Avant-Garde - East - and - West - A - C (Comparativa de La Historia y Vanguardia)

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AVANT-GARDE EAST AND WEST:
A COMPARISON OF PREWAR GERMAN AND JAPANESE
AVANT-GARDE ART AND PERFRORMANCE
by
David Robert Pellegrini
BS, University o f Santa Clara, 1989
MA, San Francisco State University, 1993
Submitted to the Graduate Facility of
Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor o f Philosophy
University o f Pittsburgh
2001
UMI Number 3013321
CJMI
UMI Microform 3013321
Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company.
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
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COMMITTEE SIGNATURE PAGE
J/7hom as Rimer, Dissertation Advisor

Irafessor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Chair o f the Department
jounaridou, Dissertation Advisor

Assistant Professor o f Theatre Arts, Smith College
Attilio A. Favorini
Professor of Theatre Arts and Chair o f the Department
Keiko I. McDonald
Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures
ii
AVANT-GARDE EAST AND WEST:
A COMPARISON OF PREWAR GERMAN AND JAPANESE
AVANT-GARDE ART AND PERFRORMANCE
David Pellegrini, PhD
University o f Pittsburgh, 2001
This dissertation, prepared toward completion of a PhD in Theatre and Performance

Studies at the University o f Pittsburgh, is an interdisciplinary comparison of early
twentieth century avant-garde performance in Germany and Japan. The movements that
will be considered include Expressionism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism,
agit-prop and proletarian theatre, cabaret performance; and the Japanese movements
Action, Mavo, Sanka, Shingeki, and the Proletarian Theatre Movement. Framing this
comparison are historical and contemporary discourses that posit the centrality of the
historical avant-garde in the development of twentieth century art and theatre. The period
to be covered ranges from the turn of the twentieth century through World War II—an
era in which the proliferation, assimilation, and ultimately, the elimination of avant-garde
art and performance transpired in both countries. Representative texts, designs, and
performances illuminate the similarities and differences in regard to the intention,
production and reception o f German and Japanese avant-garde artists, writers, and theatre
practitioners. Aesthetic considerations are derived from historical and contemporary
critical and theoretical discourses, and address such phenomena as the relationship of the
avant-garde to the institutions o f art and theatre, the avant-garde’s reaction to aesthetic
autonomy, and transformations in the aesthetic sphere effected by avant-gardist discourse
and praxes in both nations. The sociopolitical coordinates o f the avant-garde project also
figure prominently, specifically, the “national” characteristics o f discrete movements, as
well as transformations in the reception o f art and performance in the first half o f the
twentieth century in both nations, including arts policies adopted under National
Socialism and the Japanese military-bureaucracy in the decade prior to World War II.
The methodology adopted in this dissertation crosses disciplinary boundaries, drawing
upon Western and Japanese scholarship in the fields o f art history and aesthetics, theatre
history and performance studies, critical theory, and social scientific approaches to art
and culture.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply grateful to my dissertation committee members for their guidance and many
suggestions. I am especially grateful to Dr. J. Thomas Rimer for sharing with me his
personal collection o f reference material, as well as his many contacts and sources o f
reference in Japan. Special thanks are also due to Dr. Kiki Gounaridou for her thoughtful
review o f the many drafts o f this dissertation; Dr. Attilio Favorini, Dr. Dennis Kennedy,
and Dr. Keiko McDonald for their early support o f my ideas; and Dr. Akiko Hashimoto
for her illuminating seminar on postwar Germany and Japan. In Japan, I was honored to
have interviewed Omuka Toshiharu—the foremost scholar on the Japanese avant-
garde—who shared his many insights and materials. I am also indebted to Mizusawa
Tsutomu, curator of the Kawakami Museum o f Modem Art; Yoshie Inoue of Waseda
University; and EmikoYamanashi o f the Tokyo National Research Institute o f Cultural
Properties, all of whom shared time, expertise, and resources. Also, my gratitude is
extended to the research librarians at the International House in Tokyo, whose assistance
in locating materials continued many months after my visit. For that experience, I am
also indebted to the Toshiba Foundation for a generous research grant. Thanks are also
due to the Japan Foundation for a grant for translation services. In regard to the latter, I
was fortunate to have found Mikiko Hirayama, a fellow doctoral student at the University
of Pittsburgh, who provided me with sensitive and astute translations o f scholarly and
performance texts. Thanks also to Kai Hoke for assisting with German translations; Rie
Kinjo for additional help with Japanese source materials; and Michael Schurr and Rachel
Kerr for formatting and editorial advice.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................... 1
1.0 AESTHETIC COORDINATES OF THE HISTORICAL AVANT-

GARDE............................................................................................................. 14
1.1 Historical Parameters.............................................................................. 14
1.2 Western Avant-Garde Aesthetic Theory and Criticism.......................... 24
12 .1 The Frankfurt Institute and the Avant-Garde........................... 25
1.2.2 Peter Bflrgeris Theory o f the Avant-Garde............................. 29
1.2.3 Responses to Burger’s Theory o f the Avant-Garde..................36
1.2.4 Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Cultural Fields............................42
1.3 Western Avant-Garde Performance Scholarship.....................................45
1.4 Japanese Avant-Garde Aesthetic Theory and Criticism..........................57
1.5 Discussion............................................................................................... 75
2.0 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL COORDINATES OF THE AVANT-

GARDE.............................................................................................................86
2.1 Social and Political Theories of the Avant-Garde...................................87
2.2 Comparison of German and Japanese Political and Social

Institutions........................................................................................... I l l
2.2.1 German Influence on Meiji Political, Social, and

Cultural Institutions.................................................................112
22 2 Weimar and Taisho Liberalism............................................... 122
2.2.3 Theories o f German and Japanese Fascism ..........................129
vi
2.3 Discussion...............................................................................146
3.0 THE JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE PROJECT..............................................153
3.1 The Western Avant-Garde in Japan.....................................................154
3.1.1 Expressionism......................................................................... 160
3.1.2 Futurism, Cubism and Constructivism....................................165
3.1.3 Dada and Surrealism............................................................... 172
3.2 Indigenous Avant-Garde Art, Literature and Performance................... 179
3.2.1 The Miraiha Bijutsu Kyokai [Futuist Art Association]

and Action [Akushon]..............................................................186
3.2.2 Mavo and Sanka...................................................................... 191
3.2.3 The Proletarian Arts Movements and the Avant-

Garde....................................................................................... 202
3.2.4 Japanese Avant-Garde Performance and Shingeki..................208
4.0 COMPARATIVE CASE STUDIES.................................................................221
4.1 Berlin Dada and Mavo......................................................................... 223
4.2 Georg Grosz and Yanase Masamu....................................................... 240
4.3 Murayama Tomoyoshi and Richard Huelsenbeck, Erwin

Piscator, and Kurt Schwitters.............................................................. 254
5.0 THE INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE AVANT-GARDE

AND THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REALMS IN GERMANY
AND JAPAN.................................................................................................-274
5.1 The Fascist Bureaucratization of Art and the Elimination of

the Avant-Garde.................................................................................. 276
52 Communism and the Avant-Garde.......................................................286
53 The Assimilation o f the Avant-Garde into Fascist, Military

and Wartime Propaganda------------------------------- 295
5.4 Conclusion: Transhistorical Evaluations o f the Historical

Avant-Garde-------------------------------------------------------------------310
vii
APPENDIX: COMPARATIVE TIMELINE OF AVANT-GARDE
ACTIVITIES IN GERMANY AND JAPAN (Including
Significant Social and Political Events................................................ 321
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................. 348
viii
INTRODUCTION
The impact o f the Western historical avant-garde movements can be affirmed by

their centrality in art history, and by the most significant critical projects o f the twentieth
century. Formal assessments o f international and trans-historical avant-garde
manifestations have long been complemented by varied scholarship and critical debate.
The historical avant-garde figures prominently in theories o f social institutions and in
analyses o f European culture prior to and after World War II. Some o f these theories
hold that the historical avant-garde transformed the aesthetic categories by which art had
been (and continues to be) produced and received. As such, the avant-garde has also
become central to theories of modernism and postmodernism. In addition, for some
historians interested in the relationship between politics and early twentieth century
European cultural formations, the avant-garde has revealed conceptual affiliations with
ultra-nationalism, militarism, and war, while for others it represents the apotheosis of
anti-authoritarianism. It is generally noted that the historical avant-garde maintained
contentious relationship with the aesthetic, social, and political power structures o f its
time.
The wide range o f scholarly attention, coupled with shifts in sociocultural
valuations o f art and international curatorial practices, have contributed to the
institutionalization of the avant-garde, resulting in a kind o f avant-garde industry. That
the historical avant-garde has been credited with transforming the categories of aesthetics
is not surprising, given that the dominant modes o f modem aesthetic theory and criticism
emerged alongside o f and in response to avant-garde art, literature, and performance.
The avant-garde manifestoes necessitated that the fundamental criteria o f discrete
disciplines, such as art history, aesthetics, and social theory be conjoined. Inasmuch as
the avant-gardists incorporated the manifestoes into their performance events, they have
2
been credited with transforming the aesthetic categories of intention and artistic
production, hi that they often specified the desirable responses to their work by
audiences and the critical establishment, they have also been credited with transforming
the category o f reception. The Italian Futurists, who encouraged active rather than
passive audience responses (including rioting), represent one such instance wherein
conventionalized modes o f reception were challenged, and thus, critically reevaluated.
Historians and theorists alike have interrogated the interrelationships between
avant-garde movements and the sociopolitical institutions o f their time. Typically averse
to cultural and social traditions, the movements comprising the historical avant-garde
have become one standard by which the relationship between art and politics has been
gauged in the twentieth century. One reason for this is that the movements most
consistently identified as avant-garde are temporally linked to the social, political, and
cultural reorganization o f continental Europe following World War I. Hence, various
movements have been ascribed national characteristics and nationalistic proclivities alike,
while avant-garde artists have been tried for political affiliations, both prior to and since
the war. Futurism, which can be traced to parallel developments in Italian and Russian
poetry and art, is often associated with Italian Fascism. Russian Constructivism has been
perceived to reflect Communist utopianism after the Revolution; while Dada and
Surrealism are often associated with radical Communism in Germany, France and Spain,
due in no small measure, to the political affiliations o f leading artists. Such
determinations, however, are also predicated upon the contents o f their artistic
manifestoes, even in cases where their artworks are devoid o f overt political content. In
this line o f inquiry, manifestoes, literature, art, and performance artifacts are analyzed for
their social and political critique, the underlying presumption being that avant-garde art
reflected social and political transformation o f interwar Europe. While most scholarship
typically places the avant-garde within social and political contexts, the emphasis has
remained on formal assessments of discrete artworks. The chief limitation o f this
approach is that it relegates the historical avant-garde to the aesthetic, and not the social
and political realms with which it intentionally, and often forcefully collided.
In contrast to the traditional critical bias toward content analysis, other approaches
have been adopted by scholars utilizing social-scientific methodologies to analyze
3
cultural formations. Interdisciplinary in scope and methodology, such approaches have

become a predominant mode of avant-garde analysis in the past few decades. While
conclusiveness regarding the relation o f the historical avant-garde and sociopolitical
structures is often elusive, this approach has yielded important paradigms regarding the
significance o f the historical avant-garde project. One such paradigm holds that the
endurance o f the historical avant-garde is due less to the notoriety of specific artists than
to the avant-garde’s transformation o f the social status o f art in bourgeois society. A
tangential paradigm holds that while art throughout history always existed as a social
institution, it was the historical avant-garde’s critique o f art that prompted its recognition
as such.
As the foremost advocate of these paradigms, Peter BQrger has emphasized the
avant-garde’s radical critique of aesthetic autonomy, widely considered to have reached
its full fruition Aestheticism and the art-for-art’s-sake movements of the late nineteenth
century. What unifies the disparate movements that comprise the historical avant-garde
for BQrger, were the goals o f abolishing the institutions of art (e.g. academies, museums,
critical establishments, cultural traditions), and the integration of art and life. Futurism,
Dada, Surrealism, Russian Constructivism, and to a lesser degree Expressionism, all
qualify here because these movements made these dual goals central to both theories and
art practices. BQrger excludes movements such as Symbolism and Cubism not on the
basis of such issues as form and content, but rather, because those movements did not
advance a social agenda. Ultimately, the avant-garde’s critique of aesthetic autonomy,
and its failure to either destroy the institution o f art or sublate art and life praxis resulted
in the historical crystallization of art as a separate social sphere.
Though widely criticized for his ideological biases and his non-specificity in
matters o f form and content, Burger’s theory has, nonetheless, provided avant-garde
scholarship with heuristic guidelines that have served to delimit the field o f inquiry
categorically, and have complexified the aesthetic, social, and political coordinates by
which to gauge the avant-garde’s social efficacy. Although BQrger limits the avant-
garde’s impact to the aesthetic realm, his categorical framework has been widely adopted
by scholars to qualify, expand upon, and refute historical critical theories o f the avant-
4
garde. In effect, Burger can be credited with revitalizing avant-garde scholarship,

particularly in regard to its extra-aesthetic dimensionalities.
Social-scientific approaches to art have tended to concentrate on the
interrelationship o f the historical avant-garde with social, political and cultural
institutions undergoing radical change in the interwar period. In this vein, much
scholarship has been generated on the absorption o f the avant-gardists’ theories and
practices by totalitarian bureaucracies in Italy, Russia, and Germany. While the avant-
garde movements yielded aversive and ultimately fatal reception by political institutions,
it becomes evident that avant-garde discourses were assimilated by the agencies of
totalitarianism in complex and varied ways. This is most evident in Germany, where
avant-gardist techniques and discourses were prominently deployed in National Socialist
propaganda years after the highpoint o f the historical avant-garde and, even more
ironically, long after it supplied the new cultural bureaucracy with the vocabulary upon
which new cultural imperatives were constructed. Similarly, the Italian Futurists’
glorification o f technology, militarism, and ultra-nationalism foreshadowed and then
paralleled Italy’s aggressive imperial and military expansionism. While such patterns
appear to contradict Burger’s position that the avant-garde failed to effect social and
political change, many scholars hold that the reconfiguration o f the avant-garde project
within fascist structures proves the potency of the avant-garde’s sociopolitical critique.
The exegesis and comparison of totalitarian and avant-garde discourses, ranging from
avant-garde manifestoes to political speeches and bureaucratic policies have, not
surprisingly, become standard to contemporary avant-garde scholarship.
This dissertation draws upon the range o f scholarship that treats art as a social
institution. Wherever possible, I attempt to connect the intentions, production, and
reception o f the avant-garde movements to the social and political contexts from which
they emerged. While I will employ Burger’s model categorically, I will also examine the
conjuncture o f avant-garde theory, praxis, and reception with social and political
dynamics.
Avant-garde scholarship in all varieties has generally focused on art, literature,
and performance in Western Europe, with only sporadic mention o f either non-Western
manifestations or its global impact. While Western historical avant-garde activities are
5
well-documented, the fact that these and similar movements developed beyond Europe
has received comparatively little attention. In fact, significant historical avant-gardist
activity is locatable in Central and South America, and Asia. It is my chief assumption in
this dissertation that the avant-garde emerged in all o f its complexity in Japan as it had in
western Europe in the decades prior to World War n.
As evidenced by recent studies and international museum exhibitions,
Expressionism, Constructivism, Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism all emerged in the
literature, art and performance of Japan’s Taisho era (1912-1926). While Japanese artists
and critics have acknowledged the impact of such movements on post-war art and
culture, it is important to note that avant-garde activities were preceded by other
developments that had decisive effects on traditional art forms, aesthetics, and the social
status o f art in Japan from the beginning o f the Meiji era (1868-1912). While this may
appear to dilute the potential efficacy o f the Japanese historical avant-garde when
compared to its Western counterparts, these earlier developments must be examined in
order to provide a distinct historical context, facilitate categorization of discrete
movements, and otherwise enrich consideration o f both the aesthetic and sociopolitical
valances o f the Japanese avant-garde. Yet, this position also necessitates that the
categorical and historical parameters delimiting the Western avant-garde project be
reevaluated when applied to Japan. This is especially true when attempting to apply the
paradigm that the historical avant-garde’s primary goal was to abolish aesthetic
autonomy.
To graft aesthetic autonomy as the predominant institutional mode governing
Japanese artistic production in the post-Restoration era is to ignore both its distinctive
features, as well as the contributory factors for its emergence. Furthermore, the sublation
o f art and life praxis, the other commonly deployed criteria distinguishing the western
historical avant-garde from artistic modernism, may well be considered a hallmark o f
traditional (hence, pre-avant-garde) art and aesthetics in Japan, especially when
considering that the Japanese term for art, bijutsu, did not come into popular usage in
Japan until the Meiji era. Therefore, it might (erroneously) be concluded that the
Japanese avant-garde deferred to aesthetic traditions. Finally, the historical recognition
o f art as an institution in Japan predates the emergence o f the historical avant-garde in
6
both Japan and Europe, specifically to the early Meiji period, when the utilitarian and
diplomatic functions o f art were recognized by the oligarchy. It is a major proposition of
this dissertation that the historical crystallization o f the institutional status of art occurred
several decades prior to this phenomenon in the West.
To adhere to contemporary Western scholarship and focus on the interrelationship
between the Japanese avant-garde and changing social and political institutions, is to note
affinities to similar manifestations in Europe, but far greater differences. This becomes
clear when issues such as artistic freedom, the contours of Taisho-era liberalism, and the
assimilation o f Western forms are taken into account. Furthermore, to concentrate on
avant-garde discourse is to recognize its absorption in Japanese sociopolitical institutions
in the period covering the early Showa period through the Pacific War in ways that
differed markedly from Europe.
Despite such contradistinctions and the myriad implications for avant-garde
scholarship, that the Japanese avant-garde has remained comparatively under-examined
can be attributed to a number o f factors. First, Eurocentric tendencies in Western art
history have either marginalized or have presumed derivativeness o f non-Westem
modem and avant-garde art, literature, and performance. Second, although a great deal
o f Western avant-garde art was lost or destroyed in the periods prior to and during World
War n, a large body of it was auctioned off, exported, and rediscovered. This was not the
case in Japan, where much avant-garde art was lost or destroyed in the Kanto Earthquake
o f 1923 and the war era bombings. Contributing to the West’s inattention to the Japanese
avant-garde was the geographic remoteness that separated artists from sustained
interaction with Western practitioners and critics. These, as well as the aforementioned
difficulties in categorization and the Japanese avant-garde’s deviation from such Western
narratives as “reaction” and “assimilation,” have all posed seemingly insurmountable
difficulties.
Japanese scholarship too has tended to obscure the history, activities, and impact
o f the Japanese avant-garde in a number o f ways and for a variety o f reasons. For
example, many art historians eschew the avant-garde label due to its Western origins, and
the Eurocentrism of contemporary avant-garde theory. Others have argued that since the
Japanese translation o f avant-garde (zen ’ei) was not employed by the artists themselves,
7
it is not a valid term—even though many Western avant-gardists also did not self-identify
with this label. Still others will not consider indigenous movements such as Mavo and
Sanka as avant-garde because they had no counterparts in the West. For these reasons,
art historians place the Japanese avant-garde movements under the broader classification
o f modernism in much the same way that traditional Western art historians have
categorized the historical avant-garde, thus using the terms interchangeably and
uncritically. This also parallels Western critical approaches that place greater value on
content analysis over the social and institutional coordinates of art production. While
considerable scholarship has been devoted to abstract art and Surrealism—the two
predominant modes in the visual arts in Japan prior to and after the war, it was not until
the 1980s that a significant body o f scholarship was produced in Japan regarding the
prewar avant-garde. Such interest was precipitated by experimental and politically
minded Japanese artists of the 1960s, who cited its influence, and also high-profile
museum retrospectives in Tokyo in the mid-1960s, and Dusseldorf and Paris in the mid-
1980s.
Japanese scholarship has also been inflected with competing social and political
ideologies in regard to prewar culture in ways that parallel, but diverge from Western
critical models. Recently, many scholars have alleged an overall reluctance on the part of
Japanese art historians to revisit prewar culture and its sociopolitical dimensions.
Equally significant, the legacy o f the Japanese avant-garde has been obfuscated by the
ideological conversion, tenko, required o f politically-minded Japanese artists and
intellectuals prior to the war. As in Western scholarship, theoretical constructions o f the
prewar avant-garde have also served to alternately prove or disprove Japan’s
predisposition towards militarism and war—with the avant-garde assuming either proto-
fascistic, or anti-authoritarian components. It must also be acknowledged that some
historians o f prewar Japanese culture have identified conservative-mindedness in the
Japanese academy for not validating either cross-disciplinary studies or serious
consideration to prewar censorship o f leftist ideologies inherent to any consideration of
the Japanese avant-garde project
This dissertation adds to the body o f avant-garde scholarship by examining
significant aesthetic and sociological coordinates unique to the Japanese avant-garde
8
project I will attempt to chart the emergence o f the avant-garde, highlight significant
activities and events, and assess its impact and sociopolitical valences. In order to
achieve these goals, I have adopted a comparative framework that focuses on the
historical avant-garde in Japan and Germany in the prewar era. Furthermore, I will
emphasize avant-garde performance activities in order to further delimit the field of
inquiry. To concentrate on performance manifestations is particularly relevant as it is the
most under-examined area in Western and Japanese avant-garde scholarship, despite the
fact that it encompasses the widest range o f aesthetic and extra-aesthetic dimensions.
The selection o f Germany over other Western countries as a cohort nation is
advantageous for several reasons. From the standpoint of artistic production, a body of
comparative work exists regarding the counter-influences o f German and Japanese
political, social, and cultural formations in the early modem period. Germany also
witnessed the proliferation of the widest range o f avant-garde performance activities,
including those undertaken by movements as diverse as Expressionism, Dada, and
Bauhaus in equally diverse performative contexts, such as music halls and cabarets, and
in the case o f proletarian agit-prop performance, in the workplace or throughout the urban
landscape. By comparison, significant avant-garde performance activities in other
European countries were undertaken by only one or two movements. Equally important,
German aesthetic theory also broadened in scope during the Weimar era, and its range
and sophistication is attributable in no small measure to the Frankfurt School
intellectuals, who took early notice o f the avant-garde project, and established a critical
legacy that remains a touchstone for Western avant-garde scholarship. As such, German
aesthetic and critical theory is a particularly strategic cohort by which to consider
Japanese aesthetic and performance theories.
If avant-garde performance was particularly rich in Germany, the modes in which
it was received were equally multifaceted. German avant-garde performance
manifestations challenged traditional modes o f theatrical reception, including the
institutional structures and codes o f theatre at the time. Equally significant is the German
political response to the avant-garde, especially after the rise o f National Socialism,
which categorically eliminated avant-gardism in all o f the arts. Furthermore, the
assimilation o f avant-garde discourse, and art and performance practices by the Nazi
9
cultural bureaucracy has become a standard by which governmental intervention in art

and its redeployment towards totalitarian political ends is measured. This holds unless
one also considers the arts and cultural policies in Japan from the Meiji era through the
Pacific War, for it was as true in Japan as in Germany, that as cultural regulation
approached total control, avant-garde art, literature and performance became particularly
contentious. Thus, the comparison o f transformations in cultural policies and
bureaucratic structures in Germany and Japan in relation to avant-garde activities is a
major goal of this dissertation. Avant-garde performance manifestations in Italy and
Russia will augment my assessment o f the intersection of the avant-garde with the social
and political realms, and help to identify international patterns in the reception o f the
avant-garde project.
Due to its synthetic properties, performance provides a range o f opportunities to
examine the intended and actual transformations in both the aesthetic and social spheres
by the avant-garde. In that it fuses textual, literary, and visual arts practices, and often
incorporates music and dance, to consider performance forms requires attention to several
modes o f artistic production. It also encompasses social dimensions, including the
presence o f live performers, performance site specificities, and performer-audience
dynamics. As in the visual arts, avant-gardists working in the medium o f performance
attempted radical transformations o f all available modes of production in the traditional
theatre. While this was also true in Japan, traditional theatrical practices and the
institutional frameworks within which they were produced and received diverged from
the West.
The European avant-gardists sought changes in how theatre was to be received by
subverting theatrical conventions and assailing bourgeois sensibilities and cultural
establishments. The Italian Futurists’ provocation of riots at their performances
represents one manifestation of the avant-garde’s disruption of the passive, contemplative
modes o f reception. At its height, the avant-garde challenged the critical reception o f art
as well. The often volatile nature o f its performances necessitated a broadening o f the
category o f reception to include extra-aesthetic coordinates, not only because of the
sociopolitical aims o f the avant-gardists, but also because performance by its very nature
is a social act. This challenge was first taken up by the critical theorists o f the Frankfurt
10
School for Social Research and affiliated intellectuals and artists such as Walter
Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, and Georg Lukacs.
In Japan, artists, the public, and critics also confronted avant-garde art, literary,
and theatrical practices. Within a few decades, the Japanese theatre experienced a rapid
succession o f transformations, beginning with the Kabuki Reform Movement, and
continuing with the rise of entirely new representational modes associated with Western
Naturalism, the institutionalization of Shingeki, and the emergence of avant-gardist and
proletarian theatre forms. A significant portion o f this dissertation will be devoted to
identifying and comparing transformations in the social and aesthetic reception effected
by the avant-gardists in Japan, as discernible in the theories and practices o f both artists
and critics concerned with theatre forms.
Methodologically, this dissertation is informed by scholarly projects that link
cultural production with sociopolitical structures and institutions. Following
contemporary trends in avant-garde scholarship, issues o f form will be weighed more
heavily than artistic content. Here usage o f the term “form” should not be confused with
formal criticism, which rests on empirical linkages between form, content, and meaning.
Rather, to shift analysis from artistic content to discourses about forms o f art and
performance is to posit that avant-garde forms, more than the content o f specific
artworks, contained significant meanings.
While content analysis is important in determinations of meaning in any critical
project, one of the chief legacies o f the avant-garde was its problematization of meaning
as a critical category. This legacy has several ramifications on the historical and trans-
historical reception o f avant-garde art and performance. First, the avant-gardists’
tendency to conflate the modalities of intention, production, and reception was often
deeply tied to the structure and content o f specific works. Strategies such as the Futurist
performances o f artistic manifestoes, the compression o f traditional dramatic structures
into cabaret and variety theatre formats, chance construction, and the predisposition to
alternative performance sites, all represent ways in which the avant-gardists attempted to
transform both production and reception. To emphasize form and discourses about form
also adheres to the maxim o f social-scientific art theory which holds that neither the
ideological components, nor the meaning and impact o f specific artworks is fixed, but
11
rather, is dependent upon the contexts in which they are received. Examining the
reception o f the historical avant-garde at different historical junctures, including the
assimilation o f avant-garde discourses and praxes in political art and propaganda, is,
therefore, a chief component of this dissertation. Finally, to emphasize form over content
is compatible with the project o f seeking connections between art and social institutions,
thus serving the goals o f charting and comparing the complex interrelationships between
the historical avant-garde and social and political institutions in Germany and Japan.
To summarize, this dissertation adopts the following research goals: (I) to
identify, apply and compare scholarly discourses and methodologies regarding the
historical avant-garde in Germany and Japan; (2) to establish a set o f criteria pertinent to
evaluating historical avant-garde performance; (3) to compare social and political
institutions in Germany and Japan from the late nineteenth century through World War II
in order to establish the coordinates most pertinent to the extra-aesthetic dimensions of
the avant-garde, including discourses on the incompatibility o f the avant-garde with
totalitarian and militaristic ideologies, the fascist aestheticization of politics versus the
avant-garde’s politicization o f art, and the assimilation o f avant-gardist techniques and
discourses within social institutions and as bome out in bureaucratic policies; (4) to
construct a narrative o f the activities o f the Japanese historical avant-garde; (5) to
consider shifts in cultural traditions and social forms as they relate to the emergence and
decline o f the historical avant-garde; (6) to compare representative manifestations of
German and Japanese avant-garde performance along both aesthetic and extra-aesthetic
coordinates; (7) to establish a historical chronology o f the conjunctures o f the avant-
garde and the social and political spheres in Germany and Japan, emphasizing cultural
policies directly and indirectly related to the avant-garde project; and, (8) to assess the
efficacy o f the avant-garde in fulfilling their aesthetic, social, and political goals in both
countries.
This dissertation is divided into five chapters comprised o f the following research
components:
In chapter one, I survey historical and contemporary scholarship on the historical
avant-garde in Germany and Japan. Drawing upon a wide body o f critical and theoretical
scholarship, I will establish historical and categorical parameters, and a set o f aesthetic
12
coordinates as they relate to the avant-garde project. Another goal o f this chapter is to
establish the aesthetic coordinates unique to performance, particularly as they relate to
German and Japanese theatrical institutions prior to, during, and immediately after the
presence o f the historical avant-garde. I will also consider the extent to which the avant-
garde transformed aesthetic criticism in the West and in Japan.
In chapter two, I adopt a similar methodological approach, with the goal of
identifying the similarities and differences between German and Japanese cultural, social
and political institutions at key historical junctures. I will also establish a set of
coordinates relevant to the social and political valences of the avant-garde in both
countries. Central to this chapter are considerations o f social and political institutions
undergoing massive transformations concurrently to the height o f avant-gardist activities.
Three historical periods will serve to frame the establishment o f these extra-aesthetic
coordinates. The first period roughly covers the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, when the predominant modem social and cultural institutions crystallized in
both nations. The second historical period to be covered is the Taisho era in Japan, and
the Weimar Republic in Germany. O f particular concern in this period are shifting
conceptions of liberalism, the emergence of new social ideologies and political
movements, and patterns o f freedom and restraint regarding artistic and intellectual
production. The third period extends from the decline and elimination o f the avant-garde
project in both countries through the World War II. This chapter also surveys theories of
fascism, totalitarianism and fratemalism as they may apply to changing political
structures.
In chapter three, I will present a narrative history of the Japanese avant-garde,
with an emphasis on performance. This history will be framed by the historical, aesthetic
and sociopolitical parameters established in the first two chapters. I will also attempt to
distill avant-garde performance from the general trends of modernization and
Westernization in the Japanese theatre. In constructing this narrative history, I draw upon
a wide body o f research, including historical surveys o f literature, art and theatre, critical
and theoretical scholarship on discrete movements and artists, and representative
manifestoes and artifacts o f art, literature, and performance. While an exhaustive history
13
is impossible given the research goals o f this dissertation, it is hoped that a near-
comprehensive account o f Japanese avant-garde activities will result
Chapter four compares representative case studies drawn from historical avant-
garde performance in Germany and Japan. These examples include performance
manifestations related to Dada and Mavo, proletarian and agit-prop theatre, and the
careers o f key personalities, including Georg Grosz and Erwin Piscator in Germany, and
Yanase Masamu and Murayama Tomoyoshi in Japan. 1also incorporate an analysis o f
the aesthetic categories o f intention and production in regard to these samples, as well as
characteristics of the various ways in which these performance manifestations were
received. These case studies have been selected on the basis of the possibilities for
elaborating upon extra-aesthetic coordinates, specifically connections between the avant-
garde and German and Japanese social and political institutions. In this respect,
performance manifestations that compel attention to the social and political program of
the historical avant-garde (and its correlative historical reception) will assume
prominence.
Chapter five, which also serves as the conclusion to this dissertation, compares
the interrelationship of the historical avant-garde and the social and political spheres in
Germany and Japan. O f primary concern will be the assessment o f predominant
discourses about art and performance in general, and the avant-garde in particular, from
the height o f historical avant-garde activity through its demise. The comparison of select
phenomena, such as transformations in institutional and bureaucratic policies, the
assimilation o f avant-gardist techniques and discourses in wartime propaganda, and
shifting conceptions o f acceptable cultural forms will form the basis by which to gauge
the political and social valances o f the historical avant-garde in both nations.
A comprehensive timeline of avant-garde activity, including significant events in
the cultural, social, political and legislative histories of Germany and Japan, will be
presented in table form as an appendix.
ONE. AESTHETIC COORDINATES OF THE HISTORICAL AVANT-GARDE
This chapter surveys the theoretical and critical scholarship relevant to comparing
historical avant-garde performance in Germany and Japan. This literature review will
serve three purposes: (1) to establish the research parameters o f this inquiry based upon
historical and categorical qualifications; (2) to establish the aesthetic coordinates o f the
historical avant-garde project, particularly in regard to performance; and (3) to
distinguish the avant-garde project in Germany and Japan on the basis o f aesthetic
considerations.
1.1 Historical Parameters
The term “avant-garde” is used throughout this dissertation to denote art, literary,
and performance movements o f the early twentieth century. It also distinguishes them
from the trans-historical phenomenon of avant-gardism. The identification o f precise
start and end points of the historical avant-garde project in Germany and Japan are
predicated upon divergent social and cultural circumstances.
The historical avant-garde is considered by most scholars to have been a
programmatic reaction to aesthetic autonomy. The doctrine of autonomy made the
separation o f art and the social sphere axiomatic in bourgeois society. The construction
o f a discrete aesthetic sphere has been traced to the German Enlightenment, most notably
in the writings o f Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schiller.1 In Europe, aesthetic autonomy
is considered to have reached its apotheosis in the aestheticist movements o f the late
nineteenth century, particularly art for art’s sake.
Despite scholarly consensus that the avant-garde rejected aesthetic autonomy, the
constitutive elements o f this reaction have been the subject of debate. Historians have
located avant-garde discourse as early as Henri de Saint-Simon’s utopian-socialist tract
Opinions literaires, philosophique, et mdustrielle (1825), which “ascribed a vanguard
role to the artist in the construction o f the ideal state and the new golden age o f the
14
15
future.”2 This is also significant in that it indicates an early association o f progressive art
with progressive politics. According to Graver, art o f the early nineteenth century
labeled “avant-garde” typically served a “futurist-oriented (leftist) political group” as a
tool for “raising consciousness rousing enthusiasm, and gaining converts” (3). Today,
however, the label avant-garde may or may not connote art that is socially or politically
engaged.
Scholars have emphasized social and political contradistinctions in certain art and
literature o f the late nineteenth century to further distinguish the historical avant-garde
project. For example, because Naturalism incorporated both aesthetic and social reforms,
some consider it to have been the first authentic avant-garde movement, while for others
it represents the last “true” avant-garde, since it was supplanted by such aestheticist
movements as Impressionism and Symbolism.3 Graver makes the distinction that while
the Naturalists “intended that their art would lead to social reforms proposed by political
groups whose values they shared,” the twentieth century avant-gardists proposed more
radical alternatives, even though they championed social reforms insofar as they were
integral to their aesthetic ideas, and hence, only “coincidentally similar” to causes
espoused by political organizations (7). While the contours o f these “coincidental”
affiliations have proven to be contestable, most scholars hold the reaction to aesthetic
autonomy as the defining characteristic o f the avant-garde project. To this, other scholars
have added the avant-gardists’ consistent attempts to erode the boundary between art and
life. These two general tendencies, the critique o f aesthetic autonomy and the sublation
o f art and life praxis, have come to serve as the categorical parameters of the historical
avant-garde project in contemporary scholarship. When evaluating the Japanese avant-
garde, however, it becomes necessary to qualify these criteria. While it may be argued
that the Japanese avant-gardists rejected aesthetic autonomy, any such reaction must be
placed in the context of social transformations during the Meiji era (1868-1912).
To many art historians, the 1870s represent a turning point in Japanese a rt Just as
arts patronage shifted from the shogunate and aristocracy to new governmental
bureaucracies, new training methods were supplanting the traditional master-apprentice
model (Rosenfield 184). Six years after Kawakami Togai published his influential Guide
to Western Painting (1870), the Department o f Industry established the Technological Art
16
School to teach artists imported Western painting theory. By the 1900 “Exposition
Universelle” in Paris, prominent Westem-style painters such as Kuroda Seild and Asai
Chu achieved international recognition. Such developments, which resulted from the
government’s efforts to demonstrate Japan’s modernization to the world, served to
institutionalize Western arts practices. By 1907, the government was sponsoring art
exhibitions, buntens, that classified art into three categories: Nihonga [Japanese-style
modem painting], Yoga [Westem-style modem painting], and sculpture (Takashina 1990,
273).
Despite widespread enthusiasm for Western cultural forms throughout the Meiji
era, competing ideologies regarding the social values of art were already apparent by the
turn o f the twentieth century. Ernst Fenollosa, instrumental to the spread o f Western oil
painting techniques, advocated Western aestheticist values by emphasizing the
“importance o f art as an end to itself, rather than as a painless means of imparting
information or improving morals” (Keene 1984,99). Fenollosa, along with his associate
Okakura Kakuzo4 advocated for the preservation of traditional art production, a position
which was to influence the establishment o f the Tokyo National Museum and the
Committee for the Protection o f Cultural Properties in 1882, and the Tokyo School o f
Fine Arts5 [Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko] in 1887, on which both Fenollosa and Okakura served
on the faculty (Munsterberg 20). By the end o f the century, with the backlash against
Occidentalism in full-force, a group o f traditionalists led by Okakura and his colleagues
organized the House o f Fine Arts (Dan 139).
Having noted the coexistence of such competing values, Japanese artists
recognized the social and institutional dimensions o f art early on in the modem era.
Rosenfield observes that early Meiji painting presents a classic account o f artists who
were directly confronting social issues, particularly in their realization that artworks
could be “powerfully creative forces in society” (183). Similarly, Yamada notes that the
spread o f European realism in all fields of Meiji art reflected the influence o f Western
scientific positivism (19). Considered alongside the government’s support o f Western
cultural forms, it becomes apparent that the social value o f art was recognized by the
Meiji cultural bureaucracy. Equally significant is that this phenomenon cannot be
17
positioned as an after-effect o f aestheticism or as a result o f the avant-garde project as it

is normally characterized in the W est
Aestheticism appears to have emerged in Japan as a result o f social and cultural
forces that bear little similarity to those in the West. Ueda notes that in traditional
Japanese aesthetics, greater emphasis was placed on the subjectivity of the artist than on
art’s social utility. Ueda attributes this aestheticist bias to the Heian period (794-1185),
when graceful and refined beauty was elevated to an artistic norm; and also to Buddhist
philosophy, which minimized the values of heroism and manly dynamic beauty.6
Rosenfield concludes that the tension between traditional aestheticism and emerging
ideologies regarding the social utility o f art is a defining characteristic o f most forms of
Meiji era culture (183).
Such tensions were also borne out in the literature and literary criticism of the
Meiji period. In The Essence o f the Novel [Sh5setsu Shinzui] (1885), Tsubouchi Shoyo
advocated for the “artistic” over the “didactic” novel then in vogue (Keene 1984,508).
Natsume Soseki also considered art as self-expression to be the fundamental rule o f
creation, and bolstered aestheticist strains in modem literary criticism by exhorting
writers to ignore social concerns, such as audience acceptance, financial reward and
critical approbation (Takashina 1990,275). SSseki’s many followers were to found the
Shirakaba-ha [White Birch Society], and their journal, Shirakaba (1910-1923), which
introduced the works o f Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh, and Gaugin to Japanese readers,
while maintaining an editorial policy that advocated for the detachment o f art from social
and political concerns (Keene 1984,441-2).
Apart from permutations o f traditional and imported aestheticist ideologies, what
is pardularly significant about Japanese aestheticism during the late Meiji period was the
concurrent rise to prominence o f Naturalism in all of the arts. Unlike Europe, where
Naturalism as a movement peaked in the last two decades o f the nineteenth century, it
emerged in Japan after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), which brought writers into
contact with European novelists and dramatists associated with the movement (Saito
186). Arima cites Shimazaki Toson’s Hakai [Apostasy] and Tayama Katai’s Futon [The
Quilt], which appeared in 1906 and 1907 respectively, as the first important Japanese
naturalistic novels (73-5). hi regard to the late development o f Naturalism and its status
18
as more o f a style than a movement, Hogetsu wrote: “Only recently, twenty or more years
later than the French, has the Japanese reading public belatedly come to want to savor for
itself, in a deeply personal manner, the flavor of what the Europeans call Naturalism.”7
As a co-founder o f the Geijutsu-za [Art Theatre], Hogetsu’s contributions to theatrical
naturalism were also formidable, particularly his translation of Tolstoy’s Resurrection,
which was widely performed throughout Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria in 1914
(Keene 544).
As in the visual arts and literature, the growing tensions between formulations of
aestheticism and the social utility o f art were also apparent in transformations taking
place in the Japanese theatre. Weber cites the turning point in the modernization o f the
theatre, to the 1870s, when Kabuki troupes were urged by the government to adopt
measures that would make it more suitable to “enlightened audiences” and the “taste of
foreign visitors” (152). Noh, which had lost the patronage o f the Shogunate, was saved
from extinction due both to its antiquarian appeal, and also because its use value as a tool
A
o f international diplomacy was recognized by the government The Kabuki Reform

Committee was established in 1887 to ensure that producers adhered to the cultural
imperative of “The Encouragement o f Virtue and the Chastisement of Vice.”
Playwrights were also urged to be historically accurate and to incorporate the Confucian
values o f loyalty and filial piety (Keene 1984,400).
Such measures sparked controversy among leading artists and critics, who
denounced Kabuki reform largely on the basis o f aesthetic autonomy. Sh5y5, for
example, criticized the moralistic approach of the committee, and insisted that “art must
not become a slave to morality” (Weber 156). Consistent with his aestheticist bias,
Shoyo undertook a complete translation o f Shakespeare’s plays, composed
Shakespearean-influenced Kabuki dramas, and invented a new musical-drama form
[gakugeki], that he likened to the gesamtkunstwerke of Richard Wagner (Keene 1984,
416).
The late Meiji period was also marked by the influx o f Western drama in
translation. Mori Ogai who was also critical o f Kabuki reform, translated many of
Ibsen’s dramas. His version o f John Gabriel Borkman opened the Jiyu Gekijo [The Free
Theatre] in 1909, a date considered to be the turning point in the development o f
19
Shingeki [modem Japanese theatre movement]. Founded by Osanai Kaoru, the Jiyu
Gekijo took its name from Andre Antoine’s Theatre Libre (1887) and Otto Brahm’s Freie
Bfihne (1898). Like those alternative theatres, the Jiyu Gekij5 was devoted to
productions o f European Naturalistic dramas by such playwrights as Chekhov and Gorki.
Although deemed only partially successful due to the fact that Osanai cast only Kabuki-
trained male actors in both male and female roles, these productions are noteworthy for
their attempts to incorporate Naturalism in the theatre at the same time that it was
transforming the other arts. They also signal important qualifications regarding the
relationship o f naturalism and the Japanese avant-garde, especially in relation to
performance practices.
As already indicated, the emergence of Naturalism in Japan decades after its
prominence in Europe renders it distinct from categorizations in Western scholarship
which exclude Naturalism as an avant-garde movement because it preceded aestheticist
movements such as art-for-art’s sake. The Jiyu Gekijo, for example, was founded twenty
years after Antoine’s groundbreaking productions in Paris. Furthermore, most scholars
consider Naturalism as less o f a movement than a style that came to predominate in late
Meiji literature. Even in matters of style it was to manifest unique characteristics that
seem contradictory to the aims of the European Naturalists. It is also important to note
that the predominance o f Naturalism occurred alongside counter-tendencies in the art,
literature, and theatre o f the Meiji era. For example, even Hogetsu, considered one o f the
foremost advocates o f literary naturalism in Japan, chose to open his Art Theatre with his
translation o f Maeterlinck’s Symbolist drama, Monna Varna, rather than Tolstoy’s
Resurrection.
As these examples demonstrate, Meiji-era cultural production was directly
influenced by the Westernization o f Japanese social institutions. Guth points out,
however, that these transformations did not occur solely in the aesthetic realm, since the
construction o f art as a discrete social sphere was a by-product o f the government's
aggressive campaign o f “bunmei kaika ” [civilization and enlightenment]. In fact art was
initially positioned within the realm o f commerce, science, and technology.9 Even the
establishment o f the Technological Art School in 1876 was related to the government’s
plans to build a rich country and a competitive military (Yamada 83).
20
Transformations in the social status o f art were also the result of the government’s
recognition o f the social utility o f art, particularly in the realm o f international relations—
as the preservation o f Noh and Japan’s participation in international arts expositions
demonstrate. In contrast to the paradigm in Western scholarship that the critique o f
aesthetic autonomy by the historical avant-garde resulted in the social recognition of art’s
existence as an institution, it is evident that such recognition occurred in Japan as early as
the 1870s. Guth adds that while the term bijvtsu assumed ideological overtones in the
Meiji era, the aestheticist view of art as an “imitation o f transcendent harmony” did not
prevail until the Taisho era, and thus concurrent with avant-garde manifestations (17).
Three propositions regarding the categorical parameters o f the Japanese avant-
garde project emerge from these historical qualifications. First, the doctrine of aesthetic
autonomy assumed distinct contours in light of the Westernization of social institutions
after 1868. Second, the prominence o f aesthetic autonomy followed its own course o f
development in Japan and cannot be considered to have reached its height until the
Taish5 era—a period also marked by the height o f the avant-garde. Third, the social-
institutional recognition of art’s existence as a social institution occurred prior to the rise
o f aestheticism and the avant-garde. This is in direct contrast to categorizations in
Western scholarship that attribute this phenomenon in Europe to the avant-garde critique
o f aesthetic autonomy.
In Germany, the rejection o f autonomous art can be traced to artists who
recognized the lack o f art’s social import in bourgeois society. Expressionism, the
earliest association of such artists, first emerged in Germany prior to World War One,
and rose to prominence in all o f the arts in the years following the war. Dramatists such
as Walter Hasenclever, Carl Stemheim, Georg Kaiser, Oskar Kokoschka, and Ernst
Toller all contributed to Expressionism alongside numerous visual artists and poets.
Most scholars concur, however, that Expressionism was not a cohesive movement with a
specific aesthetic and social programme, even though certain characteristics are
identifiable in Expressionism overall. The most significant o f these include the refection
of the objective recording o f everyday life as advocated by the Naturalists, and an
adversarial stance against the dominant art, mores, and institutions o f bourgeois society,
which they “unmasked and caricatured” (Sokel ix). Garten notes that while they
21
acknowledged the influence o f Symbolism and its anti-naturalistic strategies, the

Expressionists criticized its aestheticism, cult o f beauty, and detachment from
contemporary life and social problems.10 After Expressionism, Dada was the most
important German avant-garde movement Founded in Zurich in 1916, the movement’s
base o f operations shifted to Berlin by 1918.
Across Europe other movements emerged that had more definitive goals than the
Expressionists. In the “First Manifesto o f Futurism” (1909), Filippo Tomasso Marinetti
urged artists to resist the commodification o f art and to abolish the bourgeois institutions
o f a rt Although Futurism was to have incarnations around the world, it was most visible
in Italy, where it lasted until the 1930s. In Russia, Futurism was adopted by the poet
Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the painter David Burliuk, who would be instrumental to its
development in Japan. More representative o f the Russian avant-garde, however, were
the Constructivist and proletarian arts movements that emerged in the decade after the
Revolution. With the support o f the Revolutionary government, artists developed new
forms that were potentially relevant and instructive to the proletariat Despite their
rejection o f bourgeois cultural forms, the Russian avant-garde was halted in 1932 with
the forced dissolution of all arts organizations and the subsequent adoption o f Socialist
Realism as the official artistic and literary paradigm (Willett 1978,219).
While all o f these movements were most active in Europe in the 1920s and were
exhausted or programmatically eliminated by the early 1930s, the emergence and decline
o f the Japanese avant-garde cannot readily be associated with the life-spans o f particular
movements any more than its emergence can be characterized as a programmatic reaction
to aesthetic autonomy. Furthermore, membership in Japanese avant-garde movements
was less fixed, with many artists having affiliations with several groups at once. As
Iwamoto notes, a single Japanese “school” could accommodate the interests o f several
movements imported from the West (157).
O f the Western avant-garde movements to appear in Japan, Futurism appears to
be the earliest and longest-lived. Introduced by Ogai, who published his translation of
Marinetti’s foundational manifesto just months after its publication in Europe, Futurism
did not peak until the 1920s (Keene 1984,257). Although performance techniques were
taken up as early as 191511 it was not until 1920 that the movement was formally
22
established as the Mirai-ha Bijutsu Kyokai [Futurist Art Association], led by Fumon Gyo
(Omuka 1986,24). Interestingly, a year prior to Ogai’s translation o f Marinetti’s
manifesto, a group o f artists led by Kinoshita Mokutaro and Ishii Hakutei, founded the
Pan no Kai [Devotees of Pan] to promote art for art’s sake (Keene 1984,240) That this
group also included the symbolist poet Kitahara Hakushuu, the controversial novelist and
playwright Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, and Osanai Kaouru, the founder o f the Jiyu Gekijo, is
further proof o f the fluidity between art and literary movements. Members o f the Pan no
Kai were also active contributors to the literary magazine Subaru [Pleiades], which under
the general advisement o f Ogai, also advocated aesthetic autonomy (241).
In Europe, the Dadaists’ interests spanned all o f the arts, especially performance.
In Japan, however, its foremost advocate was the poet Takahashi Shinkichi, and as a
movement, it was widely associated with modem poetry in the early 1920s (Ko 9). For
some historians, the emergence of Dada in Europe was inseparable from the effects of
World War I, however Ko notes that in Japan it was not the by-product of war
experiences, but rather an “amalgam o f styles then emerging in poetry” (3). Furthermore,
if the Berlin Dadaists collaborated on projects and shared aesthetic and political
philosophies, Dada was not an organized movement in Japan, and interaction among
artists claiming to be Dadaists appears to have been more limited (9).
Omuka Toshiharu has attempted to disentangle the Japanese avant-garde from
matters of European influence. He traces the origins o f an indigenous avant-garde to the
establishment o f the Nikakai, which was comprised o f young artists disenfranchised from
the buntens. The Nikakai’s first exhibition in 1914 excluded all artists who had exhibited
in the buntens. For Omuka, this policy would polarize art production into categories o f
“system and anti-system” and “authority and anti-authority” for several decades (1996,
21). Next, Omuka identifies the establishment of the Futurist Art Association and its
attempts to fuse Futuro-Cubist practices with leftist political ideology as indicative of
avant-garde propensities (22). Omuka points to Mavo as an indigenous movement
indebted, but not bound to the Western avant-garde. Founded by Murayama Tomoyoshi
and members o f the Futurist Art Association, Mavo was a “true” avant-garde movement
for Omuka, because of its “attempts to depart from and destroy systematized artistic
23
expression,” and because the Mavoists “defined themselves as avant-garde and paraded
their avant-garde awareness” (25).
Expressionism was not to emerge in Japanese literature, drama, and theatre until
well after its demise as a movement in Germany, where it had already tapered off (Vajda
45). In Japan, by contrast, the first significant manifestation of Expressionism in the
theatre was the 1924 production o f Georg Kaiser’s From Morning to Midnight at the
Tsukiji Little Theatre, designed by Murayama.
Berlin Dada was liquidated by its chief proponents in 1924 in an effort to prevent
its institutionalization, although it is widely held that its techniques were absorbed into
the Surrealist movement launched in Paris that same year by Andre Breton (Goldberg 73-
4). Although Surrealism never achieved prominence in Germany, it was adopted by such
important Japanese artists as Fukuzawa Ichiro, Ai-Mitsu, and Harue Koga, and would
have lasting import on the visual arts in both the pre and post war eras. Omuka
disqualifies Surrealism as a Japanese avant-garde movement, however, because he feels
that from the beginning it was “contained in the systematized art world” (1996,20).
Peaking in the late 1930s, the movement was halted due to changing policies in Japan,
which by then, was in the midst o f war.12 Omuka concludes that the Japanese avant-
garde project was mostly over by 1925, except for some activities by proletarian artists
and writers (25).
In Germany, formidable avant-gardists such as Georg Grosz and John Heartfield
turned increasingly to proletarian forms. The proletarian theatre movement gained
momentum in Germany in the late 1920s, assuming prominence through the efforts o f
Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht and their variations o f “epic theatre.” Upon Hitler’s
election in 1933, however, proletarian arts movements, as well as all avant-garde and
modem art movements would come under attack by a series o f measures that resulted in
the imprisonment and exile o f artists. Similarly, the proletarian arts movement was also
over by 1933 in Japan, when the invasion of Manchuria put an end to all leftist cultural
production (Keene 1984,342).
While the avant-garde project was halted in both Germany and Japan by the mid-
1930s, avant-garde techniques and discourses continued to exert direct and indirect
influence on cultural formations for years to come. Scholars have noted, for example,
24
that the avant-gardists’ goal to sublate art and life praxis became a defining feature of
fascist culture in Germany and Italy. The discursive assault on aesthetic autonomy
articulated by the avant-garde was in effect reconstituted by the Nazi regime in the
construction o f heroic-folkish realism as the officially recognized style. These and
numerous examples o f the assimilation o f the means, modes, and discourses of the
historical avant-garde will be key in assessing the relationship o f art and politics in
prewar Germany. In Japan as well, the government’s social mobilization towards
militarism and imperial expansionism resulted in a radical turn towards traditional
cultural forms and the elimination o f all Westem-styled a rt Thus, the period from the
mid-1930s through the end o f the war becomes and important historical epoch in regard
to assessing the sociopolitical coordinates o f the historical avant-garde.
To summarize, this dissertation refers to three correlative historical epochs in
Germany and Japan to frame considerations of the historical avant-garde project. In
Germany, the first epoch stretches from the Enlightenment era through World War I,
which saw the separation o f the social and cultural spheres in bourgeois society and the
ensuing predominance of aestheticism. The Meiji Era represents the correlative epoch in
Japan, most typified by the modernization and Westernization o f political, social, and
cultural institutions. The second period ranges from the mid-1910s through the mid-
1930s, the era that witnessed the height and decline of avant-garde activities in both
countries. The sociopolitical demarcations for this period are the Taisho (1912-1926) and
first decade o f the Showa eras in Japan, and the Weimar era through the election of Hitler
in 1933. The third historical period covers the mid-1930s through the end of World War
Two, a period marked by totalitarian political and social systems, the bureaucratization of
art, and the assimilation o f avant-garde techniques by the agencies o f totalitarianism.
1.2 Western Avant-Garde Aesthetic Theory and Criticism
This section reviews historical and contemporary criticism in order to establish a

set o f aesthetic coordinates o f the historical avant-garde project in Europe. German
scholarship on the matter has been especially prolific, despite ruptures in its development
25
While the social and political coordinates o f the avant-garde project has long been of
concern to German theorists, these issues will be addressed more thoroughly in chapter
two in order to focus and elaborate upon the aesthetic coordinates as they have been
developed in avant-garde scholarship.
1.2.1 The Frankfurt Institute and the Historical Avant-Garde
In prewar Germany, critical interest in the avant-garde project was taken up by

intellectuals affiliated with the Frankfurt School for Social Research, established in the
mid-1920s. The interdisciplinary focus o f what has come to be known as Frankfurt
School “critical theory” was influenced by the philosophies of Kant and Marx, and was
predicated on the belief that by examining sociopolitical issues, a critique of ideology
could be developed in the face o f authoritarian-bureaucratic politics (Held 16). In
general, the critical theorists were skeptical of dialectical materialism and scientific
positivism, both central to Marxist Humanism (25). Informed by the urgency of
developing a Sociology o f mass culture, critical theory presupposed that the disciplines of
Sociology and Cultural Criticism are mutually interdependent, and that the analysis of
artworks and cultural artifacts must incorporate an assessment o f the ways that they are
and have been interpreted (77). This model was applied to a variety o f cultural
manifestations, including modem and avant-garde art and literature, the entertainment
industry, and, increasingly, authoritarian-bureaucratic cultural policies.
Responding early on to the historical avant-garde, the first generation of critical
theorists recognized in its goals and practices a radical critique of bourgeois culture.
From the outset, the status o f aesthetic autonomy was a central concern, although there
was considerable disagreement regarding the social coordinates of autonomy. Theodor
Adomo, for example, though sympathetic to avant-garde practices, maintained that the
emancipatory potential o f art is realizable only on the “transcendent” plane o f aesthetic
form (Wolin 120). Like Georg Lukacs, the leading Marxist critic o f the time, Adomo
believed that while art is related to the social totality, its use value depends upon the
negation o f that social totality (Schulte-SSsse xviii). Adomo located organicity and
26
unity—which Lukacs attributed only to realistic art and literature—even in artworks that
manifest dissonance and disharmony.13 In contrast to Lukacs’s bias towards “mimetic
totality,” Adomo considered abstraction to be the historically-appropriate artistic mode to
negate the material conditions o f bourgeois capitalism (Berman 1989,181-2). Art and
literature that exhibited Expressionist and anti-Naturalist tendencies, therefore, were
acceptable to Adomo (Wolin 105). He also accorded no importance to either the politics
o f artists or the level o f political engagement in their works, due to his belief that art’s
value depended upon its distance from society. The doctrine of aesthetic autonomy
complemented Adorno’s belief that the social import of art is directly related to its
aesthetic substance, which empowers art to protest against a society o f domination
(Berman 1989,182).
Although he acknowledged that aesthetic innovativeness reflected the bourgeois
market economy, Adomo felt that by retaining its autonomy, art could provide a critique
o f such conditions, and thus effect its dialectical reversal. Even as art embodies the
alienation symbolized in consumer goods, it can set itself apart from commodification
through the protest of its autonomy (Mann 70). In Adorno’s model, because art is at its
most effective when it negates the empirical reality from which it originates by refusing
to “participate in the utilitarian mill of social life,” it is spared from being incorporated
into the reifying network o f commodify production (Held 83). Thus, the end of
autonomy, for Adomo, would thus result in the elimination of the essential critical
capacity o f art, and worse, render art susceptible to reactionary rather than progressive
forces (Wolin 109).
Huyssen notes that despite Adorno’s disapproval o f the avant-gardists’ goal to
abolish aesthetic autonomy, and his tendency to use the labels “modem” and “avant-
garde” interchangeably, he recognized in it a major rupture in bourgeois cultural
production (1986,32). Huyssen justifies Adorno’s pessimism on the grounds that by the
1930s he had witnessed the appropriation o f the goal o f sublating art and life by the
agencies o f totalitarianism across Europe (34). While his theory o f negation could
accommodate some avant-garde art, his adherence to the autonomy doctrine fostered
skepticism on Adorno’s part to movements and “isms.” As Graver has observed, Adomo
felt that artworks that accept the conventions o f a movement “taint” their internal
27
organicity because these conventions have not necessarily been formed within the work
itself (23).
In contrast to his contemporaries, Walter Benjamin stressed the urgency of
developing politically engaged art forms at a time when fascism was assuming
prominence. Also, Benjamin notes that changes in mass production made it compulsory
that art shed its autonomous status (Berman 1989,35). In his critique of aesthetic
autonomy, Benjamin developed the concept of the “aesthetic aura,” which was the
residual element o f the cultic origins o f art. For Benjamin, the auratic work thrived on a
specific relationship between the singularity of the work and the isolation of the single
recipient, a relationship still advocated by the aestheticists. As society became more
profane and the mechanical production o f art displaced its sacral functions, art was
emancipated from its cultic origins. The recipient, now a “collective,” adopts a critical
and rational stance to the work o f art. To Benjamin, aesthetic autonomy reached its
culmination in art for art's sake, which he considered to be the final manifestation of the
cult value o f art. Moreover, because autonomous art reflected the era of
commodification, the “exhibition value” of art came to replace the cult value o f the
auratic work (Benjamin 1968,228-40).
For Benjamin, the advanced means o f production effected the transformation of
the aesthetic category o f reception as much as art production. To validate his point,
Benjamin utilized examples from the historical avant-garde, noting that it challenged the
critical standard that held the value of an artwork as contingent upon an “unmediated
unity,” that was constructed by the dual relationships o f parts to whole, and content and
form (Berman 1989,58). He noted, for example, that the Dadaists* insertion of everyday
life fragments into their works represented their attempts to destroy the aura o f their
creations, and hence, their subversion o f the autonomy principle (Benjamin 1968,237-8).
Also important to Benjamin’s argument for engaged-art was his theory of the
fascist aesthetidzation o f politics. Benjamin noted that as fascism escalated its efforts to
present a proletarian illusion, art that remained free was already obsolete. In his thesis,
fascism strategically deployed the “quasi-cultic” values in art to beautify reactionary
politics (Arato 210). At the same time, however, the associated receptive modes of
autonomous art, such as silence and inaction, were submitted to and reorganized around
28
the state and its ultimate goal, war (Berman 1989,36-8). In opposition to these
phenomena, Benjamin advocated the politicization of a rt
The formal characteristics o f art were less significant to Benjamin than the
possibilities o f art to effect collectivity in reception. This explains, in part, Benjamin’s
acceptance o f technology’s role in avant-garde art production, especially where it negated
the cult o f artistic genius and its aspirations to be a “collective, open experimental,
technically innovative political art form” (Arato 214). In this respect, Benjamin’s critical
project reflected the avant-garde’s project to abolish the institutions o f art, including
aesthetic autonomy.14
Herbert Marcuse was another important theorist to participate in the debates about
the relationship between autonomy and modem cultural formations. In fact, Held
attributes postwar interest in Frankfurt School critical theory to Marcuse’s popularity. Of
particular interest is Marcuse’s concept o f bourgeois “affirmative culture,” which he
defined as the “assertion o f a universally obligatory, eternally better and more valuable
world [than] the world o f the daily straggle for existence” (1978,94-5). To Marcuse,
affirmative culture constructs a social ideal o f “apparent unity and apparent freedom...in
which antagonistic relations of existence [are] stabilized and pacified” (98-9).
Aestheticism, with its reification o f the beautiful, was a manifestation of affirmation
especially when it made “suffering and sorrow into eternal universal forces” (98).
Marcuse’s concept is important not only because it is applicable to categorizations
o f bourgeois and totalitarian culture alike, but also because he articulated the determinate
functions of institutional frameworks in the production and reception of art. While
Marcuse adhered to Adorno's dictum that art must remain autonomous in order to
preserve its capacity for negation, like Benjamin, he focused less on individual artworks
than on their “status as object,” when set apart from the straggle o f everyday existence.
To Bdrger, Marcuse’s cultural model made the idea that “works o f art are not received as
single entities, but within institutional frameworks that largely determine the function of
the works” axiomatic in contemporary aesthetic criticism (1974,12). This has also
become foundational to contemporary social-scientific approaches to the historical avant-
garde.
29
Due to the forced dissolution o f the Frankfurt School in the Nazi era, the
establishment o f totalitarian cultural policies in Russia, and the intellectual climate of the
postwar era, critical theory was eclipsed by other aesthetic projects. Interest in critical
theory was revived in the last decades o f the twentieth century due to a combination of
factors, including the publication o f Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, the impact of
Habermas’s theory o f modernity, and Biirger’s theory o f institutions.
1.2.2 Peter Btirger’s Theory o f the Avant-Garde
One of the most influential theorists o f the postwar era is Peter Btirger, whose
Theory o f the Avant-Garde (1974) galvanized its centrality in Western art history and
criticism. In developing a social-scientific theory o f art institutions, Biirger builds upon
Adorno’s model o f autonomy while adapting Benjamin’s focus on reception aesthetics
and Marcuse’s concept o f affirmative culture.
In Btirger’s view, the doctrine o f aesthetic autonomy dates back to the
Enlightenment era, when writers confronted the pressures of commercialism and
conformism, and were forced to produce either “high” literature, or replications of the
bourgeois social order. Btirger recalls that in The Critique o f Judgment, Kant reflected on
the “subjective aspect of the detachment o f art from the practical concerns o f life,” thus
positing an aesthetic sphere that could remain free from the constraints of bourgeois
capitalism (1984,42). In his critical writings, Friedrich Schiller also specified his belief
that art can fulfill the task o f furthering humanity by retaining its autonomy, thus serving
a function unique to social manifestations.15 From there, Biirger constructs a model o f
Western art history characterizable by three phases in the progressive detachment o f art
from the social sphere.
The first phase o f Btirger’s phases is marked by the shift from artists’ reliance on
courtly patronage to the market economy o f the eighteenth century, which was also
coincidental to the bourgeoisie’s struggle for emancipation (1984,27). The second phase
extends through the early twentieth century, when art’s steady detachment from the social
sphere culminated in Aestheticism and the fin-de-siecle movements such as art for art’s
30
sake. As Wolin notes, the post-impressionist painters and the Symbolist poets alike
promoted the ideal that aesthetic beauty was incompatible with the social fabric of
capitalism (109-113). The turning point, which also marks the third phase of Burger’s
model, was the emergence o f the historical avant-garde and its programmatic attack on
autonomy, its rejection of the institutions o f art, and its goal o f erasing the boundaries
between art and life.
For Biirger, because they attempted to reintegrate art and life, movements such as
Dada, Surrealism, and the Russian avant-garde all revealed the correlation between
aesthetic autonomy and art’s lack o f social consequences. Moreover, the artists of these
movements were the first in history to comprehend the modes in which autonomy
functioned in bourgeois society (Schulte-SSsse xiv). Aestheticism paved the way for the
avant-garde because it made the detachment o f art from social contexts and effects
axiomatic, and represented the historical crystallization o f the aesthetic realm as a
separate social sphere. Even though art always existed as an institution, in Biirger’s
estimation, this was not recognizable until the critique o f autonomy was launched by the
avant-garde.
In advancing these positions, Biirger establishes two paradigms regarding the
programmatic goals o f the avant-garde project: (1) that it sought to abolish the institution
o f art, and (2) that it sought to integrate art and life. Upon this foundation, Biirger
constructs a framework for such disparate movements as Dada, Surrealism, the Russian
avant-garde after the Revolution, and (with certain qualifications) Italian Futurism and
German Expressionism (1984,21). He adds that unlike other art movements o f the time,
the historical avant-garde did not simply reject the techniques and procedures of earlier
art, but “reject art in its entirety” (109).
Like Marcuse, Biirger is less interested in individual artworks than how they
operate within social-institutional frameworks (1984,12). Institutionalized within
bourgeois scoeity, aesthetic autonomy represents a potent example o f affirmative culture.
From Benjamin, Biirger adopts a methodological framework towards reception
formations, arguing that artworks are not received as single entities, but rather within
social frameworks. As proof, Biirger offers that the avant-garde movements did not
31
attack previous styles o f art as much as they rejected the “institutionalized discourse
about art in bourgeois society” (Pinkney 17).
The avant-gardists also rejected the “neutralization of critique” implicit in the
autonomy doctrine, while also maintaining their distance from the productive and
distributive apparatuses on which art depends (1984,23). In regard to artistic production,
Btirger notes that through the incorporation o f found objects, their predilection for
alternative performance sites, and their disavowal of individual creation, the avant-
gardists rejected the commodification o f art in bourgeois society. From the standpoint of
reception, their rejection o f traditional generic and stylistic categories, their provocation
o f both bourgeois audiences and the critical establishment, and their emphasis on active
and collective receptive modes, all reaffirm the avant-garde’s resistance to, and hence
exposure of, the institutional status o f art.
Because the social status of art as determined by the network of social systems is
his primary concern, Btirger’s concept of the aesthetic category of reception incorporates
an analysis o f aesthetic theory and critical judgment Because o f the avant-garde’s
transformation o f the category o f reception, critics recognized that they could no longer
respond to art de facto since criticism made art possible in the first place.16 The avant-
garde’s critique o f art as a social institution, moreover, transformed the way that pre
avant-garde art was understood, because it rendered the general categories o f art
recognizable in the first place. After the historical avant-garde, the social subsystem that
is art entered a stage o f self-criticism.
Btirger is critical o f Lukacs and Adomo because they assigned value judgments to
the avant-garde (and all art), and thus argued within the institutions o f a rt In contrast to
Adorno’s conflation o f modernism and the avant-garde, Btirger holds that modernist
movements such as Impressionism and Symbolism failed to effect radical changes in the
perception o f art as an institution. He also notes that because their work emerged from
the cultural and political straggles o f the 1920s and 1930s, they could not avoid “anterior
decisions,” such as the valorization o f organic art (Lukacs), and the elevation o f non-
organic art to an historical norm (Adomo) (1984,84).
Whereas the autonomy doctrine was the horizon in which Lukacs and Adomo
operated, for Btirger, autonomy represents the “normative instrument” o f the institution
32
o f art in bourgeois society (1984, Iii). Adorno’s assertion that “what is social about art is
its intrinsic movement against society and not its manifest statement” typifies for Btirger
the fallibility o f focusing on individual artworks.17 To do so, Btirger reasons, is to
relegate the functional aspect o f art to the background, thereby compromising the Marxist
dialectical model that mandates the analysis of art’s social function. In Btirger’s view,
both his theory and Marcuse’s theory o f affirmative culture redress the absence of
functional analysis in critical theory, because they both maintain that cultural
objectifications are institutionally determined. Individual artworks, discrete movements,
period styles and aesthetic criticism are all components of a complex structure Burger
refers to as the institution o f a rt By focusing on the social subsystem of a rt avoiding
individual case studies, and disregarding explicitly political characteristics, Burger feels
that his project is closer to a scientific sociology of art than the critical theory o f the
Frankfurt School.
Btirger concludes that the historical avant-garde project itself was to become
institutionalized, hence its failure to effect the sublation of art and life or the destruction
of art as an institution. Its chief value for Btirger—and why he regards it as the pivotal
moment in the history o f Western art—was its illumination of the social status of art in
bourgeois society, namely autonomy. To develop this position, Btirger draws upon
Benjamin’s formulations o f the aesthetic aura and allegory.
As evidence for his conviction that the avant-garde effected the transformation of
the aesthetic category o f reception, Btirger notes that the avant-garde critique o f
autonomy was in fact the starting point for Benjamin’s thesis regarding the loss of
aesthetic aura in the mechanical age (1992,56). He adds that avant-garde production
techniques also informed Benjamin’s theory o f allegory in regards to German Baroque
drama, thus representing another instance in how the historical avant-garde transformed
reception aesthetics, particularly the ways in which pre-avant-garde art was understood
(1984,69).
Btirger identifies individual creation as a defining characteristic o f bourgeois
autonomous art rejected by the avant-garde. By contrast, collectivity in both the
production and reception o f art is epitomized in the avant-gardists’ aim to sublate art and
life. It is here that Biirger adapts Benjamin’s theory o f allegory to apply to the non-
33
organic tendency in avant-garde art production. Like Adomo, Burger presupposes the
unity o f the avant-garde artwork, but goes a step further in qualifying its non-organicity.
For Biirger, the allegorical avant-gardist manipulates aesthetic material by isolating
fragments of the totality o f life context, thus depriving them of their original functions
and meaning (1984,69). In qualifying production and reception in this manner, Burger is
able to invest avant-garde art with a kind o f unify different from, but analogous to, the
unify found in organic a rt Moreover, if the organic work results from the artist’s
reflection and symbolic representation of something that has grown from concrete life
situations endowed with a “living picture o f the totality,” non-organic avant-garde art
presupposes that artistic material was something to be fragmented from the totality (and
its functional context) and, when combined with other fragments, could create meaning
(70). Moreover, the technique o f montage is one manifestation o f allegory in avant-garde
art, which places unique demands on the recipient in regard to the appropriation of
meaning. It is on this basis that Btirger also distinguishes avant-garde from “modernist”
art, which he categorizes as “symbolic.” While the avant-garde allegorical work negated
an organic relationship between part and whole through fragmentation, the modernist
work maintained an unmediated and organic relationship of part to whole through the
symbol.
Although he acknowledges the analytical usefulness of Benjamin’s concept of
allegory, Btirger restricts its value to the aesthetic category of production (1984,70). In
order to render it effective for categorizations of aesthetic reception, Btirger proposes two
supplements to his theory: the potential meaning of allegorical works, and the
transformation o f the category o f “meaning” resulting from such avant-garde aesthetic
practices as montage and shock.
Btirger notes that montage first appeared in the collage-paintings o f the Cubists,
whose insertion o f reality fragments marked the destruction o f unify in painting. New
techniques such as montage were antithetical to the institutionally normative means
whereby aesthetic unify was represented since the Renaissance (1984,77). For Btirger,
the predominance o f montage in avant-garde art represents one o f the ways in which it
ruptured both the production and reception modes of art; another was shock. Commonly
employed by the Dadaists, shock presupposes heightened and non-contemplative modes
34
o f reception on behalf o f the spectator. Like montage, shock renders meaning

problematic as a reception category, because it neither incorporates a “total impression
that would permit an interpretation o f its meaning,” nor can whatever impression that
may be created be accounted for by recourse to the individual parts o f a work, which are
no longer subordinate to a pervasive intent (80). Rather, the Dadaists* tendency to draw
the recipient’s attention away from the work o f art was intended so that the recipient
would be “shocked” into realizing that since the “conduct o f one’s life is questionable” it
is necessary to change it (80).
While Lukacs privileged organic realist art and Adomo dismissed “modem”
attempts at realism as “historical regression,” Biirger professes to be less concerned with
such aesthetic valuations as much as he is with the social valence of the avant-garde art
project in fulfilling its two primary goals. This does not imply, however, that Biirger
attributes social or political valences to individual artwork. Unlike the organic realistic
work o f art, where any political m otif would be subordinate to the work as a whole, such
motifs could be potentially neutralized in allegorical art works and those that employed
shock. Biirger’s resolves what he perceives to be such ambivalence in avant-garde art by
concluding that the revolutionary aspect of the avant-garde is not based on levels of
social or political engagement in discrete works, but rather in its sustained attack on
aesthetic autonomy and the institutions o f art in bourgeois society.
Biirger stops short o f examining the sociopolitical implications in the Dadaists’
demands for a change in life praxis. One explanation for this is his observation that since
shock is general and nonspecific, the experience o f shock “does not insure that the
recipient’s change o f behavior is given a particular direction” (1984,80). Biirger cites the
hostility o f spectators to Dada works as indicative o f this non-specificity, concluding that
“changes in the life praxis o f the public probably did not result,” because the act of
provocation provides already existing attitudes with “an occasion to manifest themselves”
(80). The Dadaists erred, in Biirger’s estimation, because they intensified shock for
immediate results and thus did not allow for the “contemplation” necessary to foster
social change (1990,53-54).
Ultimately, focusing on avant-garde reception modes serves Barger’s thesis that
any social or political efficacy o f the avant-garde project was undermined, and that its
35
revolutionary significance rests squarely in transformations in the aesthetic sphere.

