Japanese Art
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Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including
ancient pottery Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history cove ...
,
sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
, ink painting and
calligraphy Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "t ...
on silk and paper, ''
ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...
'' paintings and
woodblock prints Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is crea ...
,
ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...
,
origami ) is the Japanese paper art, art of paper folding. In modern usage, the word "origami" is often used as an inclusive term for all folding practices, regardless of their culture of origin. The goal is to transform a flat square sheet of pape ...
, and more recently
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 ...
and
anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
. It has a long history, ranging from the beginnings of human habitation in Japan, sometime in the 10th millennium BC, to the present-day country. Japan has been subject to sudden invasions of new ideas followed by long periods of minimal contact with the outside world. Over time the Japanese developed the ability to absorb, imitate, and finally assimilate those elements of foreign culture that complemented their aesthetic preferences. The earliest complex art in Japan was produced in the 7th and 8th centuries in connection with
Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
. In the 9th century, as the Japanese began to turn away from China and develop indigenous forms of expression, the secular arts became increasingly important; until the late 15th century, both religious and secular arts flourished. After the
Ōnin War The , also known as the Upheaval of Ōnin and Ōnin-Bunmei war, was a civil war that lasted from 1467 to 1477, during the Muromachi period in Japan. ''Ōnin'' refers to the Japanese era during which the war started; the war ended during the Bunmei ...
(1467–1477), Japan entered a period of political, social, and economic disruption that lasted for over a century. In the state that emerged under the leadership of the
Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...
, organized religion played a much less important role in people's lives, and the arts that survived were primarily secular. The
Meiji Period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...
(1868-1912) saw an abrupt influx of Western styles, which have continued to be important.
Painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...
is the preferred artistic expression in Japan, practiced by amateurs and professionals alike. Until modern times, the Japanese wrote with a
brush A brush is a common tool with bristles, wire or other filaments. It generally consists of a handle or block to which filaments are affixed in either a parallel or perpendicular orientation, depending on the way the brush is to be gripped durin ...
rather than a
pen A pen is a common writing instrument that applies ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing. Early pens such as reed pens, quill pens, dip pens and ruling pens held a small amount of ink on a nib or in a small void or cavity wh ...
, and their familiarity with brush techniques has made them particularly sensitive to the values and
aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
of painting. With the rise of popular culture in the
Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...
, a style of woodblock prints became a major form and its techniques were fine-tuned to produce colorful prints. The Japanese, in this period, found
sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
a much less sympathetic medium for artistic expression; most large Japanese sculpture is associated with
religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...
, and the medium's use declined with the lessening importance of traditional Buddhism.
Japanese pottery , is one of the oldest Japanese crafts and art forms, dating back to the Neolithic period. Kilns have produced earthenware, pottery, stoneware, glazed pottery, glazed stoneware, porcelain, and blue-and-white ware. Japan has an exceptionally ...
is among the finest in the world and includes the earliest known Japanese artifacts;
Japanese export porcelain Japanese export porcelain includes a wide range of porcelain that was made and decorated in Japan primarily for export to Europe and later to North America, with significant quantities going to south and southeastern Asian markets. Production for ...
has been a major industry at various points.
Japanese lacquerware is a Japanese craft with a wide range of fine and decorative arts, as lacquer has been used in '' urushi-e'', prints, and on a wide variety of objects from Buddha statues to ''bento'' boxes for food. The characteristic of Japanese lacquerwar ...
is also one of the world's leading arts and crafts, and works gorgeously decorated with ''
maki-e is a Japanese lacquer decoration technique in which pictures, patterns, and letters are drawn with lacquer on the surface of lacquerware, and then metal powder such as gold or silver is sprinkled and fixed on the surface of the lacquerware. The ...
'' were exported to Europe and China, remaining important exports until the 19th century. In
architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
, Japanese preferences for natural materials and an interaction of interior and exterior space are clearly expressed.


History of Japanese art


Jōmon art

The first settlers of Japan were the Jōmon people (c. 10,500 – c. 300 BCE), named for the
cord Cord or CORD may refer to: People * Alex Cord (1933–2021), American actor and writer * Chris Cord (born 1940), American racing driver * Errett Lobban Cord (1894–1974) American industrialist * Ronnie Cord (1943–1986), Brazilian singer * Co ...
markings that decorated the surfaces of their clay vessels, were
nomad A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the popu ...
ic hunter-gatherers who later practiced organized farming and built cities with populations of hundreds if not thousands. They built simple houses of wood and thatch set into shallow earthen pits to provide warmth from the soil. They crafted lavishly decorated pottery storage vessels, clay figurines called ''
dogū are small humanoid and animal figurines made during the later part of the Jōmon period (14,000–400 BC) of prehistoric Japan. ''Dogū'' come exclusively from the Jōmon period, and were no longer made by the following Yayoi period. There are ...
'', and crystal jewels.


Early Jōmon period

During the Early Jōmon period (5000-2500 BCE), villages started to be discovered and ordinary everyday objects were found such as ceramic pots purposed for boiling water. The pots that were found during this time had flat bottoms and had elaborate designs made out of materials such as bamboo. In addition, another important find was the early Jōmon figurines which might have been used as fertility objects due to the breasts and swelling hips that they exhibited.


Middle Jōmon period

The Middle Jōmon period (2500-1500 BCE), contrasted from the Early Jōmon Period in many ways. These people became less nomadic and began to settle in villages. They created useful tools that were able to process the food that they gathered and hunted which made living easier for them. Through the numerous aesthetically pleasing ceramics that were found during this time period, it is evident that these people had a stable economy and more leisure time to establish beautiful pieces. In addition, the people of the Middle Jōmon period differed from their preceding ancestors because they developed vessels according to their function, for example, they produced pots in order to store items. The decorations on these vessels started to become more realistic looking as opposed to the early Jōmon ceramics. Overall, the production of works not only increased during this period, but these individuals made them more decorative and naturalistic.


Late and Final Jōmon period

During the Late and Final Jōmon period (1500-300 BCE), the weather started to get colder, therefore forcing them to move away from the mountains. The main food source during this time was fish, which made them improve their fishing supplies and tools. This advancement was a very important achievement during this time. In addition, the numbers of vessels largely increased which could possibly conclude that each house had their own figurine displayed in them. Although various vessels were found during the Late and Final Jōmon Period, these pieces were found damaged which might indicate that they used them for rituals. In addition, figurines were also found and were characterized by their fleshy bodies and goggle like eyes. Dogū figurines ''Dogū'' ("earthen figure") are small humanoid and animal
figurine A figurine (a diminutive form of the word ''figure'') or statuette is a small, three-dimensional sculpture that represents a human, deity or animal, or, in practice, a pair or small group of them. Figurines have been made in many media, with cl ...
s made during the later part of the
Jōmon period The is the time in Japanese history, traditionally dated between   6,000–300 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united through a common Jōmon culture, which reached a c ...
. They were made across all of Japan, except
Okinawa is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi). Naha is the capital and largest city ...
. Some scholars theorize the ''dogū'' acted as
effigies An effigy is an often life-size sculptural representation of a specific person, or a prototypical figure. The term is mostly used for the makeshift dummies used for symbolic punishment in political protests and for the figures burned in certai ...
of people, that manifested some kind of sympathetic magic. ''Dogū'' are made of
clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...
and are small, typically 10 to 30 cm high. Most of the figurines appear to be modeled as female, and have big eyes, small waists, and wide hips. They are considered by many to be representative of goddesses. Many have large abdomens associated with pregnancy, suggesting that the Jomon considered them
mother goddess A mother goddess is a goddess who represents a personified deification of motherhood, fertility goddess, fertility, creation, destruction, or the earth goddess who embodies the bounty of the earth or nature. When equated with the earth or th ...
es.


Yayoi art

The next wave of immigrants was the
Yayoi The started at the beginning of the Neolithic in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age, and towards its end crossed into the Iron Age. Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that a period previously classified as a transition from the Jōmon p ...
people, named for the district 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 ...
where remnants of their settlements first were found. These people, arriving in Japan about 300 BCE, brought their knowledge of wetland rice cultivation, the manufacture of copper weapons and bronze bells (''
dōtaku are Japanese bells smelted from relatively thin bronze and richly decorated. Dotaku were used for about 400 years, between the second century B.C. and the second century C.E. (corresponding to the end of the Yayoi era), and were nearly only used ...
''), and wheel-thrown, kiln-fired
ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...
. DotakuBronzeBellLateYayoi3rdCenturyCE.jpg, A Yayoi period
dōtaku are Japanese bells smelted from relatively thin bronze and richly decorated. Dotaku were used for about 400 years, between the second century B.C. and the second century C.E. (corresponding to the end of the Yayoi era), and were nearly only used ...
bell, 3rd century CE Bronze Mirror in Ancient Japan.jpg,
Bronze mirror Bronze mirrors preceded the glass mirrors of today. This type of mirror, sometimes termed a copper mirror, has been found by archaeology, archaeologists among elite assemblages from various cultures, from Etruscan art, Etruscan Italy to Japan. T ...
excavated in Tsubai-otsukayama kofun,
Yamashiro, Kyoto was a town located in Sōraku District, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. The town was named for the old Yamashiro Province. As of 2003, the town had an estimated population of 8,978 and a density of 366.00 persons per km². The total area was 24.53 km ...
YayoiJar.JPG, Carmaic jar from the Yayoi period Ritual Yayoi potteries from Yoshinogari Site.jpg, Various ritual Yayoi potteries from
Yoshinogari Site is the name of a large and complex Yayoi archaeological site in Yoshinogari and Kanzaki in Saga Prefecture, Kyūshū, Japan. According to the Yayoi chronology established by pottery seriations in the 20th century, Yoshinogari dates to between ...
Storage Jar, 500 BC - 200 AD, Japan, earthenware - Art Institute of Chicago - DSC00129.JPG, Yayoi storage jar from 500 BCE - 200 CE


Kofun art

The third stage in Japanese prehistory, the
Kofun period The is an era in the history of Japan from about 300 to 538 AD (the date of the introduction of Buddhism), following the Yayoi period. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes collectively called the Yamato period. This period is ...
(c. 300 – 710 AD), represents a modification of
Yayoi The started at the beginning of the Neolithic in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age, and towards its end crossed into the Iron Age. Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that a period previously classified as a transition from the Jōmon p ...
culture, attributable either to internal development or external force. This period is most notable for its tomb culture and other artifacts such as bronze mirrors and clay sculptures called ''
haniwa The are terracotta clay figures that were made for ritual use and buried with the dead as funerary objects during the Kofun period (3rd to 6th centuries AD) of the history of Japan. ''Haniwa'' were created according to the ''wazumi'' techniq ...
'' which were erected outside these tombs. Throughout the Kofun period, the characteristics of these tombs evolved from smaller tombs erected on hilltops and ridges to much larger tombs built on flat land. The largest tomb in Japan, the tomb of
Emperor Nintoku , also known as was the 16th Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Due to his reputation for goodness derived from depictions in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, he is sometimes referred to as the . While his existence ...
, houses 46 burial mounds and is shaped like a keyhole, a distinct characteristic found within later Kofun tombs.


