安田靫彦

Born in 1884, the fourth son of Yasuda Matsugorō and Kiku, of the Ningyō-chō, Tokyo, restaurant Hyakuseki in Shinyoshichō, Nihonbashi-ku, Tokyo, (present-day Nihonbashi Ningyōchō, Chūō-ku). Real name Shinzaburō. After his father’s death in 1896, pleurisy made him stop his studies in the senior school division of Nihonbashi-ku Arima Elementary School, and the family moved to Kaminegishi (Taitō-ku). Impressed by the classic artworks and those by Shimomura Kanzan and Kobori Tomoto that he unexpectedly encountered at the nearby Imperial Museum in Ueno, he entered Tomoto’s studio as a student. Soon after the disturbance that arose when Okakura Tenshin resigned from his position at the Tokyo Bijutsu Gakkō (Tokyo Fine Arts School) and the subsequent establishment of the Nihon Bijutsuin (Japan Art Institute), he received his first exhibition acceptance for his “Iesada” entered in the first Nihon Bijutsuin exhibition (Inten) held in October (however, that title is not found in Bijutsuin records). Kobori Tomoto was living with others in the Yanaka district of Tokyo and so Yukihiko commuted there to study with his teacher. Kawasaki Chitora, a close associate of his teacher, gave him the Yukihiko name as his “gō” (art name). The Shikōkai study group composed of Tomoto’s students was formed and he displayed talent in the history painting genre then fashionable. In 1900 Imamura Shikō joined the group and they changed the group, and they later occupied an important position within the reorganized Nihon Bijutsuin. Given that he always had a weak constitution, he turned to literature and history for his themes, depicting heroes and exceptional figures of each period. As he sought the “tragic but brave beauty” and “fleeting beauty” imagery that had been the focus of debate in his youth, he concentrated on tragic heroes and people living in adversity, while also creating a broad array of Asian painting themes including those on ancient Chinese or Buddhist subjects. These history painting themes required realistic expression and provided a pictorial explication of history for a modern nation. “The Japanese Missions to Tang China” (1900, Second Prize Virtuosity Award, Eighth Nihon Kaiga Kyōkai/Fourth Nihon Bijutsuin Kaiga Kyōshinkai, on deposit at the Hiratsuka Museum of Art), and “The Ōmuraji Mononobe no Moriya” (1908, First Kokuga Gyokuseikai exhibition, Museum of Art, Ehime) were two realistic works within this oeuvre. On the other hand, in 1901 Yukihiko entered the Nihonga Department elective course at the Tokyo Fine Arts School as part of his process of seeking out beauty in painting, but then he was not satisfied with the courses and withdrew the same year. Okakura Tenshin noticed him in 1907 and invited him to Izura (Ibaraki). There Tenshin recommended that he visit Nara and he received training in other methods. In 1908 he contracted tuberculosis and for many years was forced to recuperate in the country. His oeuvre developed across the late Meiji through early Taishō years. In 1911 Tenshin visited him in Numazu (Shizuoka) where he was recuperating. Thanks to that consideration, Yukihiko, Shikō and others began to receive support from Hara Sankei, and he was able to see a range of antique artworks in the Hara family home. In 1912 he entered “Yumedono (The Hall of Dreams)” (Tokyo National Museum) in the Sixth Bunten exhibition (Ministry of Education Fine Arts Exhibition). He also encountered calligraphy by Ryōkan and the works of Tomioka Tessai, thus making the Taishō period a time of great activity for him. In 1914 he was involved in the revival of the Nihon Bijutsuin on the first anniversary of Tenshin’s death, and he then challenged himself to create works depicting a wide array of Asian historical themes. The resulting works include two full color, powerfully composed works “Prayer for Safe Delivery” (Tokyo National Museum) displayed in the first exhibition of the reorganized group that year followed in 1916 by “The Warlord Xiang Yu” (Tokyo National Museum). He went on to create “The Dream” (1918, Tokyo National Museum), a densely colored work with Post-Impressionist methods, and “Spring at the Gogōan Retreat” (1919, Tokyo National Museum), a Taishō romantic-style work on the calligrapher-monk Ryōkan. He depicted items he collected in his works, at that point focusing on a camera, and then on a Song dynasty jar in his 1922 “Girls” (Tokyo National Museum). He displayed a succession of works in the period’s overseas exhibitions of Japanese art. “Solar Eclipse” (1925, Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) remains as a result of these activities, a work that can be seen as both a grand compilation of his Taishō period oeuvre and a new starting point. He made repeated studies of excavated archaeological materials in order to depict the theme of his painting, a tale from the ancient “Chinese Records of the Grand Historian (Shiki).” This work reveals both material quality and historical accuracy through its use of ancient Chinese line-based depiction of structurally formed figural groups, and it marks the beginning of the neo-classical style of his prewar Shōwa period. His health improved as the Shōwa period began, and he displayed a succession of works on new themes in the Reorganized Inten exhibitions, except around the time of Yokoyama Taikan’s theories on how to reorganize the Nihon Bijutsuin and the Minister of Education Matsuda Genji’s so-called Matsuda Reorganization. These works include “Injured Yamatotakeru at the Spring” (1928, National Museum of Modern Art), said to have been influenced