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Made in Japan

An exhibition in St. Petersburg explores the Meiji period, which brought Western influence and great change to Japanese art in the late 1800s.

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published August 11, 2005

	[Images courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts
	Taiso Yoshitoshi, Midnight Moon at Mount Yoshino, 1886, woodblock color print. From the artist’s series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, more than 100 images created between 1885 and 1892. This one is from a folk tale in which a princess exorcises a ghost. During the Meiji period, artists began using synthetic dyes imported from the West, which were more brilliant than their customary vegetable dyes.
	Iris vase, Meiji period (1868-1912), repousse and chased silver. The influence of the Western art nouveau movement is evident in the vase’s shape and treatment of the irises.
	Hashimoto Kansetsu, hanging scroll, 1902, ink on silk. The tanuki looks like a raccoon but is a member of the dog family. It’s painted in the “one-corner” style in which most of the surface is left empty.

ST. PETERSBURG - "Art," the word, did not exist in the Japanese language until 1871. Like many things both conceptual and real, it was appropriated from the Western world during a time from 1868 to 1912 known as the Meiji period. The Museum of Fine Arts has organized a fascinating exhibition of Meiji art, and though it was not designed to do so, it invites comparison to the United States today and our relationships with foreign cultures.

The Meiji era has been exhaustively mined historically and politically. Popular culture has paid it attention, too. If you want context, check out The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise and set in the middle of Meiji Japan, for a subjective, selective and pretty much fictive account that will still give you a sense of the roiling forces of change going on then. And reread Shogun, the bestselling novel about the era that preceded Meiji (also with the fictive caveat). But the Meiji era's art was ignored for decades by scholars who considered it too commercial, and so it has rarely been the subject of museum shows.

"Splendors of Meiji Japan" allows for plenty of opinions about the value of the art. But it's first and foremost an educational journey.

It was a turbulent moment in Japanese history, a crossroads at which an insular society was forever altered by America's aggressive diplomatic invasion and Japan's own desire to embrace Western culture.

The Meiji ("enlightened rule") period was launched after Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor in 1853 with a squadron of warships called "Black Ships" by the Japanese, for the color of their hulls. (Devout culture junkies will recall Stephen Sondheim's 1970s musical Pacific Overtures, about that event.) Perry, acting on the orders of President Millard Fillmore, eventually forced a treaty that led to trade between the two countries as well as a U.S. military presence. Japan was ready for the change, having lived under an archaic feudal rule for centuries and a caste system dominated by the top rung of the samurai class. The emperor, who had been marginalized during the rule of the Shoguns, was given more prominence by a centralized government. Nobles were stripped of their revenues and lands, and Shinto became the official religion, dealing a blow to the powerful Buddhist priests. Goodbye samurai, hello U.S. Cavalry.

For several generations of craftsmen, these events were profound. Their traditional sources of patronage, the nobles and the Buddhist clergy, were gone. But America was hungry for evidence of this land's exoticism, so artisans began churning out domestic decor instead of battle swords and ritual objects. By the thousands they came across the Pacific Ocean: furniture, ceramics, bronzes and textiles that melded Japanese motifs with Victorian tastes.

"Splendors" is arranged thematically, using the art and objects to make historical and cultural points. It opens with an overview of the exhibition's showy furniture and subtle prints, hallmarks of the Meiji period, in the large gallery, which has been partly partitioned and painted turquoise. You're greeted by a 4-foot-high bronze incense burner topped with a Kirin, a fantastical beast with the body of a deer, horse's hooves, horns and a dragon's head. It's actually a mythical beast of Chinese origins, but American buyers would never have known or probably cared. Nearby is a large sky-blue vase, with cloisonne flowers, and a two-panel screen carved in high relief with eagles. They're all sumptuous and over the top. Along a wall are prints and an Imari plate that illustrate the coming of the Black Ships and hint at cultural clashes while celebrating progress.

The furniture in the next section, perched on a vividly stenciled platform that references the rug in a nearby print (kudos to the installation crew who designed and executed it), will elicit a wince from some viewers. By today's standards, it's cumbersome, dark and heavy and illustrates modern art history's problem with the Meiji period, which seems so out of date now. But Meiji craftsmen were giving us what we wanted, overwrought objects that often seem like parodies of the elegant, refined furniture they had produced for centuries for themselves. And there's no denying the workmanship that went into the intricate carving. A case in another gallery contains carved ivory, also made for export, with the same exquisite workmanship and often excessive detail.

The porcelains and silver are quieter and exemplify the way artists, who did not consider themselves artists, were trying to reconcile Western influences with their own beliefs about beauty. Silver strips are woven like reeds into a vase that is both sumptuous and humble. Chicks on a pair of porcelain vases look like the sweetly sentimental figures painted on Victorian china but are actually remarkably adept cloisonne, a technique that usually resembles stained glass.

Some of these objects are tropes that ballast the finest though far less dramatic part of the exhibition, the woodblock prints that line the walls in abundance. Many document the obsession with Western clothing. The emperor is suited in a morning coat, and his officers sport European military garb. Ladies are corseted into dresses with hourglass waists and bustles.

Some prints are homages to everyday life, called Ukiyo-e, or "Pictures of the Floating World." Kimono-clad women prepare dinner, or a beautiful geisha poses in a garden. They are frequently paired with vintage photographic prints of similar subjects, hand-colored and atmospheric.

Unlike decorative objects, prints and paintings were mostly made for the locals. Japonica did not extend to the walls, because Americans still preferred Old Masters, which is why you see the least Western influence in those mediums. Four of the best prints are along a back gallery wall. Crows Flying at Sunset by Shibata Zeshin is starkly graphic, with the birds, associated with fire, flying across a wash of blazing orange sky. Two prints by Taiso Yoshitoshi from his series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon and his triptych of a flutist's encounter with a thief capture the real mystery and elusiveness of Japanese art.

John Schloder, the museum's director, curated "Splendors," which, in a less spectacular way, combines food for thought and eye candy much as the Monet show did earlier in the year. Many of the 90 or so works come from the permanent collection, usually kept in storage. The wall texts are long and worth reading, giving you a real sense of the era as told through its art.

- Lennie Bennett can be reached at 727 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com

"Splendors of Meiji Japan" is at the Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg, through Oct. 23. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $8 adults, $7 seniors and $4 students with ID. Children 6 and younger admitted free. (727) 896-2667.

[Last modified August 10, 2005, 13:50:09]