Research Spotlight: Dr Eve Loh-Kazuhara

It’s my pleasure to be guest-editing this edition of the Sainsbury Institute’s e-bulletin. I am delighted to be in residence here in Norwich as one of the current Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellows, 2025-26. Originally from Singapore, I have spent almost half of my life abroad, living in Australia and Japan. I am a scholar of Japanese painting, specifically nihonga which is Japanese-style painting.

Nihonga is a modern term conceived during the Meiji period, emerging from what was perceived as a crisis and eventual demise for Japanese painting during the country’s intense modernising reforms. It inherits the painting traditions of Japanese art from classical to pre-modern times and uses synthetic and mineral painting pigments (iwaenogu) alongside other traditional media and techniques in its painting process.

Due to the prismatic properties of the pigments, they refract light and create a visual experience that can only be fully appreciated when viewing a nihonga painting in person, something that even the highest quality reproductions cannot convey.

My interest in nihonga emerged ironically, during my undergraduate honours-year research trip to India. In tracing the footsteps of early modern Indian artists from the Bengal school, I arrived in Rabindranath Tagore’s world-renowned university, Santiniketan. It was there that I discovered the interactions between nihonga artists and India at the turn of the 20^th century. Artists from both sides found artistic freedom and inspiration from this short-lived but intense exchange that inadvertently shaped the early trajectory of modern art in both countries. A second and third wave of these exchanges occurred subsequently, as I elaborate in the article Ruptures and Continuity in Pan-Asianism.

In chasing the journeys of these early modern artists, I discovered nihonga and became enamoured with it. In my academic career, my primary focus is to introduce nihonga to the English-speaking art world and to audiences both within and beyond the arts. One way to do this is to help bridge that gap between Japan and beyond. For instance, nihonga artists Yokoyama Taikan or Higashiyama Kaii are almost household names in Japan yet they remain relatively unknown outside of Japan and even within the field of art history. This brings me to the book monograph which I am working on during my time at the Sainsbury Institute.

Nihonga artist, Tanaka Isson (1908-77), moved to the Japanese southern islands of Amami Ōshima where he lived mostly in seclusion, creating enigmatic landscapes inspired by the islands’ nature. He had hoped to stage a comeback exhibition in Tokyo but his sudden passing ended those plans. However, Isson’s posthumous trajectory from obscurity to popular acclaim reveals how politics of place and power dynamics shape the mainstream art world. Central to this were grassroots-art-activism by island residents (later formalised as the Isson-Kai association) whose advocacy filled the void left by initial art world indifference and culminated in the widespread popularity of Isson’s artworks. More of this can be read in my upcoming article, “From Marginality to Mania” available through the South Pacific Studies Journal. In 2024, Isson’s solo exhibition was held in Tokyo to much fanfare and was awarded the Readers’ Choice Exhibition of the Year poll by Bijutsutecho, Japan’s leading art magazine. With this, it seems that there is a currently a surge in the popular reception of Isson’s artworks.

I visited the Amami Islands for fieldwork in 2019-20 during my doctoral studies and on attachment to the Tanaka Isson Memorial Art Museum in Amami Park as a researcher. Since then, I have returned every other year to Amami islands to update my research and embark on new projects. My research methodology and interests in the Amami islands have connected me with a network of interdisciplinary scholars in anthropology, ecology, linguistics and cultural studies who work on plant bio-cultures, environmental degradation and cultural erosion, and global cultural flows through sustainable tourism initiatives. I recently organized an international panel of Interdisciplinary Amami Studies at the Japanese Studies Association of Australia 2025 conference and am guest editing a special issue based on this for the South Pacific Studies Journal. I look forward to growing with the network and welcome connections at SICRI. Inspired by the research of Amami island scholars, I am now developing my research on plant narratives, situated within the broader field of plant humanities. Related to my book on Isson, I trace the cultural, ecological and historical resonances of select plant motifs in Tanaka Isson’s paintings. 

Isson’s posthumous rise from obscurity to “mania” was ignited by Isson-kai, a group of Amami island residents who were non-art specialists. They were simply moved by his story, his paintings and his determination. Collectively, they worked to raise awareness of his works and life story which was especially significant during the early years after his passing with the lack of attention from art world specialists. Their efforts exemplify public art history in action which is another interest of mine.

Prior to academia, I worked in museum interpretation at the National Gallery Singapore as part of the team that developed and launched the institution in December 2015. Housed in former British colonial-era buildings (also the site where the occupying Japanese army in Singapore surrendered to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1945), the Gallery is now a leading visual arts institution in the region. Through my work there, I have honed my skills in writing, exhibition planning and developing content for wide audiences. This has been a foundation that has greatly enriched my teaching and student-centred learning activities.

Since leaving the National Gallery, I have been involved in several freelance consulting projects for other museums and exhibition interpretative planning, including public art history projects such as Smarthistory where I enjoy developing and narrating videos such as this one on the Tale of Genji Handscroll.