Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (2025)

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (1)

Outros

Enviado por Susy Nunes em 15/01/2025

páginas com resultados encontrados.

páginas com resultados encontrados.

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (3)

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (4)

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (5)

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (6)

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (7)

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (8)

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (9)

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (10)

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (11)

Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (12)

Prévia do material em texto

5$fAA\T^*>V^M^.^ ^Joan Stanley-Bakergraduated from Bennington College inVermont and has been immersed in various aspects ofAsian art since 1964. She spent four years studying the artsofJapan in situ and served as inaugural Curator of Asian Artat the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in British Columbiawhere she organized an international and interdisciplinarysymposium focussing on Sino-Japanese interchanges in theseventeenth century. She is the author of Mingei: Folkcrajisof Japan (1978), The Calligraphy of Kan Makiko (1979),Nanga: Idealist Painting ofJapan (1980) and Transmission ofChinese Idealist Painting to Japan, the Early Phase: Some Noteson Materia and Methodology (forthcoming). In 1980 shejoined the Faculty of the National Taiwan Universityin Taipei where she teaches art history andcontinues her studies in Asian art.vJOAN STANLEY-BAKERJavaneseArtwith 167 illustrations, 20 in colorTHAMES AND HUDSONBRIGHTONAny copy of this book issued by the publisheras a paperback is sold subject to the conditionthat it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulatedwithout the publisher's prior consentin any form of binding or cover other than that inwhich it is published, and without a similarcondition including these words being imposedon a subsequent purchaser.© 1984 Thames and Hudson Ltd, LondonFirst published in the USA in 1984by Thames and Hudson Inc.,500 Fifth Avenue, New York,New York 101 10Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 83-50528All Rights Reserved. No part of this publicationmay be reproduced or transmitted in any form orby any means, electronic or mechanical, includingphotocopy, recording or any other informationstorage and retrieval system, without permission111 writing from the publisher.Printed and bound in Japan by Dai NipponContentsAuthor's note 6i Introduction 72 Prehistoric Period (nth mil. BC~5th c. ad) i 53 Asuka and Nara (ad 552-794) 274 Heian (794-1185) 595 Kamakura and Muromachi (1 185-1573) 1066 Azuchi-Muromachi and Edo (1 573-1 868) 1387 Modern Japan (1868-)191Select Bibliography 203Maps,206List of Illustrations 208Index 214Author's noteFor clarity regarding their source, the names of monks, monasteries,artists and artworks originating in China are given in their Chinese form,while those ofJapanese origin are given in Japanese. The Chinese suffixmeaning temple, -si, appears as -ji in Japanese, and its Japanese equivalentis -tera or -dera: hence such names as Todaiji, Horyuji, Wakakusadera.Chinese words for painting, hui and hua, become e and ga in Japanese.They occur frequently as suffixes in words referring to styles ortechniques, and are hyphenated only in the -e form to avoid ambiguity inreading: onna-c, tsukuri-e, etc. Special terms are capitalized only whenpreceded by proper names (eg Kara-e, Chinese-style painting; Nihonga,Yamato-e, Japanese-style painting); proper names functioning as verbs,however (eg japanization), are not capitalized, following such precedentsas romanization or pasteurization.CHAPTER ONLIntroductionThis book addresses itself to those who come to Japanese art for the firsttime, and introduces some of the most significant artistic innovationsmade on Japanese soil. The aim has not been to be comprehensive; certainmajor aspects of art and their traditions are not covered, major traditionswhich can best be seen in a fuller social context, such as No and Kabukitheatre, dance (some deriving from ancient Polynesian origins), and thetremendous achievements of swordsmiths and makers of miniatures.Those aspects which have been selected are intended to demonstrate thebreadth and resilience of Japan's artistic spirit, which has withstoodsuccessive cultural inundations from the continent and emerged highlyselective, adaptable, and always fully able to rediscover its own artisticroots.Another purpose of the book is to identify those aspects of the Japanesespirit which were developed in art forms. Artists, especially up to theMuromachi period, were often working with, and transforming, appar-ently incompatible foreign ideas. This seems to me a greater challengethan the unhindered development of indigenous artistic traditions. Tohave continually taken and transformed diverse influences (whether fromKorea, China, the South Seas, Europe or America) is a unique achieve-ment. Japanese culture in general may be likened to an oyster, openingitself up to repeated onslaughts from the ocean and transforming grains ofcontinental grit into pearls. These transformations obviously reflectJapanese preferences; but, more importantly, they indicate a particularkind of perception: it is possible to identify the patterns of adaptationwhich appear when Japanese art ingests new stimuli. Because they reflectcultural or ethnic traits, these patterns remain constant despite changingperiod-styles. ,At the same time, the swing of the Japanese psychological pendulumseems wider than that of other peoples, and this is reflected in opposingtendencies in the arts. One tendency is to mirror the external world as it isperceived (direct imitation). A mirror is held up to the world, so to speak,and keeps outsiders from penetrating the essential delicacy and emotionalvulnerability ofJapanese sensibility. Seeing in Japan a mirror-likeness ofhimself, the outsider loses interest and ceases to threaten.The second tendency is introspective and insular, and fosters a creativeurge to unparalleled delicacy and poetic imagery. Innate potentials, fullyrealized, gave birth to art forms and expressions unique to Japan. One iseven tempted to propose that the subtlety, poignancy and sense ofvulnerability in Japanese culture in general are protected from externaldisturbance and survive precisely by means of the public arts.Examples of the first, mirror-image tendency, arc the Asuka-Naraperiods (when whole communities of continental artisans were im-ported), the late Kamakura and Muromachi periods (when Japanese artistswere commissioned to work in Chinese styles), the Meiji period (whenvast numbers of foreign experts, this time from Europe and NorthAmerica, were imported to found schools of art, and when Japanesestudents were sent abroad in hundreds), and finally post-second-world-war Japan, whose art tries to be indistinguishable from Western models,in spite of the cultural and social differences between Tokyo or Osaka andNew York, London or Paris. It is, however, the more introspectivetendencies which best reveal Japanese uniqueness and ingenuity; the rangeincludes the arts ofjomon man, those of the Heian, Momoyama and earlyEdo periods.It could be argued that in the absence of indigenous traditions andwithout artistic importations from abroad, throughout Japanese history,there would have been no ideas to work on, and no Japanese art at all.There are nevertheless distinct ways in which the Japanese have reacted toforeign stimuli. These are, on the one hand, a spontaneous identificationwith and rapid absorption of those new ideas which struck a responsivechord in the Japanese artist, and on the other, when required by self-conscious patrons, the mastery of styles and processes which might at firstseem unbndgeably alien or mysterious. Given that most artistic processesand stvles had to be imported, it may be suggested that the phases ofintrospection, when native traditions flourished, were times when artistsenjoyed greater freedom in their selection and handling of styles, whilethe more assertive, outward-directed phases were times when the patrons'choices were conditioned by the prestige they might gain from mirroringsome external style.Non-Japanese viewers tend to respond more readily to the introspectivephases (where the art is more characteristically 'Japanese');speak, until over a century later, in the person of Emperor Shomu(reigned 724-749). In 741 Shomu launched a massive building pro-gramme of Buddhist monasteries and temples throughout the land,ostensibly for the protection of the nation, but also as a compellingmonument to his own imperial authority. (To do this in fact ran counter4Sto the basic tenets of Buddhism, which aims at the salvation ot theindividual soul, sees no class distinctions and is universally benevolent.)The new monasteries were created and served by massive labourconscriptions which recruited untold numbers of the nation's population,including slave groups, to the service of the central government. Buddhistmonks were no longer free to preach the sutras as they saw fit, nor weremonks and nuns permitted to hold religious observances