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

Art-related Collections

Books and other printed media served as vehicles within Japan's imperial art world, transporting the knowledge of artistic practices, artworks, and the art milieu itself throughout the empire. The art-related books available in the public libraries constituted the most informal level of artistic education, available to anyone with some Japanese language skills. Authors of advice books and critics encouraged aspiring artists to look at artworks and visit the library. Although learning from books alone would not make one an artist, it kindled the imagination of young readers and provided access to reproductions.

By March 1939, the Arts section of the Taiwan Government-General Library had 6,450 volumes, 199 in western languages and 6,251 in Japanese and Chinese. Taiwan Sōtokufu Toshokan, Taiwan Sōtokufu Toshokan gairan Shōwa 13nendo (Taiwan Sōtokufu Toshokan, 1939), 3. The fine arts related chunk of the collection covered topics ranging from pre-modern to modern art in Japan, China, and the West, yet was especially strong in Japanese art. In addition, some of the Japanese language books in the collection were recent translations from European languages, for example: John Ruskin's Lectures on Art (originally published in 1870; translated by Sakuma Masakazu, Geijutsu kōwa, 1924), Konrad Adolf Fiedler's Über den Ursprung der Künstlerischen Tätigkeit (originally published in 1887; translated by Kaneda Sunao, Geijutsuteki katsudō no kigen, 1921), or Ascanio Condivi's Biography of Michaelangelo (translated by Takata Hiroatsu, 1922; originally from 1553).

Furthermore, the collection of the Taiwan Government-General Library featured many books relevant for amateurs and aspiring artists, such as exhibition catalogues, books with reproductions (gashū), and a large selection of how-to-make-art and how-to-look-at-art books. It also had books about contemporary masters in Europe and Japan, including essays and memoirs penned directly by the artists.

Guo Xuehu emphasized this self-study-oriented and comprehensive character of the library collection in an article from 1955, in which he described his debut as an artist:

…[the library] could be a better solution comparing with any other schools since it offers rich collections of specific books for a self-study student… People usually give compliments to the alma mater or praise the great personality of their teachers, and even exaggerate the times spent abroad for research. If all these can raise their social status, I would like to mention my school library that contains dozens of thousands of people [sic]. Translated into English in: Lin Ming-hsien, ed. New Visions/Meili xinshijie: Collected Papers on the Historical Significance of Taiwan’s Gouache Paintings/Taiwan jiaocaihua de lishi yu shidai yiyi xueshu yantaohui lunwenji (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, 2008), 26.