Furthermore, the unmasking o f the nexus between autonomy and the absence o f any
consequences becomes another criterion to distinguish the avant-garde from modernism,
in that the avant-gardists’ social goals superseded their aesthetic innovativeness. Hence,
the avant-garde is less significant for changes it sought to effect in art production than by
its transformation o f the aesthetic category o f reception. In this respect, Btirger attributes
two patterns characteristic o f the reception o f avant-garde art: hypostatization or
elimination. Hypostatization refers to the tendency to make the audience “the sole
endpoint o f artistic action,” as in the ephemeral nature o f Dadaist happenings.
Elimination, on the other hand, refers to the negation o f the audience as an artistically
meaningful entity. Moreover, shock, implies the elimination o f the recipient in that it
negates the audience as a body able to enjoy and judge works of a rt For Btirger, both
tendencies represent a shift from individual to collective modes of reception, especially
when the “contemplative audience member” is substituted with an abstract recipient
(1992,22).
The avant-gardist strategies to negate the conventional roles o f producer and
recipient are equally significant for BQrger in the implicit attempt to make art the central
organizing principle o f life. For the avant-garde project to have been successful,
therefore, would have meant the end of a rt That the avant-garde project continues to
define contemporary artistic praxis reinforces Biirger’s assessment o f its failure to effect
social or political change (1984,22-3). Finally, the critique o f art as an institution
implies to Btirger the liquidation of the possibility o f a period style. Since styles no
longer dominate after the avant-garde project, Btirger points out that institution o f art can
no longer lay claim to a “more advanced” style or form (63). As evidence, Btirger cites
the contemporary avant-garde, which “institutionalizes the [historical] avant-garde as art,
and thus negates genuinely avant-gardist intentions” (58).
36
1.2.3 Responses to Btirger’s Theory o f the Avant-Garde
Because he is primarily concerned with the construction o f theory, Btirger has

been criticized by some scholars for his non-specificity. Burger justifies this by noting
that the historical emphasis on individual works has impeded criticism and research from
considering the theoretical functions of art (1992,5). Btirger states his position as
follows: “the social effect of a work o f art cannot simply be gauged by considering the
work itself, but that its effect is decisively determined by the institution within which the
work functions” (1984, li). His emphasis on reception modes, therefore, serves as his
corrective to the critical legacy o f overemphasizing content analysis. It has also proven
to be influential on scholarship concerned with the extra-aesthetic coordinates o f the
avant-garde project.
Many scholars have noted that divergent categorizations o f the historical avant-
garde project have served to legitimate various critical projects in the history o f twentieth
century aesthetics. Huyssen notes, for example, that the rediscovery o f Dada in the 1950s
served as an “antidote to an increasingly canonized modernism in poetry, narrative and
painting.”18 Berman adds that after the institutionalization of the avant-garde in the
1950s and the resurgence o f a political avant-garde in the 1960s, by the next decade the
avant-garde project was denounced by liberals and neoconservative critics alike. For the
new right, the antibourgeois sentiments of the avant-garde informed the “excessive”
influence o f a “new class o f intellectuals,” at the same time that advocates of
postmodernist theory declared the obsoleteness o f the avant-garde’s goal to radically
transform the social totality.19 It is precisely his dismissal of the avant-garde’s potential
to interpenetrate the extra-aesthetic realms that has generated the most controversy in
regard to Biirger’s theory.
Berman notes that the features that stamps Biirger’s theory as a variant o f neo-
Marxist criticism, thus related to critical theory, include his emphasis on the historical
sequence o f social formations, and a dialectical mode o f inquiry. It is incompatible,
however, with the central paradigm o f orthodox Marxist criticism that posits a reflective
relationship between base and superstructure in the work o f art as a “cognitive mirror o f
37
social reality” (Burger 1992, xiv). Schulte-Sasse further characterizes Btirger’s theory as
an amalgam o f Marcuse’s theory o f institutions and Habermas’s theory o f modernity.
Habermas has argued that the disenfranchisement o f the cultural sphere in modem
civil society was the precondition for both high autonomous art and a sphere o f mass
culture. In Legitimation Crisis (1973), he defined the social function of autonomous art
in bourgeois society as “the refuge for a satisfaction, even if only virtual, o f these needs
that have become...illegal in the material life process o f bourgeois society” (78). As
Schulte-Sasse notes, for Habermas, autonomous art holds a “precarious, ambivalent
position” in bourgeois society, because even when protesting against alienation and
reification, it also threatened to degenerate into a “mere compensation for what society
lacks” (xxxv). In this respect, Habermas adheres to Marcuse’s concept o f affirmative
culture. However, he adds that while the bourgeoisie could experience in autonomous art
“its own ideals and redemption, however fictive, o f a promise o f happiness that was
merely suspended in everyday life,” with the emergence of the historical avant-garde, it
“soon had to recognize the negation rather than the complement o f its social practice”
(Habermas 85). To Btirger as well, the avant-garde’s attack on aesthetic autonomy
undermined the legitimizing discourses of high art in European society. Btirger’s
conclusion that the avant-garde project failed to destroy art as an institution, however,
also serves to legitimize the existence o f a separate aesthetic sphere as established in the
enlightenment project. As Huyssen has observed, Habermas’s “holistic notion of
modernity,” which has its roots in the bourgeois enlightenment and orthodox Marxism
became anathema in the 1970s with the emergence o f postmodern theory (1986,28).
Btirger’s model o f Western art history, which positions the avant-garde as the end-
product o f the Enlightenment project's rationalization o f the aesthetic sphere (and as the
institutionalized norm by which all art before and since has come to be judged),
undermines claims for a postmodern break.
To Berman, Btirger’s dismissal o f the social and political efficacy o f the avant-
garde project due to its failure to destroy the institution of art and to sublate art and life
praxis necessitated that he elude “explicit thematizations o f the political intentions or
functions o f art” (1985,185-6). As a result, many scholars feel that Biirger overestimated
the avant-gardists’ attack on the institutions of a rt In his examination o f the textual
38
innovativeness o f historical avant-gardists working in the medium of graphic arts, for

example, Rumold notes that they “specialized in laying bare the device of the techniques
o f artistic production through the new provocative text or icon o f art in order to estrange,
demystify, and to debunk the ideological claims o f the old text of a rt”20 Foster adds that
although the avant-garde project had overt political dimensions, it was within the realms
o f art and literature and not politics that the avant-gardists became or attempted to
become a social force (317). Christensen has noted that Biirger’s failure to elaborate
upon the institutional frameworks of aesthetic autonomy or to adequately address the
anti-institutional postures o f pre-avant-garde art movements render key aspects o f his
theory unsubstantiated (208). Objections such as these presuppose that the historical
avant-gardists were, like the modernists, highly interested in aesthetic innovativeness and
effectively operated within, rather than altogether against, the institutions of a rt
Berman objects to Barger’s procedural non-specificity on the grounds that it
accounts for both autonomy and the avant-garde project in terms of the development of
the institutions o f art, and not within broader economic, social and political contexts
(1986,46). Following this line of criticism, some scholars hold that the contours of the
avant-garde attack on aesthetic autonomy were considerably more nuanced than Barger’s
model would suggest. Contrary to Barger’s characterization of an “Enlightened” avant-
garde critique o f institutions, Graver has identified “irony, self-parody and bewilderingly
opaque elements,” and also the lack of any possible “discursive consistency” due to the
avant-gardists’ “playful interest in the immediate sensual pleasure of insincere poses and
bald-faced contradictions” (10). Rumold concurs, qualifying avant-garde intentionality
such as Dadaist performance manifestations—which although “provocative and
offensive”—as ultimately capable o f engaging an audience “in the abandonment of the
inhibitions imposed by the status quo” (464).
In response to such criticism, Graver has developed additional categories that
presuppose a wider range for the avant-garde project as both a “multivalent tradition,”
and a “catalogue o f aesthetic stances” from which artists (and theorists) have drawn.
Graver’s five categories include: (1) Partisan Art; (2) Secessionist Art; (3) Engaged
Art; (4) Anti-Art; and (5) Innovatively Aestheticized commodities (12-18). Because this
typology is especially relevant to avant-garde performance, these categories will be
39
elaborated upon in section 1.4. However, in that it most relates to Burger’s theory, it is
useful to expand upon one category, the “anti-art” avant-garde.
To Graver, the anti-art avant-gardists “attack the notion o f art in general, or at
least, some o f the basic presuppositions o f art,” such as the autonomy o f the work, the
craft with which its raw material is manipulated, and the works’ availability to the
public” (12). Like the “partisan” and “engaged” avant-garde, the “anti-art” avant-gardists
sough to alter the social function of art, while undermining the social and aesthetic
autonomy o f the work (16). This key distinction allows for greater flexibility in
correlating intention and production practices by avant-garde artists, and also qualifies
what scholars perceive to be Btirger’s overestimation o f the avant-gardist tendency for
the act of provocation to take the place o f the work itself. While Graver concedes that the
act o f provocation could displace the artwork in the “more extreme Dada performances,”
he believes that in most avant-garde art the formal and thematic components embody,
absorb and contain such displacements (40). Responding to Biirger’s thesis that the
avant-garde turned artworks into manifestoes, for example, Graver observes that it was
“more likely to turn manifestoes into artworks” (10).
In his categorization o f the “anti-art” avant-garde, Graver qualifies Adorno’s
thesis o f negation by noting that anti-art works are by definition more critical of the
social totality. He also adds that both avant-garde and modernist art had the potential to
attack the bourgeois institutions o f art because they were both marginalized from the
center o f bourgeois cultural institutions (10). This qualification is made especially potent
when considering that artistic modernism tended to “borrow from” the avant-garde.21
Other scholars have examined the qualitative dimensions o f the avant-garde’s
potential for negation. For Calinescu, modernism never conveyed the sense o f “universal
and hysterical negation” so characteristic o f the avant-gardes, because its “anti
traditionalism is often subtly traditional” (140). To Huyssen, although overlaps are
inescapable, the overall aesthetic and political differences between modernism and the
avant-garde project are too pervasive to be ignored (1986,163). In elaborating upon
these distinctions, he applies Biirger’s theory o f the avant-gardists’ intention to erase the
art/life dichotomy towards different ends. While he concurs that the avant-gardists were
the first to attempt this goal, Huyssen makes the distinction that a “technologized” life
40
was central to the avant-garde project (19). To Huyssen, the influence o f technology
supersedes the rejection o f aesthetic autonomy in explaining the emergence o f the
historical avant-garde—an influence which typically “penetrated to the core o f the work
itself* (9). In effect, Huyssen complements critical valuations o f the avant-gardists’
tendency to incorporate new technologies into their works as much as random everyday
items and chance construction. Furthermore, these technological components bridge the
aesthetic and sociopolitical realms in avant-garde discourse since they demonstrate that
“despite the power and integrity o f its attacks against traditional bourgeois culture and the
deprivations o f capitalism, there are moments in the historical avant-garde which show
how deeply avant-gardism itself is implicated in the Western tradition of growth and
progress” (173).
While Huyssen’s thesis ascribes retrograde rather than progressive
dimensionalities to the avant-garde project, it also allows for both formal and structural
considerations o f the interrelationship of the avant-garde project to social and political
formations. While such relationships will be examined in chapter two, it is worth noting
that Burger’s failure to examine these dimensions o f the avant-garde project as they relate
to the emergence o f totalitarianism across Europe is cited by many scholars as another
major deficiency in his theory. While Bdrger mentions Benjamin’s assertion that fascist
arts policies liquidated art’s autonomy status, his inference that this bore a striking
resemblance to the avant-garde project remains unexamined, as does the fact that fascism
also liquidated, at last temporarily, the avant-garde project. This is despite the obvious
deduction that if the avant-garde made art’s existence as an institution recognizable in
bourgeois society, it may also be viewed as having paved the way for totalitarian art and
cultural policies in much the same way that autonomy paved the way for the avant-garde.
To follow Bdrger’s logic to its conclusion, therefore, because the avant-garde effected the
historical realization o f the social status o f autonomy in bourgeois society, any
subsequent efforts to challenge autonomous art, transform cultural institutions, and
control the production and reception o f art must have benefited from the avant-garde. It
is here that the assimilation o f avant-garde techniques and discourses into totalitarian
bureaucratic structures and policies has proven to be fruitful to scholars interested in the
sociopolitical coordinates o f the avant-garde project.
41
In the case o f the Berlin Dadaists, as Clement Greenberg recognized, the attack on
autonomous art was accompanied by the realization that if they were to have practical
social effects on individuals and groups, they were dependent upon the action and support
o f groups devoted to social and political ends (1961,186). As Goldberg notes, the
politically-charged nature of Dada performance in Berlin often appeared to incorporate
the elements o f Communist ideology and an aggressive nihilism (70). Similarly in both
Futurism and the Russian avant-garde, the glorification and incorporation of technology
attests to the avant-garde's preoccupation with industrial society’s increasing reliance on
machines. In the case o f Italian Futurism, while this was a part o f the goal to cultivate
active and participatory audiences, there was also an implicit possibility of producing an
audience o f “submissive automatons,” since men and women were quite often presented
as a “conglomeration o f mobile matter inferior to the machine” (Cary 104). In this sense,
the Futurists’ instigation of collective modes o f reception is paradoxical since they could
incite responses ranging from riots to silence, as audience members were subject to a
battery o f sensory stimuli. As these examples show, the avant-gardists’ intention to
sublate art and life was fraught with inconsistencies especially in regard to the institutions
they were attacking. This is especially viable when considering the impact o f avant-
garde discourse and techniques on mainstream artistic practices.
Paul Mann characterizes BOrger’s approach to the avant-garde as a “death-theory”
because it posits that the avant-garde project failed, given that arts continues to exist (61).
In concluding that the avant-garde failed to achieve its aims, Btirger implies that only
with the complete termination o f artistic activities could the avant-garde project have
succeeded. Not even the Dadaists, who dismantled the movement to resist its
commodification and institutionalization, however, can be perceived as coming close to
approximating Bhrger’s expectations, particularly in light its assimilation into subsequent
aesthetic practices such as Surrealism, Piscator’s epic theatre, and, perhaps most
compellingly, its many international manifestations over the course of the 1920s and
1930s.
42
1.2.4 Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory o f Cultural Fields
Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the fields o f cultural production has proven influential
to scholars seeking to address the connections between art and the economic, social, and
political realms (Wolff 96). Advocating for a “sociology o f art” that differs from both
traditional and social histories o f art, Bourdieu has applied his model o f “cultural capital”
to historical and contemporary art and literature. Bourdieu’s analysis of the French
literary field o f the late nineteenth century, for example, is especially relevant to
considerations of the Western avant-garde, due to his thoroughness in regard to the
aesthetic and social coordinates of aesthetic autonomy.
In Bourdieu’s model, the fields o f literature and art are constellated by social
agents occupying a “space of position-takings” and engaging in self-legitimizing
struggles, individually, or in groups (1993,30). Each field is also constituted on the
reception end by “a set o f agents, whose combined efforts produce consumers capable of
recognizing a work of art,” in addition to the consumers themselves (37). Bourdieu
emphasizes that aesthetic discourse is a precondition for art production, and also provides
an index to art’s social value. Relatedly, he also maintains that the producer of an
artwork’s value is not the artist, but rather the ensemble o f agents and institutions that
constitute a field. Critics, for instance, in “judging and claiming the right to judge,” also
“struggle to monopolize legitimate discourses about the work of art,” thus engaging in the
production o f its value (36). Other value-producing agents include art historians,
publishers, museum curators, patrons, collectors, academies, salons, juries, and members
o f institutions who “work towards the production o f producers and the production of
consumers,” as well as the “ensemble o f political and administrative authorities,” who act
on the art market either by “verdicts o f consecration” or “regulatory measures”(1996,
229). To Bourdieu, therefore, a sociology o f art must account for not only the social
conditions o f the agents o f a field (e.g. origins, education and qualifications), but also the
conditions for the “production o f a set o f objects socially constituted as works of art”
(1993,37).
As with most other critical projects engaging the historical avant-garde,
Bourdieu’s model presupposes that the autonomy o f a given cultural field serves as an
43
index to the social values ascribed to art. Regarding the emergence o f the doctrine of
aesthetic autonomy in Western bourgeois culture, Bourdieu holds that artists could
express their independence from external economic and political powers only when a
specific field had already achieved a high degree o f autonomy.22 The fin-de-siecle
aestheticist movements, moreover, elevated the autonomy doctrine to an “institution o f
freedom,” even as they occupied a “structurally ambiguous position” within their fields
that compelled them to reject both the art market and social demands for art’s utilitarian
values (1993,63). Bourdieu argues that the proponents o f aestheticism were keenly
aware o f the institutional coordinates o f art’s autonomy—an attribute more frequently
associated with the historical avant-garde. Bourdieu observes that by dividing up the
social world according to criteria that were “first o f all aesthetic,” the advocates of
aestheticism were able to identify simultaneously with a “glorified working class” and a
“new autonomy of the spirit” (167)
To Bourdieu, the emergence o f “an” avant-garde results from structural shifts
within a field that have been motivated by a group capable of establishing a set of
position-takings within that field (1996,159). To illustrate this, Bourdieu points to Andre
Antoine’s Theatre Libre (1887), the bastion o f theatrical naturalism, and also to Lunge-
Poe’s Theatre de l’Oeuvre (1893), primarily devoted to Symbolist drama. The
“projection into the new space” of the opposition between Naturalism and Symbolism
“opened up” by Antoine exemplifies, for Bourdieu, that the structures and forms
comprising the fields o f cultural production were destined to be responsive to the
“rhythms o f revolutions,” such that “each successful revolution legitimates itself” and
also a “revolution as such” (1996,125).
In Free Exchange (1994), Bourdieu and Hans Haacke discuss the material
preconditions for the production and reception o f art, referencing manifestations as
seemingly diverse as the historical avant-garde, totalitarian arts censorship, and corporate
sponsorship o f the arts in the contemporary era. All such phenomena, however, affirm
that art always exists as a symbolic power that can be put to the “service o f domination or
emancipation” (2). Furthermore, because art’s value is always determined by social
institutions, artworks must always be considered ideological tokens o f power and
symbolic capital (88). It follows, therefore, that art institutions are always political, even
44
though Bourdieu and Haacke acknowledge “difficulties” in demonstrating the

interdependence o f art and society (98-9). In order to surmount these difficulties, they
advocate a critical methodology that weighs “form” more heavily than content It is
important to note that Bourdieu’s usage o f the term “form” refers less to the formal or
structural properties o f artworks, than to the aesthetic criteria that denote those values
established by institutions that condition art’s production and reception.
It is significant that this usage o f the term “form” has been adopted by scholars
interested in exploring the relationship between theatre and politics. For example, in her
analysis of Italian fascist theatre subsidization, Berezin argues against the time-honored
critical practice o f overemphasizing content in the determination of an artwork’s
meaning. By shifting empirical analysis from the texts of plays to discourses about
theatrical production, Berezin is able to locate a “rhetoric of appropriation between
regime bureaucrats and cultural entrepreneurs” that suggests that theatrical form was
more important than dramatic content in the conveyance of fascist ideology.23 Berezin
foregrounds as the primary placeholder of fascist meaning, performative dimensions,
such as staging, acting style, and spectacle. Often performed in open-air theatres, such
productions maximized the potential for audiences to transfer feelings of collectivity
from the aesthetic to the political realm, at the same time that they mirrored other fascist
social manifestations, including military demonstrations and political rallies (1994,
1259). Berezin concludes that this bias towards the performative over literary content
illumines structural affinities between fascism and form.
Significantly, Bourdieu and Haacke note that their use o f the term form can more
effectively incorporate non-conventional art, such as mixed-media works, and art created
by women and non-Westemers. In this regard, Haacke notes that historical avant-garde
movements first demonstrated that artistic form could be as politically charged as artistic
content, and that the meanings o f given objects are not “fixed,” but, rather, depend on the
contexts in which they are received (88).
Ultimately, Bourdieu deploys his sociological model o f art to defend the
“autonomy o f the universes o f cultural production” in the face o f threats to artistic
freedom.24 The struggles o f engaged artists (such as those affiliated with the historical
avant-garde), and the most extreme manifestations o f the bureaucratization o f art and
45
culture throughout the twentieth century (such as those effected in totalitarian culture),
provide ample justification for Bourdieu’s support o f autonomy.23 Bourdieu’s position
on autonomy is particularly relevant to cross-cultural comparisons o f aestheticism and the
avant-garde given his qualification that the relative autonomy o f a given field is a
precondition for artists to engage (or negate) aestheticist discourse. His further
stipulation that formations o f aesthetic autonomy are not “fixed,” but vary “considerably
according to [historical] periods and national traditions,” and also that art must be seen as
a function o f the “degree of symbolic capital which has been accumulated over the course
o f time by the action of successive generations,” are particularly instructive in cross-
cultural comparisons (1993,221). Finally, Bourdieu’s identification o f both
revolutionary and avant-garde properties inherent to theatrical naturalism renders it
unique in relation to contemporary avant-garde theory. While this has relevance to the
interrelationship o f Naturalism to Western historical avant-garde performance, such
affinities are even more pronounced in the Japanese theatre during the Taisho and early
Showa eras.
1.3 Western Avant-Garde Performance Scholarship
In this section, I will elaborate upon the aesthetic coordinates o f avant-garde

performance by examining the ways in which it sought the subiation of theatre and life,
and the abolition o f the institutions o f theatre. To frame this analysis, I will employ the
aesthetic categories of intention, production, and reception. The category o f reception
figures prominently in that it most facilitates identification of the aesthetic coordinates
unique to the field o f theatre. In fact, the broadening o f twentieth century performance
theory to incorporate the inherent performativity o f non-aesthetic social formations has
been attributed, in part, to historical avant-garde performance. This is primarily due to
the fact that scholarship has had to come to terms with the extra-aesthetic dimensions of
the avant-garde project.
Aesthetic classifications o f the historical avant-garde have mostly been
generalized from the visual to the literary and performance arts. The paucity o f avant-
46
garde literary and performance texts in print, due to low commercial appeal, is one reason
cited to explain this tendency.26 Increasingly, however, scholarly attention has rendered
performance a distinct sub-category o f the avant-garde project.
On an international scale, hundreds o f artists aligned with Expressionism,
Futurism, Constructivism, Dada, and Surrealism served in a variety of capacities in
creating avant-garde performances. Although most of the avant-garde movements were
short-lived, their impact on pre- and postwar theatre is widely considered to have been
far-reaching. Structural and technical affinities, such as those that have been noted
between Futurism and the Italian Teatro Grottesco,27 Dada and the Piscator’s epic
theatre,28 and Surrealism and postwar Absurdist theatre,29 all attest to the impact of avant-
garde performance beyond the activities of discrete movements. Such conjunctures have
also served to obfuscate distinctions between avant-garde and modernist theatre. In this
regard, the prewar critical debates involving the theatre o f Bertolt Brecht along with
Graver’s typology o f avant-garde theatre, complement the analysis of the aesthetic
coordinates of avant-garde performance, and pave the way for consideration of the social
and political coordinates in subsequent chapters.
In regard to the aesthetic category o f intention, the Italian Futurist manifestoes
reveal that high expectations were placed on performance in achieving the twin goals of
abolishing the institution o f bourgeois theatre and dissolving the boundaries between
theatre and life. In “The Variety Theatre” (1913), Marinetti advocated for a variety
format, because it had “no tradition, no masters, no dogma and is fed by swift
actuality.”30 In promoting the admixture o f film, acrobatics, song, dance, and clowning,
Marinetti also rejected theatrical naturalism, which, in his estimation, vacillated
“stupidly” between “historical reconstruction” and the “photographic reproduction” of
daily life (126). In “The Futurist Synthetic Theatre Manifesto” (1915),3I, Marinetti,
Emilio Setdmelli, and Bruno Corra called for the elimination o f the Aristotelian
conventions of “exposition, structure, and characterization” in order that a “condensed
and swiff* form could be adopted (184). More important, their rejection of the “Solemn,
the Sacred, the Serious and the Sublime in Art with a Capital A ...” (129) indicates their
awareness o f the institutional coordinates o f aesthetic autonomy in Italian society and its
consequences on the production and reception o f a rt
47
In the agit-prop performances of the Mastfor troupe, leader Nikolai Foregger put
into practice his conviction that the bourgeois institutions o f Russian theatre were living
out their last days (Rudnitsky 97). Foregger expressed his antipathy to theatrical
aestheticism in his “List o f Artistic Phrases to be Forgotten,” which included “artistic
genius” and “art for art’s sake.”32 Russian theatre collectives, like the Constructivist
architects and designers, advanced the Soviet mandate to demolish bourgeois cultural
forms in constructing a utopian-proletarian society (Goldberg 37-40).
The Dadaists’ discursive assault on the institution o f theatre was, ironically,
initially leveled at another avant-garde movement, Expressionism (Goldberg 69). In
“The First German Dada Manifesto” (1918), Richard Huelsenbeck and Raoul Hausmann
complained that “...the Expressionists in literature and painting have joined together to
form a generation which already longingly awaits its literary and art historical
appreciation, and is the candidate for honorable recognition by the bourgeoisie.”33 In
addition to objecting to the assimilation of Expressionism into an “escapist bourgeois
culture capable o f war” (21), the Dadaists denounced its practitioners for becoming
“middle-class, like the Republic” (Short 296).
The inclusion o f the sights and sounds o f everyday life in Dada performance, like
the incorporation o f “found objects” in their collages, was meant to counter the abstract
representation o f the soul typical of Expressionism at the same time that it evinced their
goal to sublate theatre and life. Huelsenbeck’s reluctance to turn a “whim” (Dada) into
an “artistic school,” is emblematic of their resistance to the institutionalization o f the
movement, as was Hugo Ball’s objection to Tristan Tzara’s proposed anthology of Dada
texts (Goldberg 70).
In regard to the category o f production, avant-garde performance is characterized
by its incorporation o f devices intended to rupture the conventionalized separation o f
theatre from life. In Hands by Marinetti and Corra, only the performers’ hands are
visible above a curtain stretched across the length o f the stage.34 Consisting of a
sequence o f twenty images (e.g. “hands shaking,” “hand with a revolver”), Hands
eliminates verbal language and narrativity in favor o f a sintesi [synthesis] o f the
“diversity o f life” that the Futurists assumed would be so familiar, that the audience
would require neither exposition, nor explanation (Senelick 1989,193). Moreover, by
48
eliding the conventional functions o f theatre practitioners such as the playwright and
director, the Futurists believed that they could supplant the theatre “artist” with a
“workman operating within the same milieu o f experience as that o f the spectator”
(Apollonio 9).
Perloff considers the Futurist manifesto its “quintessential literary form,” since it
often served as a primary text in performance (90). She notes that at the premiere of Les
Poupees Electrique, Marinetti’s declamation of the already infamous “First Manifesto of
Futurism” was better received than the play (85-6). Moreover, by manipulating rhetorical
devices inherent to the manifesto form, Marinetti’s declamatory style permitted him to
reject theatrical naturalism by creating a stage persona devoid o f individual psychology
and personal emotion (88).
Goldberg notes the affinities of Dada and Surrealist performance with Richard
Wagner’s concept of the gesamtkunstwerke [total work of art], because the montage-like
construction of performative elements were ultimately arranged to achieve a total effect
(81). Guenther adds that it was only in performance that the total effect o f Dada poetry
could be realized, given their staccato patterns, word avalanches, and defiance o f logic
(427). Tzara’s practice o f randomly cutting up, rearranging and reading items from the
daily newspapers exemplifies the Dadaist tendency to incorporate everyday life
fragments in performance. Similarly, Huelsenbeck’s “simultaneous poetry” adapted the
“condensed and swiff’ performance form first advocated by the Futurists, in order to
better present the occurrence o f different events at the same time, as they would happen
in life (Goldberg 67). Typically, the recitation of syntactically-broken phrases from
assorted languages was accompanied by “rattles, pipes and howls” (Senelick 1989,205).
Similarly, the Surrealist ballet Relache,3S featured a series of “simultaneous” events,
including pantomime, film, dance, and direct address to the audience (Goldberg 90-92).
The technique o f montage as adapted to performance, therefore, served to erode the
boundaries between the performance and life.
Unlike traditional drama, time and place in Dada performances referred to the
immediate conditions o f the performance event, which often meant a bare platform-stage
(Berghaus 1985,302). Similarly, the Russian Constructivist designers* tendency to strip
the stage of its illusionist qualities, such as the curtains, fly galleries, and all
49
concealments o f stage machinery and lighting, was intended as a “death blow to the old
intimate theatre with its threadbare devices and its handling of the stage like a box
camera” (Gorkachev 130). In his production of The Magnificent Cuckold (1922),
Meyerhold deployed Constructivist designs to reconfigure the theatre in order to gulf the
divide between spectators and performance (Guenther 427).
The avant-gardists could also explore their interest in technology more fully in
performance than all of the other fields. At the Bauhaus School, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy,
among others, conceptualized a ‘‘theatre o f totality,” which would draw upon advances in
lighting, projection, and optical instruments (Goldberg 116). In The Kidnapping o f
Children (1922), Foregger combined mechanical dance, music hall conventions, and new
lighting technologies to produce, what he termed, “the cinefication o f performance”
(Goldberg 39). The avant-gardists’ celebration o f technology often served as the primary
subject matter o f a performance, such as Oskar Schlemmer’s formal experiments at the
Bauhaus. Just as often, however, they employed technologies to reflect everyday life in
the industrial age. For the Mastfor production o f Vladimir Mass’s Be Kind to Horses
(1922) designers Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Yutkevich constructed an “urbanist mobile
environment” fitted with moving steps and treadmills, suspended trampolines, flashing
electrical signs, rotating decors, and flying lights (Gordon 70). Foregger’s “mechanical
dances,” wherein performers simulated the parts o f complex machines accompanied by a
“score” o f factory sounds created by a “noise orchestra,” celebrated the interrelationship
between technology, everyday life, and new acting styles (Van Baer 52).
From a standpoint o f the aesthetic category o f reception, avant-garde performance
can be most characterized by its subversion o f the institutionally-conventionalized
passivity o f the audience. Many strategies were devised to engage the audience in the
collaborative labor o f creating the performance event. The Bauhaus “theatre o f totality,”
for example, was intended to produce a kind o f stage activity that would no longer permit
an audience o f silent spectators, but would rather allow them to fuse with the action on
the stage (Goldberg 117). The Futurists justified their preference for the cabaret over the
traditional theatre because the former “uses the smoke of cigarettes to join the
atmosphere o f the theatre to that o f the stage” (Apollonio 127). Perloff notes that by
using the collective “we” in performing his manifestoes, Marinetti subordinated his
50
persona as a theatre artist to the communal experience o f the performance by drawing the
audience into his realm of discourse (87). The riots incited at Futurist and Dada
performances indicates the lengths to which these artists would go to foster active,
participatory audiences. When Fernand Leger declared that Relache represented the
Surrealists’ “rupture with traditional ballet,” both he and Francis Picabia were delighted
at the tumult in the audience, and even more important, in the press (Goldberg 95).
The violence that typically greeted historical avant-garde performances is not
surprising given the professed goal to abolish a cherished cultural institution. In
hindsight, Huelsenbeck observed that what most offended the German people was that
the Dadaists no longer seemed to believe in art—a particularly threatening idea for a
culture that laid stress on the idealistic significance o f art (144). Guenther adds that Dada
performance texts may have posed less trouble to their audiences than their presentation,
and that since few o f the Dadaists were trained performers,36 an overall amateurishness
often resulted (427).
To Btirger the goal to abolishing art as an autonomus sphere necessitated that the
avant-gardists “eliminate the antithesis between producer and recipient” (1984,53). He
cites Tzara’s instructions for the creation o f Dada poetry37 and Andre Breton’s “recipe”
for the construction o f automatic texts as two instances in which the spectator was called
upon to participate in the creation o f a performance text While Btirger acknowledges
these as “guides” for production, he notes that in such instances “production” is best
understood as a function of the avant-gardists’ intention to effect a “liberating life praxis”
(1974,53). Huntleigh Carter’s reports o f performance in post-Revolutionary Russia bear
out this notion, particularly his observation that Meyerhold’s elevation of “the social
purpose o f the theatre” required that the actor become a “good citizen” capable o f
“establishing a real relationship to the audience by releasing himself in its collective
necessities” (70). Similarly, Carter observed that a Mastfor performance revealed the
potential for new forms to liberate an audience in “exalting them above a realm armored
in hate and struggle” (156).
hi regard to the avant-gardists’ transformation o f the reception modalities
associated with theatre criticism, observations such as Carter’s reveal the potential for
avant-garde performance to raise the specter o f social and political relevance, particularly
51
that such goals would be conceivable and valued. For their efforts, the Futurists
suggested that the terms “critic” and “criticism” be replaced with ones like “measurer”
and “measurement” (Apollonio 9-10). Even more radically, the avant-gardists’
problematization o f meaning impacted reception by audiences and critics alike. As
Berghaus notes, a Dada evening o f simultaneous poetry involved over twenty people
onstage, with the result often being that that little of the text could be heard or understood
(1985,298). The First Celestial Adventures o f Mr. Antipyrine, first staged by Tzara in
Zurich, featured performers in clown-like dress, who performed “linguistic,” not
“magic,” tricks. Lacking a narrative explaining Mr. Antipyrine’s “adventure,” the play is
constituted o f words and phrases cross-cut with, among other elements, African poetry,
and a manifesto which indicated that the play’s language was similar to children’s games
wherein meaning is generated by linguistic patterns of similarity and difference. Nicholls
theorizes that Tzara’s play was the first time that theatre “used language but dispensed
with dialogue” as character development became “enmeshed within the general flow of
sound” (337-8). Since definitive meaning could not be appropriated along narrative or
plot lines, the recipient is asked to locate “possible” meanings within the orchestrated
fragments o f sound.
For Mann, such tendencies exemplify the avant-gardists’ goal o f collectivity in
the production of art, and, given the implicit critique o f “authorial authority” and the “cult
of the masterpiece,” their transformation from individual to collective modes o f reception
(103). In regard to the latter, Hans Richter characterized one audience’s response to
Tzara's play as the “transformation o f impassive spectators” into a “frenzied
mob...vociferously involved with the performance” (Appignanesi 79).
Shifts in receptive patterns were also stimulated in performance by rupturing the
horizon o f expectations in audiences and critics. One o f the most consistent devices
employed by the Futurists and Dadaists was shock. Eventually, however, the association
of their performances with the experience o f shock also served to condition audiences'
expectations at their performances. Appignanesi notes that the final performance at the
Cabaret Voltaire in 1919 was significant, less for the melle that occurred after the first
act, than by the relative calm by which the final part o f the program was received. She
concludes, therefore, that this “signaled the end o f Dada’s live impact” in Zurich, since
52
the dissent that gave such performances their vitality could not outlast their shock effects
(81).
These examples reveal that performance manifestations conform to theoretical
classifications o f the historical avant-garde’s critique o f the institutions o f art, aesthetic
autonomy, and the separation between theatre and life. The negation of the
institutionalized conventions of theatre and drama was implicit in the performing of
manifestoes, the parodying o f the classical repertory,38 and the preference for alternative
or altered performance sites. In defying generic expectations and rejecting mimesis, the
avant-gardists incorporated everyday life fragments and industrial era technologies.
Through such devices as montage and shock, the performance avant-gardists sought a
collaborative synergy between audience and performer that challenged the Romantic
concept o f artistic genius. Through environmental staging practices, and spontaneous
performances in the streets and in the workplace, they attempted to reconfigure the
audience-performance dynamic by eradicating the actual and semiotic boundaries
between the two. Furthermore, the goal of sublatmg theatre and life praxis was integral
to formal elements and their structural arrangement within performances. It was also tied
to the social agenda of the avant-garde project, the characteristics o f which will be
discussed in the next chapter.
Despite the preponderance o f such scholarly evidence, however, the degree to
which avant-garde performance practitioners sought the actual destruction o f the
institution o f theatre has been subject to debate. As already mentioned, BOrger attributes
the avant-garde’s failure to destroy the institutions o f art to its eventual
institutionalization. It must be noted, however, that prior to this, trends in artistic and
theatrical practice and shifts in social valuations of art, directly impacted the more
immediate fate o f the avant-garde project in the W est Graver notes, for example, that the
historical avant-garde, like modernism in general, was marginalized from both
commercial-bourgeois, and academic and high-cultural institutions alike. This affinity
between the avant-garde and modernism was further entrenched by the tendency o f high
modernism to borrow avant-gardist production techniques (11). In theatre scholarship,
the cross-pollination o f modernist, avant-garde, and bourgeois institutional theatre
compromises the paradigm that the avant-gardists intended, above all, the abolition of
53
theatre, at the same time that it has obfuscated distinctions among them. As Mann
observes, the manifestoes represent the avant-gardists’ “most important contribution to
mainstream modernity,’’ thus indicating the assimilation o f the avant-garde into
modernism in general (6). In historical avant-garde performance criticism—from
Frankfurt School critical theory onwards—there has existed the tendency to conflate the
avant-garde and modernism categorically. Furthermore, the work o f some o f the most
important modernist visual artists was preceded by their experimentation with aesthetic
ideas in performance (Goldberg 7-8). This is further compounded in theatre, due to its
synthetic and collaborative dimensions. For example, Esslin posits that the greatest
achievement of Expressionism may have been its lasting influence on theatre production,
especially as evidenced in the pioneering productions of such directors as Leopold
Jessner, Piscator, and Brecht (556-7).
One recurring objection to theoretical categorizations o f the historical avant-garde
is that it was necessarily anti-art, when it seems, in fact, that the avant-gardists mostly
operated within the aesthetic realm, even when their ends were social or political. As
Graver notes, this is one reason why some o f the most noted avant-garde practitioners are
denied avant-garde status and are subsumed into the broader classification of high
modernism. Here the example of Bertolt Brecht proves illuminating.
To Btirger, although Brecht shared the avant-gardists’ anti-bourgeois and anti-
aestheticist goals, and even though he employed such avant-garde techniques as allegory,
he does not qualify as an avant-gardist because he “never shared the intention ...to
destroy art as an institution,” but wanted to “change rather than destroy the theatre as an
institution.” Furthermore, although Brecht’s plays build upon the avant-gardists’
“conception o f the work in which the individual elements attain autonomy,” his plays can
be considered “avant-garde” only to the extent that the historical avant-garde made
possible a new kind o f political art by liberating “the parts from their subordination to the
whole” (1974,88-91). Closer examination o f the trajectory o f Brecht’s career, including
his stated intention regarding the transformation o f theatre production and reception,
however, reveals more similarities than differences with the avant-garde project Esselin
notes, for example, that Brecht was influenced by the Expressionist dramatists, but was
already parodying them in such early plays as Baal (1918). hi this play, Brecht
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incorporates a parody o f an Expressionist drama by Hans Johst and (in one version)
quotations from “the more ridiculously extreme Expressionist poetry,” at the same time
that he builds the structure of his play as an Expressionistic Stationendrama (557).
Similarly, In the Jungle o f the Cities (1923) exhibits the influence o f several avant-garde
movements: Expressionism (exuberant language), Futurism (drama as sporting contest
and the rejection o f psychology), and Dada and Surrealism (motiveless action, logically
inexplicable events) (558). As Cole notes, Brecht’s “alienation effect,” developed in
plays and in production between the late 1920s and the 1940s, is predicated upon
revealing the means by which theatrical illusion is created—particularly the invisible
fourth wall separating actors from audience—a project first undertaken by Meyerhold
and the Constructivists (24-5).
In regard to the avant-gardists’ propensity towards collectivity in both production
and reception, it must be remembered that performance, unlike the other arts, relies upon
the collaborative efforts of a variety of artists, and is also received in social, communal
formats. On these levels, avant-garde performance was no different; however, the
emphasis placed on collectivity assumes distinctive qualities. The avant-gardists’
rejection o f authorial authority and artistic genius obscured the contributions of
individual creators, while they called upon audience to participate in the production or
completion of various elements o f the performance event. As Willet notes, despite his
singular contribution to twentieth-century theatre, Brecht absorbed Dadaist and agit-prop
techniques39 as exhibited by his “unacknowledged borrowings and his group of backroom
collaborators” (1978,107). Silberman adds that scholarly emphasis on Brecht’s
Modellbucher, with their “photographic sequences and explanations for some o f his most
important and successful productions at the Berliner Ensemble,” has given rise to the
misconception that he intended them as “authoritative paradigms which could be
reproduced,” when in fact they offer a “fascinating documentation” o f his directorial
processes, and not a “prescription or recipe” (4). In regard to his affinities with the
avant-gardist’s subversion of reception, Ferran notes that Brecht attempted to transform
the audience’s pleasure in the theatrical event by shifting the audience’s experience from
“passive-culinary” modes to “active-critical” ones, in order for “rationally and
55
aesthetically revived spectators” to be more likely to participate in revolutionary

activities in the sociopolitical realms (23).
For Graver, although Brecht operated within the anti-art avant-gardist paradigm,
he was also responding to the limitations of avant-garde performance styles (213). He
notes that in his early plays, Brecht separated Dada’s “participatory anarchy from its
moral cynicism” in much the same way that he absorbed Expressionism’s “mise-en-scene
o f social morality,” but negated the “bourgeois idealism o f its plot lines” (215). In Man
and Masses, for example, Brecht draws upon Expressionistic themes and techniques, such
as abstract characters, moral debate and choral speech, but, neither its “liberal” rhetoric,
nor its “emotionalism” (Dukore 11). To Graver, while the Expressionists’ plays made
statements about social realities by pressing sociopolitical issues into a plot “that drives
inexorably to evaluative conclusions,” Brecht’s learning plays, by contrast, create
“situational spaces in which social and political issues can expand to reveal the felt
qualities o f their ethical and strategic aspects” (215).
While it is beyond the purview of this discussion to conclusively determine
Brecht’s avant-garde status, these issues point to the exigency o f broadening avant-garde
classifications when evaluating the aesthetic coordinates o f avant-garde performance. It
is here that Graver’s typology of the avant-garde becomes useful and worth briefly
summarizing here.40
Graver situates avant-garde art and performance, from the early twentieth century
onward, into five general categories: (1) Partisan Art, created by artists “attached to and
serving a partisan political organization,” such as Russian agit-prop productions and
Piscator’s early political reviews; (2) Secessionist Art, created by “aesthetically
innovative artists interested in artistic technique for its own sake but also in creating
works that cannot be used to affirm the dominant bourgeois culture and cannot be readily
transformed into simple, pleasure-giving commodities;” (3) Engaged Art, created by
artists “interested in using art to analyze and transform habits o f thought and ideological
prejudices rather than to incite enthusiasm for an immediate political goal.” Engaged Art
is typified by such groups as the German Expressionists, the Italian and Russian Futurists
and the English Vorticists; (4) Anti-Art, which attacks “the notion o f art in general, or, at
least, some o f the basic presuppositions o f art,” such as that produced by the Dadaists and
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Surealists; and, (5) Innovatively Aestheticized Commodities, locatable in advertising

campaigns and design styles “that attempt to make art part of life or...imbue products in
the marketplace with an aesthetic aura o f attraction that is independent of their use-value
and appeals to notions o f innovation and progress.” Art Nouveau and Man Ray’s
advertising photos, which imbued products of the 1920s and 1930s “with an avant-garde
cache” are exemplary of this classification (12-14).
O f these, the categories that appear to be most relevant to historical avant-garde
performance are Partisan, Engaged, and Anti-Art because they all describe variations of
the intention to significantly alter the social function o f art by undermining the social and
aesthetic autonomy o f the artwork and demanding that it be judged by “more than its
internal articulation of form and content” (16). Graver’s multivalent categories not only
serve to broaden avant-garde theory to include the distinct coordinates o f theatre and
performance, but they also qualify the paradigm that the historical avant-garde sought,
above all, the abolition of the institutions o f a rt In this respect Graver’s model allows
both for artistic activity per se, and the avant-gardists’ reconfiguration of the institutions
o f art and life alike.
Equally significant this model also allows for such considerations as tendencies,
counter-tendencies, and national distinctions within specific movements, and within the
development o f individual artists’ careers. Finally, Graver’s model also incorporates a
more nuanced assessment o f the demarcation between modem and avant-garde theatre.
Despite similar goals in regard to formal and expressive innovativeness, and an equally
strong aversion to naturalistic-mimetic codes, modernist theatre “maintained an interest
in the possibilities o f representing human actions dramatically,” in contrast to avant-garde
performance, which expressed its “social and aesthetic dissidence in a manner far less
respectful o f the development o f dramatic representation” in its preoccupation with
“powers o f expression” (44-5). Similarly, even when modernist drama broke from the
constraints o f mimesis, its focus remained on the development o f aesthetic material “by a
central creative consciousness;” a tendency nowhere more evident than in the rise to
predominance o f the director in modernist theatre praxis. By contrast, it was less the
"realization o f a fixed work” than the “unfolding o f a unique event” that was the primary
concern o f the historical avant-garde performance artists (58).
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1.4 Japanese Avant-Garde Aesthetic Theory and Criticism
Whereas the Western historical avant-garde has become an institutionalized

standard in the visual arts and aesthetic theory, its non-Western manifestations have
received comparatively less attention. Even when focused on international phenomena,
Western scholarship routinely omits even casual reference to prewar Japanese artists who
identified themselves as avant-gardists. In Japanese scholarship, moreover, these artists
are often subsumed into the more general categories o f “modem” or “Western-styled,” a
tendency even more prevalent in theatre studies.
Munroe attributes the recent academic interest in the non-Westem historical
avant-garde to postmodern theory, which tends to deflate Eurocentric models of
modernity.41 It has also been stimulated by the growth of the Japanese museum
industry,42 and the more recent trend in Japanese scholarship to legitimize prewar cultural
history. Despite these developments, however, Munroe observes a lack o f “mature
discourse” in Japanese avant-garde scholarship, which she attributes to curatorial
periodizing practices, and to museum-catalogue and art-book conventions that privilege
chronological over interpretive documentation. To Munroe, both o f these tendencies
have perpetuated the notion that “Japanese modernism is essentially discontinuous and
ahistorical” (20). It must also be noted, however, that because o f these phenomena, new
possibilities have opened up in regard to narrativizing and assessing the aesthetic, social,
and political coordinates o f the Japanese avant-garde project
In this section I will provide an overview o f scholarship concerned with the
relationship between aesthetic theory and transformations in Japanese cultural
production. Unlike the previous section on Western avant-garde performance, I will
focus on aesthetic discourse, with minimal reference to either Japanese institutional
structures, or to what I will identify in subsequent chapters as the Japanese avant-garde. I
have adopted this strategy because o f the desirability of considering the theoretical
frameworks o f Japanese aesthetics separately from Western theories. This is especially
important given the substantial body o f criticism that argues against applying Western
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aesthetic concepts to Japanese culture in general, and/or the appropriateness of “avant-

garde” designations categorically. Such distinctions, moreover, are particularly valuable
in decoding the complexities o f the Japanese avant-garde project in order to produce
discourse that neither imports Western aesthetic concepts wholesale, nor disregards the
distinctiveness o f such designations as aesthetic autonomy, modernity, naturalism, and
avant-gardism in prewar Japanese culture.
One striking feature of Meiji Era scholarship is its interdisciplinary nature, which
can be attributed to the fact that most universities had not yet departmentalized the fields
o f literature, philosophy, politics, and economics (Nolte 1984,669). Ueda cites Nakae
Chomin’s translation o f Eugene Veron’s L 'Esethetique (1884) as foundational to the
disciplining o f aesthetics, and for standardizing the Japanese translation of the term,
bigaku (1990,283). In fact, academic interest in aesthetics dates back to 1881, when
Fenollosa and Toyama Masakazu offered courses at Tokyo University, followed by Ogai
at Keio University soon after.43 While it has been argued that these developments reflect
the immersion o f Meiji intellectuals in Western philosophy, Japanese aesthetics has a
long history that, like Japanese art and literature, followed distinctive lines of
development.
Miyoshi notes that while the Japanese term for literature, bungaku, had come to
denote literary production and criticism as it was used in the West by the turn of the
twentieth century, it had actually been used for many centuries (278-9). Similarly, in
regard to the history o f Japanese art, Kato maintains that different types o f art did not
supplant one another as they had in the West, but rather, “co-existed and remained more
or less creative from the time o f their first appearance” (4). Especially significant to any
consideration o f the Japanese avant-garde’s relationship to aesthetic autonomy is Kato’s
location o f the first appearance o f the ideology o f art-for-art’s sake in the late twelfth and
early thirteenth centuries. Kato traces this early formulation o f aestheticism to the
decline o f the aristocracy in the Heian Period, when one group sought to separate
aristocratic culture from society in order that they may take refuge in a world of art
“independent o f the chaos o f everyday life” (152). This ideology dominated throughout
the Edo period, although it co-existed alongside the competing ideology o f “life for art’s
sake” (155). Shifts in philosophical thought that resulted from the spread o f Zen
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Buddhism gave rise to the idea that art and social life should not be considered as
separate entities. For Kato, the displacement o f “life for religion’s sake” by “life for art’s
sake” represents an important development in the secularization o f Japanese culture. He
points to the tea ceremony as a definitive manifestation of this principle, since the
“transformation o f life into art is achieved by means o f a very special view o f the whole
social life” (155). He adds, however, that the aestheticization o f life had very little
bearing on the social totality, since “life for art’s sake” was a possibility open only to
select individuals, i.e., the “masters” o f the tea ceremony (155).
The actual material conditions for the secularization o f Japanese culture occurred
with the rise o f the merchant class and the institutionalization o f pleasure during the Edo
Period (1603-1868), when entertainment districts flourished and with them such popular
forms as samisen music, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, kyogen puppet-drama, and Kabuki.
Over the next two centuries these forms were diversified and refined, resulting in a
cultural production that lacked “profound connections with any system o f ethical values”
(18). This era also witnessed the stabilization of the artist’s relationship to society—a
trend that lasted until the Meiji Era, when the artist’s alienation from society became a
dominant trend (9).
While it is often maintained that Japanese aesthetics and art production lagged
behind Western developments (at least until the Taisho era), this only applies to
Westernizing trends and not necessarily modernizing ones, although these two
classifications are often deployed interchangeably. Furthermore, the linearity implicit in
such judgments, derived as they are from Western art history, has little bearing on the
continuities o f traditional aesthetic theories and arts praxes throughout the modem era.
This is especially evident in prewar art and literary criticism, which often harkens back to
traditional concepts even when engaging modem and/or Western paradigms.
Keene maintains that Romanticism was the first significant Western literary and
critical movement imported to Japan. Romanticism gained popularity due primarily to
the efforts o f writers associated with the magazine Bungakki (1893-1898), where such
important essayists as Kitamura Tokuku and Shimazaki Toson first advocated
individualism and emotionality in literature and art (Keene 1984,516). Another
important critic associated with Romanticism was Takayama Chogyu, whose essay “On
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the Aesthetic Life” (1901) reveals much about the reformulation of traditional aestheticist
ideology in the Meiji context Although his early writings reveal nationalist biases
influenced by the political backlash against Westernization, in this essay, Chogyu
motioned towards a Nietzschean model o f aesthetic autonomy by arguing that an
“authentic” Japanese culture could only be sustained if artists remained unfettered by
politics and mundane human affairs. While relatable to Western aestheticism, Chogyu’s
position is more properly understood as an expression of Meiji writers’ disillusionment
with the very nationalism that Chogyu himself had once espoused, due to the practical
effects of such regulatory ordinances as the Civil Code.44 Chogyu voiced the
estrangement of writers and artists from the bureaucratically-mandated ideology that art
should be socially useful, when in practice they faced greater restrictions on their
freedoms. This perceived lack of art’s social consequences caused writers to turn their
attentions towards their own experiences. Harrootunian summarizes this renewal of
aestheticism at the turn o f the twentieth century thusly: “if the outer life could not be
transformed by art and thought, then art and thought must be completely liberated from
the outer world to achieve the promise of purity” (1974,145-6).
It was in this intellectual climate that Naturalism rose to prominence in literary
and academic circles. In “Shizen Shugi no Kachi” [The Value of Naturalism] (1908),
Hogetsu criticized two novels by Ozaki Koyo45 for their failure to conform to Naturalist
literary precepts, even though they were written prior to their establishment in Japanese
literature.46 Although in agreement with the Western Naturalists that literature must be
concerned with the objective presentation o f social issues, he later revised his position in
“Bungeijo no Shizen Shugi” (Naturalism in Literature] (1908), where he maintained that
while Naturalism offered no solutions or ideals, it could lead to a type o f religious
exaltation: “Naturalist literature leads us to the point where we can even touch on the
religious. This should be the object o f one’s attention when one is creating a work o f
literature. It is the highest reach o f beauty, the true form o f life itself.”47 While this
equation appears to be far removed from the goals o f the European Naturalists, it does
corroborate the dominant scholarly paradigm that in Japan, Naturalism served several
ideological cross-currents at once. For example, some scholars hold the
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I-novel [shi-shosetsu], wherein the protagonist typically finds that his emotions and the
society in which he lives are “arbitrary, freakish, unpredictable and uncontrollable,” as
the apotheosis o f Japanese Naturalism (Nolte 1984,672-3). On a disparaging note,
Arima observes that the aesthetic and social reforms sought by the European Naturalists
were tempered in Japan by writers whose “diffidence and fear o f society cause[d] them to
internalize their concerns,” such that the “individual self rather than society” became
their defining characteristic (88). Alternately, other scholars credit the Naturalists for
introducing the concept that a private sphere o f selfhood could exist separately from the
demands of the state.
By contrast, Karatani disputes the notion that the goals of the European
Romantics were accomplished by the Naturalists in Japan. He bases his argument less on
the ideological or subjective characteristics o f discrete works, but rather on the fact that
Japan’s absorption o f Western literary history was accomplished in a brief period of time.
To Karatani, such circumstances contribute to an inversion of Western critical and
theoretical categories when applied to Japanese cultural production, especially “realism”
and “romanticism” (1993,30). In a similar vain, Rubin observes that since Japanese
Naturalism was never “successfully defined” and “represented no ideology,” it is best
considered “a convenient and misleading label for the beginning of the representation of
variousness, possibility, complexity and difficulty” in Japanese literature (1984,19).
Continuities in traditional aesthetic and literary concepts through the prewar
period is one such complexity that should be considered. Rimer cites Toson’s interest in
French art for art’s sake as indicative of the influence o f traditional and Western concepts
in Taishd literary theory. In his post-Naturalism phase, T5son’s writings owe as much to
European aestheticism as to the poetics o f the Tokugawa writer, Matsu Basho and the
classical literary paradigm o f aware. Rimer translates aware as a “deep sensitivity to the
world that can permit the writer to grasp the fundamental power and deep significance o f
life, felt as a truly personal response to an incident, perhaps a trifling one, from his or her
daily life” (1987,6). When Toson maintained that an artist must engage in a process of
“identification and internalization,” therefore, his aestheticist bias sprang as much from
his predisposition to Japanese classicism as to his immersion in European aesthetics (11).
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Many historians hold that the paradigm o f art-for-art’s sake was inextricably
linked to Japanese modernism in the visual arts. Weisenfeld maintains that aesthetic
autonomy and artistic subjectivity are the defining characteristics o f the Japanese (and
Western) modernists, because they “sought to make manifest the artist’s mediation in art
production by focusing on pictorial technique and eschewing mimesis” (1997,5). In this
regard, art and literary historians alike point to Takamura Kotaro’s “The Green Sun”
[“Midori iro no taiyo”] (1909) as foundational to late Meiji aestheticism. A poet,
sculptor, and critic, Takamura incorporated a plea for artistic freedom into his critique of
Western illusionism in Nihonga (Guth 19). Responding, in part, to anti-Western biases,
Takamura maintained that the subjectivity of the artist was far more important than such
concerns as nationality in determinations o f an artwork’s value (Rimer 1987,59).
Although beholden to the Western formulation o f art-for-art’s sake, Takamura signaled a
renewed interest in Western art and aesthetics, which Yamada labels the “second stage”
o f Japanese modernism—an era which also witnessed the emergence of the avant-garde
(103-4).
Some historians maintain that the adoption of realistic techniques in all artistic
fields was the decisive break from traditional arts production. Weisenfeld admits that her
linkage o f Japanese modernism with non-mimetic techniques and the ideology of art-for-
art’s sake is controversial given the absence o f a tradition o f mimesis and the close ties
between art and society in the early modem period (1997,5). Jameson goes further by
asserting that the entire epoch all through the Far East is characterizable by the turn to
realism, which corresponded to, but differed from, European “high” modernism (1993,
178). This is another example o f the inversion of Western aesthetic categories when
applied to Japanese culture as postulated by Karatani.
Such inversions appear even more pronounced when considering the absence o f
mimesis in Japanese performance history, and the social goals underpinning the
modernization o f theatre dating back to the Kabuki Reform Movement o f the 1870s. To
Karatani, Kabuki reform was triggered by the government’s recognition that of all
cultural forms, theatre was “indispensable to the establishment of modem institutions”
(Karatani 1993,55). While the reform movement was relatively short-lived, the quest for
a modem Japanese theatre as envisioned by Shoyo was initially played out in the
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academic realm. Shoyo was obviously aware o f the institutional coordinates involved in
transforming Japanese theatre, as evidenced by such efforts as establishing the Bimgei
Kyokai (Literary Society), championing Ibsenism, establishing rehearsal procedures,
casting actresses, and experimenting with Westem-style playwriting.48
In general, theatre historians explain the relatively slow absorption of realistic
dramaturgical and production practices to their sheer novelty in Japan, although they also
hold this as the defining characteristic o f Japanese theatrical modernism. The first high-
profile theatre artist to popularize realistic performance techniques was the Kabuki actor
Ichikawa Danjuro IX. Widely considered to have been the greatest actor of the Meiji
Era, Ichikawa became renowned for more ordinary speech patterns, less extravagant
make-up, and psychological complexity in characterization (Karatani 1993,55). Rimer
adds that while Ichikawa caused no revolutionary changes in Kabuki, his efforts did
reflect the reformist goal o f making Kabuki a vehicle o f morality and education, and also
that he helped to legitimize theatre as a serious art form (1974,14-15).
The examples o f Shoyo and Ichikawa demonstrate that from the outset, the
modernization o f Japanese theatre was tied to the adoption of mimetic techniques (and
not their rejection or mediation, as is characteristic of European modernism), and also
that the ideal that theatre should serve social goals. These two objectives, which were to
become foundational to Osanai Kaoru’s quest to make Shingeki a purely realistic theatre,
were accomplished by the late 1930s, most notably in the psychological realism of
Kishida Kunio and the socialist realism of Kubo Sakae (Goodman 1988,6).
One residual effect of the emergence of Japanese mass culture in the Taisho era
was that ordinary citizens become more interested in the arts, as evidenced by increased
attendance at the government-sponsored buntens. The public’s exposure to the art and
ideas o f the bunten artists, moreover, contributed to the widespread acceptance o f the
aestheticist ideal o f the artist as a solitary genius—a notion reinforced by such art
journals as Shirakaba (Takashina 1990,280). To Barshay, the idealism o f German
aesthetics was particularly appealing to Japanese intellectuals who wished to explore
“apolitical social realms...[such as] metaphysics and aesthetics,” which they derived
from a range o f sources from the classical idealists and Romantics, to Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, and the neo-Kantians (66). While this suggests that the doctrine o f aesthetic
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autonomy achieved greater social valence because of the influence of German theory, the
reconfiguration o f traditional Japanese aestheticism was as prevalent in Taisho era
criticism as it had been in the Meiji era, thus qualifying the prejudice that the doctrine of
aesthetic autonomy developed later and as a result of European influence.
Along these lines, Arima points to the Taisho-era literary critic Watsuji Tetsuro,
whose essay “Mono no aware ni tsuite” (1923) borrows its central argument from the
classical poetics o f the Tokugawa scholar, Motoori Norinaga. As Karatani notes, mono
no aware was a literary and aesthetic ideal o f the Heian period, which held an “emphatic
appreciation of the ephemeral beauty manifest in nature and humble life” tinged with a
hints o f sadness, admiration, awe and even joy.49 Motoori equated mono no aware to the
autonomy of artistic feeling prevalent in Confucian and Buddhist inspired art, which
Watsuji reformulated as the “pre-Kantian separation of aesthetics from philosophy
(reason) and morality (religion),” to suit his assessment of Shirakaba-ha aestheticism
(Arima 108-10). In essence, Watsujii’s critical move exemplifies the assimilation of
Western concepts via traditional aesthetic paradigms.
The doctrine o f aesthetic autonomy was also advocated by Taishd and Showa
critical theorists associated with the Proletarian Arts and Literary movement
Hirabayahsi Hatsunosuke, a noted Marxist literary critic, proposed that a degree o f
autonomy should be preserved for artists. Because the anticipated dictatorship o f the
proletariat would only be a temporary phase toward a “classless paradise,” Hirabayashi
maintained that art should guard against the “imprint o f class prejudices” (Arima 182).
Hirabayashi also felt that art could offer a kind o f consolation that politics was incapable
of providing, although he recognized that art alone could not alone effect the
transformation o f existing social conditions. He concluded, therefore, that until the time
that art would become genuinely autonomous in a classless society, art should
temporarily become the handmaiden o f politics (183).
Another important Marxist intellectual who contributed to prewar critical
discourse was Nakano Shigeharu—a poet, novelist, and critic active in the Communist
wing o f the Revolutionary Literature Movement o f the 1920s. Well-versed in the Marxist
canon o f intellectual and cultural theory, Nakano theorized that Taisho mass culture was
shaped by both “the reproduction o f culture” by capitalists and Orientalists appropriating
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Japanese traditions for new ends, and also by a “culture o f production” promulgated by
new forms o f mass communication (Siiverberg 1990,9). Nakano was particularly critical
o f what he perceived to be the propensities o f these two mass cultural processes to
homogenize human experience and to obliterate historical and cultural distinctions. Ever
conscious o f his own social status as a writer, Nakano maintained that capitalism
subsumed art and literature into a system of exchange that rendered the artist a producer
of cultural commodities. To illustrate his opinion, Nakano offered two examples that
related to the twin phenomena o f Occidentalism and the commodification of culture: the
poetry of Paul Claudel and the Kabuki Reform Movement
To Nakano, Claudel—the former French ambassador to Japan—was a “model”
Orientalist who by appropriating traditional poetic forms, revealed how historical
cultural manifestations could be split into profit-producing units to be sold on the global
market (Siiverberg 1990,19). Nakano took even greater exception to Claudel’s
appropriation of a form that had its origins in feudal culture.
That the residual elements o f historical feudal ideology could thrive in the modem
era becomes a central concern to another essay “On Theatre” (1928). Nakano cites the
Kabuki Reform Movement o f the 1870s as emblematic o f how traditional cultural
ideologies could be recycled towards new political ends (Siiverberg 1990, 111). Because
he maintained that o f all art forms theatre comes closest to approximating life, Nakano
was less critical o f the imprint of Westernization implicit in Kabuki reform than he was
with what he perceived to be the reformists’ anti-progressivism. While he called for the
“aggressive establishment o f a new revolutionary theatrical form,” however, Nakano
believed that Shingeki was equally unacceptable, due to its origins in bourgeois Western
culture (112). The only appropriate course to adopt in modernizing Japanese theatre,
therefore, was for Kabuki to be refitted with a “new proletarian language” that
“accentuated form,” but rejected “feudal content” (113). This is especially significant
given the anti-mimetic dimensions o f Kabuki as compared to the trend towards realism in
Western theatre since at least the eighteenth century. As Sato observes, traditional
Japanese theatre “attach [es] more importance to form than to content,” and achieves its
aesthetic effects “through singing and dancing rather than through dialogue” (185).
Nakano’s proposed reforms were, therefore, consonant with the formal techniques o f
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traditional theatre familiar to Japanese audiences. Significantly, the rejection of Kabuki’s

formal elements were precisely what the early proponents o f Shingeki espoused in
adopting realism /0
While it is tempting to compare Nakano’s critique o f Taish5 culture to the critical
theorists of the Frankfurt School, what is most significant here is his establishment of
feudalism as a dialectical category in regard to modem Japanese cultural production.
That feudal ideology was to emerge full-force in prewar art and propaganda renders it an
especially potent critical category applicable to both aesthetic discourse and cultural
production. In his critique of Kabuki reform, moreover, Nakano established a critical
precedent in emphasizing form over content that is not only conducive to Japanese
theatre, but one that he himself applied to the institutional frameworks of Taish5 culture.
Finally, it is worth noting that because o f his political beliefs, Nakano’s first collection of
poetry was confiscated by the police in 1931, while his second collection was published
only after twenty-three pages had been expurgated (Keene 1974,341).
Kuki Shuzo’s contribution to prewar aesthetic discourse is also significant in that
it evidences another possibility for the reformulation o f traditional aestheticism,
specifically at the service o f military-totalitarian goals. Recognized as the foremost
advocate o f Japanese Existentialism, Kuki elaborated upon what he perceived to be an
essentialized Japanese aesthetic tendency in such essays as “Iki no kozo” [The Structure
o f Do] (1930) and “Bungeiron" [On Literature] (1941). The concept o f iki, which
harkens back to the “refined” taste o f the wealthy Tokugawa bourgeoisie, denotes a
standard of Japanese “taste,” and an index o f style that has been applied to cultural
objects and human behavior alike (Hajimu 268). Kuki maintained that iki was even more
discernible in “certain artistic elements that make up the life o f the person involved,” than
in its “direct and formal expression” in art (269-72). While his interpretation of iki also
referenced the traditional paradigm o f “life for art’s sake,” Kuki increasingly proscribed
for iki the task o f “representing the identity o f an inimitable collective subject against
claims o f Western universalism” (Pincus 228). It is also noteworthy that Kuki’s version
o f iki is correlative to the idealized sublation o f art and life central to the historical avant-
garde project, at least as it has been characterized in Western scholarship.
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In sum, prewar Japanese aesthetic discourse may be characterized by its

assimilation o f Western critical models, and also a self-reflexivity as to how these models
related to traditional and modem artistic and literary practices. Keene notes that modem
Japanese literary criticism often took the unique ronso form, which engaged both
ideological and aesthetic concerns, and often played out over many months in literary
journals (1974,502-3). Among the best-known ronso was carried out between Shoyo
and Ogai (1891-92). To Keene, if modem Japanese literary criticism was instituted with
Shoyo’s Shosetsu Shinzui (1885-6), Ogai was instrumental in introducing and applying
German critical models to Japanese literature (505-16). It is generally noted that by the
Taisho era, the dominant critical model was Marxism (Siiverberg 1990,4).
Apart from the numerous manifestoes and treatises written by artists directly
associated with specific movements, avant-garde discourse as a category of Japanese
aesthetics did not emerge until after the Occupation era. In this respect, Keene points to
the “extreme problems of interpretation” that the writings of the European Dadaists and
Surrealists posed to Japanese critics, who were already grappling with the necessity of
coining new words to correspond to Western critical terminology (1974,503). Full-scale
interest in the prewar avant-garde can be attributed to the acknowledgment by postwar
artists and writers o f their influence, and to curatorial and academic interest at home and
abroad. As in the West, there has been a tendency in Japanese scholarship to conflate the
labels o f avant-gardism and modernism—a situation that has assumed even greater
variance when applied discretely to the fields o f art, literature, and theatre. This is most
evident in issues o f periodization, classification, and differentiations between the
categories o f “modernization” and “Westernization.” It is important to note that o f the
latter two distinctions, “Westernization” is evidently not a critical or theoretical marker of
the Western avant-garde, although it continues to be laden with ideological traces in
regard to the Japanese avant-garde.
In regard to periodization, scholars have posed divergent start and end points by
which to frame the Japanese avant-garde project Munroe cites the appearance of the
Shirakaba journal in 1910 as the start o f the avant-garde period, while Omuka points to
the establishment o f the Nikakai Art lustration in 1914 as the first step toward the
development o f an indigenous avant-garde. Munroe also maintains that since the
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Japanese avant-garde was inextricably linked with the political left (and may thus be
characterized as having “stimulated an activist, literary, and passionately international
counterculture”), the year 1927 represents for her the end of the avant-garde, since such
activities could no longer be sustained after that point due to increased censorship laws
(22). Omuka maintains that with the forced dissolution o f the Sanka movement in 1925,
the Japanese avant-garde project was effectively terminated, although he does allow for
certain continuities in the proletarian arts and theatre movements (1996,25).
Significantly, the historical parameters posed by both Munroe and Omuka indicate that
the avant-garde emerged in the aesthetic realm, but concluded as a result o f forces in the
political realm.
Several scholars consider the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 a major impetus
for the intensification of avant-garde activities. Guth attributes the rise o f an indigenous
avant-garde to the disarray of the art establishment in the immediate aftermath o f the
earthquake, which killed more than one hundred thousand people and destroyed over
sixty percent of Tokyo’s housing (70). Literary historians also consider this a period of
crisis in the field o f Japanese letters. As de Bary notes, economic instability, social
unrest, and the emergence of a revolutionary working class after 1923 compromised the
heretofore high social valuation o f individualism in literature, resulting in increased
radicalization and a rise in proletarian literature (154). The Mavoists, whose activities
spanned the visual, literary and performing arts, exploited such problems as the
relationship between the individual and the state, consumerism and daily life, and the
social consequences o f the earthquake (Guth 20).
In regard to avant-garde classification, many scholars point to key figures in its
development in discrete fields. A partial list o f these noteworthy figures include Yorozu
Tetsugoro in painting, Kanbara Tai in the field o f avant-garde aesthetic discourse,
Hagiwara Kydjiro in poetry, Hijikata Yoshi and Murayama Tomoyoshi in performance,
and Yanase Masamu in stage design and political cartoons.
Most scholars maintain that the Japanese avant-garde, like its Western
counterpart, can be characterized by its adversarial stance towards the institutions o f art,
although with certain qualifications. Munroe points to the reaction o f younger artists
against the traditional art academies and salons controlled by the Ministry o f Education
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and the Imperial Fine Arts Academy as exemplary of this anti-institutionalism (Munroe
22). Tomii notes that by the time Dada and Surrealism emerged in the visual arts, the
government-sponsored salon [kanten] and various affiliated associations [dantai] had
already become institutionalized, even though the dantai had been established, in part, as
forums o f dissent against academicism. Tomii adds that a “consciously Japanized
Fauvism [that] dominated academic yoga” through the 1930s was the style against which
the visual avant-garde artists were most radically opposed (307).
In the literary field, avant-garde writers were able to more explicitly assert their
anti-establishment sentiments, and also the aesthetic and social goals o f the movements
with which they were associated. In the manifesto, “What is Futurism? A Response”
(1923), Kinoshita Shuichiro provided detailed information about the aesthetic and
ideological goals of Futurism, Expressionism and Dada (Takashina 1986,23). That same
year, Hirato Renkichi employed Futurist-inspired typography to augment his celebratory
manifesto o f the machine age (Yoshihisa 175). In 1923, several writers51 interested in the
work o f the self-proclaimed Dada poet Takahishi Shinkichi began Aka to Kuro [Red and
Black], a literary review that espoused anarchy and rejected the remnants of feudal
culture in modem culture (175). Other journals followed, such as MAVO in 1923 and Shi
to Shiron [Poetry and Poetics] in 1928, both of which were devoted to progressive art and
leftist politics (175).
Other scholars emphasize the youth o f many of the Japanese avant-gardists as the
primary reason for their attack on art institutions. In his analysis o f Kanbara Tai’s
manifesto “Akushon” (1923) Takashina calls attention to the following passage:
In order for art to flower for us, we look for the ways it makes sense to
each of us. And we search for a common idea that allows us to constitute
a group, to organize our expositions and conferences, to inspire our ardor
and joy at our youthfulness and mutual respect—to give us the courage to
follow the avant-garde and to bear witness to the spirit o f the future, and
nothing else matters.52
Takashina notes that Kanbara was only twenty-three years old when he wrote this
manifesto on the occasion o f the first Exhibition o f the Action Group, and also that the
Japanese term for the avant-garde, Zen ’ei bijustsu, had not yet come into popular usage
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(1986,24). In all, 1923 appears to have been a banner year for Japanese avant-garde
activities.
As in Western scholarship, avant-garde designations o f prewar Japanese theatre
and performance has proven complex and more prone to ambiguities than in other
cultural fields. As Omuka notes, assessing Japanese avant-garde performance is
particularly challenging due to the mostly fragmentary evidence available. It would
appear that assessing the anti-institutional dimension o f Japanese avant-garde
performance would be all but impossible were it not for the fact that Japanese theatre,
more than any other field, experienced the most sweeping institutional transformations
throughout the modem era. While it is true that many developments lagged behind those
in the other arts, when theatre did catch up it was coeval to the high-point of Japanese
avant-gardism in other fields. Similarly, while the most significant theatrical
transformation is considered to have been the adoption o f mimetic techniques, avant-
gardist experimentation in non-realistic forms was also a component of Shingeki in its
early years. The difficulties surrounding the modernization of the Japanese theatre,
despite the early and concerted efforts o f the Meiji government toward this end, can be
attributed to a number o f factors.
First, playwriting had never been accorded high status in Japan, due to the
subservient role of the dramatist in Kabuki. Playwriting was not an appropriate option
for serious writers, therefore, until the advent o f Ibsemsm in the early 1900s, when drama
was recognized for its potential to express social ideas (Rimer 1974,23). Second, unlike
Europe, where important playwrights such as Ibsen, Strindberg, and Shaw had all but
established a modem dramatic repertory that gave rise to institutions devoted to
producing their plays, in Japan, new theatre organizations were instituted prior to the
emergence o f Japanese playwrights o f stature (7-8). Third, when Western avant-garde
performance techniques made their way to the Japanese stage, it was in these same
institutions associated with Western-styled Naturalism that they first appeared. This
phenomenon exemplifies the inversion o f naturalism and avant-gardism as it played out
on institutional levels in the modem Japanese theatre, and also helps to explain the
conflation o f categories such as avant-gardism, modernism, naturalism, and
Westernization. Finally, while it was easier to import the materials needed to adopt
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Western techniques in painting, the primary materials of the theatre—the actor’s voice
and body—were not so easily transcribed. Brian Powell notes that while Shimpa and
Shinkokugeki, two derivative Kabuki forms o f the early twentieth century, made some
strides towards adopting realistic techniques, the acting style remained Kabuki-derived
(1984,5). Compounding the difficulties experienced by producers o f European
Naturalist drama in the early years of Shingeki was the fact that actors lived in Japanese
society, in houses constructed differently from the West, who walked, talked, and
expressed basic human emotions in patterns different from those prescribed by the
Western dramatists (25-6).
The most radical changes in prewar Japanese theatre were related to the
foundation and institutionalization o f Shingeki Although Shingeki incorporated Western
avant-gardist techniques in design, and produced playwrights associated with the
European avant-garde, the anti-institutional standard by which to gauge the
transformation o f Japanese theatre in the Taishd era remains Shingeki and its pioneers’
rejection of the institutions and conventions o f traditional Japanese theatre. This is not to
imply, however, that Mavo, Sanka and proletarian theatre did not reject the mimetic
standards associated with Shingeki, but it does provide a broader context by which to
assess the anti-institutional dimensions o f Japanese avant-garde performance. It also
highlights the centrality o f Westernization as a classifrcatory designation in respect to the
range o f theatre and performance manifestations in the Taishd and early Showa eras.
Relatedly, Munroe notes that in the visual arts, the Japanese avant-gardists rejected both
the “Orientalist perception o f Japan” and “Japan’s idolization of the West,” by creating
new forms that were “not bound to ‘be’ Western” (23). In her opinion, by rejecting
Fauvism, the Japanese avant-gardists not only eschewed traditional and bourgeois art, but
also those styles imported from the W est
Another important factor to contextualize the Japanese avant-garde’s social
critique is that usage o f the term bunka to denote “culture” did not come into popular use
until the 1920s (Morris-Suzuki 761). This term, which originally denoted
Westernization, and the Germanifrcation o f Japanese society in particular, assumed new
dimensions as Japanese culture itself was recognized by Taishd intellectuals as an index
o f “social development” and a “higher strata o f social existence” (763). In the context o f
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Taishd liberalism, moreover, the social status o f culture reflected a “shift from the Meiji
equation o f social advance with industrial production, to an equation o f social advance
with the new consumption patterns o f the expanding middle classes” (763). Along these
lines, Siiverberg argues that Taishd mass culture was constituted o f cultural institutions
and practices that were reconfigured through new means of mass communication (1993,
116). While this may describe similar patterns internationally, what is unique to Japan
was that mass culture appeared to accommodate two seemingly contradictory ideologies
at once, namely “an ethnocentric, essentialist, and productivist state ideology” premised
on allegiance to the emperor and the devaluation o f the individual on one hand, and a
new “commodified consumer culture” that sold “contradictory images of class, gender,
cultural traditions and leisure” on the other (116). This tension between social duty and
individualism inflected Taishd aesthetics inasmuch as the discovery o f the self resulted in
“the blocking out o f social concern, at least in any analytical sense” (Rimer 1990,34-5).
As several historians have observed, while the Japanese avant-gardists may have rejected
the institutions of art, they did not necessarily incorporate a critique of aesthetic
autonomy in the process. On the contrary, aesthetic autonomy remained inextricably
linked to the Japanese avant-garde project until the prominence o f the proletarian art
movement This is yet another example o f the inversion of Western classificatory
schemes when applied to prewar Japan as theorized by Karatani.
To Munroe, Karatani’s Kindai Nikon bungaku no kigen [The Origins o f Modem
Japanese Literature] (1980) represents the first popular attempt to reassess prewar
Japanese literature by resisting “the usual hegemonic narratives that reinforce the notion
of the West as center, origin, and arbiter o f modernity, while marginalizing, suppressing
and even dismissing the cultural production o f the non-West” (343). Jameson adds that
Karatani’s challenge to discursive formations o f modernity and “the models o f East-West
relations implicit in it,” exemplifies a “criticism o f a criticism, a theorization about
theory1*not unlike Western avant-garde discourse (1993, xix). Significantly, Karatani
delineates the historical and theoretical coordinates o f the inverse relationship o f
traditionalism and avant-gardism in the history o f East-West cultural exchanges. In his
formulation, “that which is praised as new and anti-traditionalist in Japan appears to be
mere mimicry in the West, where conversely a return to Japanese traditionalism is viewed
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as cutting edge” (34). Tomii’s observation that art historians customarily point to the
introduction o f traditional European oil painting as the beginning of modem Japanese art
history bears out Karatani’s theory (307). Alternatively, Karatani credits Fenollosa’s
advocacy of traditional art in the 1880s with discovering a new position from which to
view Japanese art (33). Also, by positing the “oneness o f the East through art” in his
influential book The Ideals o f the East (1902), Okakura Kakuzo, Fenollosa’s protege,
recognized that “art exists only as a product of its own discursive practices, and therefore
is essentially political.”53
In fact, Karatani’s model has two noteworthy historical antecedents: the critical
writings of Natsume Soseki and the “Overcoming the Modem” debates of the early
Showa era. In objecting to the normalization o f Western concepts such as “literature”
and “history,” Soseki contributed to the critical debates o f the time regarding the merits
o f Westernization by stressing the desirability of an autonomous Japanese culture.
Soseki warned that to take Western literature as “the sole truth” in “determining our own
affairs” as limiting and inaccurate.54
S5seki’s advocacy for Japan’s cultural autonomy would later inform the Showa
era critical debates in context o f the militarist campaign for pan-Asian solidarity. The
“Overcoming the Modem” debates, which culminated in the Kyoto Conference o f 1942,
solidified anti-Western sentiments most virulently expressed by such intellectuals as
Kobayashi Hideo, who advocated for a return to the timeless essence of historical cultural
artifacts as an antidote to modernization (Munroe 23-4). The proceedings of these
debates, published in the literary journal Bungakkai, concluded that European and
Japanese intellectual traditions were ultimately incompatible. The resolution o f the
intellectuals participating in these debates was a call for a rejuvenated “spiritual outlook,”
since it was impossible to reject the impact of either modernization or Westernization.55
A variety o f opinions have been advanced regarding the significance of these
debates. To Barshay, at the core o f these reactionary claims was the sublation of
rationalism, liberalism, and materialism into a higher communal and spiritual entity
(230). Takeuchi Yoshimi maintained that these debates reflected an “analytical version
o f state military discourse,” whereby the
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oppositional relations situated within the fundamental axis of tradition—

restoration and revolution, emperor worship and expulsion o f foreigners,
isolation and open country, nationalism and modernization, East and
West—exploded at a single stroke.56
Most compelling o f all, Jameson locates the seeds o f postmodernist theory in the
“Overcoming the Modem” theorists, since they were the first to conceive o f and name
this phenomenon. Jameson attributes this comparatively early development in Japan to
the fact that the three stages o f the modem (the Enlightenment, high modernism, and the
postmodern), which spanned two centuries in Europe, were compressed into only one in
Japan (1993, ix).
Such distinctions are especially relevant to configurations o f modernism and
avant-gardism in prewar Japan. Shigemi Inaga, for example, disputes the viability o f the
label “avant-garde” to refer to both pre- and postwar contemporary art movements.
Reacting to the “Japon des Avant-gardes Exhibition” at the George Pompidieu Center in
Paris in 1986, Inaga maintains that it is “logically impossible to find an authentically
avant-garde position” outside of the Euro-American context (69). Inaga finds it most
significant that the European avant-garde emerged in the colonial period, and that “the
appropriation o f the Other” by European culture as exemplified in such phenomena as
japonisme effected an “identity crisis” that led to the avant-garde (69). Like Karatani,
Inaga posits that the artifacts and forms that had been appropriated, however traditional
they may have been in their native context, became enshrined in the Western avant-garde
(69). This also mirrors Nakano Shigeharu’s formulation that traditional Japanese culture
was appropriated by Orientalists and subsumed into the modem global art market, and
also Karatani’s theory regarding the inversion of Western critical categories. Even more
problematic to Inaga, however, is the classificatory omission according to Western
aesthetic standards o f non-Westem cultural formations that do not have equivalents in the
West. He notes, for example, that flower arrangement and calligraphy “enjoy a ‘status’
in Japan that is at least socially equivalent to ‘high’ art” (70). Furthermore, Inaga argues
that “whenever an avant-garde corpus is attempted, it is inevitably the definition o f the
avant-garde forged in the context o f European art which is invoked as the criterion o f
demarcation” (69). Thus, an original creation from non-Westem countries “must seek
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another label than that o f avant-garde” in order to circumvent the “tautological and
Euocentric implications” inherent to this label (70).
Despite such objections, the Western term “avant-garde” has become standard
terminology in Japanese scholarship to demarcate a significant corpus o f pre- and
postwar art, literature and performance. As Munroe notes, the Japanese term for the
avant-garde, Zen ’ei bijustsu, was a direct translation o f the military term “advanced
guard,” which in the pre-war era connoted a “radical opposition to cultural orthodoxy,
social conformity, and political coercion” (22). Because o f such associations, Omuka
prefers the label “Advanced Modem Art” rather than either “Zen-ei” or avant-garde. By
contrast, Viatte defends the linguistic transposition of the Western term “avant-garde”
precisely because o f the political associations o f the more technically-appropriate Zen ’ei
bifutsu, and because it does provide linkages to the European tradition (7).
1.5 Discussion
This chapter has provided an overview o f scholarship regarding the aesthetic

coordinates o f the historical avant-garde. Here, I will summarize the most salient points
o f comparison as they relate to the avant-garde project in Germany and Japan.
O f all contemporary theorists of the historical avant-garde, BGrger’s theory of
institutions provides the most rigorous classificatory scheme by which to assess the
aesthetic categories o f intention, production, and reception. BQrger’s theory has also
proven to be quite influential on subsequent scholarship regarding the sociopolitical
coordinates o f the avant-garde, although he posed stringent qualifications regarding its
extra-aesthetic dimensions. I accept BQrger’s classificatory scheme regarding the
constituent movements o f the prewar avant-garde, and have demonstrated the usefulness
o f his three categories in assessing the aesthetic coordinates o f Western avant-garde
performance. In this regard, BQrger’s proposition that the overall goals o f the avant-
garde to critique the institutions o f art and to sublate art and life praxis were borne out in
the production and reception o f avant-garde performance manifestations throughout
Europe.
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I also concur with the many scholars who feel that Burger’s model delineates how
the historical avant-garde illuminated the existence o f art as an institution, and thus
precipitated a transformation in Western aesthetics. As Schulte-SSsse notes, Burger was
the first theorist to recognize that since avant-garde art rejected aesthetic autonomy,
criticism could no longer proceed autonomously and, moreover, needed to be practiced in
an interdisciplinary manner (xli). I would add that BOrger’s tripartite model of intention,
production, and reception is especially useful as a heuristic tool in examining the
sociopolitical coordinates o f the avant-garde, as I will attempt in chapter two.
Furthermore, his model provides useful guidelines by which to distinguish the avant-
garde from artistic modernism. I will, however, proceed in fundamental disagreement
with two o f Burger’s ancillary positions: that the historical avant-garde sought the
categorical abolition o f art; and that its efficacy is best relegated to the aesthetic realm,
due to its failure to abolish the institutions of a rt
Regarding the first o f my objections, while I accept that anti-art propensities were
typical of much avant-garde discourse and practice, significant evidence suggests that
many avant-gardists labored to effect changes in the production and reception of art from
within the very institutions they criticized. This is especially relevant to performance,
since the material conditions by which it is created and presented are dependent upon
institutional agents, as well as the social conditions unique to performance events.
Similarly, while evidence suggests that avant-garde performance is characterized by the
attempt to negate or subvert the conventions and traditions of institutionalized theatre, it
is also true that a substantial corpus of avant-garde performance occurred within these
same institutions.
I raise these distinctions to qualify rather than negate the auto-critique of art
advanced by the performance avant-gardists, and to substantiate the claim that the “anti
art” posture was just one o f several possibilities that were adopted. In this respect,
Graver’s supplemental classifications, particularly the “engaged” and “partisan” types of
avant-garde performance, allow for greater flexibility in regard to the avant-gardists’
rejection o f aesthetic autonomy and, above all, the possibility o f art production itself.
Further, Graver’s model permits a more thorough consideration o f its sociopolitical
valences, which many scholars agree is a major deficiency in BOrger’s theory. While
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Btirger maintains that the avant-garde was socially efficacious only in respect to its
illumination o f the existence o f art as a social institution, I concur with theorists such as
Berman, Mann, and Huyssen, who maintain that the suppression o f the avant-garde by
the agents o f totalitarian politics proves its political valence. In this respect, I maintain
that it is possible to retain Btirger’s major assertions regarding the avant-gardists’ critique
o f aesthetic autonomy, while extending it to the social and political realms.
Similarly, I maintain that Bourdieu’s observations regarding the revolutionary
dimensions of the avant-gardists's critique o f aesthetic autonomy also pose important
qualifications to Btirger’s model, specifically Bourdieu’s estimation that the proponents
o f aestheticism were aware o f the institutional coordinates of art prior to the emergence
of the avant-garde. This is an especially important qualifier given that the historical
crystallization o f art’s existence as a social institution is attributed by Biirger solely to the
activities and discourses o f the historical avant-garde, and also because it invests
theatrical Naturalism with avant-gardist properties. Bourdieu convincingly argues that
within the French theatrical field of the late nineteenth century, the Naturalists’ struggle
for prominence within institutional bounds was subsequently replicated by both
aestheticist and avant-garde movements, and also that these developments occurred
significantly later in theatre than they had in the fields o f art and literature. While
Bourdieu’s model does not diminish the radical nature of the avant-gardists’ anti-
institutional critique, the cognizance of the institutional coordinates of art cannot be
attributed exclusively to the avant-garde. Bourdieu’s elaboration of the institutional
coordinates o f French theatrical Naturalism also establishes a theoretical precedent by
which to reassess its relationship to the avant-garde project and also, significantly, to
modem Japanese theatre. Finally, Bourdieu’s theory o f fields, like other social-scientific
theories o f art, provides further justification for an emphasis on form over content—a
methodological framework that also seems especially applicable to evaluating the
political valences o f the avant-garde and its non-Westem manifestations.
In regard to the form-content debate in contemporary aesthetic theory, Western
and Japanese scholars alike have stressed the necessity o f emphasizing form, especially
in assessments o f the transformations o f the institutions of art in the modem era, and
under totalitarianism. Berezin’s study o f theatre under Italian fascism, for example, is
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consistent with, social-scientific methodologies in that she presumes that the sociopolitical
coordinates o f art must be identified prior to any analysis of individual works. Also,
Berezin’s attention to the complexities of assigning meaning, when meaning as a
category is rendered problematic, is especially compelling given the apparent similarities
between totalitarian cultural policies and the avant-garde project as they related to the
doctrine o f aesthetic autonomy
My survey o f Japanese aesthetic discourse reveals further contradistinctions
regarding Western classificatory schemes when applied to prewar Japanese cultural
production. From an historical perspective, it is clear that both the aestheticist ideology
o f art-for-art’s sake and the avant-garde conflation o f art and life were prevalent in
traditional Japanese aesthetics. I have also highlighted the ways in which such ideologies
were reconstituted in the Meiji and Taish5 era.
Overall, it may be concluded that Western critical typologies may serve not as a
standard, but rather as a comparative matrix to broaden the classificatory parameters of
the Japanese avant-garde project. Additionally, I have presented a range o f critical
vantage-points from which to view the distinctive properties of Naturalism and its
relation to prewar Japanese performance. While it would be misleading to subsume
Naturalism into the Japanese avant-garde project without reservations, it is important to
recall that unlike Europe, Naturalism gained prominence alongside and not prior to the
broader social acceptance of aesthetic autonomy. This is especially significant
considering that naturalistic dramaturgical and performance techniques revolutionized the
institution o f Japanese theatre, and also that the integration of art and life as embodied in
mimetic acting can be considered as somewhat equivalent to the avant-gardist project to
sublate art and life.
Tendencies in Taishd era aesthetic discourse also suggest that the doctrine of
aesthetic autonomy cannot be considered exclusively as an imported paradigm, but rather
that it had precedents in traditional aesthetics. Equally important, it is clear that in the
early years o f the Meiji period the institutional coordinates of art were recognizable to
both the government and artists and writers.
Combined, these factors pose important qualifications to applying Western
classificatory models to the Japanese avant-garde. These theoretical coordinates,
79
moreover, are supported by evidence in the history of Japanese art, literature, and theatre
regarding the simultaneous emergence and coexistence of Naturalism, aestheticism, and
Western and indigenous avant-garde movements. For example, Mori Ogai, perhaps more
than any other individual, facilitated the cross-fertilization o f widely divergent
movements in the late Meiji era. In May 1909, he published his translation o f Marinetti’s
first manifesto o f Futurism, just three months after its publication in Le Figaro.
Significantly, it was printed in two installments o f Subaru magazine, for which he served
as general adviser, and which was also associated with the Pan no Kai movement: a
major force in the Japanese art for art’s sake movement. Six months later, his translation
o f Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman opened the Jiyu Gekijo, thus paving the way for the
institutionalization o f naturalism in the modem theatre.
Aside from specificities regarding periodization that offset the Japanese avant-
garde, the category o f Westernization—bound up as it is has been with the phenomenon
o f modernization—is central to both pre- and postwar aesthetic discourse. For example,
Inaga’s qualification that in Japan, modernization stands in sharp contrast to the avant-
garde agenda, due to the fact that the avant-gardists abandoned what they had only just
learned from the West in the name o f modernization, is indicative o f this tendency in
contemporary avant-garde discourse.
In regard to Westernization, it seems prudent to apply Karatani’s inversion theory
regarding the applicability of Western critical paradigms in all considerations o f prewar
Japanese culture. While this paradigm will be elaborated upon in subsequent chapters, its
relevance to modem and avant-garde Japanese performance is worth previewing here.
For, while Kabuki and Kabuki-derived forms that proliferated throughout the Meiji era
contain elements that in the Western theatre are associated with modernism and the
avant-garde, it also worth remembering that Western directors such as Artaud,
Meyerhold, and Brecht were highly influenced by non-mimetic forms performed by
traveling Asian and Kabuki theatre and dance troupes. As Ivy notes, in the traditional
Japanese theatre, “there is a consistent movement between the diegesis o f the plays and
extradiegetic reality, between stage and audience, that constantly calls the frame o f
theater into question” (215). Furthermore, her observation that the formal and thematic
conventions o f traditional Japanese theatre serve as a “kind o f backdrop for the de-
so
familiarizing interruptions, wordplay, counter-narrative moments, and parodic

overtumings that keep the audience expectantly surprised” is a description that could well
apply to avant-garde performance in both Germany and Japan (215).
81
NOTES
4
In Theory ofthe Avant-Garde, Btirger argues that in Critique o f Judgment, Kant
reflected upon the “subjective aspect o f the detachment [of art] from the practical
concerns o f life;” and that this position was also taken up by Schiller in On The
Aesethetic Education o f Man, which argued that it is on the basis o f autonomy that art can
fulfill the furtherance of humanity as could be accomplished in no other way; see BQrger
1984,44-46.
2 Huyssen 1986,4. Graver alternately attributes this conception of the avant-
garde to Olinde Rodrigue, whose “dialogue” Huyssen cites appeared in Oeuvre de Saint-
Simon et d'Enfantxn (Paris: E. Dentu, 1875) 39:201-258; see Graver 223. What is most
significant here is the long tradition of conflating progressive politics and avant-garde art.
3 For further discussion see John Henderson, The F irst Avant-Garde, 1877-1894
(London: George G. Harrap, 1971); and Jost Hermand, “Das Konzept ‘Avantgarde,’”
Fascisumus und Avantgarde ed. Reinhold Grimm (Konigstein/Ts: Athaenum, 1980) 2-3.
4 In 1884, Fenollosa and Okakura founded the Painting Appreciation Society
[Kanga-kai], dedicated to Japanese painting; and in 1888, Okakura founded Kakko, the
first learned journal devoted to art in Japan.
5 Karatani Kdjin adds that its sister institution, The Tokyo Music School entirely
omitted courses in Japanese music.
6 Ueda notes that these factors also contribute to the lack of Arisotelian tragedy in
traditional Japanese drama, the dearth o f the political novel in the pre-Meiji period, and
the “disorderliness o f traditional Japanese music;” see Ueda 215-16.
7 Hogetsu, Kindai Hyoron Shu, I, Nihon Kindai Bungaku Taikei Series, ed.
Kawasoe Kumimoto (Kadokawa Shohen, 1972), qtd. in Keene 1984,261.
8 Keene cites U. S. President Ulysses S. Grant’s 1879 visit to Tokyo, when he
attended a Noh performance at the invitation of Prince Iwakura, as the turning point in
the preservation o f Noh; see Keene 1984,394.
9 Guth notes that the founding o f the Tokyo National Museum in 1872 was
intended to educate the Japanese public in the national sciences and technology, and that
82
the coining o f the term bijutsu did not occur until Japan participated in the Vienna
International Exposition of Art in 1873; see Guth 17.
10 Symbolism in Germany is often referred to as Neo-Romanticism.
11 Omuka notes that in 1915, Kyuji Sator, director if the Hibiyam Museum called
himself a fachiuchiwarist and put on informal performances; see Omuka 1996,23.
12Tamon Miki, Surrealism in Japan, (The National Museum o f Modem Art:
Tokyo, 1975), n. p ag ..
13 Theodor Adomo, Aesthetische Theorie, ed. Gretel Adomo ed. (Frankfurt,
1970), 235, qtd. in Btirger 1984,55.
14 One notable exception was Italian Futurism, which Benjamin repudiated for its
affinities with the Italian Fascists’ aestheticization of politics and war.
15 Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education o f Man, trans. Reginald Snell (New York:
Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1965) 35-36.
16 As BOrger phrases it: “...we have works of art because we have the
institution—if this were not the case we would only have beautiful objects or fetishes;”
see Btirger 1990,48.
17Adomo 1970,338, qtd. in Btirger 1984,55.
ls Huyssen provides a timeline for the institutionalization of Dada beginning with
the publication of Robert Motherwell’s The Dada Painters and Poets (1951);
retrospectives in Hanover (1956) and Dusseldorf (1958), and “The Art o f Assemblage”
exhibition at the Museum o f Modem Art, New York (1961), which incorporated “at least
the formal elements o f Dada into the modernist canon; see Huyssen 195.
19 Berman also argues that the “hostility to the ethos of the historical avant-garde,
which, claimed that aesthetic innovation could be intimately linked to social
transformations” is the common denominator linking conservatives cultural critics, the
“cybernetic” conservatism o f Jean-Francois Lyotard, and the “pre-stabilized positivism”
of Michel Foucault; see Berman 1989,43-44.
20 Rumold adds that the publishing house and relations between the author, critic,
and public are among the unique components o f the institutions o f art as they relate to the
field o f graphic design; see Rumold 465.
83
21 As proof, Graver observes that while the Symbolists may have been considered
avant-garde in 1870, by 1910 their aesthetic preoccupations had already entered the
mainstream o f modernist aesthetic practice; see Graver 10-11. Other theorists have noted
this phenomenon, most notably Poggioli and Clement Greenberg.
22 Bourdieu notes that Les Fleurs du Mai (1861), which was ignored by the press,
but was popular within literary circles, incited Baudelaire to “incarnate the most extreme
position of the avant-garde, that of revolt against all authorities and all institutions,
beginning with the literary institution;” see Bourdieu 1996,63-65.
23 Surveying fascist-subsidized Italian theatre companies, Berezin examines the
ways in which the fascist cultural bureaucracy predetermined theatrical form by
rewarding cultural entrepreneurs who linked their theatrical ambitions (and productions)
to the goals o f the fascist state; see Berezin 1994,1239.
24 Bourdieu’s defense o f aesthetic autonomy is also meant to “guarantee cultural
producers the economic and social condition o f autonomy in relation to all forms of
power,” including those of state bureaucracies; see Bourdieu 1996,345.
23 In this respect, Bourdieu calls upon cultural producers to collectively (and not
competitively) guarantee themselves power over the instruments o f production by
asserting the ‘Values associated with their autonomy,” and adds that only when cultural
producers are working collectively to defend the economic and social conditions o f their
autonomy will the “material and intellectual instruments of what we call Reason be
produced and reproduced;” see Bourdieu 1996,348.
26 For an extended discussion on this issue, see Graver 1-2.
27 For the complete text, see Kirby 1968,66.
28 For an extended discussion, see Piscator 20-21.
29 For an extended discussion, see Huyssen 1995,195.
30 Translated and edited by Apollonio, 126-131.
31 Apollonio, trans., 183-196.
32 Foregger, “Experiments in the Art of Dance,” trans. David Miller, TDR 19.1
(March, 1975): 74.
84
33 Raoul Hausmann, ed. Am Afgang war Dada (Steinbach/Giessen, 1972), 23-24;

