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I'm one of the hosts for the new books in the New Books and New Cities podcast. I'm a member of the New Books Network. Today, I'll be interviewing Dr. Rinshanagal about her book, Shilokawa and Japanese Modernism.
Art Magazine's artistic electives and the Early Audent Garden, which is out from Brill in 2018. Defitting an art history book, Shilokawa and Japanese Modernism is a beautifully packaged and fun to look at and handle analysis of the early 20th century Japanese modern art collective, Shilokawa and its eponymous co-degree magazine, which was published from 1910 until 1923. Shilokawa, which means White Birch, is recognized as the most significant art movement of the period and had a lasting impact on the discourse and practice of art in modern Japan. The group's journal was among the first and most important Japanese art magazines to include the works of prominent European artists and doing so shape the contours of the art world of 20th century Japan in addition to the group's own contributions.
Shilokawa shows how Shilokawa rose in opposition to the status art of the young MHC, the strategies deployed to promote its artistic agenda, how the group established sometimes tangible and direct, personal, artistic and ideological connections to the European artists who represented the ideal of individualism and how the movement changed over time from an avant-garde bastion to become central to the mainstream of the Japanese art scene in the early 1920s. In addition, the book reveals dynamic tensions between the status and the shared opposite of individualism, between the groups ethos of individualism and the realities of being collective, between avant-garde and establishment, and between different generations of Shilokawa artists themselves, as well as between virtual and physical exhibitions spaces and the status of original versus reproduced art. Shilokawa and Japanese modernism is an important contribution, not just Japanese art history, but to rethinking the global spread, reception and adaptation of modernism. So Dr.
Shilokawa, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Your book is about the early 20th century art movement called Shilokawa, and I wanted to know how you got interested in this project. Yeah, thanks. Great to be here.
Right, so I think what initially was interesting was this idea of just pushing back against this idea of early 20th century Japanese artists being treated as this alternative to Western modernity, particularly as Japanese art and culture was being characterized at the time as something spiritual, traditional, authentic, unchanging. And it was these common tropes that were used to articulate Japan as a whole, I think privileging a past in which pre-modern Japanese art and culture was treated as quote unquote, authentic and important, whereas modern Japanese art and visual culture was viewed as derivative. And it was these attitudes that I was really interested in engaging with and pushing back against, especially within the context of the rise of modern Japanese art and the modern art establishment. And in the effort of artists trying to promote a new direction in Japanese art that engaged with modernist idioms of individualism and self-expression.
And so it's sort of within that context that I was really interested in the way in which an art magazine such as Shilokawa was really engaging with these questions, and the ways in which artists and writers were coming together to negotiate that space, to really carve out that space and then negotiate what it meant to be within that space. And so yeah, I found that really compelling. And it was also, I think partly the fact that most of the scholarship focusing on Shilokawa is really focused on the literary components of the magazine and the writers affiliated with the magazine and the collective. And I was more interested in learning about the artists and the artistic production that came out of artists' affiliation with the magazine.
And also certainly within the study of modern Japanese art and visual culture, Shilokawa magazine holds a really seminal space. And I wanted an opportunity to explore that on a deeper level. It's mentioned in a number of important books, certainly scholarship on modern contemporary Japanese art, but I really wanted to engage with it on a deeper level. Yeah, and so this is something that was originally a dissertation project, if I understand correctly, is that right?
Yeah, it was. It grew out of my dissertation research, and certainly since then I've expanded and developed it, but yeah, it began as a product of my graduate research. And actually, you know, sort of thinking back to that time, I had written a master's paper on Sato, the Blue Stocking Group, and it was sort of through them that I initially encountered Shilokawa in their references and engagement with a lot of the artists and writers affiliated with Shilokawa. And so, and the ways in which the Sato group and that magazine modeled a lot of the content after the Shilokawa magazine.
And so it was sort of through that segue of the master's paper that I began exploring Shilokawa through the magazine and the writers and artists affiliated with it. Yeah, so that actually is a really nice segue into one of the things that I wanted to ask you to sort of get started, definitely. So Shilokawa is both the name of the art movement and the name of the eponymous art journal. And as you've said, you initially seem to have had more of an interest in the artists, but the book really takes on both the magazine in all of its material, even as well as sort of as an art manifesto, but also the artists.
And can you tell us a little bit about what the name Shilokawa means, why it was significant, why it was chosen? Yeah, so Shilokawa, the name means white birch. And the artists and writers affiliated with the magazine and the group, the collective, we're very much engaged with Western literature and visual forms of expression. And they, I think they viewed white birch as a, this Western icon of renewal, new beginnings, a symbol of sort of this icon of renewal of Tolstoyan humanism, of internationalism, and the cult of the individual.
And so I think within that space, they saw this as a name that reflected or was emblematic of who they were in the direction they were moving in as a collective. And the magazine, can you tell us about the period in the British magazine was being produced and it's placed a little bit within what you describe in the book as a second wave of modernity in Japan? So can you tell us a little bit about the magazine, like what it's, when it's being produced, when the movement is active, and then how they fit into these two waves of modernity? Yeah, sure.
