Taisho & Early Showa Art and Visual Culture

Articles

Brown, Kendall. "Out of the Dark Valley: Japanese Woodblock Prints and War, 1937-1945."　Impressions 23 (2001): 65-85.

Clark, John. "Yōga in Japan: Model or Exception? Modernity in Japanese Art 1850s-1940s: An International Comparison." Art History 18, no. 2 (June 1995): 253-85.

Foxwell, Chelsea. “Dekadansu: Ukiyo-e and the Codification of Aesthetic Values in Modern Japan, 1880-1930." Octopus: A Visual Studies Journal 3 (2007): 21-41.

Fraser, Karen M. "Fukuhara Shinzō and the 'Japanese' Pictorial Aesthetic." Review of Japanese Culture and Society 26 (December 2014): 209-27.

Guth, Christine. "Japan 1868-1945: Art, Architecture, and National Identity." Art Journal 35, no.3 (1996): 16-20.

Hartley, Barbara. "Text and Image in Pre-war Japan: Viewing Takehisa Yumeji through Sata Ineko's 'From the Caramel Factory'." Literature and Aesthetics 22, no. 2 (December 2012): 153-73.

Hirayama, Mikiko. "From Art without Borders to Art for the Nation: Japanist Painting by Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyōkai during the 1930s." Monumenta Nipponica 65, no. 2 (2010): 357-95.

Ikeda, Asato. "Fujita Tsuguharu Retrospective 2006: Resurrection of a Former Official War Painter." Review of Japanese Culture and Society 21 (December 2009): 97-115. 

———. "Japan's Haunting War Art: Contested War Memories and Art Museums." disClosure 18 (2009): 5-32. 

———. "The Japanese Art of Fascist Modernism: Yasuda Yukihiko's The Arrival of Yoshitsune/Camp at Kisegawa (1940-41)." Modernism/modernity Print Plus 1, no. 2 (May 2016). https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/japanese-art-fascist-modernism (accessed October 11, 2023).

———. "Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State: Reassessing the Art of Ogawara Shū and Fujita Tsuguharu." Asia-Pacific Journal 43 (October 2010): 2-10.

Inoue, Mariko. "Kiyokata's Asasuzu: The Emergence of the Jogakusei Image." Monumenta Nipponica 51, no. 4 (Winter 1996). 

Kang, Myungchae, Seizo Uchida, and Fumiyo Suzaki. "The Construction Process of the Memorial Hall (Completed in 1930) for the Great Kantō Earthquake." Journal of Architecture and Planning 82, no. 734 (2017): 1029-38.

Miller, Alison J. "Imperial Images: The Japanese Empress Teimei in Early Twentieth Century Newspaper Photography." Trans Asia Photography 7, no. 1 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1215/215820251_7-1-103 (accessed November 27, 2023).

———. "Wintry Women: Skiing, Modern Girls, and the Body Politics of Sport as Represented in 1930s Nihonga." The Journal of Japanese Studies 47, no. 2 (2021): 313-348.

Naoi, Nozomi. "Beauties and Beyond: Takehisa Yumeji and the Yumeji-shiki." Andon 98 (2015): 29-39.

———. "The State and Future of Yumeji Studies: Nihon no Hanga Exhibition and Beyond." Takehisa Yumeji Research Society Journal (Takehisa Yumeji Gakkai: Gakkaishi), Takehisa Yumeji Studies (Takehisa Yumeji kenkyū) 1, no. 1 (December 2017): 43-49.

Sand, Jordan. "The Living Artist: Matsumoto Shunsuke's Reply to the State." Art Journal 55, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 74-82.

Schenk, Sabine. "Takehisa Yumeji's Designs for Music Score Covers." Andon 98 (2015): 40-48.

Schoneveld, Erin. "Shirakaba and Rodin: A Transnational Dialogue between Japan and France." Journal of Japonisme 3 (2018): 52-83.

Tseng, Alice. "Imperial Portraiture and Popular Print Media in Early Twentieth-Century Japan." The Journal of Japanese Studies 46, no. 2 (Summer 2020): 305-344.

Volk, Alicia. "Authority, Autonomy, and the Early Taishō 'Avant-Garde'." positions: east asia cultures critique 21, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 451-73. 

———. "Yorozu Tetsugorō and Taishō-Period Creative Prints: When the Japanese Print Became Avant-Garde.” Impressions 26 (2004): 44-65.

Weisenfeld, Gennifer. "Designing after Disaster: Barrack Decoration and the Great Kantō Earthquake," Japanese Studies 18, no. 3 (1998): 229-246.

———. "Mavo's Conscious Constructivism: Art, Individualism, and Daily Life in Interwar Japan." Art Bulletin 55 (1996): 64-73.

