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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
This essay introduces and compares works and lives of two war painters, Ogawara Shū (1911-2002) and Fujita Tsuguharu (1886-1998). It also provides a critical perspective on the museological discourse about Fujita and reassesses Ogawara by examining recent exhibits of their works in Hokkaido, Japan. Ogawara, a prewar surrealist painter, collaborated with the military and produced war propaganda paintings in the early 1940s. Fujita was an internationally renowned Japanese artist who resided in Paris since 1913, but came back to Japan and produced propaganda paintings in the 1930s and 40s. After the ear, they were criticized harshly by the public for their war responsibility, and largely forgotten in the Japanese art scene since then: Ogawara isolated himself in Kuchan, Hokkaido while Fujita left Japan permanently and lived in France until he died.
The author analyzes some of the most representative works produced by each artist including war paintings, and compares their different responses to their wartime activities: Ogawara expressed his war responsibility publicly since the 1970s whereas Fujita never commented on it. Apart from presenting each artist's attitude towards his past, the author problematizes the way Fujita and his war paintings were interpreted at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art in 2008: he was represented as a “Renaissance humanist” who produced “anti-war” paintings. The author argues that the nationalistic impulse of the contemporary Japanese art community was behind the misrepresentation of Fujita as a “tragic hero” and raises critical questions that need to be investigated further such as the way modernism and nationalism was intertwined in Japan during the war years.
I would like to thank Mr. Yabuki Toshio, the director at the Ogawara Shu Museum of Art, for sharing with me his valuable stories on the artist. This essay is indebted to Joshua S. Mostow, John O'Brian, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Ming Tiampo, Laura Hein, and Mark Selden who gave me valuable comments and encouragement. This essay also benefited from the editorial assistance of N. J. Hall and Ben Whaley. This is an edited version of my paper presented at the 12th Annual Harvard East Asia Society Graduate Student Conference, February 2009.
Please follow the links to other websites in order to view Fujita's works.
1 Ara Masato et al., “Zadankai: senso sekinin wo kataru,” Kindai bungaku, 1956. Maruyama Masao, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, ed. Ivan Morris (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 10.
2 For more on the worldwide comparison of war art, see Laura Brandon, Art & War (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006).
3 “Ushinawareta senso kaiga: nijūnenkan beikoku ni kakusarete ita taiheiyō senso meiga no zenyō” [Lost War Paintings: The Whole Story of the Pacific War Art Masterpieces That Were Hidden in the United States For Twenty Years], Shūkan Yomiuri, August 18, 1967,
4 For a discussion of the collection and the controversy over its seizure and return, see Asato Ikeda, “Japan's Haunting War Art: Contested War Memories and Art Museums,” disclosure: A Journal of Social Theory, vol. 18 (April 2009): 5-32.
5 Sawaragi Noi, Bakushin chi no geijutsu/ The Art of Ground Zero 1999-2001 (Tokyo: Shobun sha, 2002), 390.
6 “Samayoeru sensō-ga” [Hovering War Paintings], NHK, 16 August 2003.
7 Kay Itoi and George Wehrfritz, “Japan's Art of War: A Show of WWII Propaganda Paintings Confronts the Past,” NEWSWEEK, 4 September 2000.
8 Léonard Foujita, exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008). After Sapporo, the exhibition toured Tochigi, Tokyo, Fukuoka, and Miyagi.
9 Shinmyō Hidehito, Ogawara Shū: Harukanaru imāju [Ogawara Shū: Distant Images] (Sapporo: Hokkaido Newspaper, 1995).
Recent discussion on Fujita refers to the remarkable increase in the number of publications and exhibitions on Fujita in the late 2000s. Examples include: Fujita Tsuguharu Exhibition (Tokyo: Oida Gallery: 2006); Paris du monde entire: Artistes étrangers à Paris 1900-2005 (Tokyo: The National Art Center, 2007); Masterpieces from the Pola Museum of Art: Impressionism and Ècole de Paris (Yokohama: Yokohama Museum of Art, 2010); Eureka: Poetry and Criticism (May 2006); Geijutsu shinchō (April 2006); Serai (February 7, 2008). Yuhara Kanoko, Hayashi Yoko, and Kondō Fumito all published books on Fujita in the decade.
10 Fujita Tsuguharu, ”Atorie Mango,” Bura ippon: pari no yokogao, Bura ippon: pari no yokogao (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2005), 167.
11 Originally in Ogawara Shū, “Kyogonaru kitai” [Ambitious Expectation], Hokkaido Newspaper, 15 July 1938. Reprint in Shinmyō Hidehito, Ogawara Shū, 145-147.
12 See the second chapter of Maki Kaneko's “Art in the Service of the State: Artistic Production in Japan during the Asia-Pacific War,” Ph.D. diss. (University of East Anglia, 2006). Kaneko points out that the reform was not completely the “imposition” of government control over art; artists also requested protection from the state.
13 Kawata Akihisa, “Senso-ga towa nanika” [What Is Sensō-ga?]. For more on Japanese official war art, see Geijutsu Shinchō, August 1995; Kawata Akihisa and Tan'o Yasunori, Imēji no nakano sensō: nisshin, nichiro sensō kara rēsen made [War in Images: From the Sino-Japanese War to the Cold War] (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1996); Hariu, Ichirō and Sawaragi Noi, et al. Senso to bijutsu 1937-1945/ Art in Wartime Japan 1937-1945 (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 2007).
