Abstract
This chapter suggests that Qian Shoutie’s career between the 1920s and the 1940s, partly to register the ambiguous position of artists involved in Sino-Japanese cultural exchange at the height of political enmity, and partly to shed light on seal carving, an often overlooked area in art historical scholarship. It analyses the relationship between Qian Shoutie and Hashimoto Kansetsu in the literati community, a community with a history that predates the modern nation and embodies social conducts distinct from nationalism. Seal carving is admired, along with poetry, calligraphy, and painting, as sijue. To elevate the status of seal carving, enthusiasts in the Late Qing and Early Republican periods, with the Xiling Seal Carving Society as the epicentre, held regular exhibitions and published seal albums, fostering pride in the medium. Qian Shoutie’s artistic maturation intersected with the rise of ‘neo-literati painting’ in Japan. Kansetsu appears to have been an art historical conundrum, one made more complex by his taste for things Chinese.