So my book really considers how the avant-garde pursuit of individuality in early 20th century Japan was an opposition to state-sponsored modernism and how this played out among emerging technologies and formats, including the art magazine or the bijutsu-sashi. And so the group itself, the Shilokawa magazine, was really the brainchild of the literary and artistic collective, the Shilokawa group. And it was founded by cohort of privileged writers, intellectuals, including Inagi Sotsu, Mushinoko Ji-san-yatsu, Shigani-Ai-ya, Arishin-A-Takey-o, Saiton, a number of writers. And in launching Shilokawa, they really sought to use print media as a tool of intervention in an effort to recast current debates on the status of art and literature in Japan at the time.
And they accomplished this by resisting accepted hierarchies of production and exhibition dictated by Japan's literary and art establishments, that at the time sought to reinforce the cultural and political objectives of Japan's nation building efforts during the Meiji period. And so within the space issues of modernity and the concept of the artist's revolutionary were publicly debated in the magazines pages and in national press and gallery exhibitions. And by arguing that Shilokawa's collaborative artistic practice laid the foundation for the formation of future avant-garde groups, my book tries to interrogate the Eurocentric narrative Japanese rivetiveness by locating Shilokawa in its rightful place as a crucial inflection point in the evolution of Japan's early avant-garde. But of course that raises the question of what's happening in Japan at this time and how do we talk about Japanese modernity during the moment in which the Shilokawa group is actively engaged.
And so that's something that is important to define. So right, so the first wave I think of Japanese modernity has always been linked, I think, quite problematically with the West and with the introduction of Western culture that arrived to Japan. The first was during the later half of the 19th century, resulting in the nation's rejection of its feudal past and relatively isolationist policies. And so within this space, the rapid transformation of Japan, much of which was engaged with the process of modeling itself after Western social structures and government, economics, education, the military, really shaped an uncomfortable relationship that equated modernization with Westernization.
And so there was presumably a backlash to this cultural appropriation, which caused a push towards the social and political reforms that turned away from our alliance and Western models and started something that was seen as more conveniently Japanese. And so within the second wave that became defined by this need to distance the nation, or for this need to be distance from, I think, the government's visions of the modern nation state in favor of concerns relating to the individual. And so within the space of the late-maging early Taishou, which is where I'm focused, a discourse on individualism emerges that really was seeking to redefine what it meant to be modern and independent of state ideology. And so it was this aesthetic response that came in the form of a modernism, the emphasized use of art and literature to articulate a sense of self.
And so it's sort of within the space that this brand of individualism adopted by the members of the Shilahaba group demanded a relentless search for new and more relevant modes of artistic expression. And I think this is the space really in which these artists and writers are working and engaging with. Yeah, thank you. That's very helpful to sort of frame overall where we're going today in the interview.
So I wanted to, before we jump into the individual chapters and sort of thinking also about the overall argument of the book, I wanted to actually jump ahead to the appendix, because your appendix, which I found to be really, really useful, part of the book is a translation of a manifesto by Yanagi Sowaids, one of the authors you've mentioned, as a member of Shilahaba. And I'd like to read a brief quote from this manifesto called The Revolutionary Artist and ask you to sort of unpack this in terms of your central arguments in the book. So Yanagi wrote in 1912, art is thus the reflection of personality. And that reflection is precisely the expression of individuality.
The authority of art is therefore the authority of individuality contained therein. And the power of individuality is communicated when the entire person is fulfilled. Great art was not born out of an empty being. The genius of art is to make manifest the complete existence of life.
So I thought that was really sort of exemplary of the whole tone of the manifesto. And I think to some extent the whole movement, I wonder if you could tell us how that fits into your argument for the book. I mean, I think what I'm trying to get at in that space is sort of with this, with a recent humanist turn and emphasis on global modernism, it's created a space where we can begin to acknowledge the work of Japanese artists. And I think they mutually at complex exchanges across cultures that they are participating in.
And so really the way I think about this is this interest in engaging with trans cultural dialogues, interactions, stimulated new and innovative forms of artistic production. And the ways in which Japanese artists are really interested in engaging with modernist idioms of individualism and self-expression. And for someone like Yanagi, you know, sort of within the space of the revolutionary artist, the real emphasis on the self with regard to the creation of artists as an expression of the person and not an expression of the nation state. And I think that really was a critical difference that, you know, sort of separated the artists and writers affiliated with the Shilah Kaaba group from the previous iteration of artists and writers during the Meiji, particularly artists who are very much engaged with the development of visual artists, a tool of nation building.
And so I think also this sort of this idea of the potential for the artist to be something that was beyond the nation but could engage with artists in a transnational space. And one in which I think there was this sort of engagement with the individual but also with the collective. And where a lot of this work was developed out of collaborative, fluid, interconnected relationships with artists in Japan as well as those within Europe. And thinking for these artists, really think about the ways in which to communicate that.
And you know, this idea of right of this quote, great art was not born out of an empty being. This idea that right that this the originality or this concept of originality is very much informed by a much more complicated process of sort of past, present and future engagement with the work. Yeah, so you've you talk in the book about something that's the sort of exemplar of the sort of state centered art that the early model, you know, the major Japanese state was trying to promote. You talk about the Bundin and I wonder if you could tell us about that specifically because I think it helps to frame what Yanag and others are pushing back against what sort of hub is pushing back against in the movement and in the magazine.