14 Akiyama Kunio, “Hon'nendo kirokuga nit suite” [On This Year's Record Paintings], Bijutsu, May 1944, 2.
15 Yamanouchi Ichirō, “Sakusen kirokuga no ari kata” [How War Paintings Should Be], Bijutsu, May 1944, 2-5.
16 Mark H. Sandler, “The Living Artist: Matsumoto Shunsuke's Reply to the State,” Art Journal 55.3 (Autumn, 1996): 74-82.
17 Quoted in Sandler, “The Living Artist,” 78.
18 John Clark, “Artistic Subjectivity in the Taisho and Early Showa Avant-Garde,” Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, ed. Alexandra Munroe (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 48.
19 For artists who died on the battlefield, see Kuboshima Sei'ichirō, Mugonkan nōto [The Silence Museum Notebook] (Tokyo: Shūei sha, 2005).
20 Fujita Tsuguharu, “Sensōga ni tsuite” [On War Paintings], Shin bijutsu (February 1943): 2.
21 For more on how the American public was confounded by the suicidal act, see Life, 3 April 1944, 36.
22 For visual domination and aerial perspectives, see Kari Shepherdson-Scott, “Utopia/ Dystopia: Japan's Image of the Manchurian Ideal,” Ph.D. diss. (Durham: Duke University, forthcoming).
23 Watashino naka no genfūkei I [The Real Landscape of Myself I], exh.cat. (Kuchan: Shu Ogawara Museum of Art, 2007).
5 Kondō Fumito. Fujita Tsuguharu: Ihōjin no shōgai (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2006), 305-7.
24 Fujita Tsuguharu, “Gaka no ryōshin” [Artists’ Conscience], Asahi Newspaper, 25 October 1945.
25 Fujita Tsuguharu, Bura ippon : pari no yokogao (Tokyo : Kodansha, 2005), 250.
26 Quoted in Shinmyō Hidehito, Ogawara Shū, 104.
27 For examples of war art in the 1990s, see Kawata Akihisa and Tan'o Yasunori, Imēji no nakano sensō: nisshin, nichiro senso kara resen made; Bert Winther-Tamaki, “Embodiment/Disembodiment: Japanese Painting during the Fifteen-Year War.” Monumenta Nipponica 52, no. 2 (Summer, 1997): 145-80.
28 In an email correspondence, curator of the National Museum Ozaki Masaaki informed me that 290,000 people visited the retrospective in Tokyo, 220,000 in Kyoto, and 80,000 in Hiroshima.
29 Link. For a more detailed examination of this exhibition, see Asato Ikeda, “Fujita Tsuguharu Retrospective 2006: Resurrection of a Former Official War Painter,” Josai University Review of Japanese Culture and Society, vol. 21 (December 2009): 97-115.
30 Natsubori Masahiro, Fujita Tsuguharu geijutsu shiron [The Art Theory of Fujita Tsuguharu](Tokyo: Miyoshi kikaku, 2004), 339; Kikuhata Mokuma, Ekaki ga kataru kindai bijutsu [Modern Art Examined By a Painter] (Fukuoka: Genshobō, 2003), 228.
31 Nomiyama Gyōji, “Boku no shitteru Fujita” [Fujita That I Know], Eureka: Poetry and Criticism (May 2006), 63.
32 Ozaki Masaaki, “On Tsuguharu Leonard Foujita,” trans. Kikuko Ogawa, Leonard Foujita, exh. cat. (Tokyo: The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, 2006), 191. This is an example of what art historian Bert Winther-Tamaki has called “artistic nationalism,” in which international influences and hybrid cultures are ultimately subsumed by the paradigm of nationalism. Bert Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and American Artists in the Early Postwar Years (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001).
33 Ozaki Masaaki, “On Tsuguharu Leonard Foujita,” 190.
34 From the exhibition website (accessed on December 15, 2008).
35 The Panels are now owned by the General Council of Essonne.
36 Léonard Foujita, exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 12-7.
37 Anne Le Diberder, “Battle and Composition: Fujita's Unreleased Works”; “Another Story of Renaissance,” Léonard Foujit, exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 72; 84
38 This Hiroshima connection was a new element added to the Fujita narrative. It was not Fujita but rather the President of the Pen Club Yves Gandon who made the reference to Hiroshima in his speech at the opening of the chapel. Léonard Foujita. exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 174; 203.
39 Léonard Foujita. exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 203. As far as I researched, Fujita's Chinese characters 嗣治 do not refer to peace.
40 Léonard Foujita. exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 73.
41 Léonard Foujita. exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 81.
42 Emily Braun, “Political Rhetoric and Poetic Irony: The Uses of Classicism in the Art of Fascist Italy,” On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 19101930 (London: Tate Gallery, 1990).
43 Alan Tansman, The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism, 1st ed. (University of California Press, 2009); Harry Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Leslie Pincus, Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shūzō and the Rise of National Aesthetics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Andrew Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
44 John Clark, “Surrealism in Japan,” Surrealism: Revolution by Night. exh.cat. (Canberra, National Gallery of Australia, 1993), 209.
45 Clark, “Surrealism in Japan,” 204.
46 Moriguchi Tari, Bijutsu gojūsshūnen (Tokyo: Masu shobō, 1943), 532.
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