Japanese Arts After 1868

Japanese Art

The paper aims to investigate the the Japanese Arts after 1986. The era is post Edo Period it ends after the year 1986. The Edo Period was most important for the Japanese Arts History . Japanese art is easy to define, being the art produced in the islands that form modern Japan. Until 1945, Japan was never controlled from outside. In the prehistoric period cultural links with East Asia were close, but she never owed practical allegiance to a continental power. In the early historical period we are uncertain in some cases whether artistic monuments are the work of native or East Asian artists (for example, the 8th-century CE frescoes at the Horyuji Temple). Since then, no major work of art produced in Japan is by an immigrant. Examples of important Japanese artists working abroad are equally rare—until the later 19th century CE, Sesshu is the only example and he only for a short time. Japanese art is therefore very self-contained, though ideas usually originated from outside.

Japan's geographical position encouraged both general isolation and dependence on East Asia. Until modern times the only country easily reached was Korea, and that by a stormy sea-crossing of some 120 miles (195km). So cultural ideas from China and northeast Asia came slowly and often acquired a Korean slant before settling down in semi-isolation. That is why Japanese art, though superficially like Chinese or Korean, usually has a strong character of its own.

This character was influenced partly by the danger and impermanence of life. Most Japanese were threatened by earthquake, landslide, typhoon, tidal wave, or fire. Hard stone for buildings and monuments was largely absent, so culture developed in a setting of wooden, easily replaced buildings, divided inside by light, paper-covered screens. Arts tended to the small, the light, and the replaceable. In no other advanced culture have paper, wood, and lacquer played so important a part.

After the 7th century CE there were no important immigrations into the islands, and the character of the people developed in isolation. A gentle melancholy overlaying a core of tortured violence may derive from their physical situation; a deep love of nature and of the strongly marked seasons is strengthened by their accessibility in semi-openair houses. But their unerring sense of mostly unsymmetrical design seems to be innate, as are their craftsmanship and feeling for materials.

Westernized industrial culture (1868 to Present)

After the Meiji Restoration in the year1868, Japan at last released up the country and western modernisation entered in more extensively as the Meiji government convinced Japanese artists and scholar to discover and incorporate western culture .

The opening of Japan to foreigners in 1853 and the establishment of a Westernizing government in 1867 broke old patterns. Since then, the major influences on Japanese art have been Western. In the Meiji period (1867-1912) technical competence in oil painting was achieved, but little of the work done was internationally significant, though in Japan the French-inspired paintings of Asai Chu (1856-1906), Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924), Fujishima Takeji (1867-1943), ...