Exploring local traditions and global exchange Japan Focus

Katharina Rode-Kaya specializes in Edo-period (1615-–1886) and Meiji-era (1868-–1912) painting history, theory, and politics. She is currently expanding her work on her doctoral dissertation, in which she studied the role of pictorial models in the process of modernizing Japanese painting, with a focus on art school professor and Maruyama-style painter Kawabata Gyokushō (1842–1913). Her current project focusses on artist mobility and negotiations of identity of Maruyama-style painters, who left their hometown of Kyoto. The findings of the first phase will be published in a volume on the evolution of the Maruyama-Shijō networks, co-edited with Dr. Jens Bartel.  

Her second project reevaluates Akita Ranga painting with a focus on daimyō painter Satake Shozan and his social circles. It connects the group to later ranga works (dutch pictures) by Shiba Kōkan, Aōdō Denzen and Yasuda Raishū. The study aims to contextualize discrepancies between the Chinese and European models used for the works against prevalent Sino-Japanese painting theories to situate Akita Ranga painting in its time and demystify its early end.