The Modern Era of Painters: Depicting Plants, Animals, and ArchaeologyBook Review

Aiko Kurata, 2024, University of Tokyo Press, 343 + 27 pages, 8,800 yen + tax

Introduction: Section 1: Purpose and Structure of this Book, Section 2: Regarding the "Painter"

Part I: Where the Painters Were, Chapter 1: Painters in Government Service, Section 1: Those Who Served at the Kaiseisho in the Late Edo Period, Section 2: Government Service in the 1880s, Section 3: Illustration and Documentation; Chapter 2: Museum Activities in the First Half of the Meiji Period, Section 1: Ministry of Education Exhibitions, Section 2: The Museum Inside Yamashitamona, Section 3: Producers of Natural History Illustration Books; Chapter 3: The Role of Animal Sketches in Taxidermy, Section 1: Taxidermy in the Meiji Period, Section 2: "Draft Translation of Taxidermy Methods for Birds and Animals", Section 3: Animal Inspection in 1876; Chapter 4: Painters at the University of Tokyo, Section 1: Predecessor Schools of the University of Tokyo, Section 2: The Faculty of Science in the 1880s, Section 3: The Painters' Workplace, Section 4: The Department of Botany, Section 5: The Department of Zoology

Part II: Botanical Illustration, Chapter 5: The Illustrator of the Koishikawa Botanical Garden—Kuataro Watanabe, Section 1: Botany in the Meiji 10s and Early 20s, Section 2: The Artistic Career of Kuataro Watanabe, Section 3: Botanical Sketching as University Work, Section 4: Botanists and Illustrators, Chapter 6: The Popularization of Botanical Knowledge—Ikuma Nishino, Section 1: The Artistic Career of Ikuma Nishino, Section 2: Specimen Illustrations Adorning "Shonen Sekai", Section 3: "Cherry Blossom Sketches" Selected by Manabu Miyoshi, Section 4: Famine Plant Sketches at the Nutrition Research Institute

Part III: The Image of Academia Created by Draftsmen - Chapter 7: Archaeology and Stripes - Ungai Ono, Section 1: The Artistic Career of Ungai Ono, Section 2: Draftsmen of the Department of Anthropology, Section 3: Pattern Collections of Jomon Pottery; Chapter 8: "Japan's Antiquity" in 1907, Section 1: The Exhibition Hall of Ancient Relics at the Tokyo勧業博覧会 [Industrial Exhibition], Section 2: The Village of the Koropokkuru, Section 3: The Image of Japan's Stone Age

Final Chapter Afterword Bibliography List of Illustrations Index of Names

In September 2024, at the Zoological Society of Japan's Nagasaki Annual Meeting, a tote bag featuring a realistically rendered Japanese pipistrelle was sold at the registration desk. As noted on the bag, this illustration is from a paper contributed by Motoyoshi Namie (1854–1918)—a pioneer of Japanese zoology and one of the founding members of the Tokyo University Biological Society, the predecessor to the Zoological Society of Japan—in Volume 1, Number 8 (1889) of the *Zoological Magazine* (*Dobutsugaku Zasshi*). This illustration was also used by the Society's Historical Materials Preservation Committee in their exhibition at the 82nd Annual Meeting in Asahikawa in 2011, titled "The Charm and Value of Descriptions: Japanese Mammals as Seen in the *Zoological Magazine*," which explored the history of the description of Japanese mammals through figures published in the magazine.

When the author was creating an exhibition as a committee member, they wondered whether this bat, which looked as if it was about to fly right out at them, was drawn by Namie himself or by someone else. Shedding light on the people who drew such illustrations of animals and treating them as the main subject is the book, The Modernity of Illustrators: Depicting Plants, Animals, and Archaeology. It is truly no exaggeration to say that the arrival of this long-awaited work has finally come. In any case, by thoroughly and diligently searching through historical documents and utilizing persuasive writing, the book brings to light the "illustrators" who supported the dawn of Japanese zoology.

This book uses the term "gakō" (draftsman/painter) in both a broad sense—meaning a "painter" or "artist"—and a narrow sense—meaning "someone who drew illustrations at the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Science" (page 5). However, it also takes into account that "gakō" was originally sometimes used to refer to "those who drew academic specimens or original illustrations for research papers" (page 7). The salary of a gakō was said to be "equivalent to two to three times the starting salary of a police officer or an elementary school teacher" (page 10). It can be said that such generous treatment of gakō played a role in supporting Japanese zoology during the introduction of modern Western science. The list of government office employees summarizing the backgrounds of these gakō (page 37) is also valuable information.

Well, similarly to the bat at the beginning, an illustration of the long-fingered bat published in Volume 1, Number 10 of the "Zoological Magazine" is featured on page 169 of this book, and it is explained that the artist who drew it was Masaji Hiraki (1859–1943) (page 160 [Note: actually page 166 in text]). He is a person who had experience working at the Ministry of Education's (at the time) "Educational Museum" (the predecessor of the National Museum of Nature and Science), and it is stated that after working at the museum, he had time to study painting, visited art museums, and interacted with Western-style painters (page 167). Regarding Hiraki, he is detailed next to Seizan Kimura—who held concurrent positions at the Educational Museum and the University of Tokyo, and left behind "Fish Sketches," "Insect Sketches," and plant illustrations—in Chapter 4, Section 2: The Faculty of Science in the Meiji 10s (from page 165 onwards). Furthermore, "At the time of the founding of the University of Tokyo, foreign teachers sent praise for the work of the artists who drew the original plates, which can be interpreted as showing that foreigners at the time recognized the visual effectiveness of illustrations in the publication of academic books."

