Kinkichiro Honda and the Introduction of Human Anatomy in Art

The history of artistic anatomy has a long tradition, which dates back to the 15th century in Italy. After the Meiji Restoration our government adapted the Western arts and sciences to modernize Japan. So we engaged the service of experts from abroad in various fields. As regards the field of the fine arts, we invited guite a few specialists from Italy in the early days of the Meiji period.In this essay I deal with Kinkichiro Honda (1850～1921), who first taught art anatomy to the pupils at "Shōgido", a private art school in Tokyo. Kinkichiro Honda was originally a samurai warrior of the Hiroshima clan. In March in the 4th year of the Meiji Era ( i.e.1871 ), he came up to Tokyo to study English at Keiōgijuku, a school founded in 1868 at Mita by Yukichi Fukuzawa, where he stayed for about a year.In the following year he became a probationer surveyor at the Kōbusho. While there he studied general subjects of learning, English and painting from English teachers and so on. Later on he suffered from beriberi and was compelled to resign his post, returning to Hiroshima, his home country. In the 7th year of the Meiji Era (i.e.1874), he went up to Tokyo again.Honda had a long-cherished desire to study Western-style painting, when he heard that Shinkuro Kunisawa (1847～1877) was advertising for pupils for his newly established private art school "Shōgido" located at Hayabusacho Kōjimachi ward, Tokyo. Kunisawa returned to Japan after studying English and painting in England for 4 years as a student of the Tosa Clan.Kunisawa was not strongly built and was suffering from tuberculosis while he was still in Great Britain. In March of the 10th year of the Meiji Era (i.e.1877), he died of this chronic disease. He asked Honda to look after "Shogido" after his death.Kunisawa brought home lots of books on art from England. Since Honda had a good knowledge of English, he enjoyed reading them after work everyday. Honda taught not only drawing pictures but geometry, perspective representation, human proportion and human anatomy to his pupils by translating these books.The 13th year of the Meiji Era (i.e.1880) is remarkable for the beginning of teaching art anatomy in Japan. Honda started lecturing on art anatomy to his pupils once a week. The lecturer Yohei Tamakoshi at the school of medicine, Tokyo university started teaching the same subject at Kōbubijutsu gakko in January in the 14th year of the Meiji Era (i.e.1881).Honda\u27s lecture was exclusively based on Artistic Anatomy of the human figure by Henry Warren (1794～1879) contained in the Winsor and Newton\u27s series of Hand-Books on Art, with numerous illustrations, vol.Ⅱ. Winsor & Newton, London, 1856. Though what Goto taught to his pupils was nothing more than a repetition of Henry Warren\u27s words, it was enlightening and instructive in the early art education in Japan