Asuka and Nara art

During the
Asuka Asuka may refer to: People * Asuka (name), a list of people * Asuka (wrestler), professional wrestler * Asuka (wrestler, born 1998), professional wrestler also known as Veny outside of Japan Places In Japan * , an area in Yamato Province (now ...
and
Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the cap ...
s, so named because the seat of Japanese government was located in the Asuka Valley from 542 to 645 and in the city of
Nara The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...
until 784, the first significant influx of continental Asian culture took place in Japan. The transmission of Buddhism provided the initial impetus for contacts between China and Japan. The Japanese recognized the facets of
Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the world's oldest cultures, originating thousands of years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia and is extremely diverse and varying, with customs and traditions varying grea ...
that could profitably be incorporated into their own: a system for converting ideas and sounds into writing;
historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...
; complex theories of government, such as an effective
bureaucracy The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...
; and, most important for the arts, new technologies, new building techniques, more advanced methods of casting in
bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...
, and new techniques and media for painting. Throughout the 7th and 8th centuries, however, the major focus in contacts between Japan and the Asian continent was the development of Buddhism. Not all scholars agree on the significant dates and the appropriate names to apply to various time periods between 552, the official date of the introduction of Buddhism into Japan, and 784, when the Japanese capital was transferred from Nara. The most common designations are the Suiko period, 552–645; the
Hakuhō period The was an unofficial of Emperor TenmuNussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Hakuhō''" in ; n.b., Louis-Frédéric is pseudonym of Louis-Frédéric Nussbaum, ''see'Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Authority File. after '' Hakuchi'' and before '' Such ...
, 645–710, and the Tenpyō period, 710–784. File:Horyu-ji, November 2016.jpg, Pagoda and Kondō at
Hōryū-ji is a Buddhist temple that was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples, in Ikaruga, Nara Prefecture, Japan. Its full name is , or Learning Temple of the Flourishing Law, the complex serving as both a seminary and monastery. The temple was ...
, 8th century File:NaraTodaiji0252.jpg, Hokkedō at
Tōdai-ji is a Buddhist temple complex that was once one of the powerful Nanto Shichi Daiji, Seven Great Temples, located in the city of Nara, Nara, Nara, Japan. Though it was originally founded in the year 738 CE, Tōdai-ji was not opened until the year ...
, 8th century
The earliest Japanese sculptures of the Buddha are dated to the 6th and 7th century. They ultimately derive from the 1st- to 3rd-century AD
Greco-Buddhist art The Greco-Buddhist art or Gandhara art of the north Indian subcontinent is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between Ancient Greek art and Buddhism. It had mainly evolved in the ancient region of Gandhara. The s ...
of
Gandhara Gandhāra is the name of an ancient region located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, more precisely in present-day north-west Pakistan and parts of south-east Afghanistan. The region centered around the Peshawar Vall ...
, characterized by flowing dress patterns and realistic rendering, on which Chinese artistic traits were superimposed. After the Chinese Northern Wei buddhist art had infiltrated a Korean peninsula, Buddhist icons were brought to Japan by Various immigrant groups. Particularly, the semi-seated Maitreya form was adapted into a highly developed Ancient Greek art style which was transmitted to Japan as evidenced by the Kōryū-ji Miroku Bosatsu and the
Chūgū-ji is a temple in Nara Prefecture, Japan, that was founded as a nunnery in the seventh century by Shōtoku Taishi. Located immediately to the northeast of Hōryū-ji, its statue of Miroku and Tenjukoku mandala are National Treasures. History Ch ...
Siddhartha statues. "Archaic smile", Britannica Online Encyclopedia, 2009, webpage:
EB-Smile
Many historians portray Korea as a mere transmitter of Buddhism. The Three Kingdoms, and particularly Baekje, were instrumental as active agents in the introduction and formation of a Buddhist tradition in Japan in 538 or 552. They illustrate the terminal point of the
Silk Road transmission of art Many artistic influences transited along the Silk Road, especially through the Central Asia, where Hellenistic, Iranian, Indian and Chinese influence were able to interact. In particular Greco-Buddhist art represent one of the most vivid example ...
during the first few centuries of our era. Other examples can be found in the development of the iconography of the Japanese
Fūjin or is the Japanese god of the wind and one of the eldest Shinto gods. He is portrayed as a terrifying wizardly demon, resembling a red-headed green-skinned humanoid wearing a leopard skin, carrying a large bag of winds on his shoulders. In Ja ...
Wind God, the
Niō are two wrathful and muscular guardians of the Buddha standing today at the entrance of many Buddhist temples in East Asian Buddhism in the form of frightening wrestler-like statues. They are dharmapala manifestations of the bodhisattva Vajra ...
guardians, and the near- Classical floral patterns in temple decorations. The earliest Buddhist structures still extant in Japan, and the oldest wooden buildings in the
Far East The ''Far East'' was a European term to refer to the geographical regions that includes East and Southeast Asia as well as the Russian Far East to a lesser extent. South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons. The ter ...
are found at the
Hōryū-ji is a Buddhist temple that was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples, in Ikaruga, Nara Prefecture, Japan. Its full name is , or Learning Temple of the Flourishing Law, the complex serving as both a seminary and monastery. The temple was ...
to the southwest of Nara. First built in the early 7th century as the private temple of Crown
Prince Shōtoku , also known as or , was a semi-legendary regent and a politician of the Asuka period in Japan who served under Empress Suiko. He was the son of Emperor Yōmei and his consort, Princess Anahobe no Hashihito, who was also Yōmei's younger half- ...
, it consists of 41 independent buildings. The most important ones, the main worship hall, or ''Kondō'' (Golden Hall), and ''Gojū-no-tō'' (Five-story
Pagoda A pagoda is an Asian tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist but sometimes Taoist, ...
), stand in the center of an open area surrounded by a roofed cloister. The ''Kondō'', in the style of Chinese worship halls, is a two-story structure of post-and-beam construction, capped by an ''
irimoya The East Asian hip-and-gable roof (''Xiēshān'' (歇山) in Chinese, ''Irimoya'' (入母屋) in Japanese, and ''Paljakjibung'' (팔작지붕) in Korean) also known as 'resting hill roof', consists of a hip roof that slopes down on all four side ...
'', or hipped-gabled roof of ceramic tiles. Inside the ''Kondō'', on a large rectangular platform, are some of the most important sculptures of the period. The central image is a Shaka Trinity (623), the historical
Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was ...
flanked by two
bodhisattva In Buddhism, a bodhisattva ( ; sa, 𑀩𑁄𑀥𑀺𑀲𑀢𑁆𑀢𑁆𑀯 (Brahmī), translit=bodhisattva, label=Sanskrit) or bodhisatva is a person who is on the path towards bodhi ('awakening') or Buddhahood. In the Early Buddhist schools ...
s, sculpture cast in bronze by the sculptor
Tori Busshi Tori Busshi (止利仏師; トリ・ブッシ) was a Japanese sculptor active in the late 6th and early 7th century. He was from the ''Kuratsukuri'' (鞍作, "saddle-maker") clan, and his full title was Shiba no Kuratsukuri-be no Obito Tori Bussh ...
(flourished early 7th century) in homage to the recently deceased Prince Shōtoku. At the four corners of the platform are the Guardian Kings of the Four Directions, carved in wood around 650. Also housed at
Hōryū-ji is a Buddhist temple that was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples, in Ikaruga, Nara Prefecture, Japan. Its full name is , or Learning Temple of the Flourishing Law, the complex serving as both a seminary and monastery. The temple was ...
is the
Tamamushi ''Chrysochroa fulgidissima'', "jewel beetle" or Yamato tamamushi in Japanese (ヤマトタマムシ) is a metallic woodboring beetle of the family Buprestidae. Characteristics This beetle is native to Japan and Korea. It is typically found ...
Shrine, a wooden replica of a ''Kondō'', which is set on a high wooden base that is decorated with figural paintings executed in a medium of mineral pigments mixed with lacquer. Temple building in the 8th century was focused around the
Tōdai-ji is a Buddhist temple complex that was once one of the powerful Nanto Shichi Daiji, Seven Great Temples, located in the city of Nara, Nara, Nara, Japan. Though it was originally founded in the year 738 CE, Tōdai-ji was not opened until the year ...
in Nara. Constructed as the headquarters for a network of temples in each of the provinces, the Tōdaiji is the most ambitious religious complex erected in the early centuries of Buddhist worship in Japan. Appropriately, the 16.2-m (53-ft) Buddha (completed 752) enshrined in the main Buddha hall, or ''Daibutsuden'', is a Rushana Buddha, the figure that represents the essence of Buddhahood, just as the Tōdaiji represented the center for Imperially sponsored Buddhism and its dissemination throughout Japan. Only a few fragments of the original statue survive, and the present hall and central Buddha are reconstructions from the
Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...
. Clustered around the Daibutsuden on a gently sloping hillside are a number of secondary halls: the '' Hokke-dō'' (Lotus Sutra Hall), with its principal image, the Fukukenjaku Kannon (不空羂索観音立像, the most popular bodhisattva), crafted of dry lacquer (cloth dipped in lacquer and shaped over a wooden armature); the '' Kaidanin'' (戒壇院, Ordination Hall) with its magnificent clay statues of the Four Guardian Kings; and the storehouse, called the ''
Shōsōin The is the treasure house of Tōdai-ji Temple in Nara, Japan. The building is in the ''azekura'' ( log-cabin) style with a raised floor. It lies to the northwest of the Great Buddha Hall. The Shōsō-in houses artifacts connected to Emperor Shō ...
''. This last structure is of great importance as an art-historical cache, because in it are stored the utensils that were used in the temple's dedication ceremony in 752, the eye-opening ritual for the Rushana image, as well as government documents and many secular objects owned by the Imperial family. Choukin (or chōkin), the art of metal
engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ...
or sculpting, is thought to have started in the Nara period.


Heian art

In 794 the capital of Japan was officially transferred to Heian-kyō (present-day
Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...
), where it remained until 1868. The term ''
Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...
'' refers to the years between 794 and 1185, when the
Kamakura shogunate The was the feudal military government of Japan during the Kamakura period from 1185 to 1333. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Kamakura-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 459. The Kamakura shogunate was established by Minamoto no Y ...
was established at the end of the
Genpei War The was a national civil war between the Taira and Minamoto clans during the late Heian period of Japan. It resulted in the downfall of the Taira and the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate under Minamoto no Yoritomo, who appointed himself ...
. The period is further divided into the early Heian and the late Heian, or Fujiwara era, the pivotal date being 894, the year
imperial embassies to China The Japanese missions to Imperial China were diplomatic embassies which were intermittently sent to the Chinese imperial court. Any distinction amongst diplomatic envoys sent from the Japanese court or from any of the Japanese shogunates was lost ...
were officially discontinued. Early Heian art: In reaction to the growing wealth and power of organized
Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
in Nara, the priest
Kūkai Kūkai (; 27 July 774 – 22 April 835Kūkai was born in 774, the 5th year of the Hōki era; his exact date of birth was designated as the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the Japanese lunar calendar, some 400 years later, by the Shingon sec ...
(best known by his posthumous title Kōbō Daishi, 774–835) journeyed to China to study
Shingon file:Koyasan (Mount Koya) monks.jpg, Shingon monks at Mount Koya is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asia, originally spread from India to China through traveling monks suc ...
, a form of
Vajrayana Vajrayāna ( sa, वज्रयान, "thunderbolt vehicle", "diamond vehicle", or "indestructible vehicle"), along with Mantrayāna, Guhyamantrayāna, Tantrayāna, Secret Mantra, Tantric Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism, are names referring t ...
Buddhism, which he introduced into Japan in 806. At the core of Shingon worship is
mandala A mandala ( sa, मण्डल, maṇḍala, circle, ) is a geometric configuration of symbols. In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of practitioners and adepts, as a spiritual guidance tool, for e ...
s, diagrams of the spiritual universe, which then began to influence temple design. Japanese Buddhist architecture also adopted the
stupa A stupa ( sa, स्तूप, lit=heap, ) is a mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics (such as ''śarīra'' – typically the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns) that is used as a place of meditation. In Buddhism, circumamb ...
, originally an Indian architectural form, in its Chinese-style pagoda. The temples erected for this new sect were built in the mountains, far away from the Court and the laity in the capital. The irregular topography of these sites forced Japanese architects to rethink the problems of temple construction, and in so doing to choose more indigenous elements of design. Cypress-bark roofs replaced those of ceramic tile, wood planks were used instead of earthen floors, and a separate worship area for the laity was added in front of the main sanctuary. The temple that best reflects the spirit of early Heian Shingon temples is the Murō-ji (early 9th century), set deep in a stand of cypress trees on a mountain southeast of Nara. The wooden image (also early 9th century) of Shakyamuni, the "historic" Buddha, enshrined in a secondary building at the Murō-ji, is typical of the early Heian sculpture, with its ponderous body, covered by thick drapery folds carved in the '' honpa-shiki'' (rolling-wave) style, and its austere, withdrawn facial expression. Fujiwara art: In the Fujiwara period,
Pure Land Buddhism Pure Land Buddhism (; ja, 浄土仏教, translit=Jōdo bukkyō; , also referred to as Amidism in English,) is a broad branch of Mahayana Buddhism focused on achieving rebirth in a Buddha's Buddha-field or Pure Land. It is one of the most wid ...
, which offered easy salvation through belief in Amida (the Buddha of the Western Paradise), became popular. This period is named after the
Fujiwara family was a powerful family of imperial regents in Japan, descending from the Nakatomi clan and, as legend held, through them their ancestral god Ame-no-Koyane. The Fujiwara prospered since the ancient times and dominated the imperial court until ...
, then the most powerful in the country, who ruled as
regents A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...
for the Emperor, becoming, in effect, civil dictators. Concurrently, the Kyoto nobility developed a society devoted to elegant aesthetic pursuits. So secure and beautiful was their world that they could not conceive of Paradise as being much different. They created a new form of Buddha hall, the Amida hall, which blends the secular with the religious, and houses one or more Buddha images within a structure resembling the mansions of the nobility. The ''Hō-ō-dō'' (Phoenix Hall, completed 1053) of the
Byōdō-in is a Buddhist temple in the city of Uji in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, built in the late Heian period. It is jointly a temple of the Jōdo-shū (Pure Land) and Tendai-shū sects. History This temple was originally built in 998 in the He ...
, a temple in
Uji is a city on the southern outskirts of the city of Kyoto, in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. Founded on March 1, 1951, Uji is between the two ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto. The city sits on the Uji River, which has its source in Lake Biwa. ...
to the southeast of Kyoto, is the exemplar of Fujiwara Amida halls. It consists of a main rectangular structure flanked by two L-shaped wing corridors and a tail corridor, set at the edge of a large artificial pond. Inside, a single golden image of Amida (c. 1053) is installed on a high platform. The Amida sculpture was executed by
Jōchō Jōchō (定朝; died 1057 AD), also known as Jōchō Busshi, was a Japanese sculptor of the Heian period. He popularized the '' yosegi'' technique of sculpting a single figure out of many pieces of wood, and he redefined the canon of body propo ...
, who used a new canon of proportions and a new technique (''
yosegi (lit., " parquet work") is a type of traditional Japanese marquetry developed in Edo period Japan in the town of . Resembling a type of mosaic, is created through the combination of fine oblong rods of wood chosen for their grain, texture and ...
''), in which multiple pieces of wood are carved out like shells and joined from the inside. Applied to the walls of the hall are small relief carvings of celestials, the host believed to have accompanied Amida when he descended from the Western Paradise to gather the souls of believers at the moment of death and transport them in lotus blossoms to Paradise. ''
Raigō in Japanese Buddhism is the appearance of the Amida Buddha on a "purple" cloud (紫雲) at the time of one's death. Depictions The Amida would arrive either accompanied by two bodhisattva, making it a triad depiction, or with a large retin ...
'' paintings on the wooden doors of the Hō-ō-dō, depicting the Descent of the Amida Buddha, are an early example of
Yamato-e is a style of Japanese painting inspired by Tang dynasty paintings and fully developed by the late Heian period. It is considered the classical Japanese style. From the Muromachi period (15th century), the term Yamato-e has been used to distingui ...
, Japanese-style painting, and contain representations of the scenery around Kyoto. E-maki: In the last century of the Heian period, the horizontal, illustrated narrative handscroll, known as '' e-maki'' (絵巻, lit. "picture scroll"), came to the fore. Dating from about 1130, the ''
Genji Monogatari Emaki The , also called ''The Tale of Genji'' Scroll, is a famous illustrated handscroll of the Japanese literature classic '' The Tale of Genji'', produced during the 12th century, perhaps . The surviving sections, now broken up and mounted for co ...
'', a famous illustrated ''
Tale of Genji Tale may refer to: * Narrative, or story, a report of real or imaginary connected events * TAL effector (TALE), a type of DNA binding protein * Tale, Albania, a resort town * Tale, Iran, a village * Tale, Maharashtra, a village in Ratnagiri distri ...
'' represents the earliest surviving yamato-e handscroll, and one of the high points of Japanese painting. Written about the year 1000 by
Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She is best known as the author of '' The Tale of Genji,'' widely considered to be one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between abou ...
, a lady-in-waiting to the
Empress Shōshi , also known as , the eldest daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga, was Empress of Japan from c. 1000 to c. 1011. Her father sent her to live in the Emperor Ichijō's harem at age 12. Because of his power, influence and political machinations she qui ...
, the novel deals with the life and loves of Genji and the world of the Heian court after his death. The 12th-century artists of the ''e-maki'' version devised a system of pictorial conventions that convey visually the emotional content of each scene. In the second half of the century, a different, livelier style of continuous narrative illustration became popular. The ''
Ban Dainagon Ekotoba is a late 12th-century ''emakimono'' (handscroll painting) depicting the events of the Ōtemmon Conspiracy, an event of Japan's early Heian period. The painting, attributed to Tokiwa Mitsunaga, is over long and about tall. History It is widel ...
'' (late 12th century), a scroll that deals with an intrigue at court, emphasizes figures in active motion depicted in rapidly executed brush strokes and thin but vibrant colors. ''E-maki'' also serve as some of the earliest and greatest examples of the '' otoko-e'' ("men's pictures") and '' onna-e'' ("women's pictures") styles of painting. There are many fine differences in the two styles, appealing to the aesthetic preferences of the genders. But perhaps most easily noticeable are the differences in subject matter. ''Onna-e'', epitomized by the Tale of Genji handscroll, typically deals with court life, particularly the court ladies, and with romantic themes. ''Otoko-e'' often recorded historical events, particularly battles. The Siege of the Sanjō Palace (1160), depicted in the "Night Attack on the Sanjō Palace" section of the
Heiji Monogatari is a Japanese war epic (''gunki monogatari'') detailing the events of the Heiji Rebellion of 1159–1160, in which samurai clan head Minamoto no Yoshitomo attacked and besieged Kyoto, as part of an Imperial succession dispute, in which he was op ...
handscroll is a famous example of this style.


