japanese

painting, using traditional water- and mineral-based pigments),

carving (using the traditional media of wood and ivory), and lac-

quer. Hishida Shunso's painting of the Buddhist deity Genju (fig. 3) testifies both to the idealism and historicism characteristic of the

work of many of its early graduates. Nearly a decade would pass before pressure to expand the curriculum led to the institution of a

new section devoted to yoga and sculpture in clay and bronze.

Kuroda Seiki, who had studied plein air painting under the tute-

lage of the French academic painter Raphael Collin, was appoint- ed teacher of the new oil painting department (see fig. 4).

The institution in 1907 of national exhibitions under the

auspices of the Ministry of Education (Monbusho Bijutsu Ten-

rankai, or Bunten for short) signaled the institutionalization of

nihonga and y6ga as parallel canons. The Meiji government had

already inaugurated domestic fairs modeled after the international

expositions in Europe and America to promote science and indus-

try in the 1870s, and guided the development of Japanese arts

and crafts for the international market within this framework. The

objectives of the Bunten, however, were quite different. Like the

French salon on which it was modeled, this annual juried exhibi-

tion was premised on the assumption that it was the state's

responsibility to promote high culture so as to shape public taste

and enhance Japan's international prestige. The Bunten provided a

national forum and recognition for artists from a wide range of

backgrounds, but factionalism and ideological differences prompt- ed some to seek alternative venues.

Although practitioners of nihonga and yoga employed differ-

ent media, both drew selectively on and adapted indigenous as well

as foreign themes and styles. Nonetheless, the dialectic between the

two became a microcosm for a discourse on tradition versus moder-

nity and East versus West. The government encouraged this con-

struction of categories through opposition because the resulting closed system helped it maintain control over artistic production and

consumption. Yet as John Clark has argued, these strictures also

opened up new artistic opportunities. By offering a "double other-

ness," this dual canon created "a space of discourse beyond the

control or affiliation of either 'Japanese or Western' painting. It is

this space from which modernity draws value and dynamic."4 As Japan extended its colonial empire from Taiwan to Korea

and Manchuria, issues of national identity were played out on an

ever-expanding stage. Japan's evolving sense of nationhood

began to include efforts to represent those under its political and

economic power from its newfound position of cultural domi-

nance. During the 1890s many had been disturbed by European colonial attitudes toward Japan and its culture. Tokutomi Soho, an

outspoken critic of efforts to appease the West, railed "foreigners

regard Japan as the world's playground, a museum. They pay their

admission and enter because there are so many things to see."5

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FIG. 4 Kuroda Seiki, Under the Trees, 1898, oil on canvas, 783/4 x 931/4 inches. National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

But within a few years, his vision of Japanese culture also

embraced the imperial treasures from China, Korea, India, and

other regions along the Silk Route that had been preserved since

the eighth century in the Shosoin, a storehouse attached to the

Nara temple of Todaiji.6 Like many of his contemporaries, he had

internalized the colonial mentality imposed on Japan by the West

and turned it back on those countries in Asia deemed less devel-

oped than Japan. The rationale for this outlook was summarized in

Okakura Kakuzo's pithy claim that "Asia is one."7

Yokoyama Taikan's painting Floating Lanterns (Ryuto),

depicting three women on the banks of the Ganges, exemplifies the way certain Japanese artists used their country's historical ties

with India to distinguish Japan from the wider Orient (toyo), even

as Japan sought to present itself as part of a larger cultural sphere that encompassed China, Korea, and Southeast Asia.8 As Miriam

Wattles points out in her essay, Taikan's manipulation of a subtle,

multilayered visual language of emotional identification, or affec-

tivity, foreshadowed the later use of nihonga as an emblem of

Japanese ethnic identity. Until the turn of the century, most artists shared the convic-

tion that a great nation required a cohesive culture and worked

toward objectives believed to be in the common interest. Personal

aspirations, political rivalries, and contests for cultural power were

cloaked in the rhetoric of nation-building. Japan's growing indus-

trialization and military prowess, clearly demonstrated by its victo-

ry in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, however, provoked rifts in this united front, as many found it increasingly difficult to accept the contradictions of the newly expanded world they lived in. The

Hibiya Riots, touched off by popular indignation over the humiliat-

ing terms of the peace treaty, was the first of many demonstra-

tions of rising public resistance to political authority.

