Paper short abstract:

Hishida Shunsō's Buddhist paintings show a unique style. It can be regarded as a fusion of aspects of Western and Eastern painting. Shunsō developed his style through his friendship with the famous benefactor of art education in Japan, Okakura Tenshin, and his experiences in India and the West.

Paper long abstract:

Hishida Shunsō 菱田春草 (1874-1911) was one of the first generations of the nihonga painters in the Meiji Era. This "new" style or genre was promoted as the rescue mission of traditional Japanese painting in the face of the rapid spread of Western painting styles and techniques.

Although the interest in Shunsō's art has been steadily growing in the past couple of decades in Japan, he is still rather unknown among Western researchers, especially his Buddhist paintings. In this presentation I am highlighting these Buddhist paintings, and through them I am examining how his style became a unique blend of Western and Eastern features. I am focusing on his relationship with one of the most famous thinkers, Okakura Tenshin, whose influence was quintessential in the forming of the nihonga style, and who was a friend and mentor to Shunsō. Also, I am exploring his journeys with his fellow nihonga painter, Yokoyama Taikan 横山大観 (), to India in 1903, and then to the US and Europe in 1904, and how these sojourns effected his later Buddhist paintings. In India they met some of the prominent Bengal school of painters, such as the founder of this school, Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), and the result of this encounter can be detected in Shunsō's Buddhist paintings, painted during and after his sojourn in India.

My examinations are limited to his Buddhist paintings, which he painted between 1896, his times at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō 東京美術学校) as a teacher, and 1911, when he died.