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

(24.) H. D. Harutoonian, "introduction: A Sense of an Ending and the Problem of Taisho," in H. D. Harutoonian and Bernard S. Silberman, eds., Japan in Crisis: Essays on Taisho Democracy (Pnnceton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 17.

(25.) Natsume Soseki, "Gendai nihon no kaika" (The enlightenment of modern Japan), in Soseki zenshu (Complete works of Natsume Soseki) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995), 16:430.

(26.) "What kyoyo meant . . . in contrast to shugyo was self-fulfillment of the individual in the private realm, without the necessity to perform publicly to achieve a non-personal goal"; Harutoonian, "Introduction," 17. See also pp. 3-28; and Kamishima Jiro, "Meiji no shuen" (The end of the Meiji era), in Hashikawa Bunzo and Matsumoto Sannosuke, eds., Kindai nihon seiji shisoshi (History of modern Japanese political thought) (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1971), 1:400.

(27.) Yamaji Aizan, Kishirutokyo hyoron (Christianity review) (Tokyo: Keiseisha, 1906); reprinted in Shironshu (Discourses on history) (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1958), 400. See also Carol Gluck, Japans Modern Myths (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 159-70.

(28.) See Tetsuo Najita, "On Culture and Technology in Postmodern Japan," in Postmodernism and Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 10.

(29.) "Foreword," Taiyo 12, no. 9 (June 1906): unpaginated.

(30.) Najita, "On Culture," 10.

(31.) Tsubouchi Shoyo, "Shumikai no shorai" (Artistic taste in the future), Taiyo 12, no. 9 (June 1906): 100.

(32.) Ishii, "Kaigakai (ge)," 117.

(33.) There were demands for yoga painters' opinions on the future of Japanese painting in the early twentieth-century art scene. The art press occasionally featured interviews of yoga painters on the future of lapanese painting. Some painters also lectured on the subject. See Kuroda Seiki, "Shorai no bijutsukai ni taisuru kibo" (Hopes for the future art world), Taiyo 12, no. 9 (June 1906): 85-89; Koyama Shotaro, "Shorai no kaiga" (Future painting), ibid., 169-76, reprinted in Shigeru Aoki, ed., Meiji yoga shiryo kirokuhen (Sources on Meiji Western-style painting: Documents) (Tokyo: Chuo Koron Bijutsu Shuppan, 1986); and "Yogaka no nihongakan" (Western-style painters' views of Japanese painting), Bijutsu Shinpa 10, no. 11 (September 11): 9-15; ibid., no. 12 (September 21): 11-16; and ibid., no. 13 (October 11): 23-29.

(34.) Ishii Hakutei, "Hosungen" (Editorial), Hosun 3, no. 3 (March 28, 1909): 3.

(35.) Jean-Franicois Lyotard, "Tomb of the Intellectual," in Politucal Writings, trans. Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 4.

(36.) Najita, "On Culture," 10. Perhaps Hakutei was unaware of the underlying impact of his proposals upon the Japanese art community and society at large. His vision of perfect painting, through its notably cosmopolitan slant, pointed to the possibility of cultural egalitarianism between lapan and Europe. By extension it could also have spurred the reappraisal of lapan's own modernity by providing an alternative to the very notion of modernity centered on technological innovation.