Kamakura art

In 1180, a war broke out between the two most powerful warrior clans: the
Taira The Taira was one of the four most important clans that dominated Japanese politics during the Heian, Kamakura and Muromachi Periods of Japanese history – the others being the Fujiwara, the Tachibana, and the Minamoto. The clan is divided i ...
and the
Minamoto was one of the surnames bestowed by the Emperors of Japan upon members of the imperial family who were excluded from the line of succession and demoted into the ranks of the nobility from 1192 to 1333. The practice was most prevalent during th ...
; five years later the Minamoto emerged victorious and established a de facto seat of government at the seaside village of
Kamakura is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Kamakura has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 persons per km² over the total area of . Kamakura was designated as a city on 3 November 1939. Kamak ...
, where it remained until 1333. With the shift of power from the nobility to the warrior class, the arts had to satisfy a new audience: men devoted to the skills of warfare, priests committed to making Buddhism available to illiterate commoners, and conservatives, the nobility and some members of the priesthood who regretted the declining power of the court. Thus, realism, a popularizing trend, and a classical revival characterize the art of the
Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...
. In the Kamakura period,
Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...
and
Nara The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...
remained the centres of artistic production and high culture. Sculpture: The
Kei school The was a Japanese school (style) of Buddhist sculpture which emerged in the early Kamakura period (c. 1200). Based in Nara, it was the dominant school in Buddhist sculpture in Japan into the 14th century, and remained influential until the 1 ...
of sculptors, particularly
Unkei Unkei ( ja, 運慶;  – 1223) was a Japanese sculptor of the Kei school, which flourished in the Kamakura period. He specialized in statues of the Buddha and other important Buddhist figures. Unkei's early works are fairly traditional, simi ...
, created a new, more realistic style of sculpture. The two
Niō are two wrathful and muscular guardians of the Buddha standing today at the entrance of many Buddhist temples in East Asian Buddhism in the form of frightening wrestler-like statues. They are dharmapala manifestations of the bodhisattva Vajra ...
guardian images (1203) in the Great South Gate of the
Tōdai-ji is a Buddhist temple complex that was once one of the powerful Nanto Shichi Daiji, Seven Great Temples, located in the city of Nara, Nara, Nara, Japan. Though it was originally founded in the year 738 CE, Tōdai-ji was not opened until the year ...
in Nara illustrate .Unkei's dynamic supra-realistic style. The images, about 8 m (about 26 ft) tall, were carved of multiple blocks in a period of about three months, a feat indicative of a developed studio system of artisans working under the direction of a master sculptor. Unkei's polychromed wood sculptures (1208,
Kōfuku-ji is a Buddhist temple that was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples in the city of Nara, Japan. The temple is the national headquarters of the Hossō school. History Kōfuku-ji has its origin as a temple that was established in 669 b ...
, Nara) of two Indian sages,
Muchaku Asaṅga (, ; Romaji: ''Mujaku'') (fl. 4th century C.E.) was "one of the most important spiritual figures" of Mahayana Buddhism and the "founder of the Yogachara school".Engle, Artemus (translator), Asanga, ''The Bodhisattva Path to Unsurpasse ...
and
Seshin Vasubandhu (; Tibetan: དབྱིག་གཉེན་ ; fl. 4th to 5th century CE) was an influential Buddhist monk and scholar from ''Puruṣapura'' in ancient India, modern day Peshawar, Pakistan. He was a philosopher who wrote commentary ...
, the legendary founders of the Hossō sect, are among the most accomplished realistic works of the period; as rendered by Unkei, they are remarkably individualized and believable images. One of the most famous works of this period is an Amitabha Triad (completed in 1195), in Jōdo-ji in Ono, created by
Kaikei was a Japanese Busshi (sculptor of Buddha statue) of Kamakura period, known alongside Unkei. Because many busshi of the school have a name including ''kei'' (慶), his school is called ''Kei-ha'' (Kei school). Kaikei being also called Annami-da ...
, Unkei's successor. Calligraphy and painting: The '' Kegon Engi Emaki'', the illustrated history of the founding of the
Kegon The Huayan or Flower Garland school of Buddhism (, from sa, अवतंसक, Avataṃsaka) is a tradition of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy that first flourished in China during the Tang dynasty (618-907). The Huayan worldview is based prima ...
sect, is an excellent example of the popularizing trend in Kamakura painting. The Kegon sect, one of the most important in the Nara period, fell on hard times during the ascendancy of the
Pure Land A pure land is the celestial realm of a buddha or bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism. The term "pure land" is particular to East Asian Buddhism () and related traditions; in Sanskrit the equivalent concept is called a buddha-field (Sanskrit ). Th ...
sects. After the Genpei War (1180–1185), Priest
Myōe (February 21, 1173 – February 11, 1232) was a Japanese Buddhist monk active during the Kamakura period who also went by the name ''Kōben'' ( ja, 高弁). He was a contemporary of Jōkei and Hōnen. Biography Myōe was born in what is n ...
of
Kōzan-ji , officially , is a Buddhist temple of the Omuro sect of Shingon Buddhism in Umegahata Toganōchō, Ukyō Ward, Kyoto, Japan. Kōzan-ji is also known as Kōsan-ji and Toganō-dera. The temple was founded by the Shingon scholar and monk Myōe ( ...
sought to revive the sect and also to provide a refuge for women widowed by the war. The wives of samurai had been discouraged from learning more than a
syllabary In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optiona ...
system for transcribing sounds and ideas (see
kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...
), and most were incapable of reading texts that employed Chinese ideographs (
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 ...
). Thus, the '' Kegon Engi Emaki'' combines passages of text, written with a maximum of easily readable syllables, and illustrations that have the dialogue between characters written next to the speakers, a technique comparable to contemporary comic strips. The plot of the ''e-maki'', the lives of the two Korean priests who founded the Kegon sect, is swiftly paced and filled with fantastic feats such as a journey to the palace of the Ocean King, and a poignant mom story. A work in a more conservative vein is the illustrated version of Murasaki Shikibu's diary. ''E-maki'' versions of her novel continued to be produced, but the nobility, attuned to the new interest in realism yet nostalgic for past days of wealth and power, revived and illustrated the diary in order to recapture the splendor of the author's times. One of the most beautiful passages illustrates the episode in which Murasaki Shikibu is playfully held prisoner in her room by two young courtiers, while, just outside, moonlight gleams on the mossy banks of a rivulet in the imperial garden.


Muromachi art

During the
Muromachi period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by t ...
(1338–1573), also called the Ashikaga period, a profound change took place in Japanese culture. The
Ashikaga clan The was a prominent Japanese samurai clan which established the Muromachi shogunate and ruled Japan from roughly 1333 to 1573. The Ashikaga were descended from a branch of the Minamoto clan, deriving originally from the town of Ashikaga ...
took control of the shogunate and moved its headquarters back to Kyoto, to the Muromachi district of the city. With the return of government to the capital, the popularizing trends of the Kamakura period came to an end, and cultural expression took on a more aristocratic, elitist character.
Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
Buddhism, the
Ch'an Chan (; of ), from Sanskrit '' dhyāna'' (meaning "meditation" or "meditative state"), is a Chinese school of Mahāyāna Buddhism. It developed in China from the 6th century CE onwards, becoming especially popular during the Tang and S ...
sect traditionally thought to have been founded in China in the 6th century, was introduced for a second time into Japan and took root. Painting: Because of secular ventures and trading missions to China organized by Zen temples, many Chinese paintings and objects of art were imported into Japan and profoundly influenced Japanese artists working for Zen temples and the shogunate. Not only did these imports change the subject matter of painting, but they also modified the use of color; the bright colors of Yamato-e yielded to the monochromes of painting in the Chinese manner, where paintings generally only have black and white or different tones of a single color. Typical of early Muromachi painting is the depiction by the priest-painter Kao (active early 15th century) of the legendary monk Kensu (Hsien-tzu in Chinese) at the moment he achieved enlightenment. This type of painting was executed with quick brush strokes and a minimum of detail. '' Catching a Catfish with a Gourd'' (early 15th century,
Taizō-in is the oldest sub-temple () of the Myōshin-ji Rinzai Zen Buddhist temple, situated in the northwest of Kyoto, Japan. It was founded by Zen priest Muinsoin in 1404. The original temple buildings were burned during the Ōnin War (1467-1477), and w ...
,
Myōshin-ji is a temple complex in Kyoto, Japan, and head temple of the associated branch of Rinzai Zen Buddhism. The Myōshin-ji school is by far the largest school in Rinzai Zen, approximately as big as the other thirteen branches combined: it contains wit ...
, Kyoto), by the priest-painter Josetsu (active c. 1400), marks a turning point in Muromachi painting. Executed originally for a low-standing screen, it has been remounted as a hanging scroll with inscriptions by contemporary figures above, one of which refers to the painting as being in the "new style". In the foreground a man is depicted on the bank of a stream holding a small gourd and looking at a large slithery catfish. Mist fills the middle ground, and the background mountains appear to be far in the distance. It is generally assumed that the "new style" of the painting, executed about 1413, refers to a more Chinese sense of deep space within the picture plane. The foremost artists of the Muromachi period are the priest-painters
Shūbun The traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar divides a year into 24 solar terms. ''Qiūfēn'', ''Shūbun'', ''Chubun'', or ''Thu phân'' is the 16th solar term. It begins when the Sun reaches the celestial longitude of 180° and ends when it re ...
and Sesshū. Shūbun, a monk at the Kyoto temple of
Shōkoku-ji , formally identified as , is a Buddhist temple in northern Kyoto, first founded in 1382 by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, with the existing temple complex having undergone several periods of extensive reconstruction and rebuilding in the succeeding eras. ...
, created in the painting ''Reading in a Bamboo Grove'' (1446) a realistic landscape with deep recession into space. Sesshū, unlike most artists of the period, was able to journey to China and study Chinese painting at its source. ''Landscape of the Four Seasons'' (''Sansui Chokan''; c. 1486) is one of Sesshu's most accomplished works, depicting a continuing landscape through the four seasons.


Azuchi-Momoyama art

In the
Azuchi–Momoyama period The was the final phase of the in Japanese history from 1568 to 1600. After the outbreak of the Ōnin War in 1467, the power of the Ashikaga Shogunate effectively collapsed, marking the start of the chaotic Sengoku period. In 1568, Oda Nobuna ...
(1573–1603), a succession of military leaders, such as
Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period. He is regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. Nobunaga was head of the very powerful Oda clan, and launched a war against other ''daimyō'' to unify ...
,
Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the Cour ...
, and
Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fellow ...
, attempted to bring peace and political stability to Japan after an era of almost 100 years of warfare. Oda, a minor chieftain, acquired power sufficient to take
de facto ''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...
control of the government in 1568 and, five years later, to oust the last Ashikaga shōgun. Hideyoshi took command after Oda's death, but his plans to establish hereditary rule were foiled by Ieyasu, who established the
Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...
in 1603. Painting: The most important school of painting in the Momoyama period was that of the
Kanō school The is one of the most famous schools of Japanese painting. The Kanō school of painting was the dominant style of painting from the late 15th century until the Meiji period which began in 1868, by which time the school had divided into many di ...
, and the greatest innovation of the period was the formula, developed by
Kanō Eitoku was a Japanese painter who lived during the Azuchi–Momoyama period of Japanese history and one of the most prominent patriarchs of the Kanō school of Japanese painting. Life and works Born in Kyoto, Eitoku was the grandson of Kanō Moto ...
, for the creation of monumental landscapes on the sliding doors enclosing a room. The decoration of the main room facing the garden of the Jukō-in, a subtemple of
Daitoku-ji is a Buddhist temple, one of fourteen autonomous branches of the Rinzai school of Japanese Zen. It is located in Kita-ku, Kyoto, Japan. The "mountain name" ('' sangō'') by which it is known is . The Daitoku-ji temple complex today covers more ...
(a Zen temple in Kyoto), is perhaps the best extant example of Eitoku's work. A massive ''
ume ''Prunus mume'' is an East Asian and Southeast Asian tree species classified in the ''Armeniaca'' section of the genus ''Prunus'' subgenus ''Prunus''. Its common names include Chinese plum, Japanese plum, and Japanese apricot. The flower, long ...
'' tree and twin pines are depicted on pairs of sliding screens in diagonally opposite corners, their trunks repeating the verticals of the corner posts and their branches extending to left and right, unifying the adjoining panels. Eitoku's screen, ''Chinese Lions'', also in Kyoto, reveals the bold, brightly colored style of painting preferred by the samurai.
Hasegawa Tōhaku was a Japanese painter and founder of the Hasegawa school. He is considered one of the great painters of the Azuchi–Momoyama period (1573-1603), and he is best known for his folding screens, such as ''Pine Trees'' and ''Pine Tree and Flow ...
, a contemporary of Eitoku, developed a somewhat different and more decorative style for large-scale screen paintings. In his ''
Maple Screen ''Acer'' () is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated since ht ...
'' (楓図), now in the temple of Chishaku-in ( :ja:智積院), Kyoto, he placed the trunk of the tree in the center and extended the limbs nearly to the edge of the composition, creating a flatter, less architectonic work than Eitoku, but a visually gorgeous painting. His sixfold screen, ''
Pine Wood A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accepts ...
'' (松林図), is a masterly rendering in monochrome ink of a grove of trees enveloped in mist.


