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- his 45 year reign was a phenomenal and unparalleled success story. It is a great tribute to his able leadership and to his advisors. His enlightened reign launched Japan on the road to modernity. Despite the great military victories and territorial gains, the Meiji period should perhaps be most praised for the significant advances made in industry and education. Pro�gressive economic development brought about a tremendous growth in population, from 30 million in 1868 to 60 million by 1930. By the end of the Meiji period the young people were far better educated than their parents and grandparents, and were greatly influenced by Western ideas. As a result they took the sweeping advances in Japan for granted and set much higher standards for themselves and their futures.
Emperor Meiji died leaving his throne to his weak and men�tally sick son, who became known as Emperor Taisho. During the reign of Emperor Taisho, he was used as a tool of the govern�ment and ruled in name only. He died in 1926 and was suc�ceeded by his son known as Emperor Hirohito (Showa Era).
The ArLi of the Meiji Period
Traditionally Chinese influence on Japanese art had been para�mount, but by the middle of the 19th century the changes that were about to occur would transform Japanese culture, resulting in a redirection of artistic energies. The arts in the early years of Meiji rule were noted for their zealous emulation of Western artistic ideas and their rejection of traditional Japanese and Chinese art forms.
There was a fruitful exchange of artistic expression between Japanese and Western art. Japanese decorative art such as paint�ings and woodblock prints were arriving in Europe on trade ships as well as being displayed in international exhibitions. They evoked enormous enthusiasm among European artists and caused a profound change in their late 19th century artistic ideas. The imported Japanese art spurred a fashionable trend known as "Japonisme" in various art forms. The Europeans were fascinated with the tremendous skill of the Japanese artists and craftsmen and their motifs. They were influenced by com�positional devices such as the truncation of the major part of the subject, the use of solid areas of colour and large empty spaces,
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the division of the composition into simple geometric areas, the vertical format and the use of high or low viewpoint to bring the foreground and background towards the same plane. Late 19th century Western artists like Manet, Monet, Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Whistler and Mary Cassatt were greatly influenced by Japanese art.
While Japanese art was injecting new energy into Western art, the traditional arts in Japan were rapidly deteriorating due to over emphasis on Western art and culture. The Japanese be�lieved that Western realism, with its perspective, shading and anatomical accuracy, was more //modern,/ and //civilized,/ than their own traditional depictions.
In 1876 the Japanese government established the technologi�cal Art School for practical training in Western art techniques. Italian artists such as Fontanesi, Ragusa and Cappelletti were invited to come and teach sculpture, academic portraiture, land�scape painting, and preparatory courses in geometry, perspec�tive and decoration. Everything was designed to make up for the deficiencies in Japanese art in the field of realistic rendering. By the late 19th century Japan's best students of Western art were travelling to Europe to attend leading art academies and were returning as skillful artists in the Western tradition.
However, in the Japanese art world there were a large number of nationalistic artists and craftsmen who denounced the wide�spread adoption of Western techniques. It was Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913), the writer of The Book of Tea, and Ernest Fenellosa (1853-1908), a philosophy teacher from Harvard who recog�nized that if Japanese artists continued to embrace Western art forms, it could result in the extinction of traditional Japanese art. Both men laboured to educate the Japanese in the aesthetic value of native art and to persuade the Meiji government to protect the traditional art forms. They travelled to Europe and the United States to encourage the appreciation of Japanese art. In 1887 Okakura was made an administrator of the Tokyo School of Fine Art, which had been established by Imperial decree. It was at this institution that art forms like traditional wood and metal sculpture, lacquerware and painting were placed on the school's curriculum in order to ensure their preservation. Even though the institution succeeded in maintaining traditional Japanese art
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