Lecture
Bijutsu: The Key Issue of Contemporary Japanese Art
- Date
- Wednesday 29 April 2026
- Time
- Serie
- Leiden Lecture Series in Japanese Studies
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.11
Abstract
The Japanese term bijutsu (美術) designates ‘fine art’ in the Western sense, commonly used in Japan. However, it did not exist in premodern Japan until it was coined in the early Meiji period (1868-1912). By using this term, the Meiji government promoted Western notions and practices of fine art through art institutions as part of their modernisation of the country. This historical fact has profoundly influenced the creative identity of Japanese artists, causing significant artistic issues including the role of the traditional aesthetics and the inferior status of crafts. Japan’s unconditional surrender in the Second World War in 1945 brought the country under the Western, particularly American hegemony in socio-political and cultural contexts. Under the powerful influence of Western art, postwar Japanese artists were celebrated on one hand; however, they often suffered from the negative Western evaluation of their works on the other hand. Referring to these historical contexts, the lecture examines why contemporary Japanese art tended to be regarded as a mere imitation of Western art and why it has turned into a fascinating subject since the late 1980s. The talk discusses the essential issues of bijutsu that shaped the ideas of contemporary Japanese artists such as Takashi Murakami.
About the speaker
Kiyoko Mitsuyama-Wdowiak is an art historian specialising in post-war Japanese art and the convenor of the Arts of Japan and Korea module of the SOAS-Alphawood Asian Art Programme at SOAS, University of London. Born and educated in Tokyo, she took a curatorial role (1983-1991) at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Since the early 1990s she has been based in London, working as an independent researcher/lecturer. In 2010, she published a book in Japan about the Western reception of post-war Japanese art (Umi o wataru nihon gendai bijutsu, Keisō Shobō). She has been contributing since 2019 to Art Platform Japan research projects of the National Center for Art Research, Japan, creating the resource database of post-war art exhibitions held outside Japan. She is a PhD candidate at SOAS; her thesis examines sculptural developments in postwar Japan.