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

Tōyōga Painter, Nihonga Artist

Guo Xuehu displayed his paintings in the tōyōga division of the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition. Nihonga painter and juror, Araki Jippo, made following comments on works in the tōyōga division at the salon in 1935:

I have heard that at the first and second Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition there were some extremely crude literati landscapes and flower paintings. Today, works on display have progressed and aren't any different from contemporary nihonga. It is truly a remarkable development (Araki 1935, 58).

Already in 1927, Japanese art critic, Ōsawa Sadayoshi (1886-?), suggested that the division itself was improperly named and should be called nihonga instead (Yen 2007, 86). Also, when Taiwanese tōyōga artists submitted their paintings to the salons in Tokyo in the 1930s and early 1940s, their works were on display in the nihonga division.

To address this conflation of nihonga and tōyōga, art historian Yen Chuanying has proposed an expanded definition of nihonga for the colonial period. She has described nihonga as painting with Eastern qualities under Japan's leadership (Yen 2009, 296; see also Lin 2008, 145). Similarly, Jason Kuo has argued that the naming of tōyōga division reflected Japan's ambitions to best represent East Asian art (Kuo 2000, 36).

Yen's political take on nihonga takes into account nihonga's popularity in Taiwan as well as its material affinity to painting in other East Asian countries vis-a-vis oil painting. It points to the cultural imperialism inherent in the official exhibitions' and Japanese artists' promotion of nihonga in the colonies. I argue that in the process Japanese artists lost their monopoly on nihonga. By the 1930s, nihonga became a creative medium for some Taiwanese Chinese artists. The naming of the tōyōga division helped to obscure this fact.

The shift in the meaning of nihonga became even more apparent in the early 1940s, when art critics in Japan began to discuss the implementation of the ideals of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Daitōa kyōeiken) in art. Some art critics found it difficult to praise paintings at the metropolitan salon simply for depicting ideologically relevant and politically correct subject matter. So, they were relieved to notice paintings by young Korean and Taiwanese artists in the nihonga division. Art critics envisioned these colonial artists as the vanguard, leading the metropolitan salon to becoming a center for all cutting-edge artists from each region of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in the near future (Kolodziej 2018, 217-218; Ōyama and Kimura 1942, 37). Such comments suggest that, under the wartime regime and imperialization policies, art critics began to imagine the boundaries between Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese art in new ways.

One of Guo Xuehu's most striking works is “Solitude” (also translated as “Silence,” jakukyō in Japanese) from the 1933 Taiwan salon. This work is said to have been inspired by Guo's visit to the Nanzen Temple in Kyoto, during his first trip to Japan in autumn of 1931 (Taipei Fine Arts Museum 1989, 25). This painting includes typical elements of a literati landscape, with mountains, a waterfall, and trees. Yet, the unusual composition and execution in all encompassing dark color make it appear so fresh and modern, foreshadowing developments of postwar nihonga.

Guo Xuehu did not study art in Japan for any extended period, nor did he exhibit his works there in the prewar period, unlike some of his more wealthy peers. The Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, the Taiwan Government-General Library, and the community of Japanese-settler artists in Taipei brought him into the purview of Japan's imperial art world. His paintings shared the stylistic and thematic concerns with nihonga artists, pushing the boundaries of the medium, and redefining its very premises. By rendering the distinction between nihonga and tōyōga superfluous, his work complicates our understanding of nihonga as simply “Japanese-style painting” or neo-traditional painting.