Yeah, so the Bundin was essentially the mombu-chou-bijitsu-ten-rancai, which was essentially efforts by the Japanese government to organize a government sponsored art exhibition. And so it was established in 1907 with the idea, you know, for a national exhibition held annually and conceived along the lines of the French salon. And so it was an immediate success in many ways. It was with regard to just the way in which it created a level of access for artists and the public to engage with modern forms of art.
And it became a major cultural attraction that drew significant attention and interests from a broad cross section of the Japanese public. It was really the first official attempt in Japan to organize and control the exhibition of art through a centralized form of selection and display. And the focus was primarily on the preservation of existing artistic styles and the permanent installation of art as a means of national unity in society. And so like the French salon, after which it was modeled, the Bundin made distinctions between fine arts, fijitsu, and crafts or kogae.
And this articulation and elevation of fine arts played a decisive role in the division within the Bundin of three sections in which artists could submit their work to. And those three sections were Nihonga or Japanese style painting, yoga, western style painting, and chokogur sculpture. And so it was really the Japanese government's privileging of specific forms of painting and sculpture in the Bundin's categories of Nihonga, yoga, and chokogur that perpetuated or sort of established and then perpetuated the public's perception and definition of fine art. But even by 1912, so this was held annually from 1907 up through 1918.
By 1912, the definition of art or fine art was, you know, I think was still in flux, but now it was a question of technique and style rather than really the preferencing of material over another. And so the academic paintings that characterized the works emitted to the Bundin were now being eclipsed by emerging aesthetics and art movements that were coming out of Europe and were being mediated through a magazine like Shilakabha. So movements such as Post-Impressionism, Fovism, and Expressionism that advocated a greater and larger style. And so it was within this broader context, I think that artists who were able to, well, Shilakabha are affiliated with the magazine, with the group, but then other artists as well were able to gain this level of exposure, began to rethink and re-articulate what it meant to be an artist in the ways in which they were using different visual media to express themselves, you know, this sense of the modern self within that space.
Yeah, so you talked specifically about Shilakabha as having sort of four-pronged strategy to push back against this satist art and push for their vision of a more individual centered or founded art. Can you tell us about those four prongs of the strategy? Yeah, sure. You know, right, so I mean, there were many print magazines of this period, particularly art and literary magazines that were key in disseminating visual and textual expositions of the modern experience, you know, what it meant to be an individual on a personal level as a member of an artistic or literary collective and then, you know, as an individual of the Japanese nation.
And so what sets the Shilakabha group in magazine apart, I think, really as progenitors of Japan's early avant-garde, was their development, right, as you asked me, or if you mentioned this tactical four-pronged strategy for articulating and participating in Japanese modernism. And so the strategy, I argue, not only amplified their voices in the face of marginalization, but also held them gain a foothold in Japan's increasingly competitive art world. And it was profoundly collaborative, comprising of one founding an art magazine, two establishing contact with living European artists such as Heinrich Vogler and Audis Roden, who was perhaps the most famous artist that they engaged with, disseminating the works and ideas of European modernism throughout Japan, and then finally holding public exhibitions, in some cases in opposition, to the Bhutan, that deliberately sought to juxtapose the works of Japanese and European artists. And so individually, each of these methods created four distinct oppositional spaces, which permitted Japanese artists to negotiate what they felt it meant to be an individual on a personal level as a member of an artistic collective and as a citizen of the Japanese nation.
Yet collectively, this collaborative motive association and artistic practice established a new model of practice for the emerging avant-garde. Yeah, so that's really helpful. And I think you've identified also some of the tensions, not just between Shilakabha and sort of the estate-sponsored and the state-est art, but also implicitly at least we've touched on what I saw as an interesting tension within Shilakabha between the collective and the individual. And you talked mostly about that in chapter six and that the risk was for skipping ahead to that.
I wonder if you could say a word or two about that as well. Sure. Yeah, Shilakabha viewed their cultural and creative practices surrounding the advancement of modern art literature as very fluid and interconnected. And I think they viewed the collective endeavor of the group in an effort to move or platform their ideology and push their view forward was very much collaborative.
Yet at the same time within that space, there was very much this emphasis on the cultivation of the self of the individual. And so I think one of the salient characteristics of the Shilakabha group was its advocation of individualism, which was predicated on the embrace and promotion of subjectivity and self-expression. And yet at the same time, this was being done collectively. So even though it's members came together as a collective, each participant maintained his independence in what one of the founders, Mushanoko Risani, as we termed as Washde-Dozin or the sort of harmonious but not identical.
And so within this space, the friendship of the sort of collegial bonds between the members of the Shilakabha group was really strong and enduring. I think in theory, the avant-garde stance of the Shilakabha group and its magazine advocated art for art's sake, promoting ideas of individualism and self-expression in an effort to change the world through art literature. And so the result was an avant-garde movement in early 20th century Japan that laid bare this very fluid, mobile, and most importantly collaborative nature of the modern modern, by crossing multiple boundaries of artistic media, genre, language, geography, and culture in order to reorient the trajectory of modern Japanese art. In practice, Shilakabha artists and writers developed, as I mentioned, this tactical strategy for articulating and participating in Japanese modernism that not only amplified their voices in the face of marginalization but also helped them gain a foothold in Japan's increasingly competitive art world.
