Araki Jippo, nihonga painter and juror at the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition in 1935, commented on works in the tōyōga division:

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 Jippo, Taiwan zakkan. Gendai bijutsu, 58.). 

A Japanese art critic, Ōsawa Sadayoshi (1886-?), suggested that the division itself was improperly named and should be called nihonga instead in his review from 1927 (Kikuchi, ed. 86). 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.  

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 Chuanying, “’Nihonga’ no shi: Nihon tōsei jidai ni okeru bijutsu hatten no konnan,” Bijutsu kenkyū, no. 398 (2009): 296. See also: New Visions 145). Similarly, Jason Kuo has argued that the naming of tōyōga division reflected Japan's ambitions to best represent East Asian art (add ref.). Both of these definitions 

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 how the official exhibitions and Japanese artists promoted nihonga in the colonies as part of cultural imperialism. I argue that in the process Japanese artists lost the 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. If we include Guo Xuehu's early paintings in the story of Japanese modern art, this shift in the meaning of nihonga in the interwar period would become evident.



Guo Xuehu did not study art in Japan for any extended time 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.

one of Guo's most striking works, perhaps most modern, was a piece inspired by his first trip to Japan
one of Guo's most striking works, perhaps most modern, was a piece inspired by his first trip to Japan

This will become even more prominent in the early 1940s, with the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere; the boundaries between Japanese art and colonial art were shifting