Toraji Ishikawa’s ‘Moga’

On his return after three decades spent travelling across Europe and the United States, Toraji Ishikawa presented a series of engravings entitled Ten Types of Female Nudes in 1934. The early 20th century was marked by a profound change in Japanese society as a result of an increasing openness to cultural influences from overseas, and the artist shook up the genre of female representation. The series was censored immediately due to its ‘pornographic’ character.

Born in Kochi on the island of Shikoku in 1875, the artist trained alongside Shotaro Koyama, then was involved in the reorganisation of the Meiji Fine Arts Society, renamed the Pacific Painting Society (Taiheiyo-Gaikai), in 1902. Inspired by post-impressionism and artists like Edgar Degas, Félix Vallotton, Gustave Courbet, and Henri Matisse, his body of work was characterised by nudes. In 1943, Toraji Ishikawa became director of the Pacific Painting Society, before working at Tokyo University and being awarded the Imperial Award of the Japan Art Academy in 1953.

Emancipated women

The nudes depicted by Toraji Ishikawa show a type of young woman that the Japanese call moga—from the expression modan garu, meaning ‘modern girl’—and in the Shin-hanga style. As historian Hiroshi Minami, cited by Sandra Schaal, declares, this woman is ‘the symbol of a clash of cultures and values linked to the advent of a form of Japanese modernism strongly influenced by Americanism in what embodied her most striking aspect: morals.’ Independent, modern, on the path towards a form of freedom that some considered subversive, she sets herself apart from the traditional representation of a Japanese woman subjugated by patriarchal society.

In the series of wood engravings Ten Types of Female Nudes, Toraji Ishikawa shows Japanese women alone, and nine of them are presented in their intimacy. These naked women—one of whom is smoking—wear jewellery and lipstick and have modern hairstyles, strengthening the message of freedom and breaking convention.

When looking back over Toraji Ishikawa’s career, this series of nudes is striking in its singularity. The artist, who started out as a landscape painter, reverted to government orders from 1938 onwards— particularly during the Second World War—in opposition to what he is now known for. The theory proposed by Kendall Brown in Light in Darkness: Women in Japanese Prints of Early Showa (1926-1945) is that Toraji Ishikawa was led astray by more ‘decadent’ friends.

Ten Types of Female Nudes (1934) is a series of wood engravings by Toraji Ishikawa, some of which can be viewed on the National Gallery of Victoria’s website.