———. "Publicity and Propaganda in 1930s Japan: Modernism as Method." Design Issue 25, no. 4 (Autumn 2009): 13-28.

———, ed. Visual Cultures of Japanese Imperialism. Special edition of positions.

positions: east asian cultures critique 8, no. 3 (2000).

Winther-Tamaki, Bert. "Embodiment/Disembodiment: Japanese Painting during the Fifteen-Year War." Monumenta Nipponica 52, no. 2 (Summer 1997):145-80.

Wong, Aida Yuen. "A New Life for Literati Painting in the Early Twentieth Century: Eastern Art and Modernity, a Transcultural Narrative?" Artibus Asiae 60 (2000): 297-326.

Books 

Brandt, Kim. Kingdom of Beauty: Mingei and the Politics of Folk Art in Imperial Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

Clark, John. Japanese Exchanges in Art 1850s-1930s, with Britain, Continental Europe, and the USA. Sydney: Power Publications, 2001.

———, and Elise K. Tipton, eds. Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000.

Culver, Annika A. Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013.

Dower, John W., et al. The Brittle Decade: Visualizing Japan in the 1930s. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts Publications, 2012.

Earhart, David C. Certain Victory: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2008.

Frazier, James, et al. Japanese Modern: Graphic Design Between the Wars. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996.

Frederick, Sarah. Turning Pages: Reading and Writing Women's Magazines in Interwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006.

Ikeda, Asato. The Politics of Painting: Fascism and Japanese Art during the Second World War. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. 

———, Ming Tiampo, and Aya Louisa McDonald, eds. Art and War in Japan and its Empire, 1931-1960. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Kaneko, Maki. Mirroring the Japanese Empire: The Male Figure in Yoga Painting, 1930-1950.Leiden: Brill, 2015.

Marra, Michael F. A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001.  

———. Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999.

Mayo, Marlene J., and J. Thomas Rimer, eds. War, Occupation, and Creativity: Japan and East Asia, 1920-1960. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001.

Merritt, Helen. Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: The Early Years. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1990. 

———, and Yamada Nanako. Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900-1975. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1992.

Munro, Majella. Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan, 1923-1970. Cambridge: Enzo Press, 2012.

Naoi, Nozomi. Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020. 

Nara, Hiroshi. The Structure of Detachment: The Aesthetic Vision of Kuki Shuzo. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. 

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Pincus, Leslie. Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shūzō and the Rise of National Aesthetics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Reynolds, Jonathan. Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

Rimer, J. Thomas, ed. Since Meiji: Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868-2000. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012.

Sand, Jordan. House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880-1930. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2003. 

Sas, Miryam. Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Japanese Surrealism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Sato, Barbara. The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Schoneveld, Erin. Shirakaba and Japanese Modernism: Art Magazines, Artistic Collectives, and the Early Avant-Garde. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Shamoon, Deborah. Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls' Culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012.

Shinji, Hamanaka, and Amy Reigle Newland. The Female Image: 20th Century Prints of Japanese Beauties. Tokyo: Abe Publishing; Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2000.

Silverberg, Miriam. Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Stojkovic, Jelena. Surrealism and Photography in 1930s Japan: The Impossible Avant-Garde. Abingdon: Routledge; Oxon: Taylor and Francis Group, 2020.

Swinton, Elizabeth de Sabato. The Graphic Art of Onchi Koshiro, 1891-1955. New York: Garland, 1986. 

Szostak, John Donald. Painting Circles: Tsuchida Bakusen and Nihonga Collectives in Early Twentieth Century Japan. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

Tadao, Ogura. The Complete Woodblock Prints of Yoshida Hiroshi. Tokyo: Abe Publishing, 1987.

Tansman, Alan. The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 

Till, Barry. Shin Hanga: The New Print Movement of Japan. San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2007. 

Tipton, Elise, and John Clark, eds. Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000.

Tseng, Alice. Modern Kyoto: Building for Ceremony and Commemoration, 1868-1940. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. 

Uhlenbeck, Chris, Jim Dwinger, and Philo Ouweleen. Shin Hanga: The New Prints of Japan, 1900-1960. Brussels: Ludion, 2022.

Volk, Alicia. In Pursuit of Universalism: Yorozu Tetsugoro and Japanese Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo. Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008.

Weisenfeld, Gennifer. Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan's Great Earthquake of 1923. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

———. MAVO: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Winther-Tamaki, Bert. Maximum Embodiment: Yoga, the Western Painting of Japan, 1912-1955. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i, 2012.

Wu, Chinghsin. Parallel Modernism: Koga Harue and Avant-Garde Art in Modern Japan. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019.

