A history of Japanese illustration (四)

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 sparked a continued, government-sponsored adoption of Western styles and subjects - the yōga style that saw Japan’s first serious forays into oil painting and other Western mediums - with the predictable backlash being the nihonga movement that sought a return to traditional Japanese techniques and symbolism. This explosion of new and often conflicting approaches mirrored the country’s rapid hurtle towards modernity as industrialization began in earnest; and as the Meiji era blurred into the Showa, these two styles represented a Japan more open to the wider world but more determined to put her own mark on it.And as the Empire grew, illustration was increasingly used by the state to encourage and sponsor works that emphasised discipline, patriotism, optimism, and the sense of cultural uniqueness and racial homogeneity known as nihonjinron; all part of the increasingly militaristic trend that culminated in the events of World War Two, and another seismic backlash, one that defined post-1945 Japanese art - that against the horrors both committed and endured by the country in its Imperial phase. 

The spiritual, other-worldly quality that has permeated Japanese illustration since the early Shinto works took on a new escapist form as the nation struggled to find coping mechanisms for the trauma of defeat and the A-bomb. Abstraction functioned as an outlet for the country’s confusion and desire to return to some sort of age of innocence, and took on powerful new forms: the questioning of the relationship between humans and the self-destructive technology they had produced led to works fixated on mechanisms, machinery and later robotics; disillusionment with the old order gave rise to increasingly rebellious and experimental forms of expression; the bright lights and neon colours of the rebuilt urban areas gave colour and vibrancy to Japanese pop art and the anime and manga movements that had been energised by Western influences both before but particularly after the War. Though a return to traditional Japanese qualities became more popular in the 1970’s, the escapist aesthetic of kawaii culture with its focus on shy, vulnerable, childlike qualities, wide-eyed anthropomorphic characters and schoolchildren - perhaps echoing the Shinto emphasis on purity and cleanliness - has taken a strong hold on the illustrative scene.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the contemporary “Superflat” movement. Its founder Takashi Murakami argues that Japanese art - from the anime and manga of his youth back through ukiyo-e and beyond - has always had a sense of flatness; an emphasis on bold outlines and flat planes of colour that gives it a 2-D feel compared to the more realistic and three-dimensional ideal pursued in the portraitures and landscapes of so much of Western art. But his idea of flatness extends into another defining characteristic: that the line between high and low art in Japan is blurred beyond recognition, that a Turner oil painting is as valuable and worthy of artistic and intellectual consideration as a piece of Osamu Tezuka anime. For the Japanese, any form of creative output is subject to the same rigours of conception, execution and production; nothing is done by halves, and to put a name to a work is to guarantee that it has been given the utmost thought, care and attention.

Though modern Japanese illustration is too dynamic and diverse to categorise in any meaningful way, we can identify various motifs that course through its veins, hallmarks of the Japanese character and imagination that have endured for centuries. It is often said the country is a land of contrasts, and indeed you would be hard-pressed to find somewhere with a deeper respect for the old coupled with a more insatiable thirst for the new, with an appetite for expression matched only by its tendency for repression, with a hard-nosed pragmatism and realism that can flip towards florid escapism on a dime, with a reverence for nature that belies an enthusiastic embrace of technology. This somehow peaceful co-habitation of contrasts within the Japanese condition can be clearly seen through its visual arts, and their contemplative, layered nature that can bring profound mysticism to the most mundane of subject and situation. But above all, the defining characteristic must be that of Japan’s artisanal tradition - craftsmanship, obsessive attention to detail, a willingness to use time-consuming techniques and new materials in an old-fashioned labour intensive manner, ancient methodology married to modern techniques whereby the complexity of the process often belies the simplicity yet artistic depth of the result.

This is Japan’s gift to the world. We want to share it with you.