Mizue: an alternative art magazine promoting Anglophilia, modern landscape and watercolor movement

This paper will examine the early period (1905-1911) of Mizue, one of the most long-lasting art magazines in Japan, to argue that during this period with Ôshita Tôjirô at its helm, Mizue showed and promoted in many ways an alternative view of art to the mainstream. Firstly, at a time when most of the centres of Yôga (western-style) painting were Paris-oriented, Mizue showed striking Anglophilia with many articles on and by artists and writers from Britain. Secondly, the magazine promoted a new and modern way of looking at nature and landscape, where places such as the mountains were more for leisure pursuit by urban population and less for religious or literary contemplation. Finally, Mizue, a magazine on watercolor painting (mizu = water and e = painting), tried to establish watercolor as an independent medium of its own worth. Watercolor painting was already known to early Yôga painters, such as the pupils of Antonio Fontanesi, the first publicly appointed teacher of western-style painting. However, it was oil painting, which was important for the mainstream Yôga painters and therefore watercolor played only a secondary role for them. Mizue with some help also from the Nihonga (Japanese-style) painters campaigned for watercolor and became the bastion of the watercolor movement. Together with Ôshita’s extraordinary 1901 bestseller Suisaiga no shiori (a guidebook to watercolor painting), Mizue democratized watercolor painting which spread to a new constituency of younger mostly urban generation across Japan.