Japan in the age of modernization: the art of Ōtagaki Rengetsu and Tomioka Tessai

Abstract

"Japan entered an age of rapid modernization following the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry's US navy ships on its shores in the 1850s. It soon became the first nation in Asia whose military and industry were on par with Western imperialist countries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As the Japanese grappled with the massive effects of this rapid Western-inspired modernization, they searched for their cultural identity and increasingly turned to China for inspiration. The distinctively modern identity they built through the arts has only recently begun to be examined by researchers and through exhibitions. This book gathers contributions by scholars from the United States, Japan, and Europe, who look beyond Japan's Western industrialization to examine China's role in forming the nation's modern identity. It accompanies a retrospective of the modern Japanese painter Tomioka Tessai (1836-1924) on view in late 2022, at the Freer Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Introduction: Waves of Change / Frank Feltens -- Between Asia and the West: The Struggle for "Japan" in the Era of Modernization, 1860s-1910s / Christopher Harding -- Reinventing Oneself: The Artistic Careers of Ōtagaki Rengetsu, 1791-1875 / Paul Berry -- Ōtagaki Rengetsu's Waka Poetics: Sentiment, Selfhood, and the Saigyō Persona / Melissa McCormick -- Four Perfections: Tomioka Tessai and a Sino-Japanese Network, 1895-1924 / Tamaki Maeda -- Tessai and His Space of Seclusion: Ike Taiga, Su Dongpo, Shitao, and the Collecting of Shinwatari Chinese Paintings / Tsukamoto Maromitsu -- Discovering Tessai: Masamune Tokusaburō and Yōga Painters / Michiyo Morioka -- Along the Scholar's Path: A Study of the Mounting Styles of Works by Tomioka Tessai and Ōtagaki Rengetsu in the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection / Akiko Niwa.