on unauthorizedpremises. The clergy in effect were now licensed by the government.Tempyd religious art: the Todaiji 752In 743 Emperor Shomu vowed to cast a massive Rushana Buddha(Universal Light, Vairocana); the project was properly begun in 745. Allthe copper in the land was commandeered for the massive statue whichtowered over 14 metres high; Japanese bronze-casting thereafter ceasedfor centuries. The Great Buddha symbolized the dominance of Buddhismand its spread among the populace. It was no longer a private faith for theleisured and learned but a protection for the land and all its people.The Todaiji project exacted a huge toll in money and labour. Anestimated ten per cent of the populace, down to the poorest beggars,contributed in some way or another; there were 50,000 carpenters andover 370,000 metal smiths. The casting was begun in Shomu's palacegrounds in Shigaraki; but after numerous failures the site was changed toNara in 745 and the work was completed after four more years. Thelargest wooden structure in the world was built around it; its front ofeleven bays was some 73 metres across and tied into a cloister of 154 bays.Its proportions and roof pitch may have roughly resembled that of theShosoin repository which is one of three storehouses among thenumerous structures in the original compound. Twin pagodas, threetimes the height of the Horyuji Pagoda, soared 100 metres into the air.With its numerous gates, halls and sub-temples, the Todaiji compound isthe largest in Japan and dominated the new capital of Heijo (Nara). In aspectacular ceremony, attended by every member of court and the clergy,the monastery and Great Buddha of Nara were dedicated in 752. But inthe half century that followed, its power proved too much for thegovernment which was forced to seek yet another site for the capital.The Great Buddha of Nara we see today has been reworked severaltimes and the Buddha Hall is a reduced and squared-off version of its oncemagnificent proportions. For a glimpse of the original Great Buddha, inall the splendour of gold-leaf gilt, we must resort to two slightly laterworks, and to an early painted illustration. Both statues were made in dry4631 Head of FukukenjakuKannon in the Sangatsudo.Gilded dry lacquer. H. 360.3cm. 746.lacquer, no more copper being available. The Fukukenjaku Kannon of746 is the main statue in Todaiji's Hokkedo (Lotus Hall) sub-temple,commonly called the Sangatsudo (Third Month Hall). It stands nearly 4metres tall, and is probably the work of the sculptors responsible for theGreat Buddha, headed by Kuni-naka Muraji Kimimaro. It is an eight-armed bodhisattva whose third left hand holds a rope to symbolize thehunting and fishing for salvation of souls. As the bodhisattva towers overa high wooden pedestal, its majestic, serene face is usually missed byviewers. The cheeks and chin are full but not heavy; the long, slanted eyesare modelled with curved upper lids which give them a gentle, lovingexpression beneath arched and bevelled brows. A vertical third eye ispartially open in the forehead and a black pearl decorates the spot betweenthe brows. The mouth is modulated and full, with upper and lower lips insymmetrical M and W shapes which echo the curves of the rest of the face.The elaborate silver crown is encrusted with thousands of precious stones,pearl, agate and crystals, and is swathed with chains holding carved beadsin the antique magatama shape . A twenty-centimetre silver Amida Buddhastands in the middle, hands spread in the mudra of bestowing peace o(mind. Although the Kannon clearly reflects Tang features, the Amida'sface shows vestigial traces of the Koguryo mien, in the eyes and two sharppoints rising in the centre of the upper lip.The other statue which may indicate some original features of the GreatBuddha is in the Golden Hall (Kondo) of Toshodaiji, west of Nara. It is a3i47}2 seated Vairocana or Rushana Buddha, 4 metres high, and was made ofgilded dry lacquer in 759. An elaborate aureole originally had onethousand seated Buddhas on thirty-two clusters, most of which are still inplace. The Rushana Buddha's face is more heavy-set than that of theSangatsudo Kannon and the neck-folds arc modelled around a droppedchin. The eyes look down from under thick, curved lids, and slant to thenose in an expression more severe than compassionate, more lordly thantender. The original Great Buddha of Todaiji was designed to be EmperorShomu's symbol of state and may well have combined the qualities ofthese two works, a severe but benevolent colossus which radiated34 protective light over the land. From a twelfth century handscroll we candeduce still more of its architectural details and emotional impact. In atime-sequenced vignette, like those of the Tamamushi Shrine jataka, apilgrim nun is shown several times during her night at Todaiji. Thecolossal, gilt-bronze Buddha towers benignly over her as she prays fordivine guidance. The eleven bays have slatted door-panels which openinwards and seem taller than the four-square door-panels of today's$2 Rushana Buddha, inToshodaiji. Gilded drylacquer. H. 303 cm. 759.}} Kannon from the AmidaParadise on the Horyujimurals. 711. (Damaged by fire/ in 1949)48i5, 1is%*>*•-\t*ureduced edifice of seven bays. The total impression of the old buildingwas horizontal, not square, and the impact of the statue must have beenmore immediate when it was placed, as illustrated here, squarely in themiddle of the space with little to hinder the spectator's view.TheJapanese and continental influencesAt this point we should perhaps consider the remarkable speed withwhich the Japanese assimilated continental cultural stimuli, particularlyBuddhism. It was not a matter of sudden and overwhelming direct orindirect contact; there had been frequent contacts for millennia. Massivecultural receptivity in the Asuka period, therefore, may reflect a newJapanese realization of national inadequacy in the face of an urbane,continental culture and a compensatory urgent desire for internationalrespectability. In the Tempyo period, the Japanese whole-heartedlyadopted Chinese culture, Buddhism and statecraft. Administrative andcourt rituals were regulated on continental models; court wear changedfrom Korean to Chinese; palaces were built in continental style with tiledroofs, bright crimson pillars and slate floors.All these imports were, however, no more than an external coveringdraped over a Japanese framework. Not all parts fitted. The originalmammoth Great Buddha Hall of Todaiji, for example, based as it was onChinese imperial scale, and requiring the removal of entire hills to providethe site, must have been drastically out of proportion with the surround-ing Yamato hills. In spite of the new regard for external prestige, when itcame to personal habits, native preferences remained strong. In particular,Chinese food and eating habits were rejected; later, even within theChinese-style palace compound in Hcian-kyo,the Emperor's privatequarters (dairi) retained the Japanese traditions of cedar-bark roofs andpillars of plain, undecorated wood.35, 36 The same contrast can be seen in the Toshodaiji Kondo and Kodo builtin the latter half of the eighth century. The Kondo shows Chinesesolidity, symmetry and grandeur. (Its present roof soars some fifteen feethigher than the original, however, destroying the previous impact otpower and vigour.) Across the court stands the Lecture Hall (Kodo)whose simplicity and horizontally, stressed by the slender pillars, aretypical examples of japanization. Originally part of the Heijo Palace, itwas donated to Toshodaiji and moved there in the late eighth centurywhen the fortunes of that monastery waned. Although now tiled, theridge is extended to run nearly the entire length of the roof (a Shintocharacteristic) and is gabled at each end to soften the drop of the eaves.so34 Todaiji scene showing the Great Buddha in the Shigisan Engi. Narrativehandscroll. 1 2th century.Even in the face of persistent continental influence, such examples ofindigenous traits persevered. It is obviously possible to import majoraspects of another people's material culture but it is not possiblesimultaneously to import every one of its social and spiritual attitudes.