Okakura Tenshin | |
|---|---|
 Okakura Kakuzō c. 1905 | |
| Born | (1863-02-14)February 14, 1863 |
| Died | September 2, 1913(1913-09-02) (aged 50) |
| Other names | Okakura Kakuzō |
| Occupation(s) | Artist, writer |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Tokyo Imperial University |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Era | Meiji Period |
| Discipline | Art criticism |
| Main interests | Japanese art,Japanese tea ceremony |
| Notable works | The Book of Tea (1906) |
| Notable ideas | Teaism |
| Influenced | |
Okakura Kakuzō (岡倉 覚三, February 14, 1863 – September 2, 1913), also known asOkakura Tenshin(岡倉 天心), was a Japanese scholar and art critic who in the era ofMeiji Restoration reform promoted a critical appreciation of traditional forms, customs and beliefs. Outside Japan, he is chiefly renowned forThe Book of Tea: A Japanese Harmony of Art, Culture, and the Simple Life (1906).[1][2] Written in English, and in the wake of theRusso-Japanese War, it decried Western caricaturing of the Japanese, and of Asians more generally, and expressed the fear that Japan gained respect only to the extent that it adopted the barbarities of Western militarism.
The second son of Okakura Kan'emon, a formerFukui Domain treasurer turned silk merchant, and Kan'emon's second wife, Kakuzō was named for the corner warehouse (角蔵) in which he was born, but later changed the spelling of his name to differentKanji meaning "awakened boy" (覚三).[3]
Okakura learned English while attending Yoshisaburō, a school operated by a Christian missionary, Dr.James Curtis Hepburn, of theHepburn romanization system. Here, he became well-versed in the foreign language but couldn't readKanji, the characters of his homeland. As a result, his father got him to concurrently study western culture at Yoshisaburō and traditional Japanese in a Buddhist temple.[4] After the abolition of the feudal system in 1871, his family moved from Yokohama to Tokyo. In 1875, Okakura joined them and won a scholarship to the Tokyo Institute of Foreign Languages. Quickly after, the school was renamed toTokyo Imperial University.[5] It was at this prestigious academy that he first met and studied under theHarvard-educated art historianErnest Fenollosa.[6]
In 1886, Okakura became secretary to the minister of education and was put in charge of musical affairs. Later in the same year he was named to the Imperial Art Commission and sent abroad to studyfine arts in the Western world. After his return from Europe and the United States, in 1887 he helped found, and a year later became director of, the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (東京美術学校Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō).[6][7]
The new arts school represented "the first serious reaction to the lifeless conservatism" of traditionalists and the "equally uninspired imitation of western art"[6] fostered by early Meiji enthusiasts. Limiting himself to more sympathetic aspects of art in the West, at the school, and in a new periodicalKokka,[8] Okakura sought to rehabilitate ancient and native arts, honoring their ideals and exploring their possibilities. When, in 1897, it became clear that European methods were to be given ever increasing prominence in the school curriculum, he resigned his directorship. Six months later he renewed the effort, as he saw it, to draw on western art without impairing national inspiration in theNihon Bijutsuin (日本美術院, lit. "Japan Visual Arts Academy"), founded withHashimoto Gahō andYokoyama Taikan and thirty-seven other leading artists.[6]
At the same time, Okakura had opposed theShintoistHaibutsu Kishaku movement which, in the wake of theMeiji Restoration had sought to expelBuddhism from Japan. With Ernest Fenollosa, he worked to repair damaged Buddhist temples, images and texts.[9]
Okakura was a high-profile urbanite who retained an international sense of self. He wrote all of his main works inEnglish. Okakura researched Japan's traditional art and traveled toEurope, theUnited States andChina, and lived two years inIndia during which he engaged in dialogue withSwami Vivekananda andRabindranath Tagore.[10] Okakura emphasised the importance to the modern world ofAsian culture, attempting to bring its influence to realms of art and literature that, in his day, were largely dominated byWestern culture.[11] In 1906, he was invited byWilliam Sturgis Bigelow to theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston and became the Curator of its Department of Japanese and Chinese Art in 1910.[6]
