Taikan Yokoyama was the pseudonym of a major figure in pre-World War II Japanese painting. He is notable for helping create the Japanese painting technique of Nihonga. His real name was Sakai Hidemaro.
Background
Taikan Yokoyama was born on November 2, 1868 in Ibaraki, Japan. He was the eldest son of Sakai Sutehiko, an ex-samurai family in Mito clan. He was adopted into his mother's family, from whom he took the surname "Yokoyama". With his family, he moved to Tokyo in 1878.
Education
Taikan Yokoyama studied at the Tokyo Furitsu Daiichi Chugakko (Hibiya High School), and was interested in the English language and in western style oil painting. This led him to study pencil drawing with a painter, Watanabe Fumisaburo. He also studied under one of the great painters of the time, Kano Hogai, who was the master of the Kanō school.
In 1889, Taikan Yokoyama enrolled in the first graduating class of the Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko (the predecessor to the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music), which had just been opened by Okakura Kakuzo (aka Okakura Tenshin). In school, he studied under the Kano school artist Hashimoto Gaho.
Career
After graduation, Yokoyama spent a year teaching at "Kyoto Shiritsu Bijutsu Kōgei Gakko" (the predecessor to the Kyoto City University of Arts) in Kyoto, studying Buddhist painting. Around that time, he started to use his "Taikan" pseudonym. He returned to Tokyo in 1896 as assistant professor at the Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko. He resigned that position only a year later, when his mentor, Okakura Kakuzō (aka Okakura Tenshin), was forced to resign for political reasons, and joined Okakura in establishing the Japan Fine Arts Academy (Nihon Bijutsuin).
In 1914, after his ouster from the Bunten Fine Arts Exhibition sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Taikan Yokoyama concentrated on reviving the Japan Fine Arts Academy, which had closed down upon Okakura Kakuzo's death in 1913.
In the pre-World War II era, Taikan was sent to Italy by the Japanese government as an official representative of the Japanese artistic community. In 1935, he was appointed to the Imperial Arts Academy (the forerunner of the Japan Art Academy), and in 1937, he was one of the first people to be awarded the Order of Culture when it was established in 1937. He was also awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, first class.
On 26 February 1958, Yokoyama Taikan died in Tokyo at the age of eighty-nine.