Masamu Yanase (; 1900–1945; born Shōroku Yanase, ) was a Japanese visual artist.

Early life

Masamu Yanase was born January 12, 1900, in

Ehime is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Ehime Prefecture has a population of 1,342,011 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 5,676 km2 (2,191 sq mi). Ehime Prefecture borders Kagawa Prefecture to the northeast, Tokush ...

, Japan, and his family relocated to

Fukuoka is the sixth-largest city in Japan, the second-largest port city after Yokohama, and the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The city is built along the shores of Hakata Bay, and has been a center of international commerce since ancie ...

where he spent his childhood until age 14. During his teenage years he changed his given name, Shōroku, to Masamu, and included the

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

character for "dream" () into his chosen name. At the age of 14, he left his parents home in

Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...

, arriving in Tokyo. Due to lack of income, he traveled between his home and Tokyo to be able to survive. He had an innate talent for art, yet had no art-school training. His abilities allowed him to find patrons for his work, and this in turn enabled him to continue making art.

Career

His early work was in oil painting. In the early 1920s he became interested in the Japanese

Futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...

movement, and joined the Miraiha-Bijutsu Kyokai (Futurist Art Society). He became interested in political issues, and became intrigued with the Constructivist movement, it was at that time that he joined the avant garde radical art collective, Mavo. Yanase-Morning

After the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, Yanase was arrested during a round-up of radicals, which inspired him to become even more political. In response to this new radical political spirit, he discontinued painting, which he viewed as a bourgeois activity, to begin working on posters, graphics and other forms of

mass communication Mass communication is the process of imparting and exchanging information through mass media to large segments of the population. It is usually understood for relating to various forms of media, as its technologies are used for the dissemination o ...

and popular art forms such as comics and cartoons.} In 1931, he joined the then illegal

Japanese Communist Party The is a left-wing to far-left political party in Japan. With approximately 270,000 members belonging to 18,000 branches, it is one of the largest non-governing communist parties in the world. The party advocates the establishment of a democr ...

. In 1932, he was arrested and tortured by the

Special Higher Police The , often abbreviated , was a Japanese policing organization, established within the Home Ministry in 1911, for the purpose of carrying out high policing, domestic criminal investigations, and control of political groups and ideologies deemed ...

on suspicion of violating the

Peace Preservation Law The was a Japanese law enacted on April 22, 1925, with the aim of allowing the Special Higher Police to more effectively suppress socialists and communists. In addition to criminalizing forming an association with the aim of altering the ''kokuta ...

. His

social commentary Social commentary is the act of using rhetorical means to provide commentary on social, cultural, political, or economic issues in a society. This is often done with the idea of implementing or promoting change by informing the general populace ab ...

cartoons were published in the

Yomiuri Shimbun The (lit. ''Reading-selling Newspaper'' or ''Selling by Reading Newspaper'') is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five major newspapers in Japan; the other four are t ...

newspaper. Some of Yananse's ''

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

'' drawings were inspired by the German artist,

George Grosz George Grosz (; born Georg Ehrenfried Groß; July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objec ...

, as in the 1924 manga, ''The Face of the Bourgeoise Composed out of (the works of) Grosz''. Yanase Capitalist

Yanase had a comprehensive one person retrospective exhibition entitled "Yanase Masamu: A Retrospective 1900–1945" at The Museum of Modern Art, Hayama that included over 500 of his works.

Collections

Yanase's work is held in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Art in Japan. The Ohio State University has several of his works held in their Manga Collection. Several of his posters are held in the Tokyo Mushashinoa Art University Collection. His work is held in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama. Two books with illustrations by Yanase are in the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

permanent collection.

Death

Yanase was killed at the west exit of Shinjuku station during the Yamanote Air Raid on May 25, 1945.

References

* Nejikugi no gaka : botsugo shijūgonen Yanase Masamu ten / henshū Yanase Masamu Sakuhin Seiri Iinkai (ねじ釘の画家 : 沒後四十五年柳瀬正夢展 / 編集柳瀬正夢作品整理委員会), Yanase Masamu, Catalog of an exhibition held at Musashino Bijutsu Daigaku Bijutsu Shiryō Toshokan, Oct. 1990. * Yanase Masabu Zenshū = Masamu Yanase / Yanase Masamu ; Yanase Masamu Zenshū Kankō Iinkai hen. Kyōto-shi : Sanninsha, 2013–2019. 5 volumes with illustrations, * Yanase Masamu: 1900–1945 / henshū Kitakyūshū Shiritsu Bijutsukan. Author: Yanase, Masamu 1900–1945, Kitakyūshū Shiritsu Bijutsukan, JAC Project; Catalog of an exhibition held at Kitakyūshū Shiritsu Bijutsukan, Dec. 14, 2013-Feb. 2, 2014, Kanagawa Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, Feb. 11-Mar. 23, 2014 and Ehime-ken Bijutsukan, Apr. 5-May 18, 2014. 451 pages (2013). {{DEFAULTSORT:Yanase, Masamu Artist from Ehime Prefecture Manga artists from Ehime Prefecture Japanese graphic designers 1900 births 1945 deaths Deaths by airstrike during World War II Deaths by American airstrikes Japanese military personnel of World War II Japanese military personnel killed in World War II Japanese torture victims People from Ehime Prefecture 20th-century Japanese painters

Early life

Career

Collections

Death

References

Further reading