Amateurism and the Art of Calligraphy in Postwar Japan

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Calligraphy, with its canonized status seemingly fixed across time and space in East Asia, has an inherent ontological ambiguity as an art form, oscillating between being a demonstration piece evidencing one's refinement in skillful handwriting on one hand, and a work conveying artistic individualism and expression in calligraphic markings on the other. Historically, this duality in part has resulted in the formation of polar opposite self-identities of its practitioners in East Asia, as professionals and amateurs.

This panel explores the first few decades after World War Two in Japan, arguing that the period marked a golden epoch of amateur calligraphers when the institution of professional calligraphers came to be unprecedentedly consolidated. These amateur calligraphers occupied a uniquely flexible and individualistic position in Japan's cultural landscape, positioning themselves freely in relation to the worlds of art as well as calligraphy through their claim to be "hobbyists" of calligraphy and "outsiders" of artistic establishments. Many of them were cultural celebrities exercising critical influence in and outside of Japan; their ranks included avant-garde artist Yoshihara Jirō, ceramist Kitaōji Rosanjin, ikebana artist Teshigahara Sōfū, philosophers Hisamatsu Shin'ichi and Suzuki Daisetsu, architect Shirai Seiichi, nihonga painter Dōmoto Inshō, and even a contemporary calligraphy scholar and conceptual artist, Ayelet Zohar. The aim of the panel is to offer one of the first attempts to identify synchronistic common grounds among these amateur calligraphers in their technical, methodological and conceptual approaches to art and calligraphy that may have enabled them to share their passions and commitment.

Area of Study

• Northeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Yasuko Tsuchikane, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures

Chair

• Shigemi Inaga, International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken)

Individual Presentations

• Yoshihara Jirō and the Interrelation between Calligraphy and Abstract Painting in Postwar Japan - Shin'ichirō Osaki, Tottori Prefectural Museum

• Fusion of Calligraphy into Painting: The Making of Universal Abstract Art by Dōmoto Inshō - Yasuko Tsuchikane, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures

• Amateurism in the Work of Shirai Seiichi: from Architecture to Calligraphy - Maki Iisaka, Texas A&M University

• Amateur Calligraphy in Professional Ceramics and Ikebana: The Cases of Teshigahara Sōfū and Kitaōji Rosanjin - Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer, Heidelberg University

• Ayelet Zohar's Multilingual Calligraphies 1998-2015 - Ayelet Zohar, Tel Aviv University

Discussant

• Ayelet Zohar, Tel Aviv University