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The Potential of Katachi [Form] in the History of Japanese Art: Thoughts from a History of Western Art Viewpoint
Get PDFI was a coordinator at the International Symposium on the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property “Reconsidering ‘Form’: Towards a More Open Discussion” held in January 2014, and was extremely stimulated by my interactions there with scholars from outside the field of art history. In a closed environment where research has become overly specialized and one’s focus turns to the narrowest of subjects, I felt that this symposium experimented with ventilating this compartmentalized research through debate with researchers from other fields. The results from such cross-disciplinary exchange are not inconsiderable. Thus I thought to propose one possibility in the study of the history of Japanese art from the viewpoint of the study of Western art, which I conceived after this symposium.
Erwin Panofsky’s iconology study set a new course from the use of conventional stylistic analysis in the history of Western art, but it is less well known that, in fact, Panofsky’s theory was basically indebted to Aby Warburg’s crossdisciplinary research methods. Warburg utilized a massive amount of historical material and endeavored to decipher an artwork from a certain viewpoint. Amongst his methods, his Bilderatlas Mnemosyne was intended to measure the bearings of art history. And yet, even after filling 63 panels with many photos and cuttings from advertisements and magazines, he left it unfinished, without explanation. Because there was no explanation, the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne became a richly suggestive visual tool, and continues to greatly stimulating scholars today as an alternative model for art historical thought. Warburg’s own thoughts on the Bilderatlas were diverse, and he succeeded in formulating the concept of Pathosformel out of the fact that ancient human body expression lives on, undying, through the ages.
I also think that this Pathosformel concept can be applied to the study of the history of Japanese art. The symposium presentation made by waka researcher Watanabe Yasuaki made me realize that the standard 5-7-5-7-7 form of the waka poem both bears the emotions of the Japanese people, as well as continuing on, unflaggingly, from antiquity to today. Indeed, because waka have served since antiquity as the shared cultural memory of Japan’s educated classes, then surely when such people face a painting, even across the eras, it would evoke in them their own waka verse. In the kana preface to the Kokinwakashû imperial waka anthology, Ki no Tsurayuki pronounced the following secret to the creation of waka, to paraphrase, “The human heart is the seed of the Yamato poem, which grows into myriad words.” While in the West inspiration is said to come from the heavens, in Japan it is found in the human heart. Waka was clearly recognized as a human-centric art at the beginning of the 10th century. And indeed, this philosophy can also become an important key when considering Japanese art. While waka and Japanese art are already being researched in the sub-field of uta-e, a type of painting with poems rendered in calligraphic form within the painting, there is yet to be a systematic cross-disciplinary study between literature and the visual arts. While iconographic research on waka lies concealed within the genre themes of Japanese art, it is probably still impossible for scholars from the fields of Japanese literature and art history to conduct crossdisciplinary, joint research. In that regard the NRICPT can play a major role as the locus for such research. I anticipate a bud sprouting from such cross-disciplinary studies in Tokyo from the seeds sown by Warburg’s research model.journal articl
Report on SP Records Made by Pathé in the Collection of the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo: With Focus on the Nagauta “Yoshiwara Suzume”
Get PDFThe present paper is a report that follows the article “Disque Pathé, Records Requiring a Special Player” by Ijima Mitsuru and Nagai Miwako in Research and Reports on Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 6 . That article presents an outline of the 40 SP records (39 works) in the collection of the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo that were sold by the French recording company Pathé. The collection of Pathé records includes various genres of music: gidayubushi, kouta, kiyomoto-bushi, chikuzen biwa, nagauta, shakuhachi and shinnai-bushi as well as Japanese repertoires played on western musical instruments. The characteristic of these records is that while SP records in general are laterally cut, Pathé records are vertically cut and require special apparatus for playing. Based on the history of performances of the players who were involved in the recording, it is assumed that the recordings were made around October 1911.
In this paper, focus is placed on the recording of the nagauta “Yoshiwara Suzume” (manufacture number: 34640–34645). It consists of 5 sides, with each side being 3 minutes long: in other words, an equivalent of two-and-a-half records. Representative nagauta performers of the time including Kineya Rokuzaemon XIII, Kineya Kangoro V and Okayasu Nampo VI were involved in the recording. It may be said that these recordings are extremely valuable, especially with regard to those of Okayasu Nampo (1874 － 1915), since recordings were still rare in those days and since he died at the age of 41. The characteristic of these recordings is that a special device is attached to shamisen in order to express high notes (uwajoshi ), which today is rarely done in this repertoire.
Recordings made more than 100 years ago are compared with current performances and analyzed from the points of view of singing, shamisen and hayashi . In addition, the achievements of Okayasu Nampo, who is not quite well known today, are examined, based on newspaper and magazine articles of his days.