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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.
Career Guides
In general, painters in Japan in the first half of the twentieth century specialized in one of the two modes of painting: nihonga and seiyōga. The distinction between the two modes was based on the medium, painterly technique, and the presumed set of traditions and masters each mode was indebted to, not on the nationality of the painter or the subject matter of the work.
By the early 1920s, the knowledge of artistic professionalization became codified and made available in how-to-paint books and career guidebooks for aspiring artists. Such publications propagated painting as a modern career that one could pursue by studying artworks in reproduction and in original, by receiving direct instruction at an art school, and by networking.
For example, painter Nakagawa Kigen (1892-1972) and art critic Yokogawa Kiichirō (1895-1973) co-authored a specialized guide entitled Bijutsuka o kokorozasu hito no tame ni (For People Aspiring to Become Artists). Published in 1933, it belonged to the Gendai shokugyō gaido bukku (Guide Books to Modern Professions) series, which included guides on how to become a journalist, musician, writer, pilot, filmmaker, business executive, lawyer, beautician, working woman, and soldier. The book emphasized how art education and a stellar exhibition record constituted the two key paths to establishing oneself as a professional artist.
Bijutsuka o kokorozasu hito no tame ni outlined four methods of studying oil painting, listed according to their desirability and effectiveness: entering an art school, entering an oil painting research studio, receiving individual instruction, and studying from books. The authors indicated that the last method was least effective. However they considered it an option for people who were unable to pursue any of the other three methods. They also suggested that the last option was less desirable in the case of nihonga because of its difficult technique and so the authors strongly encouraged aspiring artists to seek other options beyond studying books (Nakagawa Kigen, and Yokogawa Kiichirō, Bijutsuka o kokorozasu hito no tame ni (Tokyo: Genninsha, 1933), 159.).
Ishino Takashi's (1897-1967) Shuppin kara nyūsen made (From Submission to Acceptance at an Exhibition, 1934), and Zenkoku bijutsuten shuppin annai (The Nationwide guide to participation in exhibitions, 1942) provided detailed guidance on successful exhibition participation. The author explained the characteristics of each exhibition and advised potential participants to submit their work to the exhibition with the best fit. He suggested that the work should attract attention of jurors and future audiences by making a lasting impression. He also advised perseverance, as one's work would typically be rejected two or three times before finally securing acceptance.
According to Ishino, artists should create a good working environment by visiting exhibitions and collecting reproductions from art magazines and materials that might make good sources for still lifes. When learning how to paint, artists should engage in critically evaluating their own works, practice painting on a large-sized canvas that one would use to submit to an exhibition, send their work by post to receive a critique through mail (tsūshin hihyō), join a group of fellow painters, and inform themselves about the art establishment. He also suggested that it was possible for a self-taught oil painter to exhibit in any art society, in contrast to nihonga painters, who would typically exhibit only with a group of their artistic affiliation. Having introduced the most important developments in oil painting over the past twenty years, such as fauvism, cubism, futurism, expressionism, abstraction, and constructivism, he strongly advised against blindly copying any of these styles. He stated that painting was akin to science (kagaku/saiensu) and also entailed individual expression. Overall, the author balanced between not imposing anything on the painters while pointing them towards the type of painting that would be accepted at exhibitions.
Ishino's two books were aimed at empire-wide audiences. Shuppin kara nyūsen made directly addressed instructors of drawing and encouraged them to participate in art exhibitions to reap the benefits, such as consolidating one's reputation, having a motivational impact on one's own students, achieving personal cultivation, and gaining an opportunity to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of one's own work in comparison to others on display. The author often addressed the particular situation of artists and art instructors living in the provinces (chihō), for example, by providing detailed information on transport companies that handled artwork for submission to exhibitions. Although the scope of the provinces was left unsaid in his first book, the second book included a typology of exhibitions with official salons in Seoul and Taipei discussed under "regional exhibitions" (chihōten). The book provided a short history of the two salons and reprinted an excerpt of their respective regulations pertaining to eligibility requirements. Clearly, the author recognized that his readership extended to the empire.
The Modern Still Life
A corner "Readers' Assignment" (Dokusha kadai) in the art journal Bijutsu (Fine Arts), features a request submitted purportedly from a reader in Korea "Mr. KM" (KM sei): "I want to see somebody painting a still life. Can you show me a photograph (of an artist painting a still life) please?" The magazine editors responded by featuring a photograph of Watanabe Kōzō (1897-1980) in his atelier with an advice from the artist about his painting process. "Dokusha kadai," Bijutsu, no. 6 (1939), 33. At the time, Watanabe had already established a great exhibition record at the official salon in Tokyo with his still lifes.
Still life came to embody modern life with its cosmopolitan consumer print culture and the basic process of learning how to paint. In his Aburae no egakikata (How to paint in oil), Ōta Saburō (1884-1969) described a still life as the “ABCs” for a beginning painter, suggesting that by learning how to paint a mere vase, one could learn how to paint anything (Ōta Saburō, Aburae no egakikata (Tokyo: Sūbundō, 1930), 53). He explained the basics of form, color, shading, and composition and then proceeded to describe the conventional subject matter of still lifes, such as flowers, fruit, and fish, concluding with a section on incorporating other utensils (kibutsu):
Get paints and a solvent in an art supply shop, then go to a bookstore and buy a magazine, drink black tea in a café, and read the evening newspaper on your way home on the train. You will have a still life ready by the morning of the next day. Ōta Saburō, Aburae no egakikata (Tokyo: Sūbundō, 1930), 122.
By carefully picking and choosing, the painter could creatively enhance the conventional still life repertoire with objects hinting at his (more often his than hers) modern lifestyle and perform his artistic persona through the work.
By the late 1920s, Japanese language art magazines such as Atorie (Atelier), Yōga kenkyū (Research in Western painting), Zōkei geijutsu (Plastic arts), and Bijutsu (Fine arts) began to appear as a motif in a number of still lifes on display at the official salons in Seoul and Taipei. The emergence of such still lifes paralleled the increase of imported magazines into the two colonies, as well as their availability in the official libraries and private hands, as artists assembled their own private collections of books, art journals, and images. For example, Kim Chunghyŏn's Still Life from the twelfth Korea Fine Arts Exhibition features an interior with a desk, fruit, a wine bottle, and bread. Popped on the chair in the lower right is a special issue of the pictorial weekly magazine Asahi gurafu (Asahi Graph), dedicated to the Imperial Fine Arts Exhibition.
Similarly, Pan Li-Shui’s (1914-1995) "Painting Implements" (Gagu) on view at the fifth Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition (1931) references this intra-imperial circulation of artistic knowledge by depicting a traditional album, exhibition catalogues, and sketchbooks. In particular, the catalogues of the fourth Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition (1930) and the eleventh Imperial Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition (1930), with their distinct covers, feature prominently in this work, propped to the left of the jar holding brushes. (For a more detailed description of this work see: Liao Chinyuan, “Taiwan kindai gadan no ‘rōkarukarā’: Taiwan Bijutsu Tenrankai no tōyōgabu o chūshin ni,” in Geijutsu/kattō no genba: kindai Nihon geijutsu shisō no kontekusuto, ed. Iwaki Kenʼichi (Kyoto: Kōyō shobō, 2002), 219.). They also hint at the position of the artist at the crossroads of the Japanese and the Taiwanese art worlds as well as at the role of public art exhibitions in securing professional recognition.

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