Introduction

Despite the clouds of war, political upheaval and social change, the first four and a half decades of the 20th century saw an unprecedented flowering of Japanese painting. The opening of Japan to the West during the preceding years brought many Japanese artists to study in Europe and North America. In addition the founding of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts provided a forum for the study of both Western and Japanese Art. Before this period students followed in the path of the teachers under whom they apprenticed. By the turn of the 20th century young artists were exposed to stylistic and technical inspiration from a broad range of painting schools and traditions. These painters began to define a new type of Japanese painting, using traditional techniques to express a modern view of the world. They defined their art in opposition to Yoga or Western Style Painting. Currents of cross-cultural influence of course eddied back and forth between Japan and the West, inevitably inspiring further innovation in both traditions. At the same time the number of public art exhibitions in Japan grew at an extraordinary pace, encouraging competition and individual creativity as never before seen in the Japanese art world.

The age saw an immense level of patronage for the arts. The Imperial Government actively sponsored exhibitions, purchasing pieces for the Imperial Collections and to be given as gifts. While the upper classes traditionally valued the arts, the rising middle class was also eager to acquire art to display in their homes. Attendance at the government sponsored exhibitions ran into the hundreds of thousands. The press followed the careers of individual artists in the newspapers and an accomplished artist could in the space of a few years make his or her fortune. So the rewards of money and prestige attracted vast talent into the private and public art schools.

Artists strove to bring their best work to exhibition. The government sponsored exhibitions gave participants the chance to gain the prestige of Imperial patronage and recognition on a national level. With non-exhibition paintings the level of quality and complexity often varied depending on the status of the patron and what they were willing to spend. Even extremely important and successful artists such as Yamamoto Shunkyo worked on different levels. Masterpieces such as his hawk and snow on pine screens (illustrated as number 21 in this catalogue) represent extremely high level commission work.

The world that supported this renaissance came to a sudden end with World War II, and the political associations and hostile emotions associated with the War shadowed the period afterwards. Few Western institutions or collectors paid any attention to the era. The arts of early 20th century Japan continued to be quietly collected by Japanese national, prefectural and municipal art museums, and by private museums and collectors.

Nihonga or Japanese style paintings from the period meld traditional technique with a modernity of style that still remains essentially Japanese. Pigments were ground from minerals such as malachite or azurite for green or blue. Powdered clam shell produced white. Some vegetable sources such as indigo were available. Gold and silver leaf as well as powders brightened the palette. These pigments retain a clarity and brilliance that is extremely stable. The fineness with which the pigments were ground and the mixture of other elements allowed for gradation of color. The colors required an animal glue binding agent or nikawa. Japanese paper or silk formed the support for paintings, and these were mounted either as hanging scrolls, or on lattice style wood frames for panels, sometimes linked by paper hinges to form folding screens. The technical background required to mount paintings properly was complex and specialized, and it remains so today.

Many of the paintings created for exhibition were large in scale, and over time the formats preferred by artists tended to shift. Byōbu or folding screens became less and less common in the exhibitions after 1920, and this is true for both pairs of six panel screens or for smaller two panel sets. One sees instead increasing numbers of impressive panels with lacquer frames, or large hanging scrolls. These exhibition paintings are now largely held by public institutions in Japan, though of course many were destroyed in the fire bombings of Tokyo, Osaka and other major Japanese cities during the War.

One of the principal groups of these exhibition paintings in private hands belonged to the Meguro Gajoen Museum in Tokyo. Collected from the 1920s into the early 1940s by Hosokawa Rikizō, and stored at his hotel and wedding hall complex at the Gajoen during the War, these paintings only came onto the market in 2003 with the bankruptcy of the Gajoen’s holding company. Despite losses and damage to the collection in the fire bombing of Tokyo, thousands of paintings remained. Of these many were in such poor condition that they cannot be salvaged and retain only historical interest. Some were poorly restored in the early 1990s. A handful found their way to other museums in Japan.

Kagedo was fortunate to be the first and only art dealer from the West to purchase directly from the Gajoen in 2003. We returned again and again, spending weeks reviewing the surviving paintings in the Gajoen. In the end we were able to acquire many exhibition masterpieces from the museum collection. We have also been collecting other fine paintings from the period and include them here.

In this catalogue we bring you a visual miscellany of paintings. Images are grouped to reflect affinities or point up contrasts. The first part consists of photographs of the art, linked to the text in the back by catalogue number and artist’s name. The second part covers the text with biographical background on artists and information on the paintings. Reduced photographs of the paintings float with the text as a visual guide. Following this we include a section with reproductions of the signatures and seals.

Included are examples of the brilliant naturalism of the bird and flower painters, landscapes, and the modern portraits created by the painters of bijinga or beautiful women. In contrast to the idealized images long painted in the ukiyō-e or woodblock tradition, these paintings of young women (and very rarely men) reveal the faces of particular individuals. A new quality of introspection echoes from their eyes. Their chic mixture of traditional Japanese and Western qualities fuses a cultural image that is brightly optimistic, and speaks eloquently of the era.

We hope these paintings open a window for you on an age of luminous achievement in the arts. Too often darkened in memory by the tragedies of its later years, the period in Japan was one brightened by creativity and the embrace of modernity. As the crucible out of which flowed all contemporary Japanese Art, the first part of the 20th century deserves an enlightened reappraisal.