Side-profile of a woman in traditional Chinese dress and attire holding an orchid. Through this painting, Fujishima aims to create his idealized portraiture of "oriental beauty." For such an image, he proposes three crucial components: Chinese…
A painting of a sailboat at sea in front of a rising sun. This seemingly tranquil image hides a subtle message of Japanese hegemony and ambitions across the Pacific.
"Refugees" is a life-sized scroll that portrays the suffering of Chinese denizens during the Sino-Japanese war. It came out near the end of the war in 1943, and is an artistic plea for a ceasefire between China and Japan. One of Jiang's best skills…
This work is supposedly inspired by Fukuzawa's trip to China in 1939, where he sighted a poor man living among the deserts Loess Plateau. The figure also reflects Fukuzawa's spiritual condition and a representation of the tragedy suffered by Chinese…
A surrealist painting that depicts the artist's sentiment towards the defeat of Japan following the second world war. In the foreground, we see a heap of human bodies stacked up in a rough pyramid shape in front of a barren desolate landscape.…
A bright red sun rising next to Mt. Fuji across an extravagant gold background. This painting by Yokoyama Taikan is a nationalistic painting that celebrates Japan's imperial glory. It is part of the series "Ten Mountain
Views and Ten Ocean Views",…