村上華岳

Born on July 3, 1888 (Meiji 21) in Matsugaechō, Kita-ku, Osaka, the first son of Takeda Seizō and Tatsu. His real name was Shin’ichi. His maternal grandmother Ikegami Yukie is known for her 1883 establishment of Japan’s first reform school, the Ikegami Reform School (Ikegami Kankain), as a protective facility for wayward youth. Yukie’s first son Seizō is said to have been a medical doctor and Dutch studies scholar, and while the Ikeda family-Takeda family connection is not clear, his father Seizō inherited the role of Takeda family head. (note 1) In 1895 (Meiji 28), when Kagaku was seven years old, he was taken into the home of his paternal aunt Chizuko, his father’s younger sister, who had married into the Murakami family in Hanakuma-chō, Kobe. There he entered the elementary school of the Kobe-City Ordinary Elementary School. His father Seizō died in 1901 (Meiji 34) and thus Kagaku became the Takeda family heir. But then almost immediately after his father’s death the courts decreed the Takeda line extinct, and he was adopted by Murakami Gorobei, the head of his aunt’s household, where he lived. Interested in pictures from an early age, he decided he wanted to become a painter and in 1903 entered the Kyoto City Technical School of Art (present-day Kyoto City Senior High School of Art). His stepfather Gorobei supported Kagaku’s efforts throughout his life, saying “since you will never support yourself through art, I will support you financially.” When Kagaku entered the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Craft, Takeuchi Seihō, Yamamoto Shunkyo, Taniguchi Kōkyō, and other Maruyama-Shijō school painters taught the sketching from life method traditionally used by Maruyama-Shijō painters. Kagaku’s graduation work “Brown Bear” (1907, University Art Museum, Kyoto City University of Arts) presents a realistic image of a bear through the use of shading on its fur. He entered “Badger in a Bamboo Thicket” 竹藪に狸 (whereabouts unknown) in the First Bunten (Ministry of Education Fine Arts Exhibition), but it was rejected. The following year he entered “Donkeys and Summer Grass” 驢馬に夏草 (1908, Saitama City Cartoon Art Museum) where it was accepted and received Third Prize 三等賞入選. In 1909 (Meiji 42) he was admitted to the Kyoto Shiritsu Kaiga Senmon Gakkō (Kyoto City Technical School of Painting, present-day Kyoto City University of Arts) as a first term student. Other students in that same term included Irie Hakō, Sakakibara Shihō, Tsuchida Bakusen, Ono Chikkyō, and Nonagase Banka with whom he would later form the Kokuga Sōsaku Kyōkai (Association for the Creation of National Painting). A teacher at the school, art historian Nakai Sōtarō, provided the theoretical basis that later underscored the art movements espoused by these young painters. In 1911 (Meiji 44) his Kyoto City Technical School of Painting graduation work, “Early Spring” (University Museum, Kyoto City University of Arts) was awarded First Prize that year. He retitled the work “Landscape in February” 二月乃頃, and entered it in that year’s Fifth Bunten exhibition where it received an Honorable Mention. “Landscape in February” is a novel landscape painting that incorporates Western perspectival expression into a lyrical Shijō style and ably conveys Kagaku’s superior talents. After graduating, Kagaku advanced to the graduate school course in April of that year. Around that time he was interested in a wide array of traditional arts, from "ukiyoe" to "bunraku," “musume gidayū" (female “bunraku” puppet theater chanters), and "miyako odori" dance. These interests in turn deeply influenced his figural depiction. “Hirano” (later retitled “Evening Scene of Cherry Blossoms Viewing,” 1913, Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto) depicting nighttime viewing of cherry blossoms at Hirano Shrine in Kyoto, presents a fully mature depiction of this Kyoto custom based on his "ukiyoe" research and is imbued with the Taishō period’s distinctively carnal and decadent atmosphere. Conversely, during this period he entered “Amida” (1916, Kyoto City Museum of Art) in the Tenth Bunten exhibition where it was awarded a special prize (“tokusen”). Kagaku was fundamentally a mixture of the everyday world and the realm of Buddhist paradise, sensual beauty, and sacred beauty, and these features are also characteristic of his art. The desire for eros that exists in both the everyday and the sacred can be discerned in these two works that at first glance seem diametrically opposed. The year after he received a special prize in a Bunten exhibition, his “Aged Spring” (whereabouts unknown) was rejected by the Eleventh Bunten. The work submitted by Ono Chikkyō, who like Kagaku had received a special prize the previous year, was also rejected. Tsuchida Bakusen and Sakakibara Shihō also went unrewarded. These rejections made them dissatisfied with the Bunten judging and set them on the path towards forming their own new art association. In 1918 (Taishō 7) Tsuchida Bakusen, Ono Chikkyō, Nonagase Banka, Sakakibara Shihō, and Kagaku formed the Kokuga Sōsaku Kyōkai. They welcomed Takeuchi Seihō and Nakai Sōtarō as their advisors and held the group's inaugural meeting in January of that year. Kagaku was actively involved in the process, thinking up the group’s name and drafting its statement of purpose. He displayed his “Death of Buddha” 聖者の死 (destroyed) in the group’s first exhibition. For the second he displayed “Kiyohime at the Hidaka River” (Important Cultural Property [ICP], 1919, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), the third, “Nude” (ICP, 1920, Yamatane Museum of Art, Tokyo), the fourth, the cinnabar red ink line image “Buddha Preaching” 説法の図 (1924, private collection, on deposit at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), and three other works. For the fifth exhibition he displayed “Pine-covered Mountains in the Mist” (1925, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). Thus he created and displayed a succession of major works from the first half of his career from the end of the 1910s through the first half of the 1920s. Among those, the large “Female Nude” is a work that symbolizes Kagaku’s idealized beauty, described as “something both flesh and soul,” ‘the eternal woman’ who is the universal wellspring of humanity.” (note 2) Around 1921 (Taishō 10) Kagaku developed an intractable wheezing breath problem, and was forced to cancel his planned trip to Europe that year with members of the Kokuga Sōsaku Kyōkai. He moved to a house in Ashiya city, Hyōgo prefecture in 1923 (Taishō 12) to recuperate. In 1927 his stepfather died, and he returned to his adopted family’s home in Hanakuma, Kobe. His recuperative process coincided with his desire to escape the troublesome aspects of human interaction which hindered his free painting creation. His last entry was to the Fifth Kokuga Sōsaku Kyōkai exhibition, and then he resigned from the group. Thereafter he belonged to no specific art group and spent the rest of his life painting in the Hanakuma, Kobe, house, which he named Kōzondō Gashitsu. From the 1920s through the mid 1930s Kagaku painted gentle Buddhist figure paintings that somehow appear carnal in nature, landscapes depicting the local Mount Rokkō, and flowers such as peonies and camellias. Buddhas and mountains became Kagaku’s main subjects, and he valued them both equally. It is self-evident, he noted, “Buddhas are mountains, mountains are Buddhas.” (note 3) This view of religion and philosophy that pervades his works can be attributed to his, from a young age, closeness to and affinity for Nishida Tenkō, Miyazaki Yasuemon, and others. He was equally adept at ink tone modulation, freely applied brush strokes that vary between gentle and swift, fat and thin, as well as “tarashikomi” (ink puddling), and shading techniques. In addition to ink and colored pigments, he used gold, silver and aluminum powders, further experimenting with complex expression by using different types of paper support materials. While he was supposed to be living in seclusion far from the painting circles of the day, the concerted introduction of Kagaku in a 1931 issue of “Geibi” and a 1934 “Gashitsu” issue led the Kobe art world to develop a great interest in him. Collectors who loved his work formed the Kagaku Society 跏蕚会 in 1934 (Shōwa 9), which held a succession of Murakami Kagaku exhibitions in Kobe and Osaka, displaying works from their own collections. In 1935 (Shōwa 10) a major retrospective was held in Tokyo, followed by one in 1936 (Shōwa 11) in Kyoto. His asthmatic condition worsened in the latter half of the 1930s, and he concentrated on painting in order to escape the surrounding clamor brought about by the new attention. He produced works such as “Prince Siddhartha Meditating Under a Tree” (1937–38, Kahitsukan, Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art) with its pure expression seemingly offering salvation from his breathing problems. His “Scattering Flowers above the Clouds” (1938, Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka), “Fudo” (Acala) (1938, Kahitsukan, Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art), “Arhat” (1938, private collection), and “Vimalakirti” (1938, Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka) all seem to be prayers to cut short his calamities. He also created two works imbued with a complex ink line, semi-abstract fearsome expression, “Rocky Mountain” 岩の山 (1939, private collection) and “Autumn-tinted Mountains” 紅葉の山 (1939, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto). He died from respiratory issues before dawn on November 11, 1939 (Shōwa 14). “Peony” (private collection), a work that he had brushed with sizing ready to be painted on the next morning, was his final work. He was 51 years old. Kagaku was also interested in calligraphy and started to produce calligraphies around the mid 1930s. His distinctive calligraphy with its mountain ridge-like lines or Buddhist painting lines reveals yet another side of Kagaku’s creativity. Indeed, they resonate with the Asian belief that both painting and calligraphy reveal the human character. (Iio Yukiko / Translated by Martha J. McClintock) (Published online: 2024-03-25) Notes 1. See the following: Shimada Yasuhiro. ‘Murakami Kagaku no Shōgai’, in “Murakami Kagaku Ten”, 8-23. (Exh. cat.). Kyoto: The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, 2005; Murakami Keiko. ‘Kagaku no Kakei sono ta’. “Tōei”, Vol. 16 No. 2 (February 1940): 14-16, et al. 2. Murakami Kagaku. ‘Kuon no Josei’ in “Garon”, 52. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2004. 3. Murakami Kagaku. ‘Butsuga to Sansui’ in “Garon”, 284. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2004.