And the strategy, as I mentioned, consisted of founding a magazine establishing contact with living European artists, disseminating the works and ideas of European modernism throughout Japan, and holding public exhibitions that, again, deliberately juxtaposed the works of Japanese and European artists. And so by promoting the idea of collaboration, the Shilakabha group and magazine brought Japanese and European artists, critics, intellectuals, and readers in the conversation and, I think, into practice with one another. And so doing so, the Shilakabha established a precedent by assisting Japanese artists to gain a foothold in the emerging modern art world, encouraging them to come together as a collective while at the same time maintaining their independence. And I think it's sort of the actions of the Shilakabha group, this collaborative mode of association, established a new model for the emerging avant-garde.
It's surrounded the notion of inclusivity, not exclusivity. And it highlighted and nurtured the permeable relationship between emerging forms of modern visual media, exhibition formats, and artistic production in early 20th century Japan. Great. So in chapter one, you, which is called the Art Magazine, as the title suggests, you really focus in on the magazine Shilakabha itself.
And we've discussed some of what's in chapter one already in here. Is there anything you'd like to add at this point from this chapter about the content, the functions of the magazine, the importance of print media, like Shilakabha or Shilakabha itself in the art world of the time that we haven't already covered? Sure. I'm going to stay a little bit about the format itself or sort of the impulse, what compelled the group to engage with print media.
You know, I think the Art Magazine, one of its defining features, is its reproducibility and serialization of visual content that's able to transform the passive consumption of art and ideas by its readership into a dynamic and discursive space in which artists, writers, and intellectuals could engage with one another directly and without the temporal or physical constraints of the Solaner Art Museum. And I think this was really compelling to the Shilakabha group. And as a material object, the Art Magazine presented readers with a range of new experiences that not only stimulated the senses, but also offered new modes of circulation and contact by creating a connection between artists, the work of art, and the viewer. And the dialogic nature of the Art Magazine also encouraged conversations, both national and international, on modern art, and opened up in an imagined utopian space by championing humanism and allowing Japanese artists and writers to explore and complicate the emerging avant-garde.
So then in chapter two, you go on to talk about the engagement with the European artists and this chapter called Conversations with European Modernism. You show how Shilakabha is engaging with artistic dialogue and also building some actual direct relationships which you've already alluded to with significant contemporary European artists. And I guess, for me personally, this was also one of these places where I felt this interesting tension between the sort of professing individualism and individuality of all the artists and their drive forward for doing this in collective format and also being in dialogue, not just with each other but with European artists. So how and why in your mind is Shilakabha associating with these European artists and which ones are they?
I mean, you've named a couple of them since, and I guess my other question about this is, do the artists dictate the predilection toward individualism in other words that Shilakabha is working with or is it individualism that chooses the artists? Yeah, so I mean, I think the Shilakabha artists were really interested in developing relationships with certain European artists in an effort to advance their own views regarding the agency of artistic individualism and self-expression. And so I think part of it was them articulating or sort of pinpointing in some ways artists that they felt best exemplified their own, you know, the goals of the group were sort of emblematic of this sort of mode in which they were living, you know, this life of individualism and self-expression. And they were particularly, I think, drawn to artists such as Heinrich Vogler and August Robden as well as, you know, aligning themselves with art and the biographies of artists such as Seizan, Van Gogh and Gogan because it offered them a key rhetorical strategy in the involving discourse on modern Japanese art.
You know, that is to say the biography, the artists became the cornerstone of the Shilakabha movement in cultivating an artistic and individual artistic identity. And so in many ways they used the magazine as this conduit to facilitate access to and direct exchange of artwork and ideas between Japan and Europe and between specific artists by forging relationship with Heinrich Vogler and August Robden. The Shilakabha artists were able to establish their movement on firmer ground, particularly with their relationship that they had with Robden. And then, you know, through the exhibition of artwork by Seizan, Van Gogh and Gogan, and the translation of influential Western writings by European art critics and theorists assisted in actualizing Shilakabha ideology.
And you know, these artists, Seizan, Van Gogh and, in many ways, even though deceased served posthumously as the Shilakabha group served spiritual mentors in terms of the ways in which they, the Shilakabha group viewed these artists pursuit of, you know, individualism or sort of, they sort of affiliated themselves with this sort of emerging form of modernism that was centered around revolutionary aesthetics. And for these artists, you know, they really became a potent symbol to the Shilakabha group in the request of artistic self-expression during the early 20th century. And so, their alignment with them, particularly their embrace of these artist biographies, allowed them, I think, to promote new discourses on individualism, artistic self-expression, as well as, you know, to sort of that alignment with like-minded artists, writers, and intellectuals who shared, I think, similar attitudes about the modern experience. And as I mentioned, you know, the biography itself was really important.
The biography of the artist was really important to the Shilakabha movement in cultivating an individual artistic identity. And this, I think, this strategic alignment with artists who they believe represented revolutionary aesthetics of individualism and artistic self-expression during early 20th century Japan, assisted in concretizing the Shilakabha's ideology, which was really predicated on the lives and struggles of European artists who were representative of artistic singularity. So, in effect, the members of the Shilakabha use the lives of European artists as a type of moral compass and their quest for humanity and selfhood within modern Japanese society. You know, so for example, with an artist like Van Gogh, Shilakabha, they're the group's fascination with the biography of the artist, and their decision to translate Van Gogh's letters is really indicative of the group's engagement with anecdotes about the life of Van Gogh.