There are 7 nagauta recordings in the collection and all have been digitized. Studies of these recordings will be made in order.departmental bulletin pape
Environmental Study on Temporary Storehouses for Rescued Historical Objects from the Restricted Area in Fukushima Prefecture
Get PDFIn order to evacuate historical objects from museums of Tomioka town,Okuma town and Futaba town respectively, two temporary storehouses with buffer zones were built near the storage of the Shirakawa Branch of Fukushima Cultural Property Center in
March 2013. The movement of temperature and relative humidity in the storehouses was measured by data loggers respectively.
The inside of the storehouses was designed like a storage room for valuable objects, installed with thick insulators and airtight doors.Humidity conditioning material was also fabricated on the walls in the storehouses.Temperature was controlled by air conditioners and relative humidity by dehumidifiers with a dry desiccant system which has an ability to suppress relative humidity below 60%. Circulation fans were installed between the buffer zones and main storage rooms, and the trend of temperature and relative humidity in the buffer zones were feasibly controlled.Circulation fans were regulated to positive pressure in the storehouses against outdoor pressure of the atmosphere.No humidifier was installed.
It was found that the buffer zones of the temporary storehouses were strongly affected by outdoor atmosphere. Dew formed in the buffer zones when the temperature setting of the main room was not appropriate in summer and winter. Some bugs intruded into the buffer zones every day and curators vacuumed them away.
In summer, the main rooms were well conditioned. In winter, relative humidity decreased with air circulation from outdoors for workers in the storehouses. To prevent the sensitive objects from breakage under dry condition, they were packed with humidity
conditioning material into cardboard boxes and sealed with plastic sheets. It was found that the objects were kept in a good condition inside the cardboard boxes.journal articl
International Symposium on the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property – Reconsidering “Form”: Towards a More Open Discussion
Get PDFThe Department of Art Research, Archives and Information Systems, National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo (NRICPT) presented the “International Symposium on the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, Reconsidering ‘Form’: Towards a More Open Discussion” in January 2014. The symposium focused on the keyword “form” (katachi), as it is used in all art forms, including those that seem at first glance to be intangible or “without form,” such as literature and music. Indeed, without giving a set definition to this term, this symposium provided a forum for a discussion of “form” by scholars from both Japan and overseas, and from a diverse range of disciplines, including those in the art, architecture, archaeology, literature and performing arts fields. The aim of the symposium was to come together to talk about how we look at artworks, particularly amidst the situation whereby discussion of artworks from the vantage points of sociology or the history of the institutionalization of “bijutsu” (fine art) by Japan’s art history discipline has flourished since the late 1980s.
A Shortened History of Japan’s Fine Arts (1900) was Japan’s first government-produced history of Japanese art, in which Okakura Tenshin played an important role. That book stated that artworks (bijutsuhin) had existed both in Japan and in the West from antiquity, and discussed the Buddhist and Shinto institutional treasures of Japan’s ancient to pre-modern era against a background of social history. In contrast to that “series of art object biographies” type approach, in the latter half of the 1920s, Yashiro Yukio introduced to Japan the Western art/art object theories based on the stylistic comparison methods of Giovanni Morelli. He left a considerable legacy in the field of research on artists and artworks that unified textual materials with images of artworks, both through establishing an art library for stylistic analysis of artists and artworks, and founding the journal The Bijutsu Kenkyu. Today, art history studies in Japan thus enjoy the resources of a rich accumulation of so-called survey studies. Conversely, in terms of methodological theories, it would probably be good to say that scholars continue to experiment with applying Western art historical methodologies to Japanese and East Asian art.
Amidst the post-modernist trends of recent years, however, skepticism has arisen regarding recognized methodological theories and how we view Western art form categories, physical objects (mono) and intangible objects (koto). Even in the traces of the history of the reception of the art (bijutsu) concept that was the inception of Japan art historiography, the “art” that is thought to be a concept that surpasses geographic and temporal boundaries has been clarified as a product of Japan’s reception of Western concepts. This process itself is in line with post-modernist trends.
Working from the results of this history of the discipline, how can we discern a starting point for talking once again about physical objects (mono)? If we attempt to inter-relate the discussions being held in each separate discipline, what can we see? Wouldn’t the establishment of some entry point, an opening at that junction between disciplines, make it easier for comparisons to be made. These were the aims of this symposium.