Art of the Edo period

The
Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...
gained undisputed control of the government in 1603 with a commitment to bring peace and economic and political stability to the country; in large measure it was successful. The shogunate survived until 1867, when it was forced to capitulate because of its failure to deal with pressure from Western nations to open the country to foreign trade. One of the dominant themes in the Edo period was the repressive policies of the shogunate and the attempts of artists to escape these strictures. The foremost of these was the closing of the country to foreigners and the accoutrements of their cultures, and the imposition of strict codes of behaviour affecting every aspect of life, the clothes one wore, the person one married, and the activities one could or should not pursue. In the early years of the
Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...
, however, the full impact of Tokugawa policies had not yet been felt, and some of Japan's finest expressions in architecture and painting were produced: Katsura Palace in Kyoto and the paintings of
Tawaraya Sōtatsu was a Japanese furniture designer and painter of the Rinpa school. Sōtatsu is best known for his decorations of calligraphic works by his partner Hon'ami Kōetsu (1558–1637), and his spectacular and highly influential ''byōbu'' folding s ...
, pioneer of the
Rinpa school is one of the major historical schools of Japanese painting. It was created in 17th century Kyoto by Hon'ami Kōetsu (1558–1637) and Tawaraya Sōtatsu (d. c.1643). Roughly fifty years later, the style was consolidated by brothers Ogata Kōrin ...
. Woodblock printing: Woodblock prints were originally used to translate Buddhist scriptures in the eighth century in Japan. Woodblock printing consist of the engraving of images or pictures on a piece of wood, which is then pressed against a piece of paper. In the eighth century woodblock was considered a convenient method of the reproduction of printed text until further innovations allowed for color to be translated on paper or better known as Nishik-e prints. Wood block printing was the common method of printing from the eleventh until the nineteenth century. Nishiki-e prints produced goods such as calendars that were commonly sold to wealthy members of society during the Edo period. In the Edo period these prints were depicted events and scenes of prominent actors. Ukiyo then was associated to woodblock printing in the early Edo period. These Ukiyo paintings depicted daily lives of prominent members of society. Ukiyo first started out as hand sculpted scrolls depicted life as a normal commoner. Architecture:
Katsura Detached Palace The , or Katsura Detached Palace, is an Imperial residence with associated gardens and outbuildings in the western suburbs of Kyoto, Japan. Located on the western bank of the Katsura River in Katsura, Nishikyō-ku, the Villa is 8km distant f ...
, built in imitation of Genji's palace, contains a cluster of shoin buildings that combine elements of classic Japanese architecture with innovative restatements. The whole complex is surrounded by a beautiful garden with paths for walking. Many of powerful ''daimyōs'' (feudal lords) built a Circuit style Japanese garden in the territory country, and competed for the beauty. Painting: Sōtatsu evolved a superb decorative style by re-creating themes from classical literature, using brilliantly colored figures and motifs from the natural world set against gold-leaf backgrounds. One of his finest works is the pair of screens ''The Waves at Matsushima'' in the
Freer Gallery The Freer Gallery of Art is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. focusing on Asian art. The Freer and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and S ...
in Washington, D.C. A century later, Kōrin reworked Sōtatsu's style and created visually gorgeous works uniquely his own. Perhaps his finest are the screen paintings of '' Red and White Plum Blossoms''. Sculpture: The Buddhist monk
Enkū (1632–1695) was a Japanese Buddhist monk, poet and sculptor during the early Edo period. He was born in Mino Province (present-day Gifu Prefecture) and is famous for carving some 120,000 wooden statues of the Buddha and other Buddhist icons, ...
carved 120,000 Buddhist images in a rough, individual style. Ukiyo-e and nanga (bunjinga): The school of art best known in the West is that of the
ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...
paintings and
woodblock prints Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is crea ...
of the demimonde, the world of the
kabuki is a classical form of Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily-stylised performances, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. Kabuki is thought to ...
theater and the pleasure districts. Ukiyo-e prints began to be produced in the late 17th century; in 1765 Harunobu produced the first polychrome print. Print designers of the next generation, including
Torii Kiyonaga Torii Kiyonaga ( ja, 鳥居 清長; 1752 – June 28, 1815) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Torii school. Originally Sekiguchi Shinsuke, the son of an Edo bookseller, from Motozaimokuchō Itchōme in Edo, he took on Torii Kiyonaga as a ...
and
Utamaro Kitagawa Utamaro ( ja, 喜多川 歌麿;  – 31 October 1806) was a Japanese artist. He is one of the most highly regarded designers of ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings, and is best known for his '' bijin ōkubi-e'' "large-heade ...
, created elegant and sometimes insightful depictions of courtesans. In the 19th century the dominant figures were
Hokusai , known simply as Hokusai, was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, active as a painter and printmaker. He is best known for the woodblock printing in Japan, woodblock print series ''Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji'', which includes the ...
and
Hiroshige Utagawa Hiroshige (, also ; ja, 歌川 広重 ), born Andō Tokutarō (; 1797 – 12 October 1858), was a Japanese ''ukiyo-e'' artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format l ...
, the latter a creator of romantic and somewhat sentimental landscape prints. The odd angles and shapes through which Hiroshige often viewed landscape, and the work of Kiyonaga and Utamaro, with its emphasis on flat planes and strong linear outlines, had a profound impact on such Western artists as
Edgar Degas Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is es ...
and
Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
. Via artworks held in Western museums, these same printmakers would later exert a powerful influence on the imagery and aesthetic approaches used by early
Modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
poets such as
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
,
Richard Aldington Richard Aldington (8 July 1892 – 27 July 1962), born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet, and an early associate of the Imagist movement. He was married to the poet Hilda Doolittle (H. D.) from 1911 to 1938. His 50-year w ...
and H.D. A school of painting contemporary with ukiyo-e was nanga, or bunjinga, a style based on paintings executed by Chinese scholar-painters. Just as ukiyo-e artists chose to depict figures from life outside the strictures of the Tokugawa shogunate, bunjin artists turned to Chinese culture. The exemplars of this style are
Ike no Taiga was a Japanese painter and calligrapher born in Kyoto during the Edo period. Together with Yosa Buson, he perfected the ''bunjinga'' (or '' nanga'') genre. The majority of his works reflected his passion for classical Chinese culture and painti ...
,
Yosa Buson was a Japanese poet and painter of the Edo period. Along with Matsuo Bashō and Kobayashi Issa, Buson is considered among the greatest poets of the Edo Period. He is also known for completing haiga as a style of art, working with haibun pros ...
, Tanomura Chikuden, and
Yamamoto Baiitsu Yamamoto Baiitsu (山本梅逸) (1783–1856) was a Japanese Edo period painter. Biography He was born in Nagoya, son of the sculptor Yamamoto Yumigiemon. His father was in the service of the court of the Tokugawa lords of the Owari Domain. He ...
( :ja:山本梅逸). Ceramics Traditional, mostly
stoneware Stoneware is a rather broad term for pottery or other ceramics fired at a relatively high temperature. A modern technical definition is a Vitrification#Ceramics, vitreous or semi-vitreous ceramic made primarily from stoneware clay or non-refracto ...
, styles continued in many parts of Japan, but Japanese ceramics were transformed around the start of the Edo period, by a large influx of Korean potters, captured or persuaded to emigrate in the course of the Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s. Many of these were settled on the southern island of
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 ...
, and they brought with them experience of versions of the Chinese-style chambered
climbing kiln The ''anagama'' kiln (Japanese Kanji: 穴窯/ Hiragana: あながま) is an ancient type of pottery kiln brought to Japan from China via Korea in the 5th century. It is a version of the climbing dragon kiln of south China, whose further deve ...
, called ''
noborigama The ''anagama'' kiln (Japanese Kanji: 穴窯/ Hiragana: あながま) is an ancient type of pottery kiln brought to Japan from China via Korea in the 5th century. It is a version of the climbing dragon kiln of south China, whose further deve ...
'' in Japan, which allowed high temperatures with more precise control. By around 1620 they had discovered deposits of
kaolinite Kaolinite ( ) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4. It is an important industrial mineral. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral ...
, and started to make porcelain for the first time in Japan. The early wares (called "Early Imari") were relatively small and imitated the Chinese
underglaze Underglaze is a method of decorating pottery in which painted decoration is applied to the surface before it is covered with a transparent ceramic glaze and fired in a kiln. Because the glaze subsequently covers it, such decoration is completely ...
blue and white porcelain "Blue and white pottery" () covers a wide range of white pottery and porcelain decorated under the glaze with a blue pigment, generally cobalt oxide. The decoration is commonly applied by hand, originally by brush painting, but nowadays by sten ...
, which Japan had been importing for some time. The porcelain industry greatly expanded in the late 1650s, as the collapse of the Chinese industry from civil war led to very large orders from the Chinese traders and the
Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...
, by then the traders only permitted to do business in Japan. The first great period of
Japanese export porcelain Japanese export porcelain includes a wide range of porcelain that was made and decorated in Japan primarily for export to Europe and later to North America, with significant quantities going to south and southeastern Asian markets. Production for ...
lasted until about the 1740s, and the great bulk of Japanese porcelain was made for export, mostly to Europe, but also the Islamic world to the west and south of Japan. Japanese pottery is among the finest in the world. File:Sake Ewer, Imari ware, Kokutani gosai-de type, Edo period, 17th century, bird and flower design in overglaze enamel - Tokyo National Museum - DSC05309.JPG, '' Ko-Kutani'' (old Kutani) five colours ''Iroe'' type
sake Sake, also spelled saké ( ; also referred to as Japanese rice wine), is an alcoholic beverage of Japanese origin made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. Despite the name ''Japanese rice wine'', sake, and indee ...
ewer In American English, a pitcher is a container with a spout used for storing and pouring liquids. In English-speaking countries outside North America, a jug is any container with a handle and a mouth and spout for liquid – American "pitchers" wil ...
with bird and flower design in overglaze enamel, Edo period, 17th century File:Kyushu_Ceramic_Museum_5232-11_Iroe-Botanhookachomon-Ozara.JPG, Ko-Imari dish, 1700–1740
Lacquerware: With the development of economy and culture, the artistic quality of lacquered furniture has improved.
Hon'ami Kōetsu Hon'ami Kōetsu ( ja, 本阿弥 光悦; 1558 – 27 February 1637) was a Japanese craftsman, potter, lacquerer, and calligrapher, whose work is generally considered to have inspired the founding of the Rinpa school of painting. Robert Hug ...
and
Ogata Kōrin Ogata Kōrin ( ja, 尾形光琳; 1658 – June 2, 1716) was a Japanese landscape illustrator, lacquerer, painter, and textile designer of the Rinpa School. Kōrin is best known for his ''byōbu'' folding screens, such as '' Irises'' and ' ...
brought the designs of the Rinpa school of painting into lacquerware. After the middle of the Edo period, '' inrō'' for portable medicine containers began to be decorated gorgeously with
maki-e is a Japanese lacquer decoration technique in which pictures, patterns, and letters are drawn with lacquer on the surface of lacquerware, and then metal powder such as gold or silver is sprinkled and fixed on the surface of the lacquerware. The ...
and
raden is a Japanese termRaden.
chōnin'' class, and at the end of the Edo period, it changed from practical accessories to art collections.Masayuki Murata. ''明治工芸入門'' p.104. Me no Me, 2017 Yūji Yamashita. ''明治の細密工芸'' p.80. Heibonsha, 2014 The export of lacquerware continued following the Azuchi-Momoyama period.
Marie Antoinette Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (; ; née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child a ...
and
Maria Theresa Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina (german: Maria Theresia; 13 May 1717 – 29 November 1780) was ruler of the Habsburg dominions from 1740 until her death in 1780, and the only woman to hold the position ''suo jure'' (in her own right). ...
are known as collectors of Japanese lacquerware in this period.Masayuki Murata. ''明治工芸入門'' p.24. Me no Me, 2017 File:壽字吉祥文蒔絵印籠 - Inrō with the Characters for Longevity and Good Fortune and the “Seven Lucky Treasures” on Checkerboard Ground.jpg, and , 18th century File:Writing Box Yatsuhashi bridge design.jpg, Writing lacquer box with '' Irises at Yatsuhashi'', by
Ogata Kōrin Ogata Kōrin ( ja, 尾形光琳; 1658 – June 2, 1716) was a Japanese landscape illustrator, lacquerer, painter, and textile designer of the Rinpa School. Kōrin is best known for his ''byōbu'' folding screens, such as '' Irises'' and ' ...
.
National Treasure The idea of national treasure, like national epics and national anthems, is part of the language of romantic nationalism, which arose in the late 18th century and 19th centuries. Nationalism is an ideology that supports the nation as the fundame ...


Art of the Prewar period

When the
Emperor of Japan The Emperor of Japan is the monarch and the head of the Imperial House of Japan, Imperial Family of Japan. Under the Constitution of Japan, he is defined as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, and his positio ...
regained ruling power in 1868, Japan was once again invaded by new and alien forms of culture. During the Prewar period, The introduction of Western cultural values led to a dichotomy in Japanese art, as well as in nearly every other aspect of culture, between traditional values and attempts to duplicate and assimilate a variety of clashing new ideas. This split remained evident in the late 20th century, although much synthesis had by then already occurred, and created an international cultural atmosphere and stimulated contemporary Japanese arts toward ever more innovative forms. The government took an active interest in the art export market, promoting Japanese arts at a succession of
world's fair A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
s, beginning with the
1873 Vienna World's Fair ) , building = Rotunda , area = 233 Ha , invent = , visitors = 7,255,000 , organized = , cnt = , org = , biz = , country = Austria-Hungary , city ...
. As well as heavily funding the fairs, the government took an active role organising how Japan's culture was presented to the world. It created a semi-public company — the (First Industrial Manufacturing Company) — to promote and commercialize exports of art and established the (Exhibition Bureau) to maintain quality standards. For the 1876
Centennial International Exhibition The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair to be held in the United States, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 10 to November 10, 1876, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the ...
in Philadelphia, the Japanese government created a Centennial Office and sent a special envoy to secure space for the 30,000 items that would be displayed. The Imperial Household also took an active interest in arts and crafts, commissioning works ("presentation wares") as gifts for foreign dignitaries. In 1890, the ( Artist to the Imperial Household) system was created to recognise distinguished artists; seventy were appointed from 1890 to 1944. Among these were the painter and lacquer artist
Shibata Zeshin was a Japanese lacquer painter and print artist of the late Edo period and early Meiji era. He has been called "Japan's greatest lacquerer", but his reputation as painter and print artist is more complex: In Japan, he is known as both t ...
, ceramicist
Makuzu Kōzan Miyagawa (Makuzu) Kōzan (宮川香山) (1842–1916) was a Japanese ceramist. He was appointed artist to the Japanese Imperial household and was one of the major potters of the Meiji Era. From 1876 to 1913, Kōzan won prizes at 51 exhibitions, i ...
, painter
Hashimoto Gahō was a Japanese Painting, painter, one of the last to paint in the style of the Kanō school. He was one of the first five painters to be appointed as an Imperial Household Artist and was one of the most authoritative painters in Japan at that ti ...
, and
cloisonné Cloisonné () is an ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects with colored material held in place or separated by metal strips or wire, normally of gold. In recent centuries, vitreous enamel has been used, but inlays of cut gemstones, ...
enamel artist
Namikawa Yasuyuki Namikawa Yasuyuki (1845–1927) — original family name Takaoka — was a Japanese ''cloisonné'' artist. His work was highly sought after in his own lifetime and is held in several collections today. He and Namikawa Sōsuke (no relation)Despit ...
. Ryūko-zu Byōbu by Hashimoto Gahō(Part of the tiger).jpg, ''
Byōbu are Japanese folding screens made from several joined panels, bearing decorative painting and calligraphy, used to separate interiors and enclose private spaces, among other uses. History are thought to have originated in Han dynasty C ...
'' ''Dragon and tiger'' (竜虎図) left side, 1895, by
Hashimoto Gahō was a Japanese Painting, painter, one of the last to paint in the style of the Kanō school. He was one of the first five painters to be appointed as an Imperial Household Artist and was one of the most authoritative painters in Japan at that ti ...
Ryūko-zu Byōbu by Hashimoto Gahō(Part of the dragon).jpg, ''Byōbu'' ''Dragon and tiger'' right side, 1895, by Hashimoto Gahō
As Western imports became popular, demand for Japanese art declined within Japan itself. In Europe and America, the new availability of Japanese art led to a fascination for Japanese culture; a craze known in Europe as
Japonisme ''Japonisme'' is a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858. Japon ...
. Imperial patronage, government sponsorship, promotion to new audiences, and Western technology combined to foster an era of Japanese artistic innovation. In the decorative arts, Japanese artists reached new levels of technical sophistication. Today, Masayuki Murata owns more than 10,000 Meiji art works and is one of the most enthusiastic collectors. From that time, most of the excellent works of Meiji Art were bought by foreign collectors and only a few of them remained in Japan, but because he bought back many works from foreign countries and opened the Kiyomizu Sannenzaka Museum, the study and reevaluation of Meiji Art rapidly advanced in Japan after the 21st century.
Nasser Khalili Sir Nasser David Khalili ( fa, ناصر داوود خلیلی, born 18 December 1945) is a British-Iranian scholar, collector, and philanthropist based in London. Born in Iran and educated at Queens College, City University of New York and the ...
is also one of the world's most dedicated collectors of Meiji art, and his collection encompasses many categories of Meiji art. The
Japanese Imperial Family The , also referred to as the Imperial Family or the House of Yamato, comprises those members of the extended family of the reigning Emperor of Japan who undertake official and public duties. Under the present Constitution of Japan, the Emperor i ...
also owns excellent works of Meiji Art, some of which were donated to the state and are now stored in the
Museum of the Imperial Collections The Museum of the Imperial Collections is located on the grounds of the East Garden of Tokyo Imperial Palace. It showcases a changing exhibition of a part of the imperial household treasures. History The Museum of the Imperial Collections was con ...
.


