鏑木清方

Born in Sakumachō, Kandaku, Tokyo in 1878. Real name Ken’ichi. His father, Jōno Saigiku, was active as a popular novelist from the end of the Edo period and was also involved in the newspaper business. After taking part in the launch of Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun, Saigiku ran “Yamato Shimbun.” Kiyokata was fond of the theater and illustrated storybooks from his childhood, and following his father’s and the “rakugo” storyteller San’yūtei Enchō’s advice, he set his mind on becoming an illustrator, and became a pupil of Mizuno Toshikata in 1891. In 1893, he was conferred the “gagō” (art name) “Kiyokata” and drew his first cuts for “Yamato Shimbun.” The following year, he succeeded Toshikata’s job of providing illustrations for that newspaper and began working as an illustrator. Meanwhile, he met Yamanaka Kodō and others who took part in a society to study paintings and calligraphic works, and learned how to paint too. When business at “Yamato Shimbun” deteriorated and Kiyokata had to struggle against hard living, he came across writings by Higuchi Ichiyō and Izumi Kyōka, by which he was deeply moved. It was this esteem for Ichiyō and Kyōka’s literature that formed the basis and fermented Kiyokata’s art rich in literary flair. Particularly with Izumi Kyōka, Kiyokata later became good friends, and the novelist and illustrator referred to as “written by Kyōka, illustrated by Kiyokata” were known as an ideal pair. From 1897, Kiyokata did illustrations for regional newspapers and magazines. In 1900, he contributed illustrations to the magazines “Kabuki” and “Shinshōsetsu,” and from 1903, to “Bungei kurabu.” Thus, he gained sound popularity as an illustrator. In addition to working as an illustrator, in 1901, together with Yamanaka Kodō and others, Kiyokata formed Ugōkai, a group inclined toward ukiyo-e. In 1902, he submitted “Grave of Higuchi Ichiyō” (Kamakura City Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum, Kanagawa) to the 5th Ugōkai Exhibition. It shows Midori, the protagonist of the novel “Takekurabe” (Growing up) (“Bungakukai,” Jan.–Mar., Aug., Nov. Dec., 1895, Jan. 1896), leaning against Higuchi Ichiyō’s grave in a pensive mood. In later years, Kiyokata described this painting, in which reality and imagination intersect, as the origin of his art. While making a living as an illustrator, Kiyokata studied painting diligently at Ugōkai. However, once the Bunten (Ministry of Education Fine Arts Exhibition) was inaugurated in 1907, he decided to convert to a nihonga (Japanese-style painting) artist. For the 1st Bunten, he submitted a detailed portrayal of an Edo-period popular novelist he held in high esteem as “Kyokutei Bakin (author)” (1907, Kamakura City Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum), but it was rejected. Nevertheless, a genre scene of the Bunka and Bunsei eras (1804–30) entitled “Mirrors” (whereabouts unknown) was accepted for the first time in 1909. Then, at the 4th Bunten held in 1910, “Kabuki Played by Women” (lost in a fire) depicting female kabuki performers backstage won first place of the third prize. Thereafter, his elaborate portrayal of groups of people based on studies of early-modern genre painting and ukiyo-e continued to be highly acclaimed. After “Boating Excursion on the Sumida River” (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo）won second prize in 1914 and was purchased by the Ministry of Education, Kiyokata gained confidence that he could abandon illustration and pursue a career as a nihonga artist. The start of changes in Kiyokata’s artistic style in the works he presented to the government-sponsored exhibitions can be identified in “A Shower Passing By” (lost in a fire), which won first place of the second prize, in effect the top prize, at the 9th Bunten in 1915. Until then, Kiyokata had been painting mainly human figures, but in this painting, the subject was the natural landscape in the background. This attempt continued in “Black Hair” (awarded special recognition at the 11th Bunten, private collection) in 1917 too. Yet, in “Tamesaruru hi” (Day of Trial) (awarded recommendation at the 12th Bunten, private collection), a figure painting done the following year, the focus lay in revealing the inner feelings of the women portrayed. Thus, until the mid-1920s, Kiyokata seems to have been groping in both realms of landscape and figure painting in search of how to express them. In later years, Kiyokata described his art as “emotionalist,” but the paintings he created during this period were already brimming with an emotionalist feeling, and one can tell that his experiments were based on a core of firm creativity. The landscape paintings Kiyokata produced were frequently presented at Kinreisha, a group which he founded together with Kikkawa Reika and others in 1916 and which he regarded as an important opportunity to do research. The groping, which spanned over more than five years, came to a conclusion with “Asasuzu” (Cool of the Morning) (The 6th Teiten [Imperial Fine Arts Academy Exhibition], Kamakura City Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum), which Kiyokata painted in 1925. It was inspired by his private life. His eldest daughter, who was the model, and the natural landscape are portrayed realistically, and the beauty of a woman and that of nature are united. “Tsukijiakashi-chō, Tokyo” (The 8th Teiten, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, ICP [Important Cultural Property]), the most important work by Kiyokata produced in 1927, can be regarded as a developed version of “Cool of the Morning.” After the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, Kiyokata began working on works reminiscing about traces of