Hishida Shunso Retrospective

Hishida Shunso (1874-1911), a Japanese-style painter during Japan's modernization period, is known for his passionate quest for ideal Japanese-style painting. Together with his best friend Yokoyama Taikan, Hishida developed his creative activities under the guidance of Okakura Tenshin (Kakuzo). Hishida's extraordinary talent was recognized while he was a student at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music). After graduation, he began teaching at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where Okakura Tenshin was headmaster. When Okakura was forced to resign as headmaster due to conflicts among artists, Hishida followed his master, leaving the School together with many other artists. Subsequently, he joined the Japan Fine Arts Academy jointly established by Okakura Tenshin, Hashimoto Gaho and other artists. There, with Yokoyama Taikan, Hishida began to seek the new potential of Japanese-style painting, developing a new painting method, derogatorily named by his contemporaries moro-tai (vague style). This new method featured the gradation of colors, replacing the line drawings that characterized traditional Japanese-style painting. This new style, however, gained little support from Hishida's artistic contemporaries. Critically panned by art circles, Hishida and his colleagues were obliged to live in obscurity. Moro-tai was certainly effective in depicting such scenes as morning mist and evening glow, since its technique was suitable for representing wet air and diffusing sunshine. However, color gradation was good only for a limited number of motifs. Hishida, well aware of this disadvantage, began integrating his original moro-tai with line drawing, to cautiously but steadily forge a new path for Japanese-style painting. Later works, crystallizing Hishida's efforts to free his creativity from the restrictions of moro-tai, constitute masterpieces of modern Japanese-style painting.

Hishida's immortal masterpiece Ochiba (fallen leaves) was produced during the short interval of the period of his serious illness; in his final years, the artist concurrently suffered from retinal and kidney disease. Driven by the looming threat of blindness, Hishida committed himself to painting when his illness entered a state of remission. In 1909, Ochiba won the highest award at the third Bunten Exhibition, bringing his name nationwide renown. In addition to the Ochiba that competed successfully in the Bunten (designated an Important Cultural Property and now in the collection of the Eisei-Bunko Museum, Tokyo), there are four more extant works titled Ochiba by the same artist, including a six-panel folding screen (collection of Fukui Fine Arts Museum) of artistic value equal to that of the painting that won the award. The others comprise a work belonging to the Museum of Modern Art, Shiga; a work in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki; and one work that remained unfinished, even though the artist intended to enter it in the Bunten Exhibition. A study of the order in which these five works were created, and the reason one work remains unfinished, would afford deeper understanding of the artist's intent: what Hishida tried to express in his Ochiba series.

The upcoming exhibition will be highlighted by the Ochiba series. Although exhibits will be changed during the exhibition period, all five works in the series will be displayed simultaneously during the period May 1 to 5.

【M.M.】