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Conclusion: Japan's Imperial Art World
Place is something that exists only in time. Scholars engaged in spatial humanities “…understand space and place as the product of interrelationships, coexistence, and process, always changing and always in the state of becoming” (Bodenhamer, Corrigan, and Harris 2015, 15, 22 ). Mapping out the circulation of art-related knowledge in the Japanese empire allowed me to locate the imperial art world in the 1930s. To identify it in art exhibition spaces, libraries, artists' ateliers, and newspaper pages. We can also find it in the pages of Japan Art Yearbook (Nihon Bijutsu Nenkan), which included Korea Fine Arts Exhibition, the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition as well as museums in the colonies in its annual calendar (Asahi shinbunsha ed. 1929). This art world enticed aspiring artists with its celebrity press coverage and a promise of a career path. Access varied based on factors like gender, class, ethnicity, generation, language, and personal networks.
Many painters from Korea and Taiwan of the first generation to grow up under colonial rule attended art schools in Japan and participated in art exhibitions in the metropole. By the late 1930s and early 1940s, some of them would become well known figures in the imperial art world. At the same time, young writers, dancers, and sportsmen from the colonies began to appear on the pages of metropolitan newspapers. In 1933 Korean writer Chang Hyŏkchu (Cho Kakuchu, 1905-1997) received a literary award for his writing in Japanese. The following year, Taiwanese Chinese writer Yang Kui's (1906-1985) short story was awarded a literary prize (Kleeman 2003, 160). In 1936, Son Kijŏng (1912-2002), a Korean marathon runner, won the golden medal for the Japanese team at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. As a result of assimilation policies, colonial subjects were given Japanese citizenship (kokuseki), yet were differentiated on the basis of their origins (koseki); they had to meet the obligations of imperial subjects, yet were denied many of the rights (Ching 2001; Morris-Suzuki 1998; Suh 2013).
In 1933, the first government-sponsored permanent display of Japanese modern art in the Japanese empire opened at Seokjojeon, a building belonging to the Tŏksugung Palace compound in Seoul. And so, after many years of artists in Japan petitioning for a modern art museum in Tokyo, their demands were realized in a colonial metropole instead. In 1938, this permanent display became part of the Yi Royal Fine Arts Museum and a new building has been added to display premodern Korean art. The two buildings juxtaposed premodern Korean ceramics and art, with contemporary Japanese painting, sculpture, and crafts. This display embodied the new imperial art history in the making (Kolodziej 2018, 173-191; Aso 2014, 115-123).
Japan's imperial art world expanded further. Manchukuo, with its annual Manchukuo Fine Arts Exhibition (J. Manshūkoku bijutsu tenrankai, 1938-1944), came into its orbit by the mid 1930s. In the early 1940s, the eyes of artists and art critics turned to the Southern Islands in the Pacific and the South East Asia, propelled by the idea of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Culver 2013; Eubanks 2019).
The concept of the imperial art world is useful for rethinking Japanese modern art history. It highlights how the boundaries between the arts of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan were being policed in new ways. It points to Japan's claims to the mantle of “East Asian Art World.” It gestures to cultural imperialism at home that helped Japanese artists see their art as a worthy match to Western art.
Furthermore, this concept invites us to challenge art historical notions of place in relation to art that tend to situate art within the timeless and fixed space of the nation. Nation state building has profoundly shaped how we study art. Yet, our global artistic imagination and reality has been equally, if not more, impacted by imperial formations and cultural imperialism. If we want to pay heed to these multiple dynamics at play, we need to develop more place-conscious approaches to art historical scholarship.
Arts Section of the Classified Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Books 62 tōyōga; tōyō; seiyōga plain 2021-10-04T17:23:44-04:00 25.0383, 121.5641 Taipei 25.04086, 121.51122 1918-1927 Magdalena Kolodziej Taiwan Government-General Library Guo Xuehu
We can get a detailed understanding of available books by examining the collection catalogues. The library published its first classified catalogue in 1918 and every few years thereafter brought out additional volumes to account for its expanding collection and make it more easily searchable for the library users. Click here to see the classified catalogue of books in the arts, industry, and home economics sections acquired between 1918 and 1927.
Now, let us look at the 800 Arts section of the catalogue. This rather mundane classification of books into subsections, designed to improve access to information, largely followed the categorization scheme developed for the Imperial Library in the Meiji period. It reflected hierarchies between the genres and mapped out the boundaries of painting very loosely along geographic (but not necessarily ethnic) lines.
