Harada Naojiro's Dragon rides the gender-fluid wave

In 1890, the Meiji Art Society (or Meiji bijutsukai) in Japan got together to host the 3rd National Industrial Exposition. The Meiji Art Society was an organization of yōga artists, which does not mean that they were a big group of people in stretchy pants doing downward dog and warrior poses in a park. Rather, the yōga art movement was to reinvent Japanese art using Western styles and make Japanese art relevant in the modern world. The National Industrial Exposition presented yōga artists with the perfect opportunity to make their cause appeal to a wider audience and to be taken seriously by art lovers.

The exposition couldn’t have come at a better time because some big names in the yōga movement had just returned from Europe, including Harada Naojiro who returned from studying in Germany. Harada decided that he’d use his newfound European style to create a realistic oil painting of a traditional Japanese subject: the Kannon Bodhisattva, a non-denominational deity who is Lord of Compassion and Goddess of Mercy (Kannon is gender fluid). Harada saw this sudden exposure to yōga ideals as the best way to get the movement accepted in Japanese culture. The Japanese public, though, did not share his zeal for change.

Because Western art styles try to render fantastical subject matter, like a Bodhisattva flying on a dragon, as realistically as possible. That way an artist can clearly portray a story or scene to their viewers as clearly as possible. The problem that the realistic portrayal of Kannon Bodhisattva presented with Japanese audiences, though, was that Harada’s depiction was too realistic! The Japanese did not like their beloved deity being portrayed as a human and they couldn’t grasp the concept that this portrayal was just a symbolic one, not a literal one. When looking at the work, viewers didn’t see the Bodhisattva, they saw some random lady chilling on a dragon.

The uproar that Harada caused sparked a huge and unintended controversy. Officials decided that the subject matter that artists portrayed needed to be outlined and controlled. One such voice in the conversation was Professor Toyama Shōichi from the Tokyo Imperial University. He thought that artists should strive to create only images that represent the Japanese nation and people, yet include some kind of subliminal message. That way change could happen right under the noses of the Japanese people, and the naysayers who got angry at Harada’s work would be none-the-wiser.