Overanticipation of the positive effects of Japan's military victory over a white race, followed by profound disillusionment

that this victory had not produced greater respect for Japan in the

West, further fueled uncertainty about the future. The gap between promise and fulfillment was felt particularly acutely by

artists who believed they expressed themselves in universal West-

ern idioms, yet found that their message was rarely heard outside

Japan. The artists who communicated most effectively on an inter-

national level were those who remained most faithful to what the

West perceived to be Japanese art. This perception was a catalyst for the reevaluation of many artistic assumptions that had pre- vailed earlier in the Meiji era. Ishii Hakutei, the artist and critic who

is the focus of Mikiko Hirayama's study, was among those who

believed that the future of Japanese art lay in a synthesis of East-

ern and Western values. These concerns also contributed to the growing preoccupa-

tion with individualism that would become a distinguishing feature

of Taisho era culture. When debates on the identity of the artist

and architect began early in the Meiji era, their focus was general-

ly the artist as a professional and representative of Japan. The aim

of such artistic reforms was to fashion a modern image of the artist

in keeping with post-Renaissance European norms. As reframed in

the 1910s and 1920s, however, the debate was redirected toward

issues of personal artistic authority. Takamura Kotaro, a respected sculptor, poet, and critic, was

an eloquent and influential participant in this debate. His essay "Green Sun" (Midori iro no taiyo), which appeared in 1910, direct-

ly confronted the crucial issue of national identity in modern art:

I was born as a Japanese; and as a fish cannot leave the water to

make his life, I will always be a Japanese, whether I acknowledge that fact to myself or not ... [And yet] when my own sense of

self is submerged in the object of my attention, there is no reason

for such thoughts to occur to me. At such times, I never think of

Japan. I proceed without hesitation, in terms of what I think and

feel. Seen later, perhaps the work I have created may have some-

thing "Japanese" about it, for all I know. Or then again, perhaps not. To me, as an artist, it makes no difference at all.9

Kotarb not only championed individual creativity as a force

transcending nationality, but also rejected mimesis as the basis of

artistic practice, arguing that:

If another man paints a picture of a green sun, I have no intention

to say that I will deny him. For it may be that I will see it that way

myself. Nor can I merely continue on, missing the value of the

painting just because "the sun is green." For the quality of the

work will not depend on whether the sun depicted is either green or red. What I wish to experience, to savor, as I said before, is the

flavor of work in which the sun is green.10

"Green Sun" marked a watershed in the way Japanese artists thought about themselves and their work. Its implications were indeed far-reaching, for not only did Kotaro reject the hege-

mony of the state in the construction of artistic identity by making the individual the locus of artistic authority, he also called into

question the Western illusionistic tradition as the basis for artistic

praxis in Japan. The years following the publication of Kotaro's manifesto

saw the proliferation of avant-garde artistic movements, many of

them animated by a new political and social consciousness.

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FIG. 5 Yanase Masamu, Proletarian Newspaper, 1927, newsprint and paper, 21 x 15 inches. Location unknown.

Abstraction, Surrealism, Russian Constructivism, and Dada all

enjoyed a following. Artistic manifestations of anarchism and pro- letarianism, such as the Mavo movement discussed by Gennifer

Weisenfeld, sought to help viewers make sense of the increasingly chaotic conditions of modernity. Mavo's members addressed such

issues as the individual's relationship to state and society and the

impact of consumerism and technology on daily life, as well as the

devastating consequences of the Kanto earthquake of 1923, which left more than one hundred thousand dead and destroyed more than 60 percent of Tokyo's housing. To reach urban audi-

ences many avant-garde movements used newpapers, magazines, and photography (see fig. 5)-media of mass communication that

threatened government efforts to maintain hierarchical and gen- dered forms of national culture. By highlighting social tensions, such artistic activities fueled reactionary appeals to reinstate tradi-

tional moral values such as loyalty and filiality, as well as cam-

paigns to promote good wives and wise mothers (ry6sai kenbo).

