Women Preparing For a Party
Taniguchi Fumie (1910–2001)
Yosoou hitobito (Women Preparing for a Party), 1935
Single six-panel screen; ink and color on silk
69 5/8 x 143 1/8 inches (176 x 364 cm)

Using a traditional format, the folding screen, Fumie celebrates the self-assured, chic and sexy “modern girl,” each one making a fashion statement of own. The composition recalls the elegantly gowned courtesans of the famous early seventeenth-century Matsuura Screens in the Yamato Bunkakan, Nara.

The statuesque figures make a compelling statement for changes in womens’ identities in the early twentieth century. Consumerism in fashion—elegant high-heeled slippers; Marcel hair-curling iron; bobbed hair; powder compact; jeweled watch and ring—these things empowered women and helped them redefine themselves. The second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937. Around 1938, austerity measures set in and lavish spending on clothing and luxury items such as those featured here was discouraged by the government.

Fumie, a native of Tokyo, graduated from the Fine Arts division of Bunka Gakuen in 1934 and was one of the few women invited to exhibit with the highly regarded Blue Dragon Society (Seiryūsha). She left the group in 1938 to devote more time to the study of Noh theater and sculpture

Fumie personified the images in her painting, always looking for what was new and fascinating. In 1944, she married a fellow nihonga artist and the following year they moved to Kure, in Hiroshima Prefecture. She divorced in 1953, leaving two children behind, and in 1955, two years later, she married a Japanese-American named Umemura and moved to the United States. That marriage ended in divorce in 1957. The remainder of her life was spent in Los Angeles, where she worked as a waitress, seamstress, maid and such. Her only venture into artistic pursuits seems to have been as a contributor of numerous essays to local Japanese magazines in the 1960s and 1970s. In Japan, the Kure Museum reports a renewed interest in Fumie’s life and art.

Hosokawa Rikizō, who purchased the painting when it was exhibited in 1935, made his fortune importing iron ore from Brazil. He formed his collection of modern Japanese paintings during the 1930s, and the collection entered the Meguro Gajoen Museum of Art after the Pacific War. The museum closed around 2002, and the collection was dispersed at that time.

Provenance:

Hosokawa Rikizō Collection, Meguro Gajoen Museum of Art

Exhibited:

7th Seiryūsha Exhibition, 1935; won the Y-family Prize

Published:

Kyōto-shi Bijutsukan, Kindai nihonga ni okeru fūzokuga (Kyoto: Kyōto-shi Bijutsukan, 1984), p. 68

Hosono Masanobu et al., Kindai no bijinga: Meguro Gajoen korekushon /Paintings of Japanese beauties at the turn of the century (Kyoto: Kyōto Shoin, 1988), pl. 214

Kurata Kimihiro, Meguro Gajoen bijutsukan korekushon: Bijinga ni miru fūzoku, Shōwa zenki (Meguro Gajoen Museum of Art Collection: Manners and customs seen in beauty painting, early Shōwa period) (Tokyo: Meguro Gajoen Bijutsukan, 1996), pp. 52–53, pl. 28