Yōga (Western-style painting)

Meiji Japan received Western oil painting through an inbound channel and used it to build its own modernity. Takahashi Yuichi worked before any school taught oil painting at all, studying under Kawakami Tōgai at the Institute for the Study of Western Documents and picking up more from Charles Wirgman, who was living in Japan — finding his way largely by feel. In 1876, the Technical Fine Arts School opened, bringing the Italian painter Antonio Fontanesi over to teach (the school itself lasted only seven years). Kuroda Seiki went to Paris in 1884 planning to study law, switched to painting, learned to render outdoor light under Raphael Collin, returned to Japan in 1893, and founded the Hakubakai in 1896. Painting one's own landscape with foreign tools was not without friction. In 1901, police had a cloth draped over a nude painting shown at a Hakubakai exhibition — the Koshimaki Incident, the first police intervention at an exhibition in Japan.