This is a long-awaited publication on the history of Japanese art after 1868. As the editor of this volume, J. Thomas Rimer, articulates in the introduction, Japanese art after 1868 has been largely dismissed, compared with the rich pool of literature on premodern art of Japan, such as ukiyo-e and Buddhist art. The state of the field has changed dramatically since the late 1980s through the 1990s thanks to the individual efforts of such scholars and curators as—just to mention a few names among the contributors of this volume—J. Thomas Rimer, Ellen P. Conant, Reiko Tomii, John Clark, Chiaki Ajioka, and Toshio Watanabe, active in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, respectively. Since Meiji includes recent work by these pioneering scholars as well as by younger academics who have become particularly active in the new millennium, together with two art historians based in Japan. By embracing a wide range of studies, in terms of themes, media, methodologies, generations, and geographical locations of authors, Since Meiji is one of the most comprehensive English-language publications on Japanese visual art after 1868 to date, illuminating the rich and multifaceted state of current scholarship.
Preceded by Rimer's introduction, Since Meiji is organized into three sections further divided into seventeen chapters. The seven chapters in the first section offer an overview of Japanese visual arts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, with a focus on, but not necessarily limited to, painting or two-dimensional media. This section, organized in a clear chronological order, can effectively be used as a textbook for a survey course of Japanese art. Some chapters also offer, rather than a generalized account of each historical period, an in-depth study of specific themes by experts focusing on issues of identity, nationalism, avant-gardism, all-out war(s) and art, the institutional power of museum, sexuality and the body, and so on.
The chapters in the second section (chapters 8–10) focus on the discourses, aesthetics, and intellectual trends surrounding visual arts of the day. These chapters respectively explore the formulation of the concept and terminologies of “art”; the cultural and geopolitical categories of “Japan,” “Asia,” and “West”; and the evolution of art criticism in modern Japan. Together, the three chapters in this section bring out the crucial issues concerning canon and category formation, the intellectual, ideological, and institutional backing for various visual art forms discussed elsewhere in this volume.
While this volume is unprecedented in a number of respects, one of its greatest strengths is the inclusion of a wide range of media, which is the main theme of the third section. It casts light on the visual or cultural fields usually paid insufficient attention or excluded from many “art” historical books, such as the modern garden (chapter 13), calligraphy (chapter 16), and fashion (chapter 17), together with a concise, updated critical survey of architecture (chapter 12), prints (chapter 14), and crafts (chapter 15). It may come as a surprise to those who are not familiar with the field, but modern sculpture has been a seriously under-researched field both in and outside Japan. Thus, chapter 11 in this section, authored by Tanaka Shūji, one of the few experts on this genre, provides readers with the first in-depth study of modern sculpture in Japan.
My only reservation is the relative lack of critical investigation of Japan's colonization of Asia, the crucial factor in shaping the political nature of Japan-Asia artistic interactions before 1945 and characterizing the arts made during the period addressed by this volume. Japan's colonial legacies have, moreover, lingered on and are still visible in present-day Japanese art and culture. Similarly, the issue of gender is a relatively minor concern within this volume. To be sure, a number of chapters, including Rimer's introduction of the volume, touch upon the issues of “Asia,” “women,” and gender by referring to the contemporary politics and political climates through their investigations of each topic (chapters 3, 5, and 13 on colonialism; chapter 7 on the body, sexuality, and identity; chapter 9 on the perception of “Asia”; and chapter 17 on women's modern identity). Yet, the volume on a whole leans toward the Japan-West relationship and male artists, intellectuals, and critics. Considering the growing interest in gender and Japan's colonial expansion in the last decade in the field, the inclusion of one chapter specifically focusing on either or both issues would have added another critical dimension to this already richly themed volume.Footnote 6 These inclusions would aid in further exploring the diversities and political tensions embraced within Japanese visual representation after 1868, and critically examining the nature of the entire visual regime known as “Japanese art.”
All in all, however, this volume provides a number of insights not available in any language by a wide range of experts. Taken together in one volume, Since Meiji offers us the first major comprehensive study specifically focusing on Japanese modern art between 1868 and 2000, which would be of truly wide use for a survey course of Japanese arts and culture, in-depth discussions at the graduate level, and also as important scholarly resources and inspiration.