The subject headings in the Arts section of the Japanese and Chinese language books (Wakan tosho) catalogue contains the following subheadings:
- 800 Arts (Geijutsu)
- 810 Calligraphy and Painting (Shoga)
- 820 Sculpture and Metalwork
- 830 Lacquer
- 840 Plate-making and Printing
- 850 Photography
- 860 Music
- 870 Entertainment and Leisure
The 810 subsection for Calligraphy and Painting contains the following subheadings:
- 811 Painting / General
- 812 Japanese Painting (Nihonga) and Chinese Painting (Shinaga)
- 813 Japanese Painting (Nihonga) and Chinese Painting (Shinaga) / Organized by School
- 814 Western Painting (Yōga) and Contemporary Painting (Gendaiga)
- 815 Calligraphy (Sho)
- 816 Stylized Signatures (Kaō)
- 817 Seal Engraving, Books of Seals, Seals
The library's categorization does not include a subheading named “tōyōga,” which was the word Guo Xuehu used to describe one kind of painting he was studying at the library. The word tōyōga has appeared in publications in Japan in the Meiji period to compare and distinguish East Asian painting from its Western counterpart, seiyōga (also known as yōga). In fact, the subheading 812/813 encompasses Japanese and Chinese painting and corresponds to tōyōga. Section 8137, a subsection of 813, includes Chinese painting, Southern School, Northern School, and Literati Painting. The few books on Korean painting in the catalogue can also be found under the 812/813 subject heading.
The term tōyōga evokes the spatial category of “the East.” Stefan Tanaka has argued that tōyō, understood as China's past, was Japan's version of the “Orient,” or the uncivilized Other. He demonstrated how historian Shiratori Kurakichi (1865-1942), by strategically stressing similarities and differences between Japan and tōyō, succeeded in constructing a history of Japan that situated it within the framework of world history and elevated it as a modernized country in contrast to China, “a troubled placed mired in its past” (Tanaka 1993, 4).
Similarly, artists and critics in Meiji and Taishō period Japan, faced with the cultural imperialism of oil painting made in the West and with western Orientalism, responded with their own discourse on Japanese and East Asian art. This discourse aimed to prove the value and modernity of East Asian art, with Japan's art at its center. Japan's own Orientalism elevated selected genres of pre-modern East Asian art, while at the same time paying little heed to contemporary artistic production in colonized areas such as Korea and Taiwan. The attitudes towards Chinese art were more complex. In the 1920s and 1930s, artists from Japan and China organized a series of exhibitions together (Wong 2006). At the same time, they also competed with each other to represent East Asia through exhibitions in Europe and the USA (Su 2021). (For more discussion of tōyōga and nihonga in relation to Guo Xuehu's paintings see here). The inclusion of Japanese and Chinese painting under the same subheading gestures to this competition.
It is important to clarify that the category of seiyōga encompassed both paintings produced by European artists as well as works in oil and watercolor by Japanese artists. Thus, the distinction between tōyōga/nihonga and seiyōga was one of medium and widely conceived artistic traditions or “schools&rqduo; rather than a geographic designation or a label referring to the artist’s ethnicity or national origins. In a world where the access to art knowledge was growing globally and the differences in art education would shrink considerably in the decades to come (notice how Guo Xuehu points out the “dozens of thousands of people” as his potential art teachers in the library), policing regional differences became an increasingly complex undertaking.
Nihonga
Nihonga is often translated into English as "Japanese style painting." It refers to paintings executed with ink and/or mineral pigments on paper or silk. Its major formats include hanging scrolls, handscrolls, folded screens, albums, and framed works.
Artists and art critics in Japan began to use this term in the second half of the nineteenth century to distinguish native modes of painting from oil painting and watercolor (seiyōga). The official exhibitions in Tokyo accepted submissions to the two respective divisions, nihonga and seiyōga. Other institutions, including art associations and art schools, also upheld the division between nihonga and seiyōga. However, the two modes of painting share many stylistic and thematic similarities; the boundaries between them were often fluid and contested. Many artists engaged in both.
In principle, the distinction between nihonga and seiyōga was based on the medium and the presumed set of traditions and masters each mode was indebted to, not on painter's nationality or the painting's subject matter. Both categories reflect a Japan-centric view of global art in the time of empire. Nihonga often artists took up styles of the Kano School, Rinpa School, Maruyama Shijō School, Yamato-e, and Ukiyo-e in their works. Generally, nihonga was viewed as distinct from literati painting. However, some modern nihonga artists did incorporate literati painting into their artistic practice; also, paintings in the literati tradition were displayed in the nihonga division at the salon.