also see Weinstein 21.
34 Subtitled “A Showcase”; Kirby, trans. TDR 15.1 (Fall 1970): 132.
35 Created by Francis Picabia and Erik Satie, with contributions by Marcel
Duchamp and Man Ray.
36 Hugo Ball was one notable exception. Prior to founding the Cabaret Voltaire,
Ball had been a student at the Max Reinhardt School in Berlin, where he studied acting,
directing, dramaturgy and theatre criticism. In 1911 he became the Dramaturg for the
Stadttheater Plauen, and in 1912 assumed that position at Munich’s Kammerspiele.
37 As Helena Lewis notes, chance played an important role in Tzara’s “recipe,”
wherein he intended to “produce a poem totally devoid of meaning by completely
eliminating the conscious role of the artist;” see Lewis 5.
38 This was a staple o f agit-prop performances, especially Foregger’s.
39 Cole notes that Brecht’s theatrical experimentation played out against a
panapoly o f theatrical innovations in Germany, most notably a flourishing workers’
theatre movement, which by 1930, was comprised o f over 1590 theatre troupes, many of
which traveled and performed provocative revues in vaudevillian and music hall styles all
over Germany; see Cole 26.
40 Though mostly concerned with historical avant-garde theatre and performance,
Graver’s typology is also applicable to other cultural fields, as well as contemporary
manifestations o f the avant-garde.
41 Major exhibitions include “Japons des avant-gardes 1910-1970” at the Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris in 1986.
42 The Japanese museum industry experienced the growth o f both public and
private museums in the 1980s and an increase in the number o f commercial art galleries;
see Munroe 25.
43 That the eventual establishment o f a degree-granting program in aesthetics was
headed by Raphael von Koeber attests to the high level o f esteem accorded to German
aesthetics at this time; see Ueda 284-5.
44 The Civil Code was introduced in 1896.
85
45 These two novels by Ozaka Koyo were Tajd Takon [Many Passions, Many
Griefs] and Korgikz Yasha [Demon Gold], both written prior to the advent of Naturalism
in Japan.
46 Sadoya Shigenobu, Hogetsu Shimamura Tokitaro Ron, 117, qtd. in Keene 1984,
541. He specifically noted that lyrical subjectivity be excluded from the “surface of
Naturalism because it frustrates or impedes the truth about nature.”
47 Ibid., 124-5; see Keene 1984,542.
48 In regard to Shoyo’s contribution to the theatre and the significance of such
plays as En no Gyoja [The Hermit], see Rimer 1984,17-22.
49 Ueda Motoko, “Mono no aware,” Kodansha Encyclopedia o f Japan, 6 qtd. in
Karatani 1994,38.
50 The playwright was often given odd jobs in the Kabuki companies, such as
writing programs, advertisements, and working the stage clappers.
51 Hagiwara Kyojiro was among these writers.
52 “Akushon dojin sengensho” [Catalogue for the First Exhibition of the Action
Group] trans. Vera Linhartova, Japons des Avant-Gardes, 151-152; English translation
mine.
53 Okakura’s statement that there “were no ideals o f the East,” but rather, “the
East itself was an ideal which could only be revealed through art,” was grounded in his
belief that art was “the only arena in which the East could stand up against the West;”
see Karatani 1994,35-6.
54 Natsume Soseki zenshu, 5 (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1960) 334-35, qtd. in
Munroe 23.
55 Brett de Bary, introduction, Karatani, The Origins o f M odem Japanese
Literature, (1994) 3, paraphrasing the philosopher Shimomura Torajiro.
56 Takeyuchi Yoshimi “Kindai no chokoku” [Overcoming Modernity], Takeuchi
Yoshimi zenshu v.8 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1980) 64-5.
TWO. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL COORDINATES OF THE AVANT-GARDE
This chapter identifies the social and political coordinates o f the historical avant-
garde in Germany and Japan. In order to achieve this, I will examine the institutional
frameworks governing cultural production and reception in respect to the historical
demarcations established in chapter one: (I) the turn of the twentieth century through
World War I in Germany, and the Meiji Era in Japan; (2) the mid-1910s through 1933,
hereafter referred to as the Weimar period, and the Taishd and early Showa eras; and
(3) the period from 1933 through the end of World War II.
To treat the sociopolitical valences o f the avant-garde separately from aesthetic
concerns is important for several reasons. First, it presupposes that the avant-garde
project possessed such dimensionalities in regard to its emergence and decline. Second,
it presumes that aesthetic discourse has political valences, especially when generated
from institutions outside the aesthetic realm. Third, it facilitates the establishment o f a
more complex set o f coordinates by which to assess the political efficacy of the avant-
garde project, given the differences among sociocultural institutions internationally. In
regard to the latter, I will construct a series o f discursive matrices by which the
institutions most directly related to the organization and regulation of culture at given
historical junctures may be compared.
Following the social-scientific methodologies advocated by such theorists as
Marcuse, Bourdieu, and Btirger, I will focus less on individual artists and artworks, than
on the social institutions involved in the regulation of a rt Accordingly, I rely upon a
wide range o f scholarship regarding German and Japanese social and cultural institutions,
and theoretical designations, such as Weimar and Taisho “liberalism,’*and German and
Japanese “fascism.” I will also tend to transformations in bureaucratic structures that
were influenced by, or had direct impact on, the fate o f the historical avant-garde in each
nation. As more than one scholar has noted, Hitler had more to say about art than any
other ruler in history; yet, it would be mistaken to confine Hitler’s discourse to the
aesthetic realm given his power to galvanize German sociocultural institutions towards
political ends. Conversely, to regard censorship and propaganda as purely political
86
87
manifestations with no ties to the aesthetic sphere would be equally misguided. In fact, a
major point o f comparison throughout this dissertation is the extent to which avant-garde
art and discourse paved the way for war-era propaganda and cultural policies.
I have organized this chapter in the following manner. The first section is devoted to
theories regarding the sociopolitical quotient o f the historical avant-garde. In this respect,
I draw upon a diverse range o f scholarship: Western and Japanese, historical and
contemporary. The second section compares transformations in German and Japanese
institutions in the three historical periods under consideration, with an emphasis on the
intersection between politics and culture. Included in this section are such considerations
as the counter-influences of Western and Japanese cultural institutions and practices, and
the effects o f political transformations on cultural policies. I will also consider theories
o f fascism, totalitarianism, and ffatemalism as they have been applied to Germany and
Japan, in order to better assess the nature and extent o f bureaucratic control over art and
the avant-garde. Overall, my goal is to elaborate upon the social and political coordinats
by which the avant-garde projects in Germany and Japan may be compared.
2.1 Social and Political Theories of the Avant-Garde
There is a long tradition o f treating the political components o f the historical

avant-garde in Western scholarship. Conclusiveness has proven elusive, however, given
the diversity o f reception patterns internationally, and how the sociopolitical goals of
discrete artists and movements have been interpreted over time. The centrality o f the
doctrine o f aesthetic autonomy in historical and contemporary theory has further
necessitated the consideration o f the sociopolitical contexts within which the avant-garde
emerged and declined. In contemporary scholarship, the dominant paradigm which holds
that the historical avant-garde intended both the abolition of the bourgeois institutions of
art and the sublation o f art and life has become a theoretical matrix by which to
distinguish the historical avant-garde from artistic modernism. In turn, scholars have
advanced an array o f theories concerning the sociopolitical quotient o f the avant-garde
88
and modernism, which I will survey by applying the categories of intention, production,
and reception to sociopolitical institutional realms.
It is important to note that critical affirmations and dismissals o f the political
valences o f the avant-garde have been conditioned by the ideological frameworks
surrounding various critical projects. While this may well apply to aesthetic discourse
throughout history, it seems especially viable given the avant-garde’s auto-critique o f art,
and the transformations it effected along the constellation o f receptive modalities.
Prior to World War I, the most fully developed avant-garde movements were
German Expressionism and the Italian and Russian variations of Futurism. At various
points in its development in Italy, Futurism was allied with a number o f political causes
prior to its affiliation with fascism. From the first manifesto, Marinetti aligned Futurism
with militarism, stating that it would “glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—
militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture o f freedom” (Apollonio 22). Early on, the
Futurists were high-profile advocates o f military action against Austria, especially in the
border disputes in northern Italy (Goldberg 13). In the “Electrical War Manifesto”
(1911), Marinetti specifically stated the Futurists’ intention to “strangle Pan-Germanism”
(Appolonio 108). Not only did the Futurists stage pro-military demonstrations, some also
fought in the same unit upon Italy’s entry into the war in 1915 (Willett 1978,25).
Marinetti was celebrated as a patriot when he opened his Milan apartment to
convalescing soldiers upon his own honorable discharge (Flint 32).
Given its longevity, it is not surprising that competing claims regarding the
ideological affinities o f Italian Futurism have characterized the history o f its reception.
In attempting to prove that Futurism did not “inevitably” point to fascism, Perloff has
identified similarities between the early manifestoes and political tracts, such as the
Communist Manifesto (82). In its early years, the movement was allied with a number of
workers’ causes, a fact not unnoticed by Italy's leading Communists.1 Prior to World
War One, Marinetti forged alliances with revolutionary trade unions, socialist clubs, and
unions, and made public appearances on their behalf (Mann 53). After the rise o f
Fascism, however, the political affiliations o f Futurism became subject to debate. In
1923, for example, Giuseppe Prezzolini denied any “ideal” connection on the grounds
that he considered Futurism to be “anti-traditionalist, individualist, libertarian, anti-
89
moralist and anti-Catholic;” whereas Italian Fascism was “classicist, hierarchic,

authoritarian, moralist and Catholic.”2 Benedetto Croce countered this claim a year later,
citing “the cult o f action, the disposition toward violence, the intolerance o f dissent,
desire for the new, disdain for culture and tradition, and the glorification of youth” as
significant linkages.3
To Cary, Futurism was as much a political as an artistic movement, because it
eventually revealed itself as a “high-powered publicity organ” on behalf of militant
nationalism (99). By the time that Mussolini assumed power, the Futurists were already
identified with military expansionism, hence their allegiance to a leader who possessed
what they considered “a supreme Futurist temperament” (Appolonio 159). By the late
1920s, however, the Futurists were subject to censorship, and ultimately became
marginalized by bureaucrats who found their political rhetoric and artistic
experimentation too extreme (Mann 54).
Because o f the Futurists’ propensity to deploy their art and influence towards
multiple sociopolitical ends, many scholars deem it impossible to discern a definitive
political agenda. This is further exacerbated when considering the international
manifestations o f the movement. The Russian Futurists adopted a vastly different
political agenda after the Revolution, best exemplified by the poet Mayakovsky’s
campaign for a Bolshevik culture (Williams 1989,58). In Japan, by contrast, Futurism
came to be associated with a number of left-leaning political causes, and also a host of
artistic tendencies when consolidated under the auspices o f the Futurist Art Association
(Omuka 1996,23). Benjamin’s famous characterization o f Futurism as a prop for
fascism is hardly applicable, therefore, to the movement when viewed as an international
phenomenon.
Expressionism poses equally compelling problems. To Garten, Expressionism
was a “specifically German phenomenon” that emerged from the alienation of liberal
intellectuals from society and their disillusionment with autocratic rule, and later, the
collapse o f the whole social fabric after Germany’s defeat in the war (59). The
Expressionists’ faith in the social utility o f art, particularly in the artist as a standard-
bearer for universal humanitarianism, led to their rejection o f aesthetic autonomy and art
for art’s sake.4 Pois notes that the movement renewed interest in the Romantic values of
90
individualism, emotionality, and spiritualism in the wake o f industrialism and

technological warfare (205). Deformation, hyper-emotionalism, and later, total
abstraction all came to be defining stylistic traits, particularly in drama (207).
As with Futurism, some scholars hold that Expressionism was too diffuse, both
geographically and organizationally, to discern a unifying sociopolitical agenda.
Enzenberger even disputes the viability of the label, arguing that it “became hypostatized
into a collective manifestation which, in reality, never existed,” since many so-called
Expressionists “did not even live to hear the word expressionism [which was] introduced
into German literature in 1914 by Hermann Bahr” (38). Though they rejected aesthetic
autonomy, the Expressionists did not subscribe to an overall anti-art platform typically
ascribed to the historical avant-garde, even though Graver has identified “pointedly anti
art elements” in the dramatic writings of Oskar Kokoschka and Gottfried Benn (11).
Patterns in the historical reception of Expressionism, moreover, suggest its
conduciveness to diverse political agendas regarding the social value o f art. The German
Dadaists, for example, were critical of what they perceived to be Expressionism’s
assimilation into German bourgeois culture. This critique reemerged in both leftist and
ultraconservative discourse prior to and after Expressionism’s ultimate renunciation by
the Nazis. Even more intriguing are theories that Expressionism, no less than
Romanticism, shared ideological affinities with National Socialism. Harrison notes that
the spread of Nazism coincided with an upsurge o f neo-Romanticism in art and literature
(21). Similarly, Pois cites Goebbels’ patronage o f Expressionist painters and their willing
compliance with the regime in its early years, as well as the activities o f a “second
generation” o f Expressionists affiliated with the National Sozialistischer Deutscher
Studentenbund (208). Stephens has argued that, given the inability of Weimar politics to
answer the demands o f the German people, the Expressionists and the masses that elected
Hitler to power shared a common experiential base: disillusionment (99).
After World War I, Futurism and Expressionism were infused with new social
exigencies, just as other avant-garde movements were emerging around the world. While
most o f these movements had international manifestations, they are typically associated
with the countries and the social contexts in which they first emerged, although here too,
scholarly consensus regarding their sociopolitical coordinates has proven difficult.
91
Kleinschmidt argues, for example, that the Dadaists adhered to the Hegelian-Marxist
paradigm that all art must contain a self-critique.5 Allan Greenberg, by contrast, refutes
this idea, despite the allegiance o f many prominent Dadaists to Communism in the Berlin
phase o f the movement Although acknowledging that in their refusal to participate in
the art market, the Dadaists had the potential to reveal the social connections between art,
financial investment, and social status, Greenberg concludes that their anarchistic
tendencies ultimately neutralized doctrinaire Marxism (1979,160). In a similar vein,
Kleinschmidt cites Huelsenbeck’s stream o f conscious “Fantastic Prayers,” a Dada
performance staple, as embodying “live disorder, rather than a dead order” so as to reflect
and amplify the “totality of a wicked and senseless age” (11). Sensational accounts of
Dada exhibitions made front-page headlines, and reports of their antagonism o f war
veterans at performances further substantiated the movements’ reputation for lawlessness
(Goldberg 68).
As Lewis notes, “though Dada was apolitical at the beginning, it was bom o f the
politics o f war,” and may more accurately be characterized as a “revolt against war” (1).
In regard to the radical politicization of the movement, many o f the German Dadaists
reacted to the failed November revolution by supporting the Spartacists, and constituted
themselves as propagandists for the social revolution (Shapiro 197). At the height o f the
Spartacist revolt in Berlin, some Dadaists took to the streets, singing anti-military songs
and distributing their review “Jedermann sein einer Fussball” in working-class districts
(8). Another turning point was the “Grosse Dada-Messe” Exhibition of 1920, at which a
prominent banner heralded: “Dada kampft auf der Seite des revolutiondren Proletariats.”
Subsequently, two sub-groups emerged: one for whom Dada represented a political
weapon at the service o f Marxism, and the other group which remained committed to
anarchy (Sheppard 1979,51).
Although Surrealism had its roots in the politicized phase o f Dada, Lewis notes
that it was also apolitical at first, only gradually assuming revolutionary postures between
1924 and 1929 through forged alliances with Communist and anti-Fascist groups (123-4).
While Surrealism lasted longer than Dada, it should be remembered that it was more of
an international movement, except for the noteworthy exceptions o f Germany and Italy.
By contrast, the Russian avant-gardists and Constructivists propagated aesthetic and
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political reforms in the aftermath o f the Revolution, and as such, were the artists most in
favor at a time when collectivization in all spheres o f society and culture was being
promoted. The affiliation between revolutionary art forms and early Soviet cultural
ideology was further galvanized by the establishment o f an official Commissariat of
culture and art. Headed by Anatole Lunacharsky, who understood and supported the
avant-garde, this organization included a theatre section (TEO) initially led by Meyerhold
and Trotsky’s sister Olga Kameneva (Fitzpatrick 304). The social imperative for all
cultural forms, including avant-garde ones, was agitation and propaganda. As Hughes
observes, “no state had ever set down its ideals with such radically abstract images” as in
early post-Revolutionary Russia, and that they were not actually constructed is “less
significant than that they were imagined (87).
Despite all o f these associations, many scholars maintain that in the final analysis,
the historical avant-garde project was, as a whole, politically neutral. In her survey of
prewar avant-gardists, Shapiro maintains that while they often held radical views, their
commitment to aesthetic innovation superseded their political goals. She notes that it is
rare to identity an avant-gardist affiliated with an organized political party prior to 1918,
and when they did, most gravitated to anarchism because it held the promise for greater
access to mainstream society and a higher degree o f aesthetic autonomy (222). Hughes
maintains that Dada was neither an art style like Cubism, nor beholden to a “pugnacious
socio-political programme like Futurism,” but rather adhered to the “central myth of the
traditional avant-garde, that by changing the order o f language, art could reform the order
o f experience and so alter the conditions of social life” (61). Poggioli, a noteworthy
theorist of the avant-garde, is skeptical about placing too much value on the political
agenda o f art movements in general, noting that “every avant-garde movement, in one of
its phases at least, aspires to realize what the Dadaists called the ‘demolition job,’ an
ideal o f the tabula rasa spilled over from the individual and artistic level to that o f the
collective life” (96). Such qualifications, while indicative o f the difficulties o f applying
totalizing theories to the sociopolitical agenda o f the historical avant-garde project,
highlight the necessity of treating the activities o f each movement distinctly in each
country.
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It is perhaps due to his avoidance o f such distinctions at the service o f a totalizing

theory that BOrger relegates the sociopolitical efficacy o f the avant-garde to the aesthetic
realm. Responding to criticism that he neglected the extra-aesthetic factors for the avant-
garde’s failure to abolish aesthetic autonomy, Burger admits that the high status o f
aesthetic autonomy in bourgeois society has not been undisputed, and has been called
into question whenever it is deemed useful to harness art. Furthermore, he notes that
“politicization, either overt or perceived,” was an inevitable manifestation o f the avant-
garde's attack on bourgeois autonomous art (1990,55). Finally Burger admits that the
liquidation o f aesthetic autonomy was accomplished in Germany not by the avant-garde
project, but by the “fascist politics o f art” (1979,173-99). To follow Burger’s logic,
therefore, because the avant-garde first revealed the social status o f aesthetic autonomy,
any subsequent attempts to effect its liquidation must have benefited from avant-garde
activities and discourse. Along these lines, Berman has posed the following question
regarding the political valence of the historical avant-garde: “does the avant-garde attack
on the traditional institution of art lead successfully to an aestheticization o f everyday
life, generating a life world that is particularly susceptible to bureaucratic control?”
(1989,125).
Many scholars have examined the similarities between avant-garde discourse and
praxis with those that emanated from totalitarian social and political institutions in the
interwar period. This line o f inquiry harkens back to the Frankfurt School critical
theorists, and Lukacs and Benjamin. In “The Author as Producer” (1937), for example,
Benjamin credited John Heartfield’s political photomontages with rejuvenating the
revolutionary propensities o f Dada (94). Heartfield, along with Grosz and Piscator,
belonged to the German Communist Party (KPD), and was, by 1918, devoting most of
his energies to proletarian a rt Heartfield also fulfilled two o f Benjamin’s requirements
for the producers o f political a rt the employment o f new means o f production (e.g.,
photography and montage) and active participation in class struggle (Huyssen 1986,154).
In “The Work o f Art in the Age o f Mechanical Reproduction” (1936), Benjamin noted
that through new techniques o f montage, the Dadaists managed to jettison the market
value o f their work by destroying the “aura” o f their creations, which they branded as
“reproductions with the very means o f production” (1968,237). Benjamin’s approbation
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o f the avant-garde and Dadaism, however, was qualified by his opinion o f Futurism,
which in the same essay he associates with the Fascist aestheticization o f politics (242).
By contrast, Lukacs excoriated the movements associated with the avant-garde on
formal grounds, and what he believed to be the counter-revolutionary propensities o f all
non-realistic a rt He was especially critical o f the Expressionists’ concentration on
surface appearances and their “fragmentary and chaotic subjectivity,” which he believed
rendered their art incapable of capturing the essence o f social reality with any accuracy.
Whereas Benjamin pointed to the Futurists’ propagandizing for militarism, Lukacs held
Expressionism to be a cipher for all anti-mimetic movements and tendencies—a position
he took up with even greater vehemence after the Nazis’ rise to power and, ironically,
after the movement had been suppressed. In the pacifism of the postwar Expressionists,
for example, Lukacs located the negation of revolutionary politics and the legitimation of
counterrevolutionary bourgeois cultural practices. In “Expressionism, its Significance
and Decline” (1934) he explicitly indicted Expressionism as “only one o f the many
tendencies in bourgeois ideology that grow later into fascism,” thus centralizing its role in
the “ideological preparation for fascism (1980,87). His severe criticism o f the avant-
garde was adopted by both leftist and conservative critics, and was to become
foundational to the adoption o f Socialist Realism in Russia and by Communist arts
federations around the world.
In Russia, the avant-gardists became increasingly subject to censure from all
comers o f society and from the top down. Lenin, who at the height of Zurich Dada lived
near the Cabaret Voltaire, characterized post-RevoIutionary Russian art as a “left-wing
infantile disorder” (Flint 29). In 1919, Trotsky chided the Futurists’ attack on tradition,
since their critique was more relevant to the “closed-in circle of the Intelligentsia” than to
the masses (Trotsky 30). The eventual adoption of Socialist Realism as the official
Soviet style resulted from a series o f debates, which were initiated at the Central
Committee Conference on Agitation and Propaganda (1923) and which culminated in the
Writer’s Conference o f 1934 (Hoberman 22-3). To Lukacs, an early and influential
proponent, realism was the preferred style given his belief that it was capable o f
portraying “from the inside, human beings whose energies are devoted to the building o f
a different future, and whose psychological and moral make-up is determined by this”
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(1963,96). To justify this claim, Lukacs divided the history of German literature into
two counter-tendencies, with the Enlightenment and its liberal, democratic propensities
on one side, and Romanticism, Expressionism, and the avant-garde on the other
(Hohendahl 19-20). Maintaining that Romanticism was an aberration in German arts and
letters, Lukacs called upon Marxism’s aversion to Romantic anti-capitalism, and its
emphasis on an objective and scientific critique o f bourgeois society in order to justify his
claim that realism was the legitimate forerunner to a socialist aesthetic (22).
Many scholars point to the debate between Lukacs and Brecht during the 1930s as
emblematic o f the ideological split between the two opposing positions in historical
Marxist aesthetics. This debate is also noteworthy in that it problematized theatre “form”
in contradistinction to dramatic content. As Cole notes, while Lukacs championed
“organic” realism, due to what he believed to be its potential for objectivity and its
resistance to external and formal concerns, Brecht credited audiences with a capacity for
adjusting to experimentation, maintaining that new technologies should be incorporated
in performance to more effectively involve them in the production of meaning (25). In
contrast, Lukacs criticized forms that employed montage, such as the documentary and
epic forms pioneered by Piscator and Brecht, on the grounds that they fetishized facts and
revealed the fictional, representational devices—both of which undermine their potential
objectivity (Livingstone 16-17).
Though unrelated to the historical exigencies o f prewar avant-garde criticism, it
has become commonplace in contemporary scholarship to refer to historical fascism as an
“essentially modem” project, and to apply such terms as “modernist fascism” or “fascist
modernism” to interwar cultural manifestations. Hewitt maintains that “the avant-garde,
no less than fascism, could think o f itself as both the completion and the liquidation of
historical sequentiality” (7). Hewitt’s position is in line with BQrger’s that the avant-
garde project was the culmination o f the bourgeois rationalization of the aesthetic sphere;
however, his model o f fascist modernism allows for both complex and even causal
relationships between discursive formations o f the avant-garde project and historical
fascism. Hewitt extends his formula to the entire epoch, positing “if the period from
1910 to 1939 can be characterized as the period o f the historical avant-garde, it must also
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be characterized as the period in which fascism emerged in its most fully developed
forms” (27).
To cultural historians, the search for a new form o f secular religion in Italy and
Germany resulted in the widespread acceptance o f fascist ideology. Gentile notes that
Italian Fascism may be defined as a synthesis o f secular and religious ideologies with a
permutation o f nationalism and modernity that was first contemplated by the Futurists.
After the Mussolini's ascendance, Futurism served as a propagandists organ inasmuch as
it seemed capable o f “realizing that synthesis by instituting a political religion o f the
nation and creating an ‘Italian modernity’ that would also be a model for a new European
civilization” (58). The “cultural roots” of Futurism and Fascism, therefore, intersected in
the common terrain o f “modernist nationalism,” a term Gentile uses to denote the social
ideology constructed upon “the myth o f the nation” (60). Interestingly, Gentile adds that
in constructing this myth, the militant Italian nationalists looked to Japan, since they
believed that it had “completed a process of revolutionary modernization without
sacrificing its national tradition” (68).
The historical avant-garde holds pivotal significance in Hewitt’s model of fascist
modernism for a number o f reasons. He argues not only that the avant-garde’s
emergence represented a “paradigmatic moment in the temporal understanding of
Western culture,” but also that it contributed to “the broader episteme that alone makes
categories such as ‘art’ and ‘culture’ thinkable” (21). To Hewitt, the precondition for the
historical recognition o f the possibilities and interrelationship between aestheticization
and politicization occurred when the distinction between the two discourses became most
apparent, specifically when the avant-garde attacked aesthetic autonomy and fascism
emerged as a viable political discourse (38).
In response to the assorted applications o f “modernism” and the “avant-garde” in
critical scholarship, Hewitt posits that the avant-garde should be considered the
“modernism o f modernism” rather than a subset of, or “historically motivated break”
with modernism (38). Furthermore, because the era o f the avant-garde happened to be
the one in which “aesthetics and politics themselves become thinkable as autonomous
discourses,” Hewitt posits that the relationship o f the avant-garde to modernism
contributed to a “fascist ideology consistent with an avant-garde aesthetic” (2). While
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Hewitt does not suggest that fascism and the avant-garde project were identical, he does
argue that they be viewed as “two contemporaneous developments in the self-
consciousness o f modernity’*(2). The early philosophical writings o f Martin Heidegger
present a good case for the historical linkage between fascism and modernization. An
early proponent o f fascism as a positive social force, Heidegger mistakenly believed that
fascism would succeed where modernization failed, particularly in its potential to renew
Western metaphysics (Brown 138-9).
One compelling application o f the theories of fascist modernism in theatre and
performance scholarship is to be seen in examinations of the dramaturgical and
performative components o f fascist rituals, such as the political assemblies, party rallies,
and military shows staged by the Italian Fascists and National Socialists. As Griffin
notes, a central concern o f both regimes was the construction o f a “civic liturgy” via new
iconography and ceremonial rites that had their roots in Christian ritual (25). Both
regimes also responded to the crisis of modernity by promising a return to mythological
and historical values through the figure o f a new imago patris: the Fuhrer and il Duce
(Berghaus 1996,48). Far from being forms of anti-modernism, Italian Fascism, and
Nazism were borne out o f a collective desire for “a sense o f transcendence [and] cultural
optimism” that were highly compatible with the forces o f modernization (Griffin 14).
Because public rituals were conducive to creating the illusion o f solidarity and
communities o f feeling at the service of political-ideological goals, they multiplied in
Italy as “public dramatizations o f the merging of the public/private self” (Berghaus 1996,
246).
Relatedly, Schnapp’s observation that the “simultaneous” and “sometimes
interconnected” efforts to “overcome the crisis of bourgeois theatre” is one linkage
between historical avant-garde performance and fascist theatre. To both the Futurists and
the Italian Fascists, the traditional theatre’s decline was due to an outdated repertory,
inadequate facilities, disjointed production practices, inefficient methods o f organization,
and competition for audiences from film and sporting events (83). The radical avant-
gardist solutions, which ranged from the politically-neutral Bauhaus to the more overtly
political epic and proletarian theatre, involved the construction o f a “total theatre,” in
which modem materials and techniques would become a total theatrical instrument to
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reengineer society (83). Similarly, the Dadaists, who realized the limitations of
confronting the bourgeoisie in the theatres, took their performances out onto the streets in
order to achieve this totality of effect (Berghaus 1985,305). The “total theatre” model,
therefore, has been applied to Nazi and Fascist public spectacles.
In a similar vein, literary historians have focused on the effects o f Nazi
bureaucratic control over literary production. A major assumption in this line of inquiry
holds that the total subservience demanded of writers led to a homogeneity in both
content and form that also explains the popularity of literature celebrating the party’s
platform. By contrast, Travers maintains that such mono-causal theories have obfuscated
the complexities o f Nazi-era literary production, which, he believes, is replete with
“contradictions, tensions and dysfunctions within the apparatus of Nazi cultural control”
(257). Especially significant for Travers were the power struggles that played out on
bureaucratic-institutional levels, such as those between Goebbels and Rosenberg about
the disenfranchisement o f the Expressionists, and between Otto Dietrich and Max
Amman about controls over journalists (260).
As Director o f the Office for the Supervision of the Cultural and Ideological
Education and Training o f the Nazi Party, Rosenberg was instrumental in the
development o f new arts initiatives and cultural policies. Rosenberg not only propagated
a Nazi aesthetic that was a “hodgepodge of ethnic and national attitudes” purportedly
derived from ancient Germanic virtues, he also succeeded in forming an infrastructure
specializing in museum purges and the vilification of modem artists (Gross 73). It
appears significant that the first generation o f Expressionists either fled Germany, or
adhered vigorously to the mandate o f creating heroic-volkish a rt Interestingly, Goebbels
at one time believed that the works o f such Expressionists as Emil Nolde and Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff reflected the “national spirit in German art which could be embraced by
the Third Reich” (62). A second generation of younger Expressionists pledged party
allegiance, even as they rejected the anti-modernist platform of Alfred Rosenberg. This
group o f mostly Berlin-based artists and writers led by Otto Andreas Schreiber, decried
Rosenberg’s efforts to institutionalize volkish art, claiming that their duties were to carry
the Nazi revolution into the realm o f the plastic arts, and to restore the “spirit in the arts”
that was lost during the Weimar period (Pois 208-210).
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According to George Mosse, the roots o f fascism lay in the same spirit o f
rebellion that gave rise to Expressionism, since they both began as “youth movements”
which claimed to “end the alienation o f mankind” (1966,35). He also points to the
Expressionists’ reaction against the “basic paradox o f industrial society,” namely that
although man was robbed of his individuality by conforming to bourgeois-era constraints,
he nevertheless sought to assert this individuality (Ernst Nolte 1966,14). Mosse also
notes that both Expressionism and Nazism, in theory, sought to “recapture the ‘whole
man,’ who was atomized by and alienated from society,” by emphasizing a return to
spirituality and instinct over the positivist and pragmatic solutions prized in bourgeois
society (1966,15).
Scholars of cultural fascism have argued that fascistic tendencies manifest
themselves all across Europe and were particularly prominent in certain artistic and
literary circles.6 Turner notes that while it is customary to attribute this appeal to the
baleful influence of Romanticism, Social Darwinism, and Nietzschean philosophy, he
maintains that this could more accurately be viewed as “an expression of a genuine crisis
of popular culture” (123). Other theorists have emphasized the interrelationship between
fascism and culture in terms o f psychoanalytical theory. Ernst Nolte has observed that
considerations o f the “style and methods of fascism” have been the primary focus of
psychoanalytic theories o f fascism, specifically as as a manifestation o f a collective
unshackling o f primitive instincts, the unconscious denial o f reason, and the spellbinding
of the senses through pageantry and parades (1996,20). As early as 1933, the German
psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich described fascism in terms o f sexual repression, whereby
an idealized “authoritarian family” attempted to “secure and maintain the power o f the
patriarch.”7 It is interesting to note that many Expressionist dramas explored patriarchal
oppression as a major theme, including Johannes Sorge’s Der Bettler, (The Better]
(1910), about a man who kills both o f his parents, and Amolt Bronnen’s Vatermord
[Parricide] (1920). Esselin notes that because such plays link the rejection o f parental
authority with a radical “ultra-violent pacifism,” their psychosocial extremism
“foreshadowed the extreme violence o f the Nazi regime and its concentration camps and
mass murders” (539). This is in sync with Lukacs’s claim that the Expressionists’
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absolute rejection o f violence ultimately served to stabilize and thus, “exponentially

increase violence” (Berman 179-80).
In contrast, social-scientific models of cultural fascism have emphasized the role
o f the institutions o f art as they operated within the social structures o f totalitarianism.
Marcuse, for example, maintained that the decline o f aesthetic autonomy between the
wars was attributable to the totalitarian states’ efforts to abolish affirmative, bourgeois
culture with its liberal ideas o f humanity, individuality, and rationality, as well as its
idealist philosophy and art (1978,126). To Marcuse, the ultimate political goal of
totalitarianism was not the abolition o f affirmative culture, but the replacement o f
“obsolete methods” of affirmation with modem ones (1988,3). In Germany, the Nazis
devised a range o f coercive measures to subordinate the individual’s will to happiness to
the service o f the state via the ideology of the volk. Their reification of heroic-folkish
realism as the official art and literary style became one o f these new methods o f
affirmation. Characterized by the heroization of man, an anti-materialist version of
history, and the precept that the “folk” existed prior to all social and class differentiations,
heroic-folkish realism supplanted the ideologies o f both aesthetic autonomy and avant-
gardism, both o f which ran counter to the goals of totalitarian affirmation (3-11).
In regard to the social and political valences o f the Japanese historical avant-
garde, the phenomenon o f Westernization emerges as the most important theoretical
matrix in both pre- and postwar criticism. Summarizing the effects o f Westernization on
Meiji culture, Ivy notes that while the Tokugawa era possessed many o f the typical marks
of the European modem (including a wealthy merchant class, a professional literati, a
vast publishing industry, and heavily populated cities), after the Restoration, “entire
worlds o f representation and thought were grafted onto existing indigenous ones... [thus],
“overturning o f the semiotic constellation” of Japanese culture (69). Counter-balancing
the widespread enthusiasm in Japan for Western culture, however, were frequent
backlashes against Westernization that emerged in social and aesthetic discourse
throughout the prewar period. What is significant, however, is that even at such
junctures, Westernization and Western standards maintained a discursive centrality.
In general, it is possible to locate two strains o f avant-garde criticism prior to the
war, both o f which can be considered politically-motivated, and primarily negative in
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regard to the avant-garde project overall. The first o f these discourses focused on the
negative impact o f the assimilation o f Western forms and served to legitimate ultra
nationalism, and later, Pan-Asian military expansionism. The second strain is
characterized by the automatic association o f avant-garde art, literature and theatre forms
with leftist or subversive political projects. While both strands of criticism ultimately
coalesced in the bureaucratic policies that governed wartime cultural production, a more
nuanced understanding of prewar Japanese anti-avant-gardism can be gleaned by
distinguishing between the historical external and internal social forces behind these two
discursive lines.
Ultimately, the precondition for avant-garde discourse in all of its varieties was
the recognition by the Meiji bureaucracy of the necessity o f transforming the institutional
codes and structures o f Japanese cultural production—an awareness that complemented
modernization and Westernization. This explains the aggressive cultural policies that
fostered the Kabuki Reform Movement, the academicization of Western art and literary
practices, and Japan’s widespread participation in international art expositions. If this
phase can be characterized by the endorsement of assimilating Western cultural forms,
the backlash o f the 1880s can also be traced to the recognition of the sociopolitical
implications of the transformation o f Japan’s cultural institutions. Karatani notes that by
advocating for the traditional Japanese arts, Fenollosa contributed to the social discovery
o f “tradition” in art by introducing a new position from which to see Japanese art as “a rt”
Like other social-scientific theorists, Karatani maintains that “art does not exist without
being regarded as art, in other words, without a discourse on itself;” thus, while Japanese
art had a long history, its status as “art” was affirmed when Fenollosa legitimated it as
such (1993,33). This newly constructed status for traditional Japanese cultural forms
coincided with its institutionalization through the establishment o f the Tokyo School of
Fine Arts and the Imperial Household Museum in 1889, both o f which, in part, can also
be perceived to be symptomatic o f a reactionary nationalism at the time (Guth 18).
Shifting social valuations o f traditional Japanese theatre can also be traced to the
Meiji bureaucrats’ awareness o f the social and political implications o f theatre’s
existence as an autonomous institution. From the early efforts to reform kabuki, which
was criticized for its “superficiality, extravagance and wantonness,” to its re
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institutionalization in the late Meiji era, traditional Japanese theatre survived because o f
the recognition o f its usefulness as both a diplomatic tool and a “propaganda medium for
keeping the public aware o f the past” (Amott 124-5). Adding to the overall complexity
o f such affirmations o f Japan’s cultural autonomy was that they were coincidental to the
assimilation of Western forms, which once begun, could not be halted. As Guth notes,
“the creation o f a canon o f traditional art through the classification and conservation of
designated national treasures went hand-in-hand with efforts to create a canon o f modem
art through the institutionalization o f official art schools and the inauguration of
government-sponsored exhibitions” (18).
While such phenomena do not specifically refer to Japanese avant-garde
activities, they provide a historical base to contextualize subsequent transformations in
the social status of art in Japan. Along these lines, the inherent avant-gardism of
traditional Japanese cultural products in the context o f late nineteenth-century cross-
cultural exchange has become a central qualifier to considerations of the avant-garde in
Japan. The roots o f this branch of criticism is traceable to the phenomenon of faponisme,
a residual and highly significant effect of the participation o f Meiji artists in international
art expositions and their influence on Western artists and Western popular culture
In the 1880s, traditional and modem Japanese art appeared in galleries throughout
Europe, and become the focus of such high-profile shows as “Exposition retrospective de
l’art japonais” (1883) organized by Louis Gonse.8 To many historians,japonisme had an
incalculable effect on Western modernism. Berger, for example, notes that the influence
o f Japanese art in Paris in the 1880s “undermined all illusionistic representation and
opened up entirely new prospects for the creation o f a new visual reality, a modem style.”
9 He points to the “Maitres de Festampe japonaise” at the Ecole des Beaux Arts (1890)
as a signal event, adding that it became increasingly difficult for progressive-minded
artists to avoid the lure o f Japanese art, and furthermore, that such related phenomena as
the incorporation of African sculpture in Cubism would have been “unthinkable without
the previous phenomenon o f japonisme (2). In Germany, major exhibitions o f Japanese
art were organized in the first decade o f the twentieth century in Vienna, Berlin, and
Frankfurt (189). Francastel goes as far to conclude thatjaponisme represented a rupture
in western art production analogous to developments in the Renaissance.10
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To many Japanese scholars, however,japortsime carried the inherent propensity to

perpetuate the negative cultural stereotyping o f Japan. Chiba notes that the success o f the
Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado (1885) marked the culmination o f “Japonisme,”
at the same time that it set the tone for a plethora o f satiric depictions o f Japan in
dramatic and musical entertainments (35). In regard to the beginnings of a valid
theatrical interchange between Japanese and the west, Chiba points to the European and
American tours of Kawakami’s Shimpa troupe in 1899 and 1902, due to the enormous
popularity of the lead actress Sadda Yaco, as well as the serious critical attention that was
paid to the troupe by Western critics.11
The historical, trans-historical, and cross-cultural valuations of japonisme,
therefore, bear out the scholarly paradigm that the reciprocal influence o f Japanese
traditionalism and European modernism poses problems for any assessment of Japanese
modernism and the avant-garde. On one hand,japonisme exemplifies the phenomenon
theorized by Karatani and Inaga whereby an inverted relationship between traditionalism
and avant-gardism marks East-West cultural exchange. When viewed as a by-product o f
the Meiji officials’ efforts to demonstrate Japan’s modernization to the world,japonisme
bears the stigma o f bureaucratized conformity to Western aesthetic and cultural ideals—a
critique that would inflect critical valuations o f subsequent cultural phenomena, including
the avant-garde. Significantly, this critique has proven to be a potent weapon for both
conservative critics advocating an autonomous and/or nationalistic Japanese cultural
agenda, and for leftist critics denigrating such manifestations due to their origins in
Western bourgeois society and/or the embourgeoisement of Japan. In effectJaponism e
has become a theoretical touchstone for any number o f critical positions regarding prewar
Japanese culture at home and abroad, ranging from the West’s exclusion o f the Japanese
avant-garde on the basis of its perceived derivativeness, to disavowals o f its significance
in the history o f Japanese art history.
After the initial backlash against Westernization in the 1880s, the first major
imported aesthetic movement to come under attack from all comers o f Meiji society was
Naturalism. Almost immediately after its rise to predominance in Japanese literary
circles, Naturalism was criticized by conservative forces in the literary establishment and
by government censors, especially after it was alleged that such works were linked with
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socialism. Furthermore, the Naturalists* struggle with competing ideologies of social

duty and individualism resulted in the abandonment o f the Confucian ideal o f service to
the state. In this regard, Japanese Naturalism is credited with having introduced the
modem concept o f the autonomous self [kindaijigaj. Sharon Nolte observes that since
the concept o f the individual hardly existed before the Meiji Restoration, the Naturalists*
discovery that individual experience was both ethically and aesthetically significant,
resulted in the “emancipation of post Restoration literature from unproductive
dependence on extraneous models, both Western and Japanese” (1987 63). Such
developments, however, were completely incompatible with Meiji state ideology.
Whether or not one considers Naturalism in Japan to be a constituent movement
o f the Japanese avant-garde project, it is important to remember that in the Japanese
theatre, its influence assumed unique dimensions that diverge from its impact in the
W est In this respect its proliferation in Japanese performance was coincidental to the
emergence o f the avant-garde in all cultural fields including performance, and was central
to the transformation of the institutions and institutional codes o f Japanese theatre.
Hdgetsu’s production o f Ibsen’s A D oll’s House, for example, “exploded the earlier and
milder portrayals o f estrangement in naturalist literature,” so that, by all accounts,
“audiences exited debating the characters as if they were real persons” (Nolte 1987,99).
Similarly, some scholars have applied the distinctive stylistic propensities o f the
Naturalist authors, particularly their preoccupation with internal subjectivity, to avant-
garde visual artists. As Clark notes, “while Japanese painters o f Taisho and early Showa
followed their Meiji forebears in their conscious redeployment o f‘Western’ styles, they
placed their own self-consciousness at the center o f their creative practice” (41). While
scholars highlight the Japanese avant-gardists* overt affiliation with leftist politics after
the rise o f the proletarian arts movements, Clark maintains that primarily, they “focused
the discourse on themselves and their own sympathies and identification, not on a social
or international other given to them by the state or, more broadly and abstractly, by
Japan’s historical situation” (41). This is an important qualification regarding the
Japanese avant-gardists* stance towards aesthetic autonomy, for while they may have
rejected certain aestheticist tendencies, for the most part, they sought to retain artistic
subjectivity at the core o f their discourse and practice.
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Such tendencies have also been attributed to emergent ideologies regarding the
social dimensions o f culture, an emphasis on individualism in Taisho aesthetics, and also
as a reaction to the state nationalism o f the late Meiji era and the attendant constraints
placed on artists and writers. This is nowhere more evident than in the theatrical field at
the precise juncture when the institutions of Japanese theatre were undergoing major
transformations. In this respect, early Taishd theatrical censorship is especially
illuminating regarding the internal pressures associated with Westernization. For
example, the extensive revisions demanded by the Home Ministry office for Hogetsu’s
production o f Die Heimat by Hermann Sudermann is indicative o f the perceived threat of
Western social mores as might be transmitted through Westernized cultural forms. In this
production, what the authorities found most offensive was that Sudermann left
unchallenged the heroine’s demands for freedom of choice in marriage, which ultimately
lead to her father’s death. Their directive that the heroine be repentant at the play’s
conclusion, however, was not based on any threat to either capitalism or the Emperor
system, but due to its incompatibility with the fundamental ideology of the kazoku kokka
[the family-state] promulgated in the Meiji era. To Sharon Nolte, this ideology, which
represents the “interpenetration o f family and state” was the government’s official
challenge to the growing trend of individualism, since “to demand autonomy within the
private sphere o f the home” was perceived as a direct violation o f the state’s hierarchical
family model (1984,675).
In regard to the perceived threat of Naturalism, the government levied a series of
regulations concerning the production and distribution of literature, and established a
literary board whose charges were to curb the excesses of individualism, inhibit writers
from dealing with social and political issues, and enforce the separation o f culture from
the social and political realms (Harootunian 1990,22). In this respect, Taishd
individualism must be interpreted as much as a reaction by artists to regulatory controls,
as to the emergence o f aestheticist and art-for-art’s sake ideologies. It is also the period
when the Japanese avant-garde was becoming most active. This unique constellation o f
aesthetic and social forces distinguishes the social construction o f aesthetic autonomy in
Taishd Japan as opposed to the West, since it developed considerably later than it had in
Europe, it was crystallized in opposition to (and not as a result of) bourgeois social
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conventions, and became predominant alongside (and not prior to) the ascendance of the
avant-garde.
As in Western scholarship, the sociopolitical coordinates o f the Japanese avant-
garde project are often gleaned from the political affiliations o f individual artists and
specific movements. The Mavoists, who were active from 1923 to 1925, were concerned
with the convergence o f cultural life and politics, and advanced a “dynamic relationship
between art and ideology, particularly anarchism” (Weisenfeld 1996,64). The painter,
political cartoonist, and stage designer, Yanase Masamu, who would later become active
in the Proletarian Arts movement, co-founded the leftist journal Tanemaku Hito [The
Sower] along with intellectuals and writers o f diverse political leanings united by their
opposition to capitalism (67). Contributing essays, artworks and political cartoons,
Yanase would become one of the most visible left-leaning avant-garde artists o f his
generation. As the movement progressed, the Mavoists became interested in politicizing
their work. Among the movement’s most politically radical members were the high-
profile anarchist-poet Hagiwara Kyojiro and Murayama Tomoyoshi, who would later
dedicate himself to proletarian theatre. In fact, zen ’ei bijutsu has become inextricably
linked with the more politically proactive proletarian arts movement, even though many
artists associated with Japanese avant-garde were to adopt the doctrine o f aesthetic
autonomy as their credo for a variety o f reasons, including political coercion.
The proletarian literary movement in Japan is considered by most scholars to date
back to the founding o f the Tanemaku Hito in 1921, which was directly tied to the
formation o f the Japanese Socialist League in 1920. While the attack on the literary
establishment launched by the writers associated with this journal harkened back to the
socialist-inclined literature of the 1900s and 1910s, their critique addressed new social
exigencies after almost two decades o f literature, that has been characterized as lacking
any considerable political or social consciousness (Iwamoto 159). In 1925, leftist writers
organized themselves into the Japanese Proletarian Literary Arts League, inspired by the
1924 Fifth Comintern Meeting in Moscow (162). This group was subsequently
reorganized into the Japanese Proletarian. Arts League in 1926—an organization
comprised exclusively o f Marxists (162).
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Although it was to come to full fruition in the Proletarian Theatre Movement o f

the 1920s, political theatre was not entirely without precedent Chiba points out that
Kawakami developed a dramatic style called “Soshi Shibai,” which eschewed kabuki
stylization, music and staging (39). Exploiting such topical issues as the Sino-Japanese
War, Kawakami combined elaborate spectacle and a declamatory performance style in
order to modernize kabuki and to capitalize on the public’s fascination with the war
(Keene 1984,396). In the late 1920s, Japanese proletarian drama proliferated, largely
due to the efforts o f playwrights such as Fujimori Seikichi and Murayama Tomoyoshi
(Powell 89). The socialist and proletarian theatre troupes encouraged Japanese
playwrights to write plays for their companies, and several important playwrights
emerged from their early association with these companies, including Kubo Sakae
(Ortolani 250). The left-leaning theatre companies o f the 1920s, moreover, can be
credited with introducing two important elements that would also influence many
Shingeki companies: the replacing of the “all-important figure of the company leader”
by a collective leadership of actors; and the preference given to original Japanese plays
over Western ones (Ortolani 251).
While I will elaborate upon the activities o f the Proletarian Theatre Movement in
chapter three, it is important to note that its activities were tied not only to the Japanese
avant-garde, but also to the burgeoning institutions o f shingeki—another factor that must
be considered in regard to the sociopolitical matrices of Japanese avant-garde
performance. For now, it will suffice to note that the decline of the prewar Japanese
avant-garde has been attributed to the widespread application o f the doctrine o f KokutaU
first advocated by Taishd ideologues as an antidote to competing ideologies such as
socialism, materialism, and individualism (Munroe 24). As Brooker notes, the section in
the Kokutcd on aesthetic values described the “Japanese way” as one in which the
“individual or personal creativity” o f the artist was bound within the context of “an
inherited and well-learned artistic tradition” (257). Suspicious of the political affiliations
o f the avant-gardists, and even more secure in their condemnation o f proletarian artists,
the police arrested numerous artists, writers, and theatre practitioners, and either severely
curtailed their freedoms, or forced them to undergo public ideological conversion.
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Here another phenomenon that has no equivalent in the history of Western

censorship or totalitarian arts policies is worth mentioning, due to its significance for
understanding the complicated legacy o f the Japanese historical avant-garde. Tenko,
which is translated as “ideological conversion,” was offered to almost every political
radical and radical artist who was arrested as an alternative to torture, long prison
sentences, and execution. While the specific criteria for any particular individual’s
conversion were determined by police authorities, most all involved a public admission
o f regret for subscribing to left-wing political ideologies, and an affirmation of support
for Japan’s military aims. O f the hundreds of writers who belonged to the Japanese
Proletarian Arts Federation (1928-31) and/or the Federation of Proletarian Cultural
Organizations o f Japan (1931-4), more than ninety-five percent are believed to have
undergone conversion (Tsurumi 41). Perhaps the most noteworthy of these conversions
was Murayama Tomoyoshi’s, indisputably among the most significant of the Japanese
avant-gardists, whose activities spanned the visual arts, performance, stage design, and
proletarian theatre. While the details of Murayama’s tenko will be elaborated upon in
chapter four, it is important to note that this phenomenon has obscured the legacy of the
Japanese avant-garde in comparison to the W est For unlike most of the German avant-
gardists, who continued to work and promote their aesthetic and political goals in exile,
in Japan, sustained artistic activity was granted to former avant-gardists based on their
willingness to renounce previously-held aesthetic and sociopolitical views, and/or their
active and creative participation in the war effort
This discussion has highlighted historical and trans-historical evaluations of the
sociopolitical valences of the avant-garde project in Western and Japanese scholarship as
it relates to political developments in the interwar period. It is important to note,
however, that other scholars maintain that the avant-garde project also maintained social
objectives that may have been less politically volatile, yet no less challenging to society.
Oehler, for example, posits that the avant-gardists were less interested in destroying art as
an institution than they were in negating the very concept o f absolute cultural values. In
Fountain (1917), Andre Breton’s infamous sculpture o f a urinal, Oehler locates a critique
o f extra-aesthetic social institutions related to sexuality and bodily waste (149).
Similarly, Weisenfeld notes that the Mavoists “employed a theatrical eroticism and
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sexuality as a method o f resistance against publicly sanctioned morality” that undermined

traditional, Japanese familial/national identities (1996,68-9). To Geyer-Ryan, because
the avant-gardists’ attack on institutions was inseparable from their intention to obliterate
“a unified presentation o f the subject,” they are distinguishable on the basis o f their
“rhetoric o f forgetting, ”in contrast to the modernists whose work was largely devoted to
memory and remembering.12 Also, by criticizing the structures and influence of such
institutions as museums, libraries and academies, the avant-gardists attacked the “store
rooms o f collective memory” central to the cultural identity of bourgeois society (Geyer-
Ryan 314). Similarly, Graver notes that artistic modernism arose when the high culture
o f the industrial, imperial, bourgeois era parted company from the “sociopolitical values
and ambitions of the dominant class,” thus setting itself up in diametric opposition to the
processes o f modernization (17). The historical avant-garde, on the other hand,
celebrated these processes, and in essence became the “modernism o f modernism”—a
posture undeniably applicable to Futurism, Dada and Mavo.
Along these lines, many theorists have located continuities o f avant-gardist and
anti-avant-garde discourse in assorted critical, social and political projects in the postwar
era. Huyssen notes that in the 1950s, the rediscovery o f Dada was re-inscribed into
cultural politics as an antidote to an increasingly canonized modernism in poetry,
narrative and painting. Berman notes that in the 1970s, the historical avant-garde was
denounced by both liberal and neo-conservative critics alike: to the new right, the anti
bourgeois sentiments o f the historical avant-garde informed the “excessive” influence of
a new class of intellectuals that emerged in the 1960s, while leftist advocates of
postmodern theory pronounced the obsolescence o f the avant-garde’s goal to radically
transform the social totality (1989,43-4). Mann suggests that the legacy o f a “half-
century o f revisions and counter-revisions in avant-garde scholarship is vital to the
historical discourse o f the avant-garde,” thus resolving what he considers the paroxysm in
avant-garde theory, specifically that for the avant-garde to have succeeded would mean
the death o f art (55). Huyssen adds that most academic criticism o f the historical avant-
garde has been “ossified into an elite enterprise beyond politics and everyday life,” even
though the transformation o f both was central to the avant-garde project (4).
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Ivy has applied the concepts o f reactionary and fascist modernism to prewar
Japanese cultural production, specifically as they may refer to the coexistence o f a
capitalist, technological modernity and a “totalizing drive to reunite its disunities within
an archaic, continuous and harmonious culture” (Ivy 14-15). In this respect, prewar
Japanese anti-avant-garde discourse and anti-Western discourse can both be seen as one
version of reactionary modernism, just as the Japanese avant-gardists’ discursive
celebration o f technology can be seen as another. Ivy maintains, however, that
throughout the postwar period as well, recurring ideologies constructed by Japanese
culture industries and institutions have consistently revolved around the voice o f the folk
[shominj—ihe “abiding people” or “everyday Japanese folks, who have existed outside
history” because o f their “presumed embodiment of the dialogical, of the communal,
functions as a negation o f the archive” (18). Perhaps the most compelling postwar
conflation o f aesthetic, avant-garde, and political discourse can be found in Karatani’s
observation that “Japan has always been conceived of, by itself as well as by others, in
aesthetic terms.”13 Referencing the traditional aesthetic notion of mono no aware as the
theoretical matrix from virulent nationalism emerged in the prewar period, Karatani
asserts that “Nationalism comes into existence in the aesthetic consciousness; it is
essentially grounded less upon intellectual/moral speculations than upon an
emotional/corporeal community” (1994,34).
Along these lines, it is worth noting that theories o f the avant-garde have also
been subject to critical inquiry in regard to their sociopolitical valences. The political
agenda behind the critical projects o f Adomo, Benjamin, and Lukacs, for example, have
become more transparent with the passing o f time. Contemporary theories, however, can
be more difficult to decode. To Berman, Bvtrger’s underlying social agenda in The
Theory o f the Avant-Garde—specifically his historicization o f Lukacs and Adomo, and
his defense of a multiplicity o f aesthetic models—can be interpreted as a “response to the
waning of the West German New Left” and a “distant approach to the postmodernist
fetishization o f eclecticism” (52). Similarly, while Btirger “insists on maintaining a
theoretical discourse divorced from a cultural history of the present,” Berman locates
affinities between his model o f the historical avant-garde project and postmodern culture
in that the latter may also be characterized by the “eradication o f aesthetic autonomy,
I ll
ubiquitous aestheticization, and the collapse o f liberal individuality” (52). Furthermore,

because o f his “argumentative insistence on the relative autonomy o f the aesthetic realm”
BOrger is precluded, methodologically, horn relating the emergence (and decline) o f the
historical avant-garde to such extra-aesthetic factors as urbanization, industrialization,
World War One, or to examining the social and trans-historical consequences of the
avant-gardists’ aims of conflating art and life that may be implicit in postmodemity.
While I will revisit and apply many o f the concepts and theories discussed here in
subsequent chapters, I will conclude with two observations that seem most appropriate to
my comparison o f prewar sociopolitical transformations in Germany and Japan that will
comprise the remainder o f this chapter. The first is Shapiro’s observation that it was not
so much their politics, but rather, the “stage on which history determined they should act
them out” that renders the avant-gardists more politically-charged than other art
movements in history (223). While I only partially agree with Shapiro’s conclusion, I
concur with her underlying premise that it is necessary to examine the social and political
institutions that were most related to the emergence and decline o f the historical avant-
garde in each national context Tangentially, I seek to elaborate upon Shepard’s
proposition that while it may not be possible to credit the historical avant-garde with
advances in the field o f political theory, it is highly significant that through their art and
performance they consistently posed three important questions: “What kind of state is
most appropriate to human nature?; What political stance should the individual adopt in
everyday life?; and How, if at all, can art be political?” (40)
2.2 Comparison o f German and Japanese Political and Social Institutions
This section provides an overview o f the political, social, and cultural institutions
in Germany and Japan from the late nineteenth century through the end of World War II.
Drawing upon a wide range of comparative and historical scholarship, this material is
organized around a series o f comparative matrices that I believe to be the most salient
regarding the emergence and decline o f the historical avant-garde project My selection
o f these coordinates has been guided by the necessity of condensing voluminous
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historical data and widely divergent interpretations regarding the period in question.
While this literature review is highly selective, my goal is to provide a thorough overview
o f sociopolitical transformations in Germany and Japan, and their effects on cultural
production.
I have divided this material into three sub-sections. The first examines
Germany’s role in the transformation of Meiji social institutions. I also compare cultural
and aesthetic manifestations to the degree that they reflect a high level of interaction with
the political sphere. The second sub-section focuses more closely on similarities and
differences in sociopolitical ideologies that emerged after World War I, including
liberalism, individualism, and aesthetic autonomy. The third sub-section surveys a range
o f political theories of fascism, totalitarianism, and fratemalism as they have been applied
discretely and comparatively to both nations. I also consider similarities and differences
in bureaucratic control over cultural production, wartime propaganda, and the
sociocultural ramifications o f the German-Japanese military alliance during World War
n.
2.2.1 German Influence on Meiji Political, Social, and Cultural Institutions
Many scholars consider it significant that Japan and Germany entered onto the
international political stage at roughly the same time, with the reinstallation of the Tenno
as the ruling sovereign in 1868, and the proclamation of the Prussian king as Emperor in
1871. In both countries, national unification was consolidated through military actions
that were precipitated as much by international military threats, as from internal pressures
to accomplish the self- governing objectives o f civil so ciety (Hayashi 462). Due to the
perception o f Meiji bureaucrats that a special kinship existed on the basis o f their
respective international standings, they looked increasingly to German models of
domestic policy. This perception was further galvanized when Japanese diplomats and
intellectuals, after touring Europe and America, returned home with the highest esteem
for the patriotism, national unity, and bureaucratic efficiency they found in the decade
after the establishment o f the Reich (Martin 9). In a meeting with Japanese diplomats in
1873, Bismarck compared Japan’s current domestic problems with those o f Germany’s
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prior to its unification (18-19). The Japanese were also impressed by the strong
Protestant ethical consciousness of the German middle class, which in Japan had its
equivalent in Confucianism (Kuhnl 31).
Germany’s role in transforming Japan’s social and political institutions
culminated in the establishment o f the Meiji Constitution in 1889, and the promulgation
o f the Imperial Rescript on Education the following year (Martin 33). In 1881, the
Emperor vowed that he would provide a constitution and establish a parliamentary
government within ten years. Towards these ends, Meiji bureaucrats studied several
Western models, o f which Germany’s proved most influential (Reynolds 38). By 1890,
Japan also possessed a “thoroughly Germanified military establishment,” to replace the
French model. Martin attributes this transformation to Major Jacob Meckel, who trained
high-ranking Japanese officers in Prussian military administration and bureaucracy (38-
40). The Prussian military code stipulated an ethic of duty and unquestioned obedience,
which also inflected German life and institutions. This model was particularly conducive
to Japan, given that bushido, the traditional samurai warrior code, had an even longer
tradition (21). Japan also adopted the Prussian Royal Supreme Command, and more
significantly, the Prussian model that guaranteed a high degree o f autonomy for the
military (Hayashi 462). This separation o f civilian and military authority is significant in
that the Japanese and German militaries could exert a high degree o f political influence—
a situation that would impact future politics.
Despite inevitable similarities that resulted from Japan’s assimilation of German
institutional models, Hayashi points out two key differences in the social and political
spheres. First, in the late nineteenth-century, social mobility was greater in Japan than in
Germany. Whereas the Reich’s civil and military leadership was drawn from the newly
empowered aristocracy, the overthrow o f the ancient regime in Japan precipitated the rise
o f leaders who could advance on the basis of merit, rather than class or social status
(463). Allinson emphasizes, however, that the Meiji ruling class must be viewed as a
“hereditary elite,” which accepted the authoritarian traditions o f the past, and relied on
custom, coercion, and the acquiescence o f the populace (125). The second major
distinction noted by Hayashi relates to features o f the monarchy. While the establishment
o f the Hohenzollem crown was secured by military supremacy, the restoration o f the
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Tenno was legitimated by an ancient legacy that stipulated worship o f the Imperial family
as the divine sovereign authority, despite its rupture in power through the middle ages
(464).
While Japan was indebted to England and America for introducing modem
industry and promoting foreign trade in the early Meiji era, after 1881 it turned to
Germany for assistance in those fields that were to come under the jurisdiction of the
central government Yamagata Aritomo, the military reformer who was instrumental in
the transition to the Prussian system, also became responsible for the police force when
he was appointed as the Minister o f the Interior. Under the tutelage of German police
officials, the Japanese police forces in Tokyo and Osaka were completely restructured,
while the prison system was reorganized and enlarged (Martin 37). Under the auspices of
the Police Bureau, the Meiji censorship apparatus matured in the 1880s, when special
laws regulating publications gave the Home Ministry “virtually absolute power to
prohibit the sale o f anything deemed to be disruptive o f peace and order, or injurious to
public morals” (Rubin 1985,73). Heavy restrictions were levied on the press in order to
diffuse political dissent as the Constitution was drafted. From 1883 to 1887, one hundred
seventy-four periodicals were banned outright, while hundreds of journalists were
imprisoned on a variety of charges (Kasza 4-6).
In regard to rapid urbanization, a range o f Western architectural styles were
adopted for Japanese public buildings, such as the French Renaissance style for the
Imperial Palace, the Neoclassical for banks, and the Baroque for government offices (Dan
136). The first Diet Building—which burned down a few weeks after its formal
opening—was designed in the “pompous Wilhelmine style” by Berlin-based architects
(Martin 38). From Germany, Japanese students brought back classical music, folk songs
and Western instruments. For the new Navy band, the Japanese commissioned the
Austrian composer Franz Eckert, who later taught at the Tokyo Academy of Music and
consulted on Japan’s national anthem (Tanabe 518).
Western medicine had been brought to Japan almost exclusively by German
doctors, who comprised the core faculty o f medicine at Tokyo University (Martin 44).
The Prussian dual-system o f education was faithfully copied in Japan, so that elementary
schools served the same purposes as the German Volksschule, while academic freedom
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and research were prescribed for Japan’s secondary schools (22). O f the hundreds of
Japanese postgraduates who received a state scholarship to continue their studies abroad,
the largest percentage did so in Germany. Furthermore, while German professors held
most o f the foreign teaching appointments in Japan’s universities, many of their Japanese
colleagues had themselves studied in Germany. Concurrently, however, the pressures
wrought by the People’s Rights Movement o f the late 1870s and early 1880s, caused the
government to recognize the value of regulating the content of education. Their first
move in this direction was to compile a list o f books that were deemed favorable to
democracy, and to forbid their use as textbooks (Ienaga 19). This paved the way for an
anti-democratic, absolutist Constitution that could incorporate such edicts as the Imperial
Rescript on Education. Another top state priority was to codify the written and spoken
language. Towards this end, the “phonetic scripts of the West served as models o f
efficiency, ease and transparency,” while regional diversity was contained through the
standardization o f the Edo dialect (Ivy 75).
The disciplining of art history in the Japanese academy followed two main strands
o f development The first positioned the study o f aesthetics as a sub-field o f Philosophy,
while the second involved the study o f Western art history. In regard to the first Ogai
played a key role in disseminating German aesthetic theory, through important
translations such as the writings s of the neo-Kantian philosopher Eduard von Hartmann
(Rimer 1987,63). The emphasis on Western art history was first advanced by Fenollosa,
who delivered lectures at Tokyo University in 1881, and also by Rapahel von Koeber,
who taught Aesthetics and Philosophy at Tokyo University for almost three decades.
Rimer notes that it was not until the 1920s that a systematic approach o f teaching the
history o f art objects as distinct from general aesthetics was attempted, owing to the
efforts o f both Sawaki Yomokichi (who introduced Heinrich Wofflin’s theories), and Dan
Ino, Sawaki’s successor at Tokyo University (64-5).
By the late 1880s, the Meiji regime was more interested in importing Western
administrative models and industrial techniques than it was in Western political and
social ideas. That the intelligentsia was more highly influenced by contemporary trends
in Western philosophy and political theory than desired came to be perceived as a threat
to Japan’s autonomy. This resulted in a backlash against Westernization, which, in turn,
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gave rise to a series o f measures designed to curtail civil, academic, and artistic freedoms
(Kato 183). By 1890, the government had enacted measures to maximize civic
responsibility by promulgating compulsory education, a conscript army, and public
elections o f local and national assemblies (Nolte 1984,671). It had also paved legislative
ground for the regulation and censorship o f intellectual and artistic production. The
Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) established the state monopoly over the
determination o f social values (Maruyama 5). Designed for the moral edification of the
Japanese citizenry, the chief commentator on the ordinance was the influential
philosopher Inoue Tetsujiro, who had been educated in Germany. To Martin, the
Imperial Rescript represented “an ideological retreat from the move toward a Westem-
style constitutional state,” at the same time that it paved the way for an “aggressive
foreign policy based on nationalistic ideologies bolstered by military might” (21-22).
Combining Confucian family values and Shinto mysticism into a state ideology, the
Imperial Rescript was read everyday in all Japanese schoolrooms until 1945. Other
regulatory controls followed the Rescript, such as the Publications Law (1893), which
authorized the Home Minister to halt circulation o f literary, scientific and statistical
journals that might threaten public order and morals (Kasza 18-19).
While Japan had adopted many o f Germany’s sociopolitical structures throughout
the Meiji era, cultural exchange was not entirely one-sided. Martin notes that in the
1870s, Germany’s interest in Japanese culture was mostly limited to collecting antiques.
This would change, however, over the course o f the next few decades. Aside from the
many German scholars and scientists who taught at Japanese universities, many Western
scholars became interested in studying Japanese culture. Karl Florenz, the founder of
German Japonology, taught German philosophy at Tokyo University and carried out
pioneering research on the mythical past o f Japanese history. His efforts culminated in
the translation o f Nihongi, the Japanese Annals o f592 to 697, first written in 720.
Florenz’s efforts did much to promote more serious interest in Japanese history and
culture, especially in regard to the Tenno ideology (Martin 47-8).
Cummings suggests that no country was more aware o f the costs and benefits o f
international competitiveness in the late nineteenth-century world system than Japan.
Cross-cultural formulations, such as the “Western threat” in Japan, and Japan’s “relative
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backwardness” in the West, were mobilizing forces behind many Meiji domestic and
international policies (1993,35). On the domestic front, the national polity was equated
with the divine imperial line, as both proof and inspiration for the “unique virtues o f
Japanese politics and society” (Nolte 1984,674). A key feature of this ideology was that
family harmony was not merely useful to the well-ordered state, but also the state’s
microcosmic image. In this context, the Confucian values o f loyalty and filial piety
served to validate increased regulation of civil and academic liberties (674). At the same
time, Japan’s actual, rapid success at modernization fostered two negative images of
Japan in the West as manifest in England’s “Japanophilia,” and Germany’s ‘Tear of
yellow peril” (Lehmann 178). International relations between Germany and Japan were
temporarily halted in the late 1890s, when Germany joined the Triple Intervention that
forced Japan to return land won in Sino-Japanese War (1884-85). Another by-product of
the war was that Japanese no longer viewed China as the center of classical culture,
resulting in an overall devaluation o f its historical influence on Japanese traditions, arts
and education. Mobilization for war also spurred on Japan’s first widespread propaganda
campaign against a foreign power, with anti-Chinese biases inflecting every element of
society prior to and during the conflict, especially in primary education (Ienaga 6-7). By
the time that political tensions with Russia erupted in Japan’s declaration o f war in 1904,
the Meiji state was prepared to promulgate policies designed to mobilize widespread
public support and silence dissent. The press was a major factor for the public’s approval
o f military action, higher taxation, and the escalation o f military armament The sole
voice o f pacificism during this period was the Heimin shimbun newspaper, founded by
the socialists Kotoku Shusui and Sakai Toshinko, which itself faced the harsh Press
Regulations of 1903 (Rubin 1984,59).
Japan’s victory over tsarist Russia in 1905 secured its place as a world power,
solidified its economic predominance in Asia, and paved the way for its dominance over
Southern Manchuria and the annexation o f Korea in 1910 (Martin 85). Still, while Japan
was victorious after a decisive battle with the Baltic Fleet, over one hundred thousand
servicemen died (Rubin 1984,59). In the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese war, Japanese
writers, intellectuals, and increasingly the ever-expanding reading public, turned their
attention to Naturalism (73). Shimizaki Toson, who had established his reputation as a
US
Romantic poet, published the Naturalistic novel Hakai in 1906, which Natsume Soseki
hailed as “the only genuine novel written during the Meiji era (73). Interestingly the
same period also witnessed the emergence and p o p u larity of Western art-for-art’s sake.
In 1908, Kitahara Hakushu and Kinoshita Mokutaro founded the Pan no Kai to promote
aesthetic autonomy, reject Naturalism, embrace the “exoticism o f the West,” and express
“nostalgia for the Japanese past” (Keene 1984,241). With Ogai serving as general
advisor, their print organ, Subaru, became the leading literary magazine—a status it
enjoyed through 1913.
While censorship had relatively little impact on the development of Japanese
literature prior to the Russo-Japanese War, the perceived radicalism of Naturalism led to
new governmental measures directed against any threat to national unity (Rubin 1985,
73). In February 1908, Ikita Kizan, author o f The City, and Ishibashi Shian, editor and
publisher o f the literary magazine Btmgei Kurabu, were found guilty of having violated
the Press Regulations, precipitating a “groundswell o f public indignation” against
Naturalism and its rote association with “sexual depravity” (Rubin 1985,93).
Meanwhile, the Japanese Socialist Party, established in 1906 and dissolved by the
government a year later, once again became a target o f suppression in 1908, when a
Tokyo labor demonstration turned into a riot known as the “Red Flag Incident”
(Swearingen 5). Rubin cites 1909 as the worst year for the suppression o f literature in
modem Japanese history, and also when the Diet Press Law replaced the pre-
parliamentary Press Regulations o f 1887.14 The Newspaper Law of 1909, which was
passed primarily to silence the socialist and labor press, was applied with varying degrees
o f severity through 1945 (Kasza 40-1). In 1910, the trial and execution o f twelve
anarchists alleged to have attempted the assassination o f the Emperor, turned public
sentiment against radical political movements, and led to the virtual cessation o f socialist
activities in Japan for the next decade (Swearingen 30). Furthermore, the government
used the trial as a “pretext to prohibit all publications about socialism” (Ienaga 17).
Rubin cites 1910 as the beginning o f an even more radical strain o f nationalism,
when the doctrine o f the “family state” (kazoku kokka) was codified as both a
pedagogical imperative and a national ethical system. From this doctrine, Japanese
schoolchildren were taught Shinto myth as historical fact, and the sacredness o f the
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Emperor as the descendant o f the Sun Goddess. With the family state ideology, wherein
the Emperor served as head o f a national family comprised o f individual households, the
national polity was restructured around the realities o f modem, capitalistic society (110).
A similar “spiritualization” o f military codes and manuals occurred between 1908 and
1914. The “family state” thus became a legitimating ideology for the rejection of both
democracy and an English-style constitutional monarchy, and legitimated the “semi
divine” Emperor, whose role was to preside over, but not directly govern the state
(Barshay 4).
In 1911, the Japanese censors banned over ninety books associated with
socialism, and the Ministry o f Education ordered all libraries to lock up their Socialist
holdings (Rubin 1984,149). This policy lasted for nearly a decade, often referred to as
the “winter years o f socialism” (168). That same year, the Ministry o f Education
established a Committee on Literature, in part, to counter what the government
considered to be the deleterious effects o f Naturalism. Natsume Soseki, a vocal critic of
the Committee, castigated the government, in public lectures and in print, for its
“insensitivity to the literary demands of a new generation.”15
By contrast, German Naturalism was all but over by 1895, making way for a host
o f “isms” to flourish by the turn of the century. Hermand attributes this relative aesthetic
autonomy to an economic upswing caused by military expansion and overseas
imperialism, and the resultant hegemony in the political and intellectual sectors (93). By
the time that Kaiser Wilhelm declared war against Russia and France in 1914, most
Germans actively supported the war efforts—especially artists, with the noteworthy
exception o f the Expressionists (96). Many painters fervently reflected the spirit of
nationalism and bellicosity, resurrecting the spirit o f German “knightliness” as a
dominant theme. Art critics also looked favorably on war efforts, including Karl
Scheffler, who predicted that the war would result in the rebirth o f a “unified German art”
so that a “new comprehensive national style [would] arise from the depths o f the
people.”16 A national German style never materialized, however, primarily due to the
daunting effects o f the war on idealism, and also because the art market—wherein artists
were linked to certain galleries or circles o f painters—remained essentially unchanged
(98). Even the most patriotic o f artists adopted a multiplicity o f styles, making no
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concerted effort to develop a unified German art (104). When it appeared that Germany
would not meet its goal o f defeating Russia, calls for pacifism emerged in all o f the arts
after 1917, including a more radical strain of Expressionism, and, although it was
manifest in strikingly different ways, Dada. (Willett 18).
Despite the proliferation o f new art movements, there was a long tradition of anti-
modemism and censorship in Germany. For example, when Ibsen’s A D oll’s House
premiered in Munich in 1880, the theatre management insisted on a happy ending before
the play could be performed (Senelick 1989,89). The influential art critic Max Nordau’s
book, Entartung [Degeneracy] (1893), promoted the idea that all modem art was
“pathological,” vilifying such artists as Baudelaire, and the Impressionists (Nicholas 7).
Such anti-modem biases persisted at the highest reaches of German society. In 1909,
Kaiser Wilhelm fired Hugo von Tschudi, the director o f the Nationalgalerie, for
purchasing Impressionist paintings (7). Prior to the war, critical valuations o f modem art
became so politicized that it became the focus of debate in the Reichstag, while the
Prussian parliament passed a resolution against the “degeneration” of art (7). Willet
notes that Germany’s preparations for war had a devastating effect on the arts, and that
once in the throes o f war, theatres were closed, and new censorship measures delayed the
production of important new plays and books (1978, 18).
Nationalist tendencies also had a long tradition o f being reflected in modem
Japanese art, especially during the Sino-Japanese conflict Immediately after the
outbreak o f war, Kawakami Otojiro, one o f the pioneers of shimpa, presented a
sensational play that recreated a naval battle, the immediate success o f which spurred on
the public’s appetite for war dramas.17 Takayama Chogyu, an important critic associated
with the Romantic movement, founded with Inoue Tetsujiro, the magazine Nihon Shugi
[Japanism] in 1897, which appealed to a wave of militant nationalism in the wake o f the
Triple Intervention. Nihon Shugi also advocated for a greater awareness o f the
uniqueness o f Japanese cultural institutions and art, as well as the divinity of the Imperial
Family (Keene 1984,527). As testament to the rapid transformation o f social valuations
o f the utility value o f art, four years later, Takayama would pen an important essay
advocating aestheticism: “On the Aesthetic Life” (1901).
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Munsterberg maintains that despite the fortification of nationalism resulting from

Japan’s military successes in China and Russia, Westem-styled art experienced a
renewed vitality in the late Meiji period. The high value placed on Western painting
techniques was exemplified in both dramatic war scenes, and glorious military and naval
victories, recorded in prints, traditional wood engravings, and Western style lithographs,
as well as the portraiture commissioned by the upper echelon of Meiji society (21). In
1907, the Japanese government instituted the system o f exhibiting contemporary
Japanese art under the auspices of the Ministry o f Education, which sponsored the annual
Buntea Loosely modeled on the French Salon, the Bunten contributed to the public’s
appreciation of Westem-style Japanese art, yoga, and inspired the emergence of private
methods o f exhibiting art (Rimer 1987,40). By 1907, a conservative elite associated
with the Tokyo School o f Fine Arts, was firmly established, which, like the French Ecole
des Beaux-Arts, “provided a foil for adventuresome younger Japanese artists” (42). At
the same time in Germany, the institutions o f art and the culture industry were in the
process of being transformed by unionization and professionalization. With such
developments came the realization o f the collective power of artists to influence
legislators, state regulators and employers (Steinweis 8).
One can conclude from these developments that the Japanese bureaucracy had a
far more advanced awareness of the sociopolitical utility of art, and the advantages of
keeping the institutions of art under strict control as early as the 1880s. On the other
hand, to characterize the German institutions of art as adhering strictly to the paradigm of
aesthetic autonomy would be an overstatement—especially when considering the
increased bureaucratization o f the arts, the role many artists and writers played in
galvanising German nationalism, and reflecting postwar disillusionment.
Martin notes that at the time o f the Emperor Meiji’s death in 1912, Japan “seemed
at the peak of its domestic strength and international standing” (85). Still, prior to World
War I, both Japan and Germany had been placed in a “quasi-quarantine” by their
conservative ruling elites” so that domestic reforms were neglected “for fear o f
endangering the traditional order,” while policies o f “aggression and enrichment at the
expense o f neighboring nations had to make up for domestic repression, and in Japan,
economic misery (52-3).
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2.2.2 Weimar and Taisho Liberalism
Although they fought on opposite sides, both nations emerged from the war
dissatisfied—with Germany “humiliated and impoverished” at Versailles, and Japan
“cheated o f spoils and isolated” at the Washington Conference—although participation
on the winning side spared Japan from the “aftershock of defeat” that toppled the
Hohenzollem monarchy (Anderson 33). In Germany, the tumultuous period leading up
to the establishment o f the Weimar Republic in 1918 followed a devastating war that left
more than 1.8 million Germans dead and over 4 million wounded (Gay 147). The
Versailles Treaty imposed heavy economic, political, and psychological burdens, with
little autonomy for Germany to shape domestic policy, then subordinate to the national
interests and veto power of the victorious Entente (Lubasz 65). The November 1918
Revolution led by councils o f workers and soldiers, which held as its goals the
socialization o f key industries and a purgation of the military, failed to deliver on the
promise o f fundamental political change (Barraclogh 66). In its wake, the Weimar
Assembly adopted a constitution in July 1919 through which Germany became a
democratic republic, whereby the Cabinet as the chief executive body, answered to the
Reichstag, the national legislative body, and wherein universal suffrage from age twenty
was mandated (Gay 151).
In Japan, World War I contributed to Japan's dominance over the Asian export
market, as it supplied munitions and shipping services to the Allies (Horioka 281). To
Karatani, the “discursive space” o f Taisho emerged from a “consciousness of autonomy,”
as tensions between Japan and the West eased in the aftermath o f three wars, and through
Japan's avowed separateness from the rest o f Asia (1993,299). Technological advances
were also imported from Germany, which had been forbidden under Versailles to be
deployed towards its own re-armament, greatly impacting Japan’s steel industry,
electronics, and radio transmission capabilities (275).
A major trope o f scholarship regarding the Taisho social sphere holds that an
emphasis on individualism prevailed, in contrast and reaction to, Meiji authoritarianism.
With a greater percentage o f the population pursuing higher education and the expansion
o f professionals and bureaucrats in the public sphere, Taisho culture came to reflect the
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social, consumerist, and intellectual demands o f a new managerial elite (McCallum 81).
The focus on individualism has also been attributed to the abolition o f hereditary
restrictions on occupation and residence, which combined with governmental sponsorship
of industry and education, fostered the development o f an urban, professional, and
managerial class (Nolte 1984,667). To Harootunian, the key distinction o f Taisho
liberalism was the “development and triumph o f [a] conception o f private interest and
atomized individuality” (1990,14). As Tobin notes, individualism and cosmopolitanism
were constellated around consumerism, with the “new urban elite’s tastes in food, drink,
entertainment, clothing, and housing” becoming increasingly Westernized and atomized
(23). Harootunian adds that such phenomena were reflected in the aesthetic realm with
the emergence o f a new ideology that exalted both the “isolation and the self-
centeredness o f the aesthetic man,” and the doctrine of art-for art’s sake (1990, 18).
Anderson points out, however, that such trends were borne out chiefly on an ideal level,
since the political sovereignty o f the populace and individual liberties were by no means
constitutionally guaranteed, and that it was not until after the Taisho era that suffrage was
extended in 1925, and then only to males (33).
In her survey of Taishd intellectuals, Nolte discerns three distinct, albeit
paradoxical conceptions of individualism. The first of these held that “individual
character and talent should be cultivated to strengthen the state and to foster a more
active commitment to state policies.” A more liberal-democratic conception maintained
that the “development of free and autonomous individuals was the most fundamental
value by which state and society should be judged.” A more conservative, yet clearer
portrait o f Taishd individualism, legitimated “personal autonomy and self-expression”
within the confines o f a “restricted ‘private’ sphere, which coexisted in uneasy tension
with the dominant values o f the ‘public’ sphere” (1984,670).
Pincus notes that in the early 1920s, Japan realigned itself with Western
modernizing forces, including a “transfigured cityscape o f streetcars and high buildings,
cafes and dancehalls,” and a mechanized culture that “accelerated and multiplied its
representations” in motion pictures, phonograph records, one-yen books, and the rhythms
o f jazz (229-30). By World War I, the advertising industry matured through the
consolidation o f marketing departments within corporations, the disciplining o f
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advertising in universities and specialized training schools, and the proliferation o f trade
magazines (Silverberg 1993,124). Department stores, with their ability to centralize
space so that items could be viewed, selected and purchased, contributed to the formation
of consumer consciousness (136). Concurrently, Japanese mass media forms exploded,
such as the film industry, radio, and print culture. In the Taishd era, newspaper
circulation reached ten million daily copies, as a result o f stepped up marketing efforts
and the development o f new forms o f entertainment, such as specialty advice columns
geared toward women, and comic strips (123).
Throughout the Taisho era, it was customary for advanced students in Philosophy
and Political Economy to study for a number of years in Germany. This would, in turn,
be reflected in the high stature accorded to German scholarship in those fields related to
the state, such as Constitutional and Civil Law (Barshay 65). Harootunian points out that
the aesthetic realm that was being charted by intellectuals and art theorists was highly
influenced by German idealist philosophy. He notes, however, that by opposing culture
[bunkaJ to civilization [bummei], the latter of which represented the “materialism,
rationalization, and shallow spiritual planning of the Meiji era,” Taishd intellectuals
confused “spirit with power” and “art with life,” resulting in the erroneous assumption
that “culture itself was a more than adequate substitute for politics” (16).
At the same time, the German cultural and aesthetic spheres were undergoing
rationalization and professionalization, partly as a result o f unionization. It was also a
period that saw the rise o f federations o f radical writers and artists, including the
Dadaists. Between 1918 and 1919, a group of German artists banded together to form the
Working Council for Art, dedicated to the cause o f the revolution. Among these artists
were several who had been associated with the Breucke movement—a prewar association
o f Expressionists. In regard to its aesthetic platform, the Working Council rejected both
Naturalism and Impressionism. Lehmann-Haupt points out that several painters
associated with the Council were commissioned to produce a series o f political posters,
which were highly unpopular due to their near-unanimous rejection o f mimetic or
impressionist techniques. At the same time, a critical backlash against Expressionism
was mounted by the arts and literary establishment, and by younger artists, such as the
Dadaists. Wilhelm Worringer, an influential art historian, characterized Iate-stage
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Expressionism as a “luxury function o f artistic phantasy.” and a “last revolt against the
increasing sociological dissolution o f the plastic arts,” thus paving the way for
subsequent devaluations o f such artists (23-4).
Throughout the Weimar period, the arts depended on governmental patronage,
and public architecture was subject to legislative and administrative control. The
Ministry of the Interior created the post o f a Federal Art Officer in 1919 headed by Edwin
Redslob, who initiated a thorough aesthetic reform of Weimar iconography, including
emblems, flags, insignia, currency, coins and stamps (Lehmann-Haupt, 28). Redslob also
commissioned artists to paint the portraits of top government figures, stabilized the art
market under inflationary conditions, promoted interchange between German and foreign
artists, and encouraged the arts and crafts field by lessening its tax burden (29). Such
governmental involvment in all spheres o f culture, however, also served to legitimate
bureaucratic control over style and content. In 1919, the police arrested Wieland
Herzfelde and Walter Mehring for publishing and distributing “Jedermann sein eiger
Fussbal,” and confiscated most o f the copies. As Allan Greenberg notes, in so doing, the
authorities invested this text with political significance by attributing to it the “ability to
effect an audience in a manner critical of, and threatening to, their conception of society”
(1987,434). Initially sentenced to eight months in jail, they won the case on appeal,
although Herzfelde did spend time in jail and the police closed down the first Dada
exhibit, thus setting the tone for the adversarial relationship between the movement and
police censorship (Lewis 8).
After the Revolution, there was a renewed interest in Russian culture, literature
and music in Japan, especially after the visit o f the Grand Opera in 1919, which
introduced grand opera to Japanese audiences (Tanabe 521). In 1918, Takabatake
Motoyuki published the first article in Japan on Lenin’s theories, and translated Marx’s
Capital—first published in its entirety in 1924 (Beckmann 1971,144). Concurrently,
economic factors contributed to a resurgence o f socialism after nearly a decade o f relative
political hegemony. While Japan experienced unprecedented prosperity as a result o f its
trade with the allies during World War I, the discrepancy between war-inflated prices and
inadequate wages resulted in widespread public disturbances, which culminated in the
Rice Riots o f 1918 (Swearingen, 6). Social unrest, and pressure exerted from alliances
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between fanners and labor groups with intellectuals and student organizations, provided
the backdrop for the formation o f Japan’s First Party Cabinet, and the appointment of
Prime Minister Hara Kei in 1918 (Mitchell 1976,28).
Though operating underground for several years, the Japanese Communist Party
was formally established in 1922, quickly becoming the wellspring of Marxist ideology
for academics, writers, and avant-garde theatre groups (Kato 222-3). From its inception,
the party was unique in its public renunciation o f the Emperor system (Tsurumi 38).
Kato notes, however, that Marxism remained more of an intellectual than a political
force, since it had little direct influence over either workers or farmers (222). Marxism
was especially appealing to Japanese intellectuals who were interested in synthesizing
traditional Confucianism and German idealism and scholasticism (Beckmann 1971,147).
By the mid-1920s, Japan’s labor movement was comprised of three factions: a
social-democratic wing, a left-center faction, and a pro-Communist left wing (Garon
155). At the start of the Showa period, new government initiatives were established to
destabilize the political left The Peace Preservation Law (1925) was devised to suppress
socialism. It was upon this measure that an elaborate system of thought control was to be
constructed, leading many scholars to consider it as foundational to Japanese fascism
(Ienaga 15). The Law was first levied against students and labor organizers involved in
the planning of an economic revolution, known as the Gakuren Incident o f 1925-26
(Kasza 41). The Law also enforced the kokutai (national polity) by indicting any form of
critical inquiry into the political power structure as anti-Japanese (Hoston 171). In 1928,
it was further amended so that any speech, action or writing that advocated for the
abolition o f private property or the monarchy was outlawed, with a specific provision for
the illegality o f the Communist party (Shilloney 11). Brian Powell notes that after
returning from a tour o f the Soviet Union in 1928, Ichikawa Sadanji Q, the revolutionary
kabuki actor, had his performances interrupted by ultra-right wing groups for years to
come, thus indicating the extent and nature of anti-socialist ideology as played out in the
cultural arena (117). Over the next decade, revisions to the Peace Preservation Law
codified bureaucratic regulation of the mass media, the press and radio (Kasza 21). A
final amendment in 1941 stipulated the death penalty for individuals who constitutued a
risk to the public peace (Shilloney 11).
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The corresponding years in Germany (1924-1929) are often referred to as the

