Fashizumu no Nihon bijutsu

Asato Ikeda

This book examines a set of paintings produced in Japan during the 1930s and early 1940s that have received little scholarly attention. Asato Ikeda views the work of four prominent artists of the time--Yokoyama Taikan, Yasuda Yukihiko, Uemura Shōen, and Fujita Tsuguharu--through the lens of fascism, showing how their seemingly straightforward paintings of Mount Fuji, samurai, beautiful women, and the countryside supported the war by reinforcing a state ideology that justified violence in the name of the country's cultural authenticity. She highlights the politics of "apolitical" art and challenges the postwar labeling of battle paintings--those depicting scenes of war and combat--as uniquely problematic. Yokoyama Taikan produced countless paintings of Mount Fuji as the embodiment of Japan's "national body" and spirituality, in contrast to the modern West's individualism and...