ABSTRACT

Founded in 1952, the avant-garde Japanese calligraphy collective Bokujin-kai embodied a widespread but somewhat paradoxical desire: to reinvigorate traditional Japanese art forms by inserting them into avant-garde artistic discourse. Morita Shiryū, the group’s founder, advocated for the sekai-sei (“world relevance”) of calligraphy, insisting that even non-Japanese speakers could find inspiration in the form and the spirit of the written characters. Bokujin-kai artists consciously “modernized” their calligraphy and their philosophy for both Japanese and Western audiences by creating strikingly expressive, performative, and nearly illegible calligraphic works. The group circulated these creations, along with extensive written texts musing on calligraphy’s position in the art world, almost exclusively via their monthly journal, Bokubi. This magazine remains one of the best records of their early international accomplishments. In the first decade of its publication, Bokubi presented transcripts of discussions on abstract art versus calligraphy, editorial features and exhibition reviews by prominent art critics, and reproductions of works by both Bokujin-kai calligraphers and Western artists. By disseminating these works and texts within Japan and overseas, Bokubi acted as a platform and a catalyst for early postwar discussions of artistic internationalism. Its circulation connected artists in New York and Paris with those in Tokyo and Kyoto, spawning cross-cultural debates on the malleability of word and image, on the value of national “styles,” and on the intersection of tradition and innovation in modern artistic practice. While Bokujin-kai’s influence on global modern art has been largely disregarded, by focusing instead on their journal as the group’s primary output, a specific legacy is visible. Bokubi was a concrete facilitator of international postwar artistic exchanges: the periodical itself achieved a complex “world relevance” that transcends the revitalization of calligraphy.