by “Chatterton” (1856, Tate, London) by the Pre-Raphaelite Henry Wallis; the boldly modernized, albeit referencing Sōtatsu “Wind God and Thunder God” (1929, Toyama Memorial Museum, Saitama), and innovative works on subjects drawn from Hiraga Gennai and contemporary women. From 1940 through the following year he welcomed the most productive, overflowingly energetic era of his oeuvre. The most representative of such works, “Camp at Kisegawa” (1940–1941, Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), was highly regarded and awarded the Noma Prize and the Asahi Prize. Yukihiko was unparalleled for his painting style that incorporated highly refined quality with period accuracy. He further discovered Tawaraya Sōtatsu as he traced back through ancient Yamato-e works, and in the same manner, found Ryōkan as he sought the aesthetic forms of “man’yōgana” and strove to honor him. Looking back we can see that his painting prowess also shone through in such portraits as his 1937 “Flower Bouquet” (private collection). He went on to paint portraits, starting in 1941 with the portrait of Yokoyama Taikan he created on the urgings of Hosokawa Moritatsu and Kojima Kikuo for the Nijūgonichikai group followed by “Portrait of Admiral Yamamoto“ (1944, Tokyo University of the Arts), “Portrait of Tanizaki Jun’ichirō“ (1964, private collection), and “Portrait of Shiga Naoya“ (1971, private collection). In terms of postwar history paintings, he entered his “Wang Zhaojun” (Adachi Museum of Art, Shimane), a work both highly regarded and one that pleased its painter, in the 1947 Reorganized Inten exhibition. The following year he was the honored recipient of an Order of Culture. In 1958 he was named the first chairman of the Nihon Bijutsuin, which had become a foundation following the death of Yokoyama Taikan, and strove to guide younger generations of artists. Representative examples of his postwar intricately rendered mature period works include “Nukata no Ōkimi in Asuka in Spring” (1964, Shiga Museum of Art), “Himiko“ (1968, Shiga Museum of Art), and “Queen Himiko of Yamato” (1972, private collection). In 1974, at the age of 90, he entered his last work in a public exhibition, “Ushiwakamaru Leading a Secluded Life in Kuramadera Temple for Prayer” (Shiga Museum of Art). Yukihiko thus built a central role for himself in the early period Nihon Bijutsuin and then through its financial collapse and reemergence as the Reorganized Inten. He also served to connect the generations, following the Chinese painting-style lineage Yokoyama Taikan and acting as the Yamato-style lineage representative. He played a major role in creating history paintings for Japan as a modern nation amidst the Nihon Bijutsuin’s role as the equivalent of the Academy in the West. At the same time, while his follower Okumura Togyū praised the high quality of Yukihiko’s arts in his ‘Tenpin no Kosei’ [Inate individuality] obituary for volume 12 of the “Nihon Bijutsuin Hyakunenshi” centennial history of the organization, the times no longer required history paintings, such sentiments declined, and as such, there were no artists to truly succeed him. We must also not overlook the importance of plum blossoms and other plants and flowers, Mt. Fuji and portraits in Yukihiko’s oeuvre, with all of these works exuding the Nihonga quality that was his lifelong pursuit. His images of plum blossoms which were highly regarded among his plants and flowers works reveal his longing for Man’yō era Nara and were praised by his talented follower Hayami Gyoshū, who called them ‘heavenly music’ and ‘fragrant scent’ in his article ‘Hōkō’ (“Bijutsu Hyōron” 4-1, 1935). His Mount Fuji paintings also seen occasionally in his later years—such as the 1955 and onwards “Dawn” and “Autumn Clear” (both private collection) and “Mt. Fuji” (National Trust, UK), which was presented to Winston Churchill the following year—were the realization of his fascination with the mountain’s appearance at dawn that he saw from the shores of Lake Yamanaka when he was evacuated to the area during World War II. His followers who took up this romantic aspect of his work included Haneishi Kōji, Mano Mitsuru and Yoshida Yoshihiko, along with Kamakura Hideo who continued his art school and advised his followers. We can mention Ogura Yūki and Kataoka Tamako as two artists who achieved beyond Yukihiko’s teaching and became independent artists in their own right. Yukihiko’s circle of friends was also broad. He actively observed the art situation of his own time through Kaburaki Kiyokata, also revered as a Tokyo-ite, along with Sugiyama Yasushi, Hashimoto Meiji, Yamamoto Kyūjin, and Iwahashi Eien. As he interacted with the leading figures of other fields, such as the novelists Kawabata Yasunari and Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, he played an important role in modern Nihonga’s mature period. Some of his other major contributions to the development of Japanese culture can be seen in how, while living in Ōiso, his interactions with former Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru contributed to the move of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, to its Kitanomaru Park site, and his supervision of the “Copy of the Mural Paintings in the Kondō (Golden Hall), Hōryūji” with Maeda Seison. “The Retrospective Exhibition of Yukihiko Yasuda” held in 1976 was the last major exhibition of his works held during his lifetime. On April 29, 1978 he died of heart failure. He was 94 years old. (Katsuyama Shigeru / Translated by Martha J. McClintock) (Published online: 2024-03-25)