Japan’s Van Gogh? Analogy and revision in the case of Shikō Munakata

Abstract

After a fortuitous encounter with a reproduction of Vincent van Gogh’s Six Sunflowers in 1920s Japan, then teenager Shikō Munakata (1903–75) famously pledged to become “Japan’s Van Gogh.” Instead, Munakata would become a woodblock printmaker celebrated in a purposely non-analogical manner not only as “the world’s Munakata” but also, later, as “Japan’s Munakata,” amongst numerous other variations. Conveyed through successive (dis)analogies, the story of Munakata’s artistic development makes clear certain national paradigms entangled in the historization of Japanese modern art. In this case study, I trace the varied ways in which Munakata and others construct, propagate, and modify analogy in an active and, at times, unwitting process of historicization across several contexts, including Munakata’s own visual and textual legacy, the writings of his contemporaries and art historians, and the interpretive approaches of museums. This article focuses on key insights from historiographical research and a site visit to the Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum of Art in Aomori, Japan. This example is unusual and significant in that an analogy proposed by the artist himself (Japan’s Van Gogh) is adopted and modified by others in a way to which Munakata responds in different ways throughout his life. In comparing the intentions and contexts that underlie each instance, I discuss ruptures in how Munakata’s life and work are interpreted in writings about the artist. I emphasize that analogies need not be static; they are also strategically inconsistent, malleable, and thus revelatory of their underlying conventions.