松岡映丘

Born in Tahara-mura, Jintō-gun, Hyōgo prefecture (present-day Fukusaki-machi, Kanzaki-gun) the last of eight children in the Matsuoka family of several generations of doctors. Real name Teruo. Except for three of the children who died young, his older brothers all rose to eminent positions. His oldest brother Kanae graduated from Tokyo Imperial University (present-day University of Tokyo) and became a medical practitioner in Chiba as well as a member of the prefectural legislature. The third son of the family Taizō became an eye doctor and professor at the Okayama Igaku Senmon Gakkō (Okayama Medical School) as well as being known as Inoue Michiyasu, a poet versed in Japanese literature and a “Man’yōshū” scholar. The sixth son Kunio it goes without saying was Yanagida Kunio known for his ethnographic studies. The seventh son Shizuo was a naval captain who also wrote numerous scholarly texts in his role as linguistics scholar and ethnographer. Thus all of the brothers can be seen as excelling in the pursuit of the classics alongside their professional careers. Eikyū also carried on this learned character, with his talents flowering in the form of the painting that his father loved. Thus his older brothers were unstinting in their support for their youngest brother. In 1889 (Meiji 22) he moved to Tokyo at the age of eight, and while living with his older brother, around the age of fourteen, he began studying under Hashimoto Gahō, then a professor at Tokyo Fine Arts School (present-day Tokyo University of the Arts). Around the age of sixteen he changed direction, switching to study at the private painting academy of Yamana Tsurayoshi, a Yamato-e style painter. It seems that Eikyū discerned a path forward for himself in the Yamato-e style rather than the Kanō style. This can be linked to his later production of warrior paintings and history paintings. In 1899 (Meiji 32) he entered the preparatory course of the Tokyo Fine Arts School Nihonga department. There he learned basic sketching from Araki Kanpo and Kawabata Gyokushō, and full painting production from Terasaki Kōgyō. While in school he had a chance to participate in the Rekishi Fūzoku Gakai (History and Genre Scene Painting Society) organized by Kobori Tomoto, Kajita Hanko, Matsumoto Fūko, Kikkawa Reika, and others. This group presented lectures by historians and “yūsoku kojitsu” (ancient Japanese court ritual) scholars, as well as displays of reference materials such as garments, furnishings, armor, and ancient paintings. They held workshops on how to put on period garments such as “gusoku” helmets. Eikyū’s experience in this group laid the groundwork for his later warrior and history paintings. In 1904 (Meiji 37) he produced his “Ura-no-shimako” (Tokyo University of the Arts) on the subject of Tempyō era customs and graduated head of his class. Starting in 1908 (Meiji 41) he became an assistant professor of Yamato-e at the school under professor Kobori Tomoto, and thus assisted with teaching. His older brother Inoue Michiyasu created Eikyū’s art name by using an expression from the “Nihon Shoki” ancient history chronicle, and it seems that the resulting art name was meant to be pronounced Teruo, like his real name. He received a series of rejections from the Ministry of Education Art Exhibitions (Bunten) starting with the First exhibition held in 1907 (Meiji 40). His “Uji Princesses” (Himeji City Museum of Art), entered in the Sixth Bunten held in 1912 (Taishō 1), was his first work accepted for a Bunten exhibition. His “Natsu tatsu ura” (destroyed in the Great Kantō Earthquake), entered in the Eighth Bunten in 1914 (Taishō 3) was greatly heralded as a modern interpretation of traditional Yamato-e. He was awarded special status for three years running, from 1916 (Taishō 5) to 1918 (Taishō 7), for his “Murogimi” 室君 (Important Cultural Propertiy [ICP], Eisei Bunko, Tokyo) entered in the Tenth Bunten, “Dōjōji” (Himeji City Museum of Art) entered in the Eleventh Bunten, and “Yamashina no Yado” (Yamatane Museum of Art, Tokyo) in the Twelfth Bunten. He also often acted as a judge for the Teikoku Bijutsuin Tenrankai (Teiten, Imperial Fine Arts Academy Exhibition), begun in 1919 (Taishō 8). He entered “Pond at Ikaho” (Tokyo University of the Arts) in the Sixth Teiten held in 1925 and was awarded the Teikoku Bijutsuin Prize for “Heiji no Shigemori” (Japan Art Academy, Tokyo) at the Tenth Teiten held in 1929 (Shōwa 4). He continued to display a succession of major works, including his “Udaijin Sanetomo” (Japan Art Academy, Tokyo) shown at the Thirteenth Teiten in 1932 (Shōwa 7). Meanwhile, in order to continue his own free research and the mutual honing of knowledge, in 1916 (Taishō 5) he joined Kikkawa Reika, Hirafuku Hyakusui, Kaburaki Kiyokata, Yūki Somei, and other central Bunten artists in the formation of the Kinreisha study group. From 1917 through 1922 (Taishō 11) the group held a total of seven exhibitions. Eikyū displayed more than twenty works in those Kinreisha exhibitions. These were creative works heralding a new age in Yamato-e paintings, all history paintings, genre scenes, and landscapes based on his studies of classical literature, “yūsoku kojitsu,” and antique handscroll paintings. Eikyū also stepped outside his classic and historical themes, turning instead to seek out the potential for new Yamato-e images of contemporary genre scenes. His “Chigusa no Oka” (private collection), entered in the Seventh Teiten in 1926 (Taishō 15) is a beauty painting, depicting then popular actress Mizutani Yaeko posed in a modern kimono and set against a Yamato-e style landscape of verdant foliaged hills and distant mountains. Eikyū was an enthusiastic educator, training the next generation across seventeen years as a professor at Tokyo Fine Arts School starting in 1918 (Taishō 7). His students included such later Order of Culture recipients as Yamaguchi Hōshun, Yamamoto Kyūjin, Hashimoto Meiji, Sugiyama Yasushi, and Takayama Tatsuo, as well as Iwata Masami, Urata Masao, and Hasegawa Roka. He is said to have trained approximately forty to fifty followers at his private painting academy Tokonatsusō, and then gathered around seventy followers at the renamed Konohanasha. He loved Japanese helmets and armor as one aspect of his study of the classics and “yūsoku kojitsu”. He donned his own “ōyoroi” armor, took photographs, and used the imagery in his creation of “Minamoto Yoshitsune at Yashima” (1929, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) and “Heiji no Shigemori”. He wore the armor so that he could get an accurate sense of how a wearer appeared and moved in such equipment. “Yaomote” (In Front of the Enemy’s Camp) (Himeji City Museum of Art) shows the depth of his understanding of armor details. As part of his practical research, he and fellow armor fans Kobori Tomoto and Goseda Hōryū held a “first armor wearing ceremony” and published a photographic compendium of the event as full evidence of their armor mania. Such practices give a glimpse of his aim to create empirically accurate, real history paintings while maintaining a classical style, rather than simply relying on the information in Kikuchi Yōsai’s “Zenken Kojitsu,” then considered the history figure painting bible. Even though he resigned from his teaching role at the art school due to cardiac asthma in 1935 (Shōwa 10), he continued an ambitious schedule, from art director for films, to the founding of the Kokugain, and the entry of the major work “Yaomote” and “Ex-emperor Gotoba and the Prostitutes of Kanzaki” (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) in the First Kokugain exhibition. But then in March 1938 (Shōwa 13) his condition worsened, and he died at his home in Zōshigaya, Koishikawa-ku, Tokyo. (Katō Yōsuke / Translated by Martha J. McClintock) (Published online: 2024-03-08)