You know, so, for instance, the off-sighted episode of Van Gogh severing his ear was understood by the members of the Shilakabha as a result of this, of a passionate incident, right? It exemplified the degree to which the search for self was less a private affair, relying more on this attention-seeking sensationalism. You know, so in other words, the cultivation of the self was in part associated with the creation of an artistic persona and a public image, as well as representing a challenge to the status quo. And I think the Shilakabha group believed that the qualities, you know, such as this, are these qualities that encapsulated Van Gogh's life and his work were something, you know, that they aspire to as well.
And Van Gogh embodied what was seen as a revolutionary act of rejecting societal norms and expectations in order to seek a new path towards selfhood. And so, the Shilakabha group interpreted the art and the personality of the artist as inseparable. And there was really no distinction between the personality of the artist as expressed through the media's inherent emotional aspects and the personality of the artist in the real world. And so, you know, within the case of an artist like Roden, his life and work also became a potent symbol in the pursuit of individualism that was grounded in the artist's personality.
And so, with Roden, the Shilakabha group was able to establish, sort of through a connection with them by sending the artist a magazine that was dedicated to him on his 80th birthday, by sending him Japanese prints, Okiyoi prints. And then receiving in exchange three small bronze sculptures from the artist, as well as letters back and forth as dialogue, he offered the group a link with the developments of modern art beyond Japan's shores. And Shilakabha was able, I think, really through that relationship, able to establish a secure place in Tokyo's modern art scene. You know, their contact with Roden established a new precedent for transnational dialogues and presages, the activities of other post-war art collectives, such as the Goutai group, in their own attempts to establish contacts or exchanges with other artists and curators in Europe.
And so, I think that, again, Roden was perhaps even more important in molding the Shilakabha group's ideological stance, and its contact with him was arguably one of the most influential of all their exchanges with European artists. And that's, you know, they also had a dialogue with Heinrich Vogler as well, in which they sent him a book on Japanese gardens. He sent them, he was so flattered, and he wrote Roden's letter back, expressing his acknowledgement of the influence of Japanese art in his own work, particularly Okiyoi. And then also sent the group an etching of a white birch tree, which they reprinted as the cover of their magazine from 1911 to 1912.
Yeah, that dialogue with Vogler in particular, I thought was interesting. It made me wonder, you know, Vogler himself and beyond the sort of acknowledgement that he gave of the influence of so-called traditional Japanese art in Okiyoi and that sort of thing. What was, you know, Shilakabha is being influenced by these, you know, European modern artists. Is this a two-way street, right?
Is there, and I don't think you really talked about this in the book of Trigami if I missed it, you did. But is this something where the Europeans are really looking to that sort of traditional Japanese art for influence, but not so much the art of, you know, a collective like Shilakabha, or is this kind of a two-way exchange in that sense as well? Well, I think with regard, if we're thinking about an exchange on that level, I think what the Shilakabha group was able to do, especially with Roden, was to create or carve out a space within Japan, where his work could circulate, be exhibited, and be exhibited in dialogue with modern Japanese art. Shilakabha group was the first group to own and exhibit Roden's work, and certainly, you know, that of Oblars as well.
And I think through the process of exhibiting, sort of the practice of exhibition and display and creating these, you know, alternate spaces outside of the Buntan, outside of sort of standard channels of exhibition and artistic practice, within that space, I think they were able to, you know, again, create this discourse, this visual discourse with modern Japanese art and European art that was extremely important in terms of allowing a greater sense of exposure to European artists within Japan at the time. So I don't know if it's directly sort of influenced with regard to necessarily maybe technique or style, but I think more of signaling this trans-cultural dialogue and that it's a two-way conversation, one in which the Shilakabha group had a lot of cultural capital and were able to create spaces for European artists for their work to circulate into engage with Japanese art during the Tisho. Yeah, so the next chapter, which is Chapter Three Shilakabha in Modernism in Japan, gets back toward the sort of domestic context of it more, and it centers on the so-called conventions of painting debate and the manifesto by Eligis Ojai's Revolution of Art, which we addressed in part in the beginning of the interview. Can you tell us about this conventions of painting debate, why it was important in understanding Shilakabha and the Japanese art scene at the time, and then sort of how revolutionary artist, the United's Revolution artist, is as you put it, the most codified and formal response to the debate and sort of what that means for understanding Shilakabha.
Sure, right, so the conventions of painting debate represented, I think, this back and forth, this compromise between the popularization of art and the ideology of arts for art's sake, that the Shilakabha group valued, and really thinking about the ways in which this broader discourse around what the specific use of oil painting as a medium for self-expression and so this debate took place from late 1911 through early 1912, and within the pages, primarily with the pages of the Shilakabha art magazine, and the back and forth was between the Shilakabha artist, Yamawakishintoku, of course Shilakabha writer, Mushinokwadi Saniaatsu, who were arguing with the public intellectual and art critic, Kino Shimokutaro, again, over this idea of the use of oil painting as a medium for self-expression. And so I think what was really at Staker is this question between objectivity and subjectivity within the space of painting and Japanese oil painting used by Japanese artists as a mode of self-expression. I think one important thing to keep in mind is that a lot of Japanese artists were really plagued by this persistent sense of alterity that Japanese viewers or critics felt toward oil painting. Many viewers of modern Japanese painting, or for many, it was difficult to separate the foreignness of the medium with the content and style of the work that it produced, and this prevented, I think it's in some ways it's full integration into Japan.
