萬鉄五郎

Yorozu Tetsugorō was born on November 17, 1885 (Meiji 18) in Tsuchizawa, Tōwacho, Hanamaki city, Iwate prefecture. He liked to draw pictures from a young age and started formal ink painting instruction while in primary school. In 1901 he learned about watercolorist Ōshita Tōjirō’s book “Suisaiga no Shiori” 水彩画之栞 (Tokyo: Shinseisha, 1901) and was beguiled by Western painting and its rich color palette. In 1903 (Meiji 36) he was given permission to move to Tokyo and enter middle school there. He entered the Waseda Middle School, visited Ōshita and asked for personal advice as his passion for watercolor painting grew all the stronger. He also began to attend Zen training at Ryōbōan, a Zen practice center in Nippori. In 1906 (Meiji 39) he graduated from middle school and traveled to America with a group from his Zen practice center. He was not able to attain his goal of entering art school in New York and returned to Japan in less than six months. In April 1907 he entered the Western painting department preparatory course at the Tokyo Bijutsu Gakkō (Tokyo Fine Arts School, present-day Tokyo University of the Arts), and in September advanced to the division’s regular course as the top of his class. During his first term at Tokyo Fine Arts School he was mesmerized by the plein air style taught by Kuroda Seiki with its clear, realist imagery that incorporates sunlight. He began experimenting with painting richly colored bright works. When he was an upperclassman, the new art trends in Europe were introduced in Japan around 1910 (Meiji 43). Yorozu quickly responded and tended towards painting in subjective styles such as Post-Impressionism and Fauvism. Yorozu himself stated that his graduation work, “Nude Beauty” (Important Cultural Property [ICP], 1912, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) “was influenced by Van Gogh and Matisse” (Yorozu Tetsugorō, ‘Watashi no Rirekisho,’ “Chūō Bijutsu” Vol. 11, No. 10, November 1, 1925). This work was the first major Fauvist work in Japan. However, the reactions of his teachers were less favorable and he barely graduated. Yorozu graduated from Tokyo Fine Arts School in 1912 (Meiji 45) and participated in the formation of the Hyūsan-kai (Fusain Society) that same autumn. This group played an epoch-making role as the first group in Japan organized by young painters who sought the new painting expression found in the styles of the Post-Impressionists, Fauvists, and others. Yorozu went on to produce other works, such as his “Woman with a Boa” (1912, Iwate Museum of Art) strongly influenced by Van Gogh, and “Landscape: Spring” (1912, The Miyagi Museum of Art) which reveals a particular Fauvist and Nabi school trend. Later, “Self-Portrait with a Cloud” (ca. 1912, Iwate Museum of Art), “Acrobats” (ca. 1912–1913, Yorozu Tetsugoro Museum, Iwate), “Self-Portrait with Red Eyes” (ca. 1913, Iwate Museum of Art), and “Mental Representation” 心象風景 (ca. 1912–1913, Yorozu Tetsugoro Museum, Iwate) reveal both his expressionist tendencies and his creativity across a diverse painterly realm which included Futurism, Cubism, and abstract expression. Thus, he presented new artistry to the Japanese art world of the early Taishō period. Later he sensed a narrowed path in both his arts and daily life, so he moved his family back to his hometown of Tsuchizawa, Iwate. They lived there from 1914 (Taishō 3) to 1916 (Taishō 5) so that he could concentrate on his painting. While in Tsuchizawa he sought his own painting style through self-portraits and paintings depicting the local scenery. He shed his previously vivid color palette and turned towards darker, brown-toned canvases, clearly dissected forms. His differentiation between light and dark further simplified into color fields as the first stirrings of a Cubist creative approach in Yorozu. However, unlike that of Europe, he began to develop his own strongly distinctive form of Cubist expression permeated with a local folk sensibility fostered by the climate and scenery of his hometown. In 1916 (Taishō 5) Yorozu and his family moved back to Tokyo and he showed the results of his time in Tsuchizawa to the world. He entered “Leaning Woman” (1917, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) and “Still Life with a Brush Stand” (1917, Iwate Museum of Art) in the Fourth Nika exhibition, where they were targeted for critique, attracting both favorable and unfavorable reactions. Of the two, the former was appraised as being a pioneering example of Cubist reception in Japan. This work based on his quests in Tsuchizawa and produced after his return to Tokyo reveals a modern, dynamic artistry which shows that he had attained an earthy feel within a refined composition. All of the works created after his return to Tokyo shed the wild Fauvism and rough brushwork of his time in Tsuchizawa, resulting in a highly finished group of works. Each work shows the development of different painting styles, indicating that he found it hard to formulate