Between Modernity and Tradition: Nihonga

Yoshitaka Kuroiwa

Genesis and evolution

In 1853, after 200 years of isolation, Commodore Matthew Perry’s “black warships” forced Japan to the process of opening up to the West. That evolution was imposed as a government policy at the beginning of the Meiji eve (1868-1912), hence, when the Tokugawa Shogunate gave way to Emperor Meiji’s reintegration. To achieve that objective with special regard to cover the scientific, literary, philosophical and artistic fields, West professors were invited to teach at the Japanese universities, and Japaneses were sent to study overseas. As regards art, the ancient styles and techniques were set aside as outdated heritages and replaced with a special western-style oil painting termed Yōga. In order to bring that slippage under control, hence, as an attempt to preserve the age-old Japanese culture in some way, art critics as Ernest F. Fenollosa (1853-1908) and Okakura Kakuzō, also known as Okakura Tenshin (1862-1913), came out. The former was a scholar from Harvard who was demanded to give lessons in west phylosophy at the Tōkyō Imperial University. During the lecture entitled “The New Theory of Art” he gave in 1882 at the Dragon Pond Society, Fenollosa pointed out the need to preserve the traditional techniques and related materials, and, in so doing, used first the expression “Japanese painting”, later translated into “Nihonga”. He also brought out the features of the Japanese art, notably lack in realism, simplicity, absence of chiaroscuro, use of outlines and light-color gradients. However, the subsequent development of the Nihonga is due to a young disciple of Fenollosa named Okakura Kakuzō, who was also involved in establishing the Japanese aesthetics through a large number of artworks widely spread throughout the West. Kakuzō and Fenollosa founded in 1887 the Tōkyō Fine Arts School, an institution that first formally made a careful distinction between Yōga and Nihonga, and provided identifying elements of the latter. The above artists also promoted the diffusion of knowledge of the Japanese art abroad. This was made possible thanks to the management entrusted to them of the Eastern Section of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Jun’ichi Hayashi, Takizakura, 2002

The Nihonga was born in Tōkyō but also became established in Kyōto because of Takeuchi Seihō (1864-1942), the merit of which was the fact that he successfully merged together the foundations of the Maruyama School with the West influence. The Bunten annual Fine Arts Exhibit, a government institution from 1907, gave space to the Nihonga, giving it an autonomous exhibition space together with the Yōga art. However, the exhibit came in for criticism since regarded by the artists as too conservative and politicised. After the death of Okakura Kakuzō, his disciple Yokoyama Taikan became in Tōkyō a leading artistic figure in the Nihonga, as it was also the case for Takeuchi Seihō in Kyōto. From the Second World War on, the Nihonga was phased out owing to its own conservative tendency, as an expression of the very Nationalism leading to war. However, a revival of the Nihonga has been in operation from the 80s of the last century. By the way, the artist Hisashi Tenmyouya (1966- ) was the promoter in the year 2001 of a novel artistic notion often referred to as “Neo-Nihonga”.

Takeuchi Seihō, Itako in Early Summer, Yamatane Museum of Art, before 1942

Style and materials

The Nihonga embraces all the Japanese traditional styles, ranging from the Kanō to Rinpa and Maruyama schools, with a view to their final merging and melting. In comparison to the Yamato-e, indeed, the painting style under examination shows wider issues and items. The Nihonga is rather inclined to simplification and styling, thus removing the unnecessary and reducing the involved natural components to their own essence, with the result of often gaining in dynamicity. Truly speaking, the boundary between the Nihonga and Yōga was never very marked and only determined by the adopted materials, notably mineral pigments applied with a paintbrush on washi paper or oil on canvas, depending on whether it is a matter of Nihonga or Yōga, respectively. Notwithstanding this, some Nihonga artists were prone to adopt the typically western chiaroscuro and perspective.