“stabilization” period o f the Weimar Republic, characterized by the end of hyperinflation,
increased rationalization in industry, and the neutralization of extremist politics of all
varieties (Herf 19). These social trends were inflected by the aversion of the art
establishment to Dada and other progressive trends in art, literature, and theatre.
Hermand notes that the anti-war paintings o f such notable former Expressionists as Otto
Dix and Georg Grosz, for example, tended to exhibit either “mute despair and the
proximity of death” or the “misery of countless crippled veterans” (105). Nevertheless,
these artists were rejected by liberal and conservative critics alike, who “did not want to
be robbed o f the uplifting memory of their ‘heroic years’” (105-6). Lehmann-Haupt
characterizes the overall art production of the Weimar period as a study in contradictions,
with the “violent upsurge o f emotional abandon” typified by the “ecstatic vision of the
Expressionists” at one end, to the “cool, mathematical precision o f the new architecture
and interior decoration” o f the Bauhuas at the other (30).
A dominant strain in both Western and Japanese scholarship maintains that the
seeds for totalitarianism were planted in the relatively liberal soil that typified the
Weimar and Taisho periods via the growing influence of ideologies that were neither
socialist, communist, nor democratic. As early as 1920, the Nazi party had incorporated
as part of its “25 Point Program,” the legal prosecution o f all those tendencies in art and
literature that they felt corrupted national life (Stanweis 21). Martin locates in Hitler’s
Mein Kampf{1924), a self-contained ideology and a systematically planned
organizational structure” anticipated relatively early in the movement (166-7). In August
1927, the Nazis held their first party rally in Nuremberg, where they publicly declared
their racial theories and called for a purge o f the German body politic (Gay 157). In the
mid-1920s, art and Nationalist Socialist racial doctrine were linked for the first time by
theorists who adhered to the supremacist doctrines o f Count Gobineau and Houston
Chamberlain. Perhaps the most influential o f these was Hans Guenther, who attempted
to prove that the style and value of a work o f art was pre-determined by the race o f the
artist Such reasoning, whereby “art becomes nothing but a representational reflection o f
the image o f man” represents, in Lehmann-Haupt’s estimation, both the “final stage o f
aesthetic materialism” and “the ultimate consequence o f academic naturalism,” both o f
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which became foundational to the Nazi’s “basic denial o f the autonomy of art” (38). In
Japan, Kita Ikki, who would later participate in the failed 1936 coup d’etat against
Imperial Rule, published the General Outline ofM easuresfo r the Reorganization o f
Japan (1923), which became a handbook o f political rebels. In this document, Kita
drafted the principles o f an “oriental socialism averse to western ideas,” which
envisioned the elimination o f the Japanese oligarchy in favor of a social dictatorship
headed by the Tenno (Martin 189). Maruyama Masao calls Kita Ikki the “ideological
father o f Japanese fascism,” and his “Measures” the Mein Kampfo f Japan (28).
By the mid-1920s, the visual arts field in Germany reverted to aestheticism, best
exemplified by the 1926 exhibition o f abstract expressionist art in Berlin in 1926, at
which such noted artists such as Kandinsky and Moholy-Nagy eschewed any political
character to their work (Lehmann-Haupt 27). Around the same time, the Deutscher
BQhnen Verein [German Theatre Association] agreed to employ only workers associated
with the Biihnengenossenschaft [Society o f German Theatre Employees]—an agreement
that would remain in effect through the Weimar Era (Stanweis 12). In the early 1930s, a
severe rupture in art production occurred as a result o f the economic crisis, with theatre
being especially hard hit. In response, many artists advocated for a “neocorporatist”
system wherein a planned theatre economy regulated by a central authority would ensure
an equitable, socially responsible distribution of income among theatre practitioners.
This was to prove foundational to the Nazi bureaucrats’ subsequent reorganization of
culture under the auspices o f the Reichskulturkammer, which initially promised
neocorporatist advantages and the autonomy of the theatre economy (18-20).
In a similar vein, Kato theorizes that the emergence of mass culture and
communication forms in Japan had the dual impact o f paving the way for more active
participation in politics by a more widespread segment o f the populace, at the same time
that it opened the door for its subsequent manipulation (229). Tobin notes that youth
culture, especially among the affluent middle class, exploded in the 1920s, playing out its
version o f the nihilistic, hedonistic life-style of jazz-age by “emulating the Folies Bergere
and the Tango,” and embracing “jazz, gin, movies, and baseball” (22). Silverberg cites
the popularity o f the urban cafes in the 1920s and early 1930s as emblematic o f a cultural
transformation to mass cultural consumption, with over 40,000 cafes operating
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nationwide by 1933—the same year that the government propounded measures to bring
them under state control (1993,125).
To von Saldem, the great crisis o f the Weimar Republic must be seen as an
economic crisis that entailed a conflict o f attitudes in the early phase o f the development
o f mass culture that would play out in the Nazi era. He adds that new trends in mass
culture posed radical threats to German cultural hegemony, which since the nineteenth-
century, placed bourgeois high culture over the workers and popular culture (317). This
crisis of culture was particularly palpable to the middle classes in Germany and Japan,
although there were noticeable differences in response. As Kato notes, in the 1920s,
political representation of the masses rested on elections that were “not much more than
mere formalities,” as political parties remained organizations without direct ties to the
emergent middle classes (231). Furthermore, despite the promise of Taishd liberalism
that the leaders o f party cabinets working through an elective parliament would attain
political advantage, by the 1930s a coalition of bureaucrats and militarists came to
dominate the Japanese polity (Allinson, 126). By contrast, the German middle class
played a different role in Weimar politics, which, as a result o f years of hyperinflation,
was angry and not resigned like the Japanese middle class (Kato 31). Also in Japan, no
Social Democratic Party emerged, labor never got as much as a tenth o f the vote, and the
small Communist party was all but wiped out under parliamentary rule by police forces
(Anderson 34).
2.2.3 Theories o f German and Japanese Fascism
A number o f theories have been advanced in regard to classifying and comparing

the social and political structures o f Germany and Japan from the 1930s through the war.
Most have centered on the applicability o f such labels as totalitarianism, fascism, and
fratemalism, and/or the appropriateness o f such Western designations to Japan. One
foundational study of historical fascism, Ernst Nolte’s Der Fascismus in siener Epoch
(1963), alternately characterizes fascism as a “uniquely European phenomenon,” a “kind
o f pan-European movement,” and a “mental disorder o f European intellectuals who were
unable to come to terms with the results o f the First World War and who had been deeply
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shocked by the emerging materialistc mass society o f our modem world” (Martin 165).
While Nolte’s work has been widely referenced, his fundamental definition precludes
interwar Japan from fascist designation. Martin notes that a key feature o f Nolte’s
interpretation of fascism rests on the neo-Marxist indictment o f the intellectual
superstructure o f prewar Europe. In fact, Nolte’s thesis rests on the premise that without
Marxism, there would have been no fascism:
Fascism is anti-Marxism which seeks to destroy the enemy by the
evolvement of a radically opposed, and yet related ideology, and by the
use o f almost identical and typically modified methods, always, however,
within the unyielding framework o f national self-assertion and autonomy.
(1996,20-21)
Several theorists have historicized Nolte’s categorization on a number o f criteria. Epstein
maintains that Nolte positioned fascism in modem history through an analysis o f its
constituent elements that references an “empirically-derived, but theoretically elaborated
‘ideal type,”’ which ultimately centers on a phenomenology o f fascism defined in terms
of its own ideology and self-understanding (3). In this way, Nolte could conclude that
although fascism existed after 1945, the subsequent applicability of fascist classification
after World War II cannot have any real significance, “unless the term be stripped almost
entirely o f its traditional connotation,” thus precluding its relevance to both postwar and
non-Westem varieties (4). On the other hand, by centralizing Marxism, Nolte
problematizes (rather than relies on) Marxist interpretations, wherein “fascism is nothing
more than the nakedly exposed inner nature o f capitalism: domination, force,
exploitation, repression” (1975,36). In this regard, Nolte is in fundamental disagreement
with what he perceives to be two interlocking premises o f the Marxist paradigm: that
capitalism (and not a combination o f capitalist and pre-capitalist forces) is the decisive
pre-condition for the emergence o f fascism; and, that a society that is non-repressive and
free o f state power in which individuals exercise authority is “actually possible in the
ta
modem world.”
In regard to scholarly categorizations o f fascism in prewar Japan, Wilson points
out two predominant models: the Marxist approach and the “authoritarian
modernization” thesis. In brief, the Marxist thesis, which dates back to the period in
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question, maintained that the appearance o f fascism was a “function of objective class
consciousness and a desperate form o f last-ditch defense on the part o f Japanese
capitalists against the menace of social and economic revolution” (Wilson 199-200).
Two variations o f Marxist theory emerged in postwar Japanese scholarship, both of
which offer alternative interpretations of the Meiji Restoration. The first is predicated on
the idea that the Meiji Restoration was a “full-fledged bourgeois revolution,” that
ultimately degenerated into absolutism. The second, so-called “Koza” version, holds that
the Restoration must be viewed as an incomplete bourgeois revolution. Wilson notes that
the Koza interpretation has dominated postwar Japanese scholarship, particularly in its
emphasis on the continuities o f pre-Meiji feudalism in modem Japan that necessarily
rendered a fascist revolution impossible (201). Wilson adds, however, that “neo-Koza”
scholars have applied fascist designations to prewar Showa sociopolitical structures,
although with such qualifications as those made by Inoue Kiyoshi, who holds that “the
proponents of military dictatorship... [wanted] to fuse monopoly capitalism with the state
and have the military .. .seize the state’s dictatorial power,” in order to resolve the
“crisis” o f Japanese imperialism. This version of fascism is often referred to in Japanese
scholarship as emperor-system fascism.19
Wilson observes that both orthodox and neo-Marxist variations of Japanese fascist
theory rest on what he considers to be the “unsupported” and “unrealistic” proposition
that the wartime regime only served the interest o f monopoly capitalism and the
landlords. He deems as more credible the “authoritarian-modemization” thesis, which
legitimizes fascist designation to all governments that emerged in the interwar period,
that “in the process o f rapid and paternal industrialization, encountered] domestic and
foreign crises that lead them to pursue policies o f repression at home and an aggressive
expansion abroad” (202). This theory has gained wide acceptance among social
scientists, even though Italian Fascism and German National Socialism remain the only
universally accepted manifestations (Turner 118). Maruyama Masao, the most influential
historian-theorist o f Japanese fascism, has argued that while its course o f development
was distinct from Europe, Japan’s political structure after 1936 was no less representative
o f international fascism. Specifically, he maintains that unlike Europe where fascism
emerged via mass mobilization “from below,” in Japan fascism was consolidated “from
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above” via the transformation o f the Emperor system into a military-bureaucratic regime
after 1936 (Wilson 203).
Maruyama outlines what he considers to be three chief phases o f prewar fascism
in Japan. The first was the “preparatory period” (1919 to 1931), which lasted from the
end of World War I to the Manchurian Incident. Typifying this phase were the activities
o f right-wing civilian movements, which held the potential to incite a mass movement
towards fascism from below as it had in Germany and Italy (23). The second phase,
which Maruyama refers to as the “period of maturity” (1931 to 1936), is characterized by
the linkage o f these civilian movements with segments of the military bureaucracy, just
as the latter was infiltrating the core o f national government This phase culminated in
the attempted coup d’etat, known as the February Incident of 1936 (26). The
“consummation period,” witnessed the dominance of the military as the prime impetus o f
fascism from above, as it “fashioned an unstable ruling structure in coalition with the
semi-feudal power o f the bureaurcratic and senior retainers on the one hand, and with
monopoly capitalism and the political parties on the other” (26). Maruyama adds that in
this period, Japanese fascism was “transformed into an actual state structure” (34).
Maruyama’s theory of Japanese fascism is constellated along a series of
coordinates that are markedly different from European fascism. He accedes that any
model of fascism must come to terms with the outward features o f “pseudo-revolution,”
acknowledging that Italian and German fascism triumphed as a result of the seizure of
power by political parties with mass organizational bases. The February Incident o f 1936
represents the dividing line from fascism from below in regard to its future development
in that the failure o f the attempted coup gave rise to governmental measures that would
ensure there would be no revolutionary mass political movements in Japan (33). As
Martin notes, the oligarchy could no longer afford to ignore the goals o f the
revolutionary-minded officers, who had allied themselves with the pauperized small-
tenant farmers and other victims o f economically-pressed tradesmen and small businesses
(170). In Japan, therefore, fascism manifested itself by permeating the existing power
structure internally.
Maruyama also qualifies Japanese fascism on the basis o f the kokutai ideology,
wherein the state was portrayed as an extended family with the Emperor at its head. By
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contrast, the Nazi formulation o f the Volksgemeinschafi was clearly a “public and
political idea,” and not correlative to the Japanese family principle, since Hitler was
never portrayed as the head o f a family or clan (37). Another primary distinction was the
relationship of agrarianism to fascism. Maruyama notes that the crisis o f capitalism
wrought by the world depression o f 1929, hit the agricultural sectors the hardest, which in
Japan, was also structurally the weakest. While the National Socialists drew their main
support by alienating the working class from the socialist, democratic and communist
parties, in Japan the industrial workers were less important to the military’s consolidation
of power, than the support of the agrarian sector (48). The military responded not to a
crisis of an insurgent working class, but to the “distress of a peasantry wracked by the
world slump in rice and silk prices;” hence, it was “village misery, not factory militancy”
that lay at the core of Japanese fascism (Anderson 34).
Maruyama also singles out Japan’s pan-Asianism, which at first heralded the
emancipation of Asia from Western colonialism, but which ultimately became
“inextricably tied up with the idea that Japan should seize hegemony in Asia in place of
European imperialism” (51). Many historians attribute the rise o f ultra-nationalism in
both Germany and Japan to developments in international politics. Crowley notes that
the efforts o f England and the United States to form regional economic blocks compelled
countries with limited possessions to expand their military power (328). The worldwide
depression, which had relatively little direct impact on the Japanese economy, forced
Germany’s “rampant economic nationalism” and accelerated military expansionism. By
contrast, the isolationist policies o f the United States, combined with the armament
limitations imposed by Versailles, galvanized Japan’s economic dominance in East Asia,
so that when the Soviet Union was advancing into Mongolia and fomenting Chinese
nationalism, Japan had little choice but to pursue an autonomous and aggressive foreign
policy (329). Furthermore, because Japan was economically dependant on international
trade to a greater degree than Germany, it led the way in overseas expansionism during
the period, beginning with the seizure o f Manchuria in 1931 (Anderson 34). In
comparison to European imperialist endeavors during the interwar period, Japan also
invested more heavily in the industrialization of its Manchurean and Korean conquests in
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order to create a “modem economic complex for the exploitation of natural resources,”
ultimately deployed at the service o f its war machine (33-4).
Western and Japanese scholars alike have taken exception to Maruyama’s theory
o f Japanese facism. Wilson argues that modem Japan developed from the initial
“nationalist movement” phase of the early Meiji era, to the extinction of that regime’s
original dynamism in the Taishd era. The tenacity o f Meiji institutions, however, coupled
with the onset of total war, brought about a reaffirmation o f authoritarian tendencies and
corollary restraints on political liberalism and individual freedoms alike (411-12).
Barshay maintains that the Meiji state contained holdovers from Tokugawa bureaucratic
traditions and imported Prussian administrative models, which resulted in the
centralization of power in an official bureaucracy and a “transcendent cabinet,” rather
than an elected representative body (Barshay 3). In Mitchell’s estimation, while such
political developments were “unfortunate,” they add up to neither fascism from above,
nor below (1976,189). Similarly, Crowley maintains that Japan was not a fascist country
by European standards, pointing out that the Meiji Constitution continued to be valid
throughout the 1930s, precluding any mass revolutionary movement from gaining
ground, or any monopoly of a single party (1974,270). Wilson finds it significant that in
proving his theory, Maruyama repeatedly emphasizes continuities of Meiji public policy
in the Showa period, and that he consistently applies Meiji ideological constructions to
Japanese fascism, especially familism, agrarianism, and pan-Asianism (204). Along
these lines, Mitchell’s observation that prewar through control was milder in Japan than
in Germany—due to the relative dearth of political executions and deportations, and the
government’s policy that no thought offender was beyond salvation—leads him to
conclude that the Showa period is best labeled “highly authoritarian” rather than fascist
(1976,189-91). Similarly, Kato maintains that political transformations in Japan are not
accurately construed as the turn from democracy to fascism, but rather as “one phase of
liberalization to another phase o f bureaucratization and militarization,” within a political
structure that had not been fundamentally changed (236).
Other scholars, however, have adhered to and elaborated upon Maruyama’s
theory o f fascism from above. In contrast to Mitchell’s conclusion, Ienaga maintains that
social oppression was actually stronger in Japan than in Germany, and while there were
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neither concentration camps, nor widespread executions o f Japanese citizens, “every

aspect o f life was so regimented and controlled that no one could plan a treacherous act
worthy o f the death penalty” (114-5). He also argues for harsh reassessment of Japan’s
war against China in light o f wartime atrocities and the racial foundations upon which the
military’s policies were based. In this regard, Ienaga points out that at its height, the
Imperial Army occupied and assumed economic control over the cities of northern and
central China, and in the process, “openly plundered Chinese property” and “committed
atrocities against the Chinese everywhere in the combat zone,” including widespread
rape—seen as an “accepted prerogative” o f the Imperial Army—political torture, the use
o f Chinese farmers as “human mine detectors,” and the forced conscription of thousands
o f Chinese civilians at the war front and in Japan (166-169). Field points to the Rape of
Nanking (1937), when Japanese forces left an estimated two to three hundred thousand
women, children and prisoners o f war dead (62-3). She adds that the regime’s strenuous
attempts to legitimate its actions in China, including the provisional government of
Peking in 1937 and the Reformed Government of the Republic o f China in Nanking in
1938, are in line with international models of fascism (170). Ienaga concludes that “if
one fundamental distinction between bourgeois democracy and fascism was the latter’s
attempt to destroy communism, not by ideological but by military means,” than the
fifteen-year war with China must be considered unequivocally a “fascist war” (84).
In recent years, scholars have advanced alternate views o f the interwar period in
Germany and Japan that fall outside the parameters o f fascist theory. Martin argues that
to adopt fascism as an all-encompassing category actually levels sociopolitical
distinctions, typically minimizing the activities o f the Nazis. In abandoning what he
perceives to be the “worn-out concept of fascism,” Martin proposes that “the Hilter
regime should be characterized as National Socialist, the Duce’s Italian regime as
Fascist,” and Japan in the prewar Showa period as a “restorative anti-Western system
with objectively fascist traits in the eyes of Westerners, yet not seen as such by the
Japanese” (181). What such appraisals gain in accuracy, they lose in conciseness, leading
many scholars to adopt the “totalitarian thesis” outlined by Hannah Arendt and Carl
Friedrich. Such models distinguish totalitarianism from liberal democratic regimes on a
number o f criteria, the most important being that the former possess an “all-pervasive
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official ideology” and are “governed by a single mass-based party led by a charismatic
leader;” that total control is exercised through the “terroristic intervention o f a police
force and through propagandists media;” and that there is centralized control over the
economy.«20
In regard to Node’s paradigm o f anti-Marxist doctrine embedded in the deep
structures o f fascism, it is verifiable that the suppression of political dissent, and the
bureaucratization of censorship and propaganda were constellated in Germany and Japan
around the perceived threat of Communism. Epstein attributes the fear of the German
bourgeoisie about the rise o f international Communism—with its “elaborate organization,
ideology and mass appeal in the aftermath of World War I”—to their embrace of
National Socialism as a counter-ideology (6). Similarly, Griffin maintains that the
construction o f a “post-liberal and anti-Marxist ‘new man’ imbued with the vitalistic,
heroic ethic,” is what most typified German propaganda, which specifically targeted the
“decadence encouraged by a ‘materialistic’ liberal or socialist society” (17). Epstein adds
that the Nazis were equally hostile to democratic parliamentarism, which they denounced
as “degenerate, corrupt and incapable of dealing with current problems”(7). By contrast,
a unique feature of Showa politics was the promulgation of tenko, or forced ideological
conversion, which was based on the government’s view that political undesirables could
be redeemed, and in the case o f high-profile cases, could serve as public relations tools.
When Japanese Communism was at its peak in 1932, the police arrested over 14,000
individuals for Communist affiliations, and maintained strict surveillance over thousands
o f others (Swearingen 67). In 1933, Communist Party leaders Sano Manabu and
Nabeyama Sadachika publicly denounced Communism, precipitating a wave o f
conversions by Marxists to the national cause (Hoston 168). The Communist Party had
been subject to mass arrests at regular intervals from 1923 through the outbreak of
hostilities in China in 1937 (Beckmann 1971,150). By 1938, after the “Thought Police”
uncovered clandestine Communist activities, all organized party activity in Japan was
terminated until after the war (Swearingen 69).
Martin estimates that whereas the Nazis murdered approximately twenty-thousand
members o f the German Communist Party for purely political reasons, only about eight
percent o f the approximately 66,000 arrests in Japan were tried by the public prosecutor,
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wit the rest undergoing voluntary conversion (179). Sano, one o f the earliest and most
visible Communists to convert, went on to develop his own theory of “national
socialism,” based on traditional Eastern philosophy and orthodox Marxism (Hoston 169).
His “socialism-in-one-country” theory maintained that the racial superiority of the
Japanese rendered them uniquely qualified to engage in a war that would result in the
liberation o f Asia, a position that was highly compatible with the military regime’s
expansionist goals through Asia (183-4).
The early 1930s witnessed the greatest number o f political assassinations and
political coups since the early Meiji period,21 culminating in the February 26 1936 Coup
d’Etat, which galvanized an image of domestic terror to the Japanese citizenry (Shilloney
82-3). The Manchurian Incident o f 1931 precipitated an upsurge of governmental and
police efforts to eradicate left-wing activities. The Writer’s League o f the Japanese
Proletarian Cultural Federation (KOPF) dissolved itself in 1934, due to external
pressures, censorship, and internal dissension (Iwamoto 179). During this same period in
Germany, the Nazis, having already inherited a state monopoly over radio, nationalized
the film industry and established a monopoly over the press (Kasza 287). By 1933, they
seized and eliminated Communist and Socialist press organs, and closed or absorbed all
periodicals linked to other parties by 1935 (287). The Reichskulturkammer, established
by the Reich Cabinet in 1933, held as its prime objective the promotion of German
culture on behalf o f the “Volk,” and served as an umbrella organization for several
hundred thousand professionals in the arts, and millions o f amateur artists and musicians
(Stanweis 1).
To Griffin, a defining characteristic o f historical fascism was the promotion of an
“elitist” form of populist nationalism. In both Germany and Italy, the vision o f a new
state and leadership entailed the proliferation o f a revolutionary ideology, so that the new
political and economic order could be perceived as having arisen from the will o f the
people, and not from the actions o f a monopoly party (16). Smethurst notes that while
German militarism triumphed at a time o f world and national crisis “by playing on the
real and imagined grievances o f large segments o f the German population through tight
organization, propaganda and demagogy,” the Japanese military “neither depended on a
national sense o f crisis to create a constituency, nor won its support by individuals,
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classes, or horizontally organized categories o f people” (180-183). He adds that while

Hitler’s army appealed to poor farmers, artisans, and shopkeepers, the Japanese military
base was expanded by exploiting the vertical and essentially authoritarian structures of
rural Japan (182).
Many scholars also point to developments in the intellectual sphere as a major
contributory factor to the emergence o f Japanese fascism. The Showa Research
Association (Showa kenkukai), was founded by Prince Konoe Fumimaro in 1935 as a
conservative think-tank in support of his vision of a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere” and the “New Order Movement.” Enlisting academics from a number of
disciplines, the SRA responded to Konoe’s charge by proposing sweeping changes to the
political structure established by the Meiji Constitution, particularly the reduction o f the
power of political parties (Fletcher 3). It also served as a clearinghouse through which
intellectuals could exert their influence over domestic policy, and politicians could
marshal academic legitimation for their platforms (Crowley 370). Three highly
influential intellectuals associated with the Showa Research Association were Royama
Masamichi, Ryu Shintaro and Miki Kiyoshi, all of whom advocated a “single mass party,
state economic control based on corporate organizations, and the inculcation of a national
service ethic” (Fletcher 5). Miki was particularly instrumental to the Association’s plan
for an East Asian Order, which would be led by a Japanese nation that was itself
transformed through increased nationalism and the centralization o f state power (114).
At the same time, Nakano Seigo, founded the Tohokai [Society o f the East], which he
based on the Italian fascist model. The Tohokai gained eleven parliamentary seats in the
general election o f 1937, but was formally dissolved along with all of the other parties in
1940 (Shilloney 22-3). Meanwhile, the Japanese Communist Party was crushed by mass
arrests in the late 1920s and early 1930s and by the time o f the outbreak of the war in
China in 1937, the government no longer tolerated Marxism in the academy (Beckmann
150).
Other scholars emphasize sociocultural factors as precipitating factors and
legitimating forces for German and Japanese authoritarianism. Martin notes that while
the Nazis were compelled to “revive” or “cunningly develop” rituals o f national
community around a “pseudo-Revolution,” such rites were so firmly rooted in Japanese
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society that under military-bureaucratic rule, they contained more restorative and
traditional elements (188). Paul Brooker’s paradigm of “Fratemalism,” by which he
compares the social structures o f Italy, Germany and Japan prior to World War n, is a
particularly useful alternative to fascist theory when assessing interwar sociocultural
institutions and ideologies. Brooker bases his theory on Durkheim’s model of
“mechanical solidarity,” which posits the existence of a collective consciousness that
extends from political personalities to every individual member o f society in nation-
building enterprises. To Brooker, fratemalism represents the attempt by the wielders of
state power “to instill in an industrialized society a pure form of the type of solidarity
normally found in societies with a non-existent or primitive division o f labour.”
Furthermore, fratemalism is the type o f social solidarity that is based on similarities of its
members in terms o f heredity, culture, morals, and ideology (3).
Brooker applies his model by assessing the lengths to which these three regimes
went to assure fratemalism, based on two criteria: the “purity” o f the mechanical society
sought by each regime, and the “organizational effort” expended in instilling that purity
(76). Brooker further elaborates upon four coordinates by which the quotient of
fratemalism can be gauged: religion, collective consciousness, the structure o f society,
and the nature o f political leadership. While he reaches compelling conclusions
regarding prewar Italy, in the interest o f a more focused and thorough comparison, I will
briefly outline his application of fratemalism to Germany and Japan.
From the early 1920s, the National Socialist party platform recognized the allure
of a more fraternal type o f society, hence, their formulation of the Volksgemeinschaft,
specifically devised to counter international Marxism (23). The Fuhrer cult, which at its
core maintained Hitler's prophetic mission to lead Germany to greatness, became a
central organizing principle by which to instill mechanical solidarity after the Nazis rose
to power (90). In support o f this goal, they staged party rallies, and mass ceremonies on
National Socialist “holy days,” including “Blood Martyr’s Day” and “the Festival of
National Brotherhood,” both of which rivaled Christian holidays and rituals, such as
christening, marriage and funeral rites (99). By contrast, rather than establishing a new
civic religion, the Japanese military bureaucracy attempted to instill mechanical solidarity
by bolstering traditional Shinto. Brooker notes, however, that the reconstitution o f the
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Shinto cult was not really a reversion to pre-modem religious traditions, since it had
already been “standardized and partially modernized when it was converted into a branch
o f the state apparatus” to complement the Confucian code o f ethics at the core of the
Imperial Rescript on Education (6-7). Anesaki adds that historically, Shinto was never a
pure theism, but was more closely associated with social life, covering the fields o f the
“state cult, community observances, family worship, and individual piety” (104). As the
Meiji state religion, Shinto combined religious motives with a “cosmo-aesthetic sense,”
such that the “religious life o f the people crossed to and fro between the divine and
mysterious on the one hand, and the beautiful and exhilarating on the other” (103).
Tsurumi notes that five trends of thought were patched together to comprise the Emperor
Cult as formulated in the Imperial Rescript on Education: militarism, constitutionalism,
Confucian ethics, the indigenous and persistent pattern of the family that dated back to
ancient times, and, finally, a nineteenth century “organismic” theory of society (100). In
the Showa period, Shinto was reformulated as a state institution, and became “an
aggregate of formal observances or a teaching of patriotism,” while its overtly religious
features were absorbed into Buddhism (Anesaki 104).
To Silberman, the Japanese civil religion was predicated on the “apotheosization
o f the Emperor as the supreme and arbitrary source o f political and social values that
freed Japanese society from the bonds of natural relations and natural discipline” (453).
In this regard, the conflation o f religious and political values in the 1930s may be
perceived as less o f a result o f Japan’s turn towards military authoritarianism than a
reformulation o f Meiji constitutionalism. Comparatively, the nearest equivalent o f Hitler
in State Shinto was Emperor Hirohito, who served as “high priest,” but not the founding
prophet like Hitler, who moreover, inherited his role through an “unbroken line of
descent from Jimmu, the first Emperor” (Brooker 209).
Civic religion was key to establishing and maintaining mechanical solidarity in
wartime Germany and Japan, particularly when galvanizing the collective consciousness
towards the “manifest destiny” o f imperial-expansionist goals, and later, fostering
perseverance in the face o f defeat. Brooker observes that education had long been key to
ensuring the success o f this collective consciousness, and that transformations in the
social sphere were easier due to the fact that mechanical solidarity was instilled in every
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phase o f education, from primary schools to the universities. In Germany, a purge o f the
teaching profession ensured that ninety-seven percent of the German Association of
Teachers were Nazi party members. In Japan and Germany, propaganda infiltrated every
dimension of the curriculum, especially in textbooks, which emphasized militarism,
nationalism, and racism (Brooker 127).
In regard to constructions o f mechanical solidarity on the basis of a shared racial
heritage, the Nazis legitimized their theory o f Aryan supremacy on a body o f quasi-
scientific scholarship that proliferated throughout the nineteenth-century, which
attempted to prove essential inequities in the human races (Nolte 1966,277). Many of
these theories adhered to Herder’s philosophical treatises, which advanced the idea of the
“volk” as the basis for a “hierarchic, but classless national body” (Harrison 20). Vachor
de Lapouge’s “anthropological” studies of race, replete with skull measurements and
cross-cultural data, alleged the superiority o f the Aryan race, while Houston Stewart
Chamberlain’s Grundlagen des IXJahrhunderts (1898) was the first revisionist history o f
civilization based on the race doctrine (Nolte 1966,281). By contrast, claims for the
superiority o f the Japanese race were based on an archaic form o f racism, which held that
the Japanese people descended from the gods (Brooker 216). However, like the German
race doctrine, Japan’s racism espoused a solidarity based on blood or kinship (217). The
kokutai, as the supreme expression o f collective consciousness, was transformed into an
effective political ideology to counter the Marxist ideal of class struggle based on liberal
individualism (216).
While key features of Brooker’s model o f fratemalism are typified by
reconstructions of pre-modem ideological and institutional structures, Brooker and other
scholars have emphasized both modem and anti-modem discursive frameworks in order
to understand the ideological underpinnings o f German and Japanese mechanical
solidarity. Martin notes that in both countries, a mythical past o f national grandeur and
racist homogeneity—the Germanic cult o f the Aryan race and the godly descent o f the
Yamato race—became central doctrines (171). The German variant was founded upon
“agrarian romanticism,” which Martin defines as an “irrational yearning for pre-modem
times in societies which had been totally altered by the Great War” (171). Though Japan
had been less effected by the war, this construct held even greater currency given that
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approximately fifty percent o f the population was agrarian-based, as opposed to only

twenty percent in Germany. Demographic realities, however, did not deter the Nazis
from extolling the virtues o f a rural Germany through the “blood and soil” ideology and
iconography (171). Another effective ideology more closely related to industrialism was
the glorification o f technology, which in both nations was based on the view that war was
“the father o f creation and the mother o f culture” (173). Just as Prussian history provided
the National Socialists with a template o f traditional martial values, the feudal Japanese
fighting code, bushido, was passed down from the samurai to the new Imperial army,
apotheosized in the kamikaze fighting spirit (173).
In regard to the re-engineering o f sociopolitical institutions to conform to the
demands o f modem industrialism and capitalism, the Nazis exploited what Brooker terms
the ‘‘uncertainty o f outlook” that resulted from the distrust of trade unions and leftist
political organizations on the part o f the working class (58). Within months o f becoming
Chancellor, Hitler decimated political and trade unions, and organized occupational and
professional associations catering to small business and special interest groups, such as
teachers, doctors, and lawyers (25). To complement these ends, the Nazis embarked on a
multi-faceted propaganda campaign to transform the public sector whereby the
glorification o f labor became a guiding principle at the same time that it countered the
Marxist emphasis on the exploitative dimensions o f capitalism (140). Because they
recognized that modem industrial society was fundamentally incompatible with folkish
ideology, they proposed a retroactive alternative based on a romanticized vision of
“harmony, community, simplicity,” often referred to as “utopian anti-modernism”
(Turner 120). Reviving late medieval and early modem “manorial and corporate”
precepts” at the service o f “an elaborate web o f social responsibilities and restrictions,”
the Nazis ultimately appealed less to the interests o f the industrial working class, than to
the old middle class of tradesmen, artisans, and small entrepreneurs (120). In its most
radical, militaristic turn, this revivalism harkened back to an even earlier mythical era as
manifest in the “cults of sword and soil,” thus resurrected so that Germans could be
“reeducated in the idealism o f martial values” (121). In Japan, centralization and
bureaucratic control over business and commerce resulted in the subordination o f small
and medium-sized firms into cartels dominated by major companies, while the
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government’s efforts at eroding organized labor culminated in an outright ban of trade

unions by 1940 (Garon 146).
In regard to the characteristics o f political leadership as one gauge o f mechanical
solidarity, most historians agree that Emperor Hirohito’s stature as a charismatic leader is
incomparable to either Hitler or Mussolini, even though his authority was indisputable.
Martin points out that the ‘Tenno was manipulated by the militarists and [after] 1936 by
the entire oligarchy into the fictive role o f an absolute monarch, so that he could fulfill
the function of a national figure of integration” while the government assumed dictatorial
powers “in his name” (173). Furthermore, unlike both Germany and Italy, where the
quasi-divine status o f the Fuhrer and II Duce had to be manufactured, Hirohito’s will was
regarded as sacred. After the dissolution of the parliamentary government in 1940, army
bureaucrats further galvanized the divinity of the Emperor by preventing him from
making political decisions, in order that he would be immune from political criticism
(221). In Japan, therefore, there was no need for a fascist political party, since prevailing
social habits rallied the public’s support behind the throne as a matter of course (174).
Here psychoanalytic theories of fascism have been particularly helpful in decoding the
unconscious appeal o f paternal authority, which seems particularly relevant to Japan’s
national polity that seated the Emperor at the head o f a “nation-family.” By contrast, “in
spite of his glorification o f all things masculine,” Hitler cannot be ascribed the role o f a
patriarch, in that he functioned more as a “leader o f the pack of a peer group o f unmarried
men” that as the nation’s father figure (Hesse 171).
Ienaga maintains that while the Nazis established a clear dictatorship in Germany
after Weimar, no such decisive break with the past occurred in Japan, pointing out that
the Meiji Constitution was never revised or suspended, and that the Diet continued to
exist, albeit in a functionary role (113). He concedes, however, that the National
Mobilization Law o f 1938 represents a decisive legislative shift in broadening the state’s
administrative authority and its ability to impose new duties and restrictions that were
“broadly unconstitutional” (113). hi this regard, Brooker maintains that Japanese
fratemalism differed markedly from Italy and Germany, since it did not emerge as a
result o f a takeover o f state power by a mass political movment founded on a
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revolutionary political ideology, and, moreover, that the very ideal o f any sort of
revolution was anathema to all o f the men who governed Japan during the 1930s (45).
In assessing the relative degrees of fratemalism in Germany, Italy and Japan,
Brooker concludes that the Japanese military regime was the highest, since it was “the
most successful in both inculcating mechanical solidarity and strengthening its society in
the face o f total war” (302). In regard to the latter, Brooker points to the “fanatical and
often suicidal commitment of the Japanese armed forces,” and its correlative
manifestation on the home front, where “many Japanese were prepared to adopt a suicidal
self-sacrificing attitude in the defense of the Emperor and homeland” right through the
end of the war (309). To Brooker, Japan’s high degree o f mechanical solidarity
supersedes the fact that the Japanese committed fewer domestic crimes and showed the
least racial discrimination towards a domestic minority, although this too has been the
subject o f scholarly debate in recent years particularly in light of Japan’s forced labor
policies and broad discrimination against Koreans and Chinese immigrants (302). In
summary, Brooker maintains that Japanese society was particularly conducive to
fratemalist mechanical solidarity, evidenced by such phenomena as the relative ease by
which the pre-industrial segmented structure of society was reconfigured to meet the
demands of industrialization, the potency of Shinto’s rejuvenation as a civic religion, and
its role in legitimizing the Emperor’s authority, and the ways in which society and culture
were bureaucratized and regulated (315). By the time of the invasion of Manchuria in
1937, Japanese society was well on its way towards complete regulation. The
government created the Cabinet Information Division in 1937 to centralize and tighten
bureaucratic censorship (Mitchell 1976,161).
The Imperial Rule Assistance Association (IRAA) was the culmination o f a series
o f measures adopted in the late 1930s designed to mobilize the public towards accepting
the new political order (Brooker 66). Headed by Prime Minister Konoe, this organization
gathered members o f parliament after the parties had dissolved themselves (Martin 225).
The executive office o f the IRAA immediately expanded its administrative authority,
developing such propaganda organs as the Culture and Research Department and the
Industrial Patriotic Movement, as well as social organizations such as the Greater Japan’s
Women’s Association and the Greater Japan Youth Association (Brooker 283).
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Significantly, the architects o f the IRAA drew their inspiration and their institutional
structures from National Socialism (34). The early 1940s witnessed a series o f measures
that strengthened and extended existing anti-subversion laws. The Peace Preservation
Law was amended in 1941 to allow the indefinite detention o f political prisoners,
followed by the National Defense Security Law (1941), the Provisional Law for Control
o f Speech, Publications, Assembly, and Association (1942) and the Special Law on
Wartime Crimes (1943), all to secure absolutist bureaucratic control over all forms o f
mass communication during the war (Ienaga 98-9).
In 1941, the IRAA published the “Basic Concepts o f the Greater East Asia Co-
Prosperity Sphere, which affirmed Japanese racial superiority in Asia thusly: “Although
we use the expression ‘Asian cooperation,’ this by no means ignores the fact that Japan
was created by the Gods, or posits an automatic racial equality” (Ienaga 14). By rejecting
the Western model of political parties, the IRAA entrusted the nation to the paternal care
o f the divine Emperor once and for all (Martin 148). In July 1942, six months after the
outbeak o f the Pacific War, a group o f intellectuals met under the auspices o f the Literary
Society [Bungaku-kai] to debate the issue of “overcoming the modem.” These
academics and critics, which included Kobayashi Hideo and Nakamura Misuo,
constructed an ideal o f a glorious new age” that would mark the end o f modem
civilization (Harootunian 67).
The Anti-Comintem Pact o f 1936, signed by the German and Japanese military as
a protest against British predominance worldwide, ultimately led to their alliance against
the allied powers four years later (Martin 56). Iriye characterizes this pact as the
beginning o f an infatuation on the part o f the Japanese government and military with
Germany in securing a new world order (10). The Tripartite Pact was ratified by
Germany, Italy and Japan in September 1940 in order to discourage the United States
from entering a two-front war and to abandon Great Britain. For Martin, what these
treaties lacked in substantive merit, they made up for as propaganda to disguise
weaknesses in the alliance, which was overshadowed by the National Socialist race
doctrine and Hitler’s conviction that Germany must rise to world power without the help
o f the “yellow race” (194). The National Socialist doctrine o f Aryan supremacy, and its
“manifest destiny to conquer the world” found its correlation in the “Foundational
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Principles ofNational Entity” [Kokutai no hongi], ofBcially declared in 1937. To Martin,

such doctrines “marked the peak o f national delusions of grandeur,” by which both
nations secured their worldwide political isolation (56).
2.3 Discussion
As indicated in chapter one, a predominant feature of historical and contemporary

avant-garde theory is the overt deployment of aesthetic discourse towards extra-aesthetic
goals. That this tendency developed historically alongside, and in response to the avant-
garde project, is indicative o f a reflexivity, partly due to the fact that the transformation
o f the coordinates of aesthetic reception was an overriding goal o f the historical avant-
garde. In the postwar era, this reflexivity has been addressed and redeployed by a wide
range of critical and scholarly projects. In prewar German aesthetic discourse, the
sociopolitical dimensions o f the avant-garde were taken up by Benjamin, Lukacs, and the
the Frankfurt School theorists, united in the aim o f developing a critique of culture that
could be put to the service o f anti-authoritarian politics. In the process, these theorists
constructed the major binaries of avant-garde discourse—aesthetic autonomy and
sociopolitical engagement, to name the most important—at the same time that they
bestowed positive and negative judgments on discrete movements, artists and artworks at
will. In the postwar era, Burger and Bourdieu have both emphasized the autonomy
doctrine as it relates to the avant-garde, which they re-deploy to legitimate the
Enlightenment ethos of Reason and the rationalization o f the social spheres, including the
autonomy o f the aesthetic sphere—a status, they point out, that is by no means
guaranteed, even in the contemporary era.
Japanese theorists have also assessed cultural formations, including the avant-garde,
as a function o f sociopolitical ideology, particularly in relation to transformations of all
social institutions prior to and after World War II. From Nakano Shigeahru, who in the
1920s, sought to educate the Japanese public on the values o f Marxist criticism, the
avant-gardist properties o f proletarian art, and the conjunctures between Taisho mass
culture with aesthetic formations, to Karatani Kojin, who has implicated pre- and post
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war aesthetic judgments as a product o f such binaries as East/West and traditional/avant-

garde, prewar and contemporary Japanese avant-garde discourse has been inflected with a
similar reflexivity as in Western theory. As this chapter has revealed, however, certain
distinctions render the Japanese case unique, the most obvious being the phenomenon of
Westernization itself, which has no correlate in Western avant-garde discourse. Even its
closest theoretical correlate—the influence o f the non-West on the Western avant-garde
and modernism—has served little purpose in reconsidering the social and political
quotients o f the avant-garde, except as it may be implicated Western imperialism and
colonialism. While this is not an insubstantial line of inquiry, it has been mostly under
explored in Western avant-garde criticism.
Emanating from the crucial distinction o f Westernization is a constellation of
socially-charged discursive formations, such as individualism, art’s social utility, and
Japanese cultural autonomy. As I have demonstrated, such formulations all reflect
transformations in the social and political realms, however, when contextualized within
transformations in aesthetic realm, they all render the emergence and classification of the
Japanese avant-garde unique. Thus, the role that the doctrine of aesthetic autonomy
played in relation to aesthetic developments prior to the war, and as it related to the
concurrent manifestations, such as Naturalism, avant-gardism, and political art, mustb be
examined in greater detail, and in respect to specific manifestations across the fields of
culture.
This chapter has also revealed, however, that this is no less true o f prewar
developments in Germany than in Japan. Thus is especially apparent in regard to
discursive constructions o f the Western avant-garde as a reaction to aesthetic autonomy,
which, in fact, is not an entirely accurate portrait of the institutions o f art in Germany
prior to the avant-garde’s emergence. Thus, because a central feature o f avant-garde
discourse is the incorporation o f social and political considerations, it becomes even more
important to examine avant-garde discourse and praxis in relation to transformations in
social and political praxes, including modernist discourse, Marxist inquiry and social
forces, the development o f mass culture, and totalitarian politics. In this regard the anti-
institutional postures o f the German and Japanese avant-garde becomes a site o f
theoretical and historical convergences in Western and Japanese avant-garde discourse,
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which in turn, must be examined more closely and in the context o f transformations in
those very institutions at which the German and Japanese avant-garde leveled their
respective critiques.
For each o f the three major historical periods surveyed, a series o f analytical and
comparative matrices yielded a number o f coordinates by which to assess the social and
political valences o f the avant-garde project in Germany and Japan. The absorption of
Western, and predominantly German social and political models in the Meiji era, for
example, revealed that Westernization—as both a historical phenomenon and a discursive
formation which assumes positive and negative social valences at various historical
junctures—ultimately serves to qualify the emergence of the Japanese avant-garde. In
regard to Germany, analysis o f sociopolitical valences of art prior to and after World War
One qualifies any position that holds aesthetic autonomy as an absolute precondition for
the emergence o f the avant-garde in Germany. Finally, the unique status o f Naturalism in
Japan—as an artistic movement, an aesthetic style, and more important, a revolutionary
social discourse that developed alongside, and not prior to the Japanese avant-garde, has
emerged as another distinction in comparison to developments in the West. Hence,
“Westernization,” the relative social status of the doctrine of aesthetic autonomy at
various historical junctures, and the convergences between Naturalism (and mimesis),
Modernist discourse, and avant-gardism, all become important coordinates to consider in
regard to the emergence of the avant-garde project in Germany and Japan, and a topic
that will be examined in greater detail in chapters three and four.
The social and political coordinates that emerge from the second historical period
surveyed—which corresponds to the height o f avant-garde activities in both Germany
and Japan—are constellated around the extent to which the avant-garde reflected,
critiqued, and/or transformed the institutions of art in both contexts. If a major paradigm
o f avant-garde theories o f all varieties—both historical and contemporary—is its anti
institutionalism, then a closer examination o f the contours of avant-garde praxis and
discourse in relation to both social and political institutions in each country is o f central
concern, and one that will be examined in respect to Japan in chapter three, and
comparatively in chapter four. In regard to the unique properties o f the Japanese avant-
garde project, aesthetic autonomy and Westernization both resurface in the Taisho and
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early Showa period, albeit tempered by social transformations effected by the

development o f mass culture formations, and competing ideologies such as liberalism and
nationalism. In Germany as well, the adversarial relationship o f the avant-garde to
Weimar social and political institutions, and transformations in these institutions effected
by the rise o f National Socialism, becomes a major area o f inquiry in chapter five. In this
respect, the overview provided in this chapter o f theories of fascism, totalitarianism, and
fratemalism as they have been applied to prewar Japan and Germany, while not
conclusive, has served as a heuristic tool by which to elaborate upon and compare the
relationship o f avant-garde discourse and practice to transformations in the social and
political spheres. In addition, Benjamin’s theory of the fascist aestheticization of politics,
Hewitt’s theory o f fascist modernism, and Karatani’s theory o f the inversion o f Western
categories in Japanese cultural formations prior to the war, as well as his reevaluation of
prewar modernist discourse—all of which are related to avant-garde theory, discourse
and praxis—become important criteria by which to assess the sociopolitical valences of
the avant-garde project in both nations. Furthermore, considering the historical avant-
garde project alongside transformations in the social and political spheres circumvents
what Hewitt has identified as the one of the central problems o f assessing prewar social
and political formations through aesthetic categories such as avant-garde theory, namely,
the possibility o f falling prey to aestheticization itself. In this respect, subsequent
comparative analysis adheres to Hewitt’s maxim that it is “as important to read fascism
through the avant-garde as it is to investigate the avant-garde for vestiges o f fascism, and
furthermore, this has been the chief deficiency in the history o f avant-garde theory” (25).
These coordinates will be revisited throughout this dissertation, and will become
the basis for a comparative analysis o f the social and political valences o f the German
and Japanese avant-garde projects in chapter five. These can be distilled to four general
areas o f consideration in subsequent sections. The first o f these is a comparison o f the
aesthetic, social, and political factors that led to the demise o f the avant-garde project in
both Germany and Japan. Subsequently, this will be reassessed in light of the
bureaucratization o f culture under National Socialism and the Japanese military-
bureaucracy. Similarly, the historical and discursive relationships between the German
and Japanese avant-garde projects with Communism and other counter-ideologies,
150
becomes a major subject o f comparison. The third category entails consideration of the
absorption and assimilation o f avant-garde discourse and practices by the agents o f
totalitarianism. This includes the relationship of avant-garde performance to the rituals
and spectacles o f German and Japanese fascism, as well as the absorption of avant-garde
means and modalities in prewar totalitarian cultural policies and wartime propaganda and
art. The final area o f consideration is the deployment o f avant-garde and anti-avant-garde
discourse as a legitimating factor for constructions o f national cultural identities in both
the pre- and postwar eras.
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NOTES
1In a letter to Trotsky, Antonio Gramsci, then the leading Italian communist
intellectual, noted that prior to World War I, Futurism was popular among the workers,
who defended the Futurists against attacks by the semi-aristocrats and bourgeoisie at
demonstrations across Italy; see Flint 11.
2 Prezzolini, “Fascismo e futurism,” U Secolo 3 July 1923, Rptd. in Per
Conoscere Marinetti e il Futurismo, ed. Luciano De Maria (Milan: Amoldo Mondadori
Editore, 1981) 286-91, qtd. in Gentile 55.
3 Croce, “Fatti politici e interpretazoni storiche,” La Stampa, 15 May 1924, Rptd.
in Croce, Cultwra e vita morale (Bari: Laterza, 1955) 268-9, qtd. in Gentile 55.
4 For an extended discussion regarding the Expressionists’ antipathy to art-for-
art’s sake, see Bernard Myers, The German Expressionists (New York, 1956) 282.
5 Kleinshcmidt, introduction, Richard Huelsenbeck, Memories o f a Dada
Drummer, xxxiii.
6 Such scholars include John Harrison, Alistair Hamilton and Renee Winegarten.
7 Hesse summarizing Reich, Wilhelm, The Mass Psychology o f Fascism, trans.
Vincent R. Carfagno (New York, 1971); see Hesse 170.
8 Gonse also wrote the first account o f Japanese art in France.
9 Berger also notes that while manifestations of faponisme was manifested in
novels, plays and operas set in Japan, it proved most influential in craft design, painting
and the graphic arts; see Berger 1-5.
10Pierre Francastel, Art et societe (Paris, 1951) 163, qtd. in Berger 165.
Francastel was a noted sociologist of a rt
11 The significance o f Kawakami’s troupe was often deliberately overlooked by
Japanese critics and scholars, due to biases against its successes abroad and because of
Kawakami’s tendency to bastardize the kabuki repertory; see Chiba 39-46.
12For an extended discussion regarding such literary modernists as Proust, Rilke,
Gide, Musil, Joyce, and Sveko, see Geyer-Ryan 307.
152
13 Karatani 1994,38. Interestingly, Karatani echoes the sentiment first expressed

by Oscar Wilde that “Japan” was an “aesthetic fiction” in “Intentions: The Decay o f
Lying:” I know that you are fond o f Japanese things. Now, do you really imagine
Japanese people, as they are presented to us in art, have any existence? If you do, you
have never understood Japanese art at all. The Japanese people are the deliberate self-
conscious creation o f certain individual artists.. .In fact the whole of Japan is a pure
invention. There is no such country, there are no such people”; see Wilde, The Artist as
Critic: Critical Writings o f Oscar Wilde (New York: Random House, 1969) 315.
14 Major writers whose work was banned in 1909 include Nagai Kafu and Mori
Ogai; also, translations of Western authors such as Tolstoy, Gorki, and Maupassant were
also banned; see Rubin 1984,115.
15 Rubin, “Preface and Foreward to Essays,” Natsume Soseki: Kokoro a Novel and
Selected Essays (Lanham: Madison Books, 1991)243-4.
16 Hermand quoting and translating Scheffler, Karl. “Der Krieg,.” Kunst und
Kunstler 13 (1914-15), 2; see Hermand 100.
17 The first of these plays, Sozetsu Kaizetsu Nisshin Senso [The Sublime,
Exhilarating Sino-Japanese War] by Fujisawa Asajird opened on 31 August 1895, just
one month after Japan declared war on China; see Keene 1984,396.
ts As the cornerstone o f his rebuttal to orthodox Marxist interpretations of
fascism, Nolte employs Johannes Agnoli’s definition as developed in “Die BQrgerliche
Gesellschat und ihr Staat,” Das Argument 8 (1966) 460; see Ernst Nolte 1975,37.
19 Inoue Kiyoshi, Nihon no rekishi, Iff (Tokyo, Iwanami shoten, 1966) 188, qtd. in
Wilson 1975,201.
20 For an extended discussion regarding Arendt’s definition in The Origins o f
Totalitarianism (1951), see Travers 225.
21 These include the assassinations o f two Prime Ministers Hamaguchi and Inukai
in 1930 and 1932 respectively, and General Nagata in 1935.
THREE. THE JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE
In this chapter, I draw upon a wide range o f Japanese and Western scholarship to
construct an overview of the most significant developments, activities, and personalities
o f the Japanese avant-garde. For organizational purposes, I have divided this chapter into
two sections.
First, I will treat the presence and influence of Western avant-garde movements in
Japan, including Expressionism, Futurism, Constructivism, Dada, and Surrealism. I will
also consider the status o f pre-avant-garde arts institutions, the impact o f Western art
exhibitions, and the relationships forged between Japanese and Western avant-gardists.
The second section surveys indigenous Japanese avant-garde movements and
associations, including the Futurist Art Association, Action, Mavo, Sanka, and the
Japanese Proletarian Arts organizations. While several o f these artistic federations were
related to the Western avant-garde, they will be considered as distinct and unique
manifestations. For instance, while the Miraiha Bijutsu Kyokai [Futurist Art
Association] shares the title of international Futurism, this is in actuality only nominally,
and while many o f the artists employed forms and espoused ideologies inspired by
Russian and Italian Futurism, their activities on the whole transgressed categorical
limitations posed by the “Futurist” label. Similarly, while much Mavoist activity
correlates to Dada, Mavo was not an international avant-garde movement and developed
in quite different directions, despite the Mavoists’ cosmopolitanism. I will also consider
Naturalism in Japan as a movement and a stylistic tendency that held unique affinities to
the Japanese avant-garde project This is in line with current scholarship that holds an
inversion o f aesthetic categories regarding mimetic and anti-mimetic tendencies in all
cultural fields. I also tend to formulations of art-for-art’s sake and the doctrine of
aesthetic autonomy in order to contextualize and distinguish the aesthetic and
sociopolitical coordinates o f the Japanese avant-garde. Finally, I will outline avant-garde
performance as it relates to both the proletarian arts movements and Shingeki.
While conceptual and historical overlaps exist among these three categories, it is
necessary to distinguish between manifestations directly related to Western art
153
154
movements and those that arose independently in Japan. This is in accord with
contemporary theorists, who have problematized categorization and evaluation of
Japanese cultural formations exclusively by Western art historical and critical standards.
It is also in line with postmodern theory, which de-centers Western modernism.
Procedurally, I will keep theoretical and analytical considerations to a minimum,
except as they relate to the intention, production and reception o f the Japanese avant-
garde. In the next chapter, I will provide more detailed, comparative analysis of select
artists and movements and will incorporate theoretical and critical scholarship regarding
the intersection between the German and Japanese avant-garde with social, cultural and
political institutions. Furthermore, while I reference continuities in arts practices and
avant-garde discourse prior to the emergence of the avant-garde as well as postwar avant-
garde manifestations, my focus remains on avant-garde activities in the Taishb and early
Showa eras.
3.1 The Western Avant-Garde in Japan
In order to effectively frame the impact o f the Western avant-garde, it is necessary

to consider artistic, literary, and theatrical developments immediately prior to its presence
in Japan. This also entails highlighting the key features o f the institutions of art during
the Meiji era, to more accurately gauge the contours of the Japanese avant-garde’s
critique o f social institutions and its relation to aesthetic autonomy.
Throughout the 1870s, many artists traveled to Europe to learn and perfect the
techniques o f Western oil painting. Kunizawa Shinkuro was among the early group of
artists to go abroad for the express purpose of studying oil painting. Under the
sponsorship o f the Meiji government, many young artists turned to France for inspiration,
trained at the famous Parisian studios, and by the turn o f the twentieth-century, were
exhibiting at the French Salon. Among the best known o f this generation o f painters
were Kuroda Kiyoteru and Okada Saburosuke, both of whom became associated with the
Western academic realistic tradition (Dan 136). Takashina notes that Kuroda’s
Impressionist-influenced academicism strove for a “convincing recreation o f the visual
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world” that is emblematic o f Japanese artists’ selective absorption o f Western styles and
techniques (1996,204).
From the outset, the practical and conceptual effects o f the widespread adoption
Western painting proved controversial. Kuroda's nudes, though criticized by
conservative defenders o f the moral code, also inspired many artists to experiment with
Impressionism (Dan 138). Keene notes that Kuroda himself spoke out against most
Westem-style Japanese painters, because he felt they did not understand the “Western
culture behind the style” (Keene 1971,166). In the following decades, artists such as
Umehara Ryuzaburo and Yasui Sotaro pioneered Japanese Impressionist and post-
impressionist styles.
The establishment o f the Bunten (short for Monobusho Bijutsu Tenranakai
[Ministry of Education Art Exhibition] in 1907, fulfilled the needs of artists and the
government to create a centralized forum to display art. (Takashina 1990,274). Modeled
after the French salon, the annual juried exhibitions operated under the principle that it
was the state’s responsibility to promote high culture, shape public taste, and enhance
Japan’s international prestige. Furthermore, the canonization o f traditional art through
the classification and conservation o f designated national treasures went hand-in-hand
with the institutionalization o f modem art via government-sponsored exhibitions at home
and abroad, and the establishment o f official Westem-style art schools (Guth 18). By the
end o f Meiji, the Bunten achieved great popularity: the Sixth Bunten o f 1912, for
example, contained 186 artworks competitively chosen from the 1,811 submitted, and
attracted more than 160,000 visitors in one month (Takashina 1990,275). In addition to
the national art museums established in Tokyo, Nara and Kyoto, three other types of
museums emerged in the prewar era. The first type was established by temples and
shrines to display their treasures and historical materials on their own premises. The
second type was established by the new class o f affluent art collectors that emerged in the
Meiji era, who built collections o f both traditional and foreign art o f unprecedented
quality and size. The third type were the public museums o f modem art, beginning with
the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Gallery in 1921 (Kawakita 154-155).
The modernization o f Japan’s expanding cities was also associated with the self-
legitimizing efforts o f the Meiji bureaucrats, who felt that through the construction of
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imposing Westem-style edifices, they could impress upon the public (and the world) the
government’s power and stability (Watanabe 23). Shimbashi, the first railway station in
Tokyo, for example, was designed by American architects in 1873 in a modified English-
baroque style that set the trend for most stations (Dan 125). Minister o f Foreign Affairs
Inoue Kaoru established a commission of Japanese and German architects to develop a
plan for a governmental complex near the Imperial Palace. In 1887, German architects
Wilhelm Bockmann and Hermann Ende produced two plans for the first Diet Building
and proposed sweeping changes for central Tokyo to supplant the traditional “shrine and
temple” architectural style (Reynolds 39). By the late 1880s, Japanese architects were
fully knowledgeable about the range o f Western architectural styles, and in their efforts to
establish a national identity, they attempted to fuse shrine and temple forms with a host of
European revivalist styles, including the Queen Anne, Neoclassical and Gothic styles
(Wendelken 29).
The influx o f Western literary and dramatic forms throughout the Meiji era was
partially a result of Japanese writers’ travels in Germany and France. In Paris especially,
they were confronted with a social milieu that valued the importance o f the arts and
democratic access to art and literature, and sanctioned a wide-range o f artistic
experimentation (Rimer 1988,22-3). In 1882, an anthology o f Western poetry in
translation, Shintaishi-sho [New Style Poetry], introduced forms that were markedly
different from traditional tanka and haiku. The popularity o f this anthology precipitated
an interest in Western poetry, at the same time that Japanese poets were adopting new
poetic conventions, rejecting the traditional “seven-five” or “five-seven” syllabo-
rhythmic patterns, and transforming poetic language from a classic or neoclassic literary
style [bungotai], to one that was more colloquial [kogotai\ (Ko 5). By the mid-1890s, a
number o f Western literary styles had been adopted by Japanese poets and writers: while
Shimizaki T5son and others were influenced by the English Romantics, younger poets
were attracted to the French Symbolists and Decadents (Saito 185-6). Bungakkai, (1893-
98) was a literary journal devoted primarily to Western Romanticism, and the first to
publish the poems o f Byron, Shelley, and Keats (184).
In the 1880s, the Japanese novel was gradually being transformed by Western
realistic techniques. Ukigamo [The Drifting Clouds] (1887)—often considered Japan’s
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first serious modem novel—was written by Futabatei Shimei, a young student of Russian
literature (Rubin 1984,40). A more popular form o f novel was produced by Ozaki
KySyo and his “Ken’yusha” group, who employed imported techniques of realistic
description that would come to be referred to as “Edo fiction in Western disguise” (40).
In the aftermath o f the Russo-Japanese war, but prior to the full-blown emergence of
Naturalism, a host o f Western writers and dramatists were introduced in translations to
the Japanese reading public, including Ibsen, Chekhov, D’Annunzio, Strindberg, Shaw,
Pinero, and Bjomson (60).
O f all literary forms, drama would go the furthest in dispensing with traditional
conventions in favor of adopting Western styles and techniques. Rimer notes that there
has been an inclination on the part o f theatre historians to link Kabuki with pre-modem
Western drama, most notably Shakespeare. He notes, however, that Kabuki dramaturgy
is “constructed so as to provide a series o f emotional and scenic climaxes, designed as
ends in themselves, that do not represent the inevitable results o f the interactions of
character and plot”—which despite their dramatic and artistic efficacy, are nonetheless
“far removed from those that stimulated the movement for a modem theatre in Europe”
(1974,8).
The Meiji era witnessed a range o f attempts to modernize the institution o f theatre
and drama. Kawakami Otojiro, a pioneer figure of Shimpa, developed a unique dramatic
form, “soshi shibai,” in which he attempted to de-feudalize Kabuki by eliminating the
hanamichi, the musical side orchestra, and highly stylized acting (Chiba 39). Kawakami
also achieved notoriety for his sensational productions on contemporary themes and
topical events, especially on the Sino-Japanese war. In Chiba’s estimation, Kawakami’s
productions represented a “forum o f political dissent” to the government’s strict
censorship policies (39). Equally significant were his troupe’s tours o f America and
Europe between 1899 and 1902, which fostered both greater understanding of Japanese
theatre in the West, and theatrical innovations at home, such as electric stage lighting
(40). Kawakami also produced Sardou’s Patrie in Tokyo, thus introducing Japanese
audiences to the “well-made play” (47).
Another Western-inspired form, zangirimono, was popularized by the Kabuki
playwright Kawatake Mokuami in plays written for the actor Onoe Kikugoro. Often
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written collaboratively, Mokuami included scenes and situations never before seen on the
Japanese stage, including characters dressed in Western clothing speaking dialogue that
referenced contemporary life and culture (Keene 1984,403). In 1879, Mokuami also
wrote a two-act comedy based on British playwright Bulwer-Lytton’s Money (403).
Shimpa’s successes during the war with China were replicated during and after the
Russo-Japanese war, at the same time that successful adaptations of literary masterpieces
such as The Divine Comedy and The Count o f Monte Cristo were being produced by
Shimpa troupes, which had by that time grown in number and popularity (437-8). The
Shinkokugeki [New National Theatre] was an Osaka-based troupe established in 1917 by
Sawada Shojiro, who devised productions intended to bridge the gulf between Kabuki
and modem theatre. In the interest of attracting wide audiences, however, Sawada more
often than not emphasized spectacle over solid dramaturgy, so that his plays are a hybrid
style reminiscent o f nineteenth-century Western melodrama (Rimer 1974,16). By 1922,
however, the company had achieved enough commercial viability to warrant a contract
with the Shochiku Company for performances in large Tokyo theatres (UNESCO 193).
The significance of Ibsen for the early innovators of modem Japanese drama is
inestimable, beginning with the establishment of the Ibsen Society in 1907 by a group of
writers interested in Naturalism, including Osanai Kaoru, who would establish the Jiyu
Gekijo [Free Theatre] in 1909.1 Another Shimpa playwright, Mayama Seika, wrote two
one-act plays—Daiichininsha [The First Man] (1907) and Umarezarishi naraba [If He
Had Not Been Bom] (1908)—which most critics compare to Ibsen (Keene 1984,429).
Nakamura Kichiz5 also attempted to write dramas in the Ibsenian mode, most notably
Bokushi no le [The Vicarage] (1909) (Rimer 1974,24).
If the Shimpa movement emerged in the arena of active, sometimes violent,
political confrontation, it matured in a decidedly commercial direction. Brian Powell
notes that Shimpa was stabilized under the management o f the Shochiku company, which
dominated Kabuki production (1984,3). Shingeki, on the other hand, was bom in the
academy, via ShoyS’s Literary Art Association (Bungei Kyokai) at Waseda University,
and Osanai’s Jiyu Gekij5, which was based at Keio University (Ortolani 1990,243).
Shdy5 also attempted to conform acting styles to the demands o f newly-emerging
dramatic forms by re-directing the efforts o f the Bungei Kyokai towards the staging of
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plays and the training actors and actresses (Rimer 1974,21). Osanai Kaoru and Ichikawa
Sadanji modeled the Jiyu Gekijo on Antoine’s Theatre Libre, concentrating on the works
o f contemporary European dramatists. While the Jiyu Gekijd performed sporadically
until 1919, the Bungei Kyokai collapsed in 1913, when Matsui Sumako and Shimamura
Hogetsu left the company to form the more commercially-inclined Geijutsu-za [Art
Theatre]. A more definitive and important step in the direction of realistic acting
techniques occurred after Osanai returned from his tours of Berlin and Moscow in 1913,
where he encountered the work of Max Reinhardt and Konstantin Stanislavski (Ortolani
1990,247).
While Shoyo recognized the significance o f Kabuki to Japanese audiences, he felt
that its emphasis on pictorial qualities needed to be augmented by psychological depth in
character. This goal was also shared by Ogai, whose translations of Ibsen’s John Gabriel
Borkman, A Doll's House, and Ghosts were widely read prior to being produced (Rimer
1974,24). In his own play En no Gyoja [The Hermit], Shoyo concerned himself with the
psychology of his characters; however, unlike Ibsen’s social dramas, he based his play on
a traditional story, thus remaining within boundaries familiar to Japanese audiences (20).
Though his first version of the play was completed in 1914, when it was published in
magazine and book forms in 1916 and 1917 respectively, it caused a sensation and
became the first modem Japanese play to be translated into French (20).
Although the enthusiasm o f Japanese artists, writers and theatre practitioners for
Western forms would revolutionize all fields o f Japanese cultural production, the period
after World War I has been characterized as one o f crisis. As styles changed rapidly, it
was no longer possible for artists to master any one given set of techniques, a situation
that contributed to their growing sense that “the burden of proof concerning artistic
authenticity and individuality was placed squarely on the shoulder o f the individual
artists” (Rimer 1987,66). Furthermore, younger artists found the Bunten judges too
conservative, which led to the founding o f the Nikakai [Second Association]. Rimer adds
that success in the Buntens usually catapulted artists into the “whole cultural system,”
due to journalistic and critical attention, widespread public exposure, and the prestige
associated with being selected for exhibition (69).
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From the early 1870s, the Meiji bureaucrats recognized the desirability o f
modernizing the theatre, compelling them to institute Kabuki reform and to underwrite
traditional Noh as a tool o f international diplomacy. The interest in Western theatre
institutions was epitomized in the academic realm by Shoyo’s wide range o f producing
and literary activities, and in the commercial arena through the gradual absorption of
Kabuki-derived forms into the increasingly corporatized network o f producing and
touring organizations.
Such were the dominant styles, movements and conditions of the institutions of
art that set the stage for the emergence o f the Japanese avant-garde. I will now turn my
attention to the presence and influence o f the Western avant-garde in Japan.
3.1.1 Expressionism
MacCallum considers Yorozu Tetsugoro’s Self-Portrait with Red Eyes (1912) the
first important Expressionist painting in Japan, since it exhibits “deeper psychological
states than [the] simple artistic alienation” typical o f many late-Meiji artists (83-4).
While Yorozu was associated with a number o f Westem-style art movements throughout
his career, including Cubism and Surrealism, Munsterberg considers it significant that he
was a graduate o f the Tokyo School o f Fine Arts and had never been to Europe like most
other artists o f his day. Yorozu also belonged to a group o f experimental artists who
called themselves (in French) “La Societd du Fusain,” which challenged the assumptions
o f the first generation o f Western style painters, particularly the “Fauvist academicism”
that dominated the Tokyo School o f Fine Arts (60). The first organized activity o f the
Fusain group was an exhibition in 1912, which featured the works o f Saito Yori,
Takamura Kdtard, Kishida Ryusei, Yorozu, and other artists who would become active in
the Futurist Art Association (Asano 52).
German Expressionist theory and art were introduced to Japan one year later
through a series o f articles written by that Mokaturo Kinoshita for the art magazine
Bifutsu Shinpo (Omuka 1996,23). In 1914, Berlin’s Der Sturm gallery loaned a number
o f prints to the Hibiya Museum for an exhibition that would have immediate impact on a
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number o f artists (23). The landscape paintings o f Umehara Ryuzaburo, who had studied
under Renoir, are often classified as Expressionist, due to their emotional intensity and
stylistic affinities to Van Gogh (Munsterberg 58). Sullivan notes that Umehara’s
paintings, however deeply they may have been inspired by Western techniques, represent
a “uniquely successful” synthesis of East and West (141). Among other noteworthy
Meiji and Taisho painters who adopted Expressionism, Munsterberg considers as the
most gifted, Saeki Yuzo, who had spent most of his adult life in Paris (61).
In respect to more abstract Expressionistic tendencies, historians cite the
enormous influence o f Kandinsky on two generations o f painters. Not only were
Kandinsky’s theories translated and put into practice, they were also taught and debated
in the academy. Murayama Tomoyoshi’s first exhibition in Germany was held at the
Twardy Gallery, which was associated with Kandinsky’s circle. Upon his return to
Japan, Murayama published translations o f poetry by Kandinsky, and published an
article, “Koseiha to shokkakushugi” [Structuralism and Tactilism] in the Yomuri
shimbun. While Murayama’s own theory o f “conscious constructivism” has been
compared to Kandinsky’s theories, Omuka points out that in the long run, Murayama and
most o f the avant-gardists of the period were more highly influenced by the social and
political content o f German Expressionism, than by the “mystical formalism” of
Kandinsky’s abstract expressionism (1995,27).
While in Germany, Murayama also became acquainted with the playwright Georg
Kaiser, whose plays are considered to be among the best and most enduring o f German
Expressionism. Murayama was especially drawn to the strong visual emphasis inherent
to Kaiser’s dramaturgy, his ideological commitment to the necessity of arousing the
audience’s self-awareness, and the creativity that his plays allow for in production
(Weisenfeld 1997,349). Murayama also became familiar with the plays and poetry of
the anarcho-socialist Expressionist Ernst Toller, who composed many o f his major works
while in prison for participating in the Munich revolution of 1918.2 Murayama’s debt to
these Expressionist playwrights, and his interest in the German proletarian director Erwin
Piscator will be discussed in greater detail in chapter four, however, it is worth noting
that all o f these artists were highly committed to social change and the role o f the
Expressionist artist in fostering that change.
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It appears highly significant, therefore, that Murayama published an article in

Chuo Bijutsu entitled “Exit Expressionism: An Introduction to Conscious
Constructivism” (1923),3 in which he echoes the Dadaists’ criticism of the inwardness of
Expressionism, while also associating abstract expressionistic tendencies with Dada.4
While I will explore Murayama’s critique of Expressionism in subsequent sections o f this
and the next chapter, his criticism is worth noting here for two reasons. First, by the time
that the Dadaists had declared Expressionist art a bourgeois commodity, the fallibility of
the Expressionists’ brand o f pacifism and social alienation had become apparent in the
aftermath of World War I. In Japan, by contrast, Expressionism had no such history,
neither as a movement, nor as a social force. The second feature o f Murayama’s critique,
wherein he associates abstract expressionism and Dada, is attributed by Omuka to the fact
that Murayama’s stay in Germany coincided with a particular moment in the history of
Berlin Dada when it appeared to be converging with Constructivism. One o f
Murayama’s chief associates in Dusseldorf was Theo Van Doesberg, who at that time
was associated with both Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticist movement and Dada.5 While this
may explain Murayama’s association o f abstract art and Dada, it does not account for the
fact that he was certainly aware o f the distinctions among all of these movements. It also
appears significant that Murayama’s does not refer to social or political factors to
distinguish Expressionism, and that his indictment not only encompasses German
Expressionism, but a host of “isms” that also included Japanese post-impressionism.
While Murayama’s conflation of classificatory labels accurately reflects the
unique cross-tendencies of these movements in prewar Japan, it is worth remembering
that many Western critics and art historians have also employed Expressionism as a
catch-all category, most notably Georg Lukacs. Murayama himself was referred to as an
“expressionist artist” [hyogenha gakaj, despite his strong tendency to incorporate a host
of Western stylistic influences, including Constructivism, Cubism, and Dada. Linhartova
attributes the conflation o f these terms in critical writings o f the period to the 1914
exhibition o f Der Sturm artwork at the Hibiya Museum. This show, which featured the
works o f twenty-six artists, including Kandinsky, Kokoschka, Max Pechstein, and Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner, who were all associated with Expressionism and/or the Blue Rider
Group, also included works by such Cubo-Futurists as Fernand Leger and Umberto
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Boccioni. Linhartovi points out that in Saitd Kaz5’s prefatory comments in the
exhibition catalogue, he referred to all of these painters as Expressionists, thus setting the
trend for the conflation o f a host of Western styles in prewar Japanese avant-garde
discourse (1984,143). It is equally telling that although Murayama pronounced the
passing of Expressionism in 1923, the following year he designed the stage settings for
the Tsukiji Little Theatre’s production o f Kaiser’s From Mom to Midnight, one o f the
genuine classics o f German Expressionist drama, and also that he translated a number of
Toller’s Expressionist plays and a collection of his poetry, Swallow Book P a s
Schwallenbuch].6 Interestingly, the cover o f Swallow Book was designed by Okada
Tatsuo, one o f the most proficient of the Mavoists in the areas o f printmaking and
illustration (Weisenfeld 1997,312). Furthermore, Murayama’s designs for the Kaiser
play have been called a pioneering achievement in Constructivist set design in the
manner of Meyerhold, the experimental Russian director (Sofue 15).
Omuka considers Onchi Koshiro’s print, An Enlightened Moment, to be the first
and most significant abstract painting in the style of Kandinsky’s brand o f Expressionism
(1996,26). He maintains that Kanbara Tai was the true pioneer in the development of
abstract painting in Japan at a time when very few Japanese painters were experimenting
with geometric and amorphous shapes. Admittedly indebted to Kandinsky, Kanbara not
only was an active painter, but also a prolific writer who did much to disseminate the
aesthetic principles behind the abstract tendencies o f both Futurism and Expressionism
(27).
In 1923, Nagano Yoshimitsu, who had been in Berlin at the same time as
Murayama, brought back many artworks that he purchased in Europe. Along with
Murayama, Nagano formed a temporary association of artists, called the August Gruppe
[August Group], an obvious play on the Novembergruppe—an association o f Berlin
Expressionists (Itabashi, N. pag.). This group held its first show at the Cafe Ryuitsuso in
Kanda in July 1923, which was billed as an exhibition o f recent Russian and German
Expressionist art, but which also included works by both Nagano and Murayama. The
success o f this exhibition caused them to mount a second show at the same location the
day after the first show closed.
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In other fields, Munsterberg considers the Taisho era a time o f experimentation in

