The magazine “Shirakaba” was published from 1910 to 1923 by a group of young men of the same generation, such as MUSHAKOJI Saneatsu, SHIGA Naoya, ARISHIMA Ikuma and YANAGI Soetsu, who were alumni of Gakushuin High School (the current Gakushuin University, as it was known under the former system). Although it was a literary magazine, it contained many art illustrations and was read by art students and young people who loved art. The art illustrations here are not the physical information provided by today’s sophisticated printing technology, which can convey colours and textures close to those of the real thing, but illustrations made up from books of paintings and photographs. In exceptional cases, a bronze statue gifted by the sculptor Auguste Rodin through a letter exchange between the group and him was featured in a magazines or exhibitions, but the illustrations were essentially printed in rough black and white. Nevertheless, the magazine attracted a large number of readers as an art magazine, since the “Shirakaba” group followed their own interests and sympathies and wrote freely about artists and artistic theory, referring to foreign books and publications.

One of the most notable achievements of “Shirakaba” was the early introduction of the so-called Post-Impressionists such as Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin. Rather than their works, however, it was their way of life as artists that was passionately introduced. “Shirakaba” believed that the best way to express oneself is through one’s own inner motives and desires, without paying attention to the mode of era or society, and advocated this image of the artist to the new age to come. At the time of the transition from the Meiji to the Taisho period, the Japanese art world was beginning to emphasise the absolute freedom of the self in expression, coinciding with the current trend at the time towards individualism. The passionate artistic theory of the “Shirakaba” group, while criticised by some as idealistic, was introduced and welcomed with enthusiasm and sympathy by young people.

KISHIDA Ryusei, who is known for a series of paintings capturing his daughter Reiko, recalled the influence of “Shirakaba” on him as “the second birth”, and was regarded as one of the leading painters of the “Shirakaba” group. Initially, KISHIDA’s work was in the style of Post-Impressionism, following the latest Western art of the time, but he soon developed a meticulous and mysterious beauty of form, inspired by Western classical art. His obsessive realism was based on a quest for an “inner beauty”, a desire to reveal within his paintings the spirituality and actuality of his subjects.

KONNO Saki

Curator

Tohoku Fukushi University Serizawa Keisuke Art and Craft Museum

Translation :Naoko Mabon (WAGON)

Reference

• “Shirakabaha no aishita bijutsu (Shirakaba − Pilots of Art in Modern Japan)” edited by Kyoto Cultural Foundation and others, The Yomiuri Shimbun, Osaka, 2009
• “Shirakaba: Bijutsu eno tobira (Shirakaba: The Door to Art)”, Mushakoji Saneatsu Kinenkan, 2000
• TAKASHINA Shuji, ““Shirakaba” to kindai bijutsu (“Shirakaba” and Modern Art),” in “Nihon kindai no biishiki (Art and Aesthetics in Modern Japan)”, Seidosha, 1986

Image caption

“Shirakaba” Vol. 3, No. 6, Rakuyodo, June 1912 (Cover: MINAMI Kunzo)

Private collection