Rewriting Cultural Frontiers: Nishikawa Yasushi and Japanese Calligraphy during the Empire

From the late 1930s, Japanese calligraphy began receiving significant financial and institutional support from the Japanese Empire, contrasting sharply with its marginalization during the Meiji period. Identified as an art form capable of uniting the Sinosphere through Chinese characters, calligraphy became a tool for the Japanese government’s international and colonial outreach. This talk focuses on the connection between Japan’s diplomatic institutions in East Asia and its calligraphic networks, specifically examining the work of prominent calligrapher Nishikawa Yasushi (1902-1989). During his tenure as a special researcher at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing from 1938 to 1940, Nishikawa emerged as a leading expert on Chinese art and calligraphy, a status he maintained into the 1980s.

Japan's imperial ambitions provided unique opportunities for Japanese scholars of China, granting near-unrestricted access to China's cultural heritage—unprecedented in the history of Sino-Japanese relations. By investigating Nishikawa’s activities, artworks, and reports back to Japan, I examine how Japanese researchers and Sinologists affiliated with Japan’s diplomatic missions navigated the cultural agenda of the Japanese Empire in its colonies, as well as how these wartime activities influenced the later trajectories of Japanese calligraphy. I argue that some of Japan’s colonial narratives about China—as well as materials collected during the Asia Pacific War—shaped Japan’s perception of China well into the second half of the twentieth century and continue to feature in the cultural dialogue between the two nations today.