Kawanabe Kyōsai: a spectator to the construction of a new japanese identity

Abstract

After two and a half centuries of impenetrability, Japan opened his harbours to the world when a little American fleet arrived in 1854. This event set the beginning of the Meiji period (1868-1912) and due to the western influence, also the beginning of the Japanese modernization was settled. Thus, during the first years of this new era, Japan underwent an unprecedented ‘self-westernisation’ process which was marked by the colonial threat in which Asia had been immersed for decades. This context in which Japan embraced the western culture and started to reject its own roots was portrayed by the work of Kawanabe Kyōsai, through paintings which were both judgmental and humoruous, as his Escuela para demonios (1874). Kyōsai became the chronicler of one of the most decisive moments of the Japanese history, when the Asian archipelago was borderline between its immediate past and the European and American influence.