Book Chapters 

Berndt, Jaqueline. "Nationally Naked? The Female Nude in Japanese Oil Painting and Posters (1890s-1920s)." In Performing "Nation": Gender Politics in Literature, Theatre, and the Visual Arts of China and Japan, 1880-1940, edited by Doris Croissant, Catherine Vance Yeh, and Joshua Mostow, 307-46. Leiden: Brill Academic Publications, 2008.

Brown, Kendall. "Prints and Modernity: Developments in the Early Twentieth Century." In The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints, edited by Amy Reigle Newland, 279-93. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2005.

Clark, John. "Artistic Subjectivity in the Taisho and Early Showa Avant-Garde." In Japanese Art after 1945: Scream against the Sky, edited by Alexandra Munroe, 41-53. New York: Abrams, 1994.

———. "Transitions in Taishō Yōga." In Modernities of Japanese Art, written by John Clark. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

Ikeda, Shinobu. "The Allure of a 'Woman in Chinese Dress': Representation of the Other in Imperial Japan." In Performing "Nation": Gender Politics in Literature, Theatre, and the Visual Arts of China and Japan, 1880-1940, edited by Doris Croissant, Catherine Vance Yeh, and Joshua Mostow, 347-82. Leiden: Brill Academic Publications, 2008.

Kim, Gyewon. "Faces That Change: Physiognomy, Portraiture, and Photography in Colonial Korea." In The Affect of Difference: Representations of Race in East Asian Empire, edited by Christopher P. Hanscom and Dennis C. Washburn, 133-58. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2016. 

Nakano, Hajimu. "Kuki Shūzō and The Structure of Iki." In Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals During the Interwar Years, edited by J. Thomas Rimer, 261-272. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Sakai, Tadayasu. "Was Japanese Fauvism Fauvist?" In Modernity in Asian Art, edited by John Clark, 128-54. Broadway, NSW, Australia: Wild Peony, 1993.

Sato, Barbara. "Commodifying and Engendering Morality: Self-Cultivation and the Invention of the 'Ideal Woman' and 1920s Mass Women's Magazines." In Gendering Modern Japanese History, edited by Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno, 99-132. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Shepherdson-Scott, Kari. "Race behind the Walls: Contact and Containment in Japanese Images of Urban Manchuria." In The Affect of Difference: Representations of Race in East Asian Empire, edited by Christopher P. Hanscom and Dennis C. Washburn, 180-206. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2016.

Szostak, John Donald. "'Fair is Foul, and Foul is Fair': Kyoto Nihonga Anti-Bijin Portraiture and the Psychology of the Grotesque." In Rethinking Japanese Modernism, edited by Roy Starrs, 362-85. Leiden: Global Oriental, 2012.

Takashina, Shuji. "Natsume Sōseki and the Development of Modern Japanese Art." In Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals During the Interwar Years, edited by J. Thomas Rimer, 273-281. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Ueda, Makoto. "Yūgen and Erhabene: Ōnishi Yoshinori's Attempt to Synthesize Japanese and Western Aesthetics." In Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals during the Interwar Years, edited by J. Thomas Rimer, 282-300. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Winston, Leslie. “Seeing Double: The Feminism of Ambiguity in the Art of Takabatake Kashō." In Rethinking Japanese Feminisms, edited by Julia C. Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker, 133-53. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. 

Wu, Chinghsin. "Reflecting and Refracting Modernity: Images of the Modern Girl in 1920s and 1930s Japan." In Japon Pluriel 8: La modernité japonaise en perspective –Actes du huitième colloque de la Société française des études japonaises, edited by Noriko Berlinguez and Bernard Thomann, 107-18. Arles, France: Editions Philippe Picquier, 2011. 

———. "Transcending the Boundaries of the 'Isms': Pursuing Modernity through the Machine in Japanese Avant-Garde Art." In Rethinking Japanese Modernism, edited by Roy Starrs, 339-61. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Dissertations 

Bae, Catherine. All the Girl's a Stage: Representations of Femininity and Adolescence in Japanese Girls' Magazines, 1930s-1960s. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2008.

Hirayama, Mikiko. Restoration of Realism: Kojima Kikuo (1887-1950) and the Growth of Art Criticism in Modern Japan. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2001.

Ikeda, Asato. Envisioning Fascist Space, Time, and Body: Japanese Painting during the Fifteen-Year War (1931-1945). Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2012.

Kaneko, Maki. Art in the Service of the State: Artistic Production in Japan during the Asia-Pacific War. Ph.D. dissertation, University of East Anglia, 2006.

Lewis, Diane. Moving History: The Great Kanto Earthquake and Film and Mobile Culture in Interwar Japan. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2011.

