2025 Theses Doctoral

The Collapse of Past and Present: Tracing “Integrated Art” in Modern Japan

Kuromiya, Naomi

This dissertation examines a phenomenon that arose in modern Japanese art and architecture in the late 1920s and early 1930s, which I term “integrated art.” I argue that “integrated art” was a distinct genre of art characterized by several impulses toward totality: the unification of multiple artistic media, the melding of art and its viewership, and most notably, the collapse of traditional Japanese arts (the “past”) with modernism (the “present”). “Integrated art” was indebted both to 19th century European notions of the Gesamtkunstwerk (the "total artwork") that had begun circulating in Japan in the 1900s, and to tea and other Japanese art practices. It also a particular local response to the rapid modernization and disorienting Westernization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The genre’s fascination with the “past” sprouted from a growing concern over the preservation of Japanese culture in modern times, and a perceived disconnect between extant practices of fine art and cultural identity.

To define this genre of total art, I examine three cases that can be understood as “integrated art”: the “total flowers” of ikebana master Teshigahara Sōfū (1900-1979), the teahouse-inspired structures of architect Horiguchi Sutemi (1895-1984), and the stage performances of the artist collective Jikken Kōbō (active 1951-1957). The sum of these three artistic practices gives shape and weight to the amorphous tendency of “integrated art,” making its characteristics and goals visible.

By conducting visual analyses of each case study’s works, their photographic documentation, and related writings, I show that each creator or group of creators pursued an intangible—and largely impossible—totality: a holistic, timeless Japanese art practice that resolved the fractured, modern present. In doing so, I offer a narrative of modern Japanese art that not only traverses diverse media and practices, but also interrogates the aesthetic and political stakes of traditional arts, modernism, and totality. Questions of totality permeate modernism in various regions of the world—by analyzing “integrated art,” this study not only enriches our understanding of these transnationally linked ideas, but also celebrates the cultural particularities of total art in pre-World War II through early postwar Japan.