Architecture and Garden

By the early 20th century, European art forms were well introduced and their marriage produced notable buildings like the Tokyo Train Station and the
National Diet Building The is the building where both houses of the National Diet, National Diet of Japan meet. It is located at Nagatachō, Tokyo, Nagatachō 1-chome 7–1, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Sessions of the House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives ta ...
that still exist today. Tokyo Station, a building of
Giyōfū architecture was a style of Japanese architecture which outwardly resembled Western-style construction but relied on traditional Japanese techniques. It flourished during the early Meiji period, and disappeared as knowledge of Western techniques became more ...
, full of
brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...
s and pseudo-European style. This style of building was built in urban areas. Many artistic new
Japanese gardens are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden desig ...
were built by Jihei Ogawa.


Painting

The first response of the Japanese to Western art forms was open-hearted acceptance, and in 1876 the Technological Art School( :ja:工部美術学校) was opened, employing Italian instructors to teach Western methods. The second response was a pendulum swing in the opposite direction spearheaded by
Okakura Kakuzō (also known as 岡倉 天心 Okakura Tenshin) was a Japanese scholar and art critic who in the era of Meiji- Restoration reform defended traditional forms, customs and beliefs. Outside Japan, he is chiefly renowned for '' The Book of Tea: A Jap ...
and the American
Ernest Fenollosa Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (February 18, 1853 – September 21, 1908) was an American art historian of Japanese art, professor of philosophy and political economy at Tokyo Imperial University. An important educator during the modernization of Japa ...
, who encouraged Japanese artists to retain traditional themes and techniques while creating works more in keeping with contemporary taste. This was a strategy that eventually served to extend the influence of Japanese art as far as Calcutta, London, and Boston in the years leading up to
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. Out of these two poles of artistic theory—derived from Europe and from East Asia respectively—developed ''
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 painting") and
Nihonga ''Nihonga'' (, "Japanese-style paintings") are Japanese paintings from about 1900 onwards that have been made in accordance with traditional Japanese artistic conventions, techniques and materials. While based on traditions over a thousand years ...
("Japanese painting"), categories that have maintained currency.


Enamels

During the Meiji era, Japanese
cloisonné Cloisonné () is an ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects with colored material held in place or separated by metal strips or wire, normally of gold. In recent centuries, vitreous enamel has been used, but inlays of cut gemstones, ...
enamel reached a technical peak, producing items more advanced than any that had existed before. The period from 1890 to 1910 was known as the "Golden age" of Japanese enamels. Artists experimented with pastes and with the firing process to produce ever larger blocks of enamel, with less need for ''cloisons'' (enclosing metal strips). Thus enamels became a more pictorial medium, with designs similar to, or copied from, traditional paintings. Enamels with a design unique to Japan, in which flowers, birds and insects were used as themes, became popular. In particular, the works of
Namikawa Yasuyuki Namikawa Yasuyuki (1845–1927) — original family name Takaoka — was a Japanese ''cloisonné'' artist. His work was highly sought after in his own lifetime and is held in several collections today. He and Namikawa Sōsuke (no relation)Despit ...
and
Namikawa Sōsuke Namikawa Sōsuke (1847–1910) was a Japanese ''cloisonné'' artist, known for innovations that developed ''cloisonné'' enamel into an artistic medium sharing many features with paintings. He and Namikawa Yasuyuki (no relation)Despite their ident ...
were exhibited at
world's fair A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
s and won many awards. Along with the two Namikawa, the
Ando Cloisonné Company is a Japanese ''cloisonné'' making company located in Sakae, Nagoya, central Japan. History Owari province was one of the foremost production centres of enamel in the country. During the Edo period the Andō family operated a pipe shop cal ...
has produced many high-quality cloisonne. Japanese enamels were regarded as unequalled thanks to the new achievements in design and colouring.


Lacquerware

The Meiji era saw a renewed interest in
lacquer Lacquer is a type of hard and usually shiny coating or finish applied to materials such as wood or metal. It is most often made from resin extracted from trees and waxes and has been in use since antiquity. Asian lacquerware, which may be ca ...
as artists developed new designs and experimented with new textures and finishes. ''
Maki-e is a Japanese lacquer decoration technique in which pictures, patterns, and letters are drawn with lacquer on the surface of lacquerware, and then metal powder such as gold or silver is sprinkled and fixed on the surface of the lacquerware. The ...
'' (decorating the lacquer in gold or silver dust) was the most common technique for quality lacquerware in this period.
Shibata Zeshin was a Japanese lacquer painter and print artist of the late Edo period and early Meiji era. He has been called "Japan's greatest lacquerer", but his reputation as painter and print artist is more complex: In Japan, he is known as both t ...
was a lacquerer who gained a high reputation for his works from the
Bakumatsu was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji government ...
to the Meiji period. Lacquerware called ''Shibayama'' and ''Somada'', created in the Edo period, became popular for its showy style, inlaid with gold, silver, shellfish, ivory, and colorful metal and glass, and reached its peak during this period.Yūji Yamashita. ''明治の細密工芸'' pp.60-61. Heibonsha, 2014 Lacquer from Japanese workshops was recognised as technically superior to what could be produced anywhere else in the world.


Metalwork

At the start of the Meiji era, Japanese metalwork was almost totally unknown outside the country, unlike lacquer and porcelain which had previously been exported. Metalwork was connected to Buddhist practice, for example in the use of bronze for temple bells and incense cauldrons, so there were fewer opportunities for metalworkers once Buddhism was displaced as the state religion. International exhibitions brought Japanese cast bronze to a new foreign audience, attracting strong praise. The past history of
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 ...
weaponry equipped Japanese metalworkers to create metallic finishes in a wide range of colours. By combining and finishing copper, silver and gold in different proportions, they created specialised alloys including
shakudō ''Shakudō'' (赤銅) is a Japanese billon of gold and copper (typically 4–10% gold, 96–90% copper), one of the '' irogane'' class of colored metals, which can be treated to develop a black, or sometimes indigo, patina, resembling lacquer. ...
and
shibuichi is a historically Japanese copper alloy, a member of the '' irogane'' class, which is patinated into a range of subtle greys and muted shades of blue, green, and brown, through the use of '' niiro'' processes, involving the ''rokushō'' compo ...
. With this variety of alloys and finishes, an artist could give the impression of full-colour decoration.


Ivory carving

In the Meiji period, Japanese clothes began to be westernized and the number of people who wore
kimono The is a traditional Japanese garment and the national dress of Japan. The kimono is a wrapped-front garment with square sleeves and a rectangular body, and is worn left side wrapped over right, unless the wearer is deceased. The kimono ...
decreased, so the craftsmen who made ''
netsuke A is a miniature sculpture, originating in 17th century Japan. Initially a simply-carved button fastener on the cords of an box, later developed into ornately sculpted objects of craftsmanship. History Traditionally, Japanese clothing – ...
'' and ''
kiseru A is a Japanese smoking pipe (tobacco), smoking pipe, traditionally used for smoking ''kizami'', a finely shredded tobacco product resembling hair. History The word ''kiseru'' is said to have originated from the Cambodian word ''khsier'' aroun ...
'' with ivory and wood lost their demand. Therefore, they tried to create a new field, ivory sculptures for interior decoration, and many elaborate works were exported to foreign countries or purchased by the
Imperial Family A royal family is the immediate family of King, kings/Queen regnant, queens, Emir, emirs/emiras, Sultan, sultans/Sultana (title), sultanas, or raja/rani and sometimes their extended family. The term imperial family appropriately describes the ...
. In particular, the works of Ishikawa Komei and Asahi Gyokuzan won praise in Japan.Masayuki Murata. (2017) ''Introduction to Meiji Crafts'' pp. 88–89. Me no Me.


Porcelain and Earthenware

Technical and artistic innovations of the Meiji era turned porcelain into one of the most internationally successful Japanese decorative art forms.
Satsuma ware is a type of Japanese pottery originally from Satsuma Province, southern Kyūshū. Today, it can be divided into two distinct categories: the original plain dark clay made in Satsuma from around 1600, and the elaborately decorated ivory-bodie ...
was a name originally given to pottery from
Satsuma province was an old province of Japan that is now the western half of Kagoshima Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Satsuma" in . Its abbreviation is . History Satsuma's provincial capital was Satsumasendai. Durin ...
, elaborately decorated with gilt and enamel. These wares were highly praised in the West. Seen in the West as distinctively Japanese, this style actually owed a lot to imported pigments and Western influences, and had been created with export in mind. Workshops in many cities raced to produce this style to satisfy demand from Europe and America, often producing quickly and cheaply. So the term "Satsuma ware" came to be associated not with a place of origin but with lower-quality ware created purely for export. Despite this, artists such as
Yabu Meizan Yabu Meizan ( ja, 藪 明山, birth name Yabu Masashichi (), January 20, 18531934) was a Japanese artist and workshop owner known for painting on porcelain. His studio produced high-end Satsuma ware, primarily for the export market. That term wa ...
and
Makuzu Kōzan Miyagawa (Makuzu) Kōzan (宮川香山) (1842–1916) was a Japanese ceramist. He was appointed artist to the Japanese Imperial household and was one of the major potters of the Meiji Era. From 1876 to 1913, Kōzan won prizes at 51 exhibitions, i ...
maintained the highest artistic standards while also successfully exporting. From 1876 to 1913, Kōzan won prizes at 51 exhibitions, including the
World's fair A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
and the National Industrial Exhibition.


Textiles

The 1902 edition of ''
Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...
'' wrote, "In no branch of applied art does the decorative genius of Japan show more attractive results than that of textile fabrics, and in none has there been more conspicuous progress during recent years.""Japan" in ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (1902), Volume 29, pages 724–725. Very large, colourful pictorial works were being produced in Kyoto. Embroidery had become an art form in its own right, adopting a range of pictorial techniques such as
chiaroscuro Chiaroscuro ( , ; ), in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achi ...
and
aerial perspective Aerial perspective, or atmospheric perspective, refers to the effect the atmosphere has on the appearance of an object as viewed from a distance. As the distance between an object and a viewer increases, the contrast between the object and its b ...
.


Art of the Postwar period

Immediately following Japan's defeat in World War II in 1945, large numbers of Japanese artists fell under the influence of, or even joined, the
Japan 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 ...
, which had just been legalized by the U.S.-led military occupation of Japan after many years of suppression by the prewar and wartime Japanese police. This had to do with the success of the Communist Party had in peddling the notion in the early postwar years that the party had been the only group in Japan to have resisted wartime militarism. In addition, the Japanese word for "vanguard" (前衛, ''zen'ei''), as in "vanguard of the communist revolution," happens to be the same word used for "avant-garde" as in the artistic avant-garde. The Japan Communist Party soon came to dominate the major art societies and exhibitions in Japan, and thus the predominant form of art in the immediate aftermath of the war was
socialist realism Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is ch ...
that depicted the suffering of the poor and the nobility of the working class, in line with Communist Party doctrine that all art should serve the purpose of advancing the cause of revolution. In 1952, the Communist Party even ordered artists such as Hiroshi Katsuragawa and other members of the newly formed Avant-Garde Art Association (前衛美術会, ''Zen'ei Bijutsukai'') out into the mountains to produce socialist realist art in support of "mountain guerrilla squads" that were attempting to foment a violent revolution in Japan.


The 1950s: Struggling to break free of socialist realism

Over the course of the 1950s, many Japanese artists became increasingly disillusioned with the rigid and limited definition of "art" enforced by the Communist Party. However, due to the ongoing preeminence of Communist Party members and supporters in the senior ranks of artistic societies and exhibition juries, artists found it extremely difficult to even show their art unless they conformed to the Party's guidelines. Some artists shied away from formal public exhibitions. Others sought recognition, financial support, and opportunities to show their art overseas, such as the
Gutai group The was a Japanese avant-garde artist group founded in the Hanshin region by young artists under the leadership of the painter Jirō Yoshihara in Ashiya, Japan, in 1954. The group, today one of the most internationally-recognized instances of ...
of conceptual artists, founded in 1954. Still other artists made use of the few unjuried, "independent" exhibitions in Japan, such as the Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition sponsored by the ''
Yomiuri Shinbun The (lit. ''Reading-selling Newspaper'' or ''Selling by Reading Newspaper'') is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five major newspapers in Japan; th ...
,'' which anyone could enter. A final straw came with the massive 1960 Anpo Protests against the
U.S.-Japan Security Treaty The , more commonly known as the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in English and as the or just in Japanese, is a treaty that permits the presence of U.S. military bases on Japanese soil, and commits the two nations to defend each other if one or th ...
(known as "
Anpo The , more commonly known as the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in English and as the or just in Japanese, is a treaty that permits the presence of U.S. military bases on Japanese soil, and commits the two nations to defend each other if one or th ...
" in Japanese"), due to the extremely passive role played by the supposedly "vanguard" Communist Party. When the protests failed to stop the treaty, a round of recriminations led to further disillusionment with the Communist Party and socialist realist art, causing many more artists to break away from the Party's influence.


