高村光太郎

Born in 1883 in Shitaya-ku, Tokyo (present-day Taito-ku). Real name Mitsutarō 光太郎. His father, the Buddhist sculptor Takamura Kōun, gave him a carving knife as a child and that inspired him to become a sculptor. The metalwork artist Takamura Toyochika was his younger brother by birth. In 1897, he entered the preparatory division of Tokyo Bijutsu Gakkō (Tokyo Fine Arts School, present-day Tokyo University of the Arts) and the following year he advanced to the school’s Sculpture Department. While in school he produced a circular magazine with his classmates and his articles were signed “Dagian” 朶木庵 or “Sendagian” 千朶木庵. In 1900 he sent an entry signed with the name “Ōson” 鷗村 to the Yomiuri Shimbun’s “Haiku Hagakibin” public submission poetry competition, and his entry was accepted with “selected“ status. He also showed an interest in “tanka” poetry around that time and, resonating with the romanticism of Yosano Tekkan, he joined the Shinshisha poetry group headed by Yosano. The “tanka” verses he submitted under the name “Takamura Saiu” 篁砕雨 to the “Myōjō” magazine were chosen for publication. In 1900, the Chōsokai (Chōso Society) consisting primarily of Tokyo Bijutsu Gakkō graduates and students was established and their activities were largely based on the naturalism heralded by Ōmura Seigai. He entered “Moongazing (Kangetsu)” in the group’s first exhibition, and the following year he entered “Maboroshi (Fantasy),” a fantasy mood work based on a novel by Izumi Kyōka, in the group’s second exhibition. In 1902 he graduated from the Wooden Sculpture Section, Sculpture Department, Tokyo Fine Arts School. His graduation work was “Awe-arousing Missionary (Nichiren)” (The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts) depicting the Buddhist priest Nichiren as a young man. He produced works that were strongly literary in tone around that time. In 1903, he joined the Tokyo Chōkōkai (Tokyo Chōkō Society) and the Chōso Dōkōkai (Chōso Dōkō Society) That same year he was impressed when he saw photographs of Rodin’s “Poetry.” In 1904 he was amazed by the images of Rodin’s “Thinker” published in the English art magazine “Studio.” The following year he bought a copy of an English translation of Camille Mauclair’s critique “Auguste Rodin” at Maruzen bookstore, and his repeated careful reading of the text further deepened his interests in Rodin. There was then no proper academic course in Western style sculpture at the Tokyo Fine Arts School, but he entered the school’s Western-style Painting Department in 1905 and pursued individual study. Following a suggestion from the art historian Iwamura Tōru he traveled to the USA in 1906 and studied charcoal drawing and sculpture at the Art Students League night school in New York City. The Following year he received the Gutzon Borglum Prize. While in New York he saw his first Rodin bronze, “St. John the Baptist” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and met sculptor Ogihara Moriye, who became a lifelong friend. He spent time in London and then, starting in 1908, he lived in Paris where he studied “croquis” at the night school classes held at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere. During the day he sculpted in the studio and often made trips to art museums. While he visited Rodin’s studio, he never met the artist himself. He returned to Japan in 1909 and participated in the Pan Society, a gathering of painters and poets who likened Tokyo’s Sumida River to the Seine in Paris as they created a decadent atmosphere at their gatherings. A 1910 critique of the Bunten exhibition (Ministry of Education Art Exhibition), ‘A Final Glance at the Third Bunten Exhibition’ (“Subaru,” January 1910 issue), criticized the sculpture displayed in the Bunten as lacking an objective sense of nature and structural form. The April 1910 “Subaru” magazine issue published an art critique titled ‘A Green Sun.’ This critique, which emphasized the complete freedom of art, can be called Japan’s first Impressionist declaration. That same year he opened the Rōkandō Gallery in Kanda Awajichō as Japan’s first art gallery, albeit it closed after only one year. During this period Kōtarō’s thoughts and actions were at the cutting edge of the art world. In 1912 he participated in the Fusain Society organized by Saitō Yori, Kishida Ryūsei, Kimura Shōhachi, and Yorozu Tetsugorō and displayed Western-style paintings and sculptures in their exhibitions. In 1914, he married the Western style painter Naganuma Chieko. He extracted himself from the decadent lifestyle and began to live lives that saw nature as the absolute presence. That year, he self-funded the publication of his debut poetry anthology “Dōtei 道程 (The Journey)” (Jojōshisha, Tokyo). While poetry production continued to be an important creative outlet, to the end Kōtarō viewed poetry as a “safety valve” for sculpture, and always considered himself to be a sculptor. Kōtarō was less productive in the genre of female nudes which were then a staple product of Western sculpture. Then, by some chance, he was able to have a woman model for him in 1917 and he created a small, freshly lovely work, “Sitting Nude” (National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto). This is the only extant finished female nude by Kōtarō, other than the “Female Nudes for the Memorial to the Patrons of the Lake Towada National Park” (known as the “Statue of Maidens”). Starting around the mid Taishō period, Kōtarō, like Rodin, created several series of works depicting hands. “Hand” (ca. 1918, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) is said to have been inspired by Buddhist sculpture mudras (hand positions) and yet it also reveals Kōtarō’s own distinctive interpretation of such motifs. Kōtarō continued the work of