Fumie Taniguchi (also known as Senka Taniguchi) rose to sudden prominence in the Japanese art world of the 1930s for her Nihonga paintings of fashionable modern girls. She spent the latter half of her life in the United States following Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, and was forgotten in Japanese art history, until the discovery of her wartime paintings in 2012.

F. Taniguchi grew up exposed to both new media and classical arts. Her father worked in the photography department of a newspaper company, her mother had an appreciation for Nihonga, and her great-grandfather, Aizan Taniguchi (1816–1899), was a Nanga school painter. In 1928, F. Taniguchi enrolled in the Women’s School of Fine Arts (Joshi Bijutsu Gakkō, now the Joshibi University of Art and Design), and began studying with the Blue Dragon Society (Seiryū-sha), an organisation spearheaded by Ryūshi Kawabata (1885–1966) whose goal was to revolutionise the art of Nihonga. Her painting, Bakushū [Early summer], which depicts a female farm worker, was selected for display at the 1930 Blue Dragon Society Exhibition. At this time, F. Taniguchi expressed a strong empathy towards women working outside of the home, and painted a series of works showing working women taking on various new professions and modern girls out on jaunty strolls.

After graduating from the Women’s School of Fine Arts, F. Taniguchi entered the Bunka Gakuin, which offered a liberal and modern education, where she began experimenting with woodblock printing and etching. In 1935, her painting Yosoou hitobito [Preparing for work] won the Y-shi Shō [Mr. Y] award. The following year she won the same award with the painting Yama no ikoi [Mountain Retreat], depicting a modern girl relaxing in the natural setting of a mountain plateau.

Preparing for Work and Spreading Out on the High Field (Kōgen ni hiraku) are representative examples of F. Taniguchi’s extant “modern girl” paintings. Preparing for Work is a painting in the folding screen (byōbu) format that depicts a group of working women diligently getting ready to perform on a dance hall stage by having their hair done and mending their clothes. This image shows none of the condescension directed towards the society dancers of the era, nor are there any signs of vanity or decadence.

In 1938, F. Taniguchi broke with her mentor R. Kawabata and left the Blue Dragon Society, and art critics immediately began to treat her coldly. In 1943, having deepened her interest in Japan’s traditional culture, she became active in the Women Artists’ Public Service Corps, founded by Haruko Hasegawa (1895–1967) with the cooperation of the Japanese military. Around this time, F. Taniguchi married the Nihonga painter Gyokuju Funada (1912–1991), but they divorced a few years later. In 1955 she moved to the United States and began working as a waitress and garment factory seamstress in Los Angeles. She published an autobiography in the Japanese–American journal Nanka Bungei [Literature of Southern California, published 1965–1986]. F. Taniguchi also took small roles in films, and her desire for self-expression held strong until her death in 2001 at the age of 91.