Expressionist styles in Japanese architecture. In 1920 a group o f younger architects
founded the Bunriha Kenchikukai [Secessionist Architectural Society], which rejected
the conventional and hybrid styles of the Meiji era, and championed the functionality of
German and Austrian designers such as Joseph Hoffmann and Peter Behrens. The
“Expressionist Style,” which was based on the work o f German architects Erich
Mendelsohn and Hanz Poelzig, inspired Japanese architects to create imaginative forms
and incorporate “bizarre ornamentation” in Taishd buildings (115). In 1925, another
group influenced by the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, established the Japan
International Architectural Society. Such developments in the Taisho era reveal a strong
social consciousness that aimed at “modernizing and rationalizing the systems and
processes o f architectural production” (Kawakita 153).
While Ishii Baku is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of Westem-style
modem dance in Japan, Eguchi Takaya, who studied under the German Expressionist
dancer Mary Wigman, was another influential force (Munroe 192). Yamada Kosaku,
who traveled in Berlin, experimented with a fusion o f dance, poetry and drama inspired
by the German Expressionists (Omuka 1996,23). While German Expressionist plays and
design techniques found their way into Shingeki in the 1920s, Expressionism was never
an organized movement as it had been in Germany. This is not to infer, however, that
Expressionist techniques were not influential on dramatists and theatre practitioners.
Kubo Sakae, later esteemed as one of the most significant prewar Shingeki playwrights,
was early in his career interested in German Expressionist drama. A graduate of the
German Literature Department at Tokyo University, Kubo translated several
Expressionist plays (Keene 1984,460). Kubo’s later proletarian dramas were unique in
their reliance on theatrical effect, which were no doubt related to his familiarity with
German Expressionism. His most famous play, Kazambai-chi (Region o f Volcanic Ash]
(1937) is particularly noteworthy for its use of Epic Theatre techniques pioneered by
Piscator. From the opening minutes of the play—which calls for film, theme music and
the voice-over o f a narrator—to its clinical portrait o f the sociological and
“technological” quality o f the characters’ interrelationships, the play is replete with
German and Soviet theatrical devices (462).
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3.1.2 Futurism, Cubism and Constructivism
Ogai published his translation o f Marinetti’s “First Manifesto o f Futurism” just

months after it appeared in Le Figaro (Omuka 96,20). It was the first of four translations
that would appear over the course o f the next decade (Lanne 389). Furthermore, Ogai’s
translation appeared in two installments in Subaru, the organ of the Pan no Kai, known
for its cult-like devotion to art-for-art’s sake. According to Noda Utaroo, even though
Italian Futurism appeared to share none o f the ideological traits o f the Pan no Kai
members, it proved compelling enough to spark their interest in the range of movements
then emerging in Europe.7 In the 1920s, for instance, the prolific poet Kitahara Hakushu
a founding members of the Pan no Kai was producing Expressionist and Futurist poetry.
His collection Kaihyd to Kumo [Sea Leopards and Clouds] (1929) contains such poems
as “Gogatsu no Yoru no Sora” [Night Sky in May], which features “English ‘readings’
for the Chinese characters” (Keene 1984,249-50).
Within a few years of its introduction, a number o f artists were experimenting
with Futurist techniques. Two young artists, Kimura Sohachi and Uryu Yojiro, wrote to
Marinetti in 1912, and received from him a wealth of information on Italian Futurism,
including photographs and reproductions o f Futurist artworks (Asano 52). In 1914, Sato
Kyuji, the director o f the Hibiya Museum, called himself a “fuchiwarist,” and
experimented with performance techniques that he called “miraigeki” (Omuka 1995,25).
Yamamoto Kanae, who had lived and worked in Europe in the early years o f World War
One, published articles in 1917 on the theoretical bases o f post-Revolutionary Russian art
(Omuka 1986,113). Kanbara Tai and Seiji Togo contributed the first Futurist works to
the Fourth Nikakai exhibition of 1918 (Lanne 383).
Interest in Futurist performance peaked in 1921, with the publication of Kanbara’s
translation o f Marinetti’s performance piece Poupees Electriques* and two articles on
Futurist performance events.9 In 1923, Kanbara contributed two more articles on Futurist
Theatre, in which he also included translations o f the “Futurist Synthetic Theatre” and
“Theatre o f Simultaneity” manifestoes.10 In one o f these articles, Kanbara also mentions
that the artist Togo Seigi had been personally involved in Futurist performance activities
in Bologna in 1922 (390). hi Germany, Murayama met Marinetti, who gave him a copy
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o f the Futurist “Manifesto of Tactilism” (1921), which revealed the potential o f Futurism
to evoke the physical senses “through the use and contrast o f such things as human and
animal hair”—a subject Murayama took up in the essay “Structuralism and Tactilism”
(Itabashi, N. pag.).
The Russian artist David Burliuk arrived in Japan in 1920, with over five hundred
artworks by Expressionist, Futurist, and Cubist painters—an event that gave an
immediate boost to the recently formed Futurist Arts Association. Omuka maintains that
Burliuk’s visit had an inestimable effect on how the Japanese avant-garde developed in
the next decade. Although Burliuk was only in Japan from 1920 to 1922, he engaged in a
number o f high-profile activities that attracted artists, theatre practitioners, and critics.
Two weeks after his arrival, Burliuk, along with artist Viktor Palimov, presented an
exhibition of Russian Futurist artwork, “The First Exhibition of Russian Paintings in
Japan,” that contained styles o f art that the Japanese had only read about in journals
(Omuka 1986,112). Kinoshita notes that Burliuk and his associates visited his house on
several occasions, and that he also accompanied Burliuk on “sketching trips” from which
he learned Futurist principles in detail (Kinoshita 1970a, 7). At one public lecture at
Tokyo University, Burliuk demonstrated a typical Futurist act o f provocation, when he
threw India ink on the walls o f the lecture hall (Omuka 1996,119).
In the literary field, poets were becoming increasingly interested in Western
avant-garde movements other than Symbolism—the dominant mode of modem Japanese
poetry. In 1921, Hirato Kenkichi distributed a leaflet entitled “Nihon miraiha sengen
undo” [Japanese Futurist Manifestation Movement], which also bore a subtitle in French,
“Mouvement futuriste japonais.” In this manifesto, Hirato noted his aversion to
conventional poetic devices, while adopting the hyperbolic and anarchic rhetoric of
Marinetti:
We want to participate in a true creation by employing onomatopoeia,
mathematical signs, and all kinds of organic methods. By destroying, as
much as possible, syntax and the conventions o f expression, especially by
sweeping way the dead bodies o f adjectives and adverbs, and by using
infinities o f verbs, we shall advance toward a realm which will not allow
any invasion. (Ko 18)
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He also glorified the machine age, thusly: “The central action of the trembling heat of
god and humanity arises from the core o f collective life. The city is a motor. Its core is
dynamo-electric.” (Hariu 6).
Although more widely associated with Japanese Dada and Mavo, according to
Keene, Hagiwara Kyojiro’s collection o f poetry Shikei Senkoku [Verdict o f Death] (1925)
is beholden to Italian Futurism. By using characters printed in a variety o f sizes and
typeface, and through such devices as onomatopoeia and the juxtaposition o f letters and
geometric shapes, Hagiwara communicated turbulent ideas and emotions in graphic
contexts (Keene 1984,257). Keene attributes Hagiwara’s rejection of linguistic
conventions and older poetic forms o f expression to his interest in Futurism (258).
In 1922, the Futurist Art Association co-sponsored exhibitions and lectures in
Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, often with the participation of Burliuk (Hariu 3). In 1923,
Kinoshita published the manifesto, “What is Futurism? A Response,” that offered
detailed information about the international manifestations o f Futurism, and other
movements, including Cubism, Expressionism, and Dada (Takashina 1986,23). Also,
Kinoshita is clear about the distinctions of Futurism from these other movements on both
aesthetic and theoretical grounds, and though aware of the formal affinities o f Cubism
and Futurism in the visual arts, he makes clear the ideological and anarchic distinctions
o f Futurism. This was unique among artists and writers, who tended to emphasize
similarities among the Western avant-garde movements, often conflating them under the
banner o f“expressionism.”
Another noteworthy Russian artist to visit Japan was Varvara Bubnova, who upon
her arrival in 1922, published two magazine articles in which she reported on
developments in post-Revolutionary Russian art and explicated the principles behind
Constructivism (Omuka 1986,114). In one o f these articles, “On The Death o f Art,”
Bubnova indicates both the “anti-art” qualities of the Russian avant-garde, and the social
imperative of eroding the boundaries between art and life:
Old-fashioned aestheficism brought about the art o f painting, museums,
and exhibitions.. .and forced the artist to indulge in his sheer visual
perception of the w orld....[in contrast], the new activities to which all the
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emerging artists devote themselves have produced various ‘objects’ of use

for human livelihood.11
Here, Bubovna maps out the Russian avant-garde's aim to abolish the bourgeois
institutions o f art, and underscores the Constructivist principle o f the utility o f art objects
in daily life. This was to be particularly influential to the Mavoists, who would deploy
Constructivist principles in art, architecture, scene design, textiles, and sculpture, and in
Murayama’s case, critical discourse. While Bubnova participated in the Sanka Bijutsu
Kyokai [Sanka Plastic Arts Association], she never exhibited with either the Futurist Art
Association or Mavo.
Lanne observes that after the departure o f David Burliuk, critical discourse on
Futurist art was fairly superficial (398). He also maintains that o f the Italian and Russian
variants of Futurism, the latter had the most impact in Japan for a number o f reasons,
including the direct influence of Burliuk and Bubnova. First, the Taish5 social milieu
was not conducive to either the anarchic or nationalistic ideologies espoused by Marinetti
and the Italian Futurists, but rather, represents a point in time when Japan was at its most
receptive to the liberal humanism o f democracy and socialism (380). Second, Marinetti’s
localized propagandistic aims as inscribed in his aesthetic manifestoes, including his
support for Italy’s war with Austria and his praise of Mussolini, were inconsequential to
the Japanese, who above all, valued Futurism as an artistic, pictorial, and poetic
movement (398).
The reception o f Futurism by the Japanese critical establishment reveals
ideological dimensions regarding the place o f art in society through the Taisho era. At its
most negative, critical evaluations characterized Futurist art as “sick,” or the product o f
charlatanism.12 Early on, the nationalism o f the Italian Futurists was rejected by artists
and intellectuals alike, who associated such ideologies with Meiji authoritarianism.
Kishida Ryusei, for example, objected to the politicization o f Japanese Futurism by
associating this with Meiji artists’ complicity with the government’s policies o f Higher
Productivity and Industrial Promotion.13 Like Takamura Kotaro, who emphasized
individualism over national interests in his polemical essays, Kishida’s rejection o f the
overtly political goals o f art appeared contradictory to the paradigm that the individual
self was to be the ultimate basis o f art, a position also advocated by Ogai. Kimura
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Shohachi, although a harsh critic o f the Futurists, also displayed intellectual curiosity at
both their formal innovativeness and their spirit o f resistance (Omuka 1996,22). As to
the Japanese artists who adopted Futurist techniques, Weisenfeld notes that overall, their
focus remained on a “technological and formally dynamic art of the future,” without
abandoning the paradigm o f aesthetic subjectivism (1997,71). She attributes this
“selective interpretation” of Western Futurism to the fact that in Japan, Futurist art was
usually displayed alongside other styles of modem and avant-garde art, and also that the
term “expressionism” [hyogenshugi or hydgenha], served as a catch-all for a range of
artistic styles in the prewar era (72). In addition, the Japanese Futurists attempted to
distance themselves from contemporary “lyrical expressionist tendencies” of other art
movements by “asserting a strong sense of iconoclasm and rebelliousness vis-a-vis
established social conventions, the past, and the gadan [art establishment]” (72).
Sait5 Yoshishige was among the pioneers o f Constructivism in Japan, who
advocated that “art must reflect the structure and dynamic o f reality.” This also inflected
his scholarship, and as a professor at Tama Art University from 1964 through 1973, Saito
inspired a generation o f postwar avant-gardists, especially those associated with Mono-ha
(Munroe 259). While in Berlin, Murayama met Alexander Archipenko, who in the early
1920s was widely exhibited and discussed in Japan. Weisenfeld notes that Archipenko’s
sculptures were particularly appealing to Japanese artists because he “moved away from
mimetic representation towards an abstracted, non-naturaiistic style that emphasized the
expressiveness o f the material itself’ (1997,55). Murayama drew upon Archipenko’s
ideas in his own theory o f “conscious constructivism,” which he developed in publication
and in practice.
In regard to his usage of everyday life objects, Murayama wrote: “the
Constructivists use glass, metal, wood and paper. Used in plastic creations, these
materials evoke the association of concrete ideas at the same time that they add to the
work an effect that appeals to the sense o f touch.”14 In this respect, the Constructivists
drew their inspiration from “industry, technology, and science,” which fostered the belief
that Contructivist practices held the promise to “unify mathematics and art, artistic labor
and the factory” (Harootunian 2000,104). To Murayama, an ideal society would be
mapped out by the Constructivists in their aim to mechanize both art and life through the
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“constant cooperation o f the masses;” in the process, artists and social beings would
together make the “artisinal products” of individual artists appear “medieval, bourgeois,
unnecessarily extravagant, and inappropriate for the present industrial age” (105).
Central to this was the Constructivists’ love o f the “beauty of the bluntly courageous
machine.”15 This notion also explains Murayama’s propensity towards collective
creation and the rejection o f individualism as the central paradigm for the artist In this
respect Murayama and the other Japanese artists adopting his model o f “conscious
constructivism” parted company from many other avant-gardists of the period, ultimately
leading to Mavo “anti-art.”
Harootunian notes that while Murayama’s glorification o f the machine is
reminiscent o f Marinetti’s “delirious” vision of Italian Futurism, Murayama placed an
emphasis on the utility o f artworks that was more in line with the Russian Futurism
(2000,104). This explains his and other artists’ attraction to architecture as a synthesis of
industry, art, and production in the aftermath of the Kanto earthquake. A number of
artists who would become associated with Mavo were involved with the “Barrack
Decoration Company,” which was formed to help decorate the interiors and exteriors of
the temporary residential and work spaces constructed after the quake (Wesienfeld 1997,
126). So prolific were they in their design ideas that the Mavoists were given two rooms
at the “Capital City Reconstruction Exhibition” in which to exhibit their designs. Though
most o f these utopian designs would go unrealized—a fate also shared by the Russian
Constructivists—they adhered to the conviction o f “necessity alongside convenience”
within the context of urban density; that public buildings should be “rational, economic,
and industrial;” and, above all, that the “forms should obey the properties o f the materials
[that] designers and builders decided to use” (Harootunian 2000,105).
The title o f a 1924 essay written by Murayama “Architecture as the Ultimate Art,”
reveals Murayama’s strong inclination that more than any other form, architecture
“intrinsically constituted the forms and actions o f modem industrial society” (Weisenfeld
1997,141). In this respect, Murayama appears to also have been influenced by the
utility-mindedness o f the Bauhaus school, which was active during his stay in Germany.
Nevertheless, the intense, albeit transitory interest o f many o f these artists with
architecture must be attributed to the exigencies o f rebuilding Tokyo after the earthquake.
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Like the Russian Constructivists, Murayama and others found an outlet for their interest
in architecture in theatrical scene design, which was a more practical arena in which to
realize their utopian visions. Murayama’s set for Kaiser’s From Mom to Midnight, for
example, reveals affinities to Meyerhold’s constructivist productions. Hijikata Yoshi, the
financier and a principal director o f the Tsukiji Little Theatre, was especially drawn to
the work o f Russian director Meyerhold, who often incorporated Constructivist and
environmental designs in his experimental productions, some o f which Hijikata had seen
during his travels to Moscow (Ortolani 1990,249). Weisenfeld also points to textile
design as another area conducive to Constructivist trends. For example, Maki Hisao’s
“constructivist kimono” featured “abstract blocks and patterns of color... with seemingly
random letters and words.” Interestingly, one such pattern was called “From Mom to
Midnight” after Kaiser’s play and Murayama’s designs for the Tsukiji production, while
another, “The Longing of Toller,” was named after the German expressionist
playwright.16
After 1925, artists who were not associated with the proletarian art movements
tended towards a kind o f formalism inspired by Cubism. Omuka notes that in Japan,
there was no organized movement o f artists pursuing Cubism, but rather, such artists
became associated with a number o f disparate federations, including the Futurist Art
Association, and later, the Ninth Room Association (Omuka 1996 23). Munsterberg
notes that Yorozu’s work during the Taisho period is exemplary o f Japanese Cubism, and
his painting Leaning Woman (1917) one o f the first and most famous paintings in this
style (60). In the mid-1920s, Seiji Togo was another noteworthy artist experimenting
with Cubist techniques. Kawakita points out, however, that Cubism assumed distinctive
traits in Japan, and that while the European Cubists tended to emphasize the “plastic
qualities” o f objects by reducing “form to plane surfaces” to “reorder and reconstruct
them,” the Japanese Cubists were more interested in “the use of form and color,” tending
to deal with the ‘flavor’ rather than the substance o f Cubism (104). He observes that the
overall failure o f Cubism to become more widespread was due to the fact that many
Japanese painters “were hindered by strong emotional predispositions” (109). A more
appealing alternative would be Surrealism, which would become a predominant style in
the visual arts through the 1930s.
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In 1927, a large exhibition o f Russian Art was held in Tokyo, which is significant
not only as the last major exposure o f the Japanese public to Russian avant-garde art in
the prewar period, but also because it contained a large number of works in the
proletarian realist style. This also coincided with a return to realism by many of the
painters who had formerly been associated with the Futurist Art Association and other
avant-garde groups (Omuka 1986,116). Art historians have grouped the formalist avant-
gardists under the banner “Constructivist abstract expression (Clark 44). Saito
Yoshishige represents one such painter, who, stimulated by his encounters with Burliuk
and Mavo, attempted a fusion of Constructivism and Dada techniques by using real
materials, and adopting the Dada conception o f “art as totality” in two series during the
1930s. Kara Kara, for example, was a series of “non-objective constructions” composed
o f lacquer, nylon thread and wood; while Toro-Wood was a series of monochromatic and
geometric wood reliefs (Munroe 259). Such works not only exemplify the tendency of
Japanese avant-gardists to draw upon the techniques associated with several movements
at the same time, but also, the imperative for art to surpass art itself.
3.1.3 Dada and Surrealism
It is important to note from the outset that Dada in Japan was never an organized
movement as it had been in Germany, and although many Japanese avant-gardists were
drawn to Dadaist techniques, its most important early manifestations occurred in the field
o f poetry. In Ko’s estimation, its influence on a generation o f young poets in the 1920s
was so strong that it warrants to be called “the era o f Dada” (4). Ko attributes these
developments to the efforts of one poet in particular, Takahashi Shinkichi, whose overall
contribution to Japanese letters was formidable, including seventeen books of poetry and
three collections o f literary essays (11).
Dada was introduced to Japan in an anonymous article about Kurt Schwitters in
the Manchoho newspaper in 1920. Ko notes that the writer considered Dada an extension
o f Futurism and Cubism, although he did place it in the context of the disillusionment felt
by German artists in the aftermath o f the war (11). The first detailed information about
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Dada appeared in two articles in the IS August 15 1920 edition of the Yorozuchoho
newspaper, which, though attributed to two different authors, may have been written by
Wakatsuki Yasuji (Linhartova 1987,34). The first article summarized Tristan Tzara’s M
Antipyrine, while the second more comprehensive article on manifestations of Dada
across Europe, also discussed the “First Manifesto o f Dada.” 17 Linhartova notes that
although these articles provided useful information, they both left the impression that
German Dada was a kind o f decadent “bolshevism” in art (1987,34).
Ko contextualizes the impact and appeal of Dada for younger poets in respect of
dominant literary trends in the 1920s. These poets, disenchanted with the aestheticism of
the Symbolists and the personal lyricism o f the Naturalists, embraced a poetics that
positioned the artist as a catalyst for social revolution. Takahashi, who claimed to be
highly stirred by the newspaper articles on Dada, soon began writing Dadaist poetry, and
in 1921, distributed about one hundred mimeographed copies of his first collection of
Dada poems, Makuwari shishu [Melon poems: DA 1J (Ko 27). Ko considers Takahashi’s
poem “Dangen was dadaisuto” [Assertion is Dada] (1921), first published in the weekly
magazine Shukan nihort as foundational to his public reputation as a Dadaist, and the
movement in general.
In the first line o f “Dangen was dadaisuto,”18“Dada asserts and negates all,”
Takahashi sets up the paradox upon which the poem’s imagery is constructed. Referring
to the nihilistic impulses o f Dada early on, Takahashi writes: “DADA negates
everything. It pierces and rips up the no self’; and also in the last lines: “All is enemy to
DADA. DADA curses everything to death, swallows everything up, and yet its tongue,
still dissatisfied, flicks in and out like an eternal have-not” Consistent with the initial
paradox, however, Takahashi also references the affirmative qualities and creative
potential o f Dada: “DADA gives birth to all, splits and synthesizes all. All is encamped
behind DADA.”
In a predominant set o f imagery, Takahashi writes: “A saying from the Buddha’s
clear vision emerges: all is all. All is seen in all. Assertion is all.” To Ko, Takahashi’s
recurrent and consistent use o f Buddhist imagery in this and other poems, reveals deep
connections between Dada and Buddhist philosophy evidenced both in Takahashi’s
oeuvre, and the poetry o f his European counterpart, Tristan Tzara (35). Another
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interesting feature o f this poem is that it functions simultaneously as a literary work and a
manifesto, thus obfuscating the lines between artistic praxis and discourse typical of
Futurism and Dada. Takahashi himself compared his poem to Tzara’s “Dada Manifesto”
on the basis o f spiritualism, noting that Tzara’s vision o f Dada should be considered
neither pessimistic nor nihilistic, but rather, a reflection o f man’s transcendent goal to rise
above “spiritual devastation” (38). If Ko maintains that Takahashi’s version of Dada was
synthesis of nihilism, anarchism, and Buddhism, Linhartova notes that Japanese Dada
poets would increasingly exploit the anarchic sensibilities of Dada, especially after 1923
(1987,35).
Takahashi’s first major volume o f poetry, Dadaisuto Shinkichi no shi, was
published in 1923. In the “Introduction,” Sato Haruo wrote that “Takahashi’s life and art
represent complete opposition and challenge to the pretentious art o f the academy as well
as the carefree life,” thus indicating his rejection o f the literary establishment and art-for-
art’s sake (Ko 28). Tsuji Jun, who composed the introduction to another of Takahashi’s
collections in 1923, also published essays on Western Dada and experimented with Dada
performance techniques (Omuka 1995,25). Other serious writers, who sensed the
revolutionary potential o f Dadaism in literature, formed temporary associations devoted
primarily to publishing their poetry and essays, although Iwamoto notes that the most
politically engaged writers would ultimately turn to proletarian forms (68). The journal
Damudamu [1922], which folded after only one issue, anthologized all o f the major Dada
poets of the time, and typifies the extent and manner to which the Japanese Dadaists
joined forces (Hariu 4). Nakahara Chuya, though more often associated with Japanese
Symbolism, also acknowledged Takahashi’s influence on his own poetry. Nakahara is
often referred to as the “Japanese Rimbaud,” due to his public bohemianism, and his
prolific, though brief career due to his early death (Keene 1984,345-9).
Linhartova observes that Dada in Japan followed one of two lines o f development
that mirrored those in the West: the formal experimentation typical o f Zurich Dada, or
the social and politically-engaged Berlin Dada. She notes that while both strands are
characterizable by an ironic detachment typical o f international manifestations o f Dada,
Takahishi—with his wordplay, associative language, and Buddhist philosophy—typifies
the formalist strand. She also places in this category the poets associated with Gee
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gimgigamu burururu gimugemu, including Nakahara Minoru and Kitazono Katsue, who
explored the humorous potential o f Dada (1987,37). Other poets, such as Tsuboi Shigeji,
however, became associated with the anarchist literary magazine Red and Black, (Ko
105-6). Onchi Terutake, a Marxist literary critic who wrote a history o f modem Japanese
poetry, once considered himself a Dadaist and published a one-man poetry magazine,
DADA1S (1925). Onchi was particularly critical o f Takahashi’s poetry for what he
perceived to be its “unsteady middle-class temperament” (Ko 107). In his own work of
the period, Onchi was much more emphatic than Takahashi on the need for social
revolution, and was even more prone to employing typographical disarrangements, “with
lines running up and down, letters printed in different sizes, and large black dots
interspersed” (107).
Hagiwara, who is sometimes classified as a Futurist poet, at one time also
identified himself as a “neo-Dadaist” (Weisenfeld 1997,253). Much of Hagiwara’s
poetry is imprinted with a virulent anarchism that he expressed in outbursts o f despair
and somewhat violent imagery (Tsuruoka 175). In the sixth issue o f MA VO (1925),
Hagiwara and others identified themselves with a sociopolitical brand of neo-Dadaism,
thus representing a new phase when Japanese Dada and Mavo converged and became
more radical (Linhartova 1987,37). This represents the culmination o f the second strand
o f Dada’s development in Japan, typified, as Ko and Linhartova have both noted, by its
absorption into Mavo and the proletarian arts movement Through more cohesive
groupings such as Mavo and Sanka, moreover, Dada techniques would become absorbed
in performance.
Unlike Europe, none o f the Japanese Dadaist poets ever became officially
associated with Surrealism as it would develop in Japan (Ko 11). Breton’s “First
Manifesto o f Surrealism” (1924) first appeared in Japan in the literary revue Btmgei tanbi
[Literary Aesthetics] in 1925, accompanied by translations of texts by Aragon and
d’Eluard, as well as poems by Ueda Toshio, Ueda Tomatsu and Kitazono Katsue. In
1927, these three poets, along with Fujiwara Sei’ichi and Yamada Kuzuhiko, established
the review Bara Majutsu Gakusetsu [Rose, Magic, Theory], in which they declared
themselves to be Surrealists (Linhartova 1987,109). That same year, Nishiwaki
Junzaburo, Takiguchi Shuzd, and Kitazono Katsue published a collection of Surrealist
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poetry, Fukuikutaru kafuyo. In 1928, these two groups merged and inaugurated a
Surrealist poetry journal, Isho no taiyo [A costume Sim] that was based at Kei5
University (Hariu 5). Nishiwaki, whose influence extended well beyond World War n,
published essays on French Surrealism in the most influential Modernist literary
magazine Shi to Shiron [Poetry and Poetics].19 In an article for M ita Bungaku entitled
“Profanus” (1926), Nishiwaki wrote that in his theories and art, Breton sought to destroy
the “cause and effect relationship between image and association,” thus opening the door
for art to “create a vast awareness of everything in our minds that cannot be reduced to a
definite cognition.”20 In this vein, Nishiwaki experimented with such Surrealist
techniques as “automatic writing” in his own poetry (Keene 1984,326).
The early 1930s witnessed the full-blown emergence of Japanese Surrealism in
the visual arts. By 1930, Klee, Chagall and Miro were all highly popular artists in Japan
(Kawakita 103). Takiguchi Shuzo’s translation o f Breton’s Surrealism and the Painter in
1930, had a major impact on the Tokyo art world (Sullivan 141). In 1931, Fukuzawa
Ichiro, who would become one of the premier Surrealists painters o f the era, returned
from his studies in Paris, where he was particularly inspired by de Chirico and Ernst
(Takashina 1986,23). To Clark, however, Fukuzawa should be seen as a “kind o f realist
who used Surrealist techniques and concepts to give his work a more critical edge” (45).
A founding member of the Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyokai [Independent Art Association]
(1931), Fukuzawa displayed thirty-seven works at its first exhibition in 1931. AI-MITSU
and Kotaro Mighishi also exhibited works at this show (Tamon, N. pag.). The Tokyo-
Paris Exhibition o f Rising Art in 1932 introduced to Japan the works o f Ernst, Masson,
Tanguy and Arp. By that time, many artists were adopting Surrealism as their aesthetic
credo, including Yoshihara Jiro, Koga Harue, and Migishi Kotaro.
Migishi represents a typical instance of a painter who had originally worked in the
Fauvist style, but later turned to Surrealism. After the “Tokyo-Paris” show, Migishi
began experimenting with automatist techniques, and later became associated with more
abstract surrealist compositions. Clark notes that Migishi, like other Surrealists such as
AI-MITSU and Hasegawa Saburd, self-consciously deployed an “oriental spirit” in his
works, through the incorporation of motifs drawn from calligraphy and Japanese design
(46). Surrealism became the dominant avant-garde movement o f the 1930s, culminating
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in the 1937 “Surrealism Overseas” exhibition in 1937, curated by Takiguchi (Sullivan

141). This exhibition, co-sponsored by Mizue art magazine, was the largest exhibition of
Surrealism ever in Japan (Tamon, N. pag.). Interestingly, Sullivan notes that Takiguchi
maintained that “Surrealism should not be considered just another Western modernism,
but a vital force that could revive the creative and artistic force o f Japan” (141).
Takiguchi’s statement, coupled with Migishi’s and other artists’ tendency to employ
distinctively Japanese iconography represents one way in which these artists staked out
the distinctiveness of the movement in Japan. This was to become increasingly important
in the late 1930s, especially in light of increased pressure by the military bureaucracy for
artists to adhere to and develop a national style. Interestingly, this debate was to be
carried out in the pages of Mizue magazine, which had co-sponsored the “Surrealism
Overseas” exhibit, and which, along with Atelier, was a major source of information
about avant-garde and modem a rt In 1941, Mizue published the proceedings of a
symposium21 initiated by the Army Information Services [Rikugan Hodo Bu]—a branch
o f the Cabinet Information Bureau—which presaged the government’s plans to bring the
entire art world under its control (Sandler 76). This symposium, which was held in 1940,
not only intended to lay the groundwork for art to be deployed towards the war efforts,
but also to legitimate the military bureaucratic appeal for a national, non-Westem, and
socially useful art in Japan.
In 1938, Yoshihara Jiro became a founding member of the Ninth Room
Association [Kyushitsu-kai], a group of visual artists who declared themselves Surrealists
and abstract artists. The Ninth Room was formed after senior members broke ranks with
the Nika (which by this time had been re-named the Teiten),22 including Yoshihara, Saito,
Yamaguchi Takeo, and Matsumoto Shunsuke; and serving as advisors, Fujita Tsuguhara
and Togo Seiji (Clark 52). Matsumoto would become the most outspoken dissenter to
the government’s efforts to nationalize Japanese a rt The Ninth Room was particularly
critical o f the Teiten, which was then still dominated by Fauvist artists. According to
Munroe, Yoshihara’s association with the Ninth Room established him as one o f the
leading figures in the Japanese avant-garde (Munroe 86). As a group, these artists
exhibited from 1938 through 1943 (Clark 52). Yamaguchi, and Saito would also retain
their status as the leading abstract painters in the postwar period (Munroe 99).
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Abe notes that in Japan, Surrealism experienced a regional expansion beyond the
art establishment in Tokyo, attesting to its widespread popularity. In Nagoya, Shimozato
Yoshio was the leader o f a coterie o f Surrealist painters. A great number of Surrealists
were also based in Kyoto, including Kitawaki Noboru and Komaki Gentaro—who in
Abe’s opinion, represent the finest examples of the more abstract tendencies of Japanese
Surrealism in the late 1930s (92). To Sullivan, Japanese Surrealism was distinctive in its
synthesis o f “romanticism, decoration, and the irrationality o f Zen,” and embodied the
desire of many o f the artists associated to “break out o f the narrow confines of Japanese
tradition and to be more modem and cosmopolitan” (142). He also locates an escapist
tendency in the Surrealist art of the late 1930s, which was an inevitable result of the
escalating war with China (142). Kawakita notes that Surrealism was more successful
than other Western movements in this period, because artists who had difficulties with
Cubism’s “intellectual and geometric grounding” found themselves more comfortable
with Surrealism’s “phantasmagorical current” (103).
Munroe lists as the three most progressive arts groups in the 1930s: the Ninth
Room Association; the Free Artists Association [Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokai], founded in 1937
by abstract painters Hasegawa Saburo, Hamaguchi Yozo, Murai Masanari and
Yamaguchi Kaoru; and the Arts Culture Association [Bijutsu Bunka Kyokai], founded in
1939 by Fukuzawa, AI-MITSU, and Terada Masaki. The Arts Culture Association
included over forty artists, and under the leadership of Fukuzawa, was also the most
socially and politically engaged o f the three federations. Acknowledging the political
intentions o f his own creations, Fukuzawa reaffirmed his support of Breton’s view that
Surrealism was intrinsically linked to Communism, and emphasized that artists needed to
“respond to the need for an overall revival o f the value o f the real” by merging the inner
and outer worlds (Clark 45). Such interest in the abstract qualities o f Surrealism and their
concomitant adherence to a non-political, aestheticist subjectivity can also be attributed to
increased governmental pressure.
The arrests in 1941 o f Japan’s leading Surrealist poet Takiguchi Shuzo, and the
leading Surrealist painter Fukuzawa Ichiro, marks the end o f the movement in the prewar
period (Munroe 24). Still, Surrealism was the longest-lived o f all o f the Western avant-
garde movements in Japan, especially when considering its re-emergence in the postwar
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era. That it was also permitted a modicum o f activity in the late 1930s is also evidentiary
o f the tendency o f many of these artists to avoid overt social or political commentary in
their work—a tendency markedly different from Surrealism in Europe. Even at a time of
increased hostility towards all Western cultural forms, the “Surrealism Overseas”
exhibition o f 1937, which included the works o f French and English Surrealists, proved
to be a critical and popular success. One noteworthy development in avant-garde
discourse was the “Scientific Surrealism” o f Takenaka Hisashichi, who disavowed
Breton’s model o f creative spontaneity and his association of the movement with
Communism. Takenaka defined Scientific Surrealism as “assembly,” stressing that the
so-called artist was actually a “specialist” or “technician,” who took part in a social
process (Clark 46). Participants in Takenaka’s Research Group on Literary Dialectical
Materialism in the 1930s included the art critic Abe Kongd, and the painter Koga Harue.
(46). Koga, whose work followed a trajectory o f Japanese magical realism akin to
Chagall and Klee, also exemplifies the trend in Japanese Surrealism o f the late 1930s to
revive Fauvism (45).
The reception o f Surrealism by the critical establishment was typified by a range
o f responses. Ogawa Takei wrote in 1937 that the movement appeared to be “a kind o f
hysterical phenomenon” that was borne out of the “pain and anguish of a transitory
period of crisis.”23 On the left, the aesthetic theorist Sagara Tokuzo pronounced that “the
revolution o f Surrealism was not realistic, and therefore was anti-Revolutionary,” and
furthermore, since the “imagination” of Surrealism was not realist, it was, therefore,
“anti-social.”24 Reacting to Sagara’s implicit mandate for artists to adopt the social
realism of proletarian forms, Takiguchi wrote: “if the war gets more serious, art will
probably go into mourning.’
3.2 Indigenous Avant-Garde Art, Literature and Performance Movements
Many scholars consider the Shirakaba-ha, established in 1910, as one of the

leading forces in Japanese modernism. The intellectuals associated with the Shirakaba-ha
were mostly from aristocratic families, many o f whom attended the elite Peer’s School in
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Tokyo. Cosmopolitan in outlook, the Shirakaba-ha “became the disinherited soul of

Japan and the adopted sons o f the European world” (Arima 121). Early on, C. L. Hind’s
The Post-Impressionists served as a major impetus for their interest in Western aesthetics
(Takashina 1996,202). Not only did they introduce much Western modem art and foster
the development o f modem art criticism, they also “popularized art in sectors of Japanese
society which had hitherto been unacquainted with the outside world” (Arima 122).
Similarly, the Pan no Kai did much to introduce the Japanese public to art-for-art’s sake.
Though it was in Subaru that Ogai had first published Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto and
while the early Western avant-gardists aroused their interest, the Pan no Kai members
were primarily linked to what Lanne terms an “impressionist aesthetic” that manifest
itself in their nostalgia for the past and their emphasis on artistic subjectivity (380).
Together, these two high-profile groups popularized the doctrine o f aesthetic autonomy
and the notion of the artist as a solitary genius.
On the other side o f the spectrum, a growing number of intellectuals and artists
were increasingly drawn to more radical social doctrines antithetical to individualism and
artistic subjectivity. Ikuta Choko, an important literary critic of the Taisho era, translated
a number o f Nietzsche’s seminal works, which were highly influential on Taisho
intellectuals and artists (Keene 1984,553). Widely considered to be the spokesperson of
these counter-ideologies, the anarchist Osugi Sakae, disparagingly characterized the
second decade o f the twentieth century thusly:
The literary and intellectual circles were saturated with the ideas of
individualism. Self-perfection, the fulfillment o f the life of the self, the
isolation o f the self from its social surroundings, the conscious escape
from the social reality that interferes with the purity o f the self, quiet and
introspective meditation—these were the reality and practice o f the
‘individualists.’26
Osugi referred to this brand o f individualism as a “prison philosophy,” since it precluded
direct involvement with the social sphere (Arima 61). He was particularly critical of both
art-for-art’s sake, and the institutions o f Japanese art, which he felt were o f no value to
contemporary life. In his goal to renew both art and life, he charged artists, writers, and
intellectuals to consciously destroy “past cultural residues”—an ideology that was to be
IS1
taken up with ever-increasing determination by the artists associated with the Japanese
avant-garde (62).
To Omuka, the establishment o f the Nikakai in 1914, represents the first move in
the direction o f an indigenous avant-garde in Japan. It was established by a group of
artists who opposed the Bunten. At the base o f this dispute was that the Bunten did not
distinguish between older and newer stylistic yoga trends, ikka and nika; hence the
origins of the Nikakai’s name. Among the artists involved with the first exhibitions of
the Nikakai were Yorozu, Kanbara, Fumon Gyd, and several artists working in the Cubist
style (Hariu 3). From the outset, the Nika established the policy to deny entries by all
artists exhibiting with the Bunten. The Nika went on to become the dominant group of
progressive artists, and its activities also spurred on the development of coteries o f artists
and private methods o f exhibiting art; so much so, in fact, that by 1920, it became the
institution against which the Japanese avant-gardists would became increasingly opposed.
Around the same time, the Bunten was re-formed as the Teiten, which represented
a nominal shift in administrative control o f the annual exhibitions from the Ministry of
Education to the Imperial Fine Arts Academy (Clark 53). This lasted until 1935, when
the Ministry o f Education instituted reforms designed to bring the art establishment under
greater bureaucratic control and to re-legitimize Nihonga. Three museums were
established in the prewar era for the express purposes o f collecting and exhibiting modem
art: the Tokyo Metropolitan Gallery (1921), the Kyoto City Art Museum (1933), and the
Osaka Municipal Art Museum (1936). Kawakita notes, however, that none of these
institutions successfully carried out these goals prior to the war, since the Metropolitan
Gallery and the Osaka Museum were chiefly involved with renting space to the
government and other organizations, while the Kyoto collection was under-developed
(156).
The rise o f Naturalism in Japan has been explained by the fact that many
intellectuals, writers, and artists considered it to be the artistic equivalent o f Western
objectivist science, technology and the rationalization o f the social spheres. When
assessed solely as a phenomenon in the literary field, Naturalism in Japan appears to have
taken a radically different course than it had in the West, owing in part to its relatively
late emergence alongside competing ideologies, such as art-for-art’s sake, and perhaps
R e p ro du ced with permission o f the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
182
more important, to its sheer novelty in all cultural fields. Arima notes, however, that the
Japanese Naturalists did not exclusively rely on Western techniques in developing their
individual styles. The rise to prominence o f Naturalism in literature happened to coincide
with the improvement o f the economic and social status o f writers. Arima notes that
most writers, with the exception o f the socialists, “accepted social isolation... with
varying degrees o f acquiescence,” in part because they were “ready to accept the
improved social status and financial security prepared for them by their predecessors”
(Arima 96).
Taisho era literary criticism was split along ideological lines that reflected the
crisis between artistic individualism and social utility. Keene notes that the elevation of
the social status of writers was due to the influence of one critic in particular, Kikuchi
Kan, who distinguished between mass and “pure” literature, conferring critical
approbation on the latter (Keene 1984,576). In the early Showa period, Keene notes that
two strands of literary criticism dominated, one associated with the proletarian
movement, and the other with the literary modernism. By the late 1920s, however,
Marxism predominated, which Keene finds curious given that the “importance o f the
proletarian critics was vitiated by the scarcity of works of literary value written in
accordance with the principles they advocated” (580). As a rule these critics were
concerned with the distinctions between “democratic” and “feudal” literature, one feature
that distinguishes them from modem Western literary and aesthetic criticism during this
period (580).
Irena Powell maintains that the differences in the social classes o f the Naturalists
and the Shirakaba-ha intellectuals explain their divergent approaches to cultural
production. While the Shirakaba-ha writers were all from successful aristocratic families,
the early generation o f Naturalists, by contrast, were mostly the children of former
samurai, who had been socially and financially displaced by the Restoration. While both
groups eventually would be identified with the struggle to assert subjective individualism,
the Naturalists paid lip service to sociopolitical concerns, whereas the Shirakaba-ha
advocated art-for-art’s sake and the heroism of the artist Harootunian speculates that one
reason for the strong inclination o f the Shirakaba-ha intellectuals to explore inferiority
was the fact that most adhered to Christianity (1974,124).
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In the literary field, the tensions between art-for-art’s sake, the social utility model
of art, and Naturalism (and its later manifestation in proletarian realism) would surface
repeatedly throughout the prewar era. Naturalism was also challenged by writers
affiliated with “modernist” groups such as the New Perceptionist School (de Bary 154).
Amidst these cross-tendencies and counter-ideologies were the activities o f the early
Japanese literary avant-gardists, who, though maintaining a surface aversion to aesthetic
autonomy and art-for-art’s sake, nevertheless reserved for themselves a high degree of
subjectivity and individualism—a description which could just as easily refer to the
Naturalists.
Similar tendencies can be discerned regarding the proliferation of Naturalism and
the adoption o f mimesis as an aesthetic imperative in the visual arts and theatre. The
perception of the potential to better reproduce reality [shajitsuJ through Western
techniques was first manifest in the practice o f shasei [sketching from life]. While many
scholars argue that there was never a strong mimetic tendency in Japanese art, others
maintain that traditional forms like ink painting and prints exhibit such tendencies, as did
the practice o f copying of imported Dutch painting dating back to the mid-Tokugawa
period (Weisenfeld 1997,5-6). Sato notes that as early as the late Edo period, the
mastery o f oil painting techniques was integrally related to the adoption of mimesis,
although this would be tempered by the subsequent generation of European-trained
painters who would be as concerned with creating their own styles of expression as with
capturing reality (219). If the early Meiji paintings were replete with historical and
religious themes painted more or less realistically, the late Meiji painters became more
proficient in expressing ideas through composition rather than subject matter, thus
representing a shift to a more freely-conceived Impressionism (Kitazaki 225).
Sato notes that it was actually the Taisho era that witnessed the emergence of
renowned painters concerned with capturing minute realistic details, such as Kishida
Ryusei and Kono Micheisi (219). Rimer has also identified a strong autobiographical
content in the paintings of many o f the Nikakai artists manifested in the preponderance of
self-portraits as indexical to their desire to assert the authenticity o f their expressions of
sentiment and personal experience.27 Such goals are also related to the Naturalist writers’
attempts to reveal the truth o f one’s experiences. These were the forerunners to the
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Japanese avant-gardists, who would soon begin to adopt Constructivist and anti-art
techniques, at the same time that they made concerted efforts to erase the boundaries
between art and life.
Unlike the academicization of European naturalistic drama, the turn to mimesis in
Japanese theatre did not result from the concerted efforts of personalities associated with
the Naturalist movement as much as it did from a series of gradual changes positioned
along a trajectory extending from Meiji Kabuki reform to the triumph of social realism in
the late 1930s. Keene notes that the theatrical innovations of the propagandists shimpa
plays during and after the Sino-Japanese war paved the way for a “modem drama capable
o f representing realistically contemporary events” by creating a public appetite for such
representations (1971,161).
The period after the Russo-Japanese war witnessed the emergence o f Naturalism,
with the publication o f novels as Shimazaki Tososn’s Hakai (1906) and Tayama Katai’s
Futon (1907). Almost from the beginning, however, the Naturalists came under fire from
the government, and the literary establishment. In Vita Sexualis (1909), for example,
Ogai parodied the Naturalists’ “preoccupation with sexual impulses” and displayed
contempt for their “quasi-scientific pose” (Arima 79). At the same time, to the Japanese
public, theatre still meant Kabuki, despite the proliferation o f Kabuki-derived forms.
Brian Powell notes that in general, the modem Japanese drama that has been translated
into Western languages and/or assessed by scholars has mostly been anti-commercial in
nature, which he attributes to its nearness to the Western tradition and thus, a marker of
progress. He points out, however, that there is a considerable gap between classical
theatre and Shingeki, which was bridged by a series o f developments such as
Shinkakabuki [new Kabuki],28 Shimpa, and Shinkokugeki (5). These forms rose to
popularity in the early decades o f the twentieth century, and though noteworthy here in
that they employed actors of both sexes and dealt with topical issues, they retained the
spectacular elements o f Kabuki, and were performed by actors who in the main, were
unsuccessful at adopting realistic acting techniques.
To many art historians, a strong anti-mimetic tendency [hishizenshugi] in the
visual arts was a full-fledged ideology by the late Meiji era. This was reflected in the
literary field in the polemical-aesthetic essays by Yokomitsu Riichi, which hinted at the
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avant-gardist goals such as the Futurists’ anti-traditionalism and the Surrealists’

automatic writing techniques. Iwamoto considers Yokomitsu’s revolt against literary
Naturalism related to his goal of introducing a literature o f new sensibilities (158). He
would become a prime spokesperson for the New Sensationalist movement, which has
often been associated with a branch o f modernist literary discourse that was particularly
averse to proletarian literature (Keene 1984,579).
The seeds o f anti-Naturalistic performance and drama trends were planted well-
before the full-flowering o f naturalistic drama and performance techniques. The
Geijutsu-za [Art Theatre] was founded by Hogetsu and Matsui Sumako in 1913, and its
first program included the play Monna Vcmna by the Belgian Symbolist Maurice
Maeterlinck (Keene 1984,544). The Geijutsu-za has also been credited with helping to
establish a “new dynamic o f selfhood and public influence,” which in Hogetsu’s vision,
positioned the theatre as “the center of an ongoing festival o f art” (Nolte, 1987,80). In
regard to this anti-elitism, Hogetsu declared that “theater is not a luxury,” and hoped that
the theatre building itself would become a “kind o f club” for artists and the public alike to
“stop on their way home from work” and “refresh themselves amid all the arts” (81).
What this brief overview reveals is that at the time o f the emergence of a native
avant-garde, there was a plethora of cross-tendencies in all fields o f culture which
precludes any totalizing theory regarding the Japanese avant-garde’s rejection o f aesthetic
autonomy, or previously imported Western styles and avant-garde movements, including
Naturalism. This is not to suggest, however, that the Japanese avant-garde project did not
exhibit characteristics that distinguish it from other manifestations prior to and during the
height of its activities. O f these, an overall rejection of the institutions of art and the
sublation o f art and life emerge as the most important. Interestingly, however, these
tendencies did not necessarily entail a resistance to bourgeois commodification or a
rejection o f mimesis. Omuka notes that around 1916 the role o f spectatorship became a
subject o f debate amongst artists and intellectuals alongside the proliferation of new
means o f mass communication, including popular literature, film, and Kabuki-derived
theatre forms. Meanwhile, “art for the people” became a widespread phenomenon, which
was especially picked up on by the mass media. In 1926, for example, the Chuo Koron
published a special edition devoted to popular literature, while a special issue of Bijutsu
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Shiron in 1927 was devoted exclusively to “The Populace and Art” (Omuka 1996,29).
Such manifestations were related to new efforts in the publishing industry to foster a new
reading public through the mass marketing o f “one-yen books” and the organization of
book clubs by the publishing houses (29). These factors, coupled with the aestheticist
emphasis on individuality and the more widespread acceptance o f the doctrine o f art for
art’s sake, provide the context for the emergence o f the indigenous Japanese avant-garde.
3.2.1 The Miraiha Bijutsu Kyokai [Futurist Art Association] and Action [Akushon]
In 1920, a radical faction o f the Nika led by Fumon Gyo, established the Mirai-ha
bijutsu kyokai [Futurist Art Association]. Noteworthy artists initially associated with
group included Yorozu Tetsugoro, Kishida Ryusei, Onchi Koshiro, and Togo Seiji
(Omuka 1996 24). The poet Hirato Kenkichi, who was an early supporter of the group,
died around the time the Association disbanded in 1922 (Clark 52). Their first exhibition
was held in September 1920 at a small framing store in Ginza. The works exhibited were
not confined to Futurism, however, but displayed a range of avant-garde impules,
including Expressionism and Cubism. In conjunction with this exhibit, group members
distributed pamphlets outside o f Ueno Park, which was also the site o f the heavily-
guarded Imperial Museum (118). As Kinoshita recalled:
We gave out handbills in the central part o f Ueno everyday to advertise
the show. At the time, Ueno Park was still under the jurisdiction of the
Imperial Household Agency. The guards o f the Imperial Museum, dressed
in their uniform with silver braids, came towards us and told us that we
were not allowed to give out handbills in the park. They said that we were
only allowed to do so outside the borderline between the park and the city,
so we made fun o f them by spreading our handbills precisely along that
borderline. (1970b, 7)
This portrait accurately captures the transitional role that the Futurist Art Association
played in the development o f an indigenous Japanese avant-garde. Similarly, Kanbara,
who held his first solo exhibition in 1921, published “The Kanbara Tai Manifesto,” in
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which he declared the “absolute freedom o f art,” while noting that “following the
collapse o f individuality and ego, any thing and any experience could become art” (Hariu
3). This sixty-four page manifesto is noteworthy not only in that Kanbara subtitled the
manifesto in French (“Au Grand Poete Futuriste au Parfait Magicien Incendiare, A mon
tres cher confrere, F. T. Marinetti”), but also because it incorporates Italian, French, and
English citations alongside Japanese text, thus naturalizing Japanese Futurist discourse
within the international avant-garde.
The second group exhibition of the Futurist Art Association was held at the
Maruzen department store in October 1921, and included sixteen works contributed by
David Burliuk. This exhibition, however, was organized by Kinoshita, since Fumon
entered paintings to the Nikakai in order to mend fences with the organization he had so
bitterly denounced the previous year. Kinoshita notes that for the second exhibition,
there were twice as many submissions for consideration as there had for the first, and that
by this time Yanase Masamu and Hirato had become active participants. Kinoshita’s
description of his preparations for the second show reveal much about the conditions
involved in organizing an avant-garde exhibition at that time:
Although I used to paint since I was in junior high school, I did not know
anything about organizing exhibitions. So I had a lot o f trouble finding a
place, especially since I wanted it to be in Ueno...Since it cost more
money than I expected, I solicited money from friend from high school,
Yoshihiro Taneichi, and my relative Ogata Kamenosuke. I then hired
Shibuya Osamu to take care of administrative duties. (1970a, 7)
Kinoshita recounts that the unexpectedly favorable reviews in two newspapers
contributed to the success of the show. He also notes, however, that
paintings that had non-figurative qualities or contained both figurative and
non-figurative techniques were all criticized by people who did not
understand what was going on. When it came to a purely abstract
painting, not only lay people, but also some painters would say ‘You call
this painting?* (1970b, 7)
He also recalled that coincidental to the second exhibition, another group exhibition of
“Japanese Futurist paintings” led by Otake Chikuha opened at a restaurant in Ueno.
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Though Kinoshita acknowledges that Otake’s group shared similar aims as the Futurist
Art Association, especially the renunciation o f the Imperial Art Academy exhibition
(Teiten), the shows were markedly different given that “theirs was at a deluxe Japanese-
style restaurant on the hills o f Ueno, and ours was at a Westem-style restaurant under the
hills;” and more important, that the Futurist Art Association members considered
themselves to be the “more authentic Futurism” than the “Japanese-style Futurists”
(1970a, 8).
The Association’s second exhibition was so successful that the group decided to
mount a tour. When the exhibition opened in Nagoya, David Burliuk was in attendance,
and gave a “Futurist lecture” entitled, “A Horse on the Cheek” (Omuka 1986, 119). In
Osaka, they exhibited on the second floor o f a building o f the Textile Manufacturer’s
Association. For this show, however, Fumon added ten paintings of his own, and
usurped organizational control. As Kinoshita recalled, because the Osaka show “looked
almost as if it was Fumon’s one-man exhibition,” many members decided to break with
Fumon for good (1970a, 7). Omuka notes that one reason for Fumon’s intervention was
that he felt it contained works o f variable quality, owing to Kinoshita’s own inexperience
as an artist, and Kinoshita’s encouragement o f the participation of amateurs (1986, 118).
In regard to the anti-institutional postures o f Japanese Futurism, Kanbara Tai
proclaimed
Painters be gone! Art critics be gone! Art is absolutely free...Say, nerve,
reason, sense, sound, smell, color, light, desire, movement, pressure—and
furthermore, true lie which stands at the end of it all—there is nothing that
does not fit the content o f art...” (Ko 17-18)
In Clark’s opinion, Kanbara’s statement, though resonant o f the Italian Futurists’ anti-art
platform, is ultimately ahistorical, since it “recognizes neither the development of
European modernism, nor the way in which the history o f Japan’s introduction to
European art was premised on different kinds o f artistic subjectivities” (42). In this
sense, Kanbara’s polemic did not provide a viable attack on Japanese art institutions, but
rather, privileged an “absolutist and relativistic position on artistic subjectivity” (42). In
a similar vein, Arima notes that by refusing recourse to tradition, Kanbara made
“deformation into a new art form,” ultimately resulting in the “intensification of the
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social alienation o f these intellectuals rather than any prolific outburst of creativity” (67).
While Arima’s pejorative assessment is attributable to his overall theory regarding the
“failure” o f prewar intellectuals and artists in constructing an effective barrier against the
rising tides o f authoritarianism, his critique o f the Futurist Art Association has a historical
precedent in the Taisho critic Kato Kazuo, who though an early advocate for “anti-art,”
warned them against elitist tendencies and isolationism. To Arima, it was precisely such
qualities that rendered the Futurist Art Association ineffective, and explains why they
were met by “a mostly indifferent public,” who “did not understand them or their art”
(68).
In his reminiscences about the Futurist Art Association and its political
dimensions, Kinoshita wrote:
In those days Communism was not yet a major threat, but Osugi Sakae
and his group frequently had trouble with the police. Any “ism,”
therefore, was a red flag. The authorities assumed that all isms were
involved in Communism and tried to suppress them. Even the Special
Higher Police came to investigate us. After that, Taneichi decided to leave
our group, and I could by no means blame him. (1970a, 7)
While Kinishita does not disavow political affiliations, it is undeniable that the Futurist
Art Association—as an early development in the indigenous Japanese avant-garde—did
not approach the levels o f social and political engagement to which subsequent groups
would aspire. Attesting to the relative neutrality of the Futurist Art Association,
Weisenfeld attributes authorship o f a polemical essay written on behalf o f the Futurist Art
Association Mizue, entitled “Tomo yo same yo” [Friends! Wake Up!] to Kinoshita. One
noteworthy passage proclaimed:
Progress and freshness cannot be expressed in the traditional background
which is full of rules...Flash! Scream! Leap! Sorrow! Wild Joy! We have
and observe the same amount o f love for mechanical movement and
sensual excitement...All the stagnation, shame, jealousy, hesitation—
foster mold on the human spirit Futurism is constantly changing—
fresh—dashing forward—collision—destruction...Energy melts steel.
Futurism has the passion to melt steel.29
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This quote is indicative o f both the optimism and faith in the forces o f modernization that
were typical o f the Japanese avant-garde prior to the Kantd earthquake. This would
become a practical consideration for Mavo and Sanka artists, as well as a faction of the
Shingeki movement
After the Futurist Art Association disbanded due to conflicts over the second
exhibition, several members re-formed as Action [Akushon] in 1922, including Kanbara,
Koga, Yabe Tomoe, Yokoyama Junnosuke, and Nakagawa Kigen. Clark notes that
Kanbara chose this name because o f its Futurist connotations, although the thirteen
participating painters primarily employed Dada and Cubist techniques (51).
Interestingly, Action did not oppose other groups, and even included Nika artists on its
advisory board, including Arishima Ikuma and Ishii Hakutei.
As a whole, Action artists were devoted to freedom and individuality. The first
exhibition of the Action Group in April 1923 and was held at the Mitsukoshi department
store. Kanbara summarized the mission of Action in his manifesto, entitled “An
Awakening,” which is noteworthy for the following passage:
In order for art to flower for each o f us, we look for the ways that it makes
sense to each of us. And if we search for the common idea that allows us
to constitute a group, to organize our exhibitions and conferences, to
inspire our ardor and joy at our youthfulness and mutual respect—this
gives us the courage to adhere to the avant-garde and to bear witness to the
spirit of the future, and nothing else matters.30
To Takashina, Kanbara’s manifesto reveals several defining tendencies o f the Action
group. First, he notes that this manifesto was an indictment of the official academicism
o f the government-sponsored Teiten by young artists, noting that Kanbara was only
twenty-four years old at the time. It also displays a growing awareness on the part o f the
avant-gardists o f the necessity of attracting attention to themselves by adopting avant-
gardist postures and discourses which deployed a critique o f institutions at their core. He
also locates two defining features o f their aesthetic program—innovation and
individualism—the latter representing one steady course o f the avant-garde’s
development in Japan in the long run, but one that would also come immediately under
attack by the Mavo and Sanka groups. In Kanbara’s interpretation o f the collapse o f
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definitive aesthetic norms, moreover, the only recourse for artists was to practice their art
from a subjective point o f view, and in the absence of any other definitive values, the
“only saliable criteria were inventiveness, originality and expression o f the self’ (24).
Action held its second exhibition at the Mitsukoshi department store in April
1924, and it is especially noteworthy for its inclusion of the works ofNakahara Minoru,
who had joined the group by this point The group disbanded in October 1924 due to
internal disagreements over some of the members’ participation in what had then
crystallized as the anti-avant-gardist posture o f the Nika.
Interestingly, Murayama was highly critical of the second group exhibition of
Action. In a critique published in Mizue, he expressed dissatisfaction with what he
perceived to be the artists’ derivative copying o f contemporary French art, and for their
persistent mimetic tendencies.31 In 1925, a more radical contingent of Action artists
formed Sanka Zokei Bijutsu Kyokai [Sanka Plastic Arts Association]. By 1927, Sanka
artists would be advocating for the adoption of social realism as the proscribed aesthetic
norm, and went so far as to call their past attempts at anti-art a “youthful mistake” (Hariu
4). Among them were the former Action artists Yabe, Tomoe, Kanbara, Yoshida,
Yoshimura Jiro, and Yoshihara Yoshihiko (Weisenfeld 1997,181). Before this, however,
they would engage in a host of anti-art activities in the visual arts and performance under
the Mavo and Sanka banners.
3.2.2 Mavo and Sanka
Mavo was formed in July 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi, along with Kadowaki
Shinro, Oura Shuzo, Ogata Kamenosuke and Yanase Masamu—all o f whom had been
associated with the Futurist Art Association. Over the course o f its development, other
artists became associated with Mavo, but since there were no official statements
regarding new additions, membership appears to have been a “fluid entity” (Weisenfeld
1997,101). From the start, the Mavoists openly protested the exclusivity o f the Japanese
art establishment, and when none of their work was admitted to the Nika exhibition in
1923, they mounted an outdoor, “mobile” exhibit in Ueno Park (68)
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The First Mavo exhibition was held at a Buddhist temple in Asakusa (M y 28

through August 3, 1923), and in the catalogue, they included the “Mavo no sengen”
(Mavo Manifesto].32 Signed by the five artists listed above, the manifesto declared that
while they were all practitioners of the “plastic arts,” they rejected any association based
on “style,” and furthermore, that they “would not seek to establish definitive artistic
principles.” While they acknowledged the inevitability o f sharing “concrete tendencies,”
they also declared that Mavo would be a “temporal, opportunistic entity.” This sense of
the transitory nature o f their association, while emblematic o f most o f the avant-gardist
federations o f the time, renders Mavo distinct from Western avant-garde movements such
as Futurism and Dada, which largely maintained the superiority of their collective efforts
even though resistant to their own institutionalization. This declaration is also
noteworthy in that it exhibits an awareness o f the expediency o f artists to consolidate
their efforts, perhaps in no small measure owing to the exigencies of the earthquake and
the subsequent collapse o f the art establishment. The manifesto also asserted the
revolutionary stance o f the artists:
We are standing on the edge. And we are standing on the edge forever.
We are not bound. We are radical. We revolutionize. We create. We
constantly affirm and negate. We live in every sense of the word and to
such a degree that is is beyond comparison.
This statement not only reiterates the dual intentions o f affirmation and negation first
articulated by the Dadaist poet Takahashi Shinkichi, it also lays the ground for the “anti
art” proclivities that many o f the Mavoists would exhibit in their works.
Interestingly, the Mavoists also nodded to a kind of populism in the face of the
elitism o f the art establishment. Not only did they announce the ambitious goal of
presenting four exhibitions per year, they also aimed to “seek artistic contributions from
the general public.” In respect to the latter, they declared that while there would be no
juries, Mavo members would remain in charge o f screening in order to “ensure content
and artistic m erit” They qualified this seemingly contradictory policy by noting that the
criteria for inclusion would be based on the similarity of contributions to their own
“tendencies,” however this would be interpreted “very broadly.”
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The manifesto also declares their intention to transgress the bounds of

institutionalized art, and that they intended to hold lectures, plays, and concerts, and to
publish a journal. They also declared their intention to accept commissions for “posters,
window display, book design, theatre design, and various decorative and architectural
design projects.” While many o f these activities would come to pass in the next two
years, what is particularly noteworthy is that they were not doctrinally adverse to
commercial work, which many o f them in fact engaged in. Finally, the manifesto
stipulates their wish to become subscriber-based, offering “Friends of Mavo” status to
members of the general public who donated one yen a month in exchange for free
admission to exhibitions and other events.
From the very start, the Mavoists were proactive and not content with merely
holding exhibitions to showcase their work. They adopted the slogan: ‘T o the street, to
the square, to despair, to emptiness, to the conversion o f the atom”—a position they put
into practice weeks after their first exhibition, when they exhibited works in Ueno Park in
conjunction with a demonstration in front of the Takenodai exhibition hall then housing
the Tenth Nika show (Hariu 4). They also sponsored traveling exhibitions o f their work
at twenty-four different cafes throughout Tokyo (4). Weisenfeld notes that while the
Mavoists contributed to rebuilding efforts, they seized upon the “disarray o f the art
establishment” after the earthquake to their advantage by building and decorating
residences, businesses, and cafes in exchange for exhibiting their works (1996,69). In
the process, they also established themselves as artisan-laborers, who in bringing art to
commonplace environments, instilled their ethos of fusing art and life.
More than any other arts movement or avant-garde manifestation up to that time,
Mavo members were distinguished by their consciousness o f the rewards o f self
promotion, and they took every opportunity to call attention to themselves in the mass
media. They also adopted a range o f strategies designed to disseminate information
about their aesthetic and social goals. For example, they organized a “chain” exhibition,
whereby the group’s members showed their works in different venues concurrently
(Omuka 1996,123). On the occasion o f their outdoor exhibit in Ueno Park, they called
the press in advance to denounce the Nika’s exclusionary policies, organized a band, and
carried their works on the streets from Ueno to Shinbashi before being stopped by the
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police (Weisenfeld 1996,67). On the cover o f the third issue o f MA VO they affixed a
firecracker as a promotional device, a stunt that caused the censors to halt that issue’s
circulation (Omuka 1996,123).
The official organ o f the movement, MAVO,33 appeared in seven installments over
two phases (July through October 1924; and June through August 1925), and was
published out o f Murayama’s home (Kairu 4). Reproductions of the magazine show that
from the first issue, the group was interested in experimenting with graphic and
typographical arts. Each issue also included critical essays, poetry, performance texts
and collages. The first edition was an eight-page octavo leaflet that featured Murayama’s
translations of Kandinsky’s poetry, paintings and photography by Okada Tatsuo, original
poems by Yanase, and eye-catching typography that employed horizontally-lined and
reverse characters, and signs of various sizes (Ogadiri 411). The second edition was
expanded to thirty-two pages, and featured polemical essays, ten linocut prints pasted on
newspaper, stage designs, and poems by Ernst Toller in translations by Murayama (412).
In regard to their anti-art platform, Weisenfeld notes that Murayama, for one,
rejected the notion o f technical mastery heretofore sought after by Japanese artists on the
grounds that it was irrelevant in an “age of subjectivity when absolute standards of
criticism had been discredited” (1996,66). This is highly significant in regard to
Murayama’s conscious attempts to effect a transformation in critical reception and
spectatorship. In response to negative criticism that his work transgressed the bounds of
pure art, Murayama wrote:
What I am trying to make and am asking for is not something that can fit
into the narrow category o f art...I do not approve o f pure art, neither its
positive nor its negative effects...For me...constructive art knocks down
and destroys the interior boundaries between the other arts or between
other areas o f life.34
Murayama (to an even greater degree than Kanbara, Kinoshita, and Takahashi) was a
highly-prolific essayist, who contributed dozens of articles to a host of art and literary
journals on contemporary trends in Western and Japanese avant-garde art and
performance. The Mavoists’ performance activities also tended to deploy alternate
visions o f sexuality, such as Murayama’s cross-dressing, which proved especially
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contentious to the censors. As Weisenfeld notes, because o f the unrestrained quality o f

their art and performances—including an “unabashed sexuality,” the Mavoists were
branded as kyorakushugisha, or hedonists (1996,69).
It should also be noted that the Mavoists produced and promoted their work as
internationalists. Omuka notes that for MAVO, Murayama cultivated exchanges with
journals associated with the European avant-garde, including Der Sturm (Berlin), MA
(Vienna), Blok (Warsaw), Broom (Rome) and Het Overzicht (Antwerp) (1996,123). In
this regard, Weisenfeld notes that the Mavoists felt that an “individual cosmopolitan
culture o f modernity would unite all artists” (65). It is significant, therefore, that
Murayama and other Mavoists participated in the Capital City Restoration Exhibition the
year after the earthquake sponsored by the Kokumin Bijutsu Kyokai [National Art
Assocation] (Kawakita 154). Given two rooms in which to exhibit their works, the
Mavoists contributed sixty-seven works, a handful o f which survive only in a few
photographs that reveal that their designs were more “anarchic expressions o f the chaotic
city,” rather than realistic plans for actual rebuilding (Weisenfeld 1997, 137).
Clark maintains that while the Japanese Futurists adopted an anti-art platform that
was ahistorical in that it was divorced from the actual development of modem art in
Japan, he believes that the Mavoists, by contrast, were the first avant-gardists to
recognize that in order for their critique o f art and social institutions to be effective, they
had to take into account the particular dimensions o f contemporary Japanese a rt In this
respect Murayama adopted two positions regarding Mavo’s intentions: the rejection o f
“inauthentic imitation,” and the necessity o f grounding art praxis in a “social rather than
an autonomously artistic discourse” (42). Murayama was particularly critical o f what he
perceived to be the derivative tendencies o f several o f his avant-garde compatriots, even
those who would become active in Mavo. For example, he criticized Nakahara for the
likeness o f his works during his Action phase to Georg Grosz, as well as Yokoyama
Junnosuke’s “copying” from the Italian Futurists. What is noteworthy here is that
Murayama himself had consciously and admittedly borrowed from Western artists,
especially in his German showcases (42). In regard to the imperative o f grounding art in
social praxis, a central feature o f Murayama’s critique o f the institutions of art had its
basis in his perception of the desirability o f Japan to maintain its cultural autonomy.
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While this critique never approached the nationalism associated with either the Meiji or
military-minded Showa artists and critics, Murayama clearly intended to establish a
distinctive identity for the Japanese avant-garde. This is in line with Munroe’s
observation that the Japanese avant-garde, especially after the establishment of Mavo, not
only rejected the institutions o f Japanese art, but the Western avant-garde as well.
To Omuka, Mavo was a manifestation o f the international avant-garde because of
its efforts to “depart from and destroy systematized art expression,” and also because the
Mavoists “defined themselves as avant-gardists and paraded their avant-garde awareness
(Omuka 1995,25). Such exhibits as the “Nika Rakusen Kangei-Ido-ten” [Welcome Nika
Rejectees Mobile Exhibition], not only reaffirmed their anti-institutional postures, but
also drew attention to their causes in ways that previous avant-gardists had not attempted.
The demise of Mavo has been attributed to a number of factors. First, the
movement became increasingly associated with radical and subversive politics. After the
anarchist-Dadaist poet Hagiwara Kyojiro joined the group Ogata, Kadowaki and Oura
resigned (Weisenfeld 1996,71). Yanase, who had been cultivating his activities with the
proletarian arts movement, began to devote all of his energies towards these ends, while
Murayama, who had become increasingly skeptical of the “destructive and
expressionistic elements” of his own work, began to devote more o f his creative energies
to proletarian theatre (71). Weisenfeld notes that with the exception o f the entire artistic
oeuvre and personal collection of Yanse Masamu, only a handful o f other Mavoist works
exist, along with the seven issues o f MAVO—the vast majority having been confiscated
by the police, or lost as a result o f war era bombings (1997,16-17).
Many former Mavoists joined forces with Sanka Zokei Bijutsu Kyokai [Third
Section Plastic Arts Association], which was established in 1924 by fourteen former
members o f the Futurist Art Association and Action. Sanka was initially conceived o f as
an exhibiting group for experimental artists operating outside the realm of the official
institutions o f a rt Its name, which is translated as “Third Division,” was an open
statement o f their resistance to the Nika [Second Division]. Founding members included
Tabe Tomoe, Okamoto Toki, Kanbara, Murayama, and Nakahara. Although this group
barely survived a year, Sanka represents the locus of independent avant-garde
performance activities in Japan in the 1920s.
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The First Sanka exhibition in 1925 was held at the Matsuzakaya Department Store
in the Ginza section o f Tokyo. It attracted a healthy audience, partly due to the
controversial reputations o f many o f the participating artists. Omuka notes that this
exhibition was among the largest o f any avant-garde exhibition in the prewar era, and
was comprised o f a range o f works o f “disparate media and subjects,” many o f them
geared towards scandalizing the public. Among the more noteworthy works on display
was an assemblage consisting o f two ropes (Lumpen Proletariat A and B), which
Okamoto constructed on the spot; and a “large three-dimensional hybrid assemblage” that
flanked the gallery’s entrance (Omuka 1996,124). Omuka has classified the art on
display into three categories: (1) sixty-four “purely artistic” pieces; (2) five works that
exhibited a socialist theme; and (3) twenty “anti-art” pieces (1996 124). Although
Kinoshita had argued for an open format such as the one he adopted for the second
Futurist Art Association show, the majority insisted that only one or two submissions be
submitted by any single artist, which also needed to be accompanied by explanatory texts
because o f the confusion o f visitors at previous exhibitions (Omuka 1996,121). This
may also have been induced by the strong inclination o f many o f the artists to employ
“anti-art” techniques (Asano 62). Kinoshita’s own contributions included “two living
sculptures:” R.G ... and Three Examples o f Costume Construction. Writing about the
Nakada Sadanosuke recounted that he almost fainted when two inanimate figures
began to shake, blink their eyes, and move about the room without making a sound.35
In a text published shortly before the second Sanka exhibition, Murayama
unabashedly wrote o f the class consciousness that informed his own work at the time, as
well as others associated with Sanka. In addition to the necessity of explicating the
aesthetic and social affinities o f their constructions for the benefit o f the public and the
critics alike, Murayama made his most overt statement in support of Communism up to
that point:
The desire to arrive at the universal, the hope for a truthful objective that
one locates in Constructivism, corresponds to the desire for collective and
social power. As a result, Constructivism is the blood brother of
Communism, which like us, tends to the universal, and looks for a truthful
objective.36
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In conjunction with the first exhbition, members of Sanka devised an evening of

performance, called Sanka in the Theatre Arts, [Gekijo no Sanka]. Murayama and other
Sanka members, most notably Yanase Masamu, had increasingly turned to theatre to
realize their sociopolitical and anti-art goals. The Mavoists had already mounted an
IT
exhibition of stage designs at the Sirasameso Parlor in Kanda. The Sanka evening,
however, is considered to be the most significant and revealing event in Japanese avant-
garde performance history, and represents a turning point in the careers of both Yanase
and Murayama. Premiering on May 31,1925 at the Tsukiji Little Theatre, the Sanka
group presented what were billed as Expressionist and Dada inspired texts, to an audience
comprised of well-known theatre personalities, including Hijikata Yoshii, Hirabayashi
Hatsunosuke, and Akita Ujaku. Omuka notes that the performance oversold the five-
hundred seat capacity of the Tsukiji Little Theatre, forcing many people to stand.
The first act was a performance piece by Yoshida Kenkichi entitled Botan
[Button], subtitled “The Opening Play o f Opposition Between White and Red.” Omuka
reconstructs this piece as follows:
A large sheet o f white sheet of paper was hung in the middle o f the stage
along with a large red button. A caged monkey stood on the stage staring
absent-mindedly at the audience. A factory whistle suddenly shrieked out
in the silence and an empty lunchbox fell to the ground. The audience was
then plunged into darkness and a so-called ‘dada’ movie of a small toy
truck and a close-up o f a person’s face was projected on the paper. As
soon as the film stopped, thirty actors dressed as workers came ripping
through the paper screen from behind.38
Aside from the non-narrative features evident in this description, it is clear that Yoshida
was concerned with presenting a seemingly random series o f images in a collage-like
format that also drew upon various media such as film. It also evidences the typical
avant-garde practice of incorporating surprise elements in performance. Perhaps the
overriding element that emerges in this description is Yoshida’s formal emphasis on color
and composition. Interestingly, Yoshida would write a book on stage design, Butai
sochisha no techo [A Stage Designer’s Handbook] in 1931.
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Murayama appeared next, barefoot and wearing a dark tunic, and proceeded to
“writhe across the stage like a snake, dancing a weird, lizard-like dance to Beethoven’s
“Minuet in G” (Weisenfeld 1997,336). A photograph exists of this dance, which shows
that Murayama intended to present an androgynous image, wearing what appears to be a
bob-styled wig. After Murayama, an assortment o f Sanka artists then followed in
succession, producing billowing smoke and deafening sounds, as one performer ran up
and down the aisles with a charred fish (337). This appears indicative o f their desire to
erode the separation between the audience and the performance, at the same time that it
reflected Futurist performance techniques such as simultaneity and tactility. In a further
move to provoke the audience, the performers pelted them with dried tangerines.39
Murayama’s contribution, Ko o Umu Inbaifu [Prostitute Giving Birth to a Child],
the only surviving evidence of which is one photograph of the rehearsal and one of the
performance, has been reconstructed by descriptions of the piece by Omuka:
After an opening accompaniment similar to the well-known folk tune
Yagi-bushi, the curtain rose and a child selling newspapers came out on
stage. Then a prostitute with a distended belly appeared, wearing a pink,
Westem-style dress. This woman gave birth to children squatting directly
on the ground, and the babies then rose up into heaven.40
While it is difficult to conclusively discern Murayama’s intentions from the fragmentary
documentation available, the photograph indicates that he employed movement and
dance, while the description reveals his interest in juxtaposing disharmonious elements,
such as traditional Japanese music and Western clothing.
Other contributors to the evening were Yanase Masamu, whose comic play
Mangeki +-+-+-x+=Kyubi [+-+-+-x-^=Holiday], is the only surviving text of the show.
While I will examine this piece more closely in chapter four, it is worth noting that
Yanase’s cast included Sasaki Takamaru, who was active with the Tanemaku hito
journal, as well as Kanbara, Murayama, Okada, and Yoshida. Also a description o f the
rehearsal by Saito Yoshishige appears to be indicative o f the processes employed by the
participant performers:
We rehearsed for about two days at the Kudan Gallery before the
performance at the Tsukiji Shogekijo. In performance, we did not stick to
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the script. During the rehearsal, everyone tried not to tell each other what
they were going to do in performance. I don’t think we had a script at the
actual performance—it was more like a happening o f sorts. We were not
quite sure o f what was going to take place until we were actually
onstage.41
The critical reception of the Sanka performance was mixed. Clark notes that one
report of the performance told of “five or six rubber dolls hung from a bamboo pole that
amused the audience when they were lifted to the ceiling.”42 Hariu mentions one
particular image that seemed to dominate newspaper accounts: Murayama’s ride across
the stage on a motorcycle (4). Many o f the slated contributors had already established
themselves as controversial figures prior to the event, so their announced participation
surely pre-conditioned the audience’s expectations for outrageousness. In an interview
with the Tokyo asahi shinbun prior to the event, Yoshida, whose own piece was first on
the bill, announced that the performance would be geared towards provocation, and that it
would reflect the cacophony of daily life—a statement which is a direct quote from
Marinetti’s “Futurist Synthetic Theatre” manifesto 43 Okada, a former member of the
Futurist Art Association, criticized the Sanka art exhibition for its lack of social import,
stating that the works “did not appear to be strong enough to permeate into the kernel of
the times, and [thus,] cannot become the fuse for a social revolution, an individual
revolution, nor a revolution in the life of the masses.”44 Interestingly, however, Okada
appears in the cast list of Yanase’s Sanka performance. Murayama’s piece, considered
by many to be the most “play-like” o f the twelve pieces presented, was described as
being particularly popular with the audience (Weisenfeld 1997,354).
Weisenfeld provides a summary o f responses from prominent art and literary
personalities from a survey conducted by Mizue magazine regarding the Sanka exhibition
and performance as follows:
Somiya Ichinen expressed respect for the group’s extreme and pioneering
posture. Nishida Takeo noted the mutually influential nature o f the two
endeavors, remarking on the theatricalization of the artwork and the
pictorialization in the theatre. He concluded by saying that the Sanka
production would surely cause waves in the gekidan [theatre
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establishment]. Proletarian-inclined writer Sasaki Takamaru answered

that he still could not help but see Sanka’s work as a kind o f game, and
implored the members to think more seriously about how to address the
future organization o f production. Still, he felt great satisfaction upon
viewing the theatre production because it satisfied his desire to destroy the
current modes o f Japanese theatre. Generally people were impressed by
Saoka’s energy, although two respondents indicated dissatisfaction with
the “masturbatory” character o f the work. ..Somewhat dismissively and
without further elaboration, Watanabe Daito merely commented, “when
Western flowers are planted in Japan the color changes and the scent
disappears.45
Another significant artist to become associated with Sanka was Nakada
Sadanosuke, who had studied in Germany in the mid-1920s, and became very interested
in the Bauhaus school. In response to the second Sanka exhibition, Nakada defended the
anti-art agenda of the Sanka participants thusly:
Sanka is honest. Sanka does not assume the title o f “art.” Sanka artists do
not fake and deceive by making a gold sign o f “a rt”...[Instead], they
decline the beautiful name “art” as it is and do not receive [this
canon]... [Sanka’s] work cannot be judged by the aesthetics of yesterday.
These constructive works that are transformed from former art—should be
called “anti-art” [hart geijutsu] 46
Despite the fact that the first exhibition attracted widespread attention, the second
exhibition was suspended due to internal pressures among the artists who, though united
in their opposition to academicism, were divided stylistically and ideologically. In
Omuka’s estimation, the disbanding o f Sanka represents a signal event in the decline of
the Japanese avant-garde, which would be absorbed into the proletarian arts movements
and Surrealism (125).
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32 3 The Proletarian Arts Movements and the Avant-Garde
The formation o f the Japanese Socialist League in 1920 led to the establishment
of Tcmemaku hito, often considered to be the genesis of the proletarian literary
movement, in which such writers as Komaki Omi and Kaneko Yobun declared their
intention to promote “modernity, revolution and internationalism” (Iwamoto 159-61).
Other journals soon followed, including Kaijin [The Destroyer] (1921), which advocated
for the destruction o f the “idols o f past art,” and Aka to kuro [Red and Black], which
championed anarchism, and featured Dada poetry. As Arima notes, however, both
journals were more closely aligned with the Osugi Sakae’s brand o f anarcho-syndacalism
than with Marxist literary theory (180).
Yanase Masamu, one of the most prolific o f the avant-gardists associated with the
proletarian arts movements, contributed writings, artworks and political cartoons to
Tcmemaku hito, many o f which fused anarchic sensibilities with a Marxist critique of
capitalism. After government officials cracked down on the socialist movement, whcih
they justified by the chaos of social life in the aftermath of the earthquake, former
members o f the defunct Tcmemaku hito established another important journal, Bungei
sensen, and soon thereafter the Japanese Proletarian Literary Arts League (Iwamoto 162).
Bungei sensen maintained as its editorial policy, “the common front o f artistic struggle in
the liberation of the proletariat,” but also acceded that an “individual’s activities and
ideas in the movement for liberating the proletariat are left to the free choice of the
individual member,” thus allowing relative creative autonomy for proletarian writers, and
setting up a major dichotomy that would inform proletarian art, literature and
performance in the mid-1920s (Arima 186).
The Japanese Proletarian Literary Arts League was established, in part, as a
reaction on the part of younger Marxist intellectuals such as Nakano Shigeharu, to what
they perceived as the bourgeois propensities o f writers associated with Bungei sensen
(Iwamoto 163). While the levels o f autonomy afforded to proletarian writers were
subject to debate throughout the 1920s, an increasingly vocal group o f writers called for
total ideological commitment to Communism. Owing largely to the influence of
Fukumoto Kazuo—who maintained that the Japanese Communist Party should weed out
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non-committed members to galvanize political power—this brand of ideological purity

(often referred to as “Fukomotoism”), was doctrine to a younger generation o f Marxists
(Arima 188). Tensions reached a highpoint at the Second Congress o f the Japanese
Proletarian Literary Federation o f 1926, which forced non-Marxists and anarchists to
forfeit their membership (189). Nevertheless, theoretical ambiguities persisted, as
evidenced by the position advanced by Hayashi Fusao. In “The Socialist Literary
Movement” (1927) published in Bungei sensen, Hayashi maintained that “socialist art
had to above all be a work of a rt” To Arima, such a stance not only represents the
reluctance of even the most committed of Communists to renounce artistic subjectivity
and individualism, but also the durability o f negative associations of the doctrine of the
social utility o f art with Meiji authoritarianism (190).
As early as 1924, the contours o f the argument for didacticism in art were
developed by such theorists as Tani Hahime. In “The Development o f the Proletarian
Movement in Our Country” (1924), Tani was critical o f those writers and artists who
sought refuge in art rather than class struggle (Iwamoto 189). Nakano, whose collections
o f poetry were confiscated and censored by the police, produced a series o f poems that
recorded the abuses o f technological reproduction by the photograph, a stance consistent
with his Marxist critique o f the reproduction of culture in Taisho mass communication
(Silverberg 130). In a series o f essays in Bungei sensen, Nakano referred to Hayashi’s
steadfast adherence to the doctrine that artfulness was the ultimate criteria for socialist
art, as “the crystallization o f the petty-bourgeois nature,” and countered that to “assert in
any guise the autonomy o f the proletarian literary movement [is] a historical fallacy”
(Arima 191). Ironically, Nakano is considered to be one o f the truly artistic proletarian
poets o f the period. In Keene’s estimation, Nakano succeeded where other proletarian
writers failed because o f his unique lyrical gifts, even though he subordinated them to
sociopolitical ends (1984,339). Keene singles out “Shinagawa Station in the Rain”
(1928 or 1929)—whose subject is the deportation o f Korean workers from Japan—for its
“flawless lyrical phrasing” (1984,340). Keene identifies Kitagawa Fuyuhiko as another
exemplary proletarian poet, especially his collection Senso [War] o f 1929, which has
been called the first attempt in Japan to “clarify the relationship between the artistic
consciousness o f Modernism and the political consciousness o f Socialist Realism” (341).
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Kurahara Korehito was a key figure in the establishment of the Japanese

Proletarian Cultural Federation (KOPF), which was comprised of twelve affiliate
divisions, including the Japanese Proletarian Theatre Guild and the Japanese Proletarian
Literary Arts League (Swearingen 53). Ideological divisions within the JPAL
subsequently led to the splintering o f the group into the Worker-Farmer-Artists’ League
and the Vanguard Artists League, both eventually consolidated by Kurahara in 1930
under the Japanese Proletarian Cultural Federation (Iwamoto 164). Establishing the
criteria for proletarian realism according to the Russian model, Kurahara wrote:
Art is technique as well as ideology, and form as well as content. If it is a
fact that form is determined by content, then it is also a fact that form does
not arise spontaneously from content. The form of an artistic work arises
only as a development of a past form that has been determined by new
content. This is the only true principle o f artistic development as viewed
from the Marxist standpoint. (Iwamoto 168)
As Arima notes, Kurahara did much to galvanize the proletarian arts movement by
paving the necessary ground on which the Proletarian Art Federation and the Federation
o f Vanguard Artists could merge. While he advocated for a united front that would
include all agrarian organizations and leftist petty-bourgeois artists’ groups, he also
allowed each group to retain organizational and ideological autonomy (Arima 195). The
ultimate reason for the merging o f the two groups, however, was the so-called “March 15
Incident” of 1928, when the government arrested more than fifteen hundred leftist
activists in one day (195). That same year, members of the Japanese Proletarian Author’s
League began its own journal, Senki [The Fighting Flag], which circulated until
December 1931, when the party could no longer express its ideological directives “even
under a literary guise” (195). From the beginning, Senld’s editorial policy established
“Proletarian Realism” as the official style. Although he argued against the type of
bourgeois realism o f the Japanese Naturalists, Kurahara, like Georg Lukacs, maintained
that writers needed to concentrate on the “social dimension o f the individual life and the
possibility o f social improvement” (Arima 196)
The two major periods of proletarian literature were 1918-1923, and 1928-1933
(de Bary 154). The latter was dominated by the officially endorsed realism as articulated
205
by the Russian Association o f Proletarian Writers. Kurahara’s essay “The Road to

Proletarian Realism” (1928) was foundational to the adoption of social realism as
aesthetic doctrine, which had as its basis objectivism and class consciousness (Iwamoto
166). In 1930, after spending several months in the Soviet Union, Kurahara contributed
an influential essay to Senki in which he called for the “bolshevization o f literature,” and
the use o f art as a “didactic instrument for political indoctrination” (Koschmann 1991,
17). In regard to criticism, he asserted that the “main criterion of literary value should be
faithful adherence to Marxist-Leninist epistemology” (17). In 1930, the poets Kitagawa
Fukihiro and Miyoshi Tatsuji, who had been associated with Shi to Shiron, began Shi,
Genjitsu [Poetry, Reality], which was devoted to disseminating proletarian literature and
Marxist critical and aesthetic theory (Keene 1984,337).
The Japanese Proletarian Cultural Federation had a dozen affiliates, including the
Japanese Proletarian Theatre Guild, the Japanese Proletarian Fine Arts Guild, and the
Proletarian Author’s League.47 O f these, the Author’s League exerted the greatest
influence o f any group, and proved the most resistant to governmental pressure
(Swearingen 53). In regard to proletarian theatre, the most significant early development
was the establishment in 1922 of the Nihon Rodo Gekidan [Japan Labor Theatre] by
Hirasawa Keishichi, a labor leader and writer. This company, which used amateur actors
and played to factory audiences, lasted only two years due to the fact that Hirasawa was
“arrested and evidently murdered by the Tokyo police” (Rimer 1974,52). A production
o f proletarian playwright Fujimori Seikichi’s Gisei [The Sacrifice] (1926) was halted by
the authorities one day before its scheduled opening at the Tsukiji Little Theatre (49).
Fujimori and two other playwrights of proletarian drama, Kaneko Yobun and Akita
Ujaku, were associated with the Socialist League prior to their association with the
Japanese Proletarian Arts League. While Fujimori subsequently became the editor of
Brngei sensen, Akita continued to write dramas in the German Expressionist style (49).
Greatly influenced by The Labor Theatre, Akita began the Senzuka [Pioneer Theatre],
which was also known as “The Storehouse Theatre,” since it was housed on the second
floor o f a bakery in Shinjuku (Rimer 1974,52). In 1926, one member of the Senzuka,
Sasaki Takamaru—who had participated in Sanka performances—founded the Toranku
Gekidan [Trunk Theatre] to support the efforts o f labor unions.
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That same year, Murayama, Kaneko Yobun, Sasaki, and Senda Koreya
established the Zen’eiza [Vanguard Theatre], which aimed to reinterpret classical plays.
For the Zen’eiza, Murayama directed and co-designed (with Yanase) a production of Don
Quixote Liberated [Kaihosareta don kihote] by Lunacharsky—the Commissar of
Enlightenment in post-RevoIutionary Russia, who had been most supportive o f the avant-
garde prior to the establishment of social realism as the official Soviet style (Sofiie 14).
The second production of the Zen’eiza was a production o f Upton Sinclair’s Prince
Hagen—a favorite of Piscator’s—directed by Murayama at the Tsukiji Little Theatre in
1927. The Zen’eiza split into smaller groups in 1927, which were eventually reorganized
as the Sayoku Gekijd [Left Theatre], when the arrests o f many leading Communists
forced the consolidation o f proletarian artists’ efforts. One noteworthy production of the
Sayoku Gekijo was Miyoshi Juro’s Kubi o kiro nowa dare-da [Who Fires the Workers?],
which incited the audience to stage a demonstration (UNESCO 222). In 1929, the Japan
League o f Proletarian Drama was formed. Dozens o f other proletarian theatres emerged
all over Japan, many of them drawing inspiration, energy, and talents from artists
associated with the avant-garde.
To Arima, the major contribution o f proletarian literature in Japan lies in the area
o f literary criticism as the “ambiguous border area between art and politics” (178). In
what has come to be referred as the “keishiki-naiyd ronso” [form and content
controversy] o f 1928, Marxist literary critics argued that it was the content of a literary
work that ultimately determined its artistic value, while an opposing group led by
Yokomitsu Riichi, argued that it was style and form that in the final analysis determined
artistic excellence (Arima 201). Yokomitsu’s Shinkankaku-ha [New Sensibility School]
arose in direct opposition to proletarian literature (201).
Arima notes that while 1929 was a banner year for the proletarian literary
movement, the coming years would see a marked decline, due to government intervention
and also the Marxists’ “failure to communicate with the masses” (207). That the Third
Proletarian Arts Exhibition of 1930 saw a record 5,000 visitors, which though small in
comparison to the 200,000 visitors to the Imperial Academy’s exhibitions, must be
viewed in light o f the increased police surveillance o f proletarian and left-leaning art,
literature, and performance at the time.
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One of Murayama’s plays, Shimura Natsue (1932), first published in the