And so, within that space, there's a lot of anxiety around the artistic relationship between tradition and innovation. And so what was the role of painting within society, particularly of oil painting? And so this was debated by Yamawakhi, who's very much for oil as a mode of expression, but also one where painting didn't necessarily have to be a direct objective depiction of the world, of the natural world, that it could be used as a mode of self-expression. And this was something that, of course, Mushanoko Dizanatsu also supported and argued, versus Kino Shumokotaro, who really believed there had to be some sort of rules to the ways in which the medium of oil was being used as a means of expression, of depicting of the natural world.
And so this debate went back and forth, and really the combination of this debate resulted in Yanagi Sōas' Manifesto, the revolutionary artist. And so revolutionary artist was really a rejoinder to Kino Shusas' dismissal of the group, and his dismissal of their views regarding the medium of oil, the purpose of painting. And so the Manifesto, which appeared in Shida Kaaba in early 1912, became a template, I think, really for sort of second generation, this next generation of artists who aspired to an artistic expression that valued individuality and emphasized subjectivity. And the Shida Kaaba magazine's, the group's brand of individualism, was directly related to an interpretation of European modernism that engaged with revolutionary language and aesthetics.
And Yanagi's text was inspired by Charles Lewis Hines, the Post-Impressionists, which was a book written in defense of Broderify's exhibition, Menet, and the Post-Impressionists, The Grafton Galleries in London from November 1910 to January 1911. And in Yanagi's essay, he espouses the revolutionary aesthetics of individuality and self-expression. And Yanagi's concept of the revolutionary artist has become a justification for rejecting state-sponsored modernism, for rejecting the sort of rules or conventions of painting, for adopting a mode of self-promotion that was in opposition to the Japanese art establishment, which I think Kino Shida was very much advocating for. And one of the things that I also encourage here is that in the past, there's been this tendency, I think, in scholarly literature to either ignore or isolate Yanagi's essay from the larger conversation around the changing status of modern Japanese painting.
And so in my book, I really try to argue that the revolutionary artist should be seen as an intrinsic part of the conventions of painting debate, and not just simply as a standalone text. And I think there's been a lot written about the conventions of painting debate by a number of scholars. And most of the emphasis relates on, or the debate tends to focus on the role of the public or the audience in the development of a discourse on Japanese modern art. And so I'm trying to not only acknowledge that, but also suggest that we need to think about Yanagi's essays as very much an important part of that in terms of how that relates to this discussion between Kino Shida Yamawaki and Wushan Okoji, again about the changing status of modern painting in Japan.
Great. So up till now, we've been talking about the first generation of Shida Ka-ba artists. And in chapter four, revolutionary art, revolutionary artists, you look at the second generation of Shida Ka-ba artists, and their struggle with the rhetoric of artistic singularity that was the sort of founding principle of Shida Ka-ba. Can you tell us about these artists and the challenges that they faced in trying to bring Shida Ka-ba into this new phase of its existence?
Sure. Yeah. So the model of the revolutionary artist formulated by Yanagi and the Shida Ka-ba group represented a complicated relationship between the individual and the collective, which we've been talking about, particularly in relation to the development of artistic identity and the quest for originality during early 20th century Japan. And so the concept of the revolutionary artists inspired the work of the second generation of modern artists and Shida Ka-ba affiliates.
Most notably, and these are the artists I discuss in my book, Takamura Kotaro Umehara-Dusaburo and Kishida-Dusse, in their quest to forge a new path in modern Japanese art. However, at the same time, these artists really struggled with this rhetoric of artistic singularity, you know, and sort of what I call the burden of originality as revolutionary artists fell on the shoulders of Takamura Umehara and Kishida. And so in their pursuit of new artistic styles, you know, that valued individuality and stress, subjective expression, I analyzed the initial stages of these men's careers and examined the ways in which there were made not only made significant contributions to modern Japanese art, but the ways in which they, I think they struggled to articulate and negotiate their own sense of subjective reality. And, you know, I argue that Takamura Umehara and Kishida selectively engaged with and transformed modernist idioms of artistic self-expression by incorporating both the foreign and the familiar through concurrent processes of representation, adaptation, and preservation to construct a new modernism.
You know, I think these artists in many ways found themselves caught between two opposing desires of wanting to revolutionize their artistic practice in a similar vein to modernist movements and artists that they admired, such as the post-impressionists, while also maintaining and respecting their own cultural identity by not having a work become your imitation. And so the concept of artistic singularity promoted in Yanagi's rhetoric proved a challenge for the second generation of modern Japanese artists working within emerging avant garde milieu of the Taisho period. You know, within this space, the notion of individualism was really undergoing constant redefinition as artists, writers, you know, intellectuals were continued to shape and reshape their image. And so I argue that much of the work that came out of this nascent phase of their careers was part of a larger artistic evolution facilitated by the Shilakaba group.
But it offered a means to an end, but not an end in itself. And I'm really interested in this chapter looking at these sort of processes of the ways in which these three artists work through and develop their styles, you know, and trying to sort of work work amidst this tension, as I said, between respecting sort of their own cultural identity, engaging with modernist styles and new media and most of representation. Yeah, I found this also to be a really fascinating chapter in thinking about that problem of not only being working against the sort of state sponsored, state-ist art, but also struggling with that legacy of your own forebears in the movement and trying to, you know, in the real spirit of individualism, which I think you've talked about as the spirit of how to try to find their own way, you get there already sort of in this defined movement. And I found this, I guess, I mean to say that I found this chapter particularly, you know, sort of exemplary of that tension between the individuality and individualism of the artists and the sort of realities of actually producing art in the real world.