(The same situation exists today, where an intensive effort is made toassert Japan's 'International Image' in the art world. Artists with an'international image' are sent to exhibitions abroad but those who createworks uninfluenced by the large world, however accomplished andoriginal, are ignored at home and excluded from publicity abroad.) Thisdesire for parity with external powers may have its genesis in the Tempyoperiod of self discovery and self assessment.The Toshodaiji is a major symbol of the reforms instigated by EmperorShomu. He felt that the Buddhist clergy of the time had become too laxand sent Japanese monks to China to find a leader who would purify and51**»^fP^r ^^^^"'*-*,35 Kondo (Golden Hall) of Toshodaiji. Tang style. Late 8th century. (Roof hassince been raised.)36 Kodo (Lecture Hall) ofToshodaiji, more Japanese in its horizontal emphasis.Late 8th century.37 Ganjin seated in meditation. Dry lacquer.H. 79.7 cm. Late 8th century. S5>revitalize religious practice. After years of searching they found MasterGanjin (Jianzhen in Chinese) who, when his disciples showed unwilling-ness to travel such distances to an undeveloped land, took on the missionhimself. At the age of sixty-seven, in 753, he arrived in Japan after adisastrous seven year journey, during which he was blinded. In 762,Ganjin ordained a group of monks and nuns in the courtyard of Todaiji,in the presence of the Emperor and the imperial court.A remarkable dry lacquer sculpture of the time shows the aged andlearned Master Ganjin in profound meditation. The naturalistic depictionof such physical features as the blind eyes, the mouth resolute yet kind andthe aged but firm cheeks and chin, is matched by the extraordinaryexpression of emotion and spirituality. This combination of realism andexpressiveness in sculpture was to become one ofJapan's major contribu-tions to world art.37Tetnpyo secular artIn 756, Emperor Shomu's widow dedicated all his treasures to the GreatBuddha. They are still in the Shosoin repository of the Todaiji monasteryand give a lively and detailed picture o{ court life in the first half of theS3ft Tf ijn38 Ink painting of entertainers on a long bow. Lacquer on catalpa wood. L. 162cm. From Emperor Shomu's treasure, before 756.39 Knives in Persian-style jewelled, silver scabbards, with a dedicatory tag byShomu's widow. 8th century.eighth century. There were imperial clothing, prayer beads, swords andornaments; musical instruments such as lutes, flutes, the double-reededxiao and sheng, the transverse flute and the plucked string instrument38, 39 called qin in Chinese; board games such as go; bows, arrows, quivers,armour and saddles. Inner chambers were hung with textiles andfurnished with mirrors, standing screens, portable shrines, masks formusical performances, baskets, cabinets, flower vases and hangingincense-burners, brushes and writing tools. Examples of calligraphy bythe Emperor, the Empress and after the Chinese 'Sage of Calligraphy'Wang Xizhi (303-379) were also dedicated and are preserved to this daw54Many of these objects are of native manufacture and their motifs andmaterials reflect an assimilation of diverse influences. Glass ware suggestsMediterranean origins; objects of tooled gold and silver, adorned withPersian motifs, are similar to the cache buried near Xian, the Tang capitalin 756 (and excavated in 1970). Silk and hemp are woven, or rcsist-dyed,in symmetrical patterns in the manner of Persian hangings. Elaboratelyinlaid and evenly distributed designs on lacquer objects ranging fromboxes to lutes are signs of Central Asian influence. Whereas the Chinesewere happy to accept such foreign influence throughout imperial history,their presence here is a short-lived phenomenon. Although Chinese artistsaccepted all kinds of Central Asian, Indian and Persian influences andcontinued for several generations to produce works in the cosmopolitanamalgam known as the Tang style; in Japan the Tang fad seems to havelasted less than three generations. Almost none o{ Shomu's importedstyles found a place in subsequent arts.Amid the new and exotic influences on the objects in the Shosoin, thereare clear indications of native Japanese discrimination, i.e. selection andrejection. A good example is the mother-of-pearl inlaid Chinese lute,called a Genkan (Ruan Xian) after the Chinese musician of that name. It isdecorated with a pair of pearly pink parrots flying in a circle round acentral medallion of kaleidoscopic and radiating roundels. The form ofthis instrument and the Middle Eastern technique of mother-of-pearlinlay became part of Japanese tradition, but the roundel motif andsymmetry had gone by the next generation.*o40 Ruan Xian (4-stringed lute) (detail). Wood with mother-of-pearl inlay. Early7th century.41 Covered medicine jar. Ash-glazed clay. H. 18.5 cm. An inscription dates it to811.42 Plectrum guard of biwa lute.Shitan wood decorated withmarquetry and painted. 756.43 Map of Todaiji precincts (detail).Light colours on hemp. (North is atthe bottom.) Note the Yamato-e-\ikehills in contrast with Chinesepinnacles of pi. 42. 756.41 In another example, an early ninth-century ash-glazed pot from theShosoin repository, while fairly centred and well formed (according toTang canons) is glazed naturally by the falling ash settling on theshoulders, producing a mottled and uneven transparent green glaze. TheChinese potter would have considered such a glaze imperfect, evenunacceptable; the Japanese saw in it another dimension of beauty. Thepotter neither controls nor wishes to control every inch of the surfacedecoration and lets both the material and the firing process play a part inthe finished work. Although ninth-century Japanese potters did makeTang-style 'three-colour' (Tang sancai) glazed wares, these found little56r" ^ &-49favour with later generations. By contrast, later natural-glazed Japanesepottery, such as Tamba and Bizen wares, achieved worldwide renownand clearly show the potters' awareness of the beauty of the so-called'accident'.Over ten thousand objects were donated to the Great Buddha of Todaijiduring the eighth and early ninth centuries by the court. It is a treasurehouse of the arts to be found along the Silk Road which linked China tothe Mediterranean, and offers the present-day observer clear examples ofthose styles which Japanese artists accepted, rejected or modified.Another example is the painting (which shows clear Chinese \iinfluence) on the plectrumguard of a biwa lute. Two gentlemen havepaused momentarily, one in the midst of writing, to gaze upon the cliff tothe left and are lost in a state of communion with nature. The image hasfaded; only drawings made from infra-red photography now reveal thebasic outlines. The scene is typically Tang, with the emphasis onawesome, beetling scenery. The peaks are adorned with trees, theirornamental forms spread out against the sky and cliffs. The painting isfluid, with few straight lines or harsh forms, and successfully suggestsharmony between the two watching figures and the natural scene.A large map of the precincts of Todaiji, painted in 756, offers another 43glimpse of how knowledge of Chinese landscape painting was used. Thesharply rising cliffs o{ the previous example arc here replaced by gently57rolling hillocks like those of the Yamato plains. (These gentle outlineslater became the hallmark of native Yamato-e painting.) The trees on topof the hills do not pierce the sky like those on the biwa plectrum and arerendered by thick ink lines in soft curves. They do not cover the entire hillbut are scattered irregularly over the central portions. On the Chinese-style plectrum painting the trees are evenly spaced in a Middle Easternmanner, whereas the Todaiji map disperses the elements in an irregularand natural manner. The map incidentally shows us the main buildings ofTodaiji in 756: two L-shaped red brackets show the front of the Main orGreat Buddha Hall; two squarish ink outlines at the sides are the East andWest Pagodas, already a clear change from the Horyuji plan which hadonly one pagoda. To the east, a Chinese building with tiled roof and fourposts on a platform, is the Senjudo or Thousand Armed Kannon Hall.The Kaidanin or Ordination Hall is indicated to the north-west.Chinese figure painting had two main styles, one for the more formal,portrait-like images and the other less formal, showing people followingnatural pursuits. Whereas Chinese figures tended increasingly towardspsychic introversion and tranquillity so that characters in a commonsituation show little interest in each other, in Japan the reverse seems true.Here figures and motifs reach out toward each other physically orpsychologically. Portraits are relegated largely to religious painting.An example of the impressive style is the set of deftly painted ink38 figures on the inside of a bow with ninety-six acrobats, jugglers,musicians and dancers caught in mid-action. Their faces reveal differentpersonalities and moods. The strong man balancing four children on topof his head stands with eyes closed in concentration, while the childrenlook warily down. The man balancing four other children on a cross-barred pole has just taken a step; his effort is clearly visible. While thechildren show absorption in what they are doing, the onlookers expressemotions which range from curiosity to concern. Lower down, musiciansaccompany a dance. The artist has exploited the narrowness of the formatby diagonally linking the last person on one group with the first person otthe next by eye contact. The development of this style was carried toextraordinarily expressive heights in the succeeding Heian period.58CHAPTER IOLHHeian (794-1185)Towards national identity: the new capital and new BuddhismThe imposition of Chinese institutions upon Japanese society was tooswift and widespread and proved unworkable. The Confucian system ofstatecraft required learning centres with examinations, designed to fostera democratic meritocracy. A Japanese National University was founded,with about four hundred students in the capital and fifty in each regionalcentre. However, entrants were restricted to the hereditary aristocracyand examination administration was lax. The entrenched interests of theregional nobility prevented the proper functioning of a government builtupon ethical practice. High-minded Confucian scholars often called forreforms, but their memoranda carried little weight with an idle andaristocratic class.The great monasteries grew to unwieldy