ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of watercolor in Japan from the early Meiji period until the 1910s, focusing on how watercolor transcended its origins as a western art medium to incorporate local art practices and aesthetics. As a medium that required relatively simple materials and shared common elements with ink painting in Japan, watercolor was widely practiced in Meiji Japan, including by western artists who visited Japan, Japanese artists who were eager to learn western-style painting, Japanese artists who travelled overseas, artists who visited the new colonies of Japan's expanding empire, and eventually local painters in the colonies. This paper argues that whereas watercolor practice in the early Meiji period was initially associated with tourism and journalism due to its image as a foreign medium used to reflect outsiders' perspectives, over time watercolor rapidly assimilated with local materials, genres, subject matters, and aesthetics, eventually becoming one of the primary tools to create new views of Japan and its empire. Departing from its initial usage to depict stereotypical tourist views, watercolor was used to reflect evolving views of a wide range of new subjects, including relatively untouched landscapes on the Japanese mainland, as well as newly colonized territories such as Taiwan.
