ABSTRACT
THE ARTS IN JAPAN are experiencing a period of rich creativity. In the contemporary theater, visual arts, literature, and music, Tokyo is a world center to be reckoned with. In forms ranging from fashion to film, the Japanese eye and sensibility are shaping current artistic vision. Japan is at once itself and thoroughly cosmopolitan. It has not always been so, however. Until the opening of Japan to the West in the 1850s, Japanese writers, artists, and intellectuals were able to glean only the barest outlines of developments in the Western arts, for the country had been effectively cut off from international contact since the 1630s. In 1868, as the result of a proclamation of the young Emperor Meiji, men and women went forth to study the rest of the world and soon brought back a surprisingly informed understanding of Western civilization, including the newest trends in the visual and literary arts. During the earlier periods in their history, of course, the Japanese had evolved a highly sophisticated artistic tradition, with China as the primary outside point of reference. By the end of the nineteenth century, Chinese influence was replaced by that of Europe. Japanese intellectuals often claimed that they constituted a young nation, one that had broken with its past to seek and assimilate a cosmopolitan and contemporary world sensibility. It was natural, perhaps, that many writers and artists pursued the new forms they found in Europe to manifest that aesthetic. Many gifted younger poets ceased writing seventeen-syllable haiku and adopted long lyric verse forms based on the French model. Japanese composers began to travel to Paris and Berlin to learn to write operas and string quartets. Many young Japanese painters took up the art of oil painting and were soon winning prizes in the French salon exhibitions. Was there to be anything left of the Japanese artistic tradition?
