ABSTRACT
Influential cultural figures of high standing in Japan have long been involved in the arts as an avocation in addition to the work for which they are principally known. Mori Ōgai (1862–1922) was a polymath who rose to the top of military medicine as well as of the literary world in the late Meiji era. As a man of letters, Ōgai was a novelist, aesthetician, and intellectual who debated actively in public forums. There are others who show their talent in perhaps unexpected fields; the novelist Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) composed poems in Chinese, the artist Takamura Kōtarō (1883–1956) wrote poetry just as well as he sculpted, and poet Aizu Yaichi (1881–1956) created calligraphy. For Takamura, it may be silly to call either poetry or sculpture an avocation, as he was a master in either endeavour. Okakura Tenshin (1863–1913) was not only a consummate art historian and political advocate for the arts, but also excelled in calligraphy and poetry. Philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960), who overlapped with Kuki Shūzō (1888–1941) at the Kyoto Imperial University philosophy department from 1930 to 1935, also crossed into literature by writing such semi-literary works as Pilgrimages to the Ancient Temples in Nara (Koji junrei, 1919), works which are regularly regarded as an inseparable and important part of Watsuji's ouevre. This venerated tradition of cultivating skills in two or more areas may be closely related to bunbu ryōdō, a practice of engaging in both literary arts and martial arts, apparently a custom adopted from China early on. After martial arts lost their practical utility, in the Meiji period (1868–1912), a broadening of the meaning of bu ‘martial arts’ developed to include ‘sports’ of all sorts, bringing into existence a modern mutation of bunbu ryōdō. This was the idea that a complete person must possess a sound mind in a healthy body, an idea that became embraced in various social movements during the Taishō period (1912–1926), such as liberal-art-ism (kyōyōshugi) and education of the whole person (zenjin kyōiku). In addition, cultured persons, or bunjin, cultivated humanistic studies and excelled in the arts, such as poetry and painting.
