Japanese modern art is often discounted as a mere echo of its Western counterpart. This is not so much because styles and forms have been imported per se, but because in their new environment they have failed to take on a life of their own. In this, the real test, modern Japanese art has often been found wanting.
However, with the opening of the second part of its exhibition "The History of Japanese Modern Art, Reconsidered," Kamakura's Museum of Modern Art makes the case that Japanese modern art did successfully move out of the Western shadow to create many unique and vivid masterpieces.
That shadow was all too evident in Part One of the exhibition (till Nov. 25), in which many works possessed an ersatz quality. Sadao Tsubaki's "Portrait of Seiji Murayama" (1925), while excellent, is nonetheless a clear tip of the hat to the meticulous realism of the northern Renaissance. Similarly, Tomoo Wadachi's constructivist collage, "Riddle" (1921), bears all the hallmarks of state-sponsored Soviet art.