By the 1930s unsettling developments in East Asia, exacer-

bating growing consciousness of domestic social, political, and

economic ills, led to the intensification of ideological control of

national culture (bunka tosei) under the banner of patriotism. Nihonga and yoga paintings exhibited at the annual Bunten

underwent official scrutiny of their subjects and styles, with evoca-

tions of Japanese martial spirit enjoying official endorsement. In

1939 the army entered the cultural arena as a sponsor of painters

and art exhibitions. Artists were called to arms to encourage their

compatriots by painting heroic battle scenes and the like, and

denied access to materials if they did not cooperate. While most

responded enthusiastically to mobilization efforts, a few did not.

For these, the collision of conflicting interests posed moral dilem-

mas that no compromise could bridge. Matsumoto Shunsuke, the

subject of Mark Sandler's study, was such a figure. As the year that witnessed the atom bomb, Japan's defeat,

and the emperor's declaration that he was not divine, 1945 would

seem to be a logical conclusion for an examination of the interre-

lationship between art, architecture, and national identity as it

developed from the advent of the Meiji era. But the process of

defining national identity is an ongoing one, as each generation discovers and reinterprets the past, and many of the basic prob- lems faced by Japanese artists remain unchanged in the aftermath

of the war. Even artists and architects who do not share the artistic

assumptions and objectives of their prewar counterparts must still

navigate many of the same perilous cultural crosscurrents. Despite the surge in international travel and the globalization of econom-

ics and communications in the postmodern world, issues of

national identity have not been muted. On the contrary, Japan's increased interaction with the world has prompted a renewed

search for self-definition as intense and as multifaceted as that

begun in 1868.

A Note on Usage Throughout this issue, Japanese names appear in Japanese name

order-surname first-except in bibliographic citations for the

names of authors of English-language publications or for Japanese Americans. Japanese artists and literary figures are sometimes

referred to by their given names or by their artists' names, which

follow their family names. Macrons are used for all Japanese words except those that have entered English usage. All transla-

tions are by the authors unless otherwise noted.

Notes

1. See David Pollack, The Fracture of Meaning: Japan's Synthesis of China from the

Eighth through the Eighteenth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

2. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, "The Invention and Reinvention of 'Japanese Culture,"' Journal

of Asian Studies 54, no. 3 (August 1995): 762-63.

3. For a discussion of this process, see the exhibition catalogue by Ellen P. Conant et al.,

Nihonga: Transcending the Past: Japanese Style Painting, 1868-1968 (Saint Louis: Saint Louis

Art Museum, 1995), esp. 25-43.

4. John Clark, "Ybga in Japan: Model or Exception? Modernity in Japanese Art

1850s-1940s: An International Comparison," Art History 18, no. 2 (June 1995): 260.

5. Cited in Kenneth Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Iden-

tity, 1885-1895 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), 85.

6. Ibid.,148. 7. This ideal is expounded in Okakura Kakuzo's The Ideals of the East with Special Refer-

ence to the Arts of Japan (London: John Murray, 1903), 1.

8. On this phenomenon see Stephan Tanaka, Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into Histo-

ry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 9. Translated by Thomas Rimer; in Thomas Rimer and Shoji Takashina, Paris in Japan: The

Japanese Encounter with European Painting (Saint Louis: Washington University, 1987), 60.

10. Ibid., 60.

CHRISTINE M. E. GUTH is adjunct associate professor of art

history at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Art

of Edo Japan: The Artist and the City 1615-1868 (Abrams, 1996).

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