Nihonga

On this map, most style names were given from the outside, and Nihonga may be the clearest example of all. In 1882, the American scholar Ernest Fenollosa used the term Japanese painting in a lecture, and Nihonga is said to have been born as its translation — Okakura Tenshin was the one interpreting that day. Before Western painting arrived, it had simply been e, picture. The moment it got a name, it became something to protect and cultivate. When the Tokyo School of Fine Arts opened in 1889, it had a department for Nihonga but none for Yōga — a Western painting department would not exist until 1896. The nation chose to establish Nihonga first. And when Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunsō began painting without outlines, in soft blur, critics called it mōrōtai, the hazy style — hard to make out, unclear. That, too, is said to have started as an insult. Today the name is simply the name of the technique. One country holding two brushes at once, in the same era — a modernity you rarely see anywhere else.