At this point, one is reminded of the NHK morning serialized television drama "Ranman," which aired for six months starting in April 2023 and was modeled after Tomitaro Makino (1862–1957), also known as the "Father of Japanese Botany." The protagonist became a topic of conversation, including for his dedication to research and his personality. The author of this book has experience serving as a curator at the Makino Memorial Garden Museum. This book is precisely what reminds us of what was happening in zoology, anthropology, and archaeology around the time Makino was active, centered on the Department of Botany in the Faculty of Science at the University of Tokyo during its early establishment years. The introduction states: "Draftsmen who were employed by modern Japanese universities and museums and drew academic specimens of plants, animals, archaeology, etc. The reality of their production has not been clarified. This book examines the significance of the wide-ranging activities of draftsmen who contributed to the development of academia and also contributed to the dissemination of knowledge to society through illustrations in magazines and pictorial books."

Regarding botany, many pages are devoted to Part II: Illustration in Botany, specifically Chapter 5, "Kuotaro Watanabe, Botanical Illustrator at the Koishikawa Botanical Garden" (pp. 221–257), and Chapter 6, "The Diffusion of Botanical Knowledge" (pp. 259–284). The field of botany is covered in relatively great detail because, as stated, "by using Ken Ogura (ed.), *History of the Botanical Classroom* as our primary clue, we were able to roughly trace the changes in the illustrators involved in botany; however, regarding the activities of illustrators in other departments of the Faculty of Science, we have been able to obtain only meager information, and at this stage it remains unclear whether illustrators were continuously stationed in departments other than the Botanical Classroom" (p. 192). Nonetheless, since this paper is intended for members of the Zoological Society of Japan, I would like to focus on the content related to zoology rather than botany.

Now, directly related to zoology are the sections of Chapter 3: The Role of Animal Sketching in Taxidermy, and Chapter 5: The Department of Zoology in Chapter 4: Painters of the University of Tokyo. Regarding the structure of this book, Chapter 3, The Role of Animal Sketching in Taxidermy, focuses on the close relationship between the drawings made by painters and animal taxidermy as museum exhibits, and discusses the relationship between taxidermy making and sketching (page 4). This is because, "as far as the author has investigated, there are almost no studies discussing modern Japanese taxidermy and taxidermy methods from the perspective of animal representation," but it touches on the fact that pioneering zoologists such as Chiyomatsu Ishikawa, Isao Iijima, and Motoyoshi Namie offered advice on taxidermy making (page 109). "Because taxidermy has a three-dimensional form, it can sometimes be superior to two-dimensional paintings in visual communication. Using the skin of a real animal, taxidermy does not actually start moving, but it makes it possible to give the viewer a sense of realism as if a living animal were right there" (page 115). The perception that taxidermy giving such a lifelike impression is suitable for museum exhibits is thought to have arisen through inspections of the West at the end of the Edo period.

Chapter 4: Painters at the University of Tokyo, Section 5: The Department of Zoology. "As painters who illustrated under professors of zoology from the 1870s to the 1880s, the names of Seizan Kimura, Matate Indo, Kotaro Nagahara, and Jujiro Nomura can be cited" (p. 192). "There was a tendency for those well-versed in Western painting techniques to be hired as painters." Among them, Nomura was brought to tears by the strictness of Whitman (1842–1910), the second foreign zoology teacher hired by the government, following Morse.

"Mr. (Nomura), by the teacher's order, was temporarily engaged in making a sketch of a clepsine (leech). The drawing was a detailed watercolor, requiring one week to ten days to complete a single piece. However, because the teacher would not allow even a trivial error in a line or a dot to be overlooked, sketches that were finally completed were discarded in vain, and starting over happened more than once or twice" (page 197). "Nomura had been trained to become Whitman's eyes and hands, drawing illustrations exactly as Whitman envisioned them." Because of this, Whitman held Nomura in high regard, and at Whitman's request, Nomura traveled to the United States in 1885, shortly after Whitman had returned there.

Furthermore, Nagahara drew illustrations for the embryological research conducted by Kakichi Mitsukuri using softshell turtles, Japanese pond turtles, sea turtles, and other materials. In a paper published by Mitsukuri in the Journal of the College of Science, Imperial University in 1891, multiple plates bear the signatures of both Mitsukuri and Nagahara (p. 193). Nagahara transitioned from being an assistant in the Faculty of Science at the University of Tokyo to an assistant professor at the Tokyo Fine Arts School. It is noted that Nagahara's specimen drawings were "artistic pieces rather than mere specimen drawings" and that "the reason they are called the most renowned specimens in the history of the University of Tokyo is likely because value was placed on beauty in addition to accuracy" (p. 193). In any case, "speaking of illustrators in the Faculty of Science at the University of Tokyo, it is considered that individuals who could be described as exclusive, department-assigned illustrators worked in the botany, zoology, and anthropology laboratories of the Department of Biology" (p. 355).

I think the author's desire to "bring to light the existence of painters who have not been given a certain evaluation in conventional research, or whose existence is hardly known" is successfully achieved by discussing them while empirically correlating the research of each painter and researcher. The detailed notes, list of references, and index of names are also very extensive, making it extremely useful for those interested in this field, though general readers might find it somewhat cumbersome.

Mizoguchi Hajime (Rissho Univ. / Faculty of Social Welfare / Gakushuin Univ. / Archives)

Modernity of Painters: Drawing Plants, Animals, and Archaeology - Book Review (PDF file)