主編語

Abstract

Against the backdrop of Asia's modernization from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, the countries Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China progressively developed their own national forms of Modern Art. As one analyzes the modernizing art of these nations, one finds national identity, cultural conflict, nativist feelings and the paradoxical, complex consciousness that arose from the confrontation between Eastern and Western civilizations. Moreover, as the political geography and overlapping histories of this era constructed a path for the development of the Modern Arts of these nations, certain factors underlying these changes have been largely ignored, and for this reason are even more worthy of study.

This issue takes the theme of "Developments and Tendencies in East Asian Modern Art" and assembles several papers on this topic. The discussion begins with the initial modernization movement in Japan, and then goes on to discuss colonial governments' arts exhibitions and large scale expositions, how Japan facilitated a shortcut to Western aesthetic thought, and also the influence of Pan-Asianism on artistic and literary creation. One further article offers a detailed discussion of artistic creation in Japan's colonies. These diverse topics are all basic responses to a new focus on this complex era of Asian modernization.

The article "'Fine Art' and 'Art History' in Modern Japan" by Sato Doshin a professor at Tokyo University of the Arts, is an extremely important paper on the rise of modern art in Japan and East Asia. Professor Sato begins by discussing the formation of both the concept and Japanese term for "fine art" in Japan's Modern era, then follows the rise of Japonisme, the fad for Japanese style, in Western countries in the latter half of the 19th century, before finally going on to attempts by Japan's government to generate national wealth through artistic output. Painting and sculpture, as elevated creative categories in the Western system of artistic genres, were transplanted to Japan, with art taking on a symbolic role in the modernization of the state ideology. As a result of these two different conceptions of art in Japan, a situation of mutual estrangement occurred. Later, around 1910, Japan turned its focus back onto its domestic sphere and East Asia. This was symbolized by the launch of art expos and government exhibitions in colonial territories and had far-reaching influence on art in Japan's colonial possessions – Japan, Korea and Manchuria.

Next we have "Representation of Mount Geumgang, Mount Yuan and Utopia: On East Asian Colonial Governments' Arts Exhibitions" by Moon Jung-hee, a visiting professor in the doctoral program in Art Creation and Cultural Theory at Tainan National University of the Arts. This essay continues along the lines of the historical path in Professor Sato's monograph, discussing the topic of government art exhibitions. It analyzes how Japan held exhibitions of fine art in colonial territories as a means of implementing colonial rule and also relates this to the murals in colonial governors offices. These exhibitions and murals directly reflected Japan's colonial policies and ideals and at the same time gave rise to the idea of the so-called "East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

A top level researcher at France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Arnoud Nanta has long focused on Japan as a subject of study. Making use of his background in studying Japan's modern history, he presents the essay "Ethnic Shows and Racial Hierarchies in Modern Japan." From a Western perspective, between 1851 and the World War II, industrial world expos offered a platform to the nation-states of that time to exhibit scientific achievements and colonial possessions as a way of advertising their own national might. Ranking among the world powers at the end of the 19th century, Japan also held these kinds of ambitions. From the perspective of colonial history, Nanta takes a new look at the colonial exhibition halls created by Japan in expositions held after 1895, when Japan took colonial possession of Taiwan. The paper analyzes the specific case of the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition held in Osaka in 1903.

Shanghai-based scholar Hu Rong makes her study in the areas of art and literature. She observes that the publication of Jiang Danshu's book Art History (Yishushi) in 1917 initiated a trend in Chinese translations of Western art history texts, so that by 1949, more than 50 books had been published on various aspects of Western art history. Her essay "Post-Impressionism in Chinese Writings on Western Art History from 1912 to 1949: The Works of Lv Cheng, Feng Zikai, Lu Xun and Ni Yide," centers on descriptions of post-impressionism, while weaving in discussions of four Chinese scholars who studied in Japan. During the period covered in the essay, all of them edited and translated art historical texts from Europe and Japan. The article carefully combs through the historical traces left by the interaction between Chinese culture and Western cultures, the literati's knowledge and understanding of Westernized schools of painting and Western Modern Art, as well as the possible effects produced by those interactions.

In "Oriental Women in Pan-Asian Art: Negotiating the National, the Aesthetic and the Erotic," Tan Chang, an assistant professor of art history at Penn State University, opens his discussion with the proposal by Okakura Kakuzo, Japan's father of modern art, that "Asia is one." (This is also the seed idea for both the Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and the East Asian Community.) He then moves on to the period from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1940s in Japan. Here against the background of artworks and art publishing exchanged between China and India, as well as examples of works representing women from other Asian nations in nihonga (Japanese painting) and by Chinese artists painting in a western style, he studies the imagination and representations of the so-called "Asian woman" in the art of Pan-Asianism.

The young Japanese scholar Suzuki Eka takes up the topic of Okuma Ujihiro's The Monument for the Police Officers of Taiwan (1908), an important work of sculpture from the Early Modern period in Taiwan and Japan. By attempting to reconstruct the monument's original appearance, she explores the process of the monument's construction and its background. He then goes on to reconsider the close connection between this kind of new-era, three-dimensional form and Japan's modernization, and moreover how such a result could be transmitted from Japan to later arrive in the colony of Taiwan.

Two Taiwanese scholars, Hsieh Shih-ying and Sheng Kai, discuss artworks from Taiwan's Japanese colonial period, including those by Japanese painter Shiotsuki Toho and the early Taiwanese artist Chang Yi-hsiung.

In the essay "Collective Memory, Cultural Identity & Historical Constructions: Rereading Sayon and Mother by Shiotsuki Toho," Hsieh Shih-ying looks at the difference between the original creative ideas in Toho's works and the implications they took on in the post-war period. He explores the nature of historical interpretation, the complex relationship between collective memory and cultural identity, and looks at how Taiwanese society constructed a cultural identity through the process of historical remembrance. "In Search of the Free Time: Street Scenes and Daily Life in the Paintings of Chang Yi-hsiung" by Sheng Kai places emphasis Chang's in-depth exploration of street scenes and daily life. It unveils not only the iconographic meanings of the paintings but also conveys Chang's humanitarian concerns as well as his philosophical realizations about humanity and all life, reminding readers to reconsider Chang's uniqueness in Taiwanese art history.