was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

painter, noted for his pioneering work in developing the ''

yōga is a style of artistic painting in Japan, typically of Japanese subjects, themes, or landscapes, but using Western (European) artistic conventions, techniques, and materials. The term was coined in the Meiji period (1868–1912) to distingu ...

'' (Western-style) art movement in late 19th century and early twentieth-century

Japanese painting is one of the oldest and most highly refined of the Japanese visual arts, encompassing a wide variety of genres and styles. As with the history of Japanese arts in general, the long history of Japanese painting exhibits synthesis and competitio ...

Biography

Asai was born to an ex-

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

class household in

Sakura A cherry blossom, also known as Japanese cherry or sakura, is a flower of many trees of Prunus, genus ''Prunus'' or Prunus subg. Cerasus, ''Prunus'' subg. ''Cerasus''. They are common species in East Asia, including China, Korea and especia ...

, in the

Kantō region The is a geographical area of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa. Slight ...

of Japan, where his father had been a retainer of the

Sakura Domain was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Shimōsa Province (modern-day Chiba Prefecture), Japan. It was centered on Sakura Castle in what is now the city of Sakura, Chiba. It was ruled for most of its hi ...

. He attended the domain school, where his father was principal, and left home in 1873 to pursue

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

studies in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. However, he became interested in the arts, and enrolled as a pupil of Kunisawa Shinkuro in western

oil painting Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

classes. In 1876, he enrolled as one of the first students in the ''Kobubijutsu Gakkō'' (the Technical Fine Arts School), where he was able to study under the Italian foreign advisor

Antonio Fontanesi Antonio Fontanesi (23 February 1818 – 17 April 1882) was an Italian painter who lived in Meiji period Japan between 1876 and 1878. He introduced European oil painting techniques to Japan, and exerted a significant role in the development of mo ...

, who had been hired by the

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji o ...

in the late 1870s to introduce western

to Japan. In 1889, he established the ''Meiji Bijutsukai'' (Meiji Art Society), the first group of Western-style painters in Japan, and in 1898, he became a professor of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (present day

Tokyo University of the Arts or is the most prestigious art school in Japan. Located in Ueno Park, it also has facilities in Toride, Ibaraki, Yokohama, Kanagawa, and Kitasenju and Adachi, Tokyo. The university has trained renowned artists in the fields of painting, scul ...

. However, in 1900 he resigned his post and travelled to

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, where he spent the next two years refining his techniques in the

impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

school. On his return to Japan in 1902, Asai obtained a position as professor at the ''Kyoto Kōtō Kōgei Gakkō'' (present-day Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts of the

Kyoto Institute of Technology Kyoto Institute of Technology (京都工芸繊維大学, Kyōto Kōgei Sen'i Daigaku) in Kyoto, Japan is a Japanese national university established in 1949. The Institute's history extends back to two schools, Kyoto Craft High School (established i ...

), and founded the ''Kansai Bijutsu-in'' (the Kansai Arts Institute). Asai taught numerous students who later became famous in the Japanese art world, including

Sōtarō Yasui was a Japanese painter, noted for development of '' yōga'' (Western-style) portraiture in early twentieth-century Japanese painting. Biography Yasui was born to a merchant class household in Kyoto, but dropped out of commercial high school agai ...

and Ryuzaburo Umehara. He also tutored the noted poet

Masaoka Shiki , pen-name of Masaoka Noboru (正岡升), was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry, credited with writing nearly 20,000 stanzas during ...

in the techniques of western art, and was the model for a character in

Natsume Sōseki , born , was a Japanese novelist. He is best known around the world for his novels ''Kokoro'', '' Botchan'', ''I Am a Cat'', '' Kusamakura'' and his unfinished work '' Light and Darkness''. He was also a scholar of British literature and writer ...

's novel ''Sanshirō''. A number of Asai’s works have been recognized by the Japanese government's

Agency for Cultural Affairs The is a special body of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). It was set up in 1968 to promote Japanese arts and culture. The agency's budget for FY 2018 rose to ¥107.7 billion. Overview The ag ...

as Important Cultural Properties.

Noted works

*, 1903, Tokyo National Museum, National Important Cultural Property *, 1904, Tokyo University of the Arts, National Important Cultural Property.

Gallery

Image:Asai chu morning.jpg, ''Morning Sun'' Image:Asai Chu - Woman Sewing - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Sewing Woman'' Image:Asai_chu_kotaba.jpg, ''The Village Kotaba'' Image:Asai_chu_pulling.jpg, ''Pulling Boat'' File:Asai chu vegetable.jpg, ''Spring Ridge''

References

* Keene, Donald. ''Dawn to the West''. Columbia University Press; (1998). * Mason, Penelope. ''History of Japanese Art ''. Prentice Hall (2005). * Miyoshi, Masao. ''Postmodernism and Japan''. Duke University Press (1986) * Sadao, Tsuneko. ''Discovering the Arts of Japan: A Historical Overview''. Kodansha International (2003). * Schaarschmidt Richte. ''Japanese Modern Art Painting From 1910 ''. Edition Stemmle. * Shiki, Masaoka. ''Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works''. Cheng & Tsui (2002). * Weisenfeld, Gennifer. ''MAVO: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905–1931''. University of California Press (2001).

External links

National Diet Library biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Asai, Chu 1856 births 1907 deaths 20th-century Japanese painters Japanese educators People from Sakura, Chiba People of Meiji-period Japan Yōga painters Artists from Tokyo Metropolis