Six Themes About Music (violin) 

Fujishima Takeji painted 'Six Themes About Music (violin)' in the style of Nihonga, or ‘Japanese painting’, a style adopted in the Meiji period. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 saw the Japanese Imperial court encourage Westernisation of the arts. Here, we see Fujishima painting a fashionable young woman with recognizably Japanese features, playing a violin in a Western style. Gold leaf evokes the Japanese Rinpa school of painting. These visual codes indicate the cultural project of the Meiji period, as the country sought to promote itself as modern and cosmopolitan, but also to maintain its distinct national identity. Fujishima, who trained in Tokyo and Europe, was a professor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Archival research into the records of this institution might shed further light on the politics of cultural production in Meiji Japan. Ultimately, the painting reminds us that art’s meaning is always tied to the social and institutional contexts that shape its production and reception.