Nihonbashi in Edo from series 36 Views of Mt. Fuji (1830-1832) Public Domain
At the beginning of the Meiji era (1868 – 1912), the government was very anxious to emulate the West in every aspect of Japanese society and culture. Art academies and technical schools were established to facilitate the goal. Technical Fine Art School (Kobu Bijutsu Gakkō) in 1876 was the first government school to teach Western art and design techniques to Japanese students. Three Italian instructors were hired, including Antonio Fontanesi, responsible for painting and drawing. Although he was only in Japan for two years (1876-1878), Fontanesi introduced the next generation of Japanese artists to Western media such as charcoal, pastels, and oil paint. Fontanesi taught the foundation of 2-dimensional arts, including anatomical studies, linear and atmospheric perspectives, painting and sketching from live models, and en-plain air painting.
In the 1880s, there was a backlash against the intense westernizing energy of the early Meiji period, and the pendulum swung towards the appreciation of Japanese traditions in art. Nihonga, or Japanese-style painting, resulted from the revival. Yōga fell out of favor, and the 7-year-old Technical Fine Art School closed in 1883. These events demonstrate the duality in Japanese painting, a fluctuation between Japanese tradition and Westernization in search of its modern identity.
Considered the father of Yōga, Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924) was the most successful and influential advocate of this painting category. It was primarily under Kuroda's leadership that Yōga moved toward a viable position in modem Japanese art in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Returning from Paris in 1893, Kuroda took a leading role in revitalizing Yōga, which was out of favor in the 1880s. Kuroda brought back with him a style based on Plein-air Impressionism. Kuroda's paintings were generally well-received by the Japanese audience. His accomplishment served as an inspiration and point of departure for many influential Yōga artists of his generation and beyond. More than a transplantation of foreign formal elements, the establishment of Kuroda's approach signaled the liberation of artistic freedom for Yōga artists who were working in an oppressive academic manner. Kuroda was successful in bringing Yōga to a broader Japanese public because he infused Japanese elements into the surface depth of perceived Western-style oil paintings. Kuroda's pictorial representation, his choice of subject matter, and his call for artistic freedom (in the face of strict academic naturalism) contain aspects reverberating with Japanese aesthetics.
