The people at rest: the anarchist origins of Ogawa Usen's ‘Nihonga’

Abstract

This essay revises our understanding of Ogawa Usen, a prolific artist known for his contributions to the genre of Nihonga, ‘Japanese-style painting,’ in early twentieth century Japan. Nihonga was founded to appreciate and preserve ‘Japanese arts.’ Leading representatives of Nihonga aestheticized ‘Japan’ in nostalgic representations of the nation. By considering Usen's art from the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) when Usen's work first gained popularity, the essay argues that Usen intended his work to express anarchist ideas of progress antithetical to the nostalgic sense of yearning for a vanishing national culture. According to some of the most recognized anarchist figures from the movement, human progress would be guided by anarchist principles that valued the everyday doing of common people, each with his or her own creative energy and talent to contribute to society. Usen first gained public attention as a cartoon illustrator for the Nonwar Movement against the state. Although museums and art historians have overlooked Usen's cartoons, his cartoons are a clear expression of the ideas behind his body of work, and among the earliest examples of his distinctive style. They reveal that the artist cannot be understood within the bifurcated framework of West vs. East, modern vs. tradition, global time vs. nationalized space. With Usen, the arts began to be understood as everyday practices of everyone, rather than ‘high culture.’ This new genre of anarchist art of, for, and by everyone began to include other art movements, including Mingei, Children's Free Arts, and Farmer's Arts. This introduction of Usen to Western historiography thus calls for a new lens to interpret some of the most innovative artistic currents in modern Japanese cultural history.