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Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

The Taiwan Government-General Library and Its Art-related Collections

The colonial government of Taiwan opened its library in 1915 in Taipei. The colonial government in Korea opened its library in 1925 in Seoul. Some historians have suggested that the relatively late establishment of both Government-General Libraries reflected the discriminatory policy of keeping the colonized people from going beyond their station in life (Kawata, “Ajia shinryaku to Chōsen Sōtokufu Toshokan (1),” 87-88). Others pointed out that the activities of both libraries were part of the general turn in both colonies towards a cultural rule following the March First Movement in Korea in 1919 and the appointment of civilians instead of military to the post of the Government-General (Kato, Kawata, et al 2005 Nihon no shokuminchi toshokan, 84. Ujigo Tsuyoshi, “Kindai Kankoku toshokanshi no kenkyū: shokuminchiki o chūshin ni,” Sankōshoshi kenkyū, no. 34 (1988): 5-6). The policies of cultural rule aimed at assimilating the colonized population and fostering pro-Japanese attitudes.

Next to public schools teaching Japanese language, public libraries constituted a crucial part of the cultural infrastructure of the expanding empire. They were extremely active in comparison to their counterparts in mainland Japan and attracted some of the most capable library staff from Japan (Katō Kazuo, Kawata Ikohi, and Tōjō Fuminori, Nihon no shokuminchi toshokan: Ajia ni okeru Nihon kindai toshokanshi (Tōkyō: Shakai Hyōronsha, 2005), 12-14.). They catered to Japanese settlers and the colonized, a growing number of whom could read Japanese (The Taiwan Government-General Library also had some books in Chinese and Western languages). The knowledge of Japanese language varied among the colonized subjects based on their level of contact with the Japanese population, class, education, and the year of birth. By 1941, 57% of population in Taiwan was being or had been educated in Japanese language, which was the highest literacy rate in any colony (Kleeman 2003, 142). In her discussion of Korean writers publishing in Japanese in the prewar period, literary scholar Aimee Nayoung Kwon reminds us that such seemingly "natural" command of the Japanese language was a result of violence of imperial censorship and assimilation policies (See Kwon, Intimate Empire, 190-91.). Such policies intensified after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, when the colonial government began promoting the "imperial subject movement" (kōminka) to Japanize everyday customs and ultimately draft the the colonized into the military (Fujii Shōzō "The Formation of Taiwanese Identity and the Cultural Policy of Various Outside Regimes" in Taiwan Under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1895-1945, 70).

This pathway examines user statistics and art-related holdings of the Taiwan Government-General Library to illuminate the role of the library and books in the making of the nascent imperial art world. As discussed in the "Art Education and Professional Development" pathway, studying from books constituted the most informal method of art education and was relatively available.

Questions for the classroom:

What was the role of class, gender, and ethnicity/nationality in access to the Taiwan Government-General Library?
What do classification schemes used by librarians in their user statistics and catalogues tell us about their vision of a colonial society?
How do books, journals, art postcards, and reproductions as vehicles of artistic knowledge impact the knowledge being transmitted?

