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Paper Proposal Learning from the West: Shiba Kōkan (1747-1818) and His Vision of Europe Chin-Sung Chang (Seoul National University) chin-sungchang@hotmail.com

Paper long abstract

Paper Proposal

Learning from the West: Shiba Kōkan (1747-1818) and His Vision of Europe

Chin-Sung Chang (Seoul National University)

chin-sungchang@hotmail.com

A passionate admirer of European art and civilization, Shiba Kōkan emerged as the first outstanding Japanese exponent of painting in the Western manner in late Edo Japan (1615-1868). He introduced the technique of copperplate etching, making a significant contribution to the development of Japanese graphic arts. His pictures in oils laid the foundation for Japanese Western-style painting. Furthermore, he held enthusiasm and respect for European cultural and scientific achievements. His acquisition of any and all Western learning enabled him to establish himself as one of the eminent scholars of Western science. His meeting with the Dutch scholar and merchant-trader Isaac Titsingh (1745-1812) in Edo (present-day Tokyo) in 1780 or 1782 radically transformed his life. Discontent with the values and mores of his own society, he began to study Western pictorial techniques. He fashioned himself as the most eminent advocate of Western painting and called himself “the Western painter from the eastern capital.” Divorcing himself from the mainstream of Tokugawa life, he became a nonconformist in insular and xenophobic Edo Japan. In this talk, I will explore the ways in which Kōkan fashioned his self and identity as a painter in the Western manner and occupied a unique place in his culture and how his self-promotion as the master of Western painting had an enormous impact on the modernization of Japan.