The 1960s: An explosion of new genres

With the dominance of socialist realism fading, the 1960s witnessed an explosion of new art forms in Japan, as the arts expanded in new directions that might best be termed "postmodern." Artist collectives such as
Neo-Dada Organizers , often shortened to , was a short-lived but influential Japanese Neo-Dadaist art collective formed by Masunobu Yoshimura in 1960. Composed of a small group of young, up-and-coming artists who met periodically at Yoshimura's "White House" atelier i ...
, Zero Dimension, and Hi-Red Center explored concepts such as "non-art" and "anti-art," and conducted a variety of audacious "events," "happenings," and other forms of performance art designed to erode the boundaries between art and daily life. The Mono-ha group similarly pushed the boundaries dividing art, space, landscape, and the environment. Other artists, such as graphic designer
Tadanori Yokoo is a Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker and painter. Yokoo’s signature style of psychedelia and pastiche engages a wide span of modern visual and cultural phenomena from Japan and around the world. Career Tadanori Yokoo, bo ...
, drew inspiration from 1960s counterculture and the explosion of new forms of adult-oriented
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 ...
comics. In the performing arts, Tatsumi Hijikata pioneered a new form of postmodern dance called
Butoh is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founders ...
, and playwrights such as
Jūrō Kara is a Japanese avant-garde playwright, theatre director, author, actor, and songwriter. He was at the forefront of the ''Angura'' ("underground") theatre movement in Japan. Career Graduating from Meiji University, Kara formed his own theatre trou ...
and Satō Makoto created the
Angura , also known as the "Little Theater" (小劇場, ''shōgekijō'') movement, was a Japanese avant-garde theater movement in the 1960s and 1970s that reacted against the Bertolt Brecht, Brechtian modernism and formalist realism of postwar ''Shingeki ...
style of radical "underground" theater. And in photography, photographers such as
Daidō Moriyama is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine ''Provoke (magazine), Provoke''. Moriyama’s rough, unfettered photographic style makes use of sharply t ...
pioneered an extremely influential new school of postwar photography that emphasized spontaneity over carefully staged composition and celebrated the characteristics "''are, bure,
bokeh In photography, bokeh ( or ; ) is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image. Bokeh has also been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light". Differences in lens aberrations and ...
''" (literally "rough, blurred, out-of-focus"). The proliferation of new types of art was supported by the tremendous growth of Japan's economy in the 1960s, remembered as the "
Japanese economic miracle The Japanese economic miracle refers to Japan's record period of economic growth between the post-World War II era and the end of the Cold War. During the economic boom, Japan rapidly became the world's second-largest economy (after the Unit ...
." Over the course of the 1960s, the Japanese economy grew by over 10% per year. Rising wealth created a new class of consumers who could afford to spend money on art and support different types of art and artists. For the first time in Japan's modern history, it became viable for significant numbers of artists to make a living purely through selling their art. The 1960s construction boom in Japan, which leveled the old wood-and-paper traditional Japanese architecture and replaced it with sparkling mega-cities of glass and steel, helped inspire brand new schools of Japanese architecture, such as the
Metabolism (architecture) was a post-war Japanese architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural megastructures with those of organic biological growth. It had its first international exposure during CIAM's 1959 meeting and its ideas were tentatively tested ...
movement led by
Kenzō Tange was a Japanese architect, and winner of the 1987 Pritzker Prize for architecture. He was one of the most significant architects of the 20th century, combining traditional Japanese styles with modernism, and designed major buildings on five con ...
, that boldly broke free from conventional models and proved influential around the world. At the same time, however, the art world remained dominated by cliques that promoted the works of certain (usually male) artists over others. As it became much easier for Japanese to travel overseas in the 1960s, some female artists such as
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attribute ...
and
Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...
found better reception overseas, and decamped for artistic centers such as London, Paris, and New York, as did many male artists as well. The triumph of the new forms of Japanese art was cemented at the 1970 Osaka World's Fair, where dozens of avant-garde and conceptual artists were hired to design pavilions and artistic experiences for fair-goers. Japanese avant-garde art had gone global, and had become something even the conservative government was proud to display to the world.


The 1970s and 1980s: Riding the economic bubble

The 1970s and 1980s saw Japanese art continue in many of the directions begun in the 1950s and 1960s, but often with much bigger budgets and more expensive materials. As Japan's economy kept rapidly expanding, and eventually grew into one of the largest economic bubbles in history. With Japanese currency becoming incredibly strong in the wake of the 1985
Plaza Accord The Plaza Accord was a joint–agreement signed on September 22, 1985, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, between France, West Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to depreciate the U.S. dollar in relation to the French ...
, Japanese individuals and institutions became major players in the international art market. Extraordinarily wealthy Japanese mega-corporations began constructing their own private art museums and acquiring collections of modern and contemporary art, and Japanese artists greatly benefited from these expenditures as well. In particular, artistic production continued to trend away from traditional painting and sculpture in the direction of
graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...
, pop art,
wearable art Wearable art, also known as Artwear or "art to wear", refers to art pieces in the shape of clothing or jewellery pieces. These pieces are usually handmade, and are produced only once or as a very limited series. Pieces of clothing are often made w ...
,
performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...
,
conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...
, and
installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...
. Various types of "hybrid" art increasingly came into vogue. As technology advanced, artists increasingly incorporated electronics, video, computers, synthesized music and sounds, and video games into their art. The aesthetics of manga and
anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
, which so many younger artists had grown up immersed in, exerted an increasing if sometimes quite subtle influence. Above all, artists eschewed anything redolent of "high art" or "fine art" in favor of the personal, the eclectic, the fantastic or phantasmagoric, and the playful. In edition, female artists such as
Mika Yoshizawa Mika is a given name, a nickname and a surname. Notable people and fictional characters with the name include: People known just as Mika * Mika (singer) (born 1983), Lebanese-born British singer-songwriter Michael Penniman, Jr. * Mika (footbal ...
became more and more accepted and supported by the art world in Japan.


Contemporary art in Japan

Japanese contemporary art takes as many forms and expresses as many different ideas as worldwide contemporary art in general. It ranges from advertisements, anime, video games, and architecture as already mentioned, to sculpture, painting, and drawing in all their myriad forms. Japanese artists have made especially notable contributions to global contemporary art in the fields of architecture, video games, graphic design, fashion, and perhaps above all, animation. While
anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
at first were derived primarily from manga stories, diverse anime abounds today, and many artists and studios have risen to great fame as artists;
Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and manga artist. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and creator of Japanese animated feature films, and is widel ...
and the artists and animators of
Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio headquartered in Koganei, Tokyo."Studio Ghibli Collection - Madman Entertainment". ''Studio Ghibli Collection - Madman Entertainment''. Retrieved 2020-12-14. It is best known for its animated feature films, and ha ...
are generally regarded to be among the best the anime world has to offer. At the same time, many Japanese artists continue to use traditional Japanese artistic techniques and materials inherited from premodern times, such as traditional forms of Japanese paper and ceramics and painting with black and color ink on paper or silk. Some of these artworks depict traditional subject matters in traditional styles, while others explore new and different motifs and styles, or create hybrids of traditional and contemporary art forms, while using traditional media or materials. Still others eschew native media and styles, embracing Western oil paints or any number of other forms. In sculpture, the same holds true; some artists stick to the traditional modes, some doing it with a modern flair, and some choose Western or brand new modes, styles, and media.
Yo Akiyama ''Yo'' is a slang interjection, commonly associated with North American English. It was popularized by the Italian-American community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the 1940s. Although often used as a greeting and often deployed at the ...
is just one of many modern Japanese sculptors. He works primarily in clay pottery and ceramics, creating works that are very simple and straightforward, looking like they were created out of the earth itself. Another sculptor, using iron and other modern materials, built a large modern art sculpture in the Israeli port city of
Haifa Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...
, called ''Hanabi'' (Fireworks).
Nahoko Kojima (born October 2, 1981) is a contemporary Japanese paper cut artist. She started Kirie (Japanese Papercutting) under private tutelage at the age of 5 and continued throughout her formative years. In 1999 she moved to Tokyo and in 2004 she gradu ...
is a contemporary Kirie artist who has pioneered the technique of Paper Cut Sculpture which hangs in 3D.
Takashi Murakami is a Japanese contemporary artist. He works in fine arts media (such as painting and sculpture) as well as commercial (such as fashion, merchandise, and animation) and is known for blurring the line between high and low arts as well as co ae ...
is arguably one of the most well-known Japanese modern artists in the Western world. Murakami and the other artists in his studio create pieces in a style, inspired by anime, which he has dubbed "
superflat Superflat is a postmodern art movement, founded by the artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. However, superflat doesn't have an explicit definition because Takashi Murakami does not want to limit the movement, but rather ...
". His pieces take a multitude of forms, from painting to sculpture, some truly massive in size. But most if not all show very clearly this anime influence, utilizing bright colors and simplified details.
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attribute ...
,
Yoshitomo Nara is a Japanese artist. He lives and works in Nasushiobara, Tochigi Prefecture, though his artwork has been exhibited worldwide. Nara has had nearly 40 solo exhibitions since 1984. His art work has been housed at the MoMA and the Los Angeles Coun ...
,
Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer and architect. He leads the Tokyo-based architectural firm New Material Research Laboratory. Early life and education Hiroshi Sugimoto was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. He reportedly took his earliest photographs ...
,
Chiharu Shiota (born 1972) is a Japanese performance and installation artist. Educated in Japan, Australia, and Germany, Shiota interweaves materiality and the psychic perception of the space to explore ideas around the body and flesh, personal narratives t ...
,
Daidō Moriyama is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine ''Provoke (magazine), Provoke''. Moriyama’s rough, unfettered photographic style makes use of sharply t ...
, Mariko Mori,
Aya Takano is a Japanese painter, Superflat artist, manga artist, and science fiction essayist. Aya Takano is represented by Kaikai Kiki, the artistic production studio created in 2001 by Takashi Murakami. Early life and influence Takano was born in Sa ...
, and
Tabaimo Ayako Tabata (born 1975), also known under her artist name Tabaimo, is a contemporary Japan, Japanese artist. She combines hand-drawn images and digital manipulation to create large scale animations which evoke traditional Japanese woodblock prints ...
are considered significant artists in the field of contemporary Japanese art. The Group 1965, an artists' collective, counts contemporary artist
Makoto Aida is a Japanese contemporary artist known for his provocative works of manga, painting, video, photography, sculpture, and installation. Though less well known internationally than Takashi Murakami or Yoshitomo Nara, he is recognized in Japan as ...
among its members.


Performing arts

Many traditional forms of Japanese music, dance, and theater have survived in the contemporary world, enjoying some popularity through reidentification with Japanese cultural values. Traditional music and dance, which trace their origins to ancient religious use—
Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
,
Shintō Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shintoist ...
, and
folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fol ...
—have been preserved in the dramatic performances of
Noh is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Developed by Kan'ami and his son Zeami, it is the oldest major theatre art that is still regularly performed today. Although the terms Noh and ' ...
,
Kabuki is a classical form of Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily-stylised performances, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. Kabuki is thought to ...
, and
bunraku (also known as ) is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theatre, founded in Osaka in the beginning of the 17th century, which is still performed in the modern day. Three kinds of performers take part in a performance: the or ( puppeteers ...
theater. Ancient court music and dance forms deriving from continental sources were preserved through Imperial household musicians and temple and shrine troupes. Some of the oldest musical instruments in the world have been in continuous use in Japan from the
Jōmon period The is the time in Japanese history, traditionally dated between   6,000–300 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united through a common Jōmon culture, which reached a c ...
, as shown by finds of stone and clay
flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
s and
zither Zithers (; , from the Greek word ''cithara'') are a class of stringed instruments. Historically, the name has been applied to any instrument of the psaltery family, or to an instrument consisting of many strings stretched across a thin, flat bo ...
s having between two and four strings, to which
Yayoi period The started at the beginning of the Neolithic in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age, and towards its end crossed into the Iron Age. Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that a period previously classified as a transition from the Jōmon p ...
metal bells and
gong A gongFrom Indonesian and ms, gong; jv, ꦒꦺꦴꦁ ; zh, c=鑼, p=luó; ja, , dora; km, គង ; th, ฆ้อง ; vi, cồng chiêng; as, কাঁহ is a percussion instrument originating in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Gongs ...
s were added to create early musical ensembles. By the early historical period (6th to 7th centuries), there were a variety of large and small
drum The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...
s, gongs,
chimes Tubular bells (also known as chimes) are musical instruments in the percussion family. Their sound resembles that of church bells, carillon, or a bell tower; the original tubular bells were made to duplicate the sound of church bells within a ...
, flutes, and stringed instruments, such as the imported mandolin-like
biwa The is a Japanese short-necked wooden lute traditionally used in narrative storytelling. The is a plucked string instrument that first gained popularity in China before spreading throughout East Asia, eventually reaching Japan sometime duri ...
and the flat six-stringed zither, which evolved into the thirteen-stringed
koto Koto may refer to: * Koto (band), an Italian synth pop group * Koto (instrument), a Japanese musical instrument * Koto (kana), a ligature of two Japanese katakana * Koto (traditional clothing), a traditional dress made by Afro-Surinamese women * K ...
. These instruments formed the orchestras for the 7th-century continentally derived ceremonial court music ( gagaku), which, together with the accompanying
bugaku is a Japanese traditional dance that has been performed to select elites, mostly in the Japanese imperial court, for over twelve hundred years. In this way, it has been known only to the nobility, although after World War II, the dance was ope ...
(a type of court dance), are the most ancient of such forms still performed at the Imperial court, ancient temples, and shrines.
Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
introduced the rhythmic chants, still used, that underpin
Shigin is a performance of reciting a Japanese poem or a Chinese poem read in Japanese, each poem ( ''shi'') usually chanted ( ''gin'') by an individual or in a group. Reciting can be done loudly before a large audience, softly to a few friends, or ...
, and that were joined with native ideas to underlay the development of vocal music, such as in
Noh is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Developed by Kan'ami and his son Zeami, it is the oldest major theatre art that is still regularly performed today. Although the terms Noh and ' ...
.