proportions. Todaiji, forexample, once owned more than 12,000 tax-exempt acres, burdeningfarmers and impoverishing the national treasury. The monks of Narawere cosmopolitan and worldly, and often involved themselves in Courtintrigues, to the detriment of proper administration. In China, thegovernment had occasionally suppressed Buddhism, even persecuting theChurch in order to defend its own authority. The Japanese solution wasquite different: in 784 Emperor Kammu and his court fled from Nara.After several abortive attempts to settle in Nagaoka, in 793 work beganon the site for an entirely new capital. This was called Heian-Kyo (Capitalof Peace and Tranquillity), present day Kyoto, which remained the seat ofthe imperial court until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Significantly, thegreat monasteries remained in Nara.The establishment of a new capital ushered in an era based on the newlyintroduced Buddhist principles, which stressed inner spiritual disciplineunhindered by mundane considerations. Two great religious leaders,Saicho and Kukai, established schools of Buddhism which were to havelasting effects on Japanese life.Saicho (767-822) grew up under Chinese monks in Nara. He dislikedthe spreading decadence and spiritual laxity among the clergy there.59however, and left to found a small monastery on Mount Hiei. (Smallmountain retreats were common in Chinese Taoism and Buddhism.)When Emperor Kammu arrived at Heian-Kyo he found Saicho alreadypractising a systematic spiritual discipline nearby. According to Chinesegeomancy, the mountain was the kimon or demon entrance to the capital;hence Saicho's presence protected the city. Reverences he paid to the godsof Mount Hiei, in a genial amalgam of Buddhism and Shinto practices,were thought to assure the city. Kammu was impressed by Saicho'srigorous discipline and in 804 sent him to study in China. When Saichoreturned, a year later, he brought back new learning from Mount Tiantai.The Tiantai School was a native Chinese development - that is, withoutIndian precedent - which sought to reconcile all aspects of Buddhistdoctrine in a single discipline, and, significantly, to provide solace for thecommon man. Salvation was no longer the prerogative of the rich orlearned, and would not be achieved exclusively by scriptural study,charitable works or religious practices, but from a dedicated combinationof all three. Saicho advocated the reading of the Lotus Sutra (subsequentlyone of the most influential texts in Japanese Buddhism). It assured thesalvation not only of men, but also of women, and stressed theimportance of the arts.Licensed by the Emperor, Saicho founded the Tendai Lotus School onMount Hiei. In time it became a national centre of culture and learning,with some 300 buildings spread over the summit and flanks of themountain. A connection with the court was prominent from the outset,and continued until the monastery was destroyed in 1571. Kammu was aConfucian by training and was impressed by Saicho's moral calibre;Saicho, for his part, was extremely loyal to the throne, even requiring hismonks to swear an oath which included a moving declaration ofindebtedness to Kammu. This was a major step in the japanization ofBuddhism.The second leader was the brilliant master Kukai (774-835). Heexcelled as a spiritual leader and as a calligrapher, poet, scholar, inventorand explorer. Born into an aristocratic family, he showed remarkableintellectual precocity. At the age of seventeen he wrote a treatise analysingthe teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism; revised in 797, itremains a major theoretical work. In 804 he sailed to China to study withthe great Huiguo (746-805). On his return, in 806, Saicho begged him forlessons. In 816 he built amonastery on Mt Koya, establishing the Shingon(True Word or Mantra) School of esoteric Buddhism, a system whosemysteries, including the True Words themselves, were taught privately,orally and directly, and were never written down. In 822 he wasc\VI \ifl„,^'was merely to presideover fossilized state rituals, and actual power went into the hands of theregent (sessho) and chancellor (kampaku). From the mid-ninth centuryonwards, Japan was ruled by the powerful Fujiwara clan, who strength-ened their position by regularly marrying their daughters into theenfeebled imperial family. Government schools, originally meant to trainfuture civil servants, were only open to those of court rank, descendantsfrom clans close to the Yamato ruling family. Courtiers amassed vastwealth from grants of land; conspicuous consumption accompanied rankand prestige. The new ruling class had regained those powers held priorto the seventh century reforms. In time, courtiers in the capital became anelite, far superior to their provincial equivalents. Late Heian culture wascentred on the capital and dominated by the Fujiwara family. For the nextmillenium, the role of emperor was that of a figurehead.The Phoenix HallThe regent Fujiwara Yorimichi (994-1074) demonstrated his power andinfluence by converting his residence into a copy of the Pure LandParadise itself, as represented in the Taima Mandala, imported fromChina in the late ninth century. The exquisite park in Uji, outside Kyoto,49 is a perfect setting for the Byddoin, his private chapel, completed in 1053.With its harmonious fusion of religious fervour and aristocratic splen-dour, the Byodoin itself is the ultimate expression of the age.Fujiwara Yorimichi's master sculptor was Jocho, whose father Koshohad worked for Yorimichi's father, Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1027).68^Lthe superimposition o{ the heavenly host isdramatically out of scale, compelling, immediate and immanent. Thesweetness of the Water Deva, and the innocence of thejocho images arehere superceded by an alert spirituality, simple and vigorous. The Yamatolandscape is quickened with a sense of urgency.56 In The descent ofAmida and his host (popularly known as Haya Raigo or'rapid descent'), the Buddha Amida and twenty-five bodhisattvas on awhite cloud are descending at a steep angle above a precipitous mountaintowards the priest below, who sits upright at the very moment of death.This is an example of the painting style known as kubon raigo-zu (Nine743W45* *?*>•*«56 Haya raigd ot Amida and bodhisattvas. Hanging scroll; colours and gold on silk.Kamakura, 13th century.grades of Amitabha's descent), of which we have seen an earlier .(mid-eleventh-century) example in the Phoenix Hall mural. Comparison atonce shows the increased urgency of the later work. The Paradise itself,usually the focus of gorgeous achitcctural painting, is here reduced to apalace in the upper right corner; instead, the landscape of this life loomslarge. The figures are all standing, their attention focussed on the newsoul. Gold is liberally used and the lacy intricacy of Heian decoration heregives way to flat application of unmixed pigment. The landscape issombre and vertiginous compared to that of the Phoenix Hall; emphasishas shifted from an idyllic conception of Paradise to the moment ofrebirth itself; dream has given way to action.Fujiwara secular artsIn their secular arts, although Heian courtiers enjoyed Chinese poetry andpainting, indigenous production, even when in the Chinese manner,increasingly showed Japanese qualities. In 894, as the much admiredChinese Tang dynasty was disintegrating and voyages to China werefraught with danger, the Japanese court decided to stop diplomaticmissions altogether. This isolation served to trigger an unparalleledoutpouring ofJapanese splendours.Like its Chinese counterpart (Northern Song, 960-1126), this lateHeian or Fujiwara period (897-1185) was one of introspection and selfdiscovery. Both cultures were settling down after the ebullient andextrovert phases ofTang and Nara. During those cosmopolitan centuries,both China and Japan had been flushed with the power of newlyconsolidated realms. Japan had assimilated a host of spiritual and visualstimuli which had swept from Central Asia, India and Sassanian Persia. Inthe tenth and eleventh centuries, however, both the Song and Heiancultures turned inward; political unassertiveness enabled them to discovertheir aesthetic identity and release the unfolding of their greatest artisticglory. Song China produced landscape painting and the Heian courtYamato-e. At this time, Japan's own calligraphic form, kana writing, alsoreached its zenith. And the profound differences between the two culturesbecame manifest; in Japan, many aesthetic preferences which were tobecome hallmarks ofJapanese art now found full expression. (Curiouslyenough, however, the subdued colour tone, the use of bird's-eyeperspective and the frequent stress of the diagonal have all been tracedback to Song sources.)The growing apart of the two cultures can be seen in a comparison ofpainting techniques. In Northern Song, the flat, colourist tradition was77replaced by a linear modelling technique called cunfa, where depth andtexture are defined in brush strokes rather than shading. This eventuallygave way to an ink monochrome landscape tradition which wasenthusiastically adopted by scholars and court painters alike, spawning ahost of contending schools. In Japan, however, the poetic, colourist Tangstyle was retained and its emotive potential was developed so far thateventually Yamato-e painting