Mavo's Conscious Constructivism

Abstract

It has often been noted that one of the defining factors of Japan's entry into the modern era was an emergent ideology of individualism (kojinshugi) inspired by Western philosophical and political thought.1 Widely ranging interpretations of individualism, however, were spawned in relation to changing social and political conditions as Japan went from being a newly established nation-state to a thriving imperialist power during the period from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the beginning of the war in China in the early 1930s. In its various manifestations, the continually evolving discourse on the individual had profound consequences for art and literature. It broached serious questions concerning the locus of Japanese identity in the wake of the government's aggressive policy of westernization, opened a discussion on the nature of the autonomous self, and prompted an unprecedented exploration of psychological interiority and subjectivity in the arts.2 By extension it also addressed the issue of the social role of this newly autonomous individual.