Okakura Kakuzo

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Okakura Kakuzō, 1898
Okakura ( Shimomura , 1922)
Okakuras Pavillion in Izura Kaigan Ibaraki Prefecture
Grave ( Somei cemetery )

Okakura Kakuzō ( Japanese 岡 倉 覚 三 , alias 岡 倉 天 心 Okakura Tenshin ; born February 14, 1862 in Yokohama ; † September 2, 1913 ) was a Japanese art scholar and patron. Outside of Japan, he became known for his Book of Tea .

Life

Okakura was born in Yokohama, where his father Kan'emon ran a silk business for the Fukui fief . At the age of seven he began to study English at an American missionary school. In 1873 the family moved to Tokyo, where he continued learning English at the Tōkyō gaikokugo gakkō. From 1875 he attended the Tōkyō kaisei gakkō ( renamed from 1877 to Tōkyō University ), where he studied political science and economics . There he met Ernest Fenollosa , who taught philosophy and political economy .

After completing his studies in 1880, he joined the Ministry of Culture. He supported Fenollosa as an interpreter and translator on his art-related journey. In 1886, Okakura and Fenollosa took part in a study trip to the USA and Europe organized by the Ministry of Culture.

After his return, he tried to re-establish an art college, which then in 1889 as Tōkyō bijutsu gakkō (Tokyo School of Fine Arts; now Tōkyō Geijutsu Daigaku ) could take up its work. In 1891 he became director, but resigned in 1898 due to disputes about the direction of the school from his office and founded, followed by Hashimoto Gahō , Yokoyama Taikan and other teachers, the private Nihon Bijutsuin (Japanese Art Institute). In 1906 the training center was relocated to Izura ( Ibaraki Prefecture ) for cost reasons , to the place where Okakura had set up a secondary residence the year before.  

In late 1901, Okakura traveled to India, where he met Rabindranath Tagore in early 1902 . In 1904 he was invited to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with Nihonga painters Yokoyama, Hishida and Shimomura . Okakura impresses with his knowledge of Chinese and Japanese art, and also got to know the patron Isabella Stewart Gardner . In 1905 he became director of the Asian Art Department of the Boston Museum, which was built up by Fenollosa. From then on he lived alternately in the USA and in Japan.

In 1910 Okakura took on a teaching position at the University of Tokyo. In 1911 he traveled to Europe (in Berlin he not only visited the art museums, but was also interested in the Museum of Ethnology), Harvard University awarded him his MA that year. At the end of the year his health began to deteriorate. In 1913 the operatic libretto The White Fox was finished, which he dedicated to Mrs. Gardner. Also in 1913 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In the same year he died during a stay in Japan. His grave is in Somei Cemetery in Toshima District, Tokyo.

Act

Okakura was a public city dweller who already had an international self-image in the Meiji period . He wrote his main works in English. Okakura explored the traditional arts of Japan, touring Europe, the United States, China and India . In the face of a massive onslaught of Western culture, he presented the world with an image of Japan as a member of "the East".

His book, The Ideals of the East (dt. The ideals of the East ) from 1904, which he of just before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War published, is famous for its input words Asia is One ( "Asia is one / one unit" ). He goes on to say that even the Himalayas cannot separate the interplay between Chinese and Indian cultures. This was an early expression of Pan-Asianism and was in contrast to the opinion advocated in Japan “Get out of (the backward) Asia” (脱 亜).

In Japan, Okakura - in association with Fenollosa - is credited with having continued the Nihonga , painting with traditional Japanese techniques, since this art movement was threatened by Yoga , the art of the Western style, of which Kuroda Seiki was the most important patron . In addition, having understood the need to preserve Japanese cultural heritage, he participated in the modernization of Japanese aesthetics , becoming one of the most important reformers of the Meiji period.

Outside of Japan, Okakura had direct or indirect significant influence on important personalities such as the philosopher Martin Heidegger , the poet Ezra Pound and especially the poet Tagore and Mrs. Gardner, with whom he was a close friend.

Works

  • The Ideals of the East (London: J. Murray, 1903)
  • The ideals of the east . Translation from English by Marguerite Steindorff. Leipzig: Insel, 1919
  • The Awakening of Japan (New York: Century, 1904)
  • The Japanese folk soul . 1906
  • The Book of Tea (New York: Putnam's, 1906);
    • German The book of tea transferred by Marguerite and Ulrich Steindorff, Insel-Bücherei No. 274 of Insel-Verlag Leipzig 1922.
    • German. Transferred the book from the tea and provided with an afterword by Horst Hammitzsch and an essay by Irmtraud Schaarschmidt-Richter, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002 ISBN 3-458-34655-4 .
    • German The Book of Tea , translated and with an afterword by Horst Hammitzsch. With color illustrations by Alexandra Klobouk and Eva Gonçalves . Insel Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-458-19423-1 .
  • Modern problems of painting . 1907

literature

  • Õshita Kentarō (Ed): The Chronological Table of Japanese Art History . 2001. ISBN 4-568-40062-7 (Japanese)
  • Michael Siemer: Japanese thinking with Lafcadio Hearn and Okakura Tenshin. Two stylizing aesthetics in cultural contact (MOAG; Vol. 131). Society for Nature and Ethnology of East Asia, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-928463-66-7 (plus dissertation, University of Düsseldorf 1997).
  • NHK (ed.): Masaoka Shiki - Okakura Tenshin. 1991 (Japanese)

swell

  • We Must Do a Better Job of Explaining Japan to the World . Asahi Shimbun , August 12, 2005
  • Benfey, Christopher: The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan . 2003

Web links

Remarks

  1. The first state art college in Japan, Kōbu bijutsu gakkō , was founded in 1876, but was closed again in 1883