His 1903 book on Asian artistic and cultural history,The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Art of Japan, published on the eve of theRusso-Japanese War, is famous for its opening paragraph in which he sees a spiritual unity throughout Asia, which distinguishes it from the West:[12]
Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the end, of life.[13]
In his subsequent book,The Awakening of Japan, published in 1904, he argued that "the glory of the West is the humiliation of Asia."[14] This was an early expression ofPan-Asianism. In this book Okakura also noted that Japan's rapid modernization was not universally applauded in Asia: ″We have become so eager to identify ourselves with European civilization instead of Asiatic that our continental neighbors regard us as renegades—nay, even as an embodiment of the White Disaster itself."[14]: 101
InThe Book of Tea, written and published in 1906, has been described as "the earliest lucid English-language account ofZen Buddhism and its relation to the arts".[15] Okakura argued that "Tea is more than an idealization of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life".[16]
[Teaism] insulates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.[17]
None of this, he suggested, was appreciated by the Westerner. In his "sleek complacency", the Westerner views the tea ceremony as "but another instance of the thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness and childishness of the East to him". Writing in the aftermath of theRusso-Japanese War, Okakura commented that the Westerner regarded Japan as "barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace", and began to call her civilized only when "she began to commit wholesale slaughter on theManchurian battlefields".[18]
Okakura's final work,The White Fox, written under the patronage ofIsabella Stewart Gardner in 1912, was an English-language libretto for the Boston Opera House. The libretto incorporates elements from bothkabuki plays andWagner's epicTannhäuser and may be understood, metaphorically, as an expression of Okakura's hoped-for reconciliation of East and West.[19][9]Charles Martin Loeffler agreed to Garner's request to put the poetic drama to music, but the project was never staged.[20]
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Okakura's health deteriorated in his later years. "My ailment the doctors say is the usual complaint of the twentieth century—Bright's disease," he wrote a friend in June 1913. "I have eaten things in various parts of the globe—too varied for the hereditary notions of my stomach and kidneys. However I am getting well again and I am thinking of going to China in September."[21] In August, 1913, "Kakuzo insisted on going to his mountain villa inAkakura, and finally his wife, daughter and his sister took him there by train. For a week or so, Kakuzo felt a little better and was able to talk with people, but on August 25, he had a heart attack and spent several days in great pain. Surrounded by his family, relatives and his disciples, he passed away on September 2."[22]
In Japan, Okakura, along withHashimoto Gahō, a painter of theKano School, has been credited with "saving" the JapaneseNihonga tradition of painting in the face of Western-style painting, or "Yōga", whose chief advocate was artistKuroda Seiki.[23][24] However, while accepting that with regard to Japan Okakura played a pioneering role in the practice of aesthetichermeneutics, contemporary art scholars are no longer convinced of the "threat" posed by western painting.[25] They are also critical of the manner in which Okakura, as "the founding father of the 'Myth of Asian Spiritualism'", shaped notions of an East-West dichotomy.[26]
Outside Japan, Okakura influenced a number of important figures, directly or indirectly, who includeSwami Vivekananda, philosopherMartin Heidegger, poetEzra Pound, and especially poetRabindranath Tagore and art benefactor, collector and museum founderIsabella Stewart Gardner, who were close personal friends of his.[27] He was also one of a trio of Japanese artists who introduced the wash technique toAbanindranath Tagore, the father of modern Indian watercolor.[28]
As part of the Izura Institute of Arts & Culture,Ibaraki University managesRokkakudō, an hexagonal wooden retreat overlooking the sea along the Izura coast inKitaibaraki, Ibaraki Prefecture, that was designed by Okakura and built in 1905. It is registered as a national monument.[29][30]
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