Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State: The Politics of Beauty offers sustained analyses of seminal institutions and individuals that shaped the notion of “art” in the Meiji period (1868–1912 CE). This book consists of three major sections: (1) “The Politics of Modern Art: Institutions, Economics, and Art History”; (2) “The Language of Modern Art: Painting and Language”; and (3) “The Structures of Modern Art: Painters and Art Associations.” The resulting dense study owes much to Satō's deep engagements with rich archival material, but, as these section titles make clear, also to his ambition to offer a broad historical view of the discursive formation of “art” by deploying heretofore understudied critical perspectives.
As Satō himself frequently mentions in the body of the argument, and as Chelsea Foxwell's informative introduction notes, the art historical scholarship produced in Japan in the 1990s is marked by several projects that reexamined the concept of “the modern.” Kitazawa Noriaki's Me no shinden: “Bijutsu” juyōshi nōto (The temple of the eye: Notes on the reception of “fine art,” 1989), and the 1990 exhibition “Nihon bijutsu no jūkyūseiki” (The nineteenth century in Japanese art), curated by Kinoshita Naoyuki at what was then called the Hyōgo Municipal Museum of Modern Art, exemplify the works by a new self-reflective generation of art historians. Within the broader field of the humanities, this intellectual movement was further advanced by Kojin Karatani's Origins of Modern Japanese Literature (published in Japanese in 1980 and in English in 1993), and Fujimori Terunobu's Nihon no kindai kenchiku (Modern architecture of Japan, 1993), to name a few. What distinguishes Satō's work from other projects that destabilized “the modern” is his ability to maintain a bird's-eye view of the broader historical vista even while exploring the intricacies of the political, economic, and sociological aspects of art production, appreciation, and evaluation. Throughout the book, Satō rigorously surveys the contour of the vista without having recourse to simplified outlines of figures and institutions. The resulting “map,” as it were, contains multiple contradictory and intertwined lines drawn and connected among the figures and institutions. For instance, we learn that the same officials who withheld public support of scholar-literati painting for the policy of “promotion of industry and manufacturing” would privately support this genre of painting (p. 194). For nonspecialists, the myriad of Japanese personal and institutional names and terms might feel overwhelming at first. (The glossary of key terms at the end of the book is helpful in this regard.) But the rewards of navigating his careful analyses and thick description overweigh the initial frustration. When Satō describes the role of Ernest Fenollosa—an American, Harvard-educated philosopher and an influential figure in implementing the infrastructure for “art” in Japan—in the reappraisal of the Kanō painting school, he states that “Fenollosa's study of Japanese art was not only systematic and comprehensive but also empirical” (p. 300). This characterization of his own predecessor actually echoes the strengths of Satō's own work.
Given that this book focuses on the role of governmental agencies' interest in shaping the concept of “art,” it calls for studies of the reception and responses from the nongovernmental levels. This work also raises a question about the effectiveness of the accepted standard periodization in the field of Japanese art history. Satō makes clear, especially in his case studies focused on Kanō Hōgai and Kawanabe Kyōsai, that the role of the Meiji government was paramount in setting the pictorial trends and establishing professional societies to evaluate artistic work, while, at the same time, the production of pictorial work by the artists did not neatly fit into the ideologically informed evaluative standards set by the state. That is, the accepted periodization schema, which relies on the political system, cannot adequately account for this historical gap between the production and evaluation of art. Putting Satō's work in conversation with historically contemporaneous popular antiquarianism in Japan would also illuminate the historical tensions that existed within a transactional field of broader material culture.
When the book was first published in Japan in 1999, it immediately attracted considerable scholarly attention. In selecting this book to receive the prestigious Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities (under the section of Literary and Art Criticism), Shūji Takashina, one of the most eminent art historians in Japan, remarked, “In the future, this will be an important, foundational resource without which it will be impossible to discuss modern art in Japan.” Takashina's statement remains accurate a decade later in Japan today, and with the publication of its English translation, the scope in which this book serves as an essential resource is expanded to a much wider audience. Satō's numerous detailed charts and listings will serve as invaluable resources for scholars and students of Japanese art history beyond specialization in “modern Japanese art.” For cultural and art historians of other Asian contexts, Satō's work offers a solid comparative point of entry to establish inter-Asian comparisons of institutionalizations and implementations of “art” practices.
