The Arts of Japan

Since Meiji

Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868-2000

Rimer, J. ThomasUniversity of Hawai'i Press · 2011

Details

Title
Since Meiji
Subtitle
Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868-2000
Publication Date
2011
Language
English
Media
Print
Page Count
528
ISBN 13
9780824835828
Publisher
University of Hawai'i Press
Editor
Rimer, J. Thomas
Contributors
Addiss, Stephen
Ajioka, Chiaki
Clark, John
Conant, Ellen P.
Hirayama, Mikiko
Marra, Michael F.
Reynolds, Jonathan M.
Seo, Audrey Yoshiko
Shiner, Eric C.
Smith, Lawrence
Tanaka, Shūji
Tomii, Reiko
Tsuruya, Mayu
Watanabe, Toshio
Weisenfeld, Gennifer
Winther-Tamaki, Bert
Yamanashi, Emiko
Translator
McCallum, Toshiko

Blurb

Research outside Japan on the history and significance of the Japanese visual arts since the beginning of the Meiji period (1868) has been, with the exception of writings on modern and contemporary woodblock prints, a relatively unexplored area of inquiry. In recent years, however, the subject has begun to attract wide interest. As is evident from this volume, this period of roughly a century and a half produced an outpouring of art created in a bewildering number of genres and spanning a wide range of aims and accomplishments. Since Meiji is the first sustained effort in English to discuss in any depth a time when Japan, eager to join in the larger cultural developments in Europe and the U.S., went through a visual revolution. Indeed, this study of the visual arts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggests a fresh history of modern Japanese culture—one that until now has not been widely visible or thoroughly analyzed outside that country.

In this extensive collection, which includes some 190 black-and-white and color reproductions, scholars from Japan, Europe, Australia, and America explore an impressive array of subjects: painting, sculpture, prints, fashion design, crafts, and gardens. The works discussed range from early Meiji attempts to create art that referenced Western styles to postwar and contemporary avant-garde experiments. There are, in addition, substantive investigations of the cultural and intellectual background that helped stimulate the creation of new and shifting art forms, including essays on the invention of a modern artistic vocabulary in the Japanese language and the history of art criticism in Japan, as well as an extensive account of the career and significance of perhaps the best-known Japanese figure concerned with the visual arts of his period, Okakura Tenshin (1862–1913), whose Book of Tea is still widely read today.

Taken together, the essays in this volume allow readers to connect ideas and images, thus bringing to light larger trends in the Japanese visual arts that have made possible the vitality, range, and striking achievements created during this turbulent and lively period.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
  • Introduction
    Rimer, J. Thomas
    1
  • Part I: Painting and the Allied Arts: From Meiji to the Present
    17
  • 1. Western-Style Painting Four Stages of Acceptance
    Yamanashi, Emiko
    19
  • 2. Japanese Painting from Edo to Meiji: Rhetoric and Reality
    Conant, Ellen P.
    34
  • 3. The Expanding Arts of the Interwar Period
    Weisenfeld, Gennifer
    66
  • 4. Sensō Sakusen Kirokuga: Seeing Japan’s War Documentary Painting as a Public Monument
    Tsuruya, Mayu
    99
  • 5. From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands: Japanese Painting in War and Defeat, 1937–1952
    Winther-Tamaki, Bert
    124
  • 6. How Gendai Bijutsu Stole the “Museum”: An Institutional Observation of the Vanguard 1960s
    Tomii, Reiko
    144
  • 7. Fashion Altars, Performance Factors, and Pop Cells: Transforming Contemporary Japanese Art, One Body at a Time
    Shiner, Eric C.
    168
  • Part II: Japanese Art of the Period in Its Cultural Context
    191
  • 8. The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan
    Marra, Michael F.
    193
  • 9. Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism
    Clark, John
    212
  • 10. Japanese Art Criticism The First Fifty Years
    Hirayama, Mikiko
    257
  • Part III: Individual Forms of Expression
    281
  • 11. Sculpture
    Tanaka, Shūji
    283
  • 12. Can Architecture Be Both Modern and “Japanese”?: The Expression of Japanese Cultural Identity through Architectural Practice from 1850 to the Present
    Reynolds, Jonathan M.
    315
  • 13. The Modern Japanese Garden
    Watanabe, Toshio
    340
  • 15. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts: The New Craft and Mingei Movements
    Ajioka, Chiaki
    361
  • 14. Japanese Prints 1868–2008
    Smith, Lawrence
    361
  • 16. Japanese Calligraphy since 1868
    Addiss, Stephen
    445
  • 17. Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation: The Cultural and Aesthetic Transformations of Fashion in Modern Japan
    Seo, Audrey Yoshiko
    471
  • Contributors
    497
  • Index
    501