The Nihonga artworks can be categorised as follows: monochromatic paintings (sumi-e) realised by using India ink (sumi) made of carbon black and hide glue; polichromatic paintings realized by using pigments of natural origin, such as minerals, corals, mollusc shells, clays (for the earth rendering), insects and plants (notably, cochineal larvae and garcinia to give a vibrant red), semiprecious stones (azurite for the blue, malachite for the green, cinnabar for the red).

The mineral pigments (iwaenogu) are carefully fragmented so that the related gross to fine changing granulometry adapts as much as possible to give a deep to light color. With a view to ensuring maximum adhesion to paper or silk, use is made of the pigments blended with animal glue (nikawa). The color is initially applied in thin layers by a suitable brush, later diluted with water. This technique, rather resembling the western watercolor, gives the Nihonga paintings a typically tenuous and color-gradated appearance. In addition, the color layering creates a sort of depth effect, differently termed “trans-dimensionality”, also distinctive of the Nihonga paintings along with the black sumi ink for outlining everything but plants and birds.

Hashimoto Kansetsu, Monkey, 1940, Adachi Museum of Art

Even the gofun, an oyster shell-derived whitish powder made of calcium carbonate, is of paramount importance for being widely adopted in backgrounds, these being also gilded with gold (or silver, platinum) leaf (or strip, fragment) in order that the paintings can give observers a feeling of wealth and brightness.

Last, as regards the support base, the Japanese paper (washi) is derived from a number of vegetable materials such as mulberry, bamboo, hemp, rice and wheat. On the other hand, the silk (eginu) differs in quality from that adopted for clothing production. The above supports absorb the pigments with a different degree, so that a distinctive feature of the Nihonga artworks is a gentle mixture of colors.

Uemura Shōen, Composition of a Poem, 1942, Yamatane Museum of Art

Techniques

As regards the topic indicated in this heading, the Nihonga is along the lines of the Japanese traditional schools, notably Kanō and Rinpa. A first technique is the so-called kouroku, according to which the contour of the subject is drawn in black. This ancient way of implementation is far from being naturalistic, given that some sort of creative representation does replace reality. This is a further Nihonga characteristic departing from that of the Yōga which, instead, had removed hard edges in view of a West-oriented realism. Otherwise, some Nihonga artists expressed preference for the so-called mokkotsu (“boneless”), or the mōrōtai (“indefinite” art) that stems from the previous one in the sense of waiving contours and replacing them with blurring. The term mōrōtai was originally saddled with derogatory associations, as it was the case for the “Impressionism”.

Further procedures could be summarised as follows:

  • tsuketate is a type of mokkotsu where the objects are defined not by the contours, but by the thickness and energy of the brush strokes;
  • tarashikomi is for “dripping” since the pigment is carefully provided in drops on a color layer which is wet to the extent that different color shades, depending on the specific weight of the individual pigments, can be deposited;
  • bokashi reads like nuance because it is about a technique based on color diluted in water;
  • sumi-nagashi rather means floating-ink technique precisely because a randomly positioned delicate veneing, a little reminiscent of the marble, are impressed on the paper when it is held in contact with the surface of water that previously absorbed ink;
  • kegaki is a refined painting technique, aimed at ultimately rendering a soft-surface effect, that involves the thinnest paintbrush, soaked in sumi ink, to reproduce the hairs on the head one by one (especially those forming the hairline). The same technique is adopted to reproduce animal fur;
  • the recurrent representation of clouds and mist, typical of the humid climate of the Japan, also in landscapes with mountains and rivers (sansui-ga), in order to gain perspective effects, perceive the mountain height, highlight thematic changes, symbolize the natural passing of time.

Unlike the West, where the paintings are usually framed and exhibited through protective glass, the Nihonga artworks were mounted, according to the most ancient Japanese tradition, on scrolls to hang on the walls (kakemono) or unrolled for a horizontal reading (emakimono), or on sliding doors (fusuma) and screens (byōbu). Currently, use is made of plywood especially suitable for glassless framing.

Yokoyama Taikan, Holy Peaks of Chichibu at spring dawn, 1928

Copyright © arteingiappone – All rights reserved