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Ishii Hakutei on the future of Japanese painting - Japan 1868-1945: Art, Architecture, and National Identity

Art Journal, Fall, 1996 by Mikiko Hirayama

Increasing exposure to Western art, calling into question long-standing artistic assumptions and institutional practices, caused upheaval throughout the Meiji art world.(1) During this era of cultural uncertainty, the creation of new standards of Japanese painting that could simultaneously revitalize traditional art and enhance Japan's identity as a culturally sophisticated nation-state became a major concern. Many artists were actively involved in the process of formulating what might well be described as a new artistic canon.

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Art criticism by the Western-style (yoga) painter Ishii Hakutei (1882-1958)--particularly his proposals for a syncretic canon and their relationship to the artist's quest for self-identity-illuminates one early twentieth-century painter's view of the possibility of reconciling the East-West polarity in Japanese art. The artistic, ideological, and cultural values that inform his contradiction-laden proposals also reveal the ambivalence inherent in the concept of artistic self-identity at that time.

Yoga and nihonga (traditional Japanese-style painting) dictated both the institutional structures and artistic perceptions of Meiji Japan. This dichotomy was accentuated by periodic fluctuations in national policies, particularly during the early Meiji period, when the state championed the technological value of Western art as part of its utilitarian cultural agenda. State support, however, began to shift from yoga to nihonga during the late 1870s as the government's pursuit of Western technology gradually gave way to cultural nationalism. By the late nineteenth century, the dual structure of Japanese art was firmly established, with each style constituting an independent realm.

The establishment in 1898 of a department of Western painting at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where previously only Japanese painting had been taught, heralded a new phase in the art scene. Thereafter nihonga and yoga were both officially sanctioned and coexisted on equal terms. By this time both Japanese-style and Western-style painting had a number of thriving painters' groups with their own annual exhibitions, journals, and private academies. Paintings in both styles were displayed at the 1900 Paris World's Fair, unlike the earlier 1893 World Columbian Exposition, where yoga had been refused by the Japanese organizers.

It was against this backdrop that the problem of canon formation first became a pressing issue. Instrumental in igniting the controversy was "Bijutsu Shinsetsu" (True theories of art), a lecture by Ernest F. Fenollosa (1853-1908) at the Ryachikai in 1882. In this lecture Fenollosa expounded nihonga superiority over yoga in terms of its ability to express ideas (myoso), thereby highlighting the yoga-nihonga dichotomy.(2) The repercussions of Fenollosa's speech reached the field of art education as well: the method of instruction in elementary school--either pencil sketch or traditional copybook (rinpon) practice using a paintbrush--was the main agenda of the Art Education Council (Zuga Kyoiku Chosakai) between 1884 and 1885. These events led Okakura Tenshin (1862-1913), the first director of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, to note in 1887 that "issues of art have finally begun to attract people's attention widely." "Our main concern today," declared Tenshin, "is which of the two styles, Eastern or Western, should be opted for."(3)

This controversy regained momentum especially after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, when demands arose from inside and outside the art world for works that showed Japan's new national identity as a world power with high cultural sophistication.(4) Art critics as well as major painters, both Western- and Japanese-style, actively published essays or issued statements about the matter. Discourse on the topic of the future of Japanese painting (nihon kaiga no shorai) revolved around three issues. First was the question of the superiority of one style over the other; both yoga and nihonga were repeatedly scrutinized on the basis of their respective technical strengths, artistic merits, and commercial profitability. Second was the question of the best method of revitalizing Japanese painting. Of particular concern was the appropriateness of setchu, a syncretic approach that aimed to combine the strengths of Japanese and Western art.(5) Much of the discussion among the advocates of setchu revolved around the role of Western art in the revitalization of Japanese painting. Third was the validity of classifying painting as yoga and nihonga.

Hakutei was a most appropriate person to discuss the future of Japanese painting since his career framed in many ways the issues central to Japan's artistic modernity. Hakutei had unusually broad training, including informal private lessons in nihonga, a ten-year apprenticeship in Western-style drawing and lithography at the Printing Bureau of the Finance Ministry, and a brief period of study at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. He was an erudite artist who, early in his career, experimented with Neoimpressionism and Aestheticism, as shown in Sojo no Shokei (At rest on the grass; fig. 1), his homage to Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe.

Ishii Hakutei on the future of Japanese painting - Japan 1868-1945: Art, Architecture, and National Identity

Art Journal, Fall, 1996 by Mikiko Hirayama

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