Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses social and institutional structures that prevented women calligraphers from becoming successful. It argues women could excel if they had access to the male-centred education and institutions (Hidai Shōkin and Kumagai Tsuneko) or radically rejected institutions (Shinoda Tōkō).

Paper long abstract:

In her ground-breaking essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971), Linda Nochlin argued that the very notion of ‘great artist’ is not innate, but a gendered, constructed myth. She unveiled that institutional exclusion and social inequalities prevented aspiring women artists from becoming the so-called ‘great artist’. In Japan, art historians, such as Wakakuwa Midori and Chino Kaori, and museum curators, such as Kokatsu Reiko and Kasahara Michiko, stimulated debate on feminist art history in the 1990s. However, the patriarchal system and its value judgements still persist in the Japanese art world. This is especially true in calligraphy, which is more marginalised art medium than painting.

　Drawing on insights from these feminist scholarships, this paper critically analyses social and institutional structures that prevented women calligraphers from achieving ‘greatness’. Although a number of Japanese women calligraphers, such as Hidai Shōkin (1885–1948) and Kumagai Tsuneko (1893–1986), had attained fame in the first half of the twentieth century, many of them were wives of prominent male calligraphers, teachers or gallery owners who had privileged access to the male-centred calligraphy establishment (shodan). Moreover, they predominantly practiced in kana (Japanese syllabary) calligraphy, which the calligraphy establishment considered to be a 'feminine' mode of writing. Women calligraphers were labelled ‘joryū shoka’ (feminine school calligrapher), and within the gendered division of styles, the possible greatest success for them was to become a kana calligraphy specialist.

　This paper then discusses the art and career of Shinoda Tōkō (1913–2021), the exceptionally successful woman calligrapher from the postwar period. Although the innovative, modernist terrain of postwar Japanese calligraphy was framed as belonging to the leading male calligraphers (e.g., Bokujinkai), Shinoda garnered reputation abroad. By radically distancing herself from the patriarchal calligraphy establishment, social norms and even homeland, Shinoda forged a new (yet still critically masculine) artistic persona—a serious, fiercely independent woman who sacrificed companionship and everything—to withstand comparison to the autonomous elite male calligraphers.

　This paper concludes by arguing that women could excel if they had access to the male-centred education and institutions (Hidai and Kumagai) or radically rejected institutions (Shinoda).