Arts Section of the Classified Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Books
Guo Xuehu emphasized this self-study-oriented and comprehensive character of the library collection in an article he wrote in Chinese in 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." (Translated into English in: New visions, page 26, original article add ref/p.26 footnote 2).
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.
For our purpose here, let us focus on the 800 Arts section. This rather mundane classification of books into subsections, designed to improve access to information, largely follows the categorization scheme developed for the Imperial Library in the Meiji period. It reflects hierarchies between the genres and maps 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
Interestingly enough, 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 (lit. Eastern Painting) has appeared in some publications in Japan at least since the latter Meiji period to compare and distinguish East Asian painting from its Western counterpart - yōga (also described as seiyōga). In this way, tōyōga came to refer to both Chinese and Japanese painting traditions. In fact, subheadings 812 & 813 correspond to tōyōga and perhaps make the use of this term superfluous (For example, section 8137, a subsection of 813, encompassed 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.) What is implicit in this classification, is how Japanese artists, critics, and librarians defined the category of East Asian on their own terms. (On the discourse of Toyo see Stefan Tanaka). Faced with the appeal of western-made (imperial) oil painting and the Orientalist discourse on Japanese and East Asian art produced in Europe, they responded with their own discourse on the characteristics of Japanese and East Asian art, conflating nihonga with tōyōga.
Finally, it is important to note that the category of yōga encompassed both paintings produced in Europe as well as works in oil and watercolor by Japanese artists. Thus, the distinction between tōyōga/nihonga and yōga was one of medium and widely conceived artistic traditions or "schools" rather than simply a geographic designation or a label referring to the artist’s ethnicity/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 people" as his potential art teachers in the library in the quote above), policing regional differences became an increasingly complex and cumbersome undertaking, with large political stakes.
FIGURE OUT: Not sure if I should include here a more detailed translation of part of the catalogue with an actual list of books? ADD A LINK