The Image of Woman As a National Icon in Modern Japanese
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Title The Image of Woman as a National Icon in Modern Japanese Art: 1890s-1930s Type The sis URL https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/15561/ Dat e 2 0 0 6 Citation Kojima, Kaoru (2006) The Image of Woman as a National Icon in Modern Japanese Art: 1890s-1930s. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London. Cr e a to rs Kojima, Kaoru Usage Guidelines Please refer to usage guidelines at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/policies.html or alternatively contact [email protected] . License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Unless otherwise stated, copyright owned by the author The Image of Woman as a National Icon in Modern Japanese Art: 1890s-1930s Volume 1 Kaoru Kojima Submitted as a partial requirement for the degree of doctor of philosophy, awarded by the University of the Arts, London September, 2006 Contents Volume 1 Abstract Acknowledgements ii Note v Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Kuroda Seiki and His Reception of Western art 1.1 Kuroda Seiki in Japanese art histotry 8 1.2 Kuroda's family background 12 1.3 The art of Raphael Collin and its reception by Kuroda 18 1.4 Female images by Kuroda 25 Chapter 2 Formation of Masculine camaraderie in Japan 2.1 Controversy over female nude in Japan 31 2.2 Solidarity of Japanese Students in Paris around 1900 38 2.3 Male artists and the artistic self 47 2.4 "Bohemian" life introduced to Japanese stUdents 50 Chapter 3 Making Images of "Kimono Beauty" as National Symbol 3.1 Reception of Western dress in the early Meiji period 55 3.2 Images of Japanese women in kimono under Westemes' gaze 58 3.3 Wada Eisaku and his representation of a woman in kimono 60 3.4 Invention of kimono as a "national dress" 64 3.5 Popularisation of "kimono beauty" 68 3.6 A Change in representation of "beautiful" women 74 Chapter 4 Representing "T6y6 "with Images of Women 4.1 Fujishima Takeji and his experience in Europe 78 4.2 Representation of the images of Korea by Fujishima 85 4.3 Profiles of women in Chinese dress by Fujishima 91 4.4 Admiration and desire reflected in the images of women in Chinese dress 101 Chapter 5 Representation of "Otherness" and Imperialism in "Kimono Beauty" 5.1 Umehara RyQzaburO and his images of women under the Western gaze 108 5.2 Search for modern images of Japanese beauty 112 5.3 "Kimono beauty" in contrast with female images in colonies 123 5.4 Uemura ShOen and her representation of "kimono beauty" 132 5.5 Images of Taiwan by Japanese artists and Taiwanese artists 141 5.6 "Kimono beauty imperialism" in oil paintings 152 Conclusion 157 Bibliography 160 List of Illustrations 176 Volume 2: lIustrations Abstract In the 1890s, the Meiji government established its Japanese constitution. After the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, Japan colonised Taiwan and Korea and increased its military power. The Japanese artists who lived during this time were in many ways reacting to this rapid social change that was taking place. This thesis aims to analyse the diverse images of women that were primarily produced by artists working under the government regime and to show how these artists seek to resolve through their work the tensions to which modernity, nation and empire give rise. My discussion begins with the French-trained Japanese painter, Kuroda Seiki, who introduced life class to Japan after he became the head of the Department of Western Art at the Tokyo School of Fine Art in 1896. He also introduced the studio fraternity of male artists to Japan and encouraged students to paint female nudes to catch up with the standards set by Western art. In the beginning of the twentieth century, Okada SaburOsuke and Wada Eisaku created images of "kimono beauty" by internalising the Westernern gaze on Japanese women in kimonos as exotic objects. The Mitsui kimono shop promoted newly designed kimonos for bourgeois women as a "national dress." They popularised kimono beauty with their products in print and billboards. These images had a major influence on nihonga artists of the 191 Os, which led to the vogue of Bijin-ga (paintings of beautiful women). As Japan expanded its territory in East Asia, Japanese artists needed to create new icons of Japan. Fujishima Takeji expressed t6y6 seishin (spirit of the East) in the 1920s by using images of women in Chinese dress that symbolised a modernised Japan that was the counterpart of the West. After the Japanese invasion of China, a vogue of images of women in modern Chinese dress appeared in the 1930s. Artists who had been to Europe in the 1920s rediscovered the beauty of Japanese nature and life while simultaneously depicting Japanese subalterns by humble images of their women. Contrasted with these, images of kimono beauty in the 1930s distinguished themselves through expressions of urbanity and