had little in common with either its Chinesecontemporary style or its Tang sources.The culmination of japanization may be seen in the 1053 ByodoinPhoenix Hall murals. Yamato-e landscape paintings were greatly in-fluenced by the highly developed Japanese literature of the time, that is,poems on the four seasons, on famous scenic spots, on mono-no-aware (orthe pathos, literally the 'ah-ness', of things). Departing from Chinesenotions of Spring, for example, indigenous new poems replace the snowprunus with cherry blossoms, majestic mountains with cosy paddy fields.The world of Japanese imagery shimmered with wisteria, the seashore,spring rains, spring moon and spring mists, in poetry and painting alike.57 An example is the Early Spring Landscape on a door panel of the PhoenixHall. A gentle river scene combines lushness and a sense of intimacytypical of Japanese landscapes with favourite details: the meanderingriver, the sand shoal with its few reeds remaining from last year stillcovered in snow, the pine-clad hills and the thatched roofs of the cottages.The colours are applied in flat layers, with volume suggested by discreetintensification of the greens and whites. The only sense o{ motion isprovided by the rippling lines of the river bend. The later predilection forlaterally spreading motifs is hinted at here in the fan shaped silhouettes ofthe pines.The simplicity of the scene belies the sophistication of its rendering. It isevocative and poetic. Perhaps it depicts one of the Famous Places so oftenmentioned in Heian literature, as do so many later so-called decorativescreens. But if we were to consider such work as being merely decorativewe would miss a good deal of the emotion peculiar to Japanese art.Decorative art is passive and static, with visual elements harmoniouslyinteracting; this scene is vibrantly alive and invites an emotional responsefrom the spectator. (See, for instance, the free-floating cloud forms,where the pigment is sprinkled on, rather than brushed. The clouds seemto breathe, and so seem charged with motion and emotion in theotherwise still space. They function as emotional indicators henceforth,providing this quickening and poignancy. We may call this unique motifthe 'emotive cloud'.) The Heian artist may have chosen this scene, andthis way of depicting it, in order to express the first quivering of New78^riiii«Ik*;.'*%«**»im HiMi.'TITnt>.'57 £ujr/y Spring Landscape. Door panel in Phoenix Hall, Byodoin. 1053.Year's joys: he may even have been inspired by a poem in thecontemporary anthology Gosenshu (951 ad):mizu no omo maya fukimidaruham haze yaike no kori wokyo wa tokuramuThe breezes of springAre blowing the ripples astrayAlong the water . . .Today they will surely meltThe sheet of ice on the pond.(Ki no Tomonori, trans. Donald Keene)The Heian preoccupation with minutely identified emotion foundexpression in poetry which led to painting, diaries, letters, screens andnarrative handscrolls. Even in gardens of the period, both real and thoseshown in screen paintings, plants, shrubs, streams and stones weredeliberately arranged to evoke specific emotions, or to recreate FamousPlaces which had poetic associations. A unique feature is the cloud-formisland covered with white sand which appears in pond gardens and gardenmanuals of the time. The free-form 'emotive cloud', kumogata, seen79perhaps, as a reflection of the sky, evoked in sprinkled pigment on paper asubtle confirmation of the indefinable, the transient and the moving. InHeian art, nature motifs functioned to express human emotions. Not onlydid Heian architecture encourage maximum integration of interior spacewith garden, but the sliding door panels (shoji), which often surroundedthree sides of a room, were themselves adorned with evocative land-scapes.But the dichotomy between the public and private sense persisted.Official, public architecture was termed hare. It had tiled roofs, slatedfloors and red lacquered pillars in the Chinese manner. TheEmperor'sprivate residence, however, was emphatically in the domestic modetermed ke, with thatched roof, wooden floors and pristine, unpainted59 pillars. In the first scroll of the Ban Dainagon E-kotoba, where Fujiwara noYoshifusa is shown advising the Emperor, the double standard isapparent: in the outer vestibule the mural is in the public, Chinese style,while murals in Yamato-e style decorate his private rooms. In general, artfor public places and ceremonial events used Chinese motifs. In thepalace, the Screen of Sages shows Chinese sages, and the Lake Kunmingscreen has Chinese references. Because they were associated with thepomp of the Tang court or the much admired Confucian tradition,Chinese-style paintings carried great prestige. In time, such paintingscame to be called Kara-e or Chinese (theme) painting, in contrast toYamato-e or Japanese (theme) painting.Handscroll paintingThe Yamato-e painting ofJapanese subject-matter developed some uniquefeatures in the illustrated narrative handscrolls, or emaki-mono, whichwere significantly an art practised by members of the court. Handscrollpainting or calligraphy is an intimate format. The handscroll is unrolled(30 to 80 cm at a time) over a desk and perused at leisure: artist andspectator communicate one to one. Work for such a project was dividedamong a great number of painting masters (eshi, often members of thearistocracy), who selected the scenes, laid down the drawing for thecompositions and indicated the colouring; artisans then mixed thepigments and filled in the colours.Most celebrated of aristocratic artworks are the narrative handscrolls58,64 illustrating The Tale ofGenji, a romance ofJapanese court life written inthe late tenth century by Lady Murasaki Shikibu. The earliest set ofillustrations on this theme comes from 1 120-30 and only survives infragments: nineteen segments of illustrations and twenty of narrative in80/H^¥* a*: 158 Kashiwagi I (detail from The Tale o/Genji). Handscroll; ink and colours onpaper. Early 12th century.elegant kana calligraphy by at least four great calligraphers of the day.(Today, these fragments are divided between the Tokugawa and Gotomuseums.) The writing of the text is considered as important an art formas the paintings themselves.The novel of fifty-four chapters originally must have covered at leasttwenty separate scrolls with hundreds of illustrations and thousands ofsheets of calligraphy. The surviving illustrations are mostly from the last,so-called 'ten chapters of Uji', and our understanding of the style andtechniques of the whole work is necessarily incomplete. Unlike didacticBuddhist illustrations, aimed at common folk, the Genji paintings andcalligraphies are works of art that were circulated among aristocraticconnoisseurs. It should be stressed that the paintings reveal a twelfth-century nostalgia and melancholy for the passing of the old Heian order ofpoetry and peace.In the scene depicted in Kashiwagi /, the retired Emperor Suzaku, now amonk, is full of concern for his daughter Princess Nyosan. and is quietlyweeping. His daughter, stricken with guilt and remorse at havingKashiwagi's child, is insisting upon taking the tonsure. She is prostrate onthe tatami on the left, unable to tell her rather the truth or to face herhusband Genji (seated below centre). Genji, for his part, is full ofcompassion for his wife and tries to dissuade her from her vows. In theS88ltext Genji is described as regretting his own inability to give up theworldly life, and envying his father-in-law's resolution. To the right,behind the curtains, ladies-in-waiting share in the sorrow.Nowhere in this painting is there characterization or facial expression.The mask-like faces are painted in the technique known as hikime kagihatia(line-eye hook-nose), which indicates features but does not identifyindividuals. (Reading the calligraphy portions, one would be familiarwith the text, and would recognize the characters by their relativepositions and postures.) Characteristically, such scenes show the tensionjust preceding an action, not the action itself. The ancient technique offUkinuki yatai, a bird's-eye view with the ceiling and often wall partitionsremoved, is used to great effect in the surviving Genji fragments, nearlyall of which show indoor scenes.This apparently tranquil scene, nevertheless, reveals emotional turbu-lence by subtle and effective means. The psychological isolation of thecharacters is symbolized by the silk room-dividers which are here placedto form cells of separate emotion. Elegant black ribbons hang from thecurtains, in disarray, between the princess and her father and beside theladies-in-waiting: this allows the artist to show strong emotion withoutgiving his characters unseemly gesticulations. The tension is furtherheightened by the sharply tilted ground-plane.64 In Suzumushi I, the painter has combined two episodes from thenarrative. Genji has been unexpectedly invited by the Emperor Reizei, hissupposed half-brother, for a moon-viewing party. Genji and his friendsimmediately set out for the palace, delighted that the spontaneous callshows a lessening of court formalities, at least on this occasion. In factReizei, here facing Genji, who is seated against the central pillar, has justrenounced the throne upon discovering that Genji is not his half-brotherbut his actual father. In the text, flutes are played