McDonald, Susan Strong. Onchi Koshiro: Taishō Modernist. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2002.

Miller, Alison. Mother of the Nation: Femininity, Modernity, and Class in the Image of Empress Teimei. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, 2016.

Morioka, Michiyo. Changing Images of Women: Taisho Period Paintings by Uemura Shoen (1875-1949), Ito Shoha (1877-1968), and Kajiwara Hisako (1896-1988). Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1990.

Oh, Younjung. Art into Everyday Life: Department Stores as Purveyors of Culture in Modern Japan. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 2012.

Szostak, John Donald. The Kokuga Sôsaku Kyôkai and Kyoto Nihonga Reform in the Meiji, Taishô and Early Shôwa Years (1900-1928). Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 2005.

Tsuruya, Mayu. Sensō Sakusen Kirokuga (War Campaign Documentary Painting): Japan's National Imagery of the "Holy War," 1937-1945. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2005.

Exhibition Catalogs 

Ajioka, Chiaki. Hanga: Japanese Creative Prints. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000.

Allen, Laura, et al. A Japanese Legacy: Four Generations of Yoshida Family Artists. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2002.

Berry, Paul, and Morioka Michiyo. Literati Modern: Bunjinga from Late Edo to Twentieth-Century Japan. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2008. 

Brandon, Reiko Mochinaga. Bright and Daring: Japanese Kimonos in the Taisho Mode from the Oka Nobutaka Collection of the Suzaka Classic Museum. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1996. 

Brown, Kendall, ed. Dangerous Beauties and Dutiful Wives: Popular Portraits of Women in Japan, 1905-1925. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2011.

———, ed. Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945. Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 2012.

———, ed. Light in Darkness: Women in Japanese Prints of Early Shōwa (1926-1945). Los Angeles: Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, 1996. 

———, ed. Water and Shadow: Kawase Hasui and Japanese Landscape Prints. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2014.

———, and Hollis Goodall-Cristante. Shin-hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1996.

———, and Sharon Minichiello. Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia, and Deco. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2001.

Conant, Ellen P., Steven D. Owyoung, and J. Thomas Rimer, eds. Nihonga, Transcending the Past: Japanese-Style Painting, 1868-1968. St. Louis: St. Louis Art Museum, 1995.

Guth, Christine, Alicia Volk, and Emiko Yamanashi. Japan and Paris: Impressionism, Postimpressionism, and the Modern Era. Seattle: University of Washington Press;

Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2004.

Hockley, Allen, ed. The Women of Shin Hanga: The Judith and Joseph Barker Collection of Japanese Prints. Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 2013.

Insatsu, Hakubutsukan. The Birth of a Million Seller: Magazines as Media in the Meiji-Taishō Period. Tokyo: Toppan Printing, 2008. 

Jenkins, Donald. Images of a Changing World: Japanese Prints of the Twentieth Century. Portland: Portland Art Museum, 1983.

Keller, Judith. Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2013.

Menzies, Jackie, and Chiaki Ajioka, eds. Modern Boy, Modern Girl: Modernity in Japanese Art, 1910-1935. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998.

Morioka, Michiyo, and Paul Berry. Modern Masters of Kyoto: The Transformation of Japanese Painting Traditions, Nihonga from the Griffith and Patricia Way Collection. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1999.

Naoi, Nozomi, Sabine Schenk, and Maureen de Vries. Takehisa Yumeji. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2015.

Pachter, Irwin. Kawase Hasui and His Contemporaries: The Shin Hanga (New Print) Movement in Landscape Art. Syracuse: Everson Museum of Art, 1986.

Satō, Tomoko, and Toshio Watanabe. Japan and Britain: An Aesthetic Dialogue 1850-1930. London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1991. 

Smith, Lawrence. Modern Japanese Prints, 1912-1989. London: British Museum, 1994. 

———. The Japanese Print since 1900: Old Dreams and New Visions. London: British Museum, 1983.

Stephens, Amy Reigle, ed. The New Wave: Twentieth-Century Japanese Prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection. London: Bamboo Publishing; Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 1993.

Takashina, Shūji, J. Thomas Rimer, and Gerald D. Bolas, eds. Paris in Japan: The Japanese Encounter with European Painting. Tokyo: Japan Foundation; St. Louis: Washington University Press, 1987. 

Uhlenbeck, Chris, Amy Reigle Newland, and Maureen de Vries. Waves of Renewal: Modern Japanese Prints, 1900 to 1960: Selections from the Nihon no hanga Collection, Amsterdam. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2016.

Notes

The foundations of this reading list were generously provided by Alison J. Miller and Kate Shackelford.

Suggest Additions

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