ŠTÚDIE / ARTICLES

ARS 47, 2014, 2

The Japanese Cubist Body — mapping modern
experience in the pre-WWII Japanese artistic network

Helena ČAPKOVÁ

Introduction
The development of Japanese modern art and the
issue of to what extent the local narrative was formed
by external sources has been discussed in a number
of publications by scholars such as Ömuka Toshi-
haru, Alicia Volk and John Clark, whose conclusions
I shall use in this article.1 One of the crucial problems
which Japanese artists tried to résolve over the first
decades of 20th Century was identified as: How to
be modernist, avant-garde and Japanese at the same
time. One of the early solutions was formulated by
Takamura Kötarö (1883 — 1956) in the “Midoriiro no
taiyö” essay (The Green Sun) of April 1910.2
“T hope Japanese artists will try to use all möglich
(possible) techniques without being put out by inter-
prétation. Ipray that wben they do so, conséquent on
their interior psychological demands, they will not be
ajraid of what is un-Japanese. However un-Japanese
this might be, if a Japanese person croates it, it must
be Japanese. ”

1 To list some relevant works by these leading scholars in the
field of Japanese modern art history I shall include: VOLK,
A.: In Rursuitof Universalism: Yoro^u Tetsugoro and Japanese Modern
Art (The Phillips Book Prize). Oakland 2010; Being modern in
Japan: culture and society from the 1910s to the 1990s. Eds. E. K.
TIPTON —J. CLARK. Honolulu 2000; CLARK, J.: Modernities
of Japanese art. Leiden — Boston 2013.
2 In: CLARK 2013 (see in note 1), chapter 13: Dilemmas of
Selfhood: Public and Private Discourses of Japanese Surre-
alism in the 1930s, p. 183.

The transnational flow of Cubist inspiration
reached Japan in 1911 and continued to spread
through numerous networks in the Japanese avant-
gardě art scene over some decades. This article will
test the idea of Cubism transgressing the dualistic
paradigm of the East and the West and as such
creating “a cubist body” for local, and in this case
Japanese, artists to experience modernity.3
The research for this study was shaped by trans-
national and network théories.4 This methodology
allows for analysis from a broad, interdisciplinary
and transnational perspective, addressing the issue
of parallel historiés by stressing the extensive travel
and exchange among different artists’ networks
and institutions which ultimately formed hybrid
outcomes poorly understood within a linear con-
ception of art history. Thus the narrative will not
be the standard story of a group of artists living in
Paris between the wars, but rather it will be a nar-
rative from the périphéries that were marginalized
and remained to a great extent silent in the realm
of parallel historiés.

3 This concept is developed by B. WINTHER-TAMAKI in:
Asian Possessions of the Cubist Body: ‘Home from Home’.
In: Cubism in Asia; Unbounded Dialogues, International Symposium
Report. Ed. Y. FURUICHI. Tokyo 2006, pp. 304-311.
4 Transnational theory and method is explained and used in
Arte & Ensaios, Nr. 14.' Transnational correspondence (Special
Issue). Eds.: M. ASBURY - G. BUENO - G. FERREIRA
-M. MACHADO. Rio de Janeiro 2QGpMinorTransnationalism.
Eds. F. LIONNET - S. SHIH. Durham - London 2005.

122