on Genji's way to thepalace; but in the painting the artists have depicted an idyllic, moonlit fluteconcert on the Emperor's verandah.In this painting, the tilt of the ground-plane is less steep than inKashiwagi I, and the parallel lines formed by the balustrade, tatami matborders and exposed beams provide a sense of relaxation and harmony.The meeting of Genji and his son is a poignant moment and both men areshown with heads inclined towards each other, prevented by stringentcourt etiquette from direct utterance of emotion. (Language, conduct andposture were so rigidly regulated in the eleventh and twelfth centuries thatcourtiers developed uncanny sensitivity to the slightest nuances ofbehaviour and situation. This allowed court paintings to depict scenes otpyschological intensity in compositions of apparent physical inertia.)82The articulate Lady Sei Shonagon, a contemporary of the author of TheTale ofGenji, remarked that certain things suffer when depicted in paint,particularly some species of flowers and 'characters in fiction who havebeen praised for their beauty'. (Any attempt by the artist at interpretationof an idealized person or deity interferes with the spectator's ownconcept.) This widely held view accounts for the abstracted faces in theTale ofGenji scrolls, a convention also recognizable in Heian Buddhistpainting and sculpture. However, the hikime kagihana technique allowsthe depiction of extremely subtle emotional nuances. In Suzumushi I, forexample, the characters' eyebrows and eyes are built up from many fine,straight lines into thick layers, with the eyebrows high on the foreheads;the pupils of the eyes are single dots, exactly placed along the cyeline.Reizei's pupil is placed towards the centre of his face, to indicate warmthand humility; that of the figure on the extreme left, vivacity and gaiety.The 'rule of taste' also developed colour consciousness to a high degree.The art of combining colours in daily wear revealed breeding as surely astastes in poetry, calligraphy, incense and even paper for love letters, or asthe way one conducted one's amorous affairs. The following passagefrom Lady Murasaki's diary (trans. Ivan Morris) makes this clear:The Empress was wearing the usual scarlet robe, under which she hadkimonos of light plum, light green and yellow rose. His Majesty's outerrobe was made of grape-coloured brocade; underneath he had a willow-green kimono and, below that, one of pure white - all most unusual andup-to-date in both design and colour . . . Lady Nakazukasa's robe, whichwas also of grape-coloured brocade, hung loosely over a plain jacket ofgreen and cherry.On that day all the ladies in attendance on His Majesty had takenparticular care with their dress. One of them, however, had made a smallerror in matching the colours at the openings of her sleeves. When sheapproached His Majesty to put something in order, the High CourtNobles and Senior Courtiers who were standing nearby noticed themistake and stared at her. This was a source of lively regret to Lady Saishoand the others. It was not really such a serious lapse of taste; only thecolour of one of her robes was a shade too pale at the opening.It is a pity that the colours in paintings and scrolls have changed withtime so that we are unable fully to appreciate the original tones and hues.The subtlety and refinement of colour-matching in Heian art is among thehighest achievements of any ancient society. Even so, we can still easilysee and respond to the strong sense of mono-no-awarc which suffusesHeian perception of nature, people and art. It is an emotional shorthand,instantly leading from the perception o{ beauty to a melancholy con-sciousness of the transience of human life.83Onna-e or feminine paintingAs was said above, there was in the Heian period an acute awareness ofthe distinction between public formality and private emotion. The publicworld was associated with the masculine (otoko) principle and seen in suchpublic or hare manifestations as Chinese-style architecture and kanshipoetry in Chinese script. The inner world is expressed in the feminine(onna) mode, and with indigenous arts such as the Japanese syllabaryscript kana which perfectly suits polysyllabic Japanese poetry. Heiancourtiers took pride in their command of Chinese belles lettres; but theyalso reserved native styles for their most intimate thoughts and feelings.It is likely that this dichotomy caused the emergence of the terms onna-efeminine painting and otoko-e masculine painting in Heian writings. Somescholars have interpreted these terms as describing the gender of thesubjects or of the artists or as referring to the style itself. But given thedramatic contrast between the exterior and interior worlds of Heiancourtiers, it is possible to identify onna-e with introvert, emotional feelingand otoko-e with extrovert, physical action. (Otoko-e are often associatedwith historical events, such as the founding of monasteries, or wars wherethe focus is on actual events.) Each style of painting uses differenttechniques.Onna-e (the style of the Tale of'Genji scrolls) achieves pictorial stillnessthrough subtle compositional devices such as those described earlier, andthe style is equally effective with and without colour. For particularlysumptuous scenes, whether in onna-e or otoko-e style, a laboriouscolouring process known as tsukuri-e was often used: the underdrawingwas covered up by applications of colours in thick, flat layers with littlegradation, after which the outlines were redrawn in a delicate, unbrokenline. The precise, complex designs on costumes and crests were paintedby specialists, with attention paid to the women's hair and the lacqueredheadgear of the men. Architectural features, such as beam-lines, tatamimat borders, and curtains of state were ruled, enhancing the visual impactby manipulating the groundplane angle and the spectator's vantage-point.The calligraphic sections were inscribed in fully developed hiragana script;the paper was often dyed in many shades and decorated with tiny shapes,cut from gold foil, called kirigane. Other examples of onna-e painting,including many frontispieces of the gorgeous Heike Ndgyo describedbelow, combined the tsukuri-e technique with kirigane decoration in lavishopulence. In the following Kamakura period the monochrome hakubydstyle, which used only fine ink lines with tiny red lip-accents, came intouse.84About fifty years later than the Genji scrolls, but clearly influenced bytheir style and techniques, are the Heike Nogyo (the Lotus Sutra scrolls)commissioned by members of the Taira clan (Hei-ke in their Chinesereading.) By this time, Taira no Kiyomori controlled almost half ofjapanby force: his power was matched only by his immense wealth. AmongFujiwara courtiers, the military were still stigmatized as uncouth anduncultured and it may have been to counter this reputation that the Tairawarriors undertook this project of simultaneous conspicuous piety andextravagant expense. The ascendancy of the Taira clan in fact marked acultural shift from a courtly aristocracy, such as that described in The Taleof Genji, to one of martial overlordship. Kiyomori's sutra offerings,begun about 1164, are both a nostalgic glance at the past and proof of astrong desire to beat the aristocracy at their own high-culture game.The Lotus Sutra, which preached the salvation of both women and men,had long been a favourite with court ladies. Sutra copying often involvedjoint efforts on a single scroll, through the writing out of which thecopyists established karmic relationship with one another; it could also bedone by hiring specialists in sutra-style calligraphy and paper decoration.In the case of Taira no Kiyomori, a total of thirty-three scrolls (five morethan the twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sutra), was commissioned fordedication to the principal deity of Itsukushima Shrine, the KanzeonBosatsu (Avalokitesvara) of the Thirty-Three Manifestations. Eachmember of the clan undertook the preparation of a scroll and tried tooutdo the others. The result was the most lavishly decorated sutracollection ever produced, as can be seen from the frontispiece to thetwenty-third chapter. This states that women who receive the teaching ofYakuo Bosatsu (Bhaisajya raja) and live by it, will be reborn on a lotusflower into the Blissful Amida Paradise. In the illustration, a court lady 65leans against her black lacquered armrest, holding a sutra scroll decoratedby a red sash, her hair in disarray, billowing over a garment of at least sixlayers, suggesting the juni hitoe or twelve-layered court robe. Heryouthful, pear-shaped face is turned towards golden shafts of lightradiating from the aureole of the Welcoming Amida Raigo, descendingon a purple cloud. The clouds are sprinkled with silver-white pigment;kirigane as well as pieces of silver foil of various sizes are liberally used.