Audiences saw a hit adaptation of the Japanese story “Shogun” back in 1980. But it was very different from today’s version, and America was different then, too.

© Photo illustration by The New York Times; source photographs by Bettmann/Getty Images; Katie Yu/FX, via Associated Press

Audiences saw a hit adaptation of the Japanese story “Shogun” back in 1980. But it was very different from today’s version, and America was different then, too.

缺米的新闻有真有假，但🇯🇵⚽️ 7:0 🇨🇳 这件事情假不了。

As the Biden administration nears a decision to block the proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel, the debate over national and economic security is being dwarfed by presidential politics.

The territorial violation by China is the latest in a series of events amplifying tensions between Beijing and Japan.

The proposed merger of Japanese and American industrial giants, which proponents say would benefit both countries, is ensnared by political and labor opposition.

After dominating sales in Thailand for decades, Mazda, Nissan and other Japanese companies are losing their grip on a market long viewed as a regional hub.

我突然之间牢牢记住了一种鱼的名字（不借助母语），因为它没有刺，吃起来太方便了，给人印象深刻。

The two governments said the moves were a response to growing aggression by China, whose rapid military buildup has many leaders worried.

A century ago today, on 15 July 1924, one of the most influential Japanese Impressionist painters died: Viscount Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (Kuroda Kiyoteru). For more than a quarter of a century he was one of the leading Japanese artists who trained in France and took his art back to lead the transformation of painting in Japan.

The son of a samurai in Kagoshima (in the far south-west of Japan), he moved to Tokyo, where he first learned English, then switched to French. He travelled to Paris in 1884 to study law, being supported by his brother-in-law, a member of the Japanese diplomatic mission in France.

However, after two years there, he changed to study painting in the atelier of Raphael Collin, where he met Kume Keiichirō, also a student of Collin’s; together they explored plein air painting. In 1890 he moved to the international artists’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing, south of Paris.

He painted this Woman Reading in about 1890, making it one of his earliest surviving works.

The following year his style had become more painterly, in this Girl of Bréhat (1891). Bréhat is an island just off the northern coast of Brittany.

In the autumn of that year, he painted this fine landscape of Dead Leaves (1891), with its rich colours and textures.

Returning to Paris in 1893, he painted Morning Toilette (destroyed during World War Two), the first painting of a nude to be shown in public in Japan. He then went back to Japan, and started to paint Japanese subjects in his Impressionist style. By introducing Impressionist light and colour to yōga (Western style) painting, in what was known as ‘Southern School’ or murasaki (violet), he was a major influence in developing it from its Barbizon style. He transformed Yamamoto Hōsui’s Seikōkan academy into the Tenshin Dōjō.

His Maiko Girl from 1893 is less controversial, and considered one of his masterworks.

Morning Toilette caused uproar when it was first exhibited in Kyoto in 1895, as did his other paintings shown at the yōga salon later that year. The following year, together with Kume Keiichirō, he formed a new group known as the Hakubakai (‘The White Horse Society’), to promote yōga painting in its thirteen exhibitions until it dissolved in 1911.

In 1896 he was appointed director of a new department of Western Painting at the forerunner of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he surprisingly placed emphasis on the teaching of history painting.

Sunny Day (1897) returns to painterly brushstrokes and brilliant colour.

His triptych of nudes Wisdom Impression Sentiment (before 1898) won a silver medal at the International Exposition held in Paris in 1900, and in 1910 he was appointed an Imperial Court painter.

His later landscape paintings continued to develop his style, as seen in this Sun Setting on a Wild Garden from 1910.

Throughout his career, he made vigorous oil sketches in front of the motif, here At Kamakura (at Kotsubo) in 1915. Kamakura is a former capital of Japan, on the coast to the south of Tokyo, and a site for many of Kuroda’s sketches.

He inherited the title of Viscount in 1917, and was awarded the Grand Cross of the French Legion d’Honneur. He was finally awarded the Order of the Rising Sun immediately after his death in 1924.

Kuroda was trained to paint in Impressionist style, and did so throughout his career. He was one of the founding fathers of the Western painting tradition in Japan, thus an artist of singular importance in its culture. He was also widely acclaimed in his day as a painter of significance in Europe, yet he is now hardly known outside the country of his birth.

Reference

Wikipedia

Violent attacks on foreigners have prompted a debate about extreme nationalism online in a country that heavily censors information the government bans.

Across Asia and Europe, the event stoked concerns about American stability, both domestically and on crucial foreign policy issues like Washington’s commitment to alliances.

Across Asia and Europe, the event stoked concerns about American stability, both domestically and on crucial foreign policy issues like Washington’s commitment to alliances.