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Reproductions
In his book for aspiring oil painters, Yamamoto Kanae, an oil painter himself, provided the following advice:
Another method to study painting is to see as many paintings as possible. I suggest going to exhibitions or, if one has an invitation, visiting ateliers of acquainted painters or those who live in the neighborhood. Above all, to work in oil painting, one has to see a lot of pictures by noted western artists. However, unless one travels to the West, it is impossible to see the original artworks. For this reason I advise to collect many photographic reproductions of famous works. Yamamoto Kanae, Aburae no egakikata (Tokyo: Arusu, 1919), 38.
Writing in 1919, Yamamoto Kanae emphasizes the importance of perusing photographic reproductions at a time when access to original works (in this case oil paintings produced in the West) was limited.
Similarly, an observer writing for the Taiwan nichinichi shinpō in November 1930 advised artists in the tōyōga division of the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition to study old paintings in private collections and by using the library. He pointed out that the Taipei library had the full run of the prestigious journal Kokka (Flowers of the Nation), twenty-volume set of Shinbi taikan (Selected Relics of Japanese Art), and many other books with reproductions (gashū) of works from various painting schools (Hekiteishujin, "Taiten no ato ni" Taiwan nichinichi shinpō, 11 November 1930, A.M. ed., 6.). Both Kokka and Shinbi taikan featured large size reproductions in highest print quality.
Another important medium that provided reproductions were art postcards. Sold at major art exhibitions, they enjoyed great popularity throughout the 1920s and 1930s with exhibition visitors and aspiring artists. In contrast to primarily black and white reproductions in art journals, the art postcards from major exhibitions in Japan at the time were printed in color, which greatly contributed to their appeal. Art postcards turned artworks into small, uniform, inexpensive, yet visually pleasant collectibles. They were easily transportable and allowed anyone to assemble a small “art collection.” Painter and exhibition juror Okada Saburōsuke (1869-1939) stated that since there was no permanent museum for modern art in Tokyo and art exhibitions were "temporary just like music," only art postcards would help one to recall the artworks they had earlier seen in an exhibition (“Jōsetsu bijutsukan no mondai,” Atorie 10, no. 1 (1933): 6). Also, artists used art postcards to promote their own work and exchange with their colleagues. Kolodziej Magdalena, "Gaka Ri Jinsei no bijutsu ehagaki korekushon kara miru Tokyo gadan," in Nyoze Gamon Roku, ed. Nyoze gamon roku henshūiinkai (2020).
Many artists collected art postcards and made scrapbooks with reproductions of artworks. Today, some of the most well known extant examples of such collections belong to a Korean watercolor and oil artist Yi Insŏng (1912-1950) and two Taiwanese-Chinese oil painters, Chen Chengbo (1895-1947) and Chen Zhiqi (1906-1931). Yi Insŏng's art postcard collection was on display at the National Museum of Contemporary Art as part of "The Centennial Celebration of Lee In-Sung's Birth" exhibition in 2012. This collection includes an art postcard of Liao Jichun's painting "Landscape with Palm Trees" (Yashi no aru fūkei) from the twelfth Imperial Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition in 1928, suggesting that Yi Insŏng had some interest in the work of his peers in Japan's other colony. You can see a few art postcards from Chen Chengbo's collection on this page. To view the whole collection visit the Chen Cheng-po Cultural Foundation's website.

