Silence exchanged under a tiled roof: Japan's attempt to paint a self-portrait from 1874 to the 1910s.

Silence exchanged under a tiled roof: Japan's attempt to paint a self-portrait from 1874 to the 1910s.

From 1874 to the 1910s, Japan was rapidly developing its external appearance as a modern nation. Behind such institutional reforms as treaty revision, conscription, and land tax reform, the nation faced another challenge. This was the question of how to present itself to the world. A nation's prestige could not be established by warships and factories alone. The lines and shadows engraved on paper money, securities, medals, and the portraits of emperors and other dignitaries became the face of the new Japan. At the forefront of this movement was the sculptor Edoardo Chiossone, who was invited from Italy.

At the time, Japan was excited by the introduction of Western art, but at the same time it was experiencing the devastation of traditional art as the price of rapid change. Buddhist statues and antique vessels were destroyed by the movement to abolish Buddhism, and craftsmen and painters who had lost the patronage of the old feudal lords found themselves without a place to go. The mass exodus of antiquities from Japan by foreign merchants and diplomats became a common sight. Ryosuke Tokuno, the head of the Printing Bureau, was deeply concerned about this situation. Although he was a financial bureaucrat, he saw art as a problem that affected the very foundation of the nation.

This attitude is vividly illustrated in a scene recorded during a nationwide antiquities survey trip accompanied by Kyosone. Stuck in the rain and facing each other at an inn in Hachioji, Tokunoh speaks quietly. He told them that those who paint pictures and make diagrams need to be prepared to do so. If one does not see temples, shrines, and old paintings, and have a thorough knowledge of customs and human feelings, one will only follow the form of the brush. The overlapping mountains, rivers, and tiled roofs of Japan are not found in Europe or China. If you paint without understanding this real world, your brush will surely come up empty.

These words are more like a monologue from the nation of Japan to itself than a sermon to foreign artists. Japan cannot remain Japan simply by transplanting Western technology. Without grasping the spirit that lies beyond imitation, modernization will end up being a mere disguise. For this reason, Tokunoh dared to accompany Kyosone on his grueling field trips. He believed that the best education was to show them landscapes, let them touch ancient vessels, and let them feel the layers of time with their bodies.

It is recorded that Kyossone did not say much in response to this narrative, but rather nodded his head and expressed his gratitude. This silence is symbolic. Although he possessed unparalleled skills in banknote engraving and portrait painting, he did not see Japan as merely a technologically backward country. Rather, through this journey, he came to understand the spiritual depth and historical continuity of Japanese art and reflected this in his own work. The fact that he later collected a vast amount of Japanese art and opened a museum in Genoa eloquently illustrates this internal transformation.

What this scene shows is that the role of the hired foreigner in Meiji Japan was not a one-way teacher. While the nation was learning technology from the West, it expected those same foreigners to experience and understand what Japan was all about, and to serve as a conduit for communicating it to the rest of the world. The quiet dialogue between Kyosone and Ryosuke Tokuno was the most intense moment in time during which modern Japan attempted to paint a picture of itself.

In parallel with this period, the Vienna World Exposition triggered a trend toward reevaluation of Japanese art, and Fenollosa and Okakura Tenshin conducted systematic surveys of cultural properties. These were not a series of coincidences, but rather an expression of the sense of crisis that the nation unconsciously shared. Modernization is not destruction, but selection and translation. This awareness certainly lives on in the silence exchanged under the tiled roof.