In chapter five, though, you take us to this sort of new and interesting place, which is the chapter is from the avant-garde to the institution. And here you argue that by around the end of World War I, around 1917 or so, Shilakaba has shifted its focus away from the magazine, a virtual exhibition space into exhibitions in physical spaces. And you connect this to the group's long-term mission to challenge the artist's establishment, which we've been talking about, and also its desire to institutionalize its own modernist art. And finally, to the changing politics of representation vis-a-vis reproduction and original.
So why is it that Shilakaba makes this shift specifically away from the magazine and toward physical exhibitions? And how does this affect the movement and the artsy more generally? Yeah, so up to this point in the book, I'm really I've really focused on or talk about the importance of the magazine as a site of artistic reduction and exhibition that allowed the group to define artistic agenda and to disseminate their ideas with this sort of dialogic space of the art magazine, you know, for circulating and exhibiting and disseminating ideas. Ultimately, though, they reach a point where the magazine format is viewed as being too ephemeral in nature and therefore deemed insufficient for the long-term circulation and display of art.
So concurrent with the magazine's publication, Shilakaba Group also organized 20 art exhibitions between 1910 and 1922. And those exhibitions play a different role from the magazine by placing original works of art on public display alongside original works of art and reproduction by European artists. And the Shilakaba also sponsored Group and Solo exhibitions of contemporary Japanese artists associated with a group, including artists that I mentioned earlier, Umehaadurizaburo and Kishidur-Yusse. So this transition to institutional exhibition practices really grew out of the groups evolving artistic ideology regarding style and accessibility, and providing a new outlet in the education of the Japanese public about the future direction of modern art.
So the Shilakaba Group, this is a period two where there's this real emphasis on this need for the importance of having original works of art that the public can access, that they can engage with, that while the reproductions in the magazine or even reproductions that were exhibited in their exhibitions were significant in creating initial contact, that long-term they needed, you know, a space, right, a space where they could exhibit and engage with art with modern art, you know, that much like, of course, a museum that was already, you know, sort of a museum system that was already well established at this point. And so they, the group began a campaign to build a museum of Western art, and they viewed it as really a permanent institution open to the public with access to an education about world art and culture. And like I said, this was very similar already to the Meiji Taishou Museum system that was well in response at this time. And so while the Shilakaba magazine and private exhibitions created a foundation and point of departure for the promotion of new modes and styles of painting, the group really believed that the permanent structure of an art museum with original works of art would guarantee the continuation of the Shilakaba ideology.
And so it's really within this context that I analyze the shift and the status of the reproduced image, which they relied on, was quite important to the group in the early years of the magazine's publication. So I analyze the reproduced image and its relationship to the original work of art. And I look at the notion of reproduction, inherent in photography and printing, you know, both forms of which enabled the Shilakaba magazine and the group to transform more traditional practices of exhibition and display become regarded as somewhat inferior to the original work of art. And then within that context, too, looking at the ways in which the group works very closely with or sort of the use of the magazine and they use these exhibitions as a way to begin raising money and developing in an effort to build a museum and also in an effort to acquire European works of art.
So by this point, they had these small three bronze sculptures by Rodin and through their affiliation with certain patrons, they were able to purchase a painting by Sezon, a painting of Van Gogh sunflowers, and a few more works of art that they intended to house permanently in this museum of Western art that they were that they were planning to build. And you know, in this sort of, I think, part of a much larger effort to enhance the public's understanding of the works on view. They also organized and worked in posia to educate people about Western art, musical performances of Western classical music, also ran concurrently with the exhibitions. A lot of their exhibitions were held at the same time that the Blinten was exhibiting, really in an effort to carve out alternative exhibition spaces, you know, in this sort of move towards envisioning their own museum of Western art that really was emblematic of, sort of physically emblematic of their artistic ideology.
Yeah, and I think this is, you know, this chapter is where Shilohab itself begins to think about its legacy, right, as a movement, its like its sort of place in the history of art in Japan. And that's the subject you deal with more in the final chapter, which is again, aptly titled the legacy of Shilohabab and also I guess some of what I want to ask about touches on things you have in the epilogue as well. But in this final chapter in epilogue, you address the legacy, arguing that by again the time of World War I, the group is really shifting, it's focused a lot. And you know, you've talked about sort of how that plays out in the physics, like attempting to create a physical exhibition space at the time.
I wonder if you could tell us, you know, sort of what the long-term legacy of Shilohab in the Japanese art world has been. You know, certainly by 1916, the Shilohab the group and the magazine, the content of the magazine have begun to move away from a focus on modern European art. And I think, you know, the principal event driving this change was the tumultuous events of World War I from 1914 to 1918, which significantly eclipsed European artistic and cultural production. So this hiatus in incoming European trends permitted Japanese artists and writers to take stock of their role within the modernist movement.