The growing availability and access to reproductions helped foster a shared knowledge of a vast set of images in Japan and across its empire. Yet, if the printing technology democratized access to art, the publishing industry retained a selective focus on art considered worthy of reproduction, highlighting contemporary art on display at major art exhibitions in Japan, masterpieces of Western art, and Japanese scholarship on the great works from the East Asian past.
To learn more more generally about postcards in Japan, visit the Leonard A. Lauder Collection at the MFA Boston and the East Asia Image Collection at Lafayette University.
Art Education and Professional Development 34 Art students; aspiring artists; professionalization; professional development for artists image_header 5113 2021-01-26T20:40:58-05:00 35.68039, 139.76901 2019 Magdalena Kolodziej
This pathway outlines major steps of artistic professionalization in the Japanese empire. Its findings are based on research on career guidebooks, artists' writings, art publicity, and careers of individual artists. A comparison of guidebooks and actual careers—what aspiring artists were encouraged to do and how they individually proceeded—gives us much insight into a typical path to a successful career, a range of possible other ways to succeed, and the norms of the art establishment at the time. We can also find some artists who succeeded despite rather unlikely circumstances.
The presence of Japanese painters in Taiwan and of Taiwanese painters in Japan, and the circulation of artistic knowledge through magazines, books, and exhibitions reflected and shaped the emergence of shared assumptions about artistic training in the empire (Compare: Shellen X. Wu's module "Xing An: A Contested Borderland" and its path "The Science of Empire" on the globally mobile discourse of colonial social science). Moreover, as daily newspapers celebrated acclaimed artists and reported on young emerging artists competing in art exhibitions, the painterly profession became appealing to the younger generation.
This popularity of painting as a modern profession brought about the expansion of opportunities for studying art, adjusted to the needs of amateurs and aspiring professionals. These included: studying art from books and reproductions, attending night classes, correspondence course, becoming a student in a private atelier, and attending a specialized art school. Exhibitions became the testing ground for emerging artists and a further mechanism producing the hierarchies of the art establishment.
However, these professional opportunities were not distributed evenly throughout the empire. In her discussion of the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, art historian Yen Chuanying has argued that the Taiwan salon functioned as a popular event and cultural propaganda, providing only limited benefits for participating artists because the colonial government did not establish an art school or an art museum on the island (Yen Chuanying, "The Art Movement in the 1930s in Taiwan," in Modernity in Asian Art, ed. John Clark (Broadway, NSW, Australia: Wild Peony, 1993), 52. Yen Chuanying, "Nankoku bijutsu no dendō kenzō," in ‘Teikoku’ to Bijutsu: 1930nendai Nihon no taigai bijutsu senryaku, ed. Omuka Toshiharu (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2010), 367-368.). In other words, aspiring artists in Taiwan had to rely on self-studies (hence the importance of the library) and instruction at private ateliers. With a plethora of exhibitions and art schools, Tokyo became an attractive destination, available mostly to well-off students.
Questions for the classroom:
- In what ways did the artistic profession become diverse in prewar Japan?
- What distinguished an amateur from a professional painter?
- What does the use of Japanese contemporary paintings as model works at the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition tell us about the relationship between the Taiwanese and metropolitan art world?
- What are the possible interpretations of Guo Xuehu's essay? What are the omissions and silences in this essay?
Guo Xuehu's Prize-winning Essay 30 Taiwan Government-General Library; Taiwan nichinichi shinpō; Xie Yonghua plain 2021-01-28T21:17:25-05:00 Magdalena Kolodziej
In December 1931, the twenty three year old Guo Xuehu submitted an essay in Japanese to a contest organized by the Taiwan Government-General Library, in which he extolled the benefits of library use for aspiring artists. (You can find English translation here.) The library staff was well aware of his professional path and may have well encouraged him to participate in this contest.
In the essay, Guo Xuehu describes the development of his professional career as a painter and the difficulties he encountered in achieving the two credentials necessary to become a professional artist:
1. acquiring art education;
2. and, receiving social recognition through exhibition participation.
Guo's successful if unexpected acceptance to the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition launched his career in 1927 at the very young age of nineteen. Yet, a one-time success was not enough. He needed to prove himself as an artist of true ability by securing admission of his works to the salon in the following years. In this pivotal moment, he turned to the Government-General Library for art education.
The essay highlights the importance of looking at art as part of artistic training. First, Guo Xuehu explains how he became a scroll mounter to "come in touch with great paintings." Second, he details how he was able to look at many artworks in reproduction at the library, including those in special collections (tokubetsusho):
…I looked mostly at books featuring new Eastern Painting (atarashii tōyōga), read about painting theory, copied old masterpieces, and studied new painting techniques.
While the essay does not reveal in detail the names of artists whose works he was looking at so carefully, scholars have suggested (perhaps based on later interviews with the artist) that he had studied acclaimed works of artists in Japan active during the Meiji and Taishō periods, as well as masterpieces of Chinese painting from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. ("The Art of Kuo Hsueh-Hu: Kuo Hsueh-Hu Seventy Years of Painting," ed. Taipei Fine Arts Museum (1989), 17.) Access to paintings, whether in original or in reproduction, facilitated copying and acquiring the knowledge of painting techniques. The practice was not new. Yet, the advent of public exhibitions and an increase in the quality of reproductions expanded access to art to a larger number of aspiring artists, who lacked affiliation to established ateliers or art schools.
Guo Xuehu's essay won the second prize in the contest and was published alongside the first prize winning essay in the major Japanese-language newspaper in Taiwan, Taiwan nichinichi shinpō, in January 1932. The first prize went to an entrepreneur Xie Yonghe. Both winners were Taiwanese-Chinese men in their twenties with modest family backgrounds, who attributed their professional success to their persistent library use and expressed themselves fluently in Japanese. Their respective essays paint a very positive image of the library, and by extension of the colonial government. Both essays suggest that the users discovered the library in a seemingly serendipitous manner and that the library transformed their lives by providing them with instruction and access to information, which they were otherwise unable to obtain.
Guo Xuehu is an unusual case of an artist who achieved prominence and a longstanding professional success without attending an art school or affiliating with an established artist. His insistence on the importance of looking at art and striving towards professional recognition at the official salon suggest emergence of shared practices and assumptions about artistic professionalization Japan and Taiwan. Moreover, Guo's interest in older Chinese art overlapped with those of many Japanese artists, who mined the artistic pasts of East Asia for a mode of expression suitable to the modern times. See also: Aida Yuen Wong, Parting the Mists: Discovering Japan and the Rise of National-Style Painting in Modern China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006).

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