The Limitations of Shirahama's Transformation

After 1868 when the old Tokugawa shogunate was destroyed and the new Meiji government established, formal schooling in art education began, in accordance with the first modern comprehensive educational ordinance, enacted on September 8, 1872. For a time, Western and traditional systems coexisted. However, the Meiji Government, eager to Westernize the educational system, adopted a policy of teaching mainly Western-style pencil drawing in elementary art classes.

However, by 1885, ?nationalistic reaction in the area of fine arts seemed to have reached a fanatic? pitch when ?the traditional technique of brush and sumi [charcoal ink] was restored in elementary art instruction, replacing the pen and pencil drawing which had been practiced for nearly ten years? (Haga, 1971, p.253). Fenollosa, his aide-de-camp Okakura, and others took the lead in this regressive movement. Owing to their enthusiasm to revive interest in Japanese art, ?the Ministry of Education reversed its earlier policy concerning art classes in elementary education? in 1885 and replaced ?pencil-drawing? with Japanese style ?brush-and-ink painting? (Shively, 1971, pp.115-116).

As a result of these two opposing forces in Japanese art education, there were, during the opening decade of this century, conflicting views over the best way to develop an art curriculum at the elementary level, whether to follow Western art or Japanese. A temporary solution was the publishing of two kinds of copybooks in 1904 for drawing in elementary schools; one using pencil, the other, Japanese brush. This solution, however, was only temporary, and had the bad effect of clearly dividing Japanese art educators into two camps. The demand to mediate between the Japanese and Western ways in developing a modernized curriculum of art at the elementary level resulted in the publication of the New Textbooks of Drawing in 1910.

This orientation to an eclectic way of developing an art curriculum affected Shirahama's editorial policy about the writing of the textbooks, and limited his translation of American ideas in art education into Japanese. The New Textbooks of Drawing, which served as the only national textbooks from 1910 to 1931, reflect the instructional, or practical means of teaching art in the contexts of design methodology (space relation, outline, light and shade, and color), children?s developmental psychology, and special methods of drawing (silhouette, time-sketch, working drawing, pose drawing, and free-hand drawing). These three contexts were employed in the New Textbooks of Drawing because they were less concerned with which art education philosophy to follow. They provided for a compromise between Western and traditionalist camps, and were therefore very acceptable to Japanese art educators.

However, such points as the overemphasis on a strict instructional approach to teaching art, the ignoring of the expressive aspect of art, and the retention of copy or imitative drawing in the new textbooks reflected the limitations of transforming American ideas into Japanese, which were due not to Shirahama's oversight but due to the social and educational necessity of balancing Western ideas in art education with Japanese traditional thought.

Shirahama was criticized for being responsible for retaining of copy work and the lack of expressive value in the new textbooks. Although this kind of criticism of the new textbooks can be found even now in various recent historical studies on Japanese art education, it is, I believe, not entirely correct. Shirahama's most important learning from America is that the purpose of drawing as a regular subject within school curriculum was to develop children's ?creative imaginations? (Shirahama, 1907, p.44). Shirahama certainly had a concept of expressive value (?creative imagination?), but unfortunately had no success getting the it included in the New Textbooks of Drawing.


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