Okakura Kakuzō
Okakura Kakuzō was born in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan on December 26th, 1862 and is the Japanese Scholar. At the age of 50, Okakura Kakuzō biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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In 1886, Okakura became secretary to the minister of education and was put in charge of musical affairs. Later in the same year he was named to the Imperial Art Commission and sent abroad to study fine arts in the Western world. After his return from Europe and the United States, in 1887 he helped found, and a year later became director of, the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (東京美術学校 Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō).
The new arts school represented "the first serious reaction to the lifeless conservatism" of traditionalists and the "equally uninspired imitation of western art" fostered by early Meiji enthusiasts. Limiting himself to more sympathetic aspects of art in the West, at the school, and in a new periodical Kokka, Okakura sought to rehabilitate ancient and native arts, honoring their ideals and exploring their possibilities. When, in 1897, it became clear that European methods were to be given ever increasing prominence in the school curriculum, he resigned his directorship. Six months later he renewed the effort, as he saw it, to draw on western art without impairing national inspiration in the Nihon Bijutsuin (日本美術院, lit. "Japan Visual Arts Academy"), founded with Hashimoto Gahō and Yokoyama Taikan and thirty-seven other leading artists.
At the same time, Okakura had opposed the Shintoist Haibutsu Kishaku movement which, in the wake of the Meiji Restoration had sought to expel Buddhism from Japan. With Ernest Fenollosa, he worked to repair damaged Buddhist temples, images and texts.
Okakura was a high-profile urbanite who retained an international sense of self. He wrote all of his main works in English. Okakura researched Japan's traditional art and traveled to Europe, the United States and China, and lived two years in India during which he engaged in dialogue with Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore. Okakura emphasised the importance to the modern world of Asian culture, attempting to bring its influence to realms of art and literature that, in his day, were largely dominated by Western culture. In 1906, he was invited by William Sturgis Bigelow to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and became the Curator of its Department of Japanese and Chinese Art in 1910.