Aesthetic concepts

Japanese art is characterized by unique polarities. In the ceramics of the prehistoric periods, for example, exuberance was followed by disciplined and refined artistry. Another instance is provided by two 16th-century structures that are poles apart: the
Katsura Detached Palace The , or Katsura Detached Palace, is an Imperial residence with associated gardens and outbuildings in the western suburbs of Kyoto, Japan. Located on the western bank of the Katsura River in Katsura, Nishikyō-ku, the Villa is 8km distant f ...
is an exercise in simplicity, with an emphasis on natural materials, rough and untrimmed, and an affinity for beauty achieved by accident;
Nikkō Tōshō-gū is a Tōshō-gū Shinto shrine located in Nikkō, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. Together with Futarasan Shrine and Rinnō-ji, it forms the Shrines and Temples of Nikkō UNESCO World Heritage Site, with 42 structures of the shrine included in t ...
is a rigidly symmetrical structure replete with brightly colored relief carvings covering every visible surface. Japanese art, valued not only for its simplicity but also for its colorful exuberance, has considerably influenced 19th-century Western painting and 20th-century Western architecture. Japan's aesthetic conceptions, deriving from diverse cultural traditions, have been formative in the production of unique art forms. Over the centuries, a wide range of artistic motifs developed and were refined, becoming imbued with symbolic significance. Like a
pearl A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...
, they acquired many layers of meaning and a high luster. Japanese aesthetics provide a key to understanding artistic works perceivably different from those coming from Western traditions. Within the East Asian artistic tradition,
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
has been the acknowledged teacher and Japan the devoted student. Nevertheless, several Japanese arts developed their own style, which can be differentiated from various Chinese arts. The monumental, symmetrically balanced, rational approach of Chinese art forms became miniaturized, irregular, and subtly suggestive in Japanese hands. Miniature
rock gardens A rock garden, also known as a rockery and formerly as a rockwork, is a garden, or more often a part of a garden, with a landscaping framework of rocks, stones, and gravel, with planting appropriate to this setting. Usually these are small A ...
, diminutive plants (''
bonsai Bonsai ( ja, 盆栽, , tray planting, ) is the Japanese art of growing and training miniature trees in pots, developed from the traditional Chinese art form of ''penjing''. Unlike ''penjing'', which utilizes traditional techniques to produce ...
''), and ''
ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arrangement. It is also known as . The tradition dates back to Heian period, when floral offerings were made at altars. Later, flower arrangements were instead used to adorn the (alcove) of a traditional Japan ...
'' (flower arrangements), in which the selected few represented a garden, were the favorite pursuits of refined aristocrats for a millennium, and they have remained a part of contemporary cultural life. The diagonal, reflecting a natural flow, rather than the fixed triangle, became the favored structural device, whether in painting, architectural or garden design, dance steps, or musical notations. Odd numbers replace even numbers in the regularity of a Chinese master pattern, and a pull to one side allows a motif to turn the corner of a three-dimensional object, thus giving continuity and motion that is lacking in a static frontal design. Japanese painters used the devices of the cutoff, close-up, and fade-out by the 12th century in ''
yamato-e is a style of Japanese painting inspired by Tang dynasty paintings and fully developed by the late Heian period. It is considered the classical Japanese style. From the Muromachi period (15th century), the term Yamato-e has been used to distingui ...
'', or Japanese-style, scroll painting, perhaps one reason why modern filmmaking has been such a natural and successful art form in Japan. Suggestion is used rather than direct statement; oblique poetic hints and allusive and inconclusive melodies and thoughts have proved frustrating to the Westerner trying to penetrate the meanings of literature, music, painting, and even everyday language. The Japanese began defining such aesthetic ideas in a number of evocative phrases by at least the 10th or 11th century. The courtly refinements of the aristocratic Heian period evolved into the elegant simplicity seen as the essence of good taste in the understated art that is called ''
shibui ''Shibui'' (渋い) (adjective), ''shibumi'' (渋み) (noun), or ''shibusa'' (渋さ) (noun) are Japanese words that refer to a particular aesthetic of simple, subtle, and unobtrusive beauty. Like other Japanese aesthetics terms, such as '' iki'' ...
''. Two terms originating from
Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
Buddhist meditative practices describe degrees of tranquility: one, the repose found in humble melancholy ('' wabi''), the other, the serenity accompanying the enjoyment of subdued beauty ('' sabi''). Zen thought also contributed a penchant for combining the unexpected or startling, used to jolt one's consciousness toward the goal of enlightenment. In art, this approach was expressed in combinations of such unlikely materials as lead inlaid in lacquer and in clashing poetic imagery. Unexpectedly humorous and sometimes grotesque images and motifs also stem from the Zen ''
kōan A (; , ; ko, 화두, ; vi, công án) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and to practice or test a student's progress in Zen. Etymology The Japanese term is the Sino-J ...
'' (conundrum). Although the arts have been mainly secular since the
Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...
, traditional aesthetics and training methods, stemming generally from religious sources, continue to underlie artistic productions.


Modern concepts

Modern Japanese art is often heavily influenced by the nation's unique relationship with
technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
, frequently marrying traditional forms and concepts with new aesthetics and anxieties of the technological present, as well as being heavily influenced by the nation's varied economic history following the Second World War. Modern Japanese art engages heavily with themes of isolation and
depersonalization Depersonalization can consist of a detachment within the self, regarding one's mind or body, or being a detached observer of oneself. Subjects feel they have changed and that the world has become vague, dreamlike, less real, lacking in significa ...
, as well as the growing power and influence of digital technologies and the degree to which Japanese culture is affected by and exerts influence on an increasingly
globalized Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...
and interconnected world. As Japan was one of the first nations to be connected to the Internet on a large scale and one of the first countries to adopt widespread cellphone use, Japanese art was among the first forms of art to critically evaluate the dramatic social effects that ubiquitous connectivity have had on society. Conversely, the amount of Japanese art distributed on the Internet meant that Japanese art and aesthetics, including mass-culture art such as
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 ...
and
anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
, were enormously influential on
Internet culture Internet culture is a culture based on the many way people have used computer networks and their use for communication, entertainment, business, and recreation. Some features of Internet culture include online communities, gaming, and social medi ...
throughout the 1990's and 2000's, an influence that is not only still felt today, but also encouraged Japanese artists to continue to critically explore the nature of online life. Japanese art has also been influenced by the increasing role of the nation's mass-culture art in global pop culture. Manga, anime, video games, mass market movies and associated cultural products have continued to become larger and more influential within the world of Japanese art since the 1970's, and themes expressed in these works have often mirrored the nation's current anxieties. The aesthetic language and conventions of these media have increasingly come to represent the totality of Japanese art and culture abroad as well; the aesthetic of ''
kawaii ''Kawaii'' is the culture of cuteness in Japan. It can refer to items, humans and non-humans that are charming, vulnerable, shy and childlike.Kerr, Hui-Ying (23 November 2016)"What is kawaii – and why did the world fall for the ‘cult of cu ...
'', for example, originally was derived from traditional concepts within Japanese art dating back to the 15th century, but was explored within popular manga and anime series in postwar Japan, and today is commonly seen as central to contemporary Japanese culture. File:Moe-Manga-pic.GIF, A drawing style common in manga. In recent decades, manga has not only become globally popular, but now also defines a key Japanese aesthetic. Over time, the art styles commonly found in manga have shifted in response to artistic evolutions. File:Kawaii Fashion.jpg, Kawaii fashion found in Tokyo. Popular among youth subcultures in the early 2000's, kawaii fashion rapidly differentiated into a number of aesthetic subcultures, including
lolita fashion is a subculture from Japan that is highly influenced by Victorian fashion, Victorian clothing and styles from the Rococo period. A very distinctive property of Lolita fashion is the aesthetic of Kawaii, cuteness. This clothing subculture can ...
. File:Osaka Kawaii à Japan Expo 2014 (14692703962).jpg, "Osaka Kawaii" exhibit at Japan Expo 2014. Japan has attempted to use the popularity of Japanese art to bolster the nation's
soft power In politics (and particularly in international politics), soft power is the ability to co-opt rather than coerce (contrast hard power). In other words, soft power involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction. A defin ...
through initiatives such as
Cool Japan refers to the aspects of Japanese culture that non-Japanese people perceive as "cool". The Cool Japan strategy is part of Japan's overall brand strategy, aiming to disseminate Japan's attractiveness and allure to the world. The target of Cool Ja ...
. File:703shf3.jpg, A Japanese
flip phone The flip phone or clamshell is a form factor of a mobile phone or other device which is in two or more sections that fold via a hinge. If the hinge is on a long edge the device is more likely to be called clamshell than flip phone (e.g., No ...
typical of the 2000's with phone charms. These phones and charms were symbolic of youth culture in the early
Heisei era The is the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Emeritus Akihito from 8 January 1989 until his abdication on 30 April 2019. The Heisei era started on 8 January 1989, the day after the death of the Emperor Hirohito, ...
, and remained prevalent in Japan long after the advent of the
smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
made flip phones obsolete elsewhere. File:Hatsune Miku - Tell Your World (Live @ Anime Friends 2017).webm, A hologram of
Hatsune Miku , also called Miku Hatsune, and officially code-named CV01, is a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media and its official moe anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic mascot character, a 16-year-old girl with long, turquoise bu ...
performs in concert. Originally developed as a voice synthesizer, Miku became emblematic of
kawaii ''Kawaii'' is the culture of cuteness in Japan. It can refer to items, humans and non-humans that are charming, vulnerable, shy and childlike.Kerr, Hui-Ying (23 November 2016)"What is kawaii – and why did the world fall for the ‘cult of cu ...
culture, questions about artificiality, the growth of
grassroots A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...
music production and the changing nature of the artist. File:Kizuna AI - SCP Foundation.png,
Kizuna Ai is a Japanese virtual YouTuber (VTuber) currently part of Kizuna AI Inc., a subsidiary of digital entertainment company Activ8. From her debut in 2016 until 2021, she was the most subscribed VTuber on Youtube, with more than 4 million subsc ...
, the first large-scale
VTuber A , or , is an online entertainer who uses a virtual avatar generated using computer graphics. Real-time motion capture software or technology are often—but not always—used to capture movement. The digital trend originated in Japan in the mid- ...
, a virtual anime-inspired character portrayed in real time by an actor through the use of motion tracking software. VTubers became popular in Japan in the mid-2010's, before rapidly growing in popularity worldwide. File:朝日奈央、番組中に童貞と”ガチ”喧嘩!チュートリアル徳井が「それじゃ抱けねぇ」と思わず制止!-| 傷ついた女性を慰めるDT.webm, Ado, a Japanese artist who produced the song '' Ussewa!'', which criticizes contemporary Japanese culture and expresses anxiety regarding economic uncertainty, instability and social stagnation. File:Sword Art Online anime logo.svg, ''
Sword Art Online is a Japanese light novel series written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by abec. The series takes place in the then-near future and focuses on protagonists Kirito (Sword Art Online), Kazuto "Kirito" Kirigaya and Asuna (Sword Art On ...
'' was the first widely successful ''
isekai is a Japanese genre of speculative fiction—both portal fantasy and science fiction are included. It includes novels, light novels, films, manga, anime and video games that revolve around a person or people who are transported to and have to ...
'' anime, a genre of
speculative fiction Speculative fiction is a term that has been used with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) meanings. The broadest interpretation is as a category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, na ...
in which the protagonist is sent to another (usually fantasy) world. During the later 2010's, isekai, which engages with themes such as depersonalization, impermanance and interconnectedness, became one of the most popular genres in Japan.


Traditional aesthetics

Traditional Japanese Aesthetics are forms of beauty in Japanese culture that derive from the earliest centuries. At least over two-hundred years ago. Some of these early aesthetics make up the Japanese Aesthetic as a whole: Syncretic Buddhist Art, Wabi-Sabi, Miyabi, Shibui, and Jo-ha-Kyu.


Syncretic Buddhist art

See
Japanese Buddhist architecture Examples of Buddhist architecture in Japan Japanese Buddhist architecture is the architecture of Buddhist temples in Japan, consisting of locally developed variants of architectural styles born in China.p=716/ref> After Buddhism arrived from ...
.


Wabi-Sabi

This aesthetic in Japanese culture is known for many things such as beauty in all things, even those that are imperfect. Modesty and unconventional things are what are seen as the wabi-sabi aesthetic. Wabi and sabi both make up the aesthetic of beauty in incompleteness together. When separated, both serve as differing terms. Wabi stands for fresh, simple work, denoting all complication and having a very rustic feel to all it relates too. Being made from nature and made from man itself in a tandem. If made by accident, it brings about a certain uniqueness to the work. Sabi is beauty and how it originates from age. The cycle of life plays a great role in sabi, adding to the aesthetic that sense of beauty in works that receive mending damage from aging over time. When bringing wabi and sabi together, it creates the aesthetic that every simple piece developed does not require a complicated design. Nor does it require absolute completeness for beauty to be found in it, and with age comes more delicate beauty. Wabi-sabi has always been related to tea ceremonies in Japanese culture. It is said that these ceremonies are profound wabi-sabi events. Wabi-sabi is also related to activities such as architecture, fashion, and philosophy. All of these portions of wabi-sabi all share belief in the same theme: all imperfections such as incomplete work holds undeniable beauty. However, not everyone, of course, favors the idea behind wabi-sabi. While this is true, there are many who wish to keep the belief alive despite what others believe. Overall, wabi-sabi seems to be a very mindful approach to everyday life. A calm way to see things, and a way to live without coming off as judgmental. When understanding wabi-sabi, there are terms that strongly relate to the aesthetic as well. :Fukinsei: asymmetry, irregularity. :Kanso: simplicity. :Koko: basic, weathered. :Shizen: without pretense, natural. :Yugen: subtly profound grace, not obvious. :Datsuzoku: unbounded by convention, free. :Seijaku: tranquility, silence. Each of these terms are used to break down the complete understanding of wabi-sabi. It more so relates to the philosophy aspect of the entire aesthetic and how to view one's surroundings. These can allude to several things including the ideas in humans, the themes behind certain aspects of life, or nature itself. Each term leads back to the point that wabi-sabi is an aesthetic that is about appreciating the small things that are imperfect and or incomplete.


Miyabi

In the ongoing history of Japan, miyabi can stand for many things. However, it seems to be centered around the concept of elegance, beauty, refinement, and courtliness. For this, it is one of the older aesthetics among most of the Japanese aesthetics in the culture. That would explain why it is not as popular as the rest which may be newer compared to miyabi. It is a term that is also used to express aristocratic culture. Miyabi eliminates all forms of rudeness and crudity from the culture. This brings about the proper picture and form of aristocratic culture. Miyabi brings about these changes. Miyabi ensures that refinement of love, literature, feeling, and art is celebrated within the Japanese culture. Refinement is welcomed.


Shibui

Shibui is coming to understand an object or an art piece for what it is. Locating simple and subtle beauty in certain things is a goal when it comes to designing or reviewing certain designs. In many ways, shibui is very similar to wabi-sabi but is not wabi-sabi. Shibui appreciates items and objects for simply being. There is no complication or irrational thinking when it comes down to shibui. Akin to certain aesthetics in the Japanese culture, there are a couple of terms in relation to Shibui: shibumi is the taste of shibui; Shibusa is the state of shibui. Both these terms relate to subtle, unobtrusive beauty. There are several items and objects that can be considered a part of the shibui aesthetic, not just art or fashion. It can also be people, animals, songs, movies, several different types of media can be seen as shibui. For example, a pair of shoes, a camera, a moped bike, and several different pieces of art or objects used for everyday activity can be seen as shibui. Direct and simple is the way of shibui. Nothing over the top or too flashy.


Jo-ha-kyu

This is an aesthetic that originated from the Noh Theatre and even appeared in the 14th century. It is used in different art forms in Japan even still today. It is a movement that has been applied in several different arts with jo, ha, and kyu standing for individual things to make up its definition: jo, 'beginning'; ha, 'break', 'crack'; kyu: 'rapid', 'over' Essentially, what this aesthetic means is that when it comes down to pieces that deal with movement, things should start slowly with proper build-up. Almost akin to how a story is told. Then once it reaches its climax, it speeds up. When it reaches its end, then that is when things begin to rapidly speed up until all of a sudden it has reached an ending.


Artists

Traditionally, the artist was a vehicle for expression and was personally reticent, in keeping with the role of an artisan or entertainer of low social status. The
calligrapher Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "t ...
, a member of the
Confucian Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a Religious Confucianism, religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, ...
literati class, or
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 in Japan, had a higher status, while artists of great genius were often recognized in the
Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...
by receiving a name from a feudal lord and thus rising socially. The performing arts, however, were generally held in less esteem, and the purported immorality of actresses of the early
Kabuki is a classical form of Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily-stylised performances, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. Kabuki is thought to ...
theater caused the Tokugawa government to bar women from the stage; female roles in Kabuki and Noh thereafter were played by men. After the
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, artists typically gathered in arts associations, some of which were long-established professional societies while others reflected the latest arts movement. The Japan Artists League, for example, was responsible for the largest number of major exhibitions, including the prestigious annual Nitten ( Japan Art Exhibition). The
PEN Club PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous Internation ...
of Japan (PEN stands for prose, essay, and narrative), a branch of an international writers' organization, was the largest of some thirty major authors' associations. Actors, dancers, musicians, and other performing artists boasted their own societies, including the Kabuki Society, organized in 1987 to maintain this art's traditional high standards, which were thought to be endangered by modern innovation. By the 1980s, however, avant-garde painters and sculptors had eschewed all groups and were "unattached" artists.


