Shōshūrei shitae

In nihonga, an artist first creates a small sketch for an anticipated painting and then produces a shitae, or a preparatory drawing with more details on the same scale as the finished work. Because the final painting is completed by tracing the shitae, the preparation of shitae marks a crucial stage in the nihonga process. This shitae for Draft Call is particularly significant since the actual painting is now lost, probably due to the 1923 earthquake or the 1945 bombing of Tokyo when the city and its environs were mostly destroyed by fire.

Kiyokata depicts a young man and his family proceeding to a meeting place upon receiving an official draft paper. Dressed in a Western-style uniform, the draftee looks straight ahead with a sense of resolve and holds the hand of his little brother. An older man, perhaps his father, and his young wife with downcast eyes also accompany him. The figures are placed in a landscape with trees and grasses along the path and farmhouses in the distance. Two men with a horse emerge on the right side, enhancing a sense of immediacy as if we were witnessing the scene unfolding before our eyes. The mixture of the Western hats and kimono as seen in the clothing of the man and the young boy evoke the late Meiji ambience when Japanese society was rapidly modernizing. Kiyokata showed the finished painting at the Second Exhibition of History and Genre Painting held in Tokyo in March 1904, only one month after the Russo-Japanese War had commenced. Twenty-six at the time, the reality of an impending draft was his serious concern, as indicated in his choice of the subject for this painting. With close attention to the customs and manners of the period, Kiyokata thus documented the historic moment at the dawn of the war as it impacted the ordinary people’s lives.

Born in Tokyo in the first decade of the Meiji period, Kiyokata grew up immersed in late-Edo culture and sought to capture the city’s traditional life in his work. At the age of thirteen, he became a pupil of Mizuno Toshikata and within a decade achieved popularity as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines. Soon commissions to illustrate books by famous authors such as Ozaki Kōyō and Izumi Kyōka followed. 

After achieving success as a nihonga artist with the acceptance of his work at the 1909 Bunten, he continued to participate in the government exhibitions. By early Shōwa, his name had become synonymous with Tokyo bijinga (paintings of beautiful women), while the Imperial Arts Academy Award at the 1927 Teiten established him as one of the most distinguished nihonga artists of his time. After 1949, Kiyokata moved away from the national exhibition, preferring private venues for his intimate-scale paintings, which he termed “tabletop art” (takujō geijutsu). A gifted writer, he published many essays, including Koshikata no ki (Records of My life, 1941). In 1954, Kiyokata was honored with the Order of Cultural Merit.

Kiyokata’s works are in the collection of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Yamatane Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, and Suntory Museum of Art, among others.