Historical Buddhist temples in twentieth and twenty-first century Japan, while often discussed in their association with traditions, can be recontextualized as socio-political and cultural spaces endowed with distinctively modern public natures. This presentation will examine the pictorial art (often paintings) created to adorn these spaces as a specific type of public art by investigating the patronage, production and reception of two groups of such paintings at Tōji (1934) and Saihōji (1969) by Dōmoto Inshō (1891-1975), a pioneer artist committed to the genre, who paved the way for this art form to achieve its current popularity in Japan.

Yasuko Tsuchikane holds a PhD in Japanese art history from Columbia University and specializes in the 20th century. She teaches at The Cooper Union and at Waseda University in Tokyo. Her current research questions how various values authorize the legitimacy of art works across media in different social spaces.

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