Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia, and Deco
Women at the Beach
The exhibition Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia, and Deco contains many charming depictions of young women enjoying the pleasures of bathing and relaxing on the beach. Beach and bath scenes are a subset of a rich variety of painted images, mostly of women, that celebrate the move toward modernity in Japan in the early part of the twentieth century. At the same time, one can perceive in many of the works an underlying tension in a culture still ambivalent about the weakening of traditional values.
By 1915, the approximate year Kogyo Terazaki created the woodblock print Beauty in Bathing Suit, beach-going was already a favorite pastime for young women. The suit might appear old-fashioned, even for its time, but it was daring in comparison to the bathing attire that preceded it. Almost two decades later, the screen Relaxing in the Shade (c. 1933), by Shuho Yamakawa, depicts two modern women reclining on the beach. They wear fashionable Western-style slacks and jumpsuits accessorized with belts and jewelry. Beside them are a beach ball and ukulele, indications of new forms of public leisure available to women. The bold design of the composition—based on circles (the beach ball and hat, the shadow created by an unseen umbrella) and stripes (the clothing)—also breaks with tradition.
As curator Kendall Brown observed in the exhibition catalog: “Kogyo’s print was likely as daring for its time as was Shuho’s screen a generation later. Some important differences separate the two works, however, and also distinguish Taisho from early Showa. First, the relative complexity of the beach togs worn by the women in Shuho’s painting, together with their various accessories, demonstrate the explosive growth of consumer culture between 1915 and 1933. Second, Shuho’s depiction of women gazing back at the viewer contrasts Kogyo’s work in which the subject’s attention is focused elsewhere—or perhaps the comparison indicates an evolution in feminine consciousness as perceived by these male artists.”
During the Taisho period Japanese manufacturers were borrowing Western advertising techniques. Jintan, the maker of herbal breath-freshening pills, promoted their product through a fan painting of two popular actresses—Takako Irie and Fujiko Hamaguchi—in bathing caps. Irie is also the subject of the elegant screen Woman (1930), by Daizaburo Nakamura, and is featured in the film series accompanying the exhibition.
A more ambivalent portrayal of women, Two Girls by the Sea (mid-1920s), by Kafu, shows sisters reading at the shore, one in traditional kimono, the other in a demure Western-style dress. Like other paintings in the exhibition, this work exemplifies the sometimes conflicting tendencies of modernity and tradition. The double portrait was commissioned by the girls’ family; with the growth of the business class, many painters had lucrative sidelines in portraiture and others made it their specialty. Eventually, as in the West, the painted portrait was largely replaced by the less expensive photographic portrait.
The beach as a form of leisure activity is also reflected in new furniture design: several Western-influenced folding beach chairs are featured in the exhibition.
Constance Lewallen
Senior Curator for Exhibitions
Taisho Chic has been organized by the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
This exhibition has been made possible by support from the Hawai'i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.
The Berkeley presentation of Taisho Chic has been supported by the Consortium for the Arts and The Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley.
Exclusive Media Sponsor: Classical 102.1 KDFC 
