Influences of European Art and Literature on Modern Japanese-Style of Painting

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This report aims to clarify some influences Western art and literature exert on the Japanese-style painting. The contact of the West in the Meiji era brings radical changes into this genre, above all, in the Kyoto art world where a certain traditionalism was dominant at that time. There were many painters who regard themselves as artisans rather than artists. Nevertheless, when the westernization progresses, new wave arrives in this genre. Not a few painters of Japanese-style painting, awakened, became more interested in the western art. Takeuchi Seiho, one of the most important renovators of the Japanese painting, traveled Europe in 1900 for the purpose of visiting the international exposition in Paris and museums and schools of the fine art. He began to have a more clear consciousness of the European arts and his creation. Younger painters, such as Tuchida Bakusen, Murakami Kagaku, principal members of the Kokuga Sosaku Kyokai and Tomita Keisen, an active member of Nihon Bijyutsu-in, were influenced more passionately by the European art of which, for example, Shirakaba, informed them. The influence concerns not only the art but also thoughts and life of the artists, Van Gogh, Rodin and so on. The Japanese artists admire them and try to imitate their creation and ideas and their life. They consider art as a matter of life. Opposing traditions, they search freedom in creation. They expect that their works are expressions of their real self. But it is possible that this kind of search exciting their ego brings an identity-crisis in their mind. In these circumstances Japanese painters needed, at the same time, another type of European painting as savior of their conflict. Italian painters, Fra Angelico in particular will play an important role in this point.