Konoshima Ōkoku's "Drizzling Shower of Rain" is an example of nihonga. This work was on display at the first Ministry of Education Fine Arts Exhibition in 1907. It is a pair of six-fold screens depicting deer wading through wet grasses. Associations of the subject matter with autumn match the salon season of October. Konoshima Ōkoku's masterful brushwork received much acclaim. The work won a prize and the Ministry of Education purchased it for a prospective art museum. In 1922, the Ministry loaned it for display at a major exhibition of Japanese historic and contemporary art held at the Grand Palais in Paris. In 1923, Ōkoku's screens traveled to Seoul as one of the model works for the second Korea Fine Arts Exhibition.
In certain contexts, artists and critics used the term nihonga as a synonym of tōyōga, or "East Asian Painting." The equivalent of nihonga in Taiwan and Korea and a counterpart to seiyōga came to be known as tōyōga. By the 1930s, some artists from Korea and Taiwan, like Guo Xuehu, came to work in the medium of nihonga.
See discussion of Guo Xuehu's art to better understand the relationship of nihonga and tōyōga.
Seiyōga
Seiyōga, or yōga for short, is often translated into English as "Western-style painting." Artists and art critics began to use this term in Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century to describe oil painting and watercolor. They distinguished between this newly imported medium of painting from Europe and the native modes of painting executed with ink or mineral pigments on silk or paper, which became known as nihonga.
In principle, the distinction between nihonga and seiyōga was based on the medium and the presumed set of traditions and masters each mode was indebted to, not on painter's nationality or the painting's subject matter. Thus, seiyōga referred to oil paintings executed by Japanese artists and foreign artists. The categories of nihonga and seiyōga reflect a Japan-centric view of global art in the time of empire.
The official exhibitions in Tokyo accepted submissions to the two respective divisions, nihonga and seiyōga. Other institutions, including art associations and art schools, also upheld the division between nihonga and seiyōga. However, the two modes of painting share many stylistic and thematic similarities; the boundaries between them were often fluid and contested. Many artists engaged in both.
Okada Saburōsuke's "In the Bath" is an example of seiyōga. This painting was first on display in the seiyōga division of the fifth Ministry of Education Fine Arts Exhibition, held in Tokyo in 1911. It is a nude, one of the major subject matter of seiyōga. It shows the back of a woman, who is pinning up her hair. The pose displays well her nape and gives us also a glimpse of her breast. Other popular subject matter included landscape, history painting, genre painting, still life, and portrait.
The term seiyōga came into wider use in colonial Korea and Taiwan after the establishment of the Korea Fine Arts Exhibition in 1922 and the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition in 1927, respectively. Each of these salons for contemporary art featured two divisions for painting, one for tōyōga and one for seiyōga. (Initially, the Korea Fine Arts Exhibition also had a third division for calligraphy. In 1932, it was abolished and replaced with a crafts division.) The majority of art students from Korea and Taiwan, who came to Japan to study painting in the 1920s and 1930s, pursued seiyōga.
Tōyōga
Tōyōga (tongyanghwa in Korean, dongyanghua in Chinese) is translated into English as "Oriental-style painting." It refers to paintings with ink and mineral pigments on silk or paper.
The term tōyōga appeared in publications in Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century to compare and distinguish East Asian painting from oil painting, which became known as seiyōga. Tōyōga came into wider use in colonial Korea and Taiwan after the establishment of the Korea Fine Arts Exhibition in 1922 and the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition in 1927, respectively. Each of these salons for contemporary art featured two divisions for painting, one for tōyōga and one for seiyōga (initially, the Korea Fine Arts Exhibition had also a third division for calligraphy. In 1932 it was abolished and replaced with crafts division). In this way, tōyōga was the equivalent of the metropolitan nihonga division in the colonies. In certain contexts, artists and critics used the term nihonga as a synonym to tōyōga.
The word tōyō means "the Orient." The name tōyōga suggests incorporation of East Asian painting styles. However, few literati paintings made it into the exhibition. In practice the tōyōga works at the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibitions showed close stylistic resemblance to nihonga. Guo Xuehu's "Scenery Near Yuanshan", which received a special award at the second Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, exemplifies this issue well. See discussion of Guo Xuehu's art to better understand the relationship of nihonga and tōyōga.

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