Puroretaria bimgaku, caused a scandal when it was produced by the Sayoku Gekijo
(Left-Wing Theatre], in April 1932. Sofue synopsizes the play thusly:
Shimura Natsue, the daughter o f a poor peasant family, in order to escape
debt runs away to Tokyo, where she finds employment at a factory.
Gradually becoming aware o f class struggles, she begins to fight for the
rights of female workers without consulting the factory’s union leadership,
staging a protest over the factory’s pricing policies. Meanwhile Natsue
becomes involved with a married organization leader, and gets arrested
just as she is trying to get out of the affair. Her cause is then subsequently
taken up by her female co-workers.48
Softie notes that under the direction o f Sugimoto Ryokichi, the production contained
various experimental features, such as a singing chorus. During one performance,
however, the actress who played Natsue—Hirano Ikuko—was arrested onstage, while
Sugimoto defected to Russia to escape arrest. When the play re-opened with another
actress playing Natsue, the show attracted even more attention (Sofue 20-22).
Interestingly, Murayama was also arrested during rehearsals for another production of
this play (19).
With the suppression o f Communism the top priority of the authorities by 1934,
the Sayoku Gekijo was forced to change its name to the Chud Gekijo [Central Theatre],
while many members associated with all of the proletarian arts movements were arrested.
Upon his release from prison in 1934, Murayama organized the Shinkyo Gekidan [New
Cooperation Group] in an effort to revitalize the severely weakened proletarian theatre.
Continuously battling the censors and always under the threat o f arrest, this group
managed to stay alive until 1940, producing plays by Fujimori, Murayama, and Kubo
Sakae. They also produced translations of Odets’ Awake and Sing, Tolstoy’s Anna
Karenina, and Sidney Kingsley’s Dead End (UNESCO 226).
The historical reception o f the proletarian arts movements is constellated with
competing ideologies regarding the social status o f art during the early Showa period.
The critic Itagaki Takaho, for example, questioned the essentially traditional formats by
which proletarian art was exhibited, which often made for difficult access for workers
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(Omuka 1995,29). In response, proletarian artists developed new ways to reach the
masses through posters, printed art, workers’ cartoons, art newspapers, and small-scale
exhibitions in unusual, but accessible venues (29). Such phenomena can also be credited
to the Mavoists and like-minded avant-gardists, whose works were displayed in cafes,
factories, and in any number o f sites in the urban landscape. Among the leading artists of
the Proletarian Arts Movement, which included Murayama Tomoyoshi, Takeisha
Yumeji, Takahata Kasho, and Fukiya Koji, Yanase Masamu emerged as the one o f the
most prolific, and though his work spanned a number of different formats, including set
design and photomontage, he is most highly regarded for his political cartoons and
collages.
Keene notes that Nakano Shigeahru’s ronso in 1936 with the important critic
Kobayashi Hideo, who disliked the term “art for the proletariat,” is the most illustrative
o f the dichotomy between proletarian and modernist literary values. Though generally
contemptuous o f the ideological underpinnings of proletarian forms, Kobayashi was
equally critical of art-for-art’s sake (1985,585). By 1936, Nakano, who had already
undergone tenko, denounced Kobayashi as exemplary o f the “new bureaucratism o f a
Japan that now demanded conformity to nationalistic ideals” (602). In renouncing
proletarian literature, Kobayashi wrote with conviction on what it meant to be a writer in
the wartime era, but was uncritical o f the military. After 1937, Kobayashi became an
outspoken advocate for the war, delivering addresses before such organizations as the
Japanese Literature Patriotic Association (603). This would become a trend on the part
o f many socially and politically engaged critics, writers, and artists, who either willingly
or under coercion, became active participants in the war campaign.
3.2.4 Japanese Avant-Garde Performance and Shingeki
Brian Powell identifies three major periods in the development of Shingeki prior
to the war. The early 1920s represents the first phase, and is typified largely by the
efforts of the Tsukiji Little Theatre directors to create a modem “realistic” Japanese
theatre. The second phase beginning in the late 1920s, witnessed the predominance of
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Marxist ideology in Shingeki, and the widespread adoption o f social realism. The third
period was ushered in after 1934, when the authorities stamped out proletarian forms, and
Shingeki steadily advanced towards stage realism. This last phase was temporarily
interrupted by the war, when two o f the three Shingeki troupes were ordered to disband
because o f their earlier left-wing associations (1984,7).
Aside from the independent avant-garde performance activities and events
associated with discrete movements, individual artists, and many o f the proletarian
theatre troupes, avant-garde drama and performance techniques were incorporated into
the early phase of Shingeki, even though realism was a predominant aesthetic imperative.
It is also true, however, that given the transformation of the institutions of Japanese
theatre effected by the turn towards realism, some scholars consider Shingeki itself as a
part of the Japanese avant-garde project. As Ozasa notes, “Shingeki was avant-garde
precisely because it leaned towards realism. Avant-gardism and realism were the same—
a fact long unrecognized by Japanese scholars” (221).
Weisenfeld points out that many o f the artists associated with Sanka had worked
as designers, directors, and actors in both the commercial institutions of theatre and the
Shingeki troupes (1997,337). In regard to their avant-gardist activities, however, their
aims were to “break down the boundaries between the arts” that would result in a
“comprehensive artistic-theatrical experience that would incorporate the visual arts and
completely engulf the spectator, thus blurring the line between actor and audience (337).
It is especially revealing, therefore, that the Sanka in Theatre performance was held at the
Tsukiji Little Theatre, which indicates not only the degree of experimentation that the
establishment had sanctioned, but also the affinities behind the goals of avant-garde
performance and Shingeki, even in its earliest manifestations.
Shoyo believed that because the conventions o f Kabuki were those that were the
most easily recognizable to Japanese audiences, they should be reformed rather than
abandoned (Ortolani 1990,244). While Shoyd trained amateurs to become professional
actors of modem dramatic forms, Osanai Kaoru remained committed to re-educating
Kabuki actors, with the help o f Ichikawa Sadanji, who visited and was influenced by
European theatre (246). Both efforts, however, were by all accounts, largely
unsuccessful. Another difference was that Shoyo attempted to incorporate music and
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dance forms into theatre, while Osanai concentrated mainly on realistic psychological
drama. At the Jiyu Gekijo, Osanai limited the repertory to plays by European dramatists,
and tried to incorporate the actor-training and directing techniques of Stanislavsky (247).
He also attempted this policy at the Tsukiji Little Theatre, which produced over fifty
works by Western playwrights,49 although Hijikata, his colleague and chief financier,
gravitated to Expressionist and politically-engaged dramatic and performance techniques
inspired by his travels in Russia and Germany in 1923 (Ortolani 1990,249). The early
phase o f the Tsukiji Little Theatre, then, is justly hailed as a period of experimentation in
a wide range of Western dramatic and performance techniques.
For the Tsukiji Little Theatre, Osanai advocated a complete break with tradition
in the construction of a modem realistic theatre, which was reflected in this advice to his
company of actors:
Above all, the enemy we must fight against in our effort to establish the
national theatre we hold as our ideal is the traditional theatre, that is,
Kabuki drama... We must first wage war on this tradition. We must
destroy Kabuki patterns, we must create our own distinct theatre art, new
and free.50
This quotation is interesting for several reasons. First, Osanai’s goal to establish a
“national theatre” reveals a proclivity towards institutionalization not shared by the
avant-garde project overall. While Osanai advocated the complete abolition of the
traditional theatre, his goal was to supplant one institution with another, not to destroy the
institution o f theatre per se. Yet, it is also true that Osanai’s advocacy for theatrical
Naturalism, from his earliest years with the Jiyu Gekijo, was grounded in his intention to
bring theatre closer to life—an aim not typical o f Japanese theatre up until that time, but
one that was also in step with avant-garde project o f the mid-1920s. Equally significant
is that although Osanai was a staunch proponent o f realism, he also made use of Jacques
Dalczroze’s Eurythmics and Gordon Craig’s concept o f the supermarionette as part o f his
actor-training program, both of which were associated with the Western avant-garde.
Rimer notes that Hijikata’s chance viewing o f Meyerhold’s production of The Earth
in Turmoil in Moscow led to his sustained interest in the experimental Russian director’s
techniques (1984,42). In Berlin, Hjikata also studied under the scenic designer Carl
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Heine. Hijikata wrote o f his high regard o f the Constructivist aims o f Meyerhold’s
production thusly:
The unadorned hall, the empty stage lit only by spotlights, a sidecar
running through the audience, the actor’s stark movements—everything
startled me and took my breath away...I felt that here was the real sense of
theatrical liberation that I, who had questioned ‘naturalistic’ and
‘impressionistic’ styles of directing had been seeking. (Goodman 64)
This play was an adaptation by Sergei Tretyakov of La Nuit, a French play by the Marxist
poet Marcel Martinet (Rimer 1984,42-3). The set design for this production was by the
Constructivist designer Liubov Popova, who employed a real automobile, a real tractor,
and real telephones (Bowlt 77). As Kovalenko notes, in this production, “constructivism
triumphed over mere decorativeness, painting, stage props, and architecturalism,” since
nothing could be identified as objects o f art; rather, all were objects fo r art” (151-2).
Furthermore, in this production,
Meyerhold insisted not on psychology and naturalism, as did Stanislavsky,
but on a vivid theatricalism, using aggressive declamation projected on
screens to “teach” the audience the meaning of the play; the scenery was a
procession o f real machines, the actors wore no makeup and used street
clothes as costumes. (Rimer 43)
Influential as these techniques may have been, Hijikata’s interests were not solely
confined to theatrical innovativeness, but were informed by the social and political
dimensions o f theatre as a form o f communication. For the opening production of the
Tsukiji Little Theatre, Hijikata directed the Expressionst play, Seeschlacht [Sea Battle]
by Reinhard Goering.51 As Rimer notes, Hijikata’s “rough and abstract methods of
direction” were at odds with Osanai’s Stanislavskean techniques, and hence the infamous
conflict between the two Russian directors was brought to Japan, only here played out on
the stage of a single theatre company (1974,44). To these two important figures of
Shingeki, Rimer adds Murayama, who through his attempts to implement Piscator’s Epic
theatre techniques became a “spokesperson in Japan for the importance o f the director,
even before the plays for his Expressionist repertory were created” (1984,45). In this
vein, Akita established himse lf as one o f the most significant playwrights to explore
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Expressionism. An admirer o f the Japanese avant-garde, Akita was instrumental in

encouraging Yanase to take up scenic design, attended the Sanka performance, and was a
contributor to Tcmemaku hito prior to establishing the Senzuka [Pioneer Theatre]. Rimer
points to Akita’s Gaikotsu no buyo [The Skeleton’s Dance] (1924)—a “fictional re
telling o f an infamous incident after the 1923 earthquake in Tokyo when a number of
Korean laborers were murdered by frightened mobs of Japanese”—as exemplary of
German Expressionist dramaturgy in early Shingeki (1984,48).
In his brief career, Osanai did much to establish the “cult of the director” in
Shingeki by adhering to Western training theories, and his interpretations o f important
Western modem dramas (249). However, Osanai was disinclined towards incorporating
Marxist ideology in his selection and interpretations. Rimer notes that even before his
European travels of 1912, Osanai had produced a number of articles on Western theatre,
covering such personalities as Gordon Craig and Otto Brahm (1974,34). The most
important of his discoveries in Europe, however, was Stanislavsky’s actor-training
methods, and his notes on Stanislavsky’s production of Gorky’s Lower Depths served as
the basis for his own production in 1913 (35). Ortolani notes, however, that Osanai’s
legacy of the “cult of the director” had “deeply penetrated the mental attitude” of the
company’s leaders, and that in early Shingeki, the status of the playwright was inferior
just as it was in Kabuki (1990,251). While Hijikata was devoted to leftist and Marxist
plays and established the Shin Tsukiji Gekidan after Osanai’s death, Aoyama Sugisaku -
the third of the regular directors o f the Tsukiji Little Theatre—reorganized what remained
o f the company into the Gekidan Tsukiji Shogekijo [The Tsukiji Little Theatre Company]
(Rimer 1984,75)
The productions mounted by the Shin Tsukiji Gekidan from 1928 through 1940
were mainly drawn from Japanese playwrights, including the major forces in proletarian
drama, such as Murayama, Kobayashi Takiji, Kaneko Yobun, Miyoshi, and Fujimori
Seikichi (UNSESCO 223). Meanwhile Aoyama, who had been determined to carry on
Osanai’s strict “art theatre” policy, also began to produce plays with leftist content by
Kitamura Kihachi and Fujimori. The Gekidan Tsukiji Shogekijo, however, split in two
factions in 1930: the Shin Tokyo [New Theatre] headed by Aoyama, and the Tsukijiza
led by Tomoda Kyosuke and Tamura Akiko. Mounting productions o f soon-to-be
213
important playwrights such as Kishida Kunio and Tanaka Chikao, as well as Western
playwrights, such as Ferenc Molnar, Elmer Rice, and Maxwell Anderson, in the three
years o f its existence, the Tsukijiza became renowned for its “skill in psychological
interpretation” and the encouragement of original plays written by Japanese writers
(UNESCO 224). It would also be the forerunner to the Bungakuza [Literary Theatre],
established in 1938.
Iwata Toyoo, a major force in the Bungakuza, was highly influenced by the
French director Jacques Copeau, whose pioneering company, Le Vieux Colombier,
fashioned a repertory devoted to simple and well-acted versions of contemporary and
classic plays. Upon his return to Japan, Iwata engaged in dramatic criticism and
translation, and shared Osanai’s reverence for the construction of a modem Japanese
theatre based on Western models (Rimer 1984,40-2).
In the early 1930s, Shingeki was dominated by socialist realist tenets,
characterized by a “commitment to proscenium-arch realism, humanism, and a tragic
dramaturgy” (Goodman 1994,2). As Ortolani notes, neither Brecht’s plays, nor his
dramatic or directing theories had any significant impact on Japanese theatre until the
1950s (1990,257). It is relevant, however, that both Brecht and Meyerhold had
themselves been highly influenced by Asian forms. As Zarilli notes, the search for
“alternative paradigms and techniques o f training” led many Western practitioners, “if
not to use Asian techniques per se, at least to an alternative vision prompted by
encounters with non-Western, and Asian performance traditions in particular” (74).
Meyerhold was so influenced by the Russian tour o f Kawakami’s troupe in 1901, that he
attempted his own version of Kabuki in a production ofM oliere’s Don Juan (Rimer
1984,43). Brandon notes that the early encounters of Brecht and Artaud with Beijing
opera and Balinese performance, though “fleeting, surface encounters,” contributed much
to their own theatre practices (1989,32-3). Brecht also became familiar with traditional
Noh through Elizabeth Hauptmann’s translation o f Arthur Waley’s The Noh Plays o f
Japan. As Willett notes, Noh not only influenced Das Jasager (Brecht’s operatic
collaboration with Kurt Weill), but its verbal simplicity, concrete imagery, and modes of
thought became a “life-long stimulus” in Brecht’s dramaturgy (1984,28).
214
Most scholars consider the influence o f German and Russian avant-garde theatre
practices on Shingeki as inestimable. Expressionism, with its anti-mimetic techniques,
exaggeration, and improvisation, and its manipulation o f gesture, color, and design were
infused in Shingeki, Japanese avant-garde performance, and proletarian theatre alike.
Kubo Sakae’s Land o f Volcanic Ash (1938), widely considered a hallmark in Shingeki’s
turn to social realism, is also noteworthy for its usage o f Expressionist and Epic theatre
techniques. Goodman notes that while Kubo’s play was received in its time as a “heroic
attempt to counter the rising tide of fanatic ultra-nationalism with science and rationality,
it has also been assessed as “nothing less than an expression of Stalinist totalitarianism;”
thus, indicative o f the anti-avant-garde tendencies o f the International Communist
Movement.52
On August 19,1940, the two remaining leftist Shingeki troupes, the Shinkyo
Gekidan and the Shin Tsukiji Group were dissolved, and a number of their members
arrested. The only troupe of significance to perform during the war years was the
Bungakuza [Literary Theatre], established in 1938 by Iwata, Kishida, and Kubota
Mantaro. The Bungakuza, which had no political affiliation and quietly continued its
pursuit of its “art for art’s sake” ideal,” performed throughout the war and emerged as
one of the major forces in postwar Japanese theatre (Ortolani 1990,253). As Rimer
notes, the Bungakuza represents the culmination o f the non-political strand of Shingeki’s
development initiated by Osanai (1984,119).
215
NOTES
1Takayasu Gekko first published partial translations o f Ibsen’s plays into

Japanese, including An Enemy o f the People in 1893, and ^4 D oll's House in 1901.
Ogai’s translation of John Gabriel Borkman opened the Jiyu Gekijo in 1909; see Keene
1984,439.
2 Toller was repeatedly imprisoned for his subversive political activities, and as
the president of the short-lived “Bavarian Soviet Republic,” was sentenced to five years
imprisonment in 1919. In plays such as Transfiguration (1919), Toller attempted to
portray the subjective experiences o f war, opening up the stage as an expression!stic
projection o f the mind. Other plays, such as Man and Masses (1920) and The Machine
Wreckers (1922) employed standard Expressionist dramaturgical techniques, such as
“flat” and/or anonymous characters, and the episodic “station-drama” development of the
action to serve his main protest against the exploitation of capitalism. Hurrah! We Live!
was staged by Piscator in 1927, while other plays that openly criticized the forces of
fascism forced Toller into exile in 1933.
3 Murayama“Sugiyuko hyogenha: ishikiteki koseishugi eno joronteki donyu”
[Exit Expressionism: An Introduction to Conscious Constructivism], Chuo Bifutsu 91
(April 1923) 3-15; translated for this study by Miki Hirayama; hereafter referred to as
Murayama 1923b.
4 Weisenfeld speculates that Murayama took his title from an essay by the
German Expressionist playwright and theorist Ivan Goll, who in an article o f the same
name published in Zenit (October 1921) 8-9, “employs an expressionist style” to “lament
over the futility of expressionism and the situation in art;” see Weisenfeld 1997,191.
s Around this time, Van Doesberg produced a Dada magzine, Mecano, and
participated on a lecture tour with Kurt Schwitters; see Omuka 1995,28. Asano
speculates that Murayama must have also become familiar with Schwitters’ work while
in Germany, based on what he perceived to be affinities between Murayama’s
formulation o f “conscious constructivism” and Schwitters’ Merz collages; see Asano 57.
6 Itabashi Kuritsu Bijutsukan, G uraffikunojidai: Murayama Tomoyoshi to
216
Yanase Masamu no sekai (Tokyo: Itabashi Kuritsu Bijutsukan, 1990) N. pag.; translated
for this dissertation by Mikiko Hirayama; hereafter cited as Itabashi.
7 Noda Utaroo, Gasutoo btmgeiko (Tokyo: Toohoo syoin, 1961) 280, qtd. in
Lanne 380; translation from French into English mine.
8 Published in Ningen, March 1921.
9 These two articles, both referencing Marinetti’s play, appeared in Yominri
shinbun (March 19,1921) and Gendai no bijutsu (October 1921).
10These articles appeared in Sintyoo (March 1923) and Asahi (April 1923).
11 Varvara Bubovna, “Bijutsu no Matsuro ni tsuite” Chuo Koron 8.11 (November
1922) 84, qtd. in Omuka 1986, 114.
12Kimura Soohati, Geizyutu no kakumei [The Revolution in Art] (Tokyo:
Rakuyoodoo, 1914) 620, and Sawaki K., “Insyooha yori rittaiha miraiha nu tassuru
made” [Impressionism in Cubism and Futurism] in Mitabungaku [The Literature of Mita]
(Tokyo: 1917), qtd. in Lanne 381.
13 Kishiida Ryusei, “They Who are Arrogant and Presumptuous—the Realists,
who are Malformed” in Gendai no Yoga (May 1912), qtd. in Omuka 1996,21.
14 Murayama, “Mavo no omoide (sono iche)” [Remembering Mavo, part one]
Gendai no me (Tokyo: Tokyo National Museum o f Modem Art, August 1970) 189, qtd.
in Asano 57.
15 Murayama, “Koseiha kenkyu,” Geijutsu no kakumei to kakumei no geijutsu, 14
ed. Kurihara Yukio (Tokyo: Shakai Hyoronsha, 1990) 61, qtd. in Harootunian 2000,104.
16“Koseiha no Kimono,” Yomuri shinbun, (November 1,1926) 3, qtd. in
Weisenfeld 1997,325.
17 Murasaki Ran, “Kyorokushugi no saishin geijutsu—sengo ni
kangeisaretsutsuam dadaizumu” [The Latest in Hedonism in art: the popularity of
Dadaism after the war]; and Hitsuji Akio, “Dadaizumu ichimenkan” [A View of
Dadaism] (Yorozuchoho, August 15,1920), qtd. in Linhartovd 1987,34.
18Takahashi Shinlrichi, “Dangen was dadaisuto,” reproduced and translated into
French by Linhartovd 1986,27-9; English translation mine.
217
19Keene notes that under the editorship o f Haruyama Yukio, Shi to Shiron was
the “laboratory” of modem Japanese poetry o f the early 1930s; see Keene 1984,312-3.
20 Kinoshita Mokutaro, Hinatsu Konosuke, Noguchi Yonejird, Nishiwaki
Junzaburo, Nihon no Shiika series (Tokyo: Chuo Koron Sha) 294, qtd. in Keene 1984,
325-6. Still active after the war, Nishiwaki wrote an essay, “Surrealism and Myself’
(1961), in which he declared his own contribution to Surrealism and located its roots in
the classical poetry o f Basho: “My specific views o f Surrealism were not specifically
derived from either [Yvon] Goll or Breton. I merely attemptyed to explain the general
principles o f modem poetry. The great Japanese poet Bashd was also a pioneer of
Surrealism;” in Nishiwaki Junzaburo Zenshi Shu (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1963), qtd.
in Keene 1984,332.
21 “Kokubo kokka to bijutsu: Gakka wa nani o nasubeki ka” [The National
Defense State and the Fine Arts: What Should Artists Do?] Mizue 434 (January 1941)
129-139, qtd. in Sandler 76. Participants in this five-member symposium included three
staff members o f the Army Information Section, led by Major Suzuki Kurazo, the critic
and art historian Araka Hideo—an expert on nineteenth century French painting, and
Kamigori Takashi, who served as the editor of the transcript.
22 In the changeover from the Bunten to the Teiten in 1919, organizational control
over official art exhibitions was turned over to the Imperial Fine Arts Academy from the
Ministry o f Education until 1934. The Academy’s president at the time was Mori Ogai,
and associated with the yoga division were the artists Kuroda Seiki and Okada
Saburosuke.
23 Nakamura, Ronso-shi, 217-7, qtd. in Clark 44.
24 Nakamura, Ronso-shi, 220, qtd. in Clark 47.
26 Osugi, N. c it, qtd. in Arima 61.
27 Such artists include Kishida Ryusei, Arishima Ikuma, Umehara Ryuzaburd,
Yamashita Shintaro and Yasui Sotard.
28 These playwrights include Tsubouichi Shoyo, Okamota Kidd, Hasegawa Shin,
and Mayama Seika.
218
29 “Tomo yo same yo” [Friends! Wake Up!] Mizue 12 (December 1922), qtd. in
30 Cited by Takashina Shuji 1986,23; from the (unsigned) manifesto of the Action
Group First Exhibition catalogue; transl. into French by Linhartova; English translation
mine.
31 “Akushon no shokun ni kugen o teisuru” Mizue 284 (June 1924) qtd. in
Weisenfeld 1997, 158.
32 “Mavo no sengen” [Mavo Manifesto] MAVO I (1923); translated for this study
by Miki Hirayama.
33 A facsimile o f the all seven issues was issued as ‘Mavo Jukkokuban, [ ‘Mavo ’
Facsimile] Ed. Odagiri Susumu (Tokyo: Nihon Kindai Bungakukan, 1991).
34 Murayama, “Mavo tenraki ni saishite: Asaeda kun ni kotaeru” [Concerning the
Mavo exhibition: A reply to Mr. Aseda] (Asahi Shinbtm, August 5, 1923) 6, qtd. in
Weisenfeld 1996,66.
35 Nakada Sadanosuke, “Megane o suteru (Sanka kaiin tenpyo) [Throwing Away
the Glasses—Sanka Members’ Exhibition Review] Chuo bijutsu 116 ( July 1925) 53-4,
qtd. in Weisenfeld 1997,377.
36 Murayama, “Koseiha ni kansuru ikkosatsu - Keisei geijutsu no han.i ni okeru.”
[A View on Constructivism - the State o f the Plastic Arts] Atelier (August 1925) 22, qtd.
in Asano 62; English translation mine.
37 The exhibition was held September 1-10,1924. Not much else is known about
this exhibition, except for its having been advertised in the third edition of MA VO; see
38 Omuka Toshiharu, “Taisho-ki no shinko bijutsu undo to “Gekijo no Sanka”
[The Progressive Art Movement in the Taisho Period and the “Theater o f the Third
Section”] Art Vivcmt 33 (July 1989) 84-8, qtd. in Clark 43.
39 Murayama Tomoyoshi, Engefdtefujidoden 1922-1927II [Theatrical
Autobiography, EQ (Tokyo: Toho Shuppansha, 1971), 25, qtd. in Weisenfeld 1997,337.
40 Clark, citing and translating Omuka 1989,89, qtd. in Clark 43.
41 Hiroko Kato, recounting an interview with Saito Yoshishige, see Horko 48.
219
42 Ibid.
43 Weisenfeld quoting Yoshida Kenchikf s remarks from “GekijS no Sanka”
[Sanka in the Theatre] Tokyo asahi shinbtm (May 26,1925) 6; see Weisenfeld 1997,350.
44 Clark, citing and translating citation o f Okada’s statement in Mizue (July 1925)
in Nakamura Giichi, “Chogenjitsu-shugi no notsaraku’ ronso” [Debate on the Fall of
Surrealism], Zoku Nihon kindau nijutsu ronso-shi [History o f Modem Japanese Art
Debates, Continuation] (Tokyo: Kinryudo, 1982), 188; see Clark 43..
45 Weisenfeld, summarizing and translating quotations from the Mizue survey,
“Tenrankai Sanka to Gekijo no Sanka” [The Sanka Exhibition and Sanka in the Theatre],
Mizue (July 1925) 29-30; see Weisenfeld 1997,245.
46 Nakada Sanosuke, “Megane o suteru (Sanka kaiin tenpyo) [Throwing Away the
Glasses; Sanka Members’ Exhibition Review] Chuo bijutsu 16 (July 1925) 52, qtd. in
Weisenfeld 1997, 166.
47 The other groups included the Proletarian Motion Picture Guild, the Proletarian
Musican’s League, the Photographers’ Association; the Esperanto Association, the
Science League, the Library League, the Institute for New Educational Militant Atheists,
and the Proletarian Birth Control League.
48 Sofue Shoji synopsizing “ShimuraNatsue,” Murayama Tomoyoshi gikyokushii,
I [Collected Plays o f Murayama Tomoyoshi, I] (Tokyo, 1971); see Sofue 21. Murayama
re-staged and designed this play in April 1970 for the Tokyo Geijutsuza.
49 The founding o f the Tsukiji Little Theatre in 1924 by Osanai is widely
considered to mark the beginning o f the “orthodox Shingeki movement;” see Goodman
1988,5.
50 Osanai Kaoru zenshu, vol. 6 (Kyoto: Rinsen shoten, 1975) 459-460, qtd. in
Goodman 1988,6.
51 Goering was best-known as a proponent o f Expressionism; Seeschlacht (1918),
his best-known play, gained fame for Goering as the first on the German stage to deal
directly with World War I and to employ what would become trademark Expressionist
dramatic devices, such as anonymous characters and telegraphic dialogue.
220
52 Kan Takayuki, “Sengo engeki: Shingeki was norikoerareta ka, Asahi sensho” 178
(Asahi shinbunsha, 1981), 86, qtd. in Goodman 1988,8.
FOUR. COMPARATIVE CASE STUDIES
In this chapter, I will compare Berlin Dada and Mavo, as well as the aesthetic and
social discourses and practices adopted by representative artists associated with these and
other avant-garde movements. My selections are based on what I perceive as the most
illustrative o f broader trends in historical avant-garde and its relation to the social and
political spheres. Throughout this chapter, I will emphasize performance theories and
practices, and trends in the historical reception o f avant-garde performance and theatrical
manifestations in both nations.
The first section is devoted to the similarities and differences between Mavo and
Berlin Dada. While Dada emerged as a literary movement in the field of Japanese
poetry, the broader aesthetic and anti-art techniques associated with Berlin Dada were
absorbed into the aesthetic and social goals of the Mavoists. Like Dada in Berlin, Mavo
represents the most cohesive Japanese avant-garde movement in regard to membership,
as well as the range of aesthetic interests pursued by its affiliated artists. Another
significant point o f comparison is the level of politicization both groups aspired to,
including high-profile oppositional political stances taken by key artists, and their
concurrent or subsequent involvement with political and proletarian art and performance.
I will also examine the factors leading to the demise of each movement as a result of
developments in both the aesthetic and sociopolitical realms.
In the second section of this chapter, I will examine the convergences between art
and politics in the careers of Georg Grosz and Yanase Masamu. These two artists were
not only highly active in both avant-garde and political art throughout the 1920s, their
endeavors exhibited remarkably similar tendencies—spanning publications and the
graphic arts, painting, stage design, and political cartoons. Furthermore, due to the
incorporation o f overtly political commentary in much o f their work, both Grosz and
Yanase encountered censorship and legal prosecution that impacted their creative work
and post-avant-garde careers.
In the third section, I will consider the theories, activities and performance
practices o f Murayama Tomoyoshi in comparison to a number o f German artists
221
222
associated with the avant-garde, including Richard Huelsenbeck, Erwin Piscator, and
Kurt Schwitters. As the founder o f Mavo, Murayama emerges as one o f the most prolific
of the Japanese avant-gardists, whose aesthetic interests included the visual arts,
performance and aesthetic theory—all o f which typically exhibited sociopolitical
dimensions. As one o f the most significant contributors to avant-garde performance,
Shingeki, proletarian theatre, modem dance, playwriting, and theatrical criticism,
Murayama emerges as one o f the premier theatre innovators in the prewar era, and one
whose career has until recently been under-examined in both Japanese and Western
theatre scholarship. Solely from a standpoint of range, no single figure o f the German
avant-garde compares with Murayama; hence, I have selected three German artists to
serve as cohorts. The first is Richard Huelsenbeck, a co-founder of Berlin Dada, and one
of its most politically engaged members, who has written extensively about Dada
production and reception. The second artist that I will reference is Kurt Schwitters,
whose synthesis o f Dada, Bauhaus, and Constructivist techniques closely resembled
Murayama’s aesthetic pursuits in the mid-l920s, and who also experimented with
performance, design, and architecture. The third German artist that I will consider is
Erwin Piscator, the premier director o f German political theatre in the late 1920s and
early 1930s, whose blueprint for his Epic Theatre,1Political Theatre, was translated by
Murayama into Japanese.
While it is beyond the scope of this comparison to provide an expansive
chronology o f the careers of each o f these artists, I will highlight the similarities and
differences in the intention, production, and reception o f their works. A chief advantage
of this particular sampling is that it provides the opportunity to consider the career paths
of representative avant-gardists in relation to developments in the social and political
spheres that not only had direct impact on their theories and arts practices, but ultimately,
determined the directions their careers would follow. While this is not to suggest that
other avant-gardists’ careers did not follow quite different paths, it is my contention that
these figures are the most important in regard to the convergences o f the avant-garde and
political realms in the interwar period.
223
'4.1 Berlin Dada and Mavo
The emergence o f Zurich Dada in 1916 was centered around Hugo Ball’s Cfoaiet
Voltaire, the early performances o f which, by all accounts, appear to have been
emblematic o f the conventional, escapist fare typical o f the cabaret theatre o f the period,
presented, moreover, to largely foreign and literary audiences (Btergfaaus 1985,296).
Participating in these early performances were Emmy Hemming?, Marcel Janco, Hans
Arp, and Tristan Tzara—all o f whom declared their intention to remind the world that
there were other ideals w orth considering besides nationalism: and war (Senelick 1919,
205). Within a brief period o f time, these performances became m are aesthetically*
radicalized, especially after Richard Huelsenbeck joined, and when Tristan Tzara—
having recognized the freedom and expansiveness that Dada poetics could provide—
intensified his organizational and creative endeavors, particularly in the areas o f poetry
and performance- The Zurich Dadaists came to gauge their effectiveness by the depees
to which they could shock, provoke, and enrage their audiences, and in so doing,
distinguished themselves from other cabaret artists and the bourgeois theatre (Berghous
1985,301). In 1917, they produced Oskar Kokoschka's Strohmann undSphinx, which
although Expressionist in form and sensibility, promised to fulfill Tzara's goal o f
reversing the traditional audience-perfonner dynamic inasmuch as the scenario could be
constructed by the audience, and the spectacle played out m the auditorium rather than on
I
the stage (301). '

Despite the considerable amount o f attention they gained for their efforts, it
became difficult for the movement to sustain itself after the war, with the relocation of
many o f the artists to Paris, Germany, and elsewhere, and also because o f B all's decision
to distance him self from those who remained.(Sene!ick 1989,210). By the time the base
o f operations shifted to Berlin, newly enfranchised artists, such as Raoul Hausmann,
Hannah Hoch, Otto Dix, Georg Grosz—all avowed supporters o f the Spartacists, and
harshly critical o f Expressionism, German idealism and militarism—ushered in a new
phase o f politicization fo r the movement, which they actively pursued in tandem with
their artistic, literary, and performance endeavors (Shapiro 198).
224
The Dadaists' interest in Communism was evident as early as the “First Berlin
Dada Manifesto,” in which Huelsenbeck and Hausmann demanded the abolition of
private property as the impetus for class warfare (Greenberg 1979,186). For a time,
Berlin Dada also had a “Revolutionary Central Committee” that proposed the use of
Dada verse as a Communist state prayer (Williams 1989,81). Grosz and Heartfield
joined the German Communist Party, and received their membership cards from Rosa
Luxemburg (Weinstein 223). They also made frequent contributions to the periodical
Die Aktion (Lewis 7). No more clearer declaration o f an artist’s political agenda could
have been possible in the fragile early years o f the Weimar Republic after the failed
November revolution. While not all of the Berlin Dadaists were avowed Communists,
the high-profile activities of those who were led to the inexorable association between
Dada and Communism or anarcho-syndicalism in the eyes o f the public and the
authorities.
Although it hints at collectivist propensities in regard to both a subscription base
and a submission policy open to the public-at-large, the first Mavo manifesto of 1923 is
noticeable for its lack o f a social or political programme. In fact, the Mavoists’
indication o f the likelihood of their accepting art and design commissions indicates their
willingness to engage in the commercial arena. Although the void of an overtly
sociopolitical platform would be filled soon enough, it is important to position the
emergence of Mavo in relation to the Great Kanto Earthquake. Since most o f the
Mavoists were originally from rural households, the “vitality and shock” o f Tokyo life—
so vividly captured in Hagiwara’s Dada poetry and Fumon’s futuristic oils—coupled with
the devastation the nation’s cultural epicenter and the exigencies o f rebuilding, all
converged in the Mavoists' early Constructivist aims and their anti-elitist postures.
What emerges as one o f the major characteristics shared by Berlin Dada and
Mavo, was a paradoxical relationship with Weimar or Taisho mass culture, that
manifested itself as either profoundly ambivalent and cynical, or hyper-engaged and even
celebratory. As Harootunian notes, Tokyo and Osaka urban culture inspired artists to
imagine a new form o f modem life, referred to at the time as bunka seikatsu [cultural
living], which “constantly announced itse lf in popular magazines, newspapers,
advertisements, radio, the cinema, and other mass cultural outlets (2000,13). The
225
earthquake, on the other hand, appears to have rejuvenated and inspired the avant-
gardists’ aim o f transforming all forms o f cultural expression, including those associated
with mass culture—a goal especially taken up by Mavo in its early phase (Viatte 33).
In Silverberg’s estimation, the Japanese avant-gardists employed mass culture as
both as site for production and a topic o f discourse, the latter distinguishable less for its
adversity to bourgeois mass culture, than to the “state-sponsored culturalism” that had
been in effect since the mid-Meiji era (1993,140). This was borne out in many of their
efforts in collage and sculpture, which incorporated material generated from the mass
media—a tendency which also reveals the Mavoists’ commitment to fuse art and
everyday life. Jameson extends this notion to include the Japanese avant-gardists’
relation to aesthetic modernism, considering that both occurred contemporaneously with
rapid social modernization, and the sociocultural construction o f a “bourgeois everyday
life.”2
By contrast, the Dadaists attempted to negate not only a long tradition of
bourgeois art that harkened back to the Enlightenment era, but also the institutional
values associated with the rationalization o f the social spheres and its by-product:
aesthetic autonomy, including the alleged superiority o f German culture at the heart of
German idealistic philosophy and aesthetics. This is not to infer that the Dadaists did not
assume adversarial, albeit contradictory postures towards Weimar culture. In their
parodies of both traditional and Expressionist drama, for example, the Dadaists
incorporated the means and modes o f avant-gardism and mass culture from critical
vantage-points. Hannah Hoch found source material for many o f her photomontages in
images o f a host o f popular and Hollywood icons of the era, as well as those who had
established their reputations as avant-gardists, such as Niddy Impekoven, Kathe Kollwitz,
and John Heartfield—all o f whom appear in her most celebrated works (Lavin 22-3).
In their initial manifesto, Huelsenbeck and Hausmann announced their opposition
to Expressionism due to that movements’ embourgeiosement, and noted that the
Expressionists had “joined together to form a generation which already today longingly
awaits its literary and art historical appreciation” (Hausmann 23-4). Given that several o f
the Dadaists were themselves former Expressionists (including Hausmann), or would
continue to deploy Expressionist forms and techniques in their performances, this critique
226
can be interpreted as less o f a polemic against a prior artistic style (or movement), than of
the bourgeois socio-economic apparatuses that commodified art and the susceptibility of
even the most radical o f artists to be assimilated into those structures.
In a similar vein, the Mavoists declared that they would reject any association
based on style, and would not seek to establish definitive aesthetic principles. It is worth
noting that just three months prior to forming Mavo, Murayama published an article in
which he declared that the era o f Expressionism was over in both Germany and Japan,
although he too would continue to deploy typically German Expressionist techniques and
forms in his theatrical and dramatic works over the course o f the next decade. It should
also be noted that his use o f the term “Expressionism” enfranchised not only the German
movement, but a host o f “isms,” including Japanese Impressionism. By contrast, the
Dadaists’ critique o f Expressionism implicitly evinced their antipathy to what they
perceived to be the continuation o f German Romanticism in avant-garde guise, and also
their profound skepticism for the possibility o f a national German art based on the ideals
o f truth and beauty upon which idealist aesthetics were premised. Richter recalls that the
Dadaists were also aversive to other avant-garde movements, especially Italian Futurism
after Marinetti’s complicity with nationalism and militarism became more apparent
(Richter 34).
Rumold maintains that while the early texts o f Zurich Dada manifest the goal of
transforming the institutions o f art, the Berlin Dadaists were more emphatic in seeking
their destruction so that they could construct a proletarian culture (469). Milman points
out that the “bourgeoisie” that the Zurich Dadaists so fervently attacked was, by and
large, restricted to the “conservative Zurich art world” to which they addressed their
relatively “specialized aesthetic critiques” and “kaleidoscopic view o f pan-European
modernisms” (341). In comparison, the Berlin Dadaists responded to the postwar
political crisis by “holding all culture accountable,” including earlier avant-garde
movements. Critical o f the bourgeoisie, an indifferent public, and the military
establishment, the Dadaists’ campaign against art and social institutions assumed
propagandists proportions, especially in the collaborations between Piscator, Heartfield
and Grosz. Furthermore, in their parodies o f Expressionism, Futurism and Cubism, the
Berlin Dadaists “produced a sign-system” that situated their movement “within the
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broader setting o f the surrounding culture” that had already assimilated the avant-garde
(Benson 1987,367).
Williams makes the distinction that Western modernism is most characterizeable
by artistic groupings that “sought to protect their practices within the growing dominance
of the art market, and against the indifference o f the formal academies,” at the same time
that they were establishing “their own facilities o f production, distribution and publicity”
(1989,50-52). Though they emerged from a similar impulse, the historical avant-garde
(in contradistinction to modernism), developed into
...fully oppositional formations, determined not only to promote their own
work, but to attack its enemies in the cultural establishments, and beyond
these, the whole social order in which these enemies had gained power
and now exercised and reproduced their power. (51)
While Williams is mindful o f the anti-institutional coordinates o f the avant-garde project,
his formula also allows for the avant-gardists to continue the practice o f producing art—a
criteria that is often negated in theoretical formulations regarding the “anti-art”
propensities o f the historical avant-garde. In this vein, Tzara explained the “anti-
Modemist” position o f Dada thusiy:
We declared Dada was not modem, because Dada was anarchic and the
modernism o f the time tended to become a dogma, a sort of
institution...For us, ‘modernism had a pejorative meaning; it was almost
an insult to call us ‘modemes’ because modernism was in fashion and we
were against this fashion.3
If, as Shigeo maintains, Berlin Dada is to be viewed as part o f an international arts
movement that questioned, doubted, and ultimately denied the existence o f fine art by
pursuing, “from a position within the arts” the ideas o f “self-criticism and self denial,”
Dada in Japan, by contrast, ushered in a “new sense o f internationalism in the art and
literary worlds,” wherein “the shared awareness o f crisis forced a universal standpoint to
be taken” (57). Such internationalism, however, did not prevent Murayama from
criticizing his fellow avant-gardists for what he felt was their over-reliance on Western
avant-garde techniques. In his critique o f the second Action exhibition o f 1924,
Murayama wrote:
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Throw away your albums. Stand up by yourselves. I beg you to stop

acting like monkeys. Respect yourselves more...The worst things in this
exhibition are Nakahara Minoru’s copies o f Grosz, Asano Takeshiro’s
reproduction o f Archipenko...Yokoyama Junnosuke’s reprinting o f
Rousseau and the copies o f the constructionism o f the Italian
Futurists...M ost o f it is an imitation o f spineless French imperial salon
style boiled down from Picasso and Braque. There’s nothing more
shameless than this for the Japanese painting world. It makes you want to
puke. Oh mates, how far will you be slaves? It’s as if you had been bom
slaves for generations.4
This critique, while it does not pursue a nationalist argument, does suggest Murayama’s
consciousness o f the necessity o f the Japanese avant-garde to cultivate new interests and
forms that were independent from Western influence. On another level, however,
Murayama’s statement also indicates the vast transformation in aesthetic values regarding
the production o f art that had occurred by the Taisho era. As Rimer notes, the “paradigm
o f one generation serving as a role model for artists in the succeeding generation was
perhaps the most tenacious psychological legacy left to the modem period by traditional
Japanese art” (1987,76). This paradigm, o f course, was anathema to the avant-garde,
where the “disciple was in effect forbidden to copy the master’s work in and of itself.”
This explains, for Rimer, that the best o f the earlier Westem-style painters came to be
looked upon as “cultural heroes” and “romantic figures,” who seemed, temporarily at
least, to “encapsulate strategies for maintaining their cultural force outside the confines of
a polite middle-class society” (76). This has direct bearing on the entire category of
Japanese avant-gardism, since to many o f the early Japanese modernists “all o f Western
art came to serve as their avant-garde,” and not only that which was produced in the
modem era.
Along these lines, the sociopolitical coordinates of the doctrine o f aesthetic
autonomy as it developed in the West must also be considered in relation to the
emergence o f the Western historical avant-garde. Art-for-art’s sake, which to Hauser
represents the “sum-total o f romantic aesthetic theory,” also served as a weapon in the
Romantic-idealist struggle for freedom first manifest in the revolt against classicism (21).
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Hauser adds, however, that this doctrine was extended beyond the aesthetic into the
social realm, even as it negated, paradoxically, “all external ties,” thus seemingly
emancipating art from “all non-artistic and intellectual values” (22). If the European
bourgeoisie seized upon aesthetic autonomy as a central organizing cultural paradigm, it
did so, in Hauser’s estimation, because the emphasis on the “ideal nature o f art and the
high, superpolitical status of the artist” was congruent with the rationalization o f the
social sphere (22). He adds, however, that the doctrine o f aesthetic autonomy, was an
...expression of the division o f labor which advanced hand in hand with
industrialization, partly the bulwark of art against the danger of being
swallowed up by industrialized and mechanized life. It signifies on the one
hand, the rationalization, disenchantment and contraction of art, but
simultaneously the attempt to preserve its individual quality and
spontaneity, in spite o f the universal mechanization of life. (22)
As already discussed, it is impossible to attribute the formulation of the autonomy
doctrine in Japan to the same set o f originary factors, given the uniqueness of its
properties as they had been established in traditional aesthetics, and also because of the
absence o f a centuries-old tradition o f idealist philosophy. Even in the post-Restoration
era, when the rationalization o f society was accomplished expediently and according to
the German model, can the Japanese avant-garde be solely characterized by its negation
o f the autonomy doctrine, especially considering that the institutional coordinates o f art
had already been firmly anchored to a the doctrine of socially-engaged art, which was
antithetical to both an idealist aesthetic, and, at least in the case o f the early Japanese
avant-gardists, to artistic subjectivity and individualism. On the other hand, the
reformulation o f aesthetic autonomy in the late Meiji era is comparable to the West
insofar as it emerged concomitant to the post-Restoration reorganization o f society, as
well as the aestheticist paradigm that was imported from Europe and popularized by the
Shirakaba-ha and Pan no Kai movements.
It follows, therefore, that the aesthetic concerns o f the Mavoists may be viewed as
a function o f divergent, complex, and often contradictory ideological positions relating to
the social valuation o f art, including those related to the construction o f a state-
determined public domain that existed at the discretion o f the Emperor, and the
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competing claims o f Taisho mass and consumer culture. Yet, it also becomes clear that
the Japanese avant-garde, particularly the Mavoists, incorporated a critical reflexivity
regarding art production itself, even as they were increasingly leaning towards a more
radical anti-art agenda. In this regard, Weisenfeld notes that despite the strong anti-art
quotient in their ideological stances and artistic production, “all Mavo members
considered themselves first and foremost as artists,” who attempted to innovate within the
discourse and practice of art rather than by attempting to disengage from art altogether
1997,45).
This partially explains the bounty of serious theoretical and critical writings
produced by the Japanese avant-gardists as opposed to the more flippant and ironic
manifestoes and art treatises that doubled as avant-garde performance texts for the
Dadaists. On the other hand, in his reminiscences about the reception of the Futurist Art
Association exhibitions, Kinoshita indicates the avant-gardists’ growing awareness o f the
necessity of educating the public and the critical establishment alike of their aesthetic
intentions:
In those days, paintings that had non-figurative qualities or contained both
figurative and non-figurative techniques were all criticized by people who
did not understand what was going on. When it came to purely abstract
painting, not only lay people, but also some painters would say, “You call
this painting? (1970b, 8)
It is also worth noting that the Japanese avant-gardists came to realize, like their Western
counterparts, the value o f self-promotion. More than any previous association o f artists
in Japan, the Mavoists positioned themselves against a tradition o f both modem and
Western art that had gradually become institutionalized over the course o f a half-century.
In this respect, Takashina links Action, Sanka and Mavo by the shared goal for an artistic
and social rebirth that they felt could be occasioned through agitation (1986,24).
Omuka maintains that the Mavoists made two highly significant contributions to
Japanese art and performance: collage and street theatre, hi their collages, the Mavoists
used found objects to create aggregate compositions that were neither tableau, nor
sculpture at the same time that they expanded the materials o f art to include “found
objects, industrially produced materials, and reproduced images used in combination with
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painting or printmaking to evoke the ‘feeling o f daily life* [seikatsu no kanjo].”5 In their
street performances, moreover, they attempted to erode the distinctions between everyday
life, performance, and the political demonstration. This was the Mavoists’ remedy for the
separation o f art and life characteristic o f modem art production, as indicated in Okada
Tatsuo’s assertion that due to Mavo, “art is now separated from ‘so-called art’ and is
something with meaning directly for our life.”6
In their performances, the Dadaists’ devised several strategies to rapture the
conventional separation between the performers and the audience. Huelesenbeck’s
“simultaneous poetry,” with its melange of multi-lingual words, images, and sounds
pulled from everyday life, and Heartfield’s projected photomontages for Piscator’s
multimedia proletarian theatrical extravaganzas, both represent the allegorical and
collaborative principles undergirding Dada performance construction, ultimately aimed at
transforming the conventional mode o f reception from the passive, contemplative
spectator-recipient—to an active, critical, and participatory collective.
Whereas the Russian performance avant-gardists distinguished themselves by
deploying Constructivist techniques aimed at negating the theatrical space that rendered
the audience and performance into two autonomous entities, the Dadaists deployed the
technique o f montage as its favored and most practical device towards similar ends. The
dramaturgical techniques of Tristan Tzara, wherein he cut up and read fragments from the
daily paper, levied a critique o f both “authorial authority” and the “cult o f the
masterpiece” (Mann 103). While Piscator would credit Heartfield’s use o f photomontage
in their collaboration, Flags (1924), as foundational to his Epic Theatre, Innes notes that
Yvan Goll, who was active in both Expressionism and Dada, had first incorporated
photography as an integral design element four years earlier, in such productions as The
Chaplmade and The Immortal (17). Similarly “shock” tactics in their cabaret and street
performances blurred the distinctions between theatre and the public demonstration.
Whereas in Zurich, arts and performance events were centered at the Cabaret Voltaire,
the lack o f a comparable venue in Berlin forced the Dadaists into unconventional locales,
and quite often the street, where they became visible and vocal disruptive forces at an
assortment o f civic events, or strolling the Kurfursten Damm wearing death masks and
shouting anti-capitalist slogans (Appignanesi 86). In some ways, Dada performance
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poetics incorporated the twin goals o f investing performance with the qualities of
everyday social life, and theatricalizing the social milieu. In respect to the latter, the
Dadaists can also be credited with aestheticizmg the political demonstration—a technique
that would be picked up subsequently by the Nazis in their mass demonstrations and
military shows.
The Mavoists were no less active in the public sphere than the Dadaists, with
most o f their activities occurring outside the bounds o f galleries and theatre venues. The
“Moving Exhibition of Works Rejected from the Nika Exhibition,” for example, served
as a public exhibition of their work, an act o f civil disobedience, and a performance.
Their architectural designs for the Barracks Company’s post-earthquake reconstruction
projects incorporated theatrical elements at the same time that they were devised to
transform Tokyo into a public stage, “drawing passersby into a relationship with the
outlandish and aggressive structures...[that] theatricalized the everyday and made
manifest those spaces which would otherwise have remained undifferentiated”
(Weisenfeld 1997,369).
Mavoist art production also revealed a conscious deployment of theatricalized
elements in their anti-art constructions. In regard to the first Sanka exhibition and theatre
performance, the critic Nishida Takeo took note o f the mutual exchange between the
theatricalization of the artworks and the pictorialization o f the performances.7 The Sanka
exhibition and performance are widely considered in Japanese avant-garde scholarship as
epoch-defining events that were also laden with scandal. At one point in the
performance, for example, several o f the artists ran through the aisles with broiled fish,
causing the entire theatre to be filled with its smell and smoke (Omuka 1986,124). In the
Mavo and Sanka phase o f his career, Murayama’s performances proved particularly
contentious because of his tendency to present alternate visions of eroticism, sexuality,
and gender. For instance, he often performed erotically charged dances in women’s
clothing, thus obfuscating gender roles as a means o f resistance against publicly-
sanctioned morals (Weisenfeld 1996,69). hi this respect, Mavo art and performance
“functioned at a deep level o f subversion,” by arousing the widespread fear among many
Japanese intellectuals that “the new liberation,” combined with “the transformed
conditions o f modernity” would result in “sexual and material hedonism” (Weisenfeld
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1997,340-1). O f course, this was not confined to the aesthetic praxes and discourses of
the Japanese avant-gardists, although they seemed to capitalize on mass culture for
sustenance in both subject matter and public relations efforts. As Harootunian notes,
along with the commodification o f consumer society in the Taishd era came the
“acquisition o f new identities that traversed class, gender, and sexuality” (2000, 18). It
has been noted that sexual ambiguity was a particularly rampant manifestation in Taisho
mass culture, especially in film and theatre. The Takarazuka Revue, which is comprised
o f musical entertainments in which females play both male and female roles, was a
Taisho innovation that offered an escape from reality “with a bit of perverse sex” (Kato
231). Mitchell notes that the so-called mobo and moga [modem boys and modem girls],
with their Western clothes and hairstyles and the boys’ “long hair, beards and bell-
bottomed pants,” and the “coffee shop and music hall” subculture that they inspired,
concerned cultural conservatives about the nature’s future (Mithcell 30).
One interesting point o f convergence between Mavoist and German avant-garde
performance was that while he was in Berlin, Murayama was greatly inspired by the
German modem dancers Mary Wigman and Niddy Impekoven. Wigman was associated
with the “Ausdruckstanz” [interpretive dance] movement loosely associated with
Expressionism (Manning 2). Impekoven made such an impression on Murayama that he
wrote extensively on her work, and attempted dances in her style and manner of
presentation. In fact, Murayama’s first solo show upon his return from Germany was
dedicated to Impekoven.
The Mavoists (and Murayama in particular), appear to have been especially drawn
to the expressive potential of the human body. As Weisenfeld notes, this concern for
bodily liberation and the “affirmation o f carnal desire and self-satisfaction” was
anathema to Japanese social codes regarding sexuality and gender roles. She notes for
example that throughout the Taishd period, the legitimacy o f pleasure, and the social
implications o f pleasure-seeking was a hotly debated topic, with conservative forces
considering such ideas hedonistic. Similarly, the Dadaists were also interested in
physical movement as evidenced in the Tzara’s description o f “mouvementiste” or
“gymnastic poem,” which was recited to the accompaniment o f kinetic creations that
were designed to
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...accentuate and to articulate the meaning o f words through primitive

movements. What we want to represent is intensity. It is for this reason
that we go back to primitive elements...The actor ought to add primitive
movements and noise to his voice, of a kind where the exterior expression
corresponds to the meaning of the poetry. The artist has the freedom to
arrange and to compose the movement and noises according to his
personal understanding of the poem.8
What is particularly noteworthy here—aside from the reliance on “primitivist” forms
typically associated with Western modernism—was the improvisational component that
was integral to avant-garde performance. Such techniques find parallels in Meyerhold’s
Biomechanics and Foregger’s “Mechanical Ballets,” both o f which exhibited a
Constructivist approach to the kinesthesiology o f stage movement.
Like the Western performance avant-gardists, the Mavoists employed theatrical
techniques of distortion, exaggeration, and absurdity in order to “draw attention to
meaning as distinct from mimetic narrative” (Weisenfeld 1997,338). Also unique to the
Mavo-Sanka circle o f artists was that most of the “sizable corpus o f dramatic literary
texts” were not performed, and can even be considered “un-performable to some extent”
(1997,339). Weisenfeld has narrativized the action of a scenario by Okada Tetsuo
published in the second issue o f MAVO, entitled Mordsen tekkai sawagi [Trouble Over
the Withdrawal o f a Dim Line] (1924).9 Although there is no evidence that this text was
ever performed, the scenario is interesting in that it exhibits a range o f avant-garde
performance strategies, the most obvious of which are the absence o f narrative and
character development, and a montage-like series o f images.
The piece begins with the image o f a screaming man wrapped in cloth, who rolls
up in a ball, and is then illuminated by blue footlights from below, and red lights from
above that cover the upper half o f his torso in red. He is described as standing like a pole
in the middle o f the stage. The backdrop is a graffiti-lined newspaper, which, after the
initial sequence o f images has been presented, is punctured by a man’s fist Twelve
performers’ fists subsequently appear through the paper; light disperses over the
audience; and thirty bells ring out from behind the audience.
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From the description o f this initial sequence o f events, it is clear that Okada was
concerned with the formal properties o f the stage, particularly compositional elements
such as color, light and sound. The next, scripted sequence o f events and dialogue is
summarized by Weisenfeld thusly:
The man in the middle o f the stage announces to the audience, “People, in
reality, we did not want to do a play.” The additional twelve actors yell,
“Stop him! Stop him!, stop him! Stop! Stop! Oh damn! We already
stopped!” Each o f them respectively cries out in resentment. There is the
sound o f the prop person hastily straightening up the dressing room. The
actors quickly bang and shriek “At last, At last aaah...” The man faces the
audience and pronounces, “The end, the end, the end.” The twelve yell
“Hurrah!” They vigorously knock over the backdrop and fall over
themselves. The standing man is buried in the middle of the fallen
backdrop and lets out a shriek. Actresses, prop people, the scenic design
director and the playwright hastily withdraw. At this point the dressing
room is exposed. (342)
This sequence exhibits the self-reflexive qualities o f the performances of the Italian
Futurists, who were the first o f the avant-gardists interested in exposing the mechanisms
o f theatrical illusionism. Next, the onstage figures are called upon to directly address and
engage the audience in the action, a device repeated several times throughout the
scenario, as in the following sequence:
A loud bell is heard from behind the audience, from whence a man in a
blue uniform appears pulling a bright red tail. Twelve pregnant women
follow the tail in an evenly spaced progression parting the audience down
the center and taking the stage. The bell stops. These thirteen people grab
the thirteen fallen men and throw them into the audience seats. The men
then escape on all fours and become spectators. The man in the uniform
stands in the middle o f the stage and the twelve women turn their backs
and encircle him. While holding their bellies they look back at the man
and scream, “Hey just a moment, what are you going to do now?” The
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man just responds, “Um, I’m tired.” From the ceiling over the audience
the words, “Steal, Kill” are heard. (343)
In addition, several sequences o f sounds, such as “street vendor’s flute,” and a “firing
pistol” are heard in the darkness, the juxtaposition indicates a fusion of the sounds
common to everyday life with the stage action. This is comparable to the “art of noise”
technique first employed by the Italian Futurists. However, the technique that recurs
most frequently throughout the scenario is the punctuating o f events visual tableaux and
compositional arrangements borne from the stage itself. For example, at one point Okada
specifies:
The stage is ignited by a pale blue electric beam that hits several spots. A
human body wrapped in a black cloth is lowered from the ceiling. Three
people hang upside down and the lights go out... Suddenly a strange sound
is emitted from several areas of the stage and the thirteen men who
became spectators stand up. They say, “The End, the end, the E-N-D...”
The three actors dangling from the ceiling say “People, this is some kind
o f stupid play.” Then while shaking they disappear back into the ceiling.
The thirteen men crawl up on stage. (343)
This sequence, which, in performance, would not only be spectacular in nature, also
seems to comment upon the twelve pregnant women onstage, for just as they are about to
give birth, the play’s “performers” are borne out o f the mechanisms of the stage. Also,
because o f the performers’ trespassing the “fourth wall”, the description reveals yet
another attempt to erode the distinction between the performance and the audience built
into the scenario by Okada.
In the final, more obviously humorous sequence o f images that closes the piece,
the twelve pregnant women “arise, spread their legs, and begin to simulate labor
pains...[as] the men stick their left hands between the women’s legs and grab the babies
by the napes o f their necks.” The babies, however, are all animals: “a dog, cat, pig,
chicken, cow, and deer,” which, Okada notes, would be optimal if they were real, and not
toys. Then “a ripped fabric falls slowly and the curtain closes” (344). While it is not
possible to gauge Okada’s intentions regarding the work’s content given the slimness of
its narrative development, it is clear from this description that he was concerned with
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creating a performance experience that would draw upon all the elements o f the stage to
effect surprise, simultaneity, and tactility.
Appignanesi maintains that far from being completely anti-traditional, the
Dadaists adhered to the gesamstkunstwerke model of theatre—or total work o f art—that
was an established aesthetic paradigm in German theatre for decades. While their
performances occurred far from the stages of the state and bourgeois-commercial theatre
institutions, even in their cabaret shows the Dadaists’ incorporation of manifestoes,
dances, music, poems, pictures, sketches and audience provocation—while indicative of
montage and collaborative production techniques—were arranged to maximize shock and
surprise in order to elicit active audience reception, often ending in public disturbances.
As Huelsenbeck noted, “if we hadn’t been in personal danger, we would have a splendid
opportunity o f studying mass psychology” (70).
If each o f the Dadaists’ disparate stylistic tendencies tended to converge in their
performance collaborations, the growing rift in regard to their political ideologies would
ultimately contribute to the movement’s demise. Shepperd notes that the political
commitment o f the Berlin Dadaists was never uniform, but split into two camps: the
Marxist faction, which included Grosz, Herzefelde and Heartfield; and the anarchist
faction comprised o f Huelsenbeck, Hausmann, and Johannes Baader (51). These
differences did not effect their joint creative ventures until after the Grosse Dada-Messe
of 1920. United in their opposition to the propensity o f modem and avant-garde art
movements to be commodified and institutionalized, the Dadaists made public
declarations and took actions to prevent this from happening. The movement’s
disintegration in Zurich was partially based on this policy, although the end of Berlin
Dada was precipitated by other factors as well. By the time o f the Gross-Messe exhibit in
1920, the movement was showing signs o f exhaustion. Soon thereafter, Grosz and
Heartfield joined the more programmatic proletarian theatre o f Piscator; Hausmann
relocated to Hanover where he began a satellite movement; and Huelsenbeck returned to
medical school (70). If the 1920 exhibition was unenthusiastically received by the
public, the leftist press, and even progressive artists and writers, Dada was also emerging
in artistic coteries all across Europe, a trend that culminated in the Dadaist-Constructivist
Congress held in Weimar in 1922, which, tellingly, none o f the Berlin Dadaists attended
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(A. Greenberg 54). The Zurich contingent of Dada, meanwhile, became conscripted by
Breton for his Surrealist movement, which, Huelsenbeck noted, absorbed Dada’s
“automatic” construction techniques, but romanticized the “nothingness” that was central
to the Dada paradigm (38).
The second volume o f MAVO issues (May, June, and July, 1925) documents the
increased politicization o f many o f the movements’ members. A year earlier, the censors
banned the third issue because they had affixed a firecracker to the cover. This activity,
whether a calculated act o f defiance or merely a publicity stunt, led to financial
difficulties resulting in a slender fourth issue, and a year-long suspension of publication.
By the time they resumed their efforts next spring, a confluence of events precipitated
Mavo’s more aggressive political stance. Yanase, who was arrested, beaten, detained for
five days, and forced into exile, was prevented from attending the second Mavo
exhibition. The street exhibitions fgaito-tenj o f the Mavoists were increasingly subject
to police harassment. Meanwhile, the Dada-anarchist poet Hagiwara fCyojiro joined the
group, prompting the resignations of Ogata, Kadowaki and Oura (Weisenfeld 1996,71).
In 1925, the Peace Preservation Law, although passed in conjunction with male suffrage,
was to become the most lethal weapon to be used against the left. This law punished
agitation for the abolition o f private property or changes in the national polity with
extended prison terms. While the second volume o f MA VO issues make more references
to class conflict and social revolution, such content could not possibly have been
tolerated for long.
Benson considers the consolidation of Dada as an international avant-garde
movement as the death-knell for the avant-garde's potential to restructure art as an
institution. In regard to the periodical Dada, he notes that the formal properties o f an
anthology contributed to its becoming a “conventional vehicle o f the modernist
movement,” thereby compromising its capabilities to achieve anti-institutional goals
(1987,397). He adds that with the waning of Weimar social stability, “the instrumental
potential o f the Dada text as an alternative institution o f art was losing its potency,”
prompting Grosz and Heartfield to take to the streets in agit-prop, and others to practice
what they called “political persuasion”—a posture that the Berlin Dadaists had
themselves once parodied (399).
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Although Mavo was formed at a time when Dada was in the process o f becoming
a truly international movement with many o f its practitioners turning to Surrealism, in
Germany Surrealism never amounted to much. As Willett notes, the German artists took
from Surrealism (as they had from Futurism), only what served their own aims (1978,
171-2). Even the works of Max Ernst, Hans Arp, and the Bauhaus-based Paul Klee (who
Breton attempted, but failed, to recruit), cannot properly be considered Surrealist. Willett
concludes that “once Dada was over, the art o f the Surrealists remained unknown and un
discussed in Germany”(172). In Japan, by contrast, Surrealism represents a major avant-
garde manifestation particularly in the visual arts, and while it was related to the early
efforts o f the Japanese Dada poets, Japanese Surrealism developed independently from
either Japanese Dada or Mavo. Unlike Germany, Surrealism would also become the
most influential and widespread o f the avant-garde movements, its line of development
arcing well into the postwar era.
The disbanding o f Sanka in 192S represents, for Omuka, the turning point for the
Japanese avant-garde project. The Sanka movement was weakened by a number of
pressures generated internally and externally. Tai Kanbara—one of the premier avant-
gardists o f the Futurist Art Association—was dismissed from the group, in part because
o f the increasingly non-radical nature o f his aesthetic interests. Kanbara’s dissociation
from the movement not only generated press coverage, but public statements regarding
the incidents from both sides (Weisenfeld 1997,176). And while attention from the press
aroused the public’s cu riosity and generated healthy audiences for Sanka exhibitions and
performance, it also incited stepped-up police surveillance. The day after the opening of
the second Sanka exhibition, an official with the Public Security Office inspected the
exhibit, followed by two more visits by the censors, ultimately resulting in the removal of
four works. O f these, Kinoshita Shuichiro’s Kekkoseru Anaruhisuto no Shinriteki Zoo
[Psychological Portrait o f an Anarchist o f Decisive Action], was deemed particularly
offensive, due to its overt reference to anarchism, bombs, and other munitions
(Weisenfeld 1997,177). Picking up on this development, the press contributed to the
widespread association o f Sanka artists with either militant anarchism or Communism.
In response, the Sanka membership called an emergency meeting, and unanimously
decided to disband. In true avant-gardist fashion, however, the Mavo contingent o f
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Sanka, including Murayama, Yanase and Hagiwara, staged a “disbandment

announcement party” that included performances and dancing (178).
Murayama Tomoyoshi attributed the demise o f Sanka to “anarchism and
nihilism,” noting that after this time, most Japanese avant-gardists were polarized
between “those who were moving vaguely towards a socialist art without understanding
the distinction between Communism and anarchism, and those who were for artistic
suprematism.”10 By 1930, the Kyokai was formed by a number of artists who had
studied in Paris and who were associated with the Enchokai group founded by Yoruzo
Testugoro in 1922. The Kyokai was labeled as socially moderate and became primarily
associated with Japanese Fauvism, in contrast to the more radical avant-gardists o f the
mid-1920s. This association later developed into the Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyokai
(Independent Art Association). After 1937, there was a proliferation of small groups of
visual artists working in Surrealist or abstract styles, but their work was void o f overtly
political content. Clark notes that while it is difficult to determine precisely how these
groups were viewed by the authorities, there can be “little doubt that the political police
linked Surrealism to Communism, and that the clubs and critics associated with them
were under surveillance from at least 1936” (48).
To better understand the convergences and distinctions between Mavo and Berlin
Dada, it is necessary to examine the aesthetic and sociopolitical interests of representative
artists in greater detail. In the next two sections, I compare the ideas, practices and
overall careers of Yanase Masamu and Georg Grosz, and Murayama Tomoyoshi and
Richard Huelsenbeck, Kurt Schwitters, and Erwin Piscator.
4.2 Georg Grosz and Yanase Masamu
Yanase was bom in 1900 in the Ehime Prefecture. Having displayed artistic
talent at an early age, he entered an advanced division o f the Tokyo School of Art at age
fourteen, and the next year held his first solo exhibition. In 1915, one of his paintings
was exhibited at the second Japan Art Academy Exhibition. In 1916 he was a co-founder
o f the Bunriha y5ga kyokai [Secessionist Yoga Association], and was indicted for the
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first time at age 17 for mentioning in a public lecture the police intervention in the
showing o f Kuroda Seiki’s nude paintings. By age twenty, he was drawing cartoons for
the Yomiuri shinbun and began illustrating Hasegawa Nyozekan’s influential magazine of
sociocultural criticism, Warera [We]. Yanase also became associated with playwright
and director Akita Ujaku, who encouraged him to pursue scenic design. By age twenty-
one, he became a staff-writer for Tanemaku hito, which was dedicated to fostering
solidarity among the revolutionary intelligentsia by supporting the goals of the Third
International. This ushered in a period o f sustained commitment to socialism, a
conviction that he held during the time that he was active in the Futurist Art Association,
Mavo, and Sanka (Itabashi, N. pag.).
In December 1921, Yanase contributed works to the “People’s Art Show” to
benefit famine relief in Russia, and the following year participated in the Free Thought
League in protest of governmental thought control initiatives. After the suspension of
Tanemaku hito in the aftermath of the earthquake, Yanase and several writers joined
forces to publish Bungei sensen, and he subsequently participated in the formation of the
Japanese Proletarian Literary Arts League. In 1926, he held an outdoor “portrait painting
fair” in support o f a labor dispute at a printing corporation; sat on the Central Committee
o f the Literary Arts League; and helped to establish the Japan Cartoon League. After his
return from a tour of Manchuria in 1931, Yanase joined the Japanese Communist Party,
and became the editor-in-chief o f the Taishu gurqfu [People’s Graph], an organ of the
Proletarian Culture League (Itabashi, N. pag.).
Although a large portion of Japanese avant-garde artwork did not survive the
earthquake and war, the entire artistic oeuvre and personal collection o f Yanase was
spared. While Yanase’s early works display a variety of Impressionist techniques
ranging from pointillism to geometricization, by the early 1920s he turned to Futurism for
inspiration, evidenced by his “dynamically swirling brushstrokes” that run together in
“long sweeping motions” across his canvases (Weisenfeld 1997,80-2). Kinoshita recalls
that Yanase attended the second Futurist Art exhibition, whereupon he asked to become a
member, and joined under the pseudonym “Anaaki Kyozo” (1970 b, 7). This name was
an ironic pun on the words Anarchism—anikimizu and Communism — Kydsanshugi (Abe
92). The paintings that Yanase exhibited with the Futurist Art Association may be
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characterized by their “spiraling, animated composition” and “multiple pictorial planes”

which capture a “sim u ltan eity and dynamism” that Weisenfeld likens to the paintings of
the Italian Futurist Carlo Carra (1997,107). As a Mavoist, Yanase also incorporated
Murayama’s conscious constructivist techniques, particularly in his attempts to “mirror
the collage aesthetic o f constructive art,” at first in oils, and then in mixed-media.
Omuka has noted that the twin phenomena o f rapid urbanization and the
advancement o f consumerism in the aftermath of the Kant5 Earthquake, became defining
features o f both Taisho mass culture and much avant-garde art (1996,29). In Yanaes’s
work in the immediate post-earthquake period, Weisenfeld locates an intense
preoccupation with the after-effects o f the earthquake manifested in his “numerous pencil
sketches depicting the devastation o f the city” with their “images of rubble and half
destroyed buildings...[and] people with their salvaged belongings strapped to their backs”
(1997,234). She also points out that his drawings from this period assert a “bustling,
resurging metropolitan life” that also invariably feature the omnipresent police
authorities, due to the imposition o f martial law (234).
Yanase’s work also exemplifies a strong tendency on the part o f Japanese avant-
gardists to deploy the means and modes o f mass communication towards a critique of
those very modes. In Yanase’s case, an indictment of international Capitalism was a
central ingredient o f that critique. Clark maintains that proletarian art arose from a
“reinterpretation o f the critical possibilities o f salon realism via the Soviet example” and
also the “long tendency to satirize the political via grotesque imagery” (44). Yanase’s
collage work in the mid-l920s bears out this tendency. For example, in one collage,
Shinhonka no yodare no nagasa [The Length o f a Capitalist’s Drool], Yanase provides a
critique o f capitalism by distorting photographs o f Western women—then a common
practice o f Japanese ad campaigns—by placing them alongside bestial images.
Yanase and Murayama both revered Grosz as an exemplar of the “artist-social
critic.” In his autobiography, Murayama credited Grosz with awakening his own
consciousness to the critical possibilities o f art could by its capacity to illuminate the
“ugly side o f life and the great potential for social oppression and mass destruction in the
modem age” (Weisenfeld 1997,220-1). In Grosz, Yanase found a kindred spirit in
regard to what he believed to be the necessity o f rejecting the commodification o f a rt In
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an essay written for the second issue o f Tanemaku hito titled “Substitution for a Review
o f the N ika, the Inten and the Teiten,” Yanase compared the denaturing processes of
capitalism (that turn “people into things”) with the Japanese art establishment, since the
latter encouraged the reflection o f “evil...as nothing more than a fragment of a bad
society.”11 In 1929, Yanase published a book entitled Georuge Gurossu: musankaikyu
no gaka [Georg Grosz: the Painter o f the Have-Nots] (Itabashi, N. pag.).
In Germany, Grosz had already established his reputation as an exemplary
political artist while Yanase was still in his teens. In 1916, Grosz, along with Wieland
and Helmut Herzefelde (who would later anglicize his name to protest the German “hate-
campaign” against England), published the first issue of Die Neue Jugend, a magazine
devoted to fostering world peace in words and pictures. This periodical distinguished
itself through an aesthetic layout and typography, judicious use of color and elegant use
of visuals—all of which proceeded from the basic assumptions that “a text could only say
what it was designed to say,” and that by innovating graphics and layout, ‘th e specific
language of the text could communicate new ideas in a fresh manner” (Foster 325). This
represents, to Foster, an early avant-garde awareness on Grosz’s part in regard to
reactivating the role of the receiver by making the experience of the text “participatory,
critical, and even creative” (325). When tensions erupted with the original publisher of
Die Neue Jugend, Heartfield and Grosz established the Malik Verlag Publishing House,
which took over publication o f the magazine and embarked on a number o f related
projects. Among these, Erste George Grosz-Mappe (1917)—a collection o f Grosz’s
drawings, solidified his credibility as an artist and illustrator (Hess 64).
Much of Grosz’s work in the fields of drawing and painting have been
categorized in the “verist” tradition of the German Neue Sachlichkeit o f the 1920s—a
term alternately used to characterize a “new style of factual, journalistic reporting” that
appeared across the diverse fields o f German cultural production (Selz 83). The “New
Naturalism” emerged in 1922 in the aftermath o f Expressionism and Dada, as a “less-
frenzied, harder, more down-to-earth and matter-of-fact” socially critical aesthetic
(Graver 216). Grosz’s verist tendencies, also typify the works o f Max Beckmann, and
Otto Dix during this period (Selz 83). In this respect, Selz positions Grosz as the link
between Dada and the “less frenetic Verist movement” Furthermore, with his “knife-
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hard and incisive drawing technique,” Grosz presented the human figure realistically
enough, but also transformed it into “signs and ciphers” in order to illustrate his belief
that a “person’s social position and political stance shape his psychological responses and
even his physiognomy” (84). To Selz, this represents a development of a “truly
materialistic” Marxist style of art (84). Lehmann-Haupt lists among the elements that
Grosz captured in his work “with particularly acuteness and a frightening degree o f
accuracy:” the readiness to compromise with continuing reactionary forces, the
frustration o f unemployment, large-scale corruption, cynicism and despair (26).
Much o f Yanase’s drawings and political cartoons reveal the verist properties of
the Neue Sachlichkeit. This new aesthetic also manifested itself in the ideas and
practices o f many writers and artists in the late 1920s, and inflected Japanese Marxist
literary criticism and aesthetic theory that had come to predominate during this period.
Silverberg notes that Lukacs’s “History and Class Consciousness” (1923) was translated
and published by Kukumoto Kazuo the very next year, and inspired many writers and
artists in late Taisho to counter the “apolitical humanism o f early Taisho” (1990,60). In
the field o f poetry, Murano Shiro, who had been associated with the Shi to Shirort school
of Modernism, would become one o f the most prominent supporters o f the Japanese
version o f the Neue Sachlichkeit (Keene 1984,364). In that Yanase had been exhibiting
these tendencies in the political cartoons and drawings that he had been producing for the
leftist press since the early 1920s—characterized as they are by their ironic and distanced
portrayals o f social oppression, the struggling masses, and increased militarization made
ever more clear in the aftermath of the earthquake—then Yanase should be considered a
pioneer in the Japanese Neue Sachlichkeit, a tendency, which was to become full-blown
in much o f the proletarian arts and literary activities to be undertaken by his avant-
gardists compatriots in the late 1920s. One recurring element in Yanase’s drawings is his
use o f images abstracted from mass culture, which he juxtaposed with geometrical and
avant-garde typographical organization that invariably incorporates recognizably leftist
political symbology.
All through his Dada phase, Grosz turned his attention to scenic design. As one
o f his early projects, Grosz designed the puppets for Walter Mehring’s Schall und Rausch
cabaret theatre, which operated under the umbrella patronage o f Max Reinhardt’s Grosses
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Schauspielhaus (Willett 1988,63). For Mehring’s satirical marionette play Orestie—a

send-up o f Reinhardt’s production of Aeschylus’s Oresteia then playing in the theatre
upstairs, which Mehring refashioned to satirize the fall of the German monarchy—Grosz
designed the puppets in such a way that he was able to transpose the Aeschylean
characters into German types reminiscent o f those that he had caricatured elsewhere
(Knust 233). Grosz made his debut in Berlin cabaret as a “Dada comedian,” whose
antics, he later noted, “outraged the audience” (M. Grosz 15). Kunst notes that in his
stage designs, Grosz invariably captured and highlighted the comic and satirical quality
o f the performances “through ironic metamorphosis and geometric symbolism, or
through direct, realistic caricature” (233).
Some o f Grosz’s most significant work in design was produced in his
collabrorations with Piscator. For The Good Soldier Schweik, adapted by Felix
Gasbarra,12 Brecht, and Piscator from the Czech comic novel by Jaroslav HaSek, Piscator
eliminated scenic construction in the typical sense, and commissioned Grosz to design a
series o f “cut-out marionettes, projected backgrounds, and sequences of cartoon film”
that gave the effect o f “a highly mobile show being illustrated by one o f Europe’s most
brilliant draughtsman” (Willett 1979,91). Grosz’s animated drawings added a satirical
comment on the action throughout, which became progressively less comic as the action
unfolded. Beginning with a playful “cartoon-film” prologue, Grosz’s imagery progressed
to the grotesque—as in his “horrifying cartoon sequence” that “showed soldiers arresting
spies or hostages, with their faces changing into those o f snarling dogs”—to more
figurative images that reflected the horrors of war: bombed-out villages; a Red Cross
wagon carrying soldiers that turns into a coffin onscreen; a solitary sentry on a snow-
covered landscape; “Goya-like” cut-outs o f fighting; and a skeleton that releases poison
gas (Willett 1979,93-5).
Interestingly three drawings from Hintergnmdt which was comprised chiefly of
Grosz’s designs for Schweik, were responsible for both Grosz and Herzefelde (as the
publisher o f Malik) to be brought up on charges for blasphemy against the church—the
trial and appeals o f which lasted from 1928 through 1931 (Schweede 32). Considered to
be the most offensive was “Christ with a Gas Mask” (1927), a drawing which depicts the
crucifixion o f Christ on the cross with a gasmask and army boots. Though convicted in
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the first trial, Grosz and Herzefelde later won on appeal. The first trial judge rejected
Grosz’s statement that he had “symbolized crucified humanity” to whom the words o f the
subtitle of the drawing, “Maul halten und witerdienen” [Shut up and carry on!] were
addressed; instead choosing to interpret the title “as the words o f Christ.” The appeals
court judge, however, recognized the pacifistic intent o f this and other drawings in the
collection, though this was again overturned by a higher court, which led to another trial,
at which they were acquitted for good (Hessl56-7).
By 1923, Yanase had also turned his attention to stage design, becoming a
member o f Akita’s Senzuka [Pioneer Theatre], and the founder o f his own Dozo Gekijo
[Vault Theatre] for which he designed the settings. O f the scant documentation that
exists o f his work for the Dozo Gekijo are a few photographs and sketches. One of
these, entitled “Room interiors in the style o f Caligari,” obviously refers to the classic
German Expressionist film The Cabinet o f Doctor Caligari (1919) directed by Robert
Weine. Weisenfeld describes this sketch thusly: “...a trapezoidal window sits on the
right side of the back wall, tilting unsteadily to the side with uneven pane divisions. A
door sits to the left, slightly askew from the groundplane, with a tiny triangular window
cut out at the top” (1997,363). While nothing else is known o f this production, a
photograph suggests that this set was actually used in performance.
For the Sanka Theatre performance at the Tsukiji Little Theatre, Yanase
contributed and staged a piece entitled +-+-+-x+=Holiday, 13 subtitled a “One-Act Play
by Yanase Masamu.” This piece, previously known to scholars only through description,
is the only recorded text from the Sanka performance that has survived, and was only
recently discovered amongst the collection o f books and documents donated to the Tokyo
Metropolitan Museum o f Art by Yanase’s family.14 Interestingly, the original script
contains a “seal o f approval” from the Metropolitan Police on the back cover (dated 26
May 1925), four days before it was performed. Included on the original script are
assorted jottings by Yanase, illustrations o f the stage setting, and notes on the lighting
and movement o f the actors written in the margins of the script The cast list, which
reads like a who’s who o f the Japanese avant-garde, also contains the character names
and brief descriptions:
Sasaki Takamaru: man o f shadow; agile as a bat,
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Murayama Tomoyoshi: a dancer with a beautiful, yet sadisticface;

movement as light as a butterfly; sometimes moves like a duck,
Yokoi Kozo: a black servant holding perfume andflowers; to move like a
rabbit and a goat;
Shimokawa Kado-o: Laborer F, emaciated and copper-colored
complexion; to move lie a porcupine and a bear;
Shibuya Osamu: F ’s wife; filthy and noisy, but a good woman; very
pregnant to move like a turtle and a pig-,
Tamamura Zennosuke: capitalist;
Sasaki Kenneko: to move like a lion;
Yabe Tomoe: military officer; to move like a wolf,
Kanbara Tai: official scholar who works within the bureaucracy, orfor
the imperialfamily;
Nakahara Minouru: missionary; to move like a fox and a heron;
Yoshida Kenkichi: Laborer A; to move like a bear;
AsanoTakefu: Laborer B;
OkamotoToki: Laborer C;
OkadaTatsuo: Laborer D; and
Kinoshita Shuichiro: Laborer E15
Hiroko notes that pencil marks on the script indicate that not all of these persons played
their respective roles; for example, Nakahara Minoru was obviously replaced by Sumiya
Iwane, and Yabe Tomoe by a “Sasaki,” who may have been Sasaki Takamaru doubling
up on roles (49). He also notes that while Kanbara Tai had no recollection of ever having
performed in the piece, other participants mentioned their involvement in their memoirs
(49).
Although details o f the actual performance are fragmentary, an examination of the
text reveals many of the characteristics o f Yanase’s aesthetic and political aims as he
deployed them in performance. First, the subtitle, “A play with smell, action, and light as
focal point,” reveals Yanase’s emphasis on tactQity and visual and aural sensations, while
the first stage direction “No conversation between actors are allowed; everything is to
proceed in silence” indicates the pantomimic nature o f the piece and the emphasis on
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movement and gesture (Yanase 44). The setting and first sequence o f images is
described thusly:
The curtain opens quietly. In the background o f the stage, a thin fabric
drape hangs down, which contains window-openings, although these are
not at first visible. On the fabric are written several characters. A dancer
[Murayama] is dancing slowly in a circle circle, while a man [Yokoi Kozo
disguised as a black man] enters, holding a bouquet of flowers and a
perfume bottle, who frolicks from one end o f the stage to the other, and
looking very happy, he splashes cheap perfume at the audience. (42)
Here one notes a relatively neutral performance environment conducive to the
presentation o f a series o f pieces in one setting typical o f avant-garde performance. Also,
from the first moments, Yanase sets up the Futurist technique of simultaneity, while
engaging in an unconventional manner, the audience’s sensory perception o f smell.
This is followed by the gradual revelation o f the performer/characters, who in
succession, peer out o f the window openings in the curtain, the first of which is one of the
laborers and his wife, (the latter played by a cross-dressed Shibuya), who gaze at the
dancer [Murayama]. “At the sound of a whip cracking,” Yokoi (disguised in black-face)
“hurriedly runs up to the window and shuts it,” followed by a succession o f images
through the curtain openings, including cartoon faces, and the appearance o f smoke that
“smells like burned rice” which is meant to fill the theatre (41).
After this, the curtain is raised to reveal a simly-lit “dirty, messy street comer”
(40). While the dancer has disappeared, a blue spotlight sweeps across the stage to reveal
a number o f persons on the street. This is followed by a pantomimed sequence involving
the laborer and his wife, who indicate through gestures that the mine in which he works
has been flooded. This is accompanied by a light and shadow show that ends with Sasaki
(as the Shadow-man) quietly crawling across the stage from right to left (38).
After an interval, presumably inserted by Yanase to allow time to clear the stage
and/or to indicate the beginning o f a new “movement,” the “Scholar, Missionary and
Army Officer” enter from the audience, along with Tamamura Zennoke as the
Capitalist—all o f whom appear to be intoxicated. Yanase writes that the Capitalist is to
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Unbutton his coat and take out huge coins from his round belly and give
one o f the coins to teach of the others, slamming it in their palms, while he
laughs aloud and shakes his belly, which provokes laughter from the
others (especially the Army Officer. At this point the first laborer comes
in and announces that the mine has been flooded. (37)
This begins a spoken passage obviously intended to be improvised in performance, since
the dialogue is not scripted. The scenario indicates that the Capitalist, after being
informed that the passageway to Mine A has not been shut down, becomes angry and
demands that it should be, else Mine B could be flooded as well. This is greeted by
consternation on the part o f the laborers, who have now all amassed on the stage. A
conflict between the laborers and the others erupts:
Five laborers try to stop the Capitalist; a fight ensues. The Capitalist
raises money and a “minus sign,” which is repeated sequentially by the
Army Officer, the Scholar, and the Missionary. Meanwhile, the laborers
raise a “plus sign” in defiance, and argue that human life is more
important. The Capitalist and the others falter and recoil at the laborers’
show o f resistance. The Missionary crosses his heart and refers to God,
which causes the laborers to halt a bit. The Scholar taps and begins a
lecture on history, which further weakens the laborers’ resolve. The Army
Officer then preaches patriotism for the sake o f the empire, at which the
laborers completely lose their strength and fall to the ground. The military
officer then flings a saber, which prompts the laborers to spring up as if
propelled by a coil, as the Missionary, Scholar and Capitalist all sink to
the ground. The Officer then begins to order the laborers about the stage,
now joined by the others, and they march off the stage in military
formation, as the stage becomes pitch dark. (34-6)
This section, which is the most cohesively narrativized as the piece ever becomes,
appears to have the intent o f exposing the willingness and ease by which the working
class and organized labor can be divided by the forces of religion, the academy, and big
business—all o f which are shown to be complicit with the military.
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The third sequence is comprised o f a series o f images reminiscent o f the first

section, including the juxtaposition o f sounds and images all intended to create the
illusion o f movement and chaos onstage. A man from the audience joins the onstage
group o f performers, who are now crawling on their hands and knees. The Laborer
appears, running after the Shadow man, followed by the Laborer’s wife. The stage then
gets flooded with smoke, a “magnesium light” begins to flicker, while parts o f the set
(presumably the debris and detritus o f the city street comer that appeared earlier), are
hoisted by a crane-like device. As the smoke gets more intense, the Shadow-Man
[Sasaki], dances with joy between the stage set and the smoke, while the lights slowly
dim. When the lights return,
the stage set has crumbled down over the dead bodies, props, etc. All is
still. A blue light appears over the horizon. There are stars. The sky
gradually gets brighter and brighter, slowly turning into a nightscape with
only a few stars in the sky. Silence, while the curtains fall. (31-3)
While it is not completely clear whether the apocalyptic imagery and urban rubble that
are incorporated into the last section o f the script was intended to refer to the earthquake,
or was a prophecy o f impending war (given the prominence o f the military characters), it
is especially noteworthy that the piece entails a significant number o f special effects,
including a crane and projectors. Also, the final tableau, in which the lights on a scrim
gradually reflect the passage o f time, appears to indicate a sign of hope in the aftermath
of destruction, although this is conjectural. In any event, it would be interesting to know
just how long this sequence was supposed to last (and how long it actually did in
performance), given the relative stasis following the bombardment o f images that the
penultimate section o f the scenario calls for.
One interesting feature o f the script is the back cover, on which appears the seal
of approval by the Metropolitan Police, dated 26 May 1925. Throughout, the seal o f a
person named Terasawa also appears, as well a third seal on page thirteen o f the text,
which reads “Public Order Division o f the Metropolitan Police.” This indicates that the
manuscript passed through at least three hands prior it being returned to Yanase (Kato
Hiroko 48).
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Given Yanase’s police record and the implicit criticism of the military in the
second section o f the piece, it is surprising that the play was passed for performance.
Kato Hiroko observes that Yanase’s failure to leave a wholly tangible record o f the
content o f the play reveals that what was more important was not necessarily “what he
expressed,” but rather, “the act of expression itself’ (50). It is also possible, however,
that Yanase did not script any o f the dialogue deliberately, and was perhaps counting on
the inability o f the censors to visualize what the descriptions o f his characters and their
actions would amount to in performance; or, perhaps, he believed if the commentary was
pantomimed and not spoken, his critique o f capitalism could not be actionable.
Ironically, the subsequent turn of many in Yanase’s cast to proletarian art and agit-prop
may be perceived as a result of the fact that the Sanka performance was not stopped by
the authorities, thus, seemingly allowing them a modicum of freedom of expression.
Still, of all o f the Japanese avant-gardists, Yanase was singled out for some of the
harshest treatment by the police. On one occasion in 1923, Yanase was arrested, detained
in prison for five days, and beaten and bayoneted by soldiers, which prompted him to
leave Tokyo for a time, thus missing the second Mavo exhibition (Weisenfeld 1997,121).
This event must surely have triggered a sharper reaction from his Mavo compatriots and
may explain their more rebellious attitude in 1925. In 1927, Yanase’s political cartoons
were banned from the “First Exhibition o f the Japan Cartoon League.” In December
1932 he was arrested and charged with breaking the Public Order Maintenance Law, and
was held at the Ichigaya Prison in Tokyo until September 1933, with a temporary release
granted in August so that he could be with his first wife for a few days before she died.
For Grosz, the Hintergrund issue was just one in a long list o f offenses for which
he was indicted for during the course o f his career. Shortly after the Dada exhibition o f
1920, both he and Heartfield were brought up on charges for disparaging the armed
forces. The offending photocollages have been described as a “homage to the machine
age and a rejection o f those art renovators who sought the salvation o f the world in their
souls,” such as the Expressionists (Trub 23). His series, Gott mit tms, was removed from
the exhibition by the police, and the originals confiscated from the Malik Verlag
publishing headquarters (Hess 100). In 1924, Grosz was charged with publishing
obscene materials in his portfolio Ecce Homo. That same year, Grosz co-founded the
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Rote Gruppe, [Red Group, Union of Communist Artists of Germany], which included
members previously associated with Dada and the Novembergruppe, as well as Piscator
(Willett 1984,135). The group’s manifesto, which was published in Die Rote Fahne,
declared that they were all good communists first, and “only secondly a special or skilled
worker,” whose efforts would all be put to the service o f class warfare (I. Lewis, 115).
Although they were not committed to a particular style, as proletarian artists it was
assumed that if they would aligned themselves with the interests of the proletariat, a
suitable style would emerge (116).
In 1925, Grosz and Heartfield produced a volume of essays, Die Kunst ist in
Gefahr [Art is in Danger], in which they expounded upon their understanding o f the
Marxist view o f history, and constructed their vision for the “artist-worker” in
contemporary society:
Art is in danger. Today’s artist, unless he wants to be useless, an
antiquated misfit, can only choose between technology and class war
propaganda. In both cases, he must give up “pure a rt” Either he joins the
ranks o f architects, engineers, and ad men who develop industrial strength
and who exploit the world, or, as a depictor and critic o f the face o f our
time, as propagandist and defender o f the revolutionary ideas and its
followers, enters into the army of the oppressed who fight for their just
share of the worth of the world and for a sensible social organization of
life. (I. Lewis 118)
Interestingly, when this volume appeared in translation in Russia in 1926, it was used on
both sides of the debate regarding the avant-garde cultural imperatives that were at that
time under scrutiny. In his preface to the Russian translation, V. Perzov interpreted
Grosz’s arguments as a vindication for the Constructivist aesthetic as the only suitable
one for proletarian artists to adopt—which by that time was already out of favor in
Russia. In a rebuttal to Perzov, Lunacharsky, who at one time had been one o f the major
supporters o f the avant-garde (and whose plays were produced in Japan), stressed the
critical propensities o f anti-bourgeois, proletarian forms, stopping short of advocating a
ban o f Constructivist forms (118).
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Despite his stature as one o f the most popular book illustrators in Germany, Grosz
accepted a guest lectureship in 1932 at the Arts Students League in New York, and
emigrated to the Unites States with his family in 1933, just eighteen days before Hitler
became Chancellor (Fischer 27). Sheppard notes that even in his most fervent
Communist phase, Grosz was more attracted to the “fiercely negative side of Dada,” and
that o f all his compatriots, he was “most oppressed by a sense o f evil” which he attributed
not only to the capitalist system, but to human nature itself (53). That he was, between
1929 to 1933, considered among the “enemies of German culture” most frequently cited
in the newsletter of Rosenberg’s League o f German Culture—which quoted his writings
along with those of Toller and Tucholsky—could only have added to his sense o f
oppression (I. Lewis 227). Just three months after he emigrated, an exhibit held in
Stuttgart entitled “The November Spirit, Art in Service of Disintegration” featured
confiscated works by Grosz, Dix, Beckmann, and Chagall, while another show in
Mannhein, entitled “Cultural Bolshevism” featured works from Grosz’s Ecce Homo
series (227). Shortly after the burning o f the Reichstag in February 1933, Grosz’s Berlin
apartment and studio were searched, and he was officially deprived o f his German
citizenship (229). His work was also particularly well-represented at the “Degenerate Art
Exhibit” (1937), which included five o f his oils, two watercolors, and thirteen drawings.
In 1939, Grosz’s name was included on a secret Nazi document that reported on how
successful the SS had been in eliminating or silencing Weimar artists, writers, and
intellectuals—a list which also included Brecht, Dix, Kollwitz, Piscator, Toller, and
Tucholsky (231). In later years, Grosz reported that he was sure that had he not left
Germany when he did, he would have been executed. Others on the list also made their
way to America, including Brecht, Herzefelde, Huelsenbeck, Mehring, and Piscator,
where they continued to pursue their careers with varying degrees o f success. Tucholsky,
Toller, and Hasenclever, however, all committed suicide in exile. Grosz would not return
to Berlin (his birthplace) until 1959, where he died just a few months later (Fischer 27).
The year 1933 also marks the year that Yanase was released from prison after
having served nine months for violating the Public Order Maintenance Law marks the
end o f his attempts to merge politics and art, and he spent the next ten years painting
landscapes, illustrating scientific and adventure stories for popular magazines, and took
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up haiku (Itabashi, N. pag.). That he traveled to Manchuria at the invitation of the

