Japan Art Institute

Nihon Bijutsuin (日本美術院, lit. "Japan Art Institute"^?) is a non-governmental artistic organization in Japan dedicated to Nihonga (Japanese style painting). The academy promotes the art of Nihonga through a biennial exhibition, the Inten Exhibition .

The Nihon Bijutsuin was founded by Okakura Tenshin at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1898, together with a group of artists, who included Hashimoto Gahō, Yokoyama Taikan, Shimomura Kanzan, Hishida Shunsō and several others, as a reaction against stylistic restrictions of the government-sponsored Bunten exhibitions. Nihon Bijutsuin moved with Okakura Tenshin to Izura, Ibaraki (now the city of Ibaraki) in 1906. However, Okakura was soon recruited by Ernest Francisco Fenollosa to assist in his efforts to introduce Chinese and Japanese arts to the western world via the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and soon lost interest in guiding the new organization. When Okakura died in 1913, the group dissolved.

Nihon Bijutsuin was resurrected a year later in 1914 under Yokoyama Taikan, who relocated it back to Yanaka, Tokyo. In 1920, separate sections were established for Japanese sculpture and for western-style (yōga painting), These separate sections were abolished in 1960, and currently the Institute is currently devoted exclusively to Nihonga painting.

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