Exporting aesthetic sensibilities : Japanese traditional art becoming globalized

　At the end of the 19th century, many traditional Japanese arts and crafts made their way to Europe due to the Meiji government's policy to open the country.

　Japan's unique style had a great influence on the European art circles, where a trend towards modern painting was emerging without following traditional techniques.

　A Japanese cultural boom called Japonism occurs in Europe.

　The representative medium of Japonism is Ukiyo-e.

　One of the reasons why Ukiyo-e came to Europe was related to the export of Japanese ceramics.

　At that time, ceramics manufactured in Japan were loaded onto ships and transported to Europe.

　Naturally it is fragile, so it must be packaged. Ukiyo-e was used as packaging material at that time.

　Ukiyo-e, which are mass-produced using woodblocks are more like cheap posters and leaflets that ordinary people admire than precious works of the art, and when they get tired of looking at them, they are thrown away as waste paper.

　They wrapped the ceramics in Ukiyo-e which is waste paper, and sent them to Europe along with the ceramics.

　The style of Ukiyo-e which became a waste paper in Japan shocked European painters.

　In traditional European art circles, two-dimensional canvases were created using techniques such as perspective which creates depth by drawing nearby objects larger and distant objects smaller, and shading which creates a three-dimensional effect by shade of shadow. They have been working hard on how to make it look three-dimensional and realistic.

　Ukiyo-e painting techniques ignore or on the contrary exaggerate perspective.

　The colors were vivid and solid, and they seemed innovative to European painters.

　The influence of Ukiyo-e can be seen in the solid painting style of Van Gogh and Gauguin, and it also influenced Cezanne the pioneer of cubism represented by Picasso.

　In contrast to the peaceful introduction of Japanese arts and crafts to Europe, there was a time when a large amount of Japanese arts and crafts were sent to Europe due to extremely political circumstance.

　It was the time of anti-Buddhist that began in 1868 the first year of the Meiji era.　

　The new government carries Emperor Meiji who is in Kyoto on a ensign as a symbol of the legitimacy of its rule. Since the imperial family is the sect of Shinto, they wanted to make Shinto the state religion.

　As a result of this, Buddhist temples located all over the country became targets of persecution.

　Throughout Japanese history, Buddhism has always reigned at the top of the religious world, controlling political power and wealth.

　Shintoism which was less powerful moved its shrines to temple grounds in order to recover from its inferiority, so shrines often coexisted within temple grounds before the Edo period.

　The new government will first clearly separate temples and shrines.

　Shrines which are the national religion were given preferential treatment, but temples were unilaterally persecuted.

　During the Edo period, the Edo shogunate promoted parishioners system, and gave preferential treatment to temples in order to manage family registers for all people.

　In a sense, Buddhist monks became a privileged class that also had aspects of shogunate officials, and as a result corruption progressed.

　Such antipathy among the massed towards temples and Buddhist monks also provided support for the movement to anti-Buddhist, and the movement became more heated.

　Each temple is vandalized, and temple treasures such as Buddhist statues and paintings that have been passed down from ancient times are sold off for at throwaway prices.

　On the other hand, Europeans who became interested in Japanese culture through Japonism bought these temple treasures and brought them back to their home countries.

　Even today, many of the Japanese temple treasures displayed in art museums and museums around Europe are mixed with items that were leaked overseas at this time.