Art schools

There are a number of specialized universities for the arts in Japan, led by the national universities. The most important is the
Tokyo Arts University 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 ...
, one of the most difficult of all national universities to enter. Another seminal center is
Tama Art University or is a private art university located in Tokyo, Japan. It is known as one of the top art schools in Japan. History The forerunner of Tamabi was Tama Imperial Art School (多摩帝国美術学校, Tama Teikoku Bijutsu Gakkō) founded in 1935. ...
, which produced many of Japan's late 20th-century innovative young artists. Traditional training in the arts, derived from Chinese traditional methods, remains; experts teach from their homes or head schools working within a master-pupil relationship. A pupil does not experiment with a personal style until achieving the highest level of training, or graduating from an arts school, or becoming head of a school. Many young artists have criticized this system as stifling creativity and individuality. A new generation of the
avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
has broken with this tradition, often receiving its training in the West. In the traditional arts, however, the master-pupil system preserves the secrets and skills of the past. Some master-pupil lineages can be traced to the Kamakura period, from which they continue to use a great master's style or theme. Japanese artists consider technical virtuosity as the ''
sine qua non ''Sine qua non'' (, ) or ''condicio sine qua non'' (plural: ''condiciones sine quibus non'') is an indispensable and essential action, condition, or ingredient. It was originally a Latin legal term for " conditionwithout which it could not be" ...
'' of their professions, a fact recognized by the rest of the world as one of the hallmarks of Japanese art. The national government has actively supported the arts through the
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 ...
, set up in 1968 as a special body of the
Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...
. The agency's budget for FY 1989 rose to ¥37.8 billion after five years of budget cuts, but still represented much less than 1 percent of the general budget. The agency's Cultural Affairs Division disseminated information about the arts within Japan and internationally, and the
Cultural Properties Protection Division Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
(文化財保護部, now 文化財部) protected the nation's cultural heritage. The Cultural Affairs Division is concerned with such areas as art and culture promotion, arts copyrights, and improvements in the
national language A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the te ...
. It also supports both national and local arts and cultural festivals, and it funds traveling cultural events in music, theater, dance, art exhibitions, and filmmaking. Special prizes are offered to encourage young artists and established practitioners, and some grants are given each year to enable them to train abroad. The agency funds national museums of modern art in Kyoto and Tokyo and
The National Museum of Western Art The is the premier public art gallery in Japan specializing in art from the Western tradition. The museum is in the museum and zoo complex in Ueno Park in Taitō, central Tokyo. It received 1,162,345 visitors in 2016. History The NMWA was ...
in Tokyo, which exhibit both Japanese and international shows. The agency also supports the
Japan Art Academy is the highest-ranking official artistic organization in Japan. It is established as an extraordinary organ of the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁, Bunkacho) in the thirty-first article of the law establishing the Ministry of Ed ...
, which honors eminent persons of arts and letters, appointing them to membership and offering ¥3.5 million in prize money. Awards are made in the presence of the
Emperor An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...
, who personally bestows the highest accolade, the
Order of Culture The is a Japanese order, established on February 11, 1937. The order has one class only, and may be awarded to men and women for contributions to Japan's art, literature, science, technology, or anything related to culture in general; recipient ...
. Tokyo University of the Arts also taking active roles on several art events in previous years. Their other campuses are also involving varied courses.


Private sponsorship and foundations

Arts patronage and promotion by the government are broadened to include a new cooperative effort with corporate Japan to provide funding beyond the tight budget of the Agency for Cultural Affairs. Many other public and private institutions participate, especially in the burgeoning field of awarding arts prizes. A growing number of large corporations join major newspapers in sponsoring exhibitions and performances and in giving yearly prizes. The most important of the many literary awards given are the venerable
Naoki Prize The Naoki Prize, officially , is a Japanese literary award presented biannually. It was created in 1935 by Kikuchi Kan, then editor of the ''Bungeishunjū'' magazine, and named in memory of novelist Naoki Sanjugo. Sponsored by the Society for the ...
and the
Akutagawa Prize The is a Japanese literary award presented biannually. Because of its prestige and the considerable attention the winner receives from the media, it is, along with the Naoki Prize, one of Japan's most sought after literary prizes. History The ...
, the latter being the equivalent of the
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
in the United States. In 1989 an effort to promote cross-cultural exchange led to the establishment of a Japanese "
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
" for the arts, the Premium Imperiale, by the
Japan Art Association The Japan Art Association is a Japanese art organization. Its predecessor was Ryuchikai, which was formed in 1879 (Meiji 12). History The Ryuchikai side, which felt a sense of crisis about the reform movement of the Kangakai, deepened its relat ...
. This prize of US$100,000 was funded largely by the mass media conglomerate
Fujisankei Communications Group , abbreviated FCG, is a keiretsu in Japan. In 1991, it was the fourth-largest media company in the world and the largest one in Japan. In the same year, the company's yearly revenue was $5 billion. Many of its affiliates are owned by Fuji Med ...
and was awarded on a worldwide selection basis. A number of foundations promoting the arts arose in the 1980s, including the Cultural Properties Foundation set up to preserve historic sites overseas, especially along the
Silk Road The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...
in
Inner Asia Inner Asia refers to the northern and landlocked regions spanning North, Central and East Asia. It includes parts of western and northeast China, as well as southern Siberia. The area overlaps with some definitions of 'Central Asia', mostly the h ...
and at
Dunhuang Dunhuang () is a county-level city in Northwestern Gansu Province, Western China. According to the 2010 Chinese census, the city has a population of 186,027, though 2019 estimates put the city's population at about 191,800. Dunhuang was a major ...
in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
. Another international arrangement was made in 1988 with the United States
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
for cooperative exchange of high-technology studies of Asian artifacts. The government plays a major role by funding the
Japan Foundation The was established in 1972 by an Act of the National Diet as a special legal entity to undertake international dissemination of Japanese culture, and became an Independent Administrative Institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry o ...
, which provides both institutional and individual grants, effects scholarly exchanges, awards annual prizes, supported publications and exhibitions, and sends traditional Japanese arts groups to perform abroad. The Arts Festival held for two months each fall for all the performing arts is sponsored by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. Major cities also provides substantial support for the arts; a growing number of cities in the 1980s had built large centers for the performing arts and, stimulated by government funding, were offering prizes such as the Lafcadio Hearn Prize initiated by the city of
Matsue is the capital city of Shimane Prefecture, Japan, located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. The city has an estimated population of 202,008 (February 1, 2021) following the merger with Higashiizumo from Yatsuka District. Matsue is located ...
. A number of new municipal museums were also providing about one-third more facilities in the 1980s than were previously available. In the late 1980s,
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 ...
added more than twenty new cultural halls, notably, the large
Bunkamura The is a concert hall, theater and museum located in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, operated by Tokyu Group. Venues The four main venues are: * Orchard Hall: 2,150 seats * Theatre Cocoon: 747 seats *The Museum - Changing art exhibits *Le Cinèma: mov ...
built by
Tokyu Group The is a railway keiretsu whose parent company is the Tokyu Corporation railway company, which links Tokyo and its suburbs. Many companies in the group are designed to enhance the value of the Tokyu rail network. In addition to the railroad syst ...
and the reconstruction of
Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's Globe Theatre. All these efforts reflect a rising popular enthusiasm for the arts. Japanese art buyers swept the Western art markets in the late 1980s, paying record highs for
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 ...
paintings and US$51.7 million alone for one blue period
Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
.


See also

* National Treasures of Japan *
List of National Treasures of Japan (crafts-others) The term "National Treasures of Japan, National Treasure" has been used in Japan to denote Cultural Properties of Japan, cultural properties since 1897, although the definition and the criteria have changed since the introduction of the term. Th ...
*
Culture of Japan The culture of Japan has changed greatly over the millennia, from the country's prehistoric Jōmon period, to its contemporary modern culture, which absorbs influences from Asia and other regions of the world. Historical overview The ance ...
** Eastern art history **
History of painting The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts and artwork created by pre-historic artists, and spans all cultures. It represents a continuous, though periodically disrupted, tradition from Antiquity. Across cultures, continents, and ...
**
Buddhist art Buddhist art is visual art produced in the context of Buddhism. It includes depictions of Gautama Buddha and other Buddhas and bodhisattvas, notable Buddhist figures both historical and mythical, narrative scenes from their lives, mandalas, an ...
*** Buddhist art in Japan **
Japanese architecture has been typified by wooden structures, elevated slightly off the ground, with tiled or thatched roofs. Sliding doors (''fusuma'') and other traditional partitions were used in place of walls, allowing the internal configuration of a space to ...
**
Japanese garden are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden desig ...
**
Japanese calligraphy also called is a form of calligraphy, or artistic writing, of the Japanese language. Written Japanese was originally based on Chinese characters only, but the advent of the hiragana and katakana Japanese syllabaries resulted in intrin ...
**
Japanese lacquerware is a Japanese craft with a wide range of fine and decorative arts, as lacquer has been used in '' urushi-e'', prints, and on a wide variety of objects from Buddha statues to ''bento'' boxes for food. The characteristic of Japanese lacquerwar ...
**
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 ...
**
Japanese pottery and porcelain , is one of the oldest Japanese crafts and art forms, dating back to the Neolithic period. Kilns have produced earthenware, pottery, stoneware, glazed pottery, glazed stoneware, porcelain, and blue-and-white ware. Japan has an exceptionally ...
**
Japanese sculpture Sculpture in Japan began with the clay figure. Towards the end of the long Neolithic Jōmon period, some pottery vessels were "flame-rimmed" with extravagant extensions to the rim that can only be called sculptural, and very stylized pottery dog ...
**
Japanese theater This article is an overview of traditional and modern Japanese theatre. Traditional Japanese theatre is among the oldest theatre traditions in the world. Traditional theatre includes Noh, a spiritual drama, and its comic accompaniment ; kabuki, a ...
**
Woodblock printing in Japan Woodblock printing in Japan (, ''mokuhanga'') is a technique best known for its use in the ''ukiyo-e'' artistic genre of single sheets, but it was also used for printing books in the same period. Widely adopted in Japan during the Edo period (160 ...
*
List of collections of Japanese art Japanese art is collected by museums, galleries and private collectors in many countries around the world. See also * List of museums of Asian art * List of museums References

{{reflist Japanese art, Collections Lists of art museums ...
*Art Galleries **Japan ***
Tokyo National Museum The or TNM is an art museum in Ueno Park in the Taitō ward of Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the four museums operated by the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage ( :ja:国立文化財機構), is considered the oldest national museum in Japan, ...
, est. 1872 ***
Kyoto National Museum The is one of the major art museums in Japan. Located in Kyoto's Higashiyama ward, the museum focuses on pre-modern Japanese and Asian art. History The Kyoto National Museum, then the Imperial Museum of Kyoto, was proposed, along with the Impe ...
, est. 1889 ***
Nara National Museum The is one of the pre-eminent national art museums in Japan. Introduction The Nara National Museum is located in Nara, which was the capital of Japan from 710 to 784. Katayama Tōkuma (1854–1917) designed the original building, which is a r ...
, est. 1889 ***
Kyushu National Museum The opened on October 16, 2005 in Dazaifu near Fukuoka—the first new national museum in Japan in over 100 years, and the first to elevate the focus on history over art.Japan National Tourist Organization Museum "focuses on history."/ref> The ...
, est. 2005 **United States ***
Freer Gallery of Art The Freer Gallery of Art is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. focusing on Asian art. The Freer and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and Sac ...
, est. 1923 ***
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 ...
* Japanese artists category *
Musha-e Musha-e () is a type a Japanese art that was developed in the late 18th century. It is a genre of the ukiyo-e woodblock printing technique, and represents images of warriors and samurai from Japanese history and mythology. History Edo Period ...


References


Sources

* ''This article was originally based on material from WebMuseum Paris - Famous Artworks exhibitio

''
Japan
- * John Boardman (art historian), Boardman, John, "The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity", Princeton University Press, 1994, * *Impey, Oliver, in Battie, David, ed., ''Sotheby's Concise Encyclopedia of Porcelain'', 71-74, 1990, Conran Octopus. * Kaempfer, H. M. and W. O. G. Sickinghe ''The Fascinating World of the Japanese Artist. A Collection of Essays on Japanese Art by Members of the Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts'', The Hague, Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts, 1971. * * "Alexander the Great: East-West Cultural contacts from Greece to Japan" (NHK and Tokyo National Museum, 2003) * "De l'Indus à l'Oxus, Archéologie de l'Asie Centrale",
Osmund Bopearachchi Osmund Bopearachchi (born 1949) is a Sri Lankan historian and numismatist who has specialized notably standardized the coinage of the Indo-Greek and Greco-Bactrian kingdoms. He is currently Emeritus Director of the CNRS at the École Normale Sup ...
, Christine Sachs, * "The Crossroads of Asia, Transformation in image and symbols", 1992,


Further reading

* * * * * * * Kato, Kauro (加藤 薫 ''Katō Kaoru'') ( Kanagawa University), translator: Saeko Yanagisawa.
Acercamiento a la influencia del movimiento muralista mexicano en el arte contemporáneo de Japón
" (日本現代美術におけるメキシコ壁画運動の影響について
Archive
'' Crónicas. El Muralismo, Producto de la Revolución Mexicana, en América''.
National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico ( es, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) is a public research university in Mexico. It is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in Latin America, where it's also the bigges ...
. December 2008, No. 13, p. 237–264. Spanish: p. 237–255, Japanese: p. 256–264.


External links


Five Thousand Years of Japanese Art
Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, online version
''Japanese Prints''
by
John Gould Fletcher John Gould Fletcher (January 3, 1886 – May 10, 1950) was an Imagist poet (the first Southern poet to win the Pulitzer Prize), author and authority on modern painting. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, to a socially prominent family. After a ...

e-Museum
High definition images of national treasures and important cultural properties owned by four national museums in Japan



- national cultural portal for Japan created by Visiting Arts/Japan Foundation
Ruth and Sherman Lee Institute for Japanese Art Collection
online collection of images from the Online Archive of California/University of California Merced
The Herbert Offen Research Collection of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum

The Art of Bonsai Project

The Vision and Art of Shinjo Ito
Sculptures, calligraphy, photographs of a buddhist Great Master (Grand Acharya)

Lecture at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts by Okakura Kakuzo (English Translation)
Japanese Art of the Meiji Period (1868 – 1912)
The Khalili Collections {{DEFAULTSORT:Japanese Art Art by country