Northern China Branch o f the Manchurian Railroad Corporation in 1939 suggests that he
had not entirely given up his political interests, though he was not free to record them in
his works. In 1944, he began to plan an exhibition of Grosz’s works—several o f which
he had in his possession—for the Brucke Gallery in Ginza. Had this exhibition gone
forward, it would have represented an ironic turn of events, given that his own works (as
similar to Grosz’s as they were) would never have been publicly exhibited, while as a
German artist, Grosz’s work would still have been able to be shown due to the military
alliance. In May 1945, however, Yanase died in the allied bombing of the West Forum
of Shinjuku Station. In 1948, his works were displayed at a special exhibition of artists
who had died during the war, sponsored by the Second Japan Independent. In the 1980s,
renewed interest in Yanase’s work would be marked by gallery showings, the publication
of many o f his drawings, and scholarly attention.
4.3 Murayama Tomoyoshi and Richard Huelsenbeck,

Erwin Piscator, and Kurt Schwitters
Murayama came from an educated middle-class family. His father, a military

doctor, died shordy after graduating from Tokyo Imperial Medical School in 1911, when
Tomoyoshi was eleven years old. His mother, Motoko, was a Christian convert who
supported her family by working on the editorial staffs o f several womens’ magazines.
One o f these, Fufin no tomo [Woman’s Companion], was published by Hani Motoko, a
prominent activist for women’s rights. Interestingly, Murayama contributed illustrations
to Hani’s children’s publications in 1920. Although Murayama did not have extensive
formal art training, he did take private art lessons as a child and again prior to his
European tour. He also attended Tokyo Imperial University where he took classes in
Philosophy, became absorbed in Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, and renounced his
Christianity (Sofiie 14).
In January 1922, Muryama he left for Berlin, where his compatriots, Wadachi
Tomoo and Nagano Yoshimitsu, provided him with entree into the artistic and theatrical
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worlds.16 Among the noteworthy artists that Murayama met in Berlin were Marinetti,
Ruggiero Vasari—the Berlin representative o f Futurism and the Russian sculptor
Alexander Archipenko, who Murayama would later credit with inspiring his interest in
assemblage techniques.17 Also in Germany, Murayama debuted his painting
Augsburgstrasse at “The Great Futurist Exhibition” (March 1922) held at the Neumann
Gallery, which was curated by Herwarth Walden, founder of the Galerie der Sturm and
the journal Der Sturm.18 In this painting, Murayama employed a “distorted and non-
naturalistic sense o f space” in depicting an urban street that Weisenfeld categorizes as
reminiscent of German Expressionism (1997,57-8). Two of his paintings were also
shown at the “First International Art Exhbition” in Dusselforf in late 1922, which showed
works by artists from eighteen countries (Sofue 15).
In Berlin, Murayama was exposed to the range o f theatre and performance on
view at the time. The first play that he attended at the Berlin Volskbuhne was Ernst
Toller’s Maschinensturmer [The Machine Wreckers]. Directed by Piscator, this
production featured a realistic factory-setting designed by John Heartfield (Innes 41).
Murayama also became deeply interested in the dance techniques of the German
choreographer Mary Wigman, and also the dancer Niddy Impekoven, whose style was
closely aligned with the emotive inclinations of the German Expressionist movement in
dance known as “Ausdrukstanz” (Weisenfeld 1997,63). In fact, Murayama’s first
exhibition upon his return to Japan in January 1923, which was held at the Bunpodo art
supply store, entitled “Murayama Tomoyoshi no Ishikiteki Koseishugiteki Shohin
Tenrankai—Niddi Imupekofen to Oshitsukegamashiki Yubisa to ni Sasagu” [Murayama
Tomoyoshi’s Conscious Constructivist Exhibition o f Small Works—Dedicated to Niddy
Impekoven and Obtrusive Grace]. Interestingly, Murayama also included a German
translation of his exhibition’s title in posters, press releases and the illustrated exhibition
pamphlet (64).
Murayama’s first Tokyo show consisted of fifty small-scale works that Murayama
carried back from Germany, only one o f which still exists.19 In one o f his collages* Niddi
Imupekofen m yotte Odoraretaru 'Go~I no Mama [‘What They Want,’ Danced by Niddy
Impekoven], which survives only as a color reproduction, Murayama affixed “dance
performance tickets, post-marked stamps, and irregularly shaped detritus” to a wood
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plank painted over with abstract shapes, letters and numbers (Weisenfeld 1997,65). He
also displayed numerous scenic design renderings and a series of photographs that
captured him dancing nude in his studio surrounded by his artworks. Murayama next
exhibited works at exhibition halls and cafes, drawing the attention o f the public and
critics alike. During this period, he developed an awareness of the benefits of self
promotion, and gained a reputation as a bohemian artist and also as an art theorist. His
solo exhibitions at his home in Kami-Ochiai and at the Cafe Suzuran in Gokokuji
attracted considerable attention (Ko 29). One reviewer writing for the Kokumin shinbun
labeled Murayama a “hydgenha gaka ” [expressionist artist], and provided considerable
details o f Murayama’s theory o f “conscious constructivism” as it related to art, dance and
music.20
•
Aesthetic innovativeness was not the only thing that appealed to Murayama
during his European stay. Weisenfeld maintains that Nietzsche’s emphasis on the
preeminence of individual will versus the authority o f the state as the source for all values
was foundational to much of Murayama’s early sociopolitical beliefs and his
understanding o f the artist’s role as a “social and cultural critic as well as a philosopher”
(1996,67). Murayama also came to believe that the destruction of tradition was
necessary in order to realize a new vision, which he characterized as a product of his
belief in Hegelian dialectics whereby all things produce their opposites so that destruction
produced construction (68). He also credited Toller, Grosz, and the Volksbuhne
impresario Max Reinhardt, for inspiring him to become a Socialist21 Murayama would
also translate a collection o f Toller’s poems, Swallow Book,n written while Toller was in
prison.
In April 1923, Murayama published one of the most important essays of his
career, “Exit Expressionism: An Introduction to Conscious Constructivism” (1923),23 in
which he not only echoed the Dadaists’ aversion to Expressionism, but also set forth the
fundamental principles that he and many other Japanese avant-gardists would adhere to
for the better part o f a decade. Murayama’s concept o f ishikiteki koseishugi [conscious
constructivism] was rooted in his goal to construct images o f modernity that would be
relevant to, and inclusive of, everyday life, at the same time that he rejected mimesis.
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In his Constructivist-Mavo phase, Murayama’s works exemplify his belief that in

the industrial age, art necessarily entailed the masses’ embrace o f mechanization, since it
was found everywhere in everyday life. As Harootunian notes, Murayama’s concept,
while relatable to Benjamin’s concept of the mechanical reproduction of art, in actuality
refers to a “mechanization o f life that put useful things that were also beautiful at the
disposal o f the masses” (2000,105). As Murayama put it:
...the ugly has become another object o f the visual arts. Furthermore,
artists deal with the ugly consciously, deliberately, and in an extreme case,
because o f the very ugliness (both in terms o f the subject matter and the
means o f representation). Picasso during his blue period doubtlessly
attempted to represent the ugly in human life. Otto Dix always immersed
himself in morphine, brothels, and addicted prostitutes, and shamelessly
displayed his own ugliness in art. It is not that the ugly in a previous
period appears beautiful to these artists; they consciously select the ugly as
the object o f their art: this is the important point. In short, the object of
art is no longer limited to the beautiful (not just the beautiful in a previous
period but the beautiful in general); one might say that the object of art is
no longer beauty...Nonetheless, what we call beauty or ugliness is simply
a phenomenon that arises from purely intuitive cognition, after all. And
purely intuitive cognition is, so to speak, bestial and material. That is the
strength o f i t (1923b, 5).
In this essay, Murayama also details what he perceives to be the chief limitations of
Expressionism, and criticizes a host o f Western avant-garde movements (including Dada
and Futurism) for lapsing into a “mannerism” that he attributes to the conventions
established by the representative artists, rivalries among them, and the “shortcomings
inherent to each school” (13). For a new aesthetic to emerge, therefore,
...aesthetics must be ousted from its authoritarian throne and be correctly
relocated in its proper place, The ridiculous contemplative aesthetic that
was created by non-artists must be overthrown, and a new, precise,
dynamic aesthetic must take its place. The fate o f the plastic arts, the fate
o f philosophy...the fete o f the six categories o f all o f the arts—painting,
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sculpture, architecture, film, theatre direction, and dance—and the fate o f

the spectator, all must be incorporated into this new aesthetic [conscious
constructivism]. (1923b, 14)
The forms most conducive to Murayama’s vision were those related to the mechanizing
processes o f printing, photography and film, which were also products of “mass society,
mechanical production, and the reproduction o f quantity” (Harootunian 2000, 105). By
embracing mechanization, art would be liberated from the subjectivity of the artist—the
hallmark o f art production in the past—and true originality would result.
Many of the Berlin Dadaists also recorded the relation o f man and machines.
Dadamerika (1919), one in a series o f collages that juxtaposed Heartfield’s photographic
fragments and Grosz’s drawings, and produced “mutual references between typeface,
photos and drawings” represents, in Hess’s opinion, “a conflation of several forms of
artistic reality” (88). He also notes in such “deliberate mechanization,” the Dadaists’
echo o f the Constructivist aesthetic, which ultimately led Grosz and Heartfield to refer to
themselves as “Monteurs” [Mechanics], rather than artists (92). Perhaps the figure whose
work and ideas most closely resembled Murayama’s during his Mavo phase, however,
was Kurt Schwitters.
Schwitters experimented with a form o f collage that he called MERZ, in which he
patched together disjunctive, found objects. Schwitters deployed this technique of
construction to a variety o f forms, including sculpture, architectural design, and
performance. His MERZ poetry, for example, incorporated lines from overheard
conversations, popular songs, and advertising (Senelick 1993,219). Tisdall notes that
Schwitters (along with Picasso, Archipenko, Arp), had within a few crucial years
extended the principle of “the culture o f materials” beyond the traditional canvas (72).
With his theory o f conscious constructivism and his enormous output o f works of this
kind in the mid-1920s, Murayama is more than deserving of inclusion into this select
group.
In the work Mazukegatefn kosei [Construction that is Difficult to Name] (1924),
Murayama assembled an assortment o f commonplace items—a spring, a small bottle,
artificial flowers—that he combined with overlapping photographic fragments pulled
from the mass media (Weisenfeld 1996,66). Drawing upon the social goals o f the
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Russian Constructivists, Murayama’s version o f Constructivism was allied to his belief

that Communism alone preserved the social character o f art, as opposed to traditional and
bourgeois art forms that separated art from reality. In this vein, Murayama was
particularly critical of artistic subjectivism, which he believed “signified an ‘illusion’
produced by a tendency to absolutely elevate aesthetic formalism and abstraction over
any other consideration” (Harootunian 2000,102). To counter subjective illusionism,
Murayama advocated for the aestheticization o f industrial and capitalist products
common to everyday life, as well as the collective production of such works. In his goal
to remove the elements o f individualism, Murayama felt that nature was not to be copied,
but viewed as a vast reservoir o f socially useful objects that could be beautiful, but more
important, whose value was determined by their utility, and not as commodities for
exchange (104).
In an essay entitled “Introduction to Mechanical Elements in Art” (1923),
Murayama not only documented the efforts of a number of Western artists in their
incorporation o f a machine aesthetic (including Schwitters, the Surrealists Leger and
Picabia, and the Futurists Russolo and Prampolini), he also cited Oura and Okada as two
Mavoists who were deploying a “machine aesthetic.”24 Harrotunian notes that
embedded in Murayama’s conception of conscious constructivism was his desire to
account for both the “intense industrialization that had taken over Japanese society after
World War I,” as well as the “hegemony o f bourgeois art” (2000,101). Murayama noted
that the emergence of Constructivist, socialist and proletarian art had emerged in post-
Revolutionary Russia alongside the destruction o f Capitalist society. The Constructivists
were unique among the Russian avant-gardists for incorporating the objects of everyday
life in their art as part of their goal o f demonstrating that post-Revolutionary art should
have a social character. While Murayama also advocated for similar techniques, his
conception was something o f a departure from Russian Constructivism. Though he
shared the recognition that the objects that inhabited the space o f everyday life possessed
both use-value and artistic value (thus, linking art and life), he went further by seeing
industrial society as the end o f capitalist social relations in Japan. A central feature o f
Murayama’s re-interpretation o f constructivism was his belief that the objects that were
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colonizing everyday life, such as “post cards, stamps, umbrellas, ties, chairs, futon,
handkerchiefs, towels—all functional things—can be enjoyed as a rt”25
Haroootunian notes that for Murayama, “the machine constituted the concrete
subject o f everydayness because it was authorized by a social reality dominated by
productivism” (2000,103). This led to his belief that art lacking in practicality does not
qualify as art, and furthermore, that “productivism proclaims a complete war with pure
art by “burying individualism” in favor o f the collective.26
Murayama, like several members o f Mavo, was highly active in theatre design.
Murayama’s first appointment in the capacity of stage designer was for the production of
Kaiser’s Expressionist play From Mom to Midnight at the Tsukiji Little Theatre in
December 1924. Rather than relying on familiar Expressionist techniques, Murayama
designed a Constructivist-inspired set, possibly at the behest o f Hijikata who was a
devotee o f Meyerhold. For the Kokoroza’s production o f another Kaiser play, Jucma,
Murayama employed “quickly rotating red and yellow boards to produce orange on the
set,” a technique Weisenfeld speculates was influenced by Kandinsky as expressed in
such essays as “Btihnenkomposition” [Stage Composition] and “Uber
Btihnenkomposition” (1909)—both of which Murayama translated into Japanse (1997,
364). In this production, Murayama experimented with “productive disharmony” by
having two lead characters wear costumes from two widely different cultures and time
periods (365). Weisenfeld also compares Murayama’s design to Schwitters’ concept of
the MERZ-stage, since Murayama often quoted Schwitters in his articles on stage design
(366). To Schwitters, the MERZ stage could “detonate all the possibilities o f the stage,”
which, despite its rejection of narrative, character development, and linearity, amounted
to a gesamstkunstwerke, or total work of art (Senelick 1993,219).
If his works in the plastic arts clearly exhibited his attempts to fuse
Constructivism and “anti-art” techniques, Murayama’s performance experiments during
his Mavo and Sanka phases more closely resembled the attempts o f the Berlin Dadaists to
shock, surprise, and effect a transformation in the receptive modes o f their audiences.
Murayama is also considered to be one of the pivotal figures in the emergence of
Japanese modem dance, along with Yamada Kdsaku (who also studied in Berlin), and
Ishii Baku (who performed with Wigman and Rudolf Laban in 1924). One such dance
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performance, Na no Tsukerarenai Odori [The Dance that Cannot be Named] (1924),

which is documented only in a single photograph, shows Murayama and Okada Tatsuo
posing dramatically in dark-colored tunics. Nakada Sadanosuke—who was associated
with Mavo and Sanka—contributed a Constructivist artwork, Bubikopf Venus to the
second exhibition of Sanka, which is noteworthy for its references to German culture as
are Murayama’s dance performances. Weisenfeld describes the work, which exists only
through a photograph, as a “conical object constructed out of sleek metal and glass
elements.” In regard to the title, she notes that the “Bubiokopf’ haircut was a popular
page-boy hairstyle imported from Germany known as o-kappa, which was iconic o f the
“modem girl” [moga] and “all the trappings of modernity associated with her (1997,
174). Photogtaphs o f Murayama’s dance performances reveal him sporting a similar
hair-style (probably a wig).
To the extent that Berlin Dada can ultimately be conceived of as being an idealist
movement, Allen Greenberg notes that the Dadaist project was “not realizable within the
bounds of any social system as we know them,” especially in regard to their presumption
o f a “spiritual or psychological revolution of a greater magnitude than would have been
necessary for the development o f a system retaining definitive prescriptive and
proscriptive norms” (85). Huelsenbeck substantiates this idea by noting that even though
political contentiousness was a staple o f Dada praxis, they were, for the most part,
“eternal revolutionaries” (52). Whether accurate or not, any revolutionary ideology not
compatible with the National Socialist “revolution” in Germany became categorically
unacceptable. To Allen Greenberg, the significance o f Dada’s ambivalence and
ambiguities lay precisely in their view o f the social totality, such that the
indeterminateness regarding the meaning of their works was, after all, comparable to life
(45). To Huelsenbeck, the Dadaist critique was less political than psychological in that it
expressed man’s anxious and fragmented self within a social totality that exhibited the
same qualities, but one that posited the possibilities of self-realization through creation
itself (156). And despite their penchant to elicit violence on the part o f their spectators
(as Benjamin had recognized early on), the Dadaists emancipated art from its “cultic
origin,” while transforming the receptive act from the passive contemplativeness to a
collective forced into adopting a “critical and rational stance” (221).
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Despite qualifications regarding the ambiguities o f their sociopolitical critique,

Berlin Dada was viewed as a reactionary force in early Weimar. Huelsenbeck, as the
master of shock and provocation in Dada performance, insulted war veterans in the
audience at the first Dada performance, making front-page headlines the next day.
Capitalizing on their newfound celebrity, the second Dada performance in April 1919
was a much more organized affair, with press releases distributed, and a more expansive
and “instructional” performance planned (Goldberg 68). The “success” of that
performance, which erupted into an audience melee, precipitated Huelsenbeck’s hasty
retreat to Brandenburg (69).
Murayama’s performances were similarly provocative, although they seem to be
constellated around a different set of ideologies that seemed particularly apt for
exploitation in performance in the mid-1920s. O f these, conceptions of sex and gender
roles, and the effects o f social mechanization on the individual, appear to have been the
most important, with the latter becoming even more important component in Murayama’s
later proletarian dramas.
Roden notes that in the Taisho period, the Japanese public’s fascination with the
inner psyche spread to popular culture, and its appeals becoming increasingly available to
readers of popular fiction and filmgoers. What drew the attention o f the literate populace,
however, were “those qualities of hysteria, temperamentality, and nervousness that
departed from the insipid character norms o f an earlier era,” such that the “mysteries and
ambiguities o f personality superseded the hollow and straightforward formulas of
character.” Tangentially, the sex roles that had been so carefully constructed in the Meiji
civilization grew ever more blurred and confused in Taisho (42). Reflecting such trends,
Murayama’s trademark “Bubikopf’ haircut, and his theatrical fashion sense became the
subjects of popular magazine articles (Weisenfeld 1997,286). Murayama found that his
preoccupation with sex and gender was particularly conducive for exploration in
performance. Weisenfeld describes a photograph documenting a Mavo performance o f
the “Totentanz” from the play Tod und Teufel (1905) by the German playwright Franz
Wedekind as follows:
Murayama sits high off the ground, seemingly suspended in the air above
a gathering o f mysterious characters all theatrically posed. He is naked
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from the waist up, wearing only a skirt, white stockings, and white
women’s pumps. Below him to the right is Kato Masao, dressed in a long
jumper-like frock with bare arms. His face is painted white with black
shapes on his cheek, and he leans languidly against the wall, seductively
smoking a cigarette. To the left o f Murayama is Sumiya Iwane in a long
coat, menacingly brandishing a hammer over the head of Yabashi
Kimimaro. Wearing a summer dress, Yabashi leans forward into the
center o f the photograph, his left arm outstretched to the wall. His face is
painted entirely white with bright lipstick emphasizing his mouth. On the
ground to the lower tight sits Takamizawa Michiano with his entire nude
upper torso painted with abstract patterns. Behind him is an obscured and
unidentifiable figure laying on the ground wrapping an arm with
romanized letter fragments around Takamizawa in a passionate embrace.
Sitting to the left is Toda Tatsuo, who leans forward as if about to kiss
Takamizawa’s tilted white face. The figures cross-dress in women’s
clothing and their poses are sensual and suggestive. (1997,379)
Cross-dressing seems to have been a particularly favorite strategy o f the Mavoists, as
Yanase’s Sanka performance piece also reveals. However, Yanase’s play also indicates
the increased political interests o f the Mavoists. After the dissolution of Sanka,
Murayama, Yanase, and Akita, among others, would devote much o f their efforts to
proletarian theatre. It was in this arena that Murayama would mature as a director and a
playwright, where he would concentrate most of his efforts for the rest of his career.
Among the highly influential figures in Murayama’s development as a director
was Piscator, whose collective and montage-like dramaturgical constructions were
beholden to Dada performance innovations in design and staging. Piscator was also
indebted to the Russian agit-prop model o f performance that found its earliest expressions
in the German Red Rockets groups. Like Murayama, however, Piscator would face
seemingly insurmountable challenges in his efforts to construct and sustain a
revolutionary proletarian theatre.
Interestingly, Schwitters was refused membership in Berlin Dada by Huelsenbeck
because he was considered to be too apathetic to politics (Senelick 1993,219).
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Schiwtters was savvy enough, however, to discern the contradictory impulses regarding
art and politics as they were crystallizing in Germany and Russia in the mid-1920s. As
early as 1923, Schwitters, Tzara, Arp, and von Doesberg accused the Soviet government
in writing of betraying the Revolution by stabilizing it indirectly through their “love of
superseded artistic modes” (Sheppard 65). This was at a time when the Soviet cultural
bureaucracy’s aversion to abstract and avant-garde art was becoming more clear, and the
Protelkult risked becoming an ally o f conservatism by insulating the proletariat from truly
subversive art (65).
The rise of proletarian art in Europe and in Germany can be traced to the
influence o f Soviet cultural models. As Cole notes, the “implied ideal of ending artistic
professionalism and beginning a culture of universal creativity was close to the spirit of
the network of proletarian cultural organizations called the Protelkults” (Cole 78).
Established in 1917, these were conceived of as a kind of “utopian adult education,”
which sought to inspire “working class culture from the roots” (Cole 78). Within one
year, the movement was said to have some 400,000 members, 1000 training studios, and
cells in every major factory (Cole 78). The rise of the proletarian arts movements and
concomitantly, aesthetic populism, represents the first time that audiences became an
indispensable element in art production in modem theatre. The Berlin-based Red
Rockets, one o f the most active o f the agit-prop worker’s theatre troupes, combined
avant-garde techniques with the satirical tradition of cabaret. Constantly harassed by the
police, the Red Rockets were banned in 1929 (Cole 26).
Innes notes that Piscator employed Dadaist effects in his work throughout the
1920s, but that the element that he chiefly absorbed “lay in the standards o f realism and
immediacy” of Dada, thus indicating his indebtedness to the design contributions of
Heartfleld’s projected photomontages and Grosz’s drawings—both o f which represented
a new kind of realism in the mid 1920s. Piscator joined the German Communist Party
soon after it was formed in late 1918 (Willett 88,63). In The Political Theatre, Piscator
recounts that the social milieu o f Berlin in 1919 was particularly conducive to a radical
politicization o f the arts—a realization he had made through his association with the
Dadaists. It was then that Piscator formed his opinion as to how art was only a means to
an end: “A political means. A propagandists means. A pedagogical means. Not only in
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the sense o f the Dadaists, but in any event: away with art, make an end o f it!” (Piscator
23).
Piscator made connections with the Dadaists at the height o f their activities in
Berlin, involving them in his Epic theatre, agit-prop, and multimedia performance
experiments. Piscator credited Heartfield for paving the way for his brand o f Epic theatre
and setting the course for “anti-illusionist” theatre in Germany in the 1920s (Kahn 47).
He also staged perhaps the most politically charged versions of German Expressionist
plays, such as Toller’s Man and Masses. In fact, Piscator became highly proficient at
modulating Expressionist effects to suit his own purposes. These avant-gardist
propensities, however, were not well-received by the conservative German theatre
establishment. Furthermore, despite his clearly Marxist goals, Piscator eventually fell out
o f favor with the Soviet cultural establishment for failing to conform to the social realist
model.
In 1924, Piscator was engaged as the director of the Volksbuhne, and the first play
that he presented, Alfons Paquet’s Fahnen [Flags] incorporated screens for the
projections of posters, news items and captions, giving it an air of a “documentary,”
completely in line with the Neue Sachlichkeit style that was emerging in the early
twenties. Soon after, he presented a political revue for the election campaign o f 1924,
which also used projections o f current events and Grosz’s drawings that was to become a
model for the German version o f the Russian agit-prop Blue Blouse groups (Willett 1988,
88). His didactic “Lehrstuck” [Learning Play], Tai Yang, featured a set design by
Heartfield that consisted “almost entirely of fluttering banners, which bore political (or
statistical) inscriptions on one side,” while the other side remained blank so that they
could be used for projections (Willett 1979,106). For Piscator’s historical-political
revue Despite All presented at Grosses Schauspielhaus, Heartfield contributed a set
design constructed o f platforms, stairs, and ramps mounted on a revolve that allowed for
“a sequential overlap o f cause, action, and event” (Selz 49). Heartfield’s designs were
not the only elements that were directly correlative to avant-garde performance
techniques, which included a montage-like construction of scenes, and the simultaneity in
the presence of live action and film.
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The political quotient of the Japanese avant-garde was becoming increasingly

obvious by 1925. Among the criticisms leveled at the Sanka exhibition and performance
of May 1925 was the appearance o f frivolity in regard to the political quotient o f the
works presented, and it was largely ignored by the leftist press. Moreover, internal
pressures within the group, such as Kanbara’s defection, coupled with a police raid on the
gallery, drew more attention than the Sanka artists had originally bargained for, causing
many to either shy away from political art, or become even more committed. Murayama
was certainly in the latter group, for after the events in 1925, his work became more
politically contentious. If his early association with Mavo may be viewed as comparable
to the competing tendencies that inflected the ideas and performances o f the Berlin
Dadaists, after the dissolution of Sanka in 1925, Murayama turned his attention to
proletarian theatre. As Harootunian notes, Murayama emphasized the necessity of
putting art at the disposal of the masses rather than “cloistering it in confined museums
serving only the few (2000,105). This tendency is reflected in Murayama’s many
activities from his “conscious constructivist” phase, to his more radicalized involvement
with the proletarian theatre movement.
Just months after the disbanding of Sanka, Murayama founded the Kokoroza
Theatre (with Iketani Shinzaburo and Kawarazaki Chojuro), for which he translated and
directed Kaiser’s Juana. In December, he attended the first convention o f the Japan
Proletarian Arts League and became a member o f the visual arts division. In January
1926, he wrote and directed Kofi no shochi [Treatment o f the Orphan] for the Kokoroza,
and later that year scored a critical and popular success with the proletarian drama
Isamashtki shufit [A Brave Housewife] for the Shingeki kyokai. For the Prolearian
Literary Arts League, he co-designed (with Yanase), the set for Musansha no yu [The
Have-Nots Evening], a performance commemorating the first anniversary o f the
proletarian newspaper Musansha shinbun. Over the next few years, Murayama continued
to work almost exclusively in the proletarian theatre, helping to establish the Zen’eiza,
joining the Bungei Sensensha [Literary Front Society], and working with the Sayoku
Gekijo (Left-wing theatre]. In 1929, he was on the Central Committee o f the newly
formed Japan Proletarian Theatre League. That same year, the Sayoku Gekijo production
o f his play Bdryokudankai [Notes on the Gang], directed by Sano Ryo, was hailed as one
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o f the high-points o f the Japanese proletarian theatre movement This play was based on
a well-known incident in the history o f the Chinese revolutionary movement, in which
the military’s suppression of the unionizing efforts o f laborers at the Keikan Railroad
Company led to a strike and the murder o f a labor organizer. Also in 1929, he directed a
production o f the Russian playwright I. Ehrenburgh’s proletarian drama Trust A. E. for
the Kokoroza (Sofue 40).
Murayama was subject to a series of arrests from 1930 and he was forced to
undergo tenkd, withdraw from communist activities, and remain in prison for two years.
Tsurumi notes that in order to be recognized as an ideological convert [tenko-sha], a
political dissident had to admit wrongdoing in upholding a left-wing ideology, and
support Japanese militarism. Under the threat o f police torture and death, an
overwhelming majority o f those prosecuted accepted ideological conversion: o f about
500 authors who belonged to the Japanese Proletarian Arts Federation and the Federation
of Proletarian Cultural Organizations, more than ninety-five percent are believed to have
undergone tenkd (Tsurumi 41).
After his release, Murayama wrote a series o f “conversion novels,” of which The
White Night is generally considered to be an accurate portrait o f tenkd. An excerpt from
this novel describes the psychological effects o f imprisonment:
Sitting in the comer of his prison cell, visualizing the scene o f torture by
the police, he tried to torment his own body, and he ended up with the full
recognition that he could not stand up to such conditions...He stayed in
this frame of mind for almost two years in the prison. After his second
summer there, absolutely shut away from fresh air, his mind was eroded
by something undefined and invincible. He felt as though his flesh and
blood, or rather something mysteriously a part of his own father and
mother, and o f their forebears from time immemorial, whose faces, names,
and lives had long since perished, was eating away his existence, which
was after all an infinitesimaily small particle o f their posterity. However
hard he tried to cry out to them, to push them aside, and to drive them out,
it was o f no avail. In his straggle with his invisible foes, day in and night
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out, he groaned, struck his head with his fists, and scratched the wall with
his nails.27
Tsurumi considers this an “acutely straightforward evocation of the nonrational ideo-
affective posture o f familism based on ancestor worship in a predominantly rational,
Western-educated person” (59). Murayama himself, confronted with the “socialization o f
police terror” reactivated the ideas inculcated in him in his childhood, ultimately leading
to his renunciation o f Communism and his written declaration:
We should no longer pamper ourselves...We should completely reject all
that. We should admit to ourselves all our own weaknesses. And thus we
will face reality, and our literary work will be honestly rooted in our true
selves. Otherwise, we will never be able to follow a straight and narrow
path to victory.28
In another roman a clef, The Village House, Murayama portrayed the psychological
effects o f conversion by investing the personality of his central character with the
unbridgeable gap between the “top and bottom layers of personalities comprising the
elites and the masses” (63). He also posed the existential dilemma as to what courses of
action remained open afier tenkd, as when the central character’s father admonishes his
son:
“I for one feel very strongly that you should give up your writing... What
use is there in writing to justify your shameful ideological
conversion?... Whatever you may write would be of no use except to
disgrace your past achievements...You should become a farmer
instead.”29
Murayama’s central character reflects his own dilemma in regard to past literary, artistic
and theatrical achievements, which from the start, evinced social purposiveness.
Murayama’s own tenkd was a refutation o f everything he had espoused even prior to his
association with the Proletarian Arts Movement.
Graver notes that if the “moral cynicism” of the “anarchic participatory
performance” of the Berlin Dadaists exhibited a tendency to disregard the practical
consequences o f their activities, post-avant-garde theatre practitioners in Germany were
more concerned with definitive ideological aims, and while they deployed avant-garde
269
techniques, they dropped the avant-garde’s playful disregard of social consequences

(216). The class-conscious theatre o f Brecht and Piscator were the most obvious
instances. Brecht's learning plays do not celebrate disorder, but demonstrate the
shortcomings o f all types of order and the necessity o f choosing one form over another.
Brecht and Piscator also exemplify the tendency towards Neue Sachlichkeit, which
Willett notes was first manifest in Georg Kaiser’s Volkstuck [People’s PlayJ (1922),
whose theme was inflation-era Berlin, only here presented in a “colder, more cynical
version o f his earlier [Expressionist] “station dramas” (1988,85).
Similar developments mark the turn o f many of the Japanese avant-gardists in
their adoption of proletarian theatrical forms. In Shingeki and the proletarian theatre, the
gradual absorption of Mavo and Constructivist tendencies progressed alongside the
uninterrupted development o f social realism as it was to be practiced by many former
avant-gardists and a new generation of Shingeki playwrights. Akita’s dramas,
Murayama’s directing style, and Yanase’s theatrical designs all exemplify this
phenomenon. Interestingly, the careers o f all o f these artists in their post-avant-gardist
phase continued to bear out the contradictions that characterized the production and
reception o f their avant-garde phase. For instance, the Berlin Dadaists deemed
psychoanalysis a “dangereous disease” because it “puts to sleep the antiobjective
impulses o f man and systematizes the bourgeoisie” (Nicholls 336). The unconscious, of
course, was to become the major area of inquiry for the Surrealists. In his later
reminiscences o f Dada, Huelsenbeck, who had himself become a psychoanalyst, qualified
his theory o f reception by noting that “a work o f art conducts a creative dialogue with the
onlooker,” thus revealing an emphasis on the psychology of spectatorship.” This was a
natural extension o f the Dadaists’ aim o f transforming reception by creating un-
psychologized characters in their performances. Huelsenbeck also extended this idea to
the socio-pathology o f totalitarianism, noting that “despite its radical beginnings,” Dada
should be considered a “struggle against the dictatorship o f opinion^nd the outer restraint
on expression” and that even in Hitler’s “psychotic writings” in Mein Kampf, his
denunciation o f Dada on the basis o f its “anti-German” and destructive potential, was, for
the most part, “on target” (185). A year before the Nazis came to power, at the premiere
o f a comedy by Huelsenbeck, Why is Mrs. Balsam Laughing? (1932), several Nazi
270
officers in attendance created a disturbance, causing Huelesnbeck to emigrate for fear of

being recognized by the authorities as the “Dadaist Huelsenbeck,” even ten years after his
association with the movement had passed.
After his conversion, Murayama turned most o f his efforts to directing for the
theatre, but continued to get in trouble with the authorities, so that by 1942 he was
writing plays and novels under a pseudonym. He also made contributions to the Shimpa
theatre. A series of arrests, for which he was sentenced to probation, forced him to leave
for Korea and Manchuria in the last months o f the war. He returned in December 1945,
and re-formed the Shinkyo Gekidan the following year. He continued to work in the
Japanese theatre world becoming the leader o f the Tokyo Geijutsuza (Tokyo Art
Theatre], and in 1974 was presented a distinguished theatre award commemorating his
four hundredth directorial effort.
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NOTES
1 Ley-Piscator has provided a broad schema o f Piscator’s Epic Theatre along the
following dimensions: “a theatre o f political and social nature” that attempts “to reach all
people;” a “collective ceremony and invitation to learning” which leads to
communication; a rejection of Naturalism and the Aristotelian unities; and a theatre with
“a particular bias for technical innovation, drawing upon other arts and other
civilizations”; see Ley-Piscator 12-14.
2 For Jameson, the construction of a bourgeois everyday life in Japan was
equivalent to “the realist moment,” or that which was reflected in most cultural
formations adhering to realistic ideologies and naturalistic techniques; see Jameson 1993,
184-5.
3 Olivier Todd, “Art-Anti-Art,” Oeuvres Completes V, 431-2, qtd. in Berghaus
1985,303.
4 Tanaka Yoshio, Showa no bijutsu. I, 1926-1935 [Art of Showa, I, 1926-1935]
(Tokyo: The Mainichi Shimbum, 1990) 173, qtd. in Clark 42.
5 Murayama, Engekitekijijoden, II, 1922-1927 [Theatrical Autobiography, II,
1922-1927] 62, qtd. in Weisenfeld 1996,73,.
6 Okada Tatsuo, “Ishikiteki Koseishugi e no kohi (ge)” [A Protest to Conscious
Constructivism, part one] Yomiuri Shinbun (December 19,1923) qtd. in Weisenfeld
1996,73.
7 Weisenfeld, summarizing and translating quotations from the Mizue survey,
“Tenrankai Sanka to Gekijo no Sanka” [The Sanka Exhibition and Sanka in the Theatre]
Mizue (July 1925) 29-30; see Weisenfeld 1997,245.
8 Tristan Tzara, “Le poeme bruitiste,” Oeuvres Completes I (Paris, 1975) 551-2,
qtd. in Berghaus 1985,299.
9 Okada Tatsuo, Morosen tekkai sawagiu [Trouble Over the Withdrawal o f a Dim
Line] MAVO 2 (August 1924), qtd. in Weisenfeld 1997,341-4.
10 Clark, citing and translating Omuka, Art Vivant 93; see Clark 43.
272
11 Yanase, “Nika, Inten, Teitenhyo ni kae,” Tanemaku hito 12 (November 1921)

113, qtd. in Weisenfeld 1997,226-7.
12Felix Gasbarra was a journalist for the Communist Press, and served as an
editor of Der Knuppel [The Cudgel], the Communist satirical paper that was the
brainchild of Grosz and Heartfield. Gasbarra wrote a grotesque puppet play, Prussian
Walpurgis Night in knuppelreim published by Malik-Verlag in 1922. Piscator considered
Gasbarra to be one o f his Communist mentors, and they also collaborated on the Red
Revue (1924); see Piscator 78. .
13 Yanase, +-+-+-x±=Holiday, The Bulletin o f the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum
o f Art vol. XV (March 30, 1991). Translated for this dissertation by Miki Hirayama;
hereafter referenced as Yanase.
14 Hiroko Kato, “Introduction,” +-+-+-x-^=Holiday,” The Bulletin o f the Tokyo
Metropolitan Museum o f Art (March 30,1991) 47-50; translated for this dissertation by
Miki Hirayama; hereafter referenced as Hiroko.
15The cast-list as it appears in the script; see Yanase 46.
16 Mizusawa Tsutomu, “Ranhansha sura kosai,” Mavo no jidai, eds. Mizusawa
and Omuka Toshihara (Tokyo: Art Vivant, 1989), qtd. in Weisenfeld 1997,245.
17 Murayama Tomoyoshi, “An Interview with Archipenko,” Chuo bijutsu 93
(June 1923) 81-3, qtd. in Clark 44.
18 Peter Demetz, Italian Futurism and the German Literary Avant-Garde
(London: University of London Institute o f Germanic Studies, 1987) 4-5.
19The work, Utsukushiki Shojo ni Sasagu [Dedicated to the Beautiful Young
Girls], is described by Weisenfeld as being composed of “abstract, overlapping rectilinear
and rounded forms” rendered in “somber earthtones with an occasional shock of red
pigment.” On top of the abstract forms, which make no allusion to the title of the work,
are inscribed the words and numbers “Madchen,” “Nummer,” and “Nr. 15,” while on the
left border is a sentence fragment in German Gothic script;” see Weisenfeld 1997,64-5.
20 “Onna o kakazu takumini onna o hyogen” [Skillfully Expressing a Woman
Without Painting a Woman] Kokumm shinbtm (June 2,1923) 3, qtd. in Weisenfeld 1997,
66-7.
273
21 Murayama Tomoysoshi, Engkiteki Jijodert U, qtd. in Weisenfeld 1997,61.

22 Ley-Piscator notes that “in this most beautiful poetry...[TolIer] described a pair
of nesting swallows,” who, having consoled a prisoner for a whole summer by bringing
him “greetings from life,” are “transposed” by the poet into poetry; see Ley-Piscator, 79.
23 Murayama Tomoyoshi, “Sugiyuko hyogenha: ishikiteki koseishugi eno
joronteki donyu” [Exit Expressionism: An Introduction to Conscious Constructivism]
Chuo Bijutsu (April 1923) 3-15. Translated for this study by Miki Hirayama; hereafter
referred to as Murayama 1923b
24 Murayama Tomoyoshi, “Kikaiteki yoso no geijutsu e no donyu,” Mizue
(January 1924) 227, qtd. in Weisenfeld 1997,204.
25 Murayama Tomoyoshi, “Koseiha kenkyu,” Geijutsu no kakumei to kakumei no
geijutsu, 14, ed. Kurihara Yukio (Tokyo: Shakai Hyoronsha, 1990), qtd. in Harootunian
2000, 102.
26 Ibid., 59.
27 Murayama, Byakuya [The White Night], Murayama Tomoyoshi Shu, (Gendai
Nihon Bungaku Zenshu. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1957) 345-7, qtd. in Tsurumi 58-9.
28 Murayama, “Sakkateki Saishuppatsu” [To Start All Over Again as an Author]
qtd. in Honda, Tenko Bungaku Ron, 207-8; see Tsurumi 60.
29 Ibid., 62-3.
FIVE. THE INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE AVANT-GARDE AND
THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REALMS IN GERMANY AND JAPAN
This chapter provides an overview of the most salient points o f comparison

between the historical avant-garde’s relationship with the social and political realms in
Germany and Japan. I have distilled the aesthetic and sociopolitical coordinates
established and elaborated upon in previous chapters into the following four categories:
the effects o f the bureaucratization of culture under German and Japanese fascism,
including the elimination of the avant-garde; the actual and perceived affiliation of the
avant-garde project with Communism and other political ideologies; the assimilation of
the means and modalities of avant-garde discourse and practices into totalitarianism; and
the relationship o f trans-historical valuations o f the historical avant-garde project with
sociopolitical projects in the contemporary era. In essence, I seek to prove that the
historical avant-garde had, and continues to have, sociopolitical dimensionalities beyond
the aesthetic realm, and that far from being socially or politically ineffective, the history
o f the avant-garde’s reception overwhelmingly proves otherwise.
It is worth briefly reviewing the major theoretical propositions that have been
synthesized in the formulation of these four categories. The first is BQrger’s proposition
that by rejecting aesthetic autonomy and seeking to sublate art and life praxis, the avant-
garde illuminated the existence o f art as an institution and the social coordinates upon
which autonomy was constructed. To BQrger, moreover, because the historical avant-
garde project failed to achieve either o f its fundamental aims, its significance and efficacy
rests in the aesthetic realm, thus replicating the autonomy doctrine in contemporary
society. It is this contention that I argue against most thoroughly throughout the four
sections o f this chapter.
The second major theoretical proposition that has informed the organization of
these four categories relates to theories of fascist modernism, whereby congruencies are
postulated between avant-garde and fascist discourse and praxes. Here it is important to
note that scholarly paradigms o f fascist modernism are composites o f numerous historical
and contemporary theories regarding the avant-garde and interwar political formations,
most notably: Benjamin’s theory o f the fascist aestheticization o f politics; critical
274
275
methodologies that privilege form over content such as those adopted by Bourdieu,
Burger, Berezin, and other social-scientific theorists of art; performance theory which
examines the relationship between fascist ritual and Western dramaturgical narratives;
and paradigms such as Hewitt’s regarding the affinities between the historical avant-
garde’s “poetics of performance” and fascist politics. The final theoretical construct
foundational to these four categories is Karatani’s theory of the inversion o f Western
critical categories when applied to prewar Japanese cultural formations—a paradigm that
has proven most useful in distinguishing key features o f the Japanese avant-garde project.
In the first section I will consider the bureaucratization of culture under National
Socialism and the Japanese military-bureaucratic regime, and the similarities and
differences regarding the efforts o f both to eliminate avant-garde art. The second section
examines the actual and perceived association of the avant-garde with sociopolitical
agendas that were deemed oppositional to fascist-totalitarian culture. As discussed in
previous chapters, the efforts to eradicate the avant-garde usually went hand-in-hand with
the elimination o f Communism. While there are marked similarities in the ways these
twin imperatives operated in Germany and Japan in the 1930s, what renders this category
particularly complex are the transformations in Soviet cultural dictates, which although
seemingly opposed to fascistic social policies, nevertheless mirrored the fascist project of
eradicating the avant-garde. The third section compares trends in Germany and Japan
whereby the means and modalities o f avant-garde discourse and praxis were absorbed
into fascist cultural, social, and political formations, even though the historical avant-
garde project had already run its course, or had been successfully eliminated by the early
1930s. One component to be examined is the relationship between avant-garde
performance poetics with German and Japanese mass spectacles that were devised to
dramatize and legitimate master narratives o f cultural and racial supremacy, militarism,
and imperial expansionism. Finally, the fourth section, which also serves as the
conclusion to this dissertation, addresses trans-historical assessments o f the German and
Japanese avant-garde projects. I will survey the various ways in which avant-garde
theory has served to reconstitute Western and Japanese institutions o f art in the
contemporary period. O f particular interest is how avant-garde theory and discourse
continues to be deployed towards extra-aesthetic ends.
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5.1 The Fascist Bureaucratization o f Art and the Elimination o f the Avant-Garde
Burger’s observation that fascist arts policies liquidated aesthetic autonomy

implies that such efforts were beholden to the historical avant-garde, since his theory
rests on the paradigm that the historical avant-garde first illuminated the existence of art
as an institution. Thus, it is possible to infer, without positing causality, that the avant-
garde paved the way for totalitarian art and arts policies in the same manner that
aestheticism paved the way for the avant-garde. To some scholars, inasmuch as the
avant-garde served as a catalyst in the transformation of the categories of production and
reception from individual to collective modes, and by innovating the techniques by which
such transformations could be realized, avant-garde discourse and praxis were
foundational to the fascist aestheticization of politics, even, paradoxically, as it came to
serve as an opposing binary against which fascist art discourse and policies were
formulated. As Stollman notes, while the separation of art and life made axiomatic by
aesthetic autonomy could not wholly be eradicated by the characteristically abstract
attempts of the avant-gardists, this project became an organizing principle to fascist arts
policies, but fascist politics as well. He adds, however, that this transformation could not
happen until aesthetic (and political) material was directed towards a specific function,
namely when fascist politics made its social systems more transparent and its politics
more aesthetic (51).
Although I have elaborated upon those factors that rendered the doctrine of
aesthetic autonomy and its relationship to the Japanese avant-garde distinct, such
qualifications do not render Stollman’s thesis any less viable when applied to the
Japanese military-bureaucracy’s liquidation of aesthetic autonomy. In this respect,
Stollman’s formulation o f the congruency between the aestheticization o f politics and the
politics o f aestheticization is as applicable to prewar Japan as it is to Germany and Italy.
Well before the anti-avant-gardism o f National Socialism and the Japanese military
bureaucracy, the avant-garde was singled out for its potentially destructive influence over
society by Weimar and Taisho authorities. Huelsenbeck recalled that in the early 1920s,
the Secret Police—though still in a “primitive” stage, with “primitive methods o f
torture”—had heard about Dada. He adds that their perceptions o f Dada as being
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“implacably opposed to the German soul” were, in fact, “nearer the mark” than those
critics who derided Dada on the basis o f artistic merit or other aesthetic criteria (143). He
also notes, however, that while Hitler may have been correct to list Dada in Mein Kampf
as “one o f the most anti-German [and] destructive movements,” the practical implications
o f this position would later mean that “any person who had been active in Dada could
expect to be destroyed in a concentration camp” (185). Similarly, the Bauhaus was
plagued by attacks o f a political nature throughout its short life in Germany. Shapiro
notes that Walter Gropius was calumniated by the early Right as early as 1919 for
allegedly “Bolshevik” architectural praxis (Shapiro 19).
As far back as 1920, an essential component o f the National Socialist party
platform was its aversion towards modem art and literature, which they considered as
having a “disintegrating influence” on the life o f the people. In their “25-Point Program”
of 1920, the Nazis interpreted all aesthetic modernism as a manifestation of racial decay
and equated it with other social forces such as Liberalism, Marxism, and Judaism. Yet, it
is also true that the Nazis were equally adverse to art-for-art’s sake, which they
considered to be a liberal ideal ultimately inconsistent with the cultural and spiritual
welfare of the volk. Denying autonomy to any artist, Goebbels declared that since
“culture is the higher expression of the creative power o f a nation,” the role of the artist
was “indispensable to the state as those who provide its material existence.”1
Upon their accession to power, the Nazis wasted no time implementing their
cultural agenda. In March 1933, Hitler established the Reich Ministry for Popular
Enlightenment and Propaganda, which under Goebbels’ supervision, was became the
institutionalized authoritative source for Nazi cultural activities (Grosshans 72). Soon
after, the Nazis created the Chamber o f Arts and Culture, with which artists had to
register in order to be allowed to exhibit or perform. Next came the establishment o f the
Office for the Supervision of the Cultural and Ideological Education and Training under
the leadership o f Alfred Rosenberg, who initiated museum purges and boycotts o f
teachers at art academies (73-4). In a speech to party leadership o f 1934, Hitler attacked
the modernist “spoilers o f art,” singled out Cubists, Futurists and Dadaists as a threat to
National Socialism, and mandated that henceforth German art would be “clear, without
contortion and without ambiguity” (74). As Showalter notes, however, “style was as
278
important as substance in the triumph o f National Socialism,” which sought to project an

image of a “reborn” Germany through the reformation o f the other that was transposed in
cultural terms as “the degenerate artist and his deluded audience” (295).
What was utterly transparent about Hitler’s argument, however, is that Cubism,
Futurism and Dada had long been inactive in Germany by 1934. Nevertheless, the
cultural debate between Goebbels and Rosenberg regarding the inclusion of
Expressionism within the national cultural policy was waged over two years (1934-36),
and was ultimately resolved by Hitler, who felt his own “Biedermeier tastes were more at
keeping with the conservative image that the new national government wished to
cultivate” (Travers 260). In Rosenberg’s opinion, just as the Nazi’s had supplanted the
“soulless and unorganic Prussian state” with the “organic and undiversified complex that
was the concrete embodiment o f the “Volksgeist,” German art has to expunge the “sterile
formalism that had, under foreign influence, enslaved it” (Pois 206). Towards these ends,
the Nazis attempted to integrate every facet of social life into the state and stripped art of
its social and critical power, thus paving the way for National Socialist politics to
supersede art as a catalyst for any potential changes in life praxis.
To Allen Greenberg, the Dadaists failed in their sociopolitical goals because o f an
“incompleteness” in their idealization of a “reciprocal relationship between artist and
society” as manifested in their attempts to play a meaningful role in contemporary
political affairs (34). Implicit in Greenberg’s position is that contradictory political
ambitions were at least partly to blame for the failure o f Dada to sublate art and life, but
even more important, for its failure to counter National Socialism. Differences of
opinion regarding specific courses o f political action, coupled with their anarchistic
propensities—which became increasingly difficult to differentiate in the minds of the
public, the press, and the authorities—leads Greenberg to conclude that without the
cooperation o f consolidated oppositional social and political forces, the Dadaists had no
chance o f becoming a major sociocultural force in Germany. By contrast, the Nazi’s
institutionalization o f heroic-folkish realism was supported by force and coercion. In
retrospect, Hans Richter maintained the political indeterminacy o f the Berlin Dadaists
thusly:
279
At one moment, they were all for the Spartakus movement; then it was
Communism, Bolshevism, Anarchism, and whatever else was going. But
there was always a side door left open for a quick getaway, if this should
be necessary to preserve what Dada valued most—personal freedom and
independence. (109-112)
While there is certainly some logic to Richter’s argument and similar revisionist
interpretations, such accounts tend to hold the avant-garde (and other cultural, social and
political movements) responsible for failing to brook the rising tide o f fascism, at the
same time that they downplay the expediency and swiftness by which the fascist
bureaucracy was able to eliminate opposition.
Such tendencies are no less prevalent in Japanese scholarship regarding the failure
o f Taish5 and early Showa intellectuals and artists to counteract the rise o f militant
nationalism, to protest against the first waves of aggressive expansionism into China in
the early 1930s, or to willingly accept increased legislative curbs to their autonomy. This
is nowhere more evident that in Arima’s assessment of the lack of political consequences
o f the Japanese avant-garde and all other artistic and literary projects of the prewar
period. Arima points out, for example, that while Italian Futurism stimulated a baleful
nationalism that was to become a dominant ideology prior to and after World War I, the
Japanese Futurists, by contrast,
did their somersault in a political vacuum. Their anarchistic nihilism had
no serious social consequences except that o f isolating the artists from his
surroundings. And his fate paralleled the fate of the political anarchist
(68)
While Arima’s summary judgment about the nihilism of the Japanese Futurists may be
partially true, the idea that they were acting within a political vacuum is easily disputable,
considering that the decade prior to the emergence of Japanese Futurism is often referred
to as the “winter years of Socialism,” a label which could just as easily be applied to
Japanese anarcho-syndicalism as well. As Arima himself notes, Osugi Sakae, the
anarchist who had anticipated the emergence of an “anti-art” avant-garde, was strangled
to death by an army officer in 1923, and soon afterwards “ten anarcho-syndicalist labor
280
leaders were massacred in the courtyard o f a police station in Tokyo” under the pretext
that they would capitalize on the chaos wrought by the earthquake (69).
To Brooker, “fratemalism” was higher in Japan than in Germany and Italy, given
the centrifugal force of the kokutcd ideology. He notes that the military bureaucratic
regime’s support of traditional Japanese aesthetic values is reminiscent of Germany’s
“reactionary anti-modernism,” and also that both Germany and Japan remain distinct
from Italy, where the fascists’ were willing to support (at least in the short term) the
“iconoclastic Futurist movement” (214). He points out that the section in Kokutai no
Hongi (1937) on aesthetic values stipulated the “national way” of art as one of
“individual and personal creativity within the context of a well-learned artistic
tradition”—as long as the artist “mastered his tradition before expressing his personal
attitudes in departing from the traditional norms” (257). While this represents a supreme
expression o f the wartime cultural mandate to return to traditional aesthetic practices and
ideologies (such as the master-apprentice model), it was also, paradoxically, out of sync
with the efforts of the military-bureaucracy to reorganize Japanese society and culture,
considering that it had all of the modem means o f communication and technology at its
disposal. More telling, however, is that a return to traditional aesthetic values would
necessarily entail a resurrection o f formulations of art-for-art’s sake and life-for-art’s
sake in traditional aesthetics—neither of which would suit the military regime’s goals.
Though Brooker interprets the Kokutai discourse on art as a fratemalist mechanism
designed to instill mechanical solidarity, an equally valid reading might be that what the
writers o f this doctrine had in mind was not traditional, pre-Restoration aesthetic
categories, but rather, Meiji-era, and thus, pre-avant-garde aesthetics, which were
predicated upon the demand that art existed for the service o f the state and at the
discretion o f the Emperor, and also that it should serve for the moral edification of the
Japanese people.
As Ienaga notes, since the Meiji Constitution did not guarantee basic human
rights, freedom o f expression “could be virtually abolished by subsequent laws” (14). In
this regard, many scholars point to the Peace Preservation Law—initially enacted to
suppress socialism, but later used against other ideologies that displeased the state—as
the most significant legislative move upon which subsequent efforts at the
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bureaucratization of culture would depend. As Rubin notes, because “no where in the
Japanese tradition—and certainly not in the Meiji Constitution—do we find the
sanctification o f individual rights,” it is not surprising that there was a dearth of criticism
o f censorship practices in the prewar era (1984,27). Ogai, who had experienced
censorship first-hand, early on sounded the alarm about the tendency to conflate artistic
tendencies (such as Naturalism) with either political ideologies (such as anarchism), or
social constructs (such as individualism) integral to Meiji cultural regulation (151). As
Rubin points out, however, Ogai’s argument was basically a defense of individualism,
which he set apart from anarchism on the grounds that it presented “no threat to family,
society or nation,” thus concluding, that “to persecute art in order to obliterate anarchism
and socialism all under the vague heading o f individualism can only do harm to the
nation” (152).
As previously discussed, Meiji and Taisho formulations of individualism can be
characterized by its gradual absorption as an aesthetic value which, although activated in
late Meiji, flowered into a predominant ideology throughout the 1920s. By contrast,
early Meiji formulations of individualism were tethered to the oligarchy’s aim of
legitimating the campaign for industrial and technological development by emphasizing a
utilitarian humanism that encouraged individual merit and ambition at the service of the
state. If the latter appears to be a more accurate depiction o f the military-bureaucracy’s
aim to return to traditional aesthetic norms as stipulated in Kouktai no Hongi, it should
also be remembered that by 1937, the industrial and technological modernization of
Japan was already complete, hence, freeing up this statist ideology for the more pressing
issues o f war.
Harootunian notes that in Japan, the identification o f bunka with German culture
harkened back to Shoyo and his coterie at Waseda University. For all practical purposes,
this early formulation entailed an ideal relationship between individualism and culture,
which, despite its conflicts, ultimately lay behind the intellectual and artistic milieu o f the
Taisho era as expressed through the “reverence for the diverse creations o f the spirit [and]
the mystery o f the arts,” which Harootunian notes, still possessed to many Japanese, “a
power and beauty greater than life itself” (2000 16). If it is true, therefore, that the more
radical strain o f the Japanese avant-garde revealed the social impotence and bourgeois
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foundations o f aesthetic individualism in the same way that the Dadaists had done in
Germany, then any subsequent effort to curb individualism must have benefited from the
Japanese avant-garde’s auto-critique of a rt And it was precisely the strains of
individualism that the military bureaucratic regime ultimately deemed unacceptable,
which, despite its lip service to the “individual and personal creativity” as the “national
way” in the Kokutai no Hongi, in no way characterized art production from that point
onward. On the other hand, individualism and artistic subjectivity were never quite
abandoned in most manifestations o f the Japanese avant-garde (with the notable
exceptions of the anti-art faction of Mavo and the proletarian avant-garde), thus,
redoubling its susceptibility to the statist, anti-individualist model of culture adopted in
the late 1930s.
As Munroe notes, the Japanese avant-garde reacted against the “conservative,
hierarchical, and bureaucratic art establishment,” which was, above all, associated with
Meiji authoritarianism (22). Clark adds that while aesthetic innovativeness was as
essential to the avant-garde project in Japan as it was in Europe, “its stylistic discourses
came at the historical conjunction o f a repositioning of the artist in relation to the work
itself, which was no longer an extension o f received or necessary national taste” (41).
This reconfiguration o f the artist in society was, as has been discussed, marked as much
by the adversarial of the avant-gardists towards the institutions of art as it was by the
emergence o f a new subjectivity in their consciousness, which delimited the contours of
their social aims. Furthermore, while a degree of individualism does not preclude the
intention of abolishing the institutions of art or conflating art and life praxis, it does
categorically entail the retention o f the autonomy doctrine.
Maruyama has observed that there had never existed a foundation upon which
scholarly disciplines like Political Science could be established in the prewar era. The
Popular Rights Movement o f the late 1870s and early 1880s, for example, was thwarted
by internal weaknesses and government suppression, while the Meiji Constitution
“stamped the national polity as ‘Eternal,’” thus, precluding any serious challenge to the
fundamental state ideology which placed the legislative, judicial, administrative, and
military powers under the “exclusive and absolute Imperial Prerogative” (231). It would
follow that any subsequent attempts to deploy art as a sociopolitical critique, though
2S3
potentially operative on subversive or covert levels, could only go so far without raising
questions as to the legality o f such efforts. In fact, a series of legislations that had their
origins in the Imperial Rescript on Education were promulgated and enforced
unceasingly from the mid-1920s through the war era. Soon after the passage o f the Peace
Preservation Law in 1925, the mandatory examination o f films, for example, led to their
being censored or limitations on their release, if considered potentially aversive to the
public peace, manners, morals, and health of he nation (Silverberg 1993, 128). Here
again, the early Showa bureaucratization o f culture can be linked to Meiji
authoritarianism. Maruyama notes that since the promulgation of the Imperial Rescript
on Education, there was no basis in principle for intellectual or creative freedom, since
Japan’s national polity absorbed “all the internal values of truth, morality, and beauty,”
with the result that “neither scholarship nor art could exist apart from these national
values” (6). He notes that nationalistic slogans were promulgated with greater frequency
throughout the prewar period, such as “art for the nation” and “scholarship for the nation”
(6). What is especially significant is not merely that art and scholarship had to be of
practical use, but also that the state was the ultimate arbiter of what constituted the social
utility and values prescribed in these domains. Similarly, Harootunian notes that Taisho
intellectuals substituted for an “earlier belief in the perfectibility o f the moral faculties of
the individual, the aesthetic perfectibility o f the individual,” a displacement that resulted
in the “twin veneration of culture and the creative personality” that led not simply to
’’indifference, but to the deployment o f culture as a surrogate for politics” (2000,17).
Translated into the political sphere, there existed an implicit social contract whereby in
exchange for allowances of a private sphere, the state could expect a categorical
abstention from politics and criticism o f the state.
To Harootunian, this social code explains the reluctance o f intellectuals to take a
public stand against government censorship (2000,152). From this vantage point, that
the radical avant-gardists got away with what they did for so long, especially in the
proletarian arts era o f the late 1920s, is remarkable. The relative swiftness with which its
elimination was accomplished is equally noteworthy, except if one considers that the
Japanese military bureaucracy increasingly turned to Germany, as it had in the Meiji era,
in adopting a bureaucratic model for the regulation o f culture and propaganda.
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In 1936, Japan’s Natural Resource Bureau prepared a blueprint for state

propaganda activities, known as the Summary Working Plan for Information and
Propaganda. This plan, which centralized all censorship efforts, was modeled after the
Reich Chambers o f Culture established by Goebbels in 1933. As Kasza notes, the seven
Japanese media control mechanisms resembled the assorted Reich Chambers o f film,
radio, the press, music, fine arts and the theatre; but unlike Goebbels’ plan, the seventh
was devoted to the Japanese wire service in contrast to the German Chamber o f Literature
(151-2). Despite the irrationality that characterized Hitler’s polemical attacks on modem
and avant-garde art, the aesthetic program articulated by the Nazi cultural bureaucracy
was multidimensional. This comprehensiveness entailed the regulation of every facet of
the institutions of art and theatre—the dimensions o f which were first fully (and
comprehensively) sketched out by the historical avant-garde. Specifically, if the avant-
gardist attack on the institutions o f art illuminated the aesthetic categories of production
and reception, as well as the social inefficacy o f autonomous art, it also exposed the
valences (and dangers) o f politically-engaged art, which could then be alternately
deployed as instruments o f affirmation, education, and propaganda.
Such valences were surely apparent to the Nazi bureaucrats in their construction
o f heroic-folkish realism as an “authentic” Aryan a rt The Nazis’ discursive attack on
both modernist and avant-garde art was grounded in the argument that these forms had no
relevance to the German people. If by the mid-1930s the avant-garde project can be
considered to have already been pass£, the adoption of the Nazi cultural program
constructed on the tenets of folkish realism bears out Marcuse’s thesis that in
totalitarianism, obsolete methods of affirmation are replaced by newer ones (1988,19).
Despite their insistence on a historical-mythical German aesthetic legacy, the Nazis’
aesthetic program was a novel attempt at dealing with the problems posed by modernity
by manufacturing an alleged golden age o f art as the criterion for art production.
Clement Greenberg called these manifestations “kitsch,” which employ the “debased and
academicized simulacra o f genuine culture” as its raw material (Greenberg 10). Cole
adds, however that the regimes could also use high culture “on a monumental scale” to
intimidate the masses (Cole 61). In this regard, Staneweis points out that the German
public’s response to the historical avant-garde should not be discounted when assessing
285
Nazi cultural policies. At the same time that German cultural conservatives were
assailing the avant-garde as “excessively intellectualized, aesthetically alien, un-German,
debased, or decadent,” the German public showed great reluctance in accepting the avant-
garde and its attack on the German cultural heritage (21). In 1937, Hitler refuted both
cosmopolitanism and a multiplicity o f styles as an appropriate model for art production
under National Socialism, thus seemingly negating the history o f Western art in total:
Every year something new; one day Impressionism, then Futurism, and
maybe even Dadaism; art is not founded on time, but only on peoples. It
is therefore imperative that the artist erect a monument not to a time but to
his people.2
In a similar vein, many scholars have pointed to the reluctance o f the Japanese public to
accept the more radical faction of the Japanese avant-garde as part o f its failure to
achieve its sociopolitical and aesthetic goals. Rimer notes that the question of a “national
sensibility” may help to explain why certain trends in European art such as Cubism,
Futurism and Dada appear to have been less attractive than Impressionism and Post-
Impressionism to the Japanese. Not only did the latter styles dominate and become the
“preferred point o f access to Western art” to the public and artists alike, they also
represented a “reciprocal exchange with Japanese art through the importation into France
o f woodblock prints and Japanese objets d’art” (1987,78). Alternately, it may be that the
Impressionist aesthetic—related as it was to aesthetic autonomy, individualism and
artistic subjectivity—was more appealing to arts practitioners, the critical establishment,
and the public. In his recollections of the public’s response to a Futurist Art Association
exhibition, Kinoshita recalled that many o f the visitors to the show responded
incredulously to the abstract representations of the human form, and some even
demanded their entrance fees back. He also noted that as had been expected, most o f the
established painters had completely ignored the show (1970b, 8). Such factors explain
the extraordinary efforts o f the avant-gardists to present the principles behind their art
theories and practices in art journals, newspapers, and public lectures, as well as the
noticeable lack o f irony in such approaches in contrast to their Western counterparts.
Munsterberg characterizes the 1930s in Japan as a “stagnant period for Westem-
style painting,” as the government and the public alike became increasingly aversive to
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modem art Yoshiwara, one o f the foremost avant-gardists o f the period, who admitted
his indebtedness to Kandinsky, recalled:
...m y work, which was regarded as radical and un-Japanese, was often
attacked. Japan was entering the mad era of militarism, and I was accused
o f spending time idly painting circles and triangles during a period of
national emergency.
Aso Saburo, an Expressionist painter wrote o f the war era: “It had become impossible to
paint as one liked...The air was thin. We were being strangled by a black hand.”3
One other trend must be mentioned in respect to the eradication o f the avant-garde
in Germany and Japan. As numerous examples throughout this dissertation have shown,
in the late 1920s and early 1930s, many o f the most active avant-gardists in Germany and
Japan tended to follow one o f three paths in regard to their work: a turn to a more
politically-benign aestheticism; a rigid adherence to the dictates o f proletarian art and,
ever-increasingly, the prescribed style o f social realism; or, active participation in new
efforts at establishing a “national” style o f art. These three directions represent, to one
degree or another, an anti-avant-gardism on the part of artists who once were associated
with the avant-garde project in the eyes o f the press, public and authorities. It is also true,
however, that many o f these artists were forever tainted by their prior association with the
avant-garde, although it can ascertained that in Japan at least, those who opted for the
more aestheticist path were given a modicum of artistic freedom for a longer period of
time. In both Germany and Japan, moreover, “converts” from the avant-garde to
nationalist and propagandist efforts were especially prized.
Because the efforts at eradicating the historical avant-garde went hand-in-hand
with the elimination o f Communism, it is necessary to examine the mutually reinforcing
tendencies o f both the avant-garde and Communism in Japan and Germany—tendencies
that reveal many more similarities than differences.
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5.2 Communism and the Avant-Garde
Since the nineteenth-century, Western avant-garde art has been inextricably

linked to political radicalism. Huyssen points out that it was Lenin who first severed the
dialectic between the political and cultural avant-garde in the article “Party Organization
and Party Literature” (1905), wherein he stipulated that art was to be subordinated to the
Party (1986,6). Nevertheless, in 1919, Lenin was redefining the Communist Party as the
“avant-garde of the proletariat,” a formulation that became part of the International
Communist vocabulary for a decade (Enzenberger 29). By the mid-l920s, however, his
earlier formulation was resurrected, thus paving the way for the suppression and
liquidation o f avant-gardism not only in Russia, but as a prerequisite for Communist arts
federations around the world. Given that many of the German and Japanese avant-
gardists were affiliated with Communism and accepted its cultural policies along with its
social program, it is necessary to position the historical avant-garde’s demise in relation
not only to fascist bureaucratic policies, but alongside transformations in Communist
aesthetics.
The emergence of the post-RevoIutionary avant-garde in Russia was unique in
that it had the near-unanimous support from the new government, as well as in the
homogeneity of the sociopolitical aims o f the artists to eradicate bourgeois culture by
innovating new forms more closely related to life praxis. Collectivization in the arts was
bolstered by the establishment o f an official commissariat o f culture and a rt Numerous
organizations sprang up, including Mayakovsky’s Left Front of the Arts, which insisted
on “the creation of aesthetic forms which could be infused into everyday life...and then
quickly change that life” (Rudnitsky 97). The proliferation of unions and trade guilds,
such as the Protelkult, promoted industrial design contracts and regular employment for
Constructivist artists, who designed everything from emblems, stamps, and posters, to
tables and light fixtures, all o f which bore the trademark geometric patterns (Gray 259).
Under governmental patronage, more than three thousand theatrical organizations sprang
up in the first five years after the Revolution, empowered by a bureaucratic structure that
recognized that theatrical performance could influence and enlighten a largely illiterate
public more than lectures or books (Van Norman Baer 35). The legacy o f these theatre
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troupes, as well as that of the chief innovators o f Constructivist theatre, dance, and stage
design (including Meyerhold and Foregger), had immediate and world-wide influence,
but perhaps nowhere more significantly than in Germany and Japan. In what may be
perceived as a rejuvenation of the social and political potential o f an avant-garde
aesthetic, the Russian avant-garde performance innovators devised several strategies to
eradicate the boundaries between audience and performance, to abolish authorial
authority and the cult o f genius, and to work collectively—all of which exhibited the
earmarks o f a utopian avant-garde project noticeably lacking a nihilistic quotient.
All this would change by the end of the 1920s, however, when the adoption of
socialist realism as the prescribed style became doctrine for Communist-affiliated arts
federations internationally. Its advancement had its roots in the critique of the avant-
garde by Marxist critics, of whom Lukacs was the most outspoken. Deriding the avant-
gardists’ “narrow schematism” and criticizing it for showing a “contempt for everything
artistic, and...only [valuing] what is immediately of its service for agitation,” Lukacs’
anti-avant-gardism was ostensibly less concerned with the sociopolitical aims o f the
avant-gardists than with their aesthetic goals (82). However, in espousing the superiority
of realism over allegorical, epic, and expressionist forms to portray psychological
complexities and everyday reality, Lukacs delineated the requisite components of a
“national” socialist a rt What the elimination of avant-gardism from the Communist
cultural agenda demonstrates, among other things, is that the political reception o f the
avant-garde—even at its least oppositional to dominant political ideologies—was
predicated less upon artistic content than on the social contexts within which it was
received. Furthermore, far from having relevance only in the aesthetic realm or to the
interests o f the bourgeoisie or the intelligentsia—two oft-cited critiques of the avant-
garde—the Soviet cultural bureaucracy came to view these early post-Revolutionary
forms as potentially counterproductive to its increasingly authoritarian aims. This
represents perhaps the most compelling argument for the sociopolitical valences o f the
avant-garde project, and one that can be extended not only to the effects of the Comintern
on avant-gardist and proletarian arts practitioners worldwide, but also to the new cultural
mandates established under authoritarian bureaucracies in Germany, Italy, and Japan. As
Selz notes, for example, the cynicism o f the Berlin Dadaists was less o f a reaction to the
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events o f World War I than to the failed November Revolution, for which several o f the
Dadaists had zealously contributed their efforts (80). The left-leaning politics o f the
Berlin Dadaists was evident as early as their first manifesto, in which Hausmann and
Huelsenbeck demanded the establishment of “radical Communism” and the abolition of
private property as the basis o f class warfare (Greenberg 1979,78). For a time, Dada had
a Revolutionary Central Committee, which earnestly called for the use o f Dada verse as
the Communist state prayer (Williams 81). Overtly anti-Capitalist, anti-fascist, and pro-
Communist sentiments were a defining feature o f key artists such as Grosz, Heartfield,
Brecht, and Piscator.
In Japan, the Socialist movement succumbed to the state socialism of the
nationalists, and Communism failed to become a mass political force in Japan, where
“education, religion, the civil code, and social and business conduct all emphasized the
virtues o f loyalty, obedience and stasis at the expense o f freedom, individual rights and
equality” (Beckmann 149). Also the Communists had trouble penetrating the
“integrating and binding forces” o f modem Japanese nationalism and Confucianism,
centered as it was around the cult of the Emperor. This is not to infer, however, that
Marxist ideology and Comintern social and cultural policies did not influence a
generation o f intellectuals and artists, and that the government did not take seriously the
“Communist threat.” Kinoshita notes in the early 1920s, the word “ism” [shugi] was a
“red flag” for the authorities, who assumed that all those involved with any such “ism”
were involved in Communist activities, thus explaining the raids on avant-garde exhibits,
such as those held by the Futurist Art Association and Sanka (1970b, 7). Perceptions of
the subversive potential o f both alternative political and art movements have been
attributed, in part, to their rapid proliferation in a concentrated period o f time. In 1923, a
group o f poets associated with the anarchist movement launched the literary journal Aka
to kuro, the inaugural manifesto o f which read: “We abandon all the conventional ideas
and declare: Poetry is a bomb! A Poet is a black criminal who throws a bomb at the hard
wall and door o f the prison!” (Hariu 4). Hariu points to Hagiwara’s poetry for this
journal in particular, which employed Mavoist typography at the same time that he was
protesting the murder o f numerous Koreans and anarchists earlier that year (3). By 1925,
critical reaction to the first Sanka exhibition reveals that the leftist political affinities of
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many of the avant-gardists were clear to the public and, more significantly, to the police,
best exemplified by Kawaki Ryuku’s remark that “Sanka was by far the most radical of
Japanese leftist art groups,” and its exhibition a “climax of left-wing activity evident
worldwide” (Weisenfeld 1997,159).
Interestingly, just as the most committed of the German Dadaists and Russian
Constructivists had discovered, Communist party affiliation alone did not immunize
Japanese avant-garde and proletarian artists from party scrutiny on either ideological or
aesthetic criteria. Although touted by the media as politically radical, and even with the
participation of such highly committed personalities as Yanase and Sasaki—who were
themselves active in the leftist press—the activities of the Sanka group were mostly
ignored by leftist critics. The noteworthy exception was the Bungei sensen, which
Yanase co-founded, wherein Matsumoto K5ji registered his objection to what he
perceived to be the “nihilistic pessimism o f the artists.” Tellingly, though he
acknowledged that such tendencies as Dada were understandable in Germany given that
they had emerged out o f the pessimism of World War I, Matsumoto maintained that “no
matter how much the [German] artists loathed the social system, they affirmed their
belief in the future by producing art,” thus justifying the efforts of the German avant-
gardists. In an ironic twist of optimism in regard to Japan's own future, Matsumoto notes
that such aesthetic strategies in Japan could offer nothing other than the “perpetually
oppositional feeling of depression.”4
In 1928, the Censorship Reform League, comprised of left-wing dramatists,
theatre workers, filmmakers and writers, met at the Tsukiji Little Theatre to organize
protest measures against the suppression o f leftist art, literature and theatre (Rubin 248).
Three years later such a public display o f resistance would be impossible. After the
Manchurian Incident of 1931, the government stepped up efforts to eradicate
Communism and other leftist movements, especially the proletarian arts federations. In
1931, Shi, Genfitsu, the proletarian literary magazine organized by Kitagawa Fuyuhiko
and Miyoshi Tatsuji, ceased publication due to governmental pressure (Keene 1984,342).
Proletarian criticism was disallowed in the early 1930s, and critics associated with it were
forced to publicly renounce Marxism or to refrain from writing on political subjects
(Keene 1984,580). The arrests of Nakano Shigeharu, Kurohara Korehito, and over four
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hundred proletarian writers in 1932, reflected the determination o f the Home Ministry to
eradicate the Proletarian Cultural Federation (Rubin 1984,249). Brian Powell notes that
by this time it was impossible to overtly refer to any political content of a play in reviews
(1984,128).
Clark notes that the demise o f Japanese proletarianism in the visual arts must also
be attributed to internal pressures within the field, particularly with respect to the rise to
prominence o f Surrealism and the formalist expressionists (44). While proletarian
literature and theatre experienced the most severe police scrutiny in the early 1930s,
proletarian tendencies in the visual arts were overshadowed by a return to art-for-art’s
sake, which was renewed by such newly-formed groups as Nova, which declared in their
manifesto: “We are dissatisfied with hitherto Proletarian Art which stresses political
thought, and believe that the art o f painting must be restored to a development o f painting
itself.”5 Government scrutiny extended to nihonga and yoga regarding both substance
and style, ultimately leading to the standardization of pictorial evocations of the Japanese
martial spirit as the officially-sanctioned subject matter at a time of military escalation in
China (Guth20).
Interestingly, the subjectivist tendency of Japanese Surrealism was the cause of
consternation among many avant-gardists who considered it a “bourgeois strategy of
avoiding reality,” manifested in “nihilistic-erotic appeals to a disaffected public” (Clark
44). Kanbara Tai, for example, reacting to the aestheticism o f the Japanese Surrealists,
noted in 1937 that as a “twisted outlet for doubt, criticism, derision, discontent and
disaffection on the part of an isolated stratum o f Iiberalists,” Surrealism was “incapable
o f struggling against the domination of current state integration”6 Fukuzawa was also
critical o f the Japanese Surrealists who seemed overly dependent on European models,
and disparagingly compared them to the Meiji “dilettantes” who were obsessed with
Westernization (Linhartova 209)
As Arima points out, the Japanese proletarian arts movements experienced
“increasingly ruthless government persecution,” such that most proletarian writers were
“fatally censored and cut,” while such journals as Senki were often prohibited from public
sale (208). In 1933, a dramatic performance by the Japanese Proletarian Cultural
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Federation League which aired on the radio, prompted a warning to be issued by the
Communications Ministry to radio programmers, which stated:
On broadcast content, regardless o f whether the show is a lecture, news,
fine art, or whatever, you are of course to eliminate anything which
introduces an extreme “ism” theory, movement or actual deed related to
the national polity, political system, the economy, morals, as well as
anything which aids or abets related groups and their members.
Furthermore, even when it comes to indirect terminology and clever
phrasing which at first glance does not seem related to such matters, you
must strictly avoid anything feared to foment an atmosphere that would
lead to infer such things...7
One noteworthy feature o f proletarian literature was its unflattering descriptions
o f the military. Kobayashi Takiji’s Kani kosen [Cannery Boat] (1929), for example,
highlighted the anti-labor ideology endemic to the military, which in the novel, “brutally
crushes a strike” (Ienaga 17). In 1933, Kobayahsi Takiji was tortured to death by police.
The Peace Preservation Law was increasingly employed to justify the arrests and torture
of prominent liberal journalists (Rubin 1985,229). Five months after Kobyashi’s death,
the joint statement o f tenko by Sano Manabu and Mabeyama Sadachika—the former
leaders o f the Japanese Communist Party—inspired a wave o f party conversions, with
548 announcing such intentions within one month, thus, effectively ending any form of
Communist resistance (Tsurumi 47). As Hoston notes, conversion assumed one of two
characteristic traits: the renunciation o f the Japanese Communist Party and its
subordination to Soviet and Comintern leadership; or, renunciation o f Marxism combined
with a return to indigenous philosophical and religious traditions like Buddhism or the
kokutai (1990,169). What is noteworthy about the conversions o f Sano and Mabeyama
was that they basically legitimated the dominant features o f Showa ideology that the
Communist Party had been so vocally opposed to, including Japanese racial supremacy
and the Emperor system. They also added that any social Revolution in Japan would
have to be carried out under the leadership of the Imperial Household, and that it should
be based on “one-nation socialism,” rather than an “international socialism” (47). This
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selective absorption o f Socialist ideology within the parameters o f the Emperor system
represents the Japanese variation on the absorption of a quasi Socialism in Nazi ideology.
To Mitchell, the tenko solution was an “ingenious” administrative solution by
which the Justice Ministry could keep political dissidents in a sort o f legal limbo at
protection and supervision centers—twenty-two of which had been established by 1936.
Consistent with the national polity, the Chief of the Protection Division announced that
tenko would adhere to a “father and mother type of policy” to control thought crimes,
whereby the “thought offender” would be awakened to the “fact o f being Japanese, put
his ideas into daily practice, fully accept and understand the concept of the kokutai, and
discard the unassimilable positions of Western culture” (1976,137-8).
In “Jihitsu nenpu,” [Chronology of My Own Hand], the Surrealist poet Takiguchi
Shuzo recorded the details o f his nine-month imprisonment thusly:
I was investigated about once a week. The center of the investigation lay
on the single point of whether or not the Surrealist movement had any
connection with Communism (of course, without basis). Among my
handwritten texts a correspondence with Breton was found, and I was
intensely pursued on this. In the summer [of 1941] I was put under
prosecutorial detention and reinvestigated, but the argumentation got a bit
more on track, and I could see a perplexed look on the young prosecutor
as the give and take got confused when we mentioned the relation between
£
real politics and the essential theory of Surrealism.
Fukuzawa, who spent nine months in jail in 1941, was also forced to undergo tenko. His
commentary for the catalogue o f the “Second Art Culture Association Exhibition”
presented by the government in 1943 is revealing in regard to the military bureaucracy’s
aversion to avant-gardism:
Shure [Surrealism] is—as the authorities fear—tinged with Communism,
and it goes without saying that this thought is incompatible with our
country today. Thus, Shure must not be carried out. I think there is no
one who will use this ideology for education in Communism, but with the
logic o f Breton it is possible that exploration o f the psychological domain
o f Shure will serve the ‘left wing.’9
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By 1937, Japanese authorities had mostly silenced Marxist political and social criticism,
and turned their attention to all types o f literature, including that which was devoid of
overtly ideological content. Inaga notes that new targets ranged from “mere love stories
irrelevant to the current emergency” to the “classics of the feudal periods o f antiquity,”
including Noh chants (Inaga 105).
Similarly, in their attacks on Expressionism and Dada, the Nazis reiterated the social
critique espoused by the artists associated with those very movements, although
augmented by new sociocultural imperatives. Epstein maintains that the fear o f the
German bourgeoisie about the rise of international Communism, with its “elaborate
organization, ideology and mass appeal in the aftermath of World War I,” led to the
embrace of National Socialism as a counter-ideology (6). Griffin notes that the
construction o f a “post-liberal and anti-Marxist ‘new man’ imbued with the vitalistic,
heroic ethic,” is what most typified Nazi propaganda, which specifically targeted the
“decadence encouraged by a ‘materialistic’ liberal or socialist society” (17). Summing
up the perceived and actual affiliations between the avant-garde and Communism,
Rumold points to the “counter-revolutionary” cultural forces that the Nazis believed they
had to eliminate early on:
The very negative reception of [the Dadaists] event-related texts and
sketches at the hands o f the authorities implied that obvious political
revolutionary advantage was gained: most crucially, the targeted
recipients, the masses, were reached by such spectacular happenings as
those highly publicized trials which Bertolt Brecht, with his killer instinct
for publicity, planned to exploit for his Lehrstuck stage. Similarly, the
Malik press's hit and run distribution method of Grosz’s illustrated
pamphlets on the street comers of Berlin constituted a form of
convergence o f political art and political life. In this dynamic process,
constituted by text and the political context, art indeed became a
“weapon.” (485)
Although Nazi arts policies were multivalent, the chief tenets were that art must be part
of the community and should be rooted in the racial “realities” of Germany (Grosshans
28). Since Hitler had declared that Dada and other movements had nothing to do with the
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German race, the cosmopolitanism of the avant-garde was among its features that was
called into question. Underlying this criticism was the concept o f kulturbolshevismus,
which referred not only to the Russian Revolution, but, to the “alarm and animosity
aroused by this new threat to the values and institutions” of German culture (62-3). Dada
seemed to embody the two main tenets of cultural bolshevism: its association with
Communist ideology, and its aversion to the German cultural heritage. That Dada was
subject to vilification a full decade after the movement had expired suggests neither its
political neutrality, nor its social inefficacy, but that its potential as a revolutionary force
had been emblazoned in the minds o f the German public and authorities alike.
5.3 The Assimilation o f the Avant-Garde into Fascist,

