Abstract

Traditional Japanese painting had its own format as a hanging scroll or a folded screen. These formats had functions to be used in daily life or ritual space. Painting had been categorized in Kogei , parallel to ceramics or textile. Presentation of artistic virtuosity and sales had been the important functions of public show. After the bringing the category, fine arts into Japan in Meiji-era, artists, especially painters tended to exclude those functions from exhibitions. We can recognize this transition in a series of exhibitions held in Kyoto in late Meiji-era, such as Shinko-bijutsuhinten. Gradually painting drifted away from the category, Kogei. As a result, Kogei became a word just as applied arts. In this process, titles of painting were transformed to more metaphorical or poetical ones from description of depicted objects, and paradoxically, painters rediscovered the traditional widely rectangular format, namely, a pair of six-folded screen as effective form for competition or realistic representation of landscape, not as a valuable form for practical functions. In several world expositions, painters in Japanese style enforced to transform their painting to be framed, nevertheless, in Japan, they chose the traditional format in exhibitions that was the very system the West