Uemura Shōen: Remembered for Who She Wasn’t
A Glimpse at the Life of the Non-Feminist Icon
Upheld as a feminist icon but a woman who publicly longed for a quiet and traditional female role in society; credited as pushing the boundaries of the field of Nihonga while she strictly adhered to classical rules of art; internationally acclaimed, but the creator of work that celebrated the World War II era fascist Japanese government; Uemura Shōen was a complicated individual.
Born in 1875 and raised in Kyoto, the ancient capital and cultural time capsule of Japan, Shōen was raised steeped in Japanese culture and tradition. Her mother, Naka, had been widowed two months before Shōen’s birth. Throughout her young life, Shōen proved to be a passionate and talented artist. As she grew up in her mother’s tea shop, it was said that Shōen would sit in the back of the shop and sketch patrons. She was always determined to become an artist and Naka was always her daughter’s greatest supporter. The artist would later credit her mother by saying, “My mother, who gave birth to me, also gave birth to my art.”
Despite being raised by a single, working mother, this was not the identity that Shōen sought to embody in her adult life.
By the time she was 12, Shōen was sent to attended Kyoto Prefectural Painting School, the first established art school in Japan. At school, Shōen studied the fundamentals landscape painting under the artist Suzuki Shōnen. Shōnen became so taken with Uemura’s talent that he allowed her to begin pushing her talents beyond what academia at the time permitted. Under Shōnen’s tutelage, Uemura began practicing figure painting in her spare time, despite this being a privilege reserved for older students.
Later, as a sign of respect and out of gratitude for her teacher, Shōnen Uemura was allowed to take her teachers name and thus changed her name from Uemura Tsune to Uemura Shōen.
Although Shōen learned much from her teacher and became skilled in landscape painting, figure painting and the bijin-ga style of painting was where Shōen’s talents and interests lay. Bijin-ga literally translates to “beautiful person picture” and, as a genre of painting, mostly encompasses Japanese portraits of beautiful women. By the age of 15, Shōen was already exhibiting artworks, earning awards, and had even collected such patrons as Prince Arthur of Wales and Duke of Connaught.
When she was 27, Shōen fell pregnant. Unmarried and without a public relationship, accusations flew regarding who the father of Shōen’s child might be. Although Shōen never named him specifically, it believed then, and remains the theory today, that the child’s father was Shōen’s former teacher: Suzuki Shōnen.
At the time of Uemura Shōen’s first pregnancy, her alleged lover was married and had children by his wife. Therefore, it was Shōen who received the societal and career repercussions of the affair and being an unwed mother. Shōnen saw no repercussions for his involvement in the affair, but Shōen was ostracized from the Japanese art community. Uemura Shōen would not reemerge in Japan’s art community for at least another 10 years, although her son remembered her always hard at work at her easel while he was primarily raised by his grandmother.
When she appeared on the Japanese art scene again, Shōen was a master of her craft, debuting such works as Firefly (1913), Daughter Miyuki (1914), and Flame (1918).
Shōen was, and still is, criticized for much of her work. Although she did much to elevate the field of bijin-ga to that of a major theme amongst Japanese art styles, her strict adherence to the Nihonga art umbrella and her lack of flexibility when it came to changing consumer tastes earned her considerable criticism. Critics accused her of only painting beautiful women, women who embodied an unrealistic Japanese ideal that was no longer plausible in a post-Meiji Japan facing an impending World War. In this way, Shōen earned security for herself within the Fascist Japanese government of the 1930s and 40s and, through the Bunten (an art event done in collaboration between the Japanese government and the Japan Art Academy), earned a dependable living and notoriety, equivalent to that of her male counterparts.
Uemura Shōen continued to paint images of beautiful princesses, fictional heroines, and graceful noblewomen until her later life and later career. Only towards the end of her career did Shōen begin depicting everyday, middleclass women completing everyday tasks. She did, however, paint them with the same dignity and grace that she would imbue in any of her noblewomen and princesses.
Shōen is most often remembered as being a powerful feminist role model. A single mother, independently wealthy woman, and successful artist in a male-dominated society, on the surface she does fulfill that role of “feminist icon”. However, the identity of feminist is not one that she supported or sought out, but rather had been forced into from birth. She wanted to embody the traditional Japanese female role. She craved a quiet, conservative life with a husband and the company of her family. Her passion, though, took her life in a completely different direction.
In 1949, at the age of 74, Uemura Shōen passed away from cancer. One year before her death, Shōen became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Culture. And this is what she became known as: a woman who depicted other women as though they were the stuff of legends.
My ideal is a picture without a single trace of vulgarity, which has the refined fragrance of a jewel. — Uemura Shōen
This short biography is part of a series on Uemura Shōen, published on Medium by Maura Wilson, MAH.