(They were applied individually, by rubbing a stiff brush through the hairto produce static electricity, then using the brush to pick up each foil pieceand deposit it precisely. The metal dust was applied by flicking the brush.charged with gold or silver pigment, against one finger.)Words from the sutra are camouflaged as part of the painting. Theword 'born' is emerging at the top, as the new soul arrives, on the lotuspedestal. This techinique of hidden writing is called ashide, and was oftenused in Yamato-e painting, particularly in onna-e. If the frontispiece hadbeen painted in the otoko-e tradition, the heavenward journey of the dyingwoman would have been physically shown, not symbolized in this way.Otoko-e or masculine paintingThe robust, action-filled narrative painting known as otoko-e is incomplete contrast to the static and emotion-filled onna-e. Historical eventsare realistically depicted and uninhibited emotions are plainly shown inphysical movement and facial expressions. Even the brush-strokes oflandscape are charged with action; lines swell and shrink and large,dramatic and varied strokes are used simultaneously to create and toaccent the pictorial composition.A particularly accomplished group of three painted scrolls, known asthe Shigisan Engi, depicts miracles performed bythe devout ninth-centurymonk Myoren of Mount Shigi. (Scholars are puzzled by the lack of aprior, complete, source-text on which the narrative might have been66 based.) In the section shown, the painter depicts a miracle worked by thegolden bowl Myoren used to send to be filled at the granary of a wealthytownsman. One day the servants left it in the granary, whereupon themagic bowl slipped out, dipped under the building and carried the entirestore of rice back up the mountain. The townsfolk can be seen rushingafter it, with wild gesticulations. The vantage-point is high (the onlysimilarity with the Tale o/Genji scrolls), and the narrative is continuous,the painting spreading over the entire scroll - a remarkable exploitation ofthe handscroll format. The second and third scrolls each have twosections, written narrative and painting. (One wonders whether the firstscroll also had a calligraphic narrative, now lost.) The paintings date frombetween 1156, when the palace shown was rebuilt, and 11 80, when itburned down. The anonymous artists would have been either eshi orimperial court painters familiar with obscure details of Buddhist incono-graphy, or else ebushi, Buddhist painters based in Nara, with access to theimperial palace and with knowledge of court customs, a factor whichmakes even more striking the liveliness and veracity with which theydepicted ordinary folk. This reflects a twelfth-century aristocratic interestin everyday matters, a characteristic of the new age.Instead of heavy, opaque tsukuri-e style, the Shigisan scrolls show howthe artists used colour transparently and sparingly to highlight thedynamic brushwork. Lively brushwork had been used since the Naraperiod for underdrawing, but now surfaces as 'legitimate' art in its own86right. Another illustration from the Shigisan scrolls, this time from ScrollIII, can be seen on p. 51. It shows Myoren's sister, a nun, arriving atTodaiji, and uses six exposures to show consecutive actions, a characteris-tic of narrative painting. In this illustration, reading from right to left, thenun is seen praying to the Great Buddha, begging for a dream to lead herto her brother, the monk Myoren. She steps out to sleep and dreams she isinside again and is told to 'go toward the southwest and the mountainoverhung with purple clouds'. She thanks the Buddha and is seen again, atdaybreak, standing confidently on the steps of the Buddha Hall, facing thesouthwest ready to depart. In a sixth exposure, further left, she is on herway, beneath the great steps. The Great Buddha and its magnificent Hallare depicted in their original proportions before they are burnt down inthe Taira war of 1 180.In the Ban Dainagon E-kotoba the lively brushwork of the Shigisan scrollsis combined with gorgeous colouring, which places the work stylisticallysomewhere between the courtly onna-e Genji scrolls and the lively otoko-eShigisan. Although in Ban Dainagon some courtly interiors use thicktsukuri-e colouring, and some aristocratic features are abstractly depictedin the hikime kagihana manner, in general both facial expressions andgestures show clear emotions. Genji is a tale of social and emotionalaffairs, whereas Ban Dainagon is about political intrigue. It is a penetratingstudy of human motives and behaviour and is a valuable source ofinformation about manners, and textile patterns, in the twelfth century.The story is based on actual historical events of the ninth century. In866 the evil minister Tomo no Yoshio (better known by his court rankBan Dainagon) set fire to the main gate of the imperial palace and accusedhis rival Minamoto no Makoto of the deed. As Minamoto was about to besentenced for the crime, the Prime Minister pleaded with the Emperor tosuspend proceedings for lack of evidence. Several months elapsed. In theautumn of that year a quarrel broke out between the son of a butler in themetropolitan guard and the son of Ban Dainagon's accountant. The latter,presuming on the high rank of his employer, thrashed the butler's son,whereupon the outraged butler shouted that he knew the secret evildoings of Ban Dainagon. Gossip spread this observation and the butlerwas summoned to court for questioning. He said that he had personallyseen Ban Dainagon and his son set fire to the Gate but had not dared toreport the deed because of Ban Dainagon's power. Ban Dainagon wassentenced to banishment. The scrolls show both nobles and commoners.and vividly characterize both types.In the illustration shown, multiple exposure technique (showing 59consecutive actions anti-clockwise) is used to depict the pivotal scene of87the children's quarrel. In the upper right, surrounded by curioustownsfolk, the butler's son, wearing a short, blue robe with polka-dots, ishaving his hair pulled by the accountant's son. Next (upper centre) we seethe accountant rushing to the rescue, fists at the ready. He shields his son(below left), who sneers triumphantly as his father kicks the butler's son,sending him staggering to the left. Then (upper left) we see theaccountant's wife dragging her reluctant son home to be chastised. Again,architectural details give clues to the date and creator of the work. Theaccurate representation of the Kaisho-mon Gate, which was burnt downin 1 177 and not rebuilt, gives the latest possible date for the scroll. As theSeiryoden Imperial Residence is inaccurately drawn, we may assumeeither that the artist did not have access to the innermost recesses of thePalace or that the place shown was a temporary residence of the Emperor.On the other hand, the artist has represented the metropolitan police forcewith an impressive and rigorous accuracy which suggests intimatefamiliarity with that agency.A unique and splendid set of scrolls in the ink monochrome hakubyotradition and in the otoko-e manner has also survived from the period. Thefour scrolls are collectively known as Choju Giga (Frolicking Animals).The first two can be dated definitely from the first half of the twelfthcentury, while the third and fourth scrolls, of lesser quality in brushworkand slightly different in content, date from the mid-thirteenth. The ChojuGiga scrolls have no accompanying, or even a separate, text; they are thework of Buddhist monks and their often hilarious content has been thesubject of much remark. The first scroll shows human games, rituals andother activities performed by animals often dressed as humans. Thesecond scroll shows some fifteen kinds of real or fantasy animals. Thethird scroll shows monks and laymen at play, then animals parodyingtheir actions. The fourth (notably inferior) scroll continues the satiricaltheme.This gentle clerical caricature reveals humorous and compassionateobservation of human foibles during the moral decay of the twelfth60 century. In the example from the first scroll, a monkey dressed as a monkis offering a peach branch before the Buddhist altar; his ceaseless chant isshown by wavy ink lines coming from his mouth. The simian offering issolemnly accepted by a corpulent frog, proudly seated on a lotus leaf,with a giant banana leaf as his aureole. He is framed by leafless branches ofa gnarled tree, drawn in a few swelling ink strokes. Beyond the horizon,late autumnal grasses sway in the wind as three clerics (two foxes and amonkey) show various states of mortification and ennui. Nearby, a foxand a hare, clutching Buddhist rosaries, are also uttering incantations.88USL £S.