Japanese Art - Blurring the Lines of Tradition and Modernity

Japanese Art has a very long history, with pottery being considered one of its oldest forms. One of the most recent forms is computer art and anime. Japanese art culture means very different things to different people. There is no single definition of what it is or what really connects the various genres.

Art in Japan comes in many different forms and cannot easily be pigeon-holed into one definition. We all have images of what Japan and its traditions are.

I believe that in Japan modernity has affected tradition, but vice-versa, we can see how some of the greatest artists display works of tradition affecting modernity.

Ancient Japanese art was never static. Japanese art is always changing and forming new representations of itself. There is a conflict of images from the paintings and statues of Buddhist gods to the modern expressionist and anime works.

Many traditional Japanese arts have been built around a system of imitating the teacher and adhering to the affiliated school’s principles. Today many artists are breaking away from this tradition and experimenting with their own individuality.

This technologically advanced society that we live in today now enables artists and people in general to look to the Internet and media to experience cultures other than their own. Is this breaking down tradition? Historically speaking, in a way it is. But it is also opening the door to never-before-seen experiments in the Japanese art world.

To me, Japanese art should not be seen as being in a state of conflict or loss of identity, but at the crossroads of where different ideologies are crashing together. It is only when conflicting ideas collide that true creativity and art emerge.

In an excerpt from Utage to koshin, this poet defines an artist’s creativity as a clash of two conflicting themes. It is in a coexisting sphere of opposites that artists can truly express themselves:

　"If that [awase, or bringing into accord] alone were sufficient to bring forth works, nothing would be simpler. But in reality, awesome works were created only by people who, in the midst of a setting created for the sake of bringing people into accord, became painfully aware of the necessity to return to solitude, like it or not.

Furthermore, strange to say, when people withdrew completely into solitude, their works lost color. Only when the will to bring oneself into accord with others and the will to return to solitude were pulling against each other did the work of a poet or writer exhibit true brilliance.I cannot help seeing it this way.

What must be kept in view is the point at which the tension between these conflicting pulls hits a maximum; at that juncture we have neither a strict adherence to tradition nor an emphatic assertion of individuality. There is no real meaning in either mere tradition or mere individuality. But the area where the crests of these two waves strike each other always arouses interest, tension, and excitement." (Ooka 2000)

So ideally, through this conflict we find some inner peace that allows us to not be restricted by tradition or forced into expressing our individuality. One without the other is not where true art resides.

I hope you enjoy this website. We embrace the modern and the traditional, and enjoy blurring the lines of the two.

Japanese Traditional Art
Japanese Art Galleries