spreading Rodin’s artistic vision throughout Japan. In 1916, the year before Rodin’s death, Kōtarō published “Rodin’s Words” (Oranda Shobō, Tokyo), followed by “Rodin’s Words Continued” (Tokyo: Sōbunkaku, 1920), and a critical biography “Rodin” (Tokyo: Ars, 1927). But, on a personal note, it was around this time that in Kōtarō’s mind Rodin shifted from the object of absolute worship to a more relative presence. His long poem “Cathedral in the Thrashing Rain” (“Myōjō” Second Series, 1-1, November 1921 issue), which conflates his own internal conundrums with the Notre Dame Cathedral he visited while studying in Paris, includes his determination to differentiate himself from Rodin and engage with Japanese wood sculpture. Starting around the time of an announcement in the September 1924 issue of “Myōjō” about the establishment of a “Small Wood Sculptures Buying Club” which would be created and distributed on an order basis, he carved numerous small wood sculptures depicting paddy birds, peaches, cicadas, catfish, and turban shells. Some of those works were displayed in the Daichōwa Bijutsu Tenrankai (Daichōwa Art Exhibition) held twice, in 1927 and then the following year. This process was aimed at extracting himself and Chieko from their poverty-stricken lifestyle, but it also became a process of confirming the artistic realm of Western sculpture, including Rodin, in Japanese traditional sculpting methods. Thus, while they can be considered small minor works, each encompassed a vast universe. This period when he successfully created small wood sculptures was also the time when he wrote out his own theories on sculpture. His series of publications, “Chōso Sōron (Introduction to Sculpture)” (“Ars Daibijutsu Kōza” 3–4, 1925), “Chōkoku Jikkajō (Ten Sculpture Clauses)” (“Shisō” No. 56, 1926), and “Gendai no Chōkoku (Contemporary Sculpture) (“Iwanami Kōza Sekai Bungaku” Dai 8,” Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, 1933) can be considered evidence of his moving away from Rodin and setting out to establish modern Japanese sculpture. Starting with his “Kōun 60th Birthday Commemorative Portrait” (1911, now “Head of Kōun,” private collection, only head extant) and his first commissioned work “Portrait of Sonoda Kōkichi” (1915, Rokuzan Art Museum, Nagano, et. al.), Kōtarō created numerous, still extant portrait sculptures, including “Head of Ōkura Kihachirō” (1926, private collection), “Bust Portrait of Kuroda Seiki” (1932, Tokyo University of the Arts), “Bust Portrait of Naruse Jinzō” (1933, Japan Women’s University, Tokyo), and “Bust Portrait of Kōun Commemorating the First Anniversary of his Death” (1935, Rokuzan Art Museum). These works reveal the true quality of Kōtarō’s ability, standing as manifestations of the spirits of each individual, rather than simply their physical likeness. While Kōtarō was almost never solely active in one particular art organization, he did become a member of the newly established sculpture division of the Kokugakai which was born in 1928 from the splintering of the Kokuga Sōsaku Kyōkai (Association for the Creation of National Painting). However, he never entered one of his own works in their exhibitions. In 1929, he published his father’s autobiographic memoirs, “Kōun Kaikodan (Kōun’s Reminiscing)” (Banrikaku Shobō) as recorded by Kōtarō and the author Tamura Shōgyo. That same year, Chieko’s birth family, the Naganuma family went bankrupt, and the family members scattered. It seems that Chieko’s physical and mental health changed around that time. For Kōtarō, the change in Chieko’s condition was the third trial to be endured, on top of his financial worries and the artistic struggle to be both modern and Japanese in his works. After Chieko’s death in 1938, he published a succession of poetry anthologies, critique compilations, and collections of essays, such as “The Chieko Poems (Chieko Shō)” (Tokyo: Ryūseikaku, 1941), “Bi ni Tsuite (On Beauty)” (Tokyo: Dōtōsha, 1941), “Zōkei Biron (A Treatise on Formative Art)” (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1943), “Bōgetsu Bōjitsu” (Tokyo: Ryūseikaku, 1943), and ‘Angu Shōden’ (“Tenbō” No. 19, July 1947), as his sculpture work stagnated. In 1940, the year before the Pacific War broke out, he was appointed a member of the Chūō Kyōryokukai (Central Cooperation Council) of the Taisei Yokusankai (Imperial Rule Assistance Association). As wartime conditions continued, in 1942 he became an advisor to the Zōei Chōsojin Kai (Zōei Chōsojin Society), the group organized by Shimizu Takashi, Nakamura Naondo, Naganuma Kōzō and others as the embodiment of “the monumental arts movement.” Thus, he was actively involved in the “enhancing national prestige via art” government policies, as well as writing and publishing numerous texts on current wartime conditions, including war poems. Firebombing on April 13, 1945, destroyed his studio and many of his works, and he was evacuated to Hanamaki, Iwate prefecture. After the war, he moved to Ōta village in Iwate prefecture, where he lived in a simple hut, reflecting on his own collaboration with Japan’s war effort as he lived on the produce of the area. In 1947, he was nominated as a Nihon Geijutsuin (Japan Art Academy) member, but he declined. In 1953, he completed “Statue of Maidens,” and it was installed on the shores of Lake Towada. On March 29, 1956, he vomited blood in the studio of the late Nakanishi Toshio in Nakano-ku, which he had borrowed to produce “Statue of Maidens,” and died on April 2nd. He was 73 years old. Kōtarō was interred alongside Chieko in Somei Cemetery, Komagome, Toshima-ku, Tokyo. (Fujii Akira / Translated by Martha J. McClintock) (Published online: 2024-03-13) *The works listed in the text with collection names are the completed works of those titles.