2023 Volume 55 Issue 1 Pages 177-184
Several painters in the modern era in Kyoto, Japan, were involved in writing textbooks on drawing and painting that were used in general and specialized education. This study focused on the book “Shogaku Mouhitsu Gajo” and examined the roles of the painter Kose Shoseki, who wrote the book, and the educator Miyoshi Osamu, who requested Shoseki to write it. It is positioned as the first brush painting textbook in Kyoto. In addition, one of the remarkable features of this book is that Miyoshi was not a drawing teacher, and Shoseki was not a painter belonging to the Maruyama-Shijo school, which was at the center of the Kyoto art world. First, the study examined the process of the book’s publication by researching the relevant documents. Then, it investigated the relationship between the characteristics of Shoseki’s expression of painting and the origin of the idea of the book indicated in Miyoshi’s lecture transcripts. The findings revealed that the combination of Miyoshi’s belief of the purpose of art education as a means of visual communication and Shoseki’s drawing techniques form the distinctive features of this book.
