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Lot Essay
Enjoying a hike in the hills with backpacks and school uniforms, these girls embody the expansive optimism of the culture of interwar Japan. The second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937 and Japan entered the period many Japanese have referred to as the "dark valley" of the war years.
At the age of twenty-three, Toen, a native of Mie Prefecture, together with Anayama Shodo, his classmate at the Tokyo Art School (Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko), founded a group called the Sanbokusha (Society of Brilliant Trees). In 1930 Toen entered a painting titled Seijitsu (Clear day) in the tenth annual Teiten, or Imperial Salon. The painting shown here was accepted for exhibition in the prestigious Teiten in 1934.
His paintings feature self-assured and chic modern girls ("moga") who make a statement for changes in women's identity in the early twentieth century. This example is from the now-defunct Meguro Gajoen Museum of Art, a collection formed before World War II by the Tokyo industrialist, Hosokawa Rikizo.
At the age of twenty-three, Toen, a native of Mie Prefecture, together with Anayama Shodo, his classmate at the Tokyo Art School (Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko), founded a group called the Sanbokusha (Society of Brilliant Trees). In 1930 Toen entered a painting titled Seijitsu (Clear day) in the tenth annual Teiten, or Imperial Salon. The painting shown here was accepted for exhibition in the prestigious Teiten in 1934.
His paintings feature self-assured and chic modern girls ("moga") who make a statement for changes in women's identity in the early twentieth century. This example is from the now-defunct Meguro Gajoen Museum of Art, a collection formed before World War II by the Tokyo industrialist, Hosokawa Rikizo.