the bygone Meiji era, and produced “Tsukijiakashi-chō, Tokyo” with a female figure dressed in mid-Meiji-era fashion as the subject matter. The landscape is restricted to pale line drawing and coloring, and the woman is portrayed without too much reality. The female figure is a combination of a real model and impressions of a character in Kōda Rohan’s novel “Sora utsu nami” (Shun’yōdō, 1906–1907). The woman lingers in Akashi-chō, a district which prospered as a foreign settlement in the Meiji era, and looks back at sailing ships anchored at Tsukudajima on the other side of the river, which flourished as a fishing town from the Edo period. This lyrical depiction of the times won the Imperial Fine Arts Academy Prize that year and was much talked about. Thereafter, Kiyokata extended his field of painting to portraiture too. “Portrait of San’yūtei Enchō” (The 11th Teiten, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) of 1930 captures the appearance of the distinguished “rakugo” storyteller, who Kiyokata came into contact with as a youth, in a way that the inner character of this figure is revealed. Kiyokata’s pursuit of portraiture continued in “Portraits of Geisha” (1934, The 15th Teiten, lost in a fire); “Ichiyō,” a portrait of Higuchi Ichiyō (1940, Art Exhibition Marking the 2600th Anniversary of the First Emperor Jinmu’s Accession to the Throne, Tokyo University of the Arts); and after World War II, “Senshi no Omokage (Portrait of My Late Teacher)” (1949, The 5th Nitten [Japan Fine Arts Exhibition], Kamakura City Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum), the last work Kiyokata submitted to a government-sponsored exhibition; and “Portrait of the Kabuki Actress Kumehachi” (1954, Kamakura City Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum). It is said that there are two flows in Kiyokata’s art. One is the progress he made in the government-sponsored exhibitions as described above. The other was the “takujō geijutsu” (tabletop art) he proposed. Tabletop art was a concept which emerged during Kiyokata’s period of groping in the latter half of the 1910s, and refers to small pictures as opposed to fine art depicted as large images. The quintessence of tabletop art lay in the points that it could be held in the viewer’s hands and that details of the brushwork or coloring could be appreciated. It covered a wide range from works depicted on small supports such as “emaki” (handscrolls), “orichō” (folded booklets), or “shikishi” boards to printed matter such as illustrations in novels and books containing collections of pictures. Kiyokata’s tabletop art began with “From the Story ‘Ugetsu monogatari’ by Ueda Akinari” (Reiyūkai, Tokyo), which he submitted to the 6th Kinreisha Exhibition in 1921. In 1927, he pictorialized a novel by Izumi Kyōka as “From the Novel ‘Chūmonchō’ by Izumi Kyōka” (Kamakura City Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum), and in 1934, based on a novel by Higuchi Ichiyō, he painted a series entitled “From the Novel ‘Nigorie’ by Higuchi Ichiyō” (Kamakura City Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum). There is also an album entitled “Scenes along the Tsukijigawa” (1941, Uehara Museum of Art, Shizuoka), in which Kiyokata reminisces about his childhood living in the “shitamachi” area of Tokyo. These prewar examples of tabletop art were presented at small exhibitions held at Kinreisha, local shows organized by Kiyokata’s pupils, and “shiseiten” (exhibitions of Japanese painters’ latest artworks held by department stores and Japanese art dealers). In contrast, “Chōseki Ankyo” (Daily Life of the Common People in Downtown of the Meiji Period) (1948, Kamakura City Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum), a picture scroll of the ordinary citizens’ life in the mid-Meiji era painted after World War II, was submitted to the Japan Fine Arts Exhibition (Nitten), where large-scale exhibition art was shown. This shows how determined Kiyokata was about tabletop art. There are also many works based on plays and literature, which Kiyokata was routinely fond of throughout his lifetime, and they demonstrate a significant characteristic of his art. He also designed stage sets and costumes, worked on illustrations, book designs, designs, and wrote theater reviews and essays. He is well-known for his wide-ranging activities unrestricted to painting. In particular, the autobiographical essay “Koshikata no ki” (Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 1961) and its sequel, “Zoku koshikata no ki,” (Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 1967) narrate the social conditions and aspects of the art circles from the Meiji to Shōwa era, and are read widely to the present as highly valuable documents from the point of view of cultural history. Kiyokata continued painting until 1971, and died of old age aged ninety-three in 1972. “Kaburaki Kiyokata bunshū” (Essays by Kaburaki Kiyokata), 8 vols. (Hakuhousha, 1979–1980) compiled by his son-in-law Yamada Hajime serves as the fundamental literature for studies on Kiyokata. The house in Kamakura where Kiyokata lived in his later years was donated to Kamakura City by the heirs, and opened as Kamakura City Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum in 1998. “Portrait of San’yūtei Enchō” was designated as Important Cultural Property in 2003. In 2019, the “Tsukijiakashi-chō, Tokyo” trilogy, which had been missing for forty-four years, was discovered and acquired by the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. It was designated as Important Cultural Property in 2022, which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death. (Imanishi Ayako / Translated by Ogawa Kikuko) (Published online: 2024-05-15)