Military and Wartime Propaganda
It has been suggested throughout this dissertation that prewar authoritarian

politics assimilated the techniques, discourses and forms of avant-garde art and
performance. Crucually, where the avant-garde failed to liquidate aesthetic autonomy,
German and Japanese fascist cultural policies succeeded, albeit temporarily, in the
process o f restructuring arts and cultural institutions at the service o f the state. That the
central feature o f both the avant-garde project and German and Japanese fascism was the
abolition o f aesthetic autonomy provides entree into considerations o f how fascism
subsumed and modified the practices and discourses o f the avant-garde to fit new social
and political initiatives.
In Bdrger’s theory, the “productive and distributive apparatus” of the institution
o f art is inextricably bound to the “ideas about art that prevail at a given time and
determine the reception o f works” (1984,53). As has been discussed, the transformation
or abolition of these institutions was common to both Dada and Mavo. If Burger’s
judgment is accurate, and the avant-garde called attention to the institutional apparatuses
o f art for the first time in Western art history, then the bureaucratization of art and culture
under the Nazis is relatable to the historical avant-garde project. Certainly the Nazi
cultural agenda incorporated key elements o f the avant-garde critique of art in the
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broadside against the productive and distributive apparatuses of art in the Weimar era. In
fact, the Nazis reiterated the critique of bourgeois autonomous art first and most radically
articulated by the avant-garde, a phenomenon equally true in Japan. However, though
there are similarities in regard to the construction o f authoritarian cultural policies in
interwar Germany and Japan, certain qualifications apply, of which anti-Western
discourse has emerged as the most significant.
Under the Nazis, since art could have no justification other than to re-articulate
party goals, autonomous art was categorically abolished. In that art was supposed to
articulate the “collective dreams” o f the people, the Nazis stressed collective patterns in
reception. This was also a goal of the historical avant-garde, which sought to sublate art
and life praxis in the receptive act. Unlike the avant-garde, however, the Nazis retained
the model of artistic genius by sponsoring artists willing to subordinate their creativity to
political dictates. This does not mean, however, that Nazi aesthetics privileged either
autonomy or subjectivism in artistic production: Hitler could not accept any argument
that art was a realm unto itself and governed by its own laws. Instead, the party platform
stipulated that art was to be a part o f the national community, rooted in the German race,
and thus, at the service of the state. The artist, therefore, could not be an “alienated
individual separated from his people and from their history” (Grosshans 28).
Goebbels’ avowed goal to “bring art to the people” echoed the avant-gardists’
intention to conflate art and life, as well as their critique on autonomy. In the Nazi
cultural program, art produced by minority and (by then) marginalized avant-garde
groups, was to be replaced by the kinds o f art that the majority could understand—an
agenda which harkens back to the avant-garde’s anti-academicism. It must also be
remembered, however, that the “minority” producing avant-garde and modem art in
Germany also comprised Jews, homosexuals and known Communists (von Saldem 317).
A key goal o f art for the Nazis was to promote a national identity. To Griffin, a
defining characteristic o f historical fascism was the promotion o f an “elitist” form of
populist nationalism. In both Germany and Italy, the vision o f a new state and leadership
entailed the proliferation o f a revolutionary ideology, wherein a new political and
economic order would be perceived as having arisen from the will o f the people, and not
from the actions of a monopoly party (16). Configurations o f German nationalism, which
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became increasingly dominant from the nineteenth century onwards, had a common basis
in the theory o f Herder, who put forward the idea o f the “volk” as the basis o f a
hierarchic, but classless national body (Harrison 20). As Pois notes, official Nazi art,
rather than merely embodying the “dynamic movements of the ‘Volksgeist,’” limited
itself to “portraying contented burghers, military victories and pseudo-Bruegel landscapes
fixated in a secure, serene world, such as had been conspicuously formulated by the
Naturalist painters of the late nineteenth century” (22).
In Biirger’s reconfiguration o f Western art history after the middle ages, collective
modes o f reception are characteristic of courtly-authoritarian art, the historical avant-
garde, and, it must be added, art under totalitarianism. In regard to collective modes of
reception under fascism, both heroic-folkish realism in Germany and the spectacles of
German and Italian fascism were geared to the masses as a tool of affirmation, whereby
the cultural bureaucracies justified extreme nationalism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and
the regulation of everyday life. Stollman notes, however, that the “introduction of the
aesthetic realm into public and private life broke the aesthetic monopoly o f art only in a
formal way,” since “the socially alienated conditions to which the monopoly owed its
existence remained in force” (52). This is because the German fascists knew how to
transfer collective drives into an “aesthetic-socialistic illusion which worked to cover up
the real causes of economic and psychic misery” and “could even push for their
continuation” (51).
The construction of a folk culture was advantageous to the Nazis in that they
could exclude groups who were not a part of the Aryan majority. Towards this end, they
drew upon a host o f pseudo-scientific art theories at the service o f the alleged supremacy
o f German art. Perhaps the most influential of these was the theory of Hans Guenther,
who attempted to prove that the style and value o f a work of art was pre-determined by
the race o f the artist. Such reasoning, whereby “art becomes nothing but a
representational reflection o f the image of man” represents, in Lehmann-Haupt’s
estimation, both the “final stage o f aesthetic materialism” and “the ultimate consequence
o f academic naturalism,” both o f which became foundational to the Nazis’ “basic denial
o f the autonomy o f art” (38).
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Huelsenbeck observed that the hostility o f the European dictators to Dada was due
to the fact that “abstract, problem-ridden, experimental art is useless for propaganda
purposes, either in domestic or foreign policies” (173). He also noted that this hostility
was directed towards “independent thinking by the artist,” then articulated as a
propaganda device when the dictators declared their taste to be identical with that o f the
people (173). To Hitler, true German art expressed the “moving and noble dreams of
greatness” o f the German volk (Grosshans 29). Artists who could not draw upon the volk
for inspiration were silenced, as were those who advocated “the brotherhood of men,
class identification, pacifism or cosmopolitanism” (67).
In his “Order Prohibiting Masters of Ceremonies and Commentary from the
Stage” (1941), Goebbels explicitly stipulated his objection to political jokes which “offer
open or covert criticism o f politics and the economic and cultural leadership of the
Reich.” Referencing the authority provided by the Reich Chamber of Culture Law of
November 1933, Goebbels prohibited any commentary on “personalities, circumstances
or events of public life” in performance. He added that such performances, no matter how
seemingly innocuous, undermined the “indigenous characteristics o f our people’s unique
race,” and raised issues that had the potential to “needlessly inflame emotions and which
are of subordinate significance to the carrying out of the war” (Senelick 1993,281). In
the inaugural speech for the “Great Exhibition of German Art” in Munich, Hitler seized
upon the opportunity to propagate anti-Semitism, and alleged that Judaism had taken
“possession of those means and institutions of communication which form, and thus
finally rule over public opinion” (Chipp 476). To Hitler, this was accomplished in the
press “with the help o f so-called art criticism” which served to confuse the “natural
concepts about the nature and scope o f art as well as its goals, but above all in
undermining and destroying the general wholesome feeling in this domain” (476).
Furthermore, “works o f art which cannot be understood in themselves but, for the
justification o f their existence, need those bombastic instructions for their use... will no
longer find their way to the German people” (479-80).
In contrast to the construction o f an elaborate National Socialist ideology upon
which social life and institutions were reconfigured, Martin argues that the Japanese
military bureaucrats did not have to create institutions for the express purpose o f
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establishing a “folkish community” as much as strengthened traditional social patterns,

with the active support of the population. In this regard, eliminating “Western ideas of
the individual’s responsibility” was essential to the wartime agenda, but also,
“comparatively easy” (148). The legislative ground upon which such policies were
carried out was the establishment of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association of 1940,
which “rejected the Western model o f political parties,” and entrusted the nation to the
“paternal care o f the divine Emperor,” which was better-suited to patriarchal social
patterns (148). Along these lines, Martin points out that the strict pre-modem partition of
woman’s roles that had largely been obliterated after World War I in Germany had to be
“artificially restored” under the Nazis, whereas in Japan, the “female role as servant” had
never been seriously questioned. This was galvanized by the Family House Law, which
stipulated that women remained legally “under the tutelage of the respective male head of
the household” (151).
As Ivy notes, the reification o f a Japanese folkloric tradition in Japan replicated
patterns of modem cultural nationalisms throughout the world. (1995,73). It also
represents the Japanese variant of Griffin’s concept of an “elitist” populist nationalism.
The Japanese folk-art movement, which had been popularized largely by the efforts of
Yanagi Soetsu in the 1920s, had become a full-fledged sociocultural force in the next
decade. Harkening back to traditional Japanese handicrafts, which as Kawakita notes,
were “so closely connected with daily life that they have a built-in conservatism,” the
proponents of the folk art movement exalted the beauty of craft objects that had long
been common to the lower classes (132). Kawakita adds that through Yanagi’s
advocacy, a theory of folk art developed that became “a kind o f philosophy, if not a
religion” (132). Two results o f this new cultural forces was a greater social recognition
o f the beauty to be found in everyday objects, and the cultural value that “it was in the
unsophisticated folk arts that he true tradition o f the Japanese people had been preserved”
(133). In a similar vein, Keene has observed that, coerced or not, former proletarian
writers and critics were able to shift their ideological commitments towards militarism
with surprising ease. The study o f folk literature, for example, served to bolster claims of
the superiority o f the Japanese race “in the right-wing manner, or to demonstrate that the
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common people had literary traditions even more important than those of the aristocrats”
(Keene 1984,580).
With the suppression o f Communism and the severe restrictions on most
intellectual liberties, scholarly controversies were confined to academic secrecy. As
Arima notes, while Marxist intellectuals found sanctuary in the academy, others “tried to
find their literary rehabilitation in various projects ranging from nihilism to enthusiastic
nationalism” (209). While the conversions o f noteworthy proletarian authors and
Communist party leaders dealt a deathblow to the Japanese Communist Party, any
evaluation o f prewar Marxism must take into account the fact that many Communists
switched from the vanguard left to the far right, attributed by Martin to a “lack of moral
and psychological resistance against conversion,” and a “fatal inability to develop an
effective anti-war movement involving mass participation” (1976,122).
The Japanese equivalent of the race doctrine took two distinct forms in the
military bureaucratic cultural policies and war propaganda. The first was anti-Chinese
propaganda, and the second (and by far more prevalent) form was anti-Western
discourse. One o f the earliest theatrical manifestations in regard to the former occurred
in 1932, when the military authorities approached Mayama Seika about dramatizing the
life o f a famous Japanese general, who, having been defeated and held captive by the
Chinese army, returned to the site o f his defeat and killed himself. Mayama’s Kuga
Shosa [Major Kuga] premiered in November 1932, and is a “definitive exposition of
martial values” at a time when the Japanese military needed publicity (B. Powell1984,
128-30). The rejection o f Western culture, though a recurrent social debate since late
Meiji, experienced a resurgence in the 1930s, manifested in a range o f cultural activities,
including the writings o f Watsuji Tetsurd, the folkloric anthropology o f Yanagada Kunio,
and the novels o f Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, all o f whom defended Japanese culture from the
“capitalist, rationalist and progressive West” (Munroe 125). The expurgation of Western
culture also affected everyday language, such as the ban on all foreign-language
instruction, and the vigorous production of Japanese neologisms to replace foreign words
for “tools, activities and sensations that contact with Western culture had brought” (Field
114). One notable exception were derivations from the German language, which were on
the upswing (Kasza 139). Interestingly, the last few issues o f Shirakaba were
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(uncharacteristically) devoted to the Japanese arts, such as stone gardens and Buddhist
temple a rt To Arima, this is significant in that, although they were “too sophisticated to
be fanatical about their own culture, the Shirakaba-ha intellectuals found in old Japan
“an oasis” in which their artistic subjectivity could “maintain its autonomy unhampered
by the trivialities o f everyday life” (125).
In 1937, the Japanese Cabinet under the leadership of Prince Konoe Fumimaro
announced plans for the promotion o f a “Spiritual Mobilization Movement,” which
incorporated various civic groups to gamer widespread public acceptance for the war.
Mitchell notes that within its first six months, the movement sponsored rallies, lectures,
radio programs, films and publications, as well as special weeks devoted to ceremonies
for the war dead and worship at shrines (162). In 1943, the Cabinet Information Bureau
banned 1000 musical compositions and decreed that American and British works could
not be performed or publicly aired. In 1944, steel guitars, banjos and ukuleles were
outlawed (Ienaga 123) In 1944, all art exhibitions were banned in Japan, with the
exception o f those organized by the Great Japan Patriotic Association [Dai-Nippon
Bijutsu Hokoku-kai], which complemented its policy o f banning abstract painting.
In response to criticism leveled at the avant-garde’s inefficacy at stimulating real
political change, Foster frames the avant-garde’s relation to textuality as follows: “the
avant-garde was not so concerned with the text of the culture” with which they are often
“wrongly assumed to be in competition,” as much as they were concerned with the
“culture o f the text” (Foster 321). What most characterizes avant-garde production in all
o f its forms was the examination o f culture, specifically the ways that texts carried with
them the concepts of culture, rather than the things and events that the text addressed as
its subjects. Specifically, as the larger cultural context construed communication formats
in ways that shaped and communicated ideology, the avant-garde followed suit, while
leveling a critique o f what they perceived to be society’s abuses of the cultural power of
the text (323). As Milman notes, it was within the context o f their own reviews and
periodicals that the avant-gardists were able to build a “visual vocabulary” that mirrored
their ideological goals, at the same time that they strengthened “the myth o f the avant-
garde,” specifically the avant-gardist communal sense o f self (361).
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Guth notes that among the Japanese avant-gardists, the Mavoists employed and
incorporated the forms o f mass media communication, such as newspapers, magazines
and photography—all of which threatened to subvert the government’s aims o f
maintaining and legitimating the existing hierarchy o f national culture. By highlighting
“social tensions” that “fueled reactionary appeals to reinstate traditional moral values,”
Murayama, for example, alternately celebrated, exploited, and incorporated a critique of
the objects o f the industrial age by investing them with the power and social significance
of art (20). Departing from his Soviet couterparts, Murayama believed that by
aestheticizing the objects common to everyday life, particularly through collective
production, his “conscious constructivism” would eradicate bourgeois art and culture in
the service o f revolution. While Murayama came to realize the limitations of this
position especially in his proletarian theatre phase, it is significant that his version of
Constructivism adhered to the goal of abolishing bourgeois society in preparation for a
revolution. The Western avant-gardists, particularly the Dadaists and Surrealists, shared
similar goals. What is interesting is that these endeavors were, at least discursively
fundamental to the wartime propaganda in Germany, Japan, and Russia as well. As Cole
notes, in purporting to be movements of the masses, fascism and Soviet Communism
exploited the “supposedly eternal values of high culture,” which had been deployed
throughout history to legitimate power and privilege. Without jettisoning the high status
o f traditional art, Japanese and German fascism, as well as totalitarian Communism,
adopted strategies that merged art and mass culture through two related strategies: first,
the “mass reproduction o f paintings and sculptures in films, posters, postcards, ads and
magazines, which shift the site of reception and confer a sense of common ownership
over the image,” and second, through the “stylistic adaptation of art to the visual codes o f
popular culture” (60-1).
In prewar Germany, the art and literature o f the reactionary modernists,
particularly those who were to become active in Nazi cultural production, have curious
parallels to the German avant-gardists, at least in terms o f form, if not content. Huppauf
notes that Grosz’s portraits o f man as a “stylized and technicized figure,” and the
Dadaists’ portrait o f man as a “depersonalized function in a technological environment”
prefigured the wartime propaganda that presented the German warrior as a product o f
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technological forces. This “functional being,” who was “artificially created” and
reflected a technological world beyond emotion an meaning” was replicated by the
Futurists, Constructivists, Dadaists, and Mavoists alike. Grosz’s portraits o f man as a
victim o f technologized experience and the Mavoists’ collages and stage personae o f a
depersonalized beings, however, while relatable to imagery in war propaganda, were not
constituted in the context o f the glorification of militarism and self-sacrifice.
Huppauf notes that two National Socialist myths o f Germanic heroism were
reconstructed from World War I: the battles near Langemarck (1914) and at Verdun
(1916). The battle o f Verdun, which was fought over a period of eight months, yielded
over eight hundred thousand war casualties. In the 1920s, Verdun had already proven
itself a potent subject for art and literature. Part of its appeal was that it was connected to
the fascination with the age o f modem technology, thus making it particularly useful to
the Nazis’ presentation of man as “raw material in need o f being shaped by the highly
organized, moral and merciless warfare of the age of modem technology” (46). This
myth found its way into the books o f Ernst Junger (a former Expressionist), who glorified
the highly structured, mathematical and scientific principles underlying technological
warfare. Both of these battles also came to symbolize the heroic spirit of the German
military, which in turn became a favorite subject for official National Socialist art and
iconography. One key image, the steel helmet, evoked the determination, fighting spirit,
and heroism that the party wished to instill in the minds o f the German public,
surrounded as it was by an “aura o f mixed admiration and fear” (69).
To these examples must be added the actual participation o f avant-garde
personalities in the cultural projects initiated or sponsored under German and Japanese
fascism. In both countries, avant-gardists were conscripted into producing war art and
literature, serving as high-profile exemplars of the legitimacy of the new cultural
imperatives. Even though doctrinally opposed to the avant-garde from 1932 onwards,
Goebbels actively pursued avant-garde artists and writers to create Nazi art (20).
Gottfried Benn, who attained fame as an Expressionist poet, was welcomed to the party
even as Hitler was denouncing Expressionism as a prop o f cultural bolshevism (20).
Clement Greenberg attributed this to Goebbels’ recognition o f the prestige-value of
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certain segments o f the German avant-garde for cultivated Germans, which he felt could
be deployed to party advantage (20).
The link between Romanticism and Expressionism has led some scholars to draw
parallels between Expressionism and National Socialism. Myers notes that
Expressionism and Nazism alike played in to social concerns regarding the loss of
personal identity, millenarianism, and mystical ideas in general. However, the
Expressionists did not espouse the “volkish” ideas so prominent in Romanticism, which
the Nazis reified as an aesthetic mandate, however false such claims proved to be (283).
Also, whereas Expressionism was concerned with religion and human suffering, National
Socialist arts and cultural policies demanded that art integrate society and reflect the
“simple and unsophisticated relationship to every aspect o f the life o f the ‘Volk’;
particularly as this life represented the unfolding of the collective subconscious into
concrete forms, patterns and relationships” (Pois 205-6). Granted, as Cole notes, that not
only do some Expressionist writings contain “fiercely nationalistic” sentiments, but their
biases towards physical sensations and passion over the intellect is similar to the Nazi’s
“cult of action” (62). Also like the Expressionists, the Nazis rejected both Impressionism
and Naturalism as being too intellectual and positivistic; although they shared the
emphasis on will to create (Pois 207). However, while the Expressionists tended
towards deformation and incorporated so-called ‘primitivist’ forms, the Nazis’
glorification of the volkish, by contrast, concentrated on the rustic, mythological and the
didactic, thus making Expressionism a perfect target for the Nazis’ subsequent charge of
“degeneracy” (Cole 63).
The Dadaists’ critique o f Expressionism, which attacked its commodity status and
its glorification o f individual subjectivity was reiterated by the Nazis in the “Degenerate
Art Exhibition” o f 1937. An analysis of the specific artworks selected for this exhibition
reveals that the Nazis displayed relatively few works by artists associated with the radical
left Selz notes this was perhaps due to the fact that the “icy realism” o f their political
work rendered their “visual messages...too clear and too revealing”; by contrast those
artists who had chosen to subjectify reality were most on view (111). Also, one might
consider the preponderance o f Expressionist and abstract works over the equally
significant and even more overtly oppositional Neue Sachlichkeit art as a sign that
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heroic-folkish realism had at least part o f its basis in the aesthetic and ideological strains
o f new realist art and literature. The disparaging wall text that appeared side-by-side the
mixed-media collages by Schwitters—who had four works included—contained the
following commentary attributed to Paul Schmidt, the former director o f the Dresden
Stadtmuseum:
Merz drawings by Schwitters? Merz poems by Schwitters? Fifteen of
each, always with a poem on the left and a drawing on the right. And both
meaningless. Printed words in lines of different lengths, and those are
supposed to be poems. Words stamped all over notepaper and childish
drawings o f coffee grinders, houses, and wheels, and those are supposed to
be drawings...Now if anyone asks me what all this is supposed to mean I
can only laugh in his face, along with the poet and painter himself...Art is
not there to be “understood”; Merz poems are not for professors of
philology. Dada—yes, Dada—is there for joining in, for laughing at
yourself and the world at large, for being a happy dope. If you don’t feel
it, you won’t ever get it. To think that someone has the courage to kid
around in art! A slap in the face to meaning and gravity! To Kurt
Schwitters—many thanks.10
Interestingly, the author o f the wall text employs a common-sense rhetoric coupled with
humor that could be easily understood by the lay spectator. What is ironic, o f course, is
that Schmidt’s commentary was itself pulled out of context so that it in the overall
presentation, both his and Schwitters’ work are condemned for their failure to take the
“meaning and gravity” o f art seriously. On some levels, the entire exhibition was
constructed in a montage-like, and by all accounts, almost haphazard arrangement o f
works, whereby artworks were juxtaposed with wall texts, banners, slogans, and
polemical commentaries that bear striking similarities to the Dada exhibitions. In four
months the showing attracted over two million visitors and became a traveling roadshow
in Berlin and other German cities, thus, ironically, providing the avant-gardists with
wider exposure than they ever had during the height o f their activities and all o f the years
in between.
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Despite the aesthetic innovativeness o f developing the techniques of collage,

montage, and performance, Graver notes that what most distinguished the historical
avant-garde from high modernism, were that avant-garde techniques could accommodate
a range o f “anti-aesthetic, disturbing, selfconsuming, and anarchistic elements” that
operated in the artwork as both an “aestheticized subject,” but also as a contaminant of
the aesthetic nature o f work (210-11). Aside from Graver’s highly significant assertion
that the historical avant-garde developed “performance” as a technique, a critical posture,
and a discrete theatrical field distinct from traditional, bourgeois and high modernist
theatre, his identification of a critical pose in avant-garde performance has several
implications regarding subsequent manifestations in Germany and Japan. In this regard,
Hewitt categorizes these convergences between an avant-garde “poetics of performance”
and the fascist theatricalization o f power as the “virtual form” of fascist politics.
Defining features of both—the privileging o f “performance over the finished art object,”
the coalescing o f the spectator’s consciousness with the performance, and the
incorporation and celebration of technology—all serve to bridge avant-garde aesthetics
and fascist spectacle. For example, fascist theatricality was dependent upon the
technologies of the mass media, such as the public address system, on its simultaneous
transmission on the radio, and through its ultimate aestheticization by way of cinematic
newsreels and documentaries. Cole notes that in Germany, huge architectural spaces
were built that combined the design elements of sports stadiums and the sets of
Hollywood musicals, upon which rallies and spectacles were devised under the ideal of
the gesamtkunstwerke, in which drama, choreography, music, and architecture blend into
a total experience (50).
In a similar vein, Silverberg notes that sensitivity to form became a central
ingredient o f Japanese propaganda, especially concerning the divinity o f the Emperor.
From the outset, the campaign to promote the installation of the Showa Emperor included
an extensively photographed world tour of his in 1921, and his presentation as “one of the
glamorous males” in magazines that appealed to female readers (1993,130). She adds
that for the Japanese censors, form became as important as content in the regulation of
mass culture. Radio broadcasters, for example, were told to modulate their voice and
delivery by adopting a “coldly neutral” tone, at the same time that they were not to use
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terms such as “extremely” or “absolutely” in regard to any topic, politically-charged or

not (128). Popular songs intoned in an overly erotic style were also banned, as were
comedic films such as the Keystone Cops, because they eroded the public’s respect for
the police (128-9).
Cole observes that images o f the body in fascist art, which typically asserted
strength, vigor, and aggressive alertness, metaphorized the model of the state wherein
each part operates harmoniously, but not equally: “as the head has power over the limbs,
so the government has power over the people” (71). This tendency characterizes war art
in Germany, Italy and Japan. Another predominant theme in fascist iconography was its
reference of medieval feudal images, particularly in constructing an imagined era of
social harmony. In the architecture o f the Third Reich, medievalism can be located in the
“recurrence o f vernacular half-timbered buildings” (Cole 57). Similarly in Japan,
religion and politics were “fully fused” and often expressed in medieval themes. In 1924,
the Japanese Kokuhonsha organization was founded to propagate the racial supremacy of
Japan in the Pacific, expressed in a resurgence o f the cult of the Samurai warrior that
permeated Japanese militarism (Cole 57).
As Brooker notes, the fundamental lack of an ethical code in State Shinto was
redressed as early as the Rescript on Education (1890), which fused traditional Confucian
ethical beliefs with the kokutai ideology (211). In Brooker’s estimation, this paved the
way for a future fratemalist religion in the Showa era that gave an advantage to the
Japanese military bureaucracy. This was in contrast to National Socialism, which lacked
an authentic ethical code, which had to be constructed, primarily in performative rituals
such as political rallies. In Japan, Christianity was an obvious target for suppression after
1941, because o f its Western origins and universalist beliefs, although the Churches were
persecuted only when they seemed “uncooperative and unpatriotic” (246). Furthermore,
by “showing patriotic fervor and making various compromises with the state and the
fratemalist religion,” the Christian churches were able to survive the war (246).
Meanwhile, the Great Japan Buddha Association was established in 1941, and offered its
support for the war efforts, partly as a result o f the mandates o f the Religious
Organizations Law (247).
308
Alternately, fascist iconography has been characterized by Gentile as the

“consequential expression o f a vision o f life and politics specific to a political movement
that was simultaneously a new secular religion” (58). Significantly, the fascist
aestheticization of politics was a project that was pursued with the “full consensus and
active participation o f modernist intellectuals and artists, who collaborated
enthusiastically in the construction o f the symbolic universe of fascist religion” (58).
From Futurism, the Italian fascists absorbed a “dynamic feeling o f modernity that was
expressed in the ideal o f "continual revolution” deployed to project new political
imperatives into the future o f the nation (73). Public ceremonies in Italy, such as those of
the Fascist Action squads, were choreographed with “stylized gestures and movements”
to “eternalize the war-like spirit in a military formation” (76). In 1933, Mussolini coined
the term teatro di massa (theatre o f the masses) and unveiled his plans for “a theatre with
a capacity of 15,000 to 20,000 seats” in which to present theatrical works that could “stir
great collective passions...imbued with a sense o f vivid and deep humanity” (Cavallo
114). Hitler and Mussolini also developed a repertoire o f gestures, rhetorical devices and
facial expressions, and Hitler even took lessons from an actor and set up a college to
teach effective public speaking to party members. Military rallies in Germany became
increasingly reliant upon mass-media technologies. As Cole notes, the rallies also
borrowed prior aesthetic innovations from the Weimar period, as well as Richard
Wagner’s ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerke, in which drama, chorus, music and architecture
blended into a total experience” (50). As Stollman notes, the Nazi’s aestheticization of
politics and the means by which it was to permeate social life was borne out in
celebrations, ceremonies, newly-created customs, and manufactured folklore that would
comprise a National Socialist Calendar analogous to the Christian one (43). Perhaps the
supreme manifestation o f this was the Party convention, which incorporated military
exhibitions and war games (44). By 1933, the “Thingspiel” was touted as an innovative
National Socialist Art form. The Thingspiel was a dramatic form prevalent in the early
years o f the Reich, in which plays were performed in “purpose-built amphitheatres” and
featured “ritualistic or pseudo-cultic plays” (Travers 263). Over 60,000 people were in
attendance at a 1933 Thingspiel in Berlin, which also boasted the participation o f an
estimated 176,000 SA members (Stollman 44).
309
Comparably, Maruyama locates two major features in the “psychological

structure” o f Japanese nationalistic cultural manifestations: the “tendency to symbolize
the State as the direct extension o f the primary group (family or village) in which the
individual is submerged;” and the love o f fatherland “expressed preeminently a love of
one’s native place” (144). He adds that this second feature was the Japanese version of
“tribalism,” which he considers to be foundational to nationalism (145). To Maruyama,
Nazi tribalism had to neutralize the inherent contradiction between a glorified
primitivism and the Nazis’ supreme bureaucratic-organizational structures, which they
accomplished by the construction o f a unity based on “blood and soil.” Japanese
tribalism, by contrast, had already been deeply ingrained in modem society, and was
particularly prone to hypostatization in that modem organizations and institutions no
longer performed their original functions (263-4). In response, the Japanese military-
bureaucracy formed a number of organizations designed to strengthen traditional and
anti-Western cultural expressions.
Between 1939 and 1945, the Greater Japan Arts Association [Dai Nihon Bijutsu
Hokokukai] was one of the official organizations devoted to the promotion of war art.
Among the conscripted artists was Tsuguhara Fujita, who received official rations of
painting materials in order to produce war propaganda. An established member of the
£cole de Paris, Fujita lived and worked in Paris from 1913 until his return to Japan in
1933. Although one of several hundred artists to participate in military-sponsored art
exhibitions, Fujita was singled out after the war for his complicity in the war effort, and
was banned from exhibiting his work or participating in any of the new “democratic” arts
groups, thus precipitating his emigration to the United States in 1949 (Munroe, 12). In
1939, the Japanese army sponsored exhibitions o f painters who supported the war effort
through depictions of heroic battle scenes; artists who did not comply were denied access
to materials (Guth 20). Shimizaki Toson was one o f the most famous authors to
participate in the first conference o f the Congress o f Great Asian Writers in 1943, who
led the audience in a chant o f “Long live the Emperor” at the end o f the first day (Arima
83). Other groups were also formed to support the war effort, including the Dai-Nippon
Bungaku Hokokukai [Japanese Literary Patriotic Association] and the Dai Nippon
Genron Hokokukai [Japanese Journalism Patriotic Association] (Tenaga 123). From
310
1937, there were “War Art Exhibitions,” “Holy War” Art Exhibitions” and “Greater East
Asian War” exhibitions, to which many well-known artists contributed paintings that
depicted heroism and military victories (Ienaga 123). To Sullivan, the conservatism of
Japanese painting during the Pacific War is best exemplified by the endless reproductions
o f Mount Fuji—the symbol o f the “unconquerable” Japanese spirit—by such formerly
progressive artists as Yokoyama Taikan (142).
To Btirger, the avant-garde project failed to bring about a change in life praxis
based on art, and was itself institutionalized. An intervening development, however, was
the totalitarian mandate that excluded art lacking any means-end rationality. In
Benjamin’s view, the aestheticization o f politics entailed the liquidation of autonomy not
in order that art be based in life-praxis (however much they may have argued for an art
for the people), but because art was compelled to legitimate and sustain the absolute
power o f the state. In this respect, fascism succeeded where the avant-garde project
failed, and drew upon the innovativeness of the historical avant-garde project in fulfilling
their aims. As this discussion indicates, the absorption o f avant-garde means and
discourses was an essential component of fascist cultural policies and art production in
Germany and Japan.
5.4 CONCLUSION: TRANSHISTORICAL EVALUATIONS OF THE

HISTORICAL AVANT-GARDE
One o f the chief legacies of the historical avant-garde is the lasting and
widespread effect o f the goal to transform the categories o f production and reception. In
the West, its institutionalization as a subset o f “high modernism” and as a critical
discourse, attests to the endurance o f this legacy, even as it implies that the avant-garde
failed to achieve its social and political goals. As the numerous examples throughout this
chapter suggest, however, the transformation o f production and receptive modes
intersected with the social and political spheres during the height o f avant-gardist
activity, and equally significantly, in the era o f totalitarianism. In this section I will
review continuities and varieties o f this legacy in the contemporary period.
311
It must be noted that if the Western avant-garde has been fully institutionalized
due to nearly a century o f scholarly and curatorial interest, it was only in the last couple
of decades that serious scholarly attention has been paid to the Japanese avant-garde.
Rimer notes that if by the 1930s, Western aesthetic and art historical projects were being
undertaken with greater sophistication by Japanese scholars such as Kobayashi Hideo and
Yashiro Yukio, few Japanese scholars “wrote for the general public on contemporary
avant-garde art, either European or Japanese,” which was seen as the “province of
journalists” (1987 63). As a result, “there remains virtually nothing in the way of any
synthetic analysis of modem Japanese art between the wars,” which may also be
attributed to the fact that the “teaching of art history in Japan was based...on the German
model, which tended to stress classical principles rather than modem trends” (63). As
recently as 1994, Munroe asserted “a comprehensive historical narrative and critical
context for the advanced study o f twentieth century art [in Japan] has yet to be
established” (20). In fact, Omuka Toshiharu’s pioneering studies regarding the Japanese
avant-garde and his detailed efforts at constructing a historical narrative has contributed
much to understanding the contours, personalities, and activities associated with a host of
Western-derived and indigenous avant-garde developments prior to the war.
Nevertheless, there continues to exist a noticeable dearth o f Western scholarship devoted
to the Japanese avant-garde even in surveys of its international manifestations. The long
history o f this oversight has been replicated in Western curatorial practices.
The institutionalization o f the Japanese avant-garde on theoretical, if not
altogether practical levels, can be attributed partially to the radical artists of the 1960s,
who claimed the prewar avant-gardists as their aesthetic and ideological precursors. In
the midst o f the student protests o f the mid-1960s, for example, one o f the first
exhibitions o f 1920s art was presented at the Tokyo Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, entitled
“Zen’ei kaiga no senkushatachi” [The Pioneers o f Avant-Garde Painting] (1965). Amano
has noted that Japanese modem art from the Meiji period up until sometime in the
postwar era has been comparatively ignored in the context o f Japanese art history as a
whole. This has also affected evaluations o f postwar art, due mainly to “conflicting
interpretations o f Japanese modernism,” and because prewar art and modernism have
“barely been assessed” (70). Along these lines, Munroe notes that scholarly assessments
312
o f the postwar Gutai as Japan’s “first avant-garde movement” can be viewed as part of a
“national revisionist effort to establish a history o f Japanese modernism independent
from the Euro-American narrative” (Munroe 81).
Shigeo, however, posits direct continuities in the visual arts of the pre and
postwar periods that he breaks down into three categories (58-60). To the first category
belong the “pioneer avant-garde movements” of the 1920s and 1930s: the Taisho-period
avant-garde influenced by Russian Futurism and Dada, and the postwar period avant-
garde influenced by Surrealism, Constructivism, and abstract art. The second period,
which harkens back to the indigenous avant-garde (thus also straddling the pre- and
postwar era), is exemplified by the Gutai11 and Neo-dada movements,12which were the
direct antecedents of the conceptual and Mono-ha artists of the 1960s.13 The final
important period began in the late 1970s. As in the West in the 1960s, the art and
ideology o f the prewar Japanese avant-gardists became a theoretical matrix upon which
historical aesthetic debates concerning the integration o f art and life and the eradication
aesthetic autonomy were revived.
Weisenfeld speculates that the impulse to link postwar anti-authoritarianism with
the prewar avant-garde was fueled by a desire to identify democratic propensities and the
roots of social criticism to counter deterministic explanations regarding Japan’s military
aggression (1997,13). It must be noted, however, that much postwar scholarship
regarding prewar cultural production tends to be less favorable, either through pejorative
linkages between the avant-garde and Westernizing trends, or through determinations of
the social and political inefficacy of the avant-gardists (and other intellectual, artistic and
literary groupings) to communicate otherwise laudable social doctrines to Japanese
masses. Such tendencies are also correlative with trends in Western scholarship that
indict prewar cultural and social movements for failing to counteract the rise o f fascism.
Contemporary Japanese scholarship has also not looked favorably on the legacy
o f prewar proletarian art and criticism. Maruyama Shizuka, for example, locates in the
literary criticism o f Kurohara Korehito, the exaltation of the Western canon of Naturalist
writers at the complete exclusion o f the Japanese modem literary classics. To Arima,
Kurohara’s blind-sightedness reveals that the Japanese Marxists were, in the final
analysis, “intellectually and even emotionally better trained in the history o f the West
313
than in their own,” thus further explaining their failure to effectively communicate with
the Japanese masses (209). Similarly, the realism of Kubo Sakae’s Land o f the Volcanic
Asht which in its time was lauded as an attempt to combat the rising tide o f ultra-
nationalism, by the 1960s had become, even for leftist critics, emblematic of Stalinist
dogma (Goodman 1988,8). At the base o f all such arguments, however, is the
implication of the baleful influence o f Westernization as a cultural force in the prewar
period.
In regard to summary judgments regarding Japan’s prewar political history,
Maruyama notes that while the conclusions o f Western political science may be abstract,
“behind them lie several centuries o f historical developments in European politics,”
which leads him to caution against their application to “understanding and analyzing the
hard facts of Japanese political development” (231). Many scholars of prewar Japanese
culture have heeded this warning. For instance, although he denies the validity o f the
label “avant-garde” because of its origins in Western critical discourse, Inaga notes that
the fate of the Japanese visual artists associated with such prewar movements was
marked by several paradoxes regarding their reception at home and abroad. He points
out that in the Western art world, these artists were recognized only when they played up
their “Japaneity” since they were called upon to “represent the Japanese people” despite
the fact that many had rejected Japanese forms. In Japan, meanwhile, they were
recognized as being international inasmuch as they “affected to have freed themselves
from Japan.” For Inaga, this “tragic” situation reveals a brand of “two-faced
opportunism” in which recognition could only be achieved internationally and
domestically through acts o f “cultural betrayal” (71). While Inaga does not single-out
particular artists, his argument is compelling for a number of reasons. While it serves his
main argument that formulations o f the Japanese avant-garde are paradoxical because the
implicit association with Western categories precludes the possibility for originality or
innovativeness, Inaga also argues for the inclusion into the canon of the avant-garde a
number o f Japanese cultural formations that were not beholden to Western influence,
specifically, flower arranging, the Popular Crafts Movment [mingei-undoj, creative
engraving [Sosaku hanga], and in the postwar period, Japanese architecture. The Popular
Craft Movement in particular, “sought to question the typically Western distinction
314
between high and low art” without modeling itself on Western forms (72). By the same
token, it conforms to the avant-garde project in its rejection of the artistic genius (since it
was created by “anonymous and innocent artisans”), and also its inversion of the scale of
aesthetic values in the focus on everyday life objects.
Inaga’s formulation, however, does not recognize either the rejection of Western
influence by many o f the Japanese avant-gardists, nor to the indictment of
institutionalized Western forms in Japanese cultural production, which were already
apparent by the late Meiji era. Additionally, it appears significant that Inaga calls upon
the Japanese folklore movement, which had been deployed most actively by the military
bureaucracy to reify the “supremacy” of Japanese folk production. In both cases, Inage
re-deploys Japanese avant-garde discourse (and anti-avant-garde discourse) towards a
critique o f an over-reliance on Western forms and critical classifications. That this aim is
not without ideological implications corroborates the fact that avant-garde discourse can
be reinterpreted towards sociopolitical ends well beyond their originary impulses. It is
for these reasons that Omuka, for one, prefers the more expansive term, shinko geijutsu
undo [new art movement] to designate the cluster o f experimental art movements of the
1920s, including the Futurist Art Association, Action, Mavo, and Sanka.
Such political valences are no less characteristic of Western avant-garde
scholarship and theory in the postwar period. One of the predominant strains of historical
analysis o f prewar intellectual and artistic production was the failure of the concerted
efforts of even the most committed groups o f artists to prevent the rise o f militarism,
imperialist expansionism, ultra-nationalism and racial prejudice. This strain of thought
has long co-existed with equally dominant strains o f scholarship that have asserted
linkages between modernism and fascism, or which has documented the the participation
o f leading intellectuals in war efforts. In regard to Germany, for example, many Western
scholars hold a divided liberal left responsible for the emergence o f National Socialism.
Similarly, in Japanese scholarship, a dominant strain o f historical cultural analysis
maintains the failure o f intellectuals to legitimate liberal, democratic propensities in the
face o f military dominance over social and political life.
What such theories sidestep, however, are the nuances o f gradated sociocultural
transformations, and the relative impotence o f intellectuals and artists in the face of
315
hostile legislation, police brutality, and an indifferent public. Arima’s assertion that the
“anarchist-artists” associated with Japanese Futurism were unable to transform either
their social or aesthetic goals into social and political forces represents one such
accusation. At the opposite end o f the cultural spectrum, Arima points out that as
influential as the Shirakaba-ha may have been in the Taisho era—with their
internationalism and aversion to fanaticism—they too were ultimately unable to provide
an effective voice o f dissent to xenophobic nationalism (100). Even though noteworthy
intellectuals such as Nagayo Yoshiro and Satomi Jun were against the war, Arima
attributes their failure to mount an “effective opposition” on the grounds that their
reactions to the social situation was “more impressionistic rather than analytical” (126).
Arima also points out that contemporary scholars14 indict the Shirakaba-ha’s inefficacy
on four main charges: anti-mass elitism, the high cult of aesthetic experience, the
consciousness o f tradition, and the low appreciation of scientism in humanism and social
behavior—all o f which become markers of prewar Japanese intellectual conservatism
(126). His judgment on the “stunning inability o f the Shirakaba-ha to translate their
ideals into social action” appears less stunning, however, when considering that their
aestheticist leanings axiomatically separated culture from the social and political realms.
In response to such paradoxes, many scholars have proposed alternate views of
the historical avant-garde that go beyond such classifications as “revolutionary” or
“reactionary.” Allen Greenberg notes, for example, that the Dadaists’ sociopolitical
idealism manifested in their quest for a spiritual and psychological revolution would have
entailed social and political changes o f such magnitude as to have been unrealizable
within the bounds o f even the most utopian-minded o f social systems (85). Huelsenbeck
substantiates this view in his characterization of Dadaist artists as “eternal
revolutionaries” (52). Greenberg adds, however, that the truly revolutionary propensity
o f the Dadaists may well have resided precisely in their aesthetic and political
ambiguousness such that the inherent “indefinability” o f their sociopolitical agenda
rendered Dada most comparable to life itself (45).
After the institutionalization o f the aesthetic avant-garde in the 1950s (as high
modernism) and the re-politicization o f an intellectual avant-garde in the 1960s, the
1970s witnessed the emergence o f a widespread denunciation o f the avant-garde project.
316
At the same time, shifts in aesthetic theory and critical taste maintained the obsolescence
o f the avant-garde project, by declaring the commencement o f a new period—the
postmodern—in which the central elements of the historical avant-garde project, the
emancipation from individual subjectivity and the radical transformation o f the social
totality, cased to be relevant (Berman 44). In this regard, Huyssen notes that in most
contemporary academic theory, the avant-garde has become “ossified into an elite
enterprise beyond politics and beyond everyday life,” even though the transformation of
these realms was central to the historical avant-garde project. In light o f the tendency to
project the “post-1945 de-politicization o f culture” back onto the historical avant-garde,
Hewitt argues that it is crucial to recover a sense of the cultural politics of the historical
avant-garde precisely in order to understand continuities of the convergences between art
and politics in the contemporary era (1986,4). Tangentially, he notes that postmodern
theory is largely characterized by attempts to reassess issues that the theoretical
reification of the avant-garde and the defeat o f fascism allegedly laid to rest. He notes
that in “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde,” Lyotard raised the possibility of an avant-
garde aesthetic practice that also included considerations of fascist spectacle. To Hewitt,
both avant-garde and fascist manifestations provide a historical reference point for
understanding postmodernism, even though the debate itself “replicates the ambiguous
postures o f self-distantiation so familiar from both fascist politics and avant-garde
aesthetics” (3). Hewitt concludes that the absorption of these two discursive formations
in postmodern theory implies convergences between avant-garde discourse and fascist
politics historically and trans-historically.
Western and Japanese theorists o f postmodemity “both criticize and celebrate
Japan as the first truly postmodern land” (7). For example, Karatani has argued that the
“postmodern sense o f meaningless” that was considered new and radical in the West, is
by contrast, a traditional Japanese ideology. Tobin summarizes Barthes’ Empire o f Signs
(1982), which can be read “as either an offensively or a satirically naive ethnography” of
postmodernism in Japan thusly: “.. .Barthes finds the postmodern condition everywhere
he looks in Japan: in the ‘de-centeredness’ o f sukiyaki; in geisha played by male actors
in kabuki; and Zen” (7). Yet, as Karatani notes, even the radical postures o f the avant-
gardists must be contextualized in the global context around the matrix of
317
Westernization, considering that such writers as Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Kawabata Yasunari

and Mishima Yukio, though at one time categorized as “Westernized modernists,” are
now regarded in the West as traditionalists, and furthermore, that they turned to tradition
because “it appeared more avant-garde,” at least by Western standards. (1994,34). By
contrast, Tobin has formulated the concept of “domestication,” which he deploys in
contradistinction to such categories as Westernization, modernization, and
postmodernism, wherein he suggests that Western goods, practices, and ideas are
“changed (Japanized) in their encounter with Japan” (4). He prefers this concept because
unlike those categories, it indicates a process that is active, morally neutral, and
demystifying. He adds that if a dominant trend in Western and Japanese scholarship
from the 1920s through the Occupation era explained Japan’s economic, political and
social structures in terms o f modernization theory, the most compelling question for both
modernization and postmodern theorists is how Japan could have become a preeminent
postindustrial society without going through the stages of pre-industrial development in
an orderly way (6).
As all o f these theories indicate, a predominant feature of historical and
contemporary avant-garde theory is the overt deployment of aesthetic discourse towards
extra-aesthetic goals. That such tendencies developed alongside, and in response to, the
historical avant-garde, is indicative of the reflexivity inherent to the goals o f transforming
the production and reception of art. Furthermore, that such valences continue to be
deployed by a wide range of critical and scholarly projects in the contemporary era
suggests that the historical avant-garde project—far from being ideologically neutral, or
ossified as an aesthetic-institutional category—has social and political ramifications well
beyond the scope o f the original project
318
NOTES
1Goebbels’ speech, given at the inauguration o f the Reichskulturkammer, 15

November 1933, reprinted in Goebbels, Goebbels-Reden, ed. Helmut Heiber (Dusseldorf:
Droste, 1971) 131-141, qtd. in Stanweis 22.
2 Hitler’s speech for the “Great Exhibition of German Art, 1937,” qtd. in Chipp
476.
3 Saburo, “Memories o f Shunsuke Matsumoto,’Vlrf o f the Showa Periodfrom the
Museum Collection (Tokyo: The National Museum o f Modem Art, 1989) 16, qtd. in
Munroe, 29.
4 Matsumoto Koji, “Sanka nu yosete” [Approaching Sanka] Bungei sensen 2.3
(July 1925) 28, qtd. in Weisenfeld 1997,167-8.
5 Asano Torn, “Zen’ei kaiga” [Avant-Garde Painting], Genshoku gendai Nihon no
bijutsu 8 [Modem Japanese Art in Full Color] (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1978) 173, qtd. in
Clark 46.
7 Masu Medua Tosei, vJ, document 48,258, N.pub., qtd. in Kasza 92.
8 Nakamura Giichi, “Chogenjitsu-shugi no notsaraku’ ronso [Debate on the Fall of
Surrealism], Zoku Nihon kindau nijutsu ronso-shi [History of Modem Japanese Art
Debates, Continuation] (Tokyo: Kinryudo, 1982) 223-4, qtd. in Clark 46.
9 Nakamura, Ronso-shi, 223-4, qtd in Clark 50..
10 Wall text, “Entertete Kunst, Munich 1937: A Reconstruction,” Degenerate Art:
The Fate o f the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, see LQtdchau 57.
11 The Gutai Art Association was founded in 1954, and in its most active period
(1954-1957), carried out diverse activities including performances, happenings,
installation and multi-media works. Prominent artists included Akira Kanayama, Atsuko
Tanaka, Kazuo Shiraga, Saburo Murakami and Michio Yoshiwara.
12The Japanese “anti-art” or Neo-dada movements began around 1958, and
continued until the early 1960s, and is exemplified by works by Genpei Akasegawa,
Shusaku Awakawam Tetsumi Kuso and Tomuio Miki.
319
13 Following the activities o f the Gutai and Neo-dada movements, the Japanese
conceptual art movement began in 1964, largely as a result of the pioneering efforts of
Yutaka Matsuzawa, Jiro Takamatsu and Etsutomu Kashihara. The Mono-ha movement,
which began in 1969, was organized around the principle that involvement with the world
or with artists’ circumstances can itself be considered art, and hence, was not conceived
around or from the world of a rt
14 Scholars who have argued this line include Kono Osamu and Tsurumi
Shunsuke; see Arima 126.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
COMPARATIVE TIMELINE OF AVANT-GARDE ACTIVITIES

IN GERMANY AND JAPAN
(Including Significant Social and Political Events)
Germany Japan
1868 Political The Meiji Restoration.
1870 Social/ Guide to Western Painting by

Cultural Kawakami Togai.
1873 Political Bismarck receives Japanese

diplomats.
Social/ Kabuki troupes issued

Cultural government directive to initiate
“enlightened” reforms.
Participates in the Vienna

International Exposition; adoption
of the term bijutsu [art] in
response to classificatory
requirements.
The first Tokyo railway station

(Shimbashi) designed in English
style.
1876 Social/ Technological Art School

Cultural established.
1879 Social/ Institute of Music for music

Cultural education established.
321
322
Germany Japan
1880 Social/ Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Cultural premieres in Munich, with a
revised ending.
1882 Social/ Society for Promotion of German

Cultural Sciences.
First government sponsored

exhibition of pictorial art.
Tokyo National Museum and the

Committee for the Protection of
Cultural Properties established.
Shintaishi-sho, an anthology of
Western poetry published.
1884 Social/ Painting Appreciation Society,

Cultural dedicated to Nihonga, founded by
Fenollosa and Okakura
1885 Social/ The Essence o fthe Novel by

Cultural Shoyo.
Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado

Premieres at London Savoy.
1887 Social/ Kabuki performed for first time

Cultural before Emperor Meiji; Kabuki
Reform Committee formed.
The Academy of Music, with

German training methods as
foundation.
The Tokyo School of Fine Arts

established, with emphasis on
traditional Japanese painting.
The D rifting Clouds by Futabatei

Shimei.
323
Germany Japan
1888 Social/ Art school dedicated to Japanese

Cultural revivalism in pictorial art founded
by the government
Kokka, first learned journal

devoted to art founded by
Okakura.
1889 Political Japanese Constitution adopted.
Social/ Before Sunrise by Gerhart The Kabuki-za Theatre opens.

Cultural Hauptmann, considered first
important German Naturalist
drama.
Ghosts by Ibsen premieres at

the Freie Btlhne.
1890 Political Assembly and Political

Organization Law, regulates
political activities.
Imperial Rescript on Education;

emphasizes return to Confucian
values & idea of Japanese as
“chosen” people.
Social/ Uchida Roan’s translation of

Cultural Dostoyevsky’s Crime and
Punishment.
Art commission to select

traditional Japanese art for the
Imperial Court appointed.
1893 Political Publication Law.
Social/ Degeneracy by Max Nordau, Btmgakkai, literaryjournal

Cultural avows modem art pathological. devoted to Romantic poetry.
The Weavers by Hauptmann is Tokyo University establishes

a success for the Freie Buhne. degree program in Aesthetics.
324
Germany Japan
1894 Political Sino-Japanese War. Annexation

ofFormosa.
Social/ Paulownia's Leafby Shoyo.

Cultural
Kawakami’s Shimpa production
of The Sublime, Exhilarating
Sino-Japanese War.
1895 Political Joins the Triple Intervention Victory over Korea & China.
against Japanese aspirations for
power in Asia.
1896 Political The Civil Code introduced.
1897 Social/ Takayama founds Nihon shugu

Cultural journal, advocating nationalist
cultural ideas.
1899 Social/ First American tour of

Cultural Kawakami’s troupe.
1900 Social/ Kuroda Seiki and Asai Chu

Cultural exhibit at Exposition Universelle
in Paris.
1901 Social/ Takayama’s “On the Aesthetic

Cultural Life,” privileges aesthetic
autonomy.
Police order draping of nude

sculptures at 6th Annual
Hakuybakai Art Exhibit
(“Waistcloth Incident”).
Articles on Kawakami in L ’A rt du
Theatre.
1902 Social/ The Ideals o f the East by Okakura

Cultural Kakuzo.
325
Germany Japan
1904 Political Russo-Japanese War.
1905 Political Victory over Manchuria &

destruction of Baltic Fleet.
1906 Political Establishment of Japanese

Socialist Party.
Social/ Spring Awakening by Franz Kawakami produces Sardou’s

Cultural Wedekind premieres. Patrie.
Hakai by Shimizaki Toson,

landmark Naturalistic novel.
Shoyo establishes Bungei Kyokai

at Waseda University.
1907 Social/ Ministry of Education’s

Cultural Exhibition Hall inaugurates
government-sponsored “official
exhibitions” of art (Bunten).
Founding of Ibsen Society.
Futon by Tatrami Katai.
1908 Political The Red Flag Incident
Social/ Obscenity Trial of Ikuta Kizan.

Cultural
Imperial Academy of Actresses
founded by Sada Yacco; modeled
after American Academy of
Dramatic Arts.
Avant- Pan No Kai [Devotees of Pan]

Garde established to promote art-for-
art’s sake.
326
Germany Japan
1909 Political Newspaper Law restricts freedom

of press.
Social/ Kaiser Wilhelm fires Director

Cultural of Nationalgalerie for
purchasing Impressionist
paintings.
Avant- Ogai’s translation of Oscar

Garde Wilde’s Salome.
Ogai translation of Marinetti’s

First Futurist Manifesto.
“The Green Sun” by Takamura.
Founding of Jiyu Gekijo by

Osanai Kaoru; Ogai’s translation
of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman
premieres.
1910 Political Annexation of Korea
Conspiracy to assassinate the

Emperor uncovered; precipitates
anti-Socialist regulations and
arrests of anarchists.
The Imperial Military Reserve

Association (Teikokuzaigo
gunjinkai) established by General
Tanaka Giichi.
Social/ Committee for the Investigation

Cultural of Popular Eductation.
Avant- Blaue Reiter group formed. Bungei Kyokai’s productions of

Garde Hamlet and A Doll‘s House.
Der Sturm journal founded by
Herwarth Walden. Shirakabajournal established.
327
Germany Japan
1912 Political Emperor Meiji’s death begins

Taisho era.
Avant- Der Blaue Reiter exhibition of Yorozu Tetsugoro’s Self-Portrait

Garde Italian Futurists. with Red Eyes.
“On the Spiritual in Art” by

Kandisnsky.
Morgue by Gottfied Benn.
1913 Avant- Articles on German

Garde Expressionism in Bijutsu shinpo
by Mokaturo.
Tanizaki’s The Age to Learn o f

Love banned.
Bungei Kydkai dissolves.
Geijutsuza (Art Theatre) formed

by Shimamura Hogetsu.
1914 Political Kaiser Wilhelm declares war

on Russia and France.
Social/ Takarazuka Girls Opera

Cultural established.
Avant- Der Sohn by Hasenclever. Nikakai established.

Garde
Der Sturm gallery loans Shimamura Hogetsu's production
paintings for Hibiya Museum of Tolstoy’s Resurrection tours
show. Japan, Taiwan and Korea.
Kyuji Sato, director of Hibiya

museum experiments with
Futurist performance.
1915 Social/ The Greater Japan Youth

Cultural Association established.
328
Germany Japan
1916 Avant- From Mom to Midnight by Kawakami Hajime’s Tale o f

Garde Georg Kaiser. Poverty by Kawakami Hajime.
(Zurich): Cabaret Voltaire

opens.
1917 Political U.S. declares war on Germany.
The October Revolution.
Russo-German armistice at
Brest.
Social/ A Story o f Poverty by Kawakami

Cultural Hajime, a critical analysis of
economic inequality.
Yanase Masamu indicted for

Avant- Sorge’s Die Bettler,
mentioning in a lecture the
Garde Expressionist drama. Waistcloth Incident
Zurich Dada suspended.
1918 Political November Revolution begins Shift to Party cabinets.

with naval mutiny at Kiel;
Wilhelm II abdicates. The First Party Cabinet appointed
(September 1918) with Prime
Women granted the right to Minister Hara Kei.
vote.
Social/ The Decline o fthe West by Rice Riots against inflation &
Cultural Oswald Spengler. inadequate wages.
Avant- The Novembergruppe formed. The Nikakai Art Association

Garde established.
The Bauhaus is founded in
Weimar.
Berlin Dada formed; first

evening at Neumann Gallery.
329
Germany Japan
Dadaist Johannes Baeder

causes disturbance at Berlin
cathedral.
Baal by Bertolt Brecht.
Gas I by Georg Kaiser.
1919 Political Treaty of Versailles. “General Outline of Measures for

the Reorganization of Japan” by
Kita Ikki—a boilerplate for
Spartacist uprising; Rosa political rebels.
Luxemborg murdered
“People under Special Police
Weimar assembly adopts Surveillance” list issued, with
Constitution establishing over 500 suspected radicals.
Germany as Democratic
republic.
Avant- Robert Weine’s film The

Garde Cabinet o fDr. Caligari
First Novembergruppe exhibit

in Berlin.
Max Reinhardt opens Grosses

Schauspielhaus and “Schall
und Rauch” cabaret downstairs.
Bauhaus founded in Weimar.
1920 Political Hitler established National Formation of the Japan Socialist

Socialist German Worker’s League.
Party (NSDAP)
Soda!/ Hitler designs party flag with Tanemaku hito journal begins
Cultural swastika. publications.
Avant- “Grosse Dada Messe” (Berlin). Kanbara Tai’s first solo

Garde exhibition.
Proletarian Theatre opens.
330
Germany Japan
Grosz’s Gott mit Urn

confiscated.
International Dada
manifestations: Paris Dada
Festival. Cologne Dada
exhibition shut down by Police.
1921 Avant- Dangen was dadaisuto

Garde [Assertion is Dada] by Takahashi
Shinchiki.
1922 Political (Italy) Mussolini gains power. Formation of the Japanese

Communist Party; the First
Communist Convention held in a
private residence in Tokyo.
Washington Conference forces

Japan to withdraw from Tsingtao
and abandon influence in China.
Avant- Dusseidorfartists’ conference Murayama travels and exhibits in

Garde with Lissistky and Richter the Germany.
Constructivist Faction;
Murayama exhibits work at
show.
First Novermbergruppe
evening with writers and
musicians.
Toller’s Maxhinensturmer at
Grosses Schauspielhaus.
(Russia) The Maginficent

Cuckhold_directed by
Meyerhold; and The
Kidnapping o f Children
directed by Foregger.
331
Germany Japan
1923 Political German inflationary crisis. Widespread arrests in Japan &

Korea of suspected communists.
Hitler imprisoned after foiled
Munich Putsch.
Stressmann becomes
Chancellor; succeeded by
Marx.
U.S.S.R established.
Social/ The Great Kanto Earthquake

Cultural leaves Tokyo in ruins; kills est.
90,000 and injures est. 100,000.
Avant- Grosz’s portfolio Ecce Homo “August Gruppe” formed by

Garde confiscated for obscenity. Nagano Yoshimitsu.
Art and Technology exhibition Mavo established in Tokyo; first

at Bauhaus, Weimar. exhibition in Asakusa.
BlueBlouse forms in Moscow. “Structuralism and Tactilism” and

“Exit Expressionism” by
“Literature & Revolution by Murayama.
Trotsky.
“What is Futurism? A Response”
by Kinoshita Shuichird.
Action Group holds first

exhibition at Mitsukoshi
department store.
Takahashi Shinkichi’s first

volume of Dada poetry.
Anarchist poets establish Aka to

kuro journal.
Yanase designs sets for Vault and

Senzuka Theatres.
332
Germany Japan
1924 Political Ban on German Communist

party lifted.
32 Nazis elected to Reichstag.
Hitler writes Mein Kampf,

while in prison for treason.
Avant- Grosz obscenity trial. Bungei semen, a proletarian

Garde arts/literary magazine founded
Revue Roter Rummel by after Fifth General Comintern in
Piscator and Gasbarra. Moscow.
Neue Sachlichkeit Gaikotsu no buyo [The Skeleton’s

exhibition. Dance] by Akita Ujaku, a drama
in the German Expressionist
Ernst Toller released from jail mode.
after serving five-year
sentence. The Tsukiji Little Theatre
established by Osanai and
Bauhaus announced its Hijikata: productions include
dissolution. Kaiser’s From Mom to Midnight,
designed by Murayama.
Piscator’s production of
Fahnen at Berlin Volksbuhne.
Action Group’s second exhibition
(France) Breton’s Surrealist at the Mitsukoshi department
Manifest; First issue of La store. Disbands in October.
Revolution Surrealiste.
Relache opens in Paris, by “Architecture as the Ultimate
Picabia, music by Satie, Form of Art” by Murayama.
contibutors: Duchamp, Man
Ray & Rene Clar.
1925 Political Election of von Hindenburg to Peace Preservation Law,
Presidency of the Reichstag. officiates “Kokutai” ideology;
Joseph Goebbels joins the severe penalties on subversive
National Socialist Party. political activities; effectively
bans socialist & liberal political
SS established. parties.
333
Germany Japan
Universal Manhood Suffrage Act

enacted to counter widespread
discontent among working class;
raises number of eligible voters
from 3 to 13 million, although
women excluded.
Social/ 195,000 Germans unemployed. The Home Ministry proclaims the

Cultural Motion Picture Film Inspection
Regulations sanctioning
censorship activities by local
government officials.
Avant- TrotzAlledem by Pisctaorand Japan Proletarian Literary Arts

Garde Gasbarra; designed by League founded.
Heartfield.
Hagiwara Kyojiro’s Shikei
Die Kunst in Gefahr by Grosz Senkoku [Verdict of Death]
and Heartfield. poetry collection published..
Neue Sachlichkeit exhibition in Breton’s “First Manifesto of

Mannheim. Surrealism” (1924) translated in
Btmgei tanbi [Literary
Aesthetics].
Sanka Zokei Bijutsu Kyokai

[Sanka Plastic Arts Association]
formed. The first exhibition was
held at the Matsuzakaya
Department Store, Ginza. First
exvening of performance held at
Tsukiji Little Theatre.
1926 Political National Socialist Party Taisho Emperor dies; Emperor

membership reaches 49,000. Showa.
Soviet-German Neutrality pact The Nihon Hoso Kyokai (NHK)

monopoly over radio
broadcasting.
The Third Convention of

Japanese Communist Party drafts
party platform.
334
Germany Japan
Social/ Kaizosha Pubishing Company

Cultural announces publication of 63
volume series, TheCollected
Works o fModem Japanese
Literature.
Avant- Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (film). The Japan Proletarian Arts

Garde League (PAL).
Bauhaus moves to Dessau.
“Trunk” Theatre formed by
Sasaki Takamaru and the
Zen’eiza, formed by Murayama—
both devoted to proletarian
theatre.
Neue Sachlichkeit introduced by

Nakada Sadanosuke.
1927 Political First National Socialist party Beginning of acute depression;

rally in Nuremburg. banks crash in April.
End of allied control of

Germany.
Social/ Hitler writes second volume of Worker-Farmer-Artists League

Cultural Mem Kampfand is permitted to (WFAL) and Vanguard Artists
speak in public. League, re-formed as the All-
Japan Federation of Proletarian
Arts (NAPF).
Suicide of novelist Akutagawa.
Avant- PiscatorbOhne opens with Censorship System Reform

Garde Toiler’s Hopplal Wir Lebenl League, of left-wing dramatists,
meets at Tsukiji Little Theatre to
Russian Blue Blouse group formulate policy against
begins tour of Germany. censorship; January 18-24,1928
proclaimed as “Anti-Censorship
Week.”
Yanase’s work for the first

exhibition of the Cartoon League
banned.
335
Germany Japan
1928 Political National Socialist party The Labor-Farmer Party receives

membership reaches 108,000. substantial votes in first election
after suffrage act of 1925, and
gain 2 seats in the Diet.
Crackdown on Communist Party.
Emergency decree amends Peace

Preservation Law to include the
death penalty.
Social/ The Combat League for Red Flag (Sekki) organ of the
Cultural German Culture founded by Communist Party.
Alfred Rosenberg; to halt
“corruption” of art and inform Shi to Shiron journal.
people on “relationship”
between race and aesthetic
values.
Avant- The Good Soldier Schweik “The Road to Proletarian

Garde directed by Piscator; designs by Realism” by Kurohara Korehito.
Grosz.
Sayoku Gekijo formed by
Grosz's portfolio Hintergrmd Murayama.
confiscated; Btascphemy trial-
found guilty. Osanai Kaoru dies.
Piscatorbuhne cloese due to Shin Tsukiji Gekkidan

bankruptcy. established by Hijikata.
1929 Political National Socialist Party

membership reaches 178,000.
The Wall Street Crash begins

world-wide depression.
Social/ Kampfbund fur deutsche

Cultural Kultur established by
Rosenberg.
336
Germany Japan
Avant- Das politischer Theater by Hakushu Khahara’s Kaihyd to

Garde Piscator. Kumo [Sea Leopards and Clouds]
features Futurist and
Happy End (Brecht-Weill Expressionist poems.
collaboration).
The Berlin-based Red Rockets,

street-agitation proletarian
theatre troupes banned.
Museum of Modem Art, New

York is founded.
1930 Political National Socialist Party Assasination of Prime Minister

membership reaches 810,000; Hamaguchi
107 delegates elected to
Reichstag.
Reichstag dissolved.
Social/ All Quiet on the Western Front Shi to Shiron [Poetry, Reality]
Cultural banned. devoted to proletarian literature.
Avant- Nazis throw stink-bombs at Murayama jailed for 5 months for

Garde Frankfurt performance of Communist affiliations.
Mahogonny (Brecht-Weill).
Takiguchi Shuzo’s translation of
Breton’s Surrealism and the
Painter.
1931 Political President von Hindenberg Occupation of Manchuria.

receives Hitler for the first
time. League of Nations resolution calls
for Japan’s withdrawal from
Manchuria.
Avant- Dokoritsu Bijutsu Kyokai

Garde [Independent Art Association]
holds exhibit featuring Surrealist
paintings by Fukuzawa, Kotaro
and AI-MITSU.
337
Germany Japan
Nakano Shigeharu’s first

collection of poetry is confiscated
by police.
1932 Political Hitler runs for president; Kwantung Army completes

receives 11 million votes to occupation of Manchuria by
Hindeberg’s 18.5 million; 230 severing Chinchow from China;
Nazis elected to Reichstag. “Manchukuo” recognized as
Goering wins presidency of independent country.
Reichstag; Nazi members wear
uniform. Assassination of Prime Minister
Inukai.
Authorities arrest over 14,000

people for Communist
sympathies.
Social/ Establishment of the Greater

Cultural Japan National Defense Women’s
Association.
Avant- Last issue of Der Sturm; Tokyo-Paris Exhibition of Rising

Garde Walden emigrates to USSR. Art
Lukacs attacks reportage, The Japan Proletarian Writers’

montage, and documentary art League becomes the Japanese
in Lmkskurve. branch of the International Union
of Revolutionary Writers.
Brecht visits Moscow.
Shimura Natsue by Murayama,
proletarian drama produced by
the Sayoku Gekijo leads to
arrests.
Yanase Masamu arrested for

breaking the Public Order
Maintenance Law.
1933 Political Hindeberg appoints Hitler “A General Plan for National

Reich Chancellor (January 30). Reorganization” by Nakano
Seigo.
Reichstag Fire Decree, bans
German Communist Party.
338
Germany Japan
Civil Service Law eliminates Nokumin Domei, first

non-Aryans and political panese“fascist party” in Japan.
undesirables.
Tenko of Communist leaders
Decree for the Implementation Sano and Nabeyama.
of the Reich Chamber of
Culture Law.
Social/ Reich’s Ministry for Showa Research Association

Cultural Enlightenment of the People formed.
and for Propaganda (REPP)..
Education Minister dismisses
Mayor of Frankfurt dismisses Professor Takigawa Yukitoki of
Jews employed by city opera, Kyoto Imperial University for
theater, museums, & other allegedly fostering radical ideas
cultural institutions. in lectures & textbooks on
criminal law.
Systematic persecution of Jews
begins with boycott of Jewish- Kawakami Hajime, Marxist
owned businesses. economist, translator of Marx’s
Capital arrested and sentenced to
Theatre Section of REPP 5 years in prison.
founded.
Book-bumings in German
cities.
Avant- The Bauhaus is closed. Beating death of proletarian

Garde novelist Kobayashi Takiji at
Italian Futurist Exhibition in Tsukiji Police Station.
Berlin featuring Marinetti.
Grosz leaves for U.S. Murayama indicted and

undergoes tenko.
League for Academic and Artistic

Fredom (GakugeiJ'tyu Domei),
against fascist tendencies in
politics & culture.
Yanase released from prison.
339
Germany Japan
1934 Political Monarchical government

established in Manchukuo with
Henry Pu-Yi as emperor.
Social/ Triumph o fthe Will by Leni

Cultural Riefenstahi.
Reich Theatre Act

institutionalizes position of
Reichsdramaturg as Chief
Inspector & Censor.
(Soviet Union) The First

Congress of Soviet Writers.
Avant- Hitler denounced avant-garde Murayama released from prison;

Garde art in speech to party The White Night, conversion
leadership. novel by Murayama.
Japanese Proletarian Theatre

Federation dissolved.
1935 Political Nuremberg race laws classify Assassination of General Nagata.

Jews as non-Aryan.
Renunciation of the Versailles

Treaty and proclaims
rearmament
Social/ Hinkel forms the umbrella The Film Control Committee

Cultural organization of Jewish arts creates the Great Japan Film
groups, the Reich Association Association to influence in film
of Jewish Cultural League. production.
Jazz banned on German radio.
1936 Political Italy turns Ethioia into a colony Putsch of young Japanese military
by May. officers defeated - “the February
26th Incident”.
Spanish Civil War begins.
Summary Working Plan for
Information and Propaganda for
Formation of the Cabinet
Information Committee. propaganda activity in the event
of total war.
Japanese & German military
340
Germany Japan
Japanese & German military Cabinete Information Committee

agree to the Anti-Comintern
formed.
Pact to counteract spread
Communism; Italy joins in Tohokcd (Society of the East
1937 & Spain in 1939.
founded by Nakano Seigo,
established upon principles of
European fascism; gains 11 seats
in the House of Representatives
(1937) (dissolved in 1940).
Social/ Goebbels bans art criticism in Formation of the Showa Research

Cultural Germany. Society.
The United News Agency

becomes the official source of
national news replacing
independent news agencies
Rengo & Dentsu.
Avant- “The Work of Art in the Age of

Garde Mechanical Reproduction” by
Benjamin.
1937 Political The “Marco Polo Bridge

Incident” plunges Japan into war
with China.; The “Rape” of
Nanking.
General Hayashi becomes Prime

Minister.
National Council of Labor Unions

ordered to disband.
The National Mobilization Law.
The Kasuga Communist Group

smashed by Thought Police, thus
ending organized Communism.
Social/ Kokutai no Hong) published by

Cultural the Ministry of Education; official
doctrines of state Religion and
foreign and domestic policies.
Germany Japan
The Movement for Popular

Morale created.
Prohibition of publication of
manuscripts of social and political
criticism.
Arrest of editors of SekaiBunka,

(World Culture), journal founded
by intellectuals at Kyoto Imperial
University, inspired by anti-
Fascist movements in France,
Italy and Spain.
Arrest of over 400 intellectual and

labor leaders classified within the
legal left, including moderate
leftist university professors &
members of the Social Masses
Party.
Great Japan Film Association

publishes 158-page translation of
all laws & administrative codes
pertaining to film in Nazi
Germany.
The Industrial Patriotic

Movement established.
Influential report by the Showa

Research Association, entitled
The Principles o f Thoughtfor a
New Japan.
The WorldHistorical
Significance o f the China Incident
by Miki Kiyoshi.
Avant- Free Artists Association (Jiyu

Garde Bijutsuka KyokaL
Surrealism Overseas” exhibition

curated by Takiguchi.
342
Germany Japan
1938 Political Occupies the Rhineland,

annexing Austria and the
Sudeten.
Pogrom against the Jews

nationwide.
Formal recognition to Japanese

province of Manchuria; recalls
military advisors from China in
support for Japan.
SocialV The First Great German Art

Cultural Exhibition opens in Munich;
Avant- Entertete Kunst exhibit. Establishment of the Ninth Room

Garde Association by Yoshihara Jiro
and other Surrealists and abstract
artists.
Bungakuza [Literary Theatre]

established.
1939 Political Dismembers Czechoslavakia The Law for the Control of

and invades Poland. Religions, ensures compliance of
organized religion in war
objectives.
Prince Konoe becomes Prime

Minister.
Social/ Reichsverbtmd derjusischen Publication of controversial

Cultural Kulturban dissolved to become “abridged” translation of The Tale
centralized Jewish Culture o fGenji by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro.
League in Germany.
Avant- “Avant-Garde & Kitsch” by Founding of the Art Culture

Garde Greenberg. Association (Bijutsu Bunka
Kyokai) by Surrealist painters.
1940 Political Allied forces defeated by in the Joins Germany & Italy in the
Low Countries and France. Tripartite to discourage U.S. from
entering war & abandon UJC.
343
Germany Japan
British forces retreat from The Greater East-Asia Co-

Dunkirk; Holland and Belgium Prosperity Sphere proclaimed.
fall to the Germans; Paris falls
and France surrenders (June). Imperial Rule Assistance
Organization founded with Prince
Konoe as head.
All political parties in the

National Diet dissolved.
Japan General Federation of

Labor dissolves; Greater Japan
Association for Service to the
State through Industry
institutionalizes “industrial
patriotism” and forces
cooperation of labor.
Formal establishment of a
ministry of propaganda (Cabinet
Information Committee).
Japanese troops advance into

northern Indochina with
permission of Vichy government.
Social/ Walter Benjamin commits Shinkyo Gekidan and Shin

Cultural suicide. Tsukiji Gekidan forced to
disband.
The Showa Research Association

dissolves.
The Japan Publishing Culture

Association launched as an
“autonomous” control organ for
magazine and book publishers.
1941 Political Germany and Italy declare war U.S. & England impose oil
on the United States embargo.
Invades Russia. Japanese forces move into

southern Indochina.
344
Germany Japan
Neutrality Pact with Soviet Union

signed in Moscow.
At the Imperial Conference, Japan

decide to enter war.
Shock attack of Japanese carrier

based aircraft on units of the U.S.
Pacific battle fleet in Pearl
Harbor.
Amendments to the Peace

Preservation Law of 1925, allows
preventive detention of political
activists and political prisoners.
Prime Minister Konoe resigns

from office, succeeded by Tojo
Hideki, Army Minister Gemeral.
Occupation of Hong Kong.
SodaV Judischer Kulturband Elementary Schools renamed

Cultural Deutschland dissolved. “national schools.”
1942 Political Japan Peasant Union prohibited.
Special Emergency Act prohibits

political assembly without
permission from local police.
Japan military blitzkreig: forces

seize Manila, occupy Rabaul,
Sumatra's Palembang oil fields;
surrender of Singapore; Batavia
on the island of Java occupied,
and Rangoon.
U.S. attack on Midway island;

catastrophic losses to Japanese
fleet and carrier squadron.
Japanese forces abandon

Guadalcanal (December 31).
345
Germany Japan
Social/ Mein Ahmg/’translated into

Cultural Japanese and
published in abridged edition.
First Great East Asia Literary

Conference attended by
representatives from Japan,
Korea, Taiwan, Manchukuko,
Mongolia, and Nanking; resolves
to abolish American & British
culture in E. Asia and create new
culture common to all E. Asian
nations.
Japanese Literary Patriotic

Association (Nihon Bvngaku
Hokuku Kau) formed under the
control of the Cabinet
Information Bureau.
1943 Political Soviet army forces German Cairo Declaration signed by

surrender in Stalingrad area Roosevelt, Churchill and Chiang
(February). Kai-shek, vowing defeat of Japan
and return of Manchuria and
Mussolini falls. Taiwan to China.
Teheran Conference; Premier

Stalin accedes to U.S. & enters
war against Japan.
Amendment to Special Law on

Wartime Crimes prohibiting
interference with government
administration.
Social/ Japan Publishing Association

Cultural officially controls book and
magazine publications.
Cabinet Information Bureau bans

1000 musical compositions,
including American and British
compositions.
346
Germany Japan
Nakano Seigo placed under house

arrest, commits suicide.
Japan Patriotic Association enlists

artists, composers, actors in
support of war efforts.
1944 Political Allied Forces land in Premier Tojo and Cabinet forced
Normandy. to resign; new cabinet and
Supreme Council for the
Direction of the War established.
Social/ Hinket elevated to V.P. of Steel guitars, banjos and ukeleles

Cultural Reichskulturkammer. banned by the Cabinet
Information Bureau.
Closure of all theatres.
Forced dissolution of Chuo Koron
and Kaizo literary magazines by
the Cabinet Information Bureau.
1945 Political Hitler commits suicide (April) Manila falls to Americans

(3 March); 130 American
Mussolini killed (April). bombers air raid Tokyo; nearly
80,000 die (9-10 March).
German army surrenders
unconditionally (May). Iwo Jima lost, almost 20,000
Japanese soldiers killed.
The Soviet Union invades

Manchuria.
Atomic bomb falls on Hiroshima

(6 August) and Nagasaki
(9 August); Emperor Hirohito
admits defeat (14 August).
Avant- Yanase dies in bombing of

Garde Shinjuku Station.
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Avant-Garde - East - and - West - A - C (Comparativa de La Historia y Vanguardia)

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INFORMATION TO USERS

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the

Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by

Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced

ProQuest Information and Learning

David Robert Pellegrini

BS, University o f Santa Clara, 1989

MA, San Francisco State University, 1993

Submitted to the Graduate Facility of

Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company

J/7hom as Rimer, Dissertation Advisor

jounaridou, Dissertation Advisor

David Pellegrini, PhD

University o f Pittsburgh, 2001

This dissertation, prepared toward completion of a PhD in Theatre and Performance

1.0 AESTHETIC COORDINATES OF THE HISTORICAL AVANT-

1.1 Historical Parameters.............................................................................. 14

1.2 Western Avant-Garde Aesthetic Theory and Criticism.......................... 24

12 .1 The Frankfurt Institute and the Avant-Garde........................... 25

1.2.2 Peter Bflrgeris Theory o f the Avant-Garde............................. 29

1.2.3 Responses to Burger’s Theory o f the Avant-Garde..................36

1.2.4 Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Cultural Fields............................42

1.3 Western Avant-Garde Performance Scholarship.....................................45

1.4 Japanese Avant-Garde Aesthetic Theory and Criticism..........................57

2.0 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL COORDINATES OF THE AVANT-

2.1 Social and Political Theories of the Avant-Garde...................................87

2.2 Comparison of German and Japanese Political and Social

2.2.1 German Influence on Meiji Political, Social, and

22 2 Weimar and Taisho Liberalism............................................... 122

2.2.3 Theories o f German and Japanese Fascism ..........................129

3.0 THE JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE PROJECT..............................................153

3.1 The Western Avant-Garde in Japan.....................................................154

3.1.1 Expressionism......................................................................... 160

3.1.2 Futurism, Cubism and Constructivism....................................165

3.1.3 Dada and Surrealism............................................................... 172

3.2 Indigenous Avant-Garde Art, Literature and Performance................... 179

3.2.1 The Miraiha Bijutsu Kyokai [Futuist Art Association]

3.2.2 Mavo and Sanka...................................................................... 191

3.2.3 The Proletarian Arts Movements and the Avant-

3.2.4 Japanese Avant-Garde Performance and Shingeki..................208

4.0 COMPARATIVE CASE STUDIES.................................................................221

4.1 Berlin Dada and Mavo......................................................................... 223

4.2 Georg Grosz and Yanase Masamu....................................................... 240

4.3 Murayama Tomoyoshi and Richard Huelsenbeck, Erwin

5.0 THE INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE AVANT-GARDE

5.1 The Fascist Bureaucratization of Art and the Elimination of

52 Communism and the Avant-Garde.......................................................286

53 The Assimilation o f the Avant-Garde into Fascist, Military

5.4 Conclusion: Transhistorical Evaluations o f the Historical

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................. 348

The impact o f the Western historical avant-garde movements can be affirmed by

cultural formations. Interdisciplinary in scope and methodology, such approaches have

garde. In effect, Burger can be credited with revitalizing avant-garde scholarship,

cultural bureaucracy has become a standard by which governmental intervention in art

1.1 Historical Parameters

positioned as an after-effect o f aestheticism or as a result o f the avant-garde project as it

o f international diplomacy was recognized by the government The Kabuki Reform

acknowledged the influence o f Symbolism and its anti-naturalistic strategies, the

1.2 Western Avant-Garde Aesthetic Theory and Criticism

This section reviews historical and contemporary criticism in order to establish a

1.2.1 The Frankfurt Institute and the Historical Avant-Garde