Visualizing the “South” – The 4th Seminar Held by the Department of Art Research, Archives and Information Systems for the 2025 Fiscal Year


From April to August of this year, Associate Teaching Professor Chinghsin Wu of Rutgers University in the United States visited our institute as a visiting researcher. Specializing in modern art, Dr. Wu had previously visited Japan as a visiting researcher at our institute in 2007, conducting research on Japanese surrealism centered on the work of KOGA Harue. During this recent stay, she focused her research on the portrayal of imagery in Taiwan in modern Japanese art.
On July 17, we held a hybrid seminar, featuring presentations by Professor Wu and Ms. MORIKAWA Monami, a curator at the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art. Dr. Wu gave a presentation titled “The Activities and Development of Modern Japanese Painters in Taiwan: Focusing on the Works of KINOSHITA Seigai and Other Japanese Painters of the Same Era Before and After Their Move to Taiwan,” in which she discussed the changes in the themes and styles of paintings by Japanese painters who were active in Taiwan during the colonial era, such as KINOSHITA Seigai (1887-1988) and GOHARA Kotoh (1887-1965), after their move to Taiwan. Ms. MORIKAWA’s presentation, “SAMIZU Kōhei’s Southern Military Sketches: Records of Japan’s Occupied Territories and Colonies during Wartime,” introduced the wartime military sketches of oil painter SAMIZU Kōhei (1904–1997) and pointed out the historical value of sketches he created in Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, Manchuria, and other locations as visual records of Japan’s occupied territories. In the discussion following the presentation, the presenters exchanged opinions on the image of the “South” as depicted by Japanese painters before the war. Researchers from inside and outside the Institute also joined in the discussion, which focused on the painting styles seen in the flower-and-bird paintings of Seigai and Kotoh, as well as the significance of SAMIZU’s sketches of the occupied territories during the war.