A discussion between Ikemura Leiko and Tanaka Atsushi at the beginning of the symposium acted as an opening for a discussion of “form” (katachi) as we heard from a “form” maker. The first session “ ‘Form’ as Groups” discussed “form” that takes multiples as its subject, while Sesson 2 “‘Form’ as Individual” discussed “forms” that are unexpected variants unlike all others. Session 3 “That Which Supports ‘Form’” took as its subject that which forms the background for “form.” The presentations made at the symposium were published as proceedings in the report Reconsidering ‘Form’: Towards a More Open Discussion (Heibonsha, December 2014).
From its inception the aim of this symposium was to raise issues, and it did not intend that any kind of conclusions would be reached in just three days of discussion. On March 13, 2014, we held a research group meeting to look back on what was suggested by the symposium, and to further deepen the discussion. Some of the issues recognized in this March meeting were some new directions for experimentation, such as a reexamination of the text/context duality (such as intertextuality, etc.), a reexamination of the categories and differentiation of tangible/intangible, and a reconsideration of working from the premise of each art work’s autonomy (questions of the place where the work is placed, where the work is used, etc.). During that March 2014 meeting, we decided to ask two of the symposium session coordinators, Fujikawa Satoshi and Satô Naoki, to speak on the theme of “form” based on our experiences of the symposium. Thus the following reports were presented at a research meeting held on May 22, 2014 at the NRICPT.
“Katachi” in the Field of Contemporary Art: Focusing on the International Art Fair (FUJIKAWA Satoshi)
The Potential of “Katachi” in Japanese Art History: Suggestions from a Western Art History Viewpoint (SATÔ Naoki)
Both papers were richly suggestive about how to approach and talk about “form” as related to previously raised issues. Those of us who participated in that May 2014 session realized that a simple oral presentation of the papers was not enough to grasp their complex contents, and thus we ensured that written versions of those papers remain for further study.
This was just the beginning of the reconsideration of “form.” I hope that we can continue to experiment with opening up the discussion as we straddle the normal disciplinary divides.journal articl
Material for Art Research, Letters by Fujishima Takeji Addressed to Kuroda Seiki and Kume Keiichirô: Facsimiles, Transcriptions and Explanatory Notes (I): Focusing on Conditions during his Tsu Period
Get PDFThere are 36 letters from Fujishima Takeji addressed to Kuroda Seiki preserved at the National Research Institute for Cultural Affairs, Tokyo. There are a further four Fujishima letters to Kuroda in the Tokyo National Museum, and eight addressed to Kume Keiichirô. Of the total 48 letters, 42 of them date to the Meiji period. In these letters we can learn about this artist’s trouble-filled period before he became a leading light of Japan’s art world, namely from around the time that he took up his teaching position at the Mie Prefectural Jinjo Chûgakko middle school in Tsu, to his return to Tokyo to become an assistant professor a the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, through his study abroad to around the time that he built a new studio. These letters are also critical reference materials that provide a glimpse of the various events of the art world of the day from Fujishima’s viewpoint, from the time around the establishment of the Western painting course in the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, to the establishment of annual art exhibitions sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the behind-the scenes-drama caused by the move to establish the Nika Association.
Kumamoto Kenjirô, Kagesato Tetsurô, and Tanaka Yoshiaki have already introduced some of Fujishima’s letters to Kuroda Seiki, and this article also includes those letters in its discussion.
Fujishima began exchanging letters with Kuroda Seiki when Kuroda was still studying in France. Kuroda returned to Japan on July 30, 1893 (Meiji 26). At the same time, Fujishima received his letter of appointment dated July 3rd of the same year, and set out to become an assistant teacher at Mie Prefecture’s Jinjo Chûgakko middle school. And yet, from the texts of the series of letters, it seems that Fujishima met Kuroda and Kume several times in Tokyo and Mie prefecture where they became close friends. Because there are few letters or diary entries by Kuroda dating from the period immediately after his return to Japan from his study abroad, Fujishima’s letters are an aid to understanding Kuroda’s movements during that period.
The oldest of the letters introduced in these transcriptions and explanatory notes has an envelope dated April 7, 1894 (Meiji 27), in which Fujishima introduces Ôshita Tôjirô to Kuroda. This article provides transcriptions of 13 letters by Fujishima to Kuroda, including this Ôshitarelated letter and up until the letter addressed to Kuroda with the date of January 10, 1896 (Meiji 29).
While Fujishima himself said almost nothing about his time living in Tsu, from these letters, we can see that prior to living at his previously-known Tosei-nishiura 63-banchi address, he lived in the Kakiya boarding house in Kyôguchimachi, Tsu city, Mie prefecture, when he was first appointed to his new job. Further there are almost no diaries or letters extant by Kuroda Seiki. Hence, we can understand the movements of these three figures during the Meiji Art Society period when we read Fujishima’s letters to Kuroda alongside those addressed to Kume, who was extremely close to Kuroda immediately after Kuroda’s return to Japan. For example, these letters convey the state of affairs while Kuroda was in Kyoto in 1895 (Meiji 28) around the time that he separated from his wife about October of that year.