prosperity. Examples of kimono beauty produced by female painters at the end of the 1930s reveal that they themselves as well as the images that they produced were incorporated within the imperial regime. Acknowledgements During the time I worked on my thesis I received wisdom and encouragement from many people. Firstly, and most of all, I must express my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Professor Watanabe Toshio. Another major influence on this work was the opportunity to participate in a three year project "Modernity and National Identity in Art: India, Japan and Mexico, 1860s-1940s" funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board that was conceived and organised by Professor watanabe, with Professors Oriana Baddeley and Partha Mitter. The project, which commenced in 2002, and culminated in a symposium held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2004, enabled me to develop my initial ideas for this thesis. I also would like to thank Professor Bert Winther-Tamaki with whom I had fruitful discussions on Japanese oil paintings during the workshop. My thanks also go to my second supervisor, Professor Mabuchi Akiko. Her perceptive counsel was extremely encouraging on the occasions when I lost confidence in fulfilling the task of completing my doctorate. I thank her also for including me in the Research Project for "the Journal of the Pantheon Society" from 2002 to 2003. I would like to thank Dr Kikuchi YOko, Senior Research Fellow of Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN). My contribution to a volume edited by her, Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan was the basis of my research on Taiwanese artists in chapter five. I received invaluable advice from Professors Nakamachi Keiko and Miyazaki Noriko who are my senior colleagues at Jissen Women's University. They invited me to join their research project on "Literati Culture in East Asia" in 1998 and organised a workshop of the Japan Art History Society in 2001. I am indebted to their profound knowledge on Japanese and Chinese art, especially on the literati culture in both countries. I am also grateful for their ii recommendation for me to write an essay on images of women in kimono for the second volume of Art and Gender published in 2005. I also express my gratitude to another editors of the book, Professor Suzuki Tokiko, who gave me an opportunity to join a symposium on War and Memory held at the Meiji Gakuin University in 2003. I also would like to thank Kawasaki City Museum, especially Sugita Shinju, KOriyama City Museum and Machida International Print Museum, especially Kono Minoru for allowing me to research their print collection. Mori Noboru, Mori Hitoshi, Tanaka Atsushi and Professors Aoki Shigeru, Yoshida Chizuko, Iwakiri Shin'ichirO and Tan'o Yasunori, gave me useful advice on my research. I am also grateful to Rawanchaikul Toshiko for our informative discussions on Taiwanese artists and to Kim Yong Soon, former Visiting Professor of Tokyo University, whose advice and guidance in Seoul facilitated my research on Korean modern art. My thanks also go to Kanokogi Yoshiko who generously allowed me to use archival documents on her grandfather-in-Iaw, Kanokogi TakeshirO. I also would like to express my gratitude to several people who have guided me in my earlier research on modern Japanese art, and therefore have impacted on my ideas in the present work. Professor Takashina ShOji invited me to join a research project on Kanokogi TakeshirO organised in 1985. I reported the result of my research at an international symposium held by the Asahi Shimbun and Meiji Bijutsu Gakkai sponsored by Takashimaya in 1988, where I met Professor Watanabe for the first time. Yamanashi Emiko at the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties and Arayashiki Toru of the Pola Art Museum, have both been good colleagues of mine since we were engaged in the research on Kanokogi together. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Asano TOru, and Tomiyama Hideo, who were chief curator and vice-director of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, when I started to work there in 1987. I realised later how profound their knowledge was iii and how kindly they had mentored me. I would also like to thank Ellen P. Conant who gave me the first opportunity to speak to an American audience at the international symposium on Nihonga exhibition held at St. Louis in 1995. Finally, I would like to thank Dr John L. Tran for his technical advice, and Ken Berthel for proofreading this thesis. The completion of this work would not have been possible without the emotional support of my husband KondO Yukio. iv Note Japanese terms are written in italics. Japanese names are given in Japanese order, with the family name first, though in discussing the Japanese-style artists, I have applied the convention of referring to them in their name used in painting (ga-g6).