大正

The Taisho era marked Japan's first sustained encounter with parliamentary politics. Universal male suffrage, labor organizing, and a vibrant press challenged Meiji-era authoritarianism. Workers struck. Students marched. Newspapers proliferated. The streets shook with possibility.

Yoshino Sakuzo's minponshugi — popular sovereignty grounded in the will of the people — became the era's intellectual signature. The constitutional emperor reigned; the people ruled.

Western-style oil painting (yoga) and reformed Japanese painting (nihonga) competed and cross-pollinated. Kishida Ryusei's eerie portraits absorbed both Albrecht Durer and Edo realism. Yokoyama Taikan dissolved Western perspective into mist and ink. The Shirakaba group imported Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Rodin to a country reading them in translation.

Akutagawa Ryunosuke wrote stories that bent toward the abyss. Tanizaki Junichiro's prose lingered on shadow, on the dark interiors that European modernism had bleached out. Proletarian writers documented factories. Modan gaaru — the modern girl — bobbed her hair and walked into novels without apology.

Sugiura Hisui designed for Mitsukoshi department store and Tokyo subway openings. Cherry blossoms wrapped around moga in cloche hats. Slab-serif Roman lettering met vertical kanji. The advertising poster became a fine-art object — bold, lithographic, half-Paris and half-Edo.