In this series of letters, Fujishima frankly reveals to Kuroda and Kume his loneliness and impatience regarding having to work alone and separated from the central art circles of the day, and complains about the difficulties he had in his work. He had Kuroda make direct imports from France of painting materials such as pigments, and we can also see how it was difficult to have frames made in regional Japan for the works he was entering in exhibitions. Further, the letters also indicate how Kume was greatly involved in the operations of the Meiji Art Society and busied himself with being the group’s administrative officer. Thus Fujishima’s letters allow not only an understanding of the internal workings of Fujishima the person, they are also reference materials that provide knowledge about the movements of the two young men Kuroda and Kume who took on the responsibilities of Japan’s Western painting realm.journal articl
研究資料 黒田清輝、久米桂一郎宛 藤島武二書簡（一）
Get PDFThere are 36 letters from Fujishima Takeji addressed to Kuroda Seiki preserved at the National Research Institute for Cultural Affairs, Tokyo. There are a further four Fujishima letters to Kuroda in the Tokyo National Museum, and eight addressed to Kume Keiichirô. Of the total 48 letters, 42 of them date to the Meiji period. In these letters we can learn about this artist’s trouble-filled period before he became a leading light of Japan’s art world, namely from around the time that he took up his teaching position at the Mie Prefectural Jinjo Chûgakko middle school in Tsu, to his return to Tokyo to become an assistant professor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, through his study abroad to around the time that he built a new studio. These letters are also critical reference materials that provide a glimpse of the various events of the art world of the day from Fujishima’s viewpoint, from the time around the establishment of the Western painting course in the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, to the establishment of annual art exhibitions sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the behind-the scenes-drama caused by the move to establish the Nika Association.
Kumamoto Kenjirô, Kagesato Tetsurô, and Tanaka Yoshiaki have already introduced some of Fujishima’s letters to Kuroda Seiki, and this article also includes those letters in its discussion.
Fujishima began exchanging letters with Kuroda Seiki when Kuroda was still studying in France. Kuroda returned to Japan on July 30, 1893 (Meiji 26). At the same time, Fujishima received his letter of appointment dated July 3rd of the same year, and set out to become an assistant teacher at Mie Prefecture’s Jinjo Chûgakko middle school. And yet, from the texts of the series of letters, it seems that Fujishima met Kuroda and Kume several times in Tokyo and Mie prefecture where they became close friends. Because there are few letters or diary entries by Kuroda dating from the period immediately after his return to Japan from his study abroad, Fujishima’s letters are an aid to understanding Kuroda’s movements during that period.
The oldest of the letters introduced in these transcriptions and explanatory notes has an envelope dated April 7, 1894 (Meiji 27), in which Fujishima introduces Ôshita Tôjirô to Kuroda. This article provides transcriptions of 13 letters by Fujishima to Kuroda, including this Ôshitarelated letter and up until the letter addressed to Kuroda with the date of January 10, 1896 (Meiji 29).
While Fujishima himself said almost nothing about his time living in Tsu, from these letters, we can see that prior to living at his previously-known Tosei-nishiura 63-banchi address, he lived in the Kakiya boarding house in Kyôguchimachi, Tsu city, Mie prefecture, when he was first appointed to his new job. Further there are almost no diaries or letters extant by Kuroda Seiki. Hence, we can understand the movements of these three figures during the Meiji Art Society period when we read Fujishima’s letters to Kuroda alongside those addressed to Kume, who was extremely close to Kuroda immediately after Kuroda’s return to Japan. For example, these letters convey the state of affairs while Kuroda was in Kyoto in 1895 (Meiji 28) around the time that he separated from his wife about October of that year.
In this series of letters, Fujishima frankly reveals to Kuroda and Kume his loneliness and impatience regarding having to work alone and separated from the central art circles of the day, and complains about the difficulties he had in his work. He had Kuroda make direct imports from France of painting materials such as pigments, and we can also see how it was difficult to have frames made in regional Japan for the works he was entering in exhibitions. Further, the letters also indicate how Kume was greatly involved in the operations of the Meiji Art Society and busied himself with being the group’s administrative officer. Thus Fujishima’s letters allow not only an understanding of the internal workings of Fujishima the person, they are also reference materials that provide knowledge about the movements of the two young men Kuroda and Kume who took on the responsibilities of Japan’s Western painting realm.journal articl