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  • Okakura Kakuzō:A Reintroduction
  • Noriko Murai (bio) and Yukio Lippit (bio)

In 1905, Okakura Kakuzō (1863-1913)1 designed a small hexagonal pavilion that overlooks the Pacific Ocean by Izura Bay on his country estate in rural Ibaraki Prefecture and named it Kanrantei (Big Wave Viewing Pavilion). Commonly known as Rokkakudō (Six-Sided Hall), the recently reconstructed Kanrantei, destroyed by the tsunami of March 11, 2011 (see frontispiece to the volume), serves as an architectural analogue for the complexity of Okakura's historical persona and discursive profile. It invokes many of the characteristics associated with this turn-of-the-century transnational intellectual who played such a significant role in the art and cultural patrimony of the Meiji era (1868-1912). While the six-sided Rokkakudō appears deeply rooted in the traditional architectural typologies of East Asia, its classicism is in fact inventive, as it represents a rare building form with no major precedents or obvious points of reference.2 Not only is the symbology of its form obscure, but so are the circumstances surrounding its construction—as part of the sequence of events related to the relocation of the Japan Art Institute (Nihon Bijutsuin) from Yanaka in central Tokyo to the remote fishing village of Izura. It evokes the momentary isolation of this major Meiji-era alternative art institution founded by Okakura, and by extension his renegade reputation and cult-like status among his circle of artist-friends. Furthermore, the Rokkakudō's setting, a rocky outcropping off of the Izura Coast, resonates with Okakura's self-image as an exilic and reclusive figure. The dramatic vantage point it offers onto the Pacific Ocean manifests its creator's own far-reaching vision and an overseas career that witnessed extended sojourns in Boston and Calcutta, as well as shorter stays throughout Europe and China. The Rokkakudō embodies the erudition, antinomianism, and internationalism that so indelibly marked Okakura's own career.

The destruction and subsequent rebuilding of the hexagonal structure also provide a timely pretext for a reconsideration of Okakura's discursive legacy. This legacy has [End Page 1] been conditioned by the prerogatives of specific interpretive communities throughout the twentieth century. Their cumulative effect has been the mythologization of "Okakura Tenshin" as the father of pan-Asianist discourse, and a casting of him as the father of modern Japanese art. The present issue of the Review of Japanese Culture and Society was conceived from a position of skepticism with regard to such epithets. Its main proposition, as explored through the articles by noted specialists found in this volume, is that a close reading of Okakura's writings and circumstances presents a more subtle and complex historical profile, and raises different types of questions: What are the main themes and commitments of Okakura's body of writings? How might these writings be understood as unified? How did the radically disparate environments through which Okakura moved inflect his thought? And how did he conceptualize the history of Japanese art at the end of his life, after playing central roles in the government-led surveys of cultural treasures in the 1880s, the founding of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō) and the Japan Art Institute, and the amassment of an Asian art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston? Even though we fall far short of answering these questions in full, it is our conviction that a sustained attention to them opens up new and oblique ways of understanding both the historical position of Okakura and the contingencies of the Meiji art world.

In adopting this approach, we have been inspired by the writings of Kinoshita Nagahiro (also a contributor to the present volume), who has disarticulated more than anyone the many myths of Okakura. And in keeping with Kinoshita's practice, whenever referring to Okakura, we have chosen to avoid the common sobriquet "Tenshin" that has come to be associated with a specific way of imagining Okakura, and instead have chosen to call him by his given name, Kakuzō. As Kinoshita reminds us in his essay included in this volume, "Tenshin" was one of the names Okakura occasionally used when signing his personal letters and poems, although he never...

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