And so, rather than remaining at the forefront of the most recent international artistic trends, the Shilohab now turned to the task of establishing their legacy. And this repositioning was, as I said, not only reflecting the content of the magazine, but with this belief of this sort of focus on sort of placing more emphasis on educating the Japanese public about Western art. And so, the shift in focus was also, I think, partly the result of the evolving status of the members of the group. Certainly by the late 1910s, they were no longer an obscure art or literary representatives of the early avant-garde, but many of them had increasingly become accepted as a mainstream figures within Tokyo's artistic literary circles.
So, you know, core writers, such as Mushanokoji, Shiganawiya, Satomi-Tone, for example, they didn't necessarily need Shilohab as a platform to air their opinions anymore. And they were able to contribute their work and circulate their work more widely in more mainstream commercial magazines. And I think the dissolution too was also compounded by the fact that, of course, you know, the devastation of the Great Kanto earthquake on September 1, 1923, which brought the activities of the group to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. And the group's publishing facility in Ginza was leveled.
And during the ensuing chaos, the funding to resume Shilohab magazine and the campaign to build the first museum of Western art evaporated. And so, you know, you have figures such as also, such as Yanagi Soetsu, who has certainly by this time already begun to reach out on his energies away from Shilohab and following a trip to Korea, 1916, he begins to develop his theories on Mingae. And I think in some cases, in context, Yanagi is perhaps better known today for his involvement with the Mingae movement than with his role with Shilohab, Mushanokoji Lee's Tokyo, and he resettles in the mountains of Miyazaki Prefecture and establishes the utopian community Atarashiki-Mura. And certainly artists who like Kishida and Umehara, Kishida Musakoto, begins studying more traditional Japanese art synesthetics, studying Ukiyo-e and painting, and Umehara, likewise, becomes more drawn to traditional Japanese arts and hanga.
And so, that's sort of the space in which you sort of see this dissolution, but in spite of the fact that they don't necessarily have the sort of museum as a means to establish their sort of concretize or establish their legacy long term, there was certainly, I think, the legacy to which they offered the democratization of materials within the evolving art scene I think the ways in which they could advocate and exhibit Japanese and European artworks as well as progressive art theories and criticism was the project of artists and writers who aspire to be more than just transmitters of European modernist movements and interpreters of European artists such as Seizan, Van Gogh, and Roden. And I think ultimately they desire to become producers of modern art through the circulation of visual and textual exposition of the modern experience. And I think we see that, particularly with the ways in which, even in the post-war period, the legacy of Shilakaba, I think in some ways is channeled through a group such as Goutai, where the founder of the Goutai group, Yoshihara Jiro, was just a teenager during the teens and read, so the 1910s and read, Shilakaba magazine was very much inspired by the ideology and the ideas coming out of the magazine and the content of the material. And in that way, I think for a lot of post-war artists modeled a mode of transnational dialogue, a mode of discourse, a mode of interaction, it was extremely significant and pivotal, particularly in the post-war period when artists were attempting to rebuild and reconnect with the development of, I think, post-war modernist movements, not just in Japan, but around the world.
Yeah, so I wanted to, on that note, thank you for being so generous with your time and ask if I could borrow you for another couple minutes just to finish up here, because our traditional last question on the podcast is, what are you up to now? Is there research that you're working on either that builds on what's in the book or something new that you're working on? If you could tell us about either that or a future project you have in mind, that'd be great. Yeah, sure.
So I'm shifting to a much more contemporary moment. I'm still very much, I think because of my interest in the reproducibility of media that's inherent to the magazine and also interested in Japanese cinema, I'm actually working on a project now on the filmmaker, Colossae Naomi, and her work within more of a contemporary setting and I'm really interested in the ways in which, as a filmmaker, as an artist, as somewhat, as an outsider vis-a-vis Japan's studio system or sort of mainstream film establishment, she has become one of the most well-known, internationally well-known renowned Japanese filmmakers. She's the director of the Tokyo 2020 official Olympic film. She's won a number of awards at Khan for her feature films.
She began as a documentary filmmaker and has transitioned to feature filmmaking, but all sort of working outside of the studio system as an independent filmmaker. And so I'm really interested in the ways in which her work engages with this sort of slippage between documentary and narrative or sort of feature filmmaking. I'm really interested in the ways in which she's one of the few women filmmakers who has achieved so much success in the ways in which she engages with biography, personal history, she's from Nada, and so many of her films are produced there. And so I'm thinking about this idea of cinema of place that she's articulating, this interest in loss and the sense of melancholy that pervades her work.
So, yeah, I'm sort of moving that direction, but still thinking about it within a transnational context, particularly because of the way in which her work and the production of a lot of her films are joint productions with either a French film studio and her studio in Japan, how her work circulates mostly at international film festivals. And that was really how she became well known, sort of winning awards abroad, and then being accepted back in Japan. And so sort of that tension between those two spaces and the role that international film festivals play in the creation and production of national cinema, you know, and sort of conceptions of the O'Tooor within that space. And also too, I think her, she had a very compelling statement after she won an award at Confer, her film The Morning For, is Mogari Nomori saying that she was going to be the next, after Kurosawa and Oshima, she was going to be the next sort of the most famous filmmaker in Japan of this era.
So I think that alone, I found it so compelling, I had to learn more and study more. And so that's what I'm doing now. Yeah, great. I agree that the cost is a really fascinating figure, and I'm looking forward to getting to read something about her when it comes out.
But for now, just like I thank you for again spending some time with us and talking about your book today. Thanks so much. Thank you.