a single unified expressive style during this period. “Town Looked Down Through Branches” 木の間から見下した町 (1918, Iwate Museum of Art) is a fusion of Cubist forms with a mysterious painting space. “Landscape through the Trees” (ca. 1918, Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art/Bandaijima Art Museum) does not stop at Cubism, it also shows considerable Kandinsky influence. “Screaming Landscape” かなきり声の風景 (1918, on deposit at Yamagata Museum of Art) and “Hill Road” (1918, Yorozu Tetsugoro Museum) show his creation of a refined pictorial space replete with expressionism and abstraction. Yorozu arrived at this period of stylistic completion via the developments he achieved in Tsuchizawa. And yet lack of sleep and overwork meant that around the autumn of 1918 (Taishō 7) he fell ill with pulmonary tuberculosis. In March of the following year he moved to Chigasaki in Kanagawa prefecture to recuperate. His health improved over the course of about a year, and he set out once again on a new search for his own distinctive expressive form. Yorozu turned to Japanese traditional literati painting (“nanga” or “bunjinga”) as he experimented with a true fusion of such styles with Western expression. Yorozu enthusiastically studied literati painting (Nanga) theory and ink painting techniques and displayed the result of those studies in 1922 (Taishō 11) in a solo show, the “Yorozu Tetsujin Nihonga Tenrankai” (Yorozu Tetsujin Japanese-style Painting Exhibition) held at the Nojima Yasuzō estate in Koishikawa, Tokyo. These works reveal not only generously brushed ink and clear, unmuddied brushwork, they reflect an advanced degree of poetic pictorial composition. Expressionistic touches and Fauvism can be glimpsed in the works, showing how he had attained his own distinctive literati painting realm. He was also involved in the debate about the literati painter Sugawara Hakuryū then playing out in magazines, and developed his own literati painting theory through articles about Urakami Gyokudō, Ike no Taiga and other Edo period literati painters in articles such as, “Gyokudō Kinshi no koto oyobi sono yodan” (About Qin Master Gyokudō and Anecdotes) (“Junsei Bijutsu” Vol. 2, No. 7, July 1922) and “Ike ō zakkan” (Old Man Ike Miscellany) (“Junsei Bijutsu” Vol. 2, No. 10, November 1922). In terms of the art world movements of the day, he participated in the formation of the Shun’yōkai, which later developed into one of Japan’s leading groups. He joined his painter friend Kobayashi Tokusaburō in the formation of the Enchōkai as they sought an independent place for the display of their works. This Enchōkai assembled artists irrespective of their established group or style affiliations, with many of the young Nikakai painters joining. The group influenced Yorozu’s arts to some degree and was a gathering of young painters whose quality Yorozu acknowledged. Thus Yorozu’s influence on painting circles of the time also increased. Yorozu also took literati methods and used them in his oil painting expression, thereby linking literati painting and Western painting through the addition of the special tenor attained through rhythmical brush strokes. Thus he developed a diverse expressive realm not only in landscape paintings but also in his figure works and nudes. “Man” (1925, Iwate Museum of Art) with its use of Cubist forms is a major work that takes the human form to the greatest degree of deformation, and is a nude created solely through swiftly brushed line work. Next his “Nude Woman Putting a Cloth on Her Head” (1925, Iwate Museum of Art) is a simplified, straight, planar image of a nude female with parts of her face not depicted, creating an almost monster-like sense that stands at an intersection of humor and strangeness exuding an Asian atmosphere. “Nude, Resting Her Chin on Her Hand” (1926, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) shows an abbreviated depiction of a nude woman with her hair arranged in a “Shimada” style, creating a clown-like humor in an Asian atmosphere. Yorozu thus energetically displayed works intended to create this type of East-West fusion. Then on May 1, 1927 (Shōwa 2), he fell ill and died at his home in Chigasaki at the young age of 41, all while the Fifth Shun’yōkai Exhibition was being held. Yorozu Tetsugorō’s painting career was a scant 15 years long, a time he spent seeking his own distinctive form of expression as a Japanese painter who boldly challenged himself to face the new Western artistic trends. He discerned a theory of painting that found Western expressionist qualities in literati painting, and created an inimitable painterly space that was a fusion of both. The painter Yorozu nurtured his own independence as a Japanese person within the realm of painting, and was an expressive person who concealed within himself a burning desire to create his own unique artistry not attained by anyone else. (Hirasawa Hiroshi / Translated by Martha J. McClintock) (Published online: 2024-03-08)