抄録
After World War II, the painters in Okinawa tried to reconstruct the art world system
and create a new style of painting. During the U.S. Military occupation period (from
1945 to 1972), the paintings in Okinawa were influenced by the memory of the War, the
cultural policy of the U.S. Military, and the relationship with Japanese contemporary art.
With these backgrounds, it is important to note the contribution of traditional culture to
the modern expression of the paintings.
To reveal the connection between modernity and tradition in post-war Okinawan art,
this paper focuses on an artist, Adaniya Masayoshi, and his paintings and critiques. He is
regarded as one of the earliest modernist painters in Okinawa by his abstract paintings.
In his critiques, Adaniya also claimed the importance that modernist paintings created a
new tradition in Okinawa.
Adaniya’s effort was to find out a modernity in Okinawa, not as the imitation of the
Western or Japanese one, but as Okinawa’s originality based on its tradition. In other
words, he looked for Okinawan modernity, in that he reconsidered the tradition of
Okinawa from his self-reflective perspective instead of the secondary information from
the others.