*h> / I 2X 10 >and taking part in archery contests and water sports. Whetheror not they refer directly to the annual court festivals and sports, such asthose listed in the Nenju gydji, cannot be proven, but there is no mistakingthe whimsical caricature of humanity. The art of ink caricature wasrevived in the mid-Edo period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,when cartoons, manga, became a favoured genre and launched great artistssuch as Katsushika Hokusai.It would be pointless to discuss Japanese narrative painting solely interms of Chinese origins. Certainly, various Chinese narrative scrolls hadbeen seen by Japanese in China and, occasionally, in Heian collections.The two Japanese linear traditions, the discreet, unwavering 'iron-wire'line seen in onna-e and the oblique swelling and diminishing line of otoko-epainting, were both basic to Chinese figurative painting. But the Chineseused figurative representation to exemplify general moral precepts, anddescriptions of specific events or physical traits served to represent theuniversal values of a moral society where the arts were expected to inspirethe beholder. The Japanese artist, by contrast, guided only by courtlystandards of taste, was free to explore the smallest detail of the humancondition. It was not considered improper to express personal feelings; infact, such expression was encouraged and the remarkable acuity ofobservation so developed led to some of the most masterly narrativepaintings the world has seen.Continuation ofnarrative scroll traditionsIllustrated narrative handscrolls grew in popularity in the Kamakuraperiod. They had been the oldest means for Buddhist proselytizingamong the masses since Tang Chinese story-tellers held up painted scenesto illustrate their market-place narratives.Japanese religious education continued the practice. E-bushi illustratednot only the glories of Paradise but the frightful torments of Hell. Thistype of didactic Buddhist painting is known as rokudo-e (Painting ot theSix Paths) and its subject matter was drawn from the six regions of theImpure Land in contrast to the elysian Pure Land. Its purpose was to warnthose who did not ceaselessly recite Amida's name that they were risking6 1 disease, deformitv and all the horrors of Hell. Hungry Ghosts, forexample, now in the Tokyo National Museum, graphically shows howattachment to worldly things in this life leads to similar bondage in thenext. After death, former gluttons experience hunger pangs. Here theyare seen feasting on the fecal matter of unwary slum dwellers. The90'4IN46 1 Hungry Ghosts, from the GdH Zoshi scroll (Kawamoto version). Ink, colours onpaper. Late 12th century.accurately perceived bloated abdomens and the frightening expressions onthe ghostly faces were intended to teach medieval gluttons the Buddhistdictum, 'Leave the table when six-tenths full!'Myoe in meditationIn 1206, the monastic reformer Koben (a.k.a. Myoe-Shonin, 1 173-1232) re-established the forested mountain retreat Kozanji, southwest of Kyoto, asan active part of the Kegon School of Buddhism of which Todaiji in Narawas the centre. Kozanji became known for its remarkable paintings.Myoe is said to have imported many Chinese Song paintings and theymay have influenced the new Kozanji painting style. The first wereproduced by Myoe's favourite disciple, Enichi-bo Jonin. His famous andunusual portrait of Myoe is a lasting tribute to the affection between thepainter and his subject. It also introduces a new freshness and clarity 111coloration. The, abbot, in deep meditation, is portrayed three-quarterface, sitting in a tree. His eyes are closed, his smile-wrinkles arcemphasized and his resolute, shaven but bristly chin is depicted withstriking realism. This outstanding portrait signals the new spiritual vigourof the Kamakura period, when aristocratic and aesthetic indulgence beganto give way to a new sense of moral purpose and dynamism.629]After a long period of diplomatic isolation, Japan was now welcomingChinese works showing the new Song spirit of spartan introspection, acontrast to the previous opulent extravagance of Tang. This reflects a shiftof power in China from the courtly aristocracy to a scholarly bureau-cracy. In art, inner spiritual qualities were stressed rather than externaldetails. Transparent colour-washes were preferred to heavy pigmenta-tion. The development of modelling strokes replaced colour shading.The portrait of Myoe is a Japanese interpretation of these new Songideas. The brushwork is firm but supple; the forms express innertranquillity; the rocks are built up by parallel contour lines with occasionaldark accents; finely sketched tree outlines are superimposed by lines ofbroader wash.The engi (founding history) of the Kegon School was produced atKozanji at Myoe's request. The six illustrated scrolls of the Kegon Engi arewidely considered to have been painted by Enichi-bo Jonin. The Koreanpatriarchs of the School, Gisho and Gengyo (Korean: I-sang and Won-hyo), who introduced Kegon (Korean: Hwa-on) teachings from Silla inthe seventh century, are the subjects of the narrative. The first four scrollsare devoted to Gisho (624-702), who studied Buddhism in China and wasthere adored by a beauty named Zemmyo (Chinese: Shanmiao), whom heconverted to the Buddhist faith. As Gisho's boat was about to sail forKorea, Zemmyo threw her parting gift after it. To her surprise the giftbegan to follow the boat as if alive; this inspired Zemmyo to plunge intothe ocean herself, whereupon she was transformed into a large dragon andcarried Gisho's boat on her back to Korea. (Zemmyo thereafter wasdeified as patron goddess of the Kegon School.)67 In the detail shown, her transformation has been accepted by thepassengers who are listening as Gisho, in the centre, expounds the Law.As in the Myoe portrait, the painting is relaxed, the brushwork is clearand supple and although every space is full there is no sense of crowding.On the contrary, the soft colour gradations, as the sea turns from blue towhite, give a sense of spaciousness. There is none of the drama found inthe assertive brushwork of Shigisan Engi, and none of the emotionalintensity of the Genji scrolls. Instead there is a sparkling clarity, reflectingthe shift in emphasis from emotion to spirituality.War talesA later, major category of picture handscrolls tells of heroism and loyaltyin battle. The illustrations are based on literary tales or historicalchronicles of specific engagements. This development marks the start oft)i Myoe Shonin meditating, by Enichi-bojonin. Hanging scroll; ink, colours onpaper. Early 13th century.military overlordship in Japan, where the bakufii form of governmentbegan in 1185 with Minamoto Yoritomo's seizure of power and theestablishment of his government in Kamakura. From then to the end ofTokugawa rule in 1868, interest in the code of the warrior (bushido) wasreflected in the vast production of war tales, both in literature and in allkinds of fine art: fan painting, album leaves, screens and hanging scrolls aswell as narrative handscrolls.Like a film, the handscroll depicts action in sequence, one frame at atime. The pace at which the narrative takes the viewer's attention isintentionally directed. Each scroll painting has its own tempo, fast orslow, which engages the viewer to the extent of conditioning the speed atwhich he unrolls the scroll. In the Genji scroll, for instance, the pictorialsections are separate paintings interleaved with a continuous calligraphicnarrative. This 'internal', ontia-c, style makes the viewer pause at lengthover each 'frame' to savour every detail of its meaning, whereas the otoho-e style of many war scrolls is more explicit, with continuous action scenesand no textual interruption. The tales of Shigisan Engi and Ban Dainagonthe assertive orpublic phases inevitably invite comparisons with the original models,when the Japanese version usually appears to fail. (In passing, it isinteresting to note that the Emperors and the aristocracy in general haveconsistently favoured indigenous and introspective tendencies in the arts.)For instance, Japanese examples of calligraphy in the regular Chinesescript otkaishu or semi-cursive xingshu styles, by even the greatest monkswho had lived and studied in China during the ninth and tenth centuries,cannot compare at first glance, in nobility, gravity or structual prowess,with corresponding examples by great Chinese masters. On the otherhand, it is difficult for the non-Japanese to detect the japamzatioif, thetendency towards a more sensuous line reflected in the Japanese hand. InMuromachi ink landscapes which reflect the Chinese Xia Gui style,connoisseurs of the Chinese prototypes lament the unhealthy appearanceof the trees, the lack of solidity in the rocks and coherence in the pictorialstructure, but do not see that in Japanese hands it is not the rocks and treeswhich represent early fifteenth-century ideals but the expansive, evocativespace for which the trees and rocks serve merely as points of departure. Inthe same way, in the 'post-Impressionist' paintings of Sakamoto Hanjiro(i 889-1956), it is not so much that his horses lack muscular structure orthat his space lacks definition; what matters is the way in which his brush-strokes, oil-textures and choice of colours all help to convey a mood ofautumnal gloom.In the last twelve hundred years or so, when most imported culturalstimuli reached Japan from China, what was the response of the Japaneseartist? How did he select and transform his models? These questions aresome of the great fascinations ofJapanese art, and the solutions found arean index to its supreme vitality and durability. For no two peoples couldbe more disparate. The ancestor-worshipping Chinese, for example,developed a sinewy, three-dimensional ideographic script for theirmonosyllabic language, and constructed a moral philosophy based on aprofound respect for man and the brotherhood of all mankind. A greatdeal of Chinese imports to Japan thus reflect concern with continuation oflineages and permanence. The polysyllabic Japanese, on the other hand,communicates with whimsical deities through songs and dances, and hispoetry is permitted the minutest emotive indulgences. With no eye oneternity, he quickens at the sight of unexpected beauty and cherishes itsimpermanence.In the Heian period, aristocratic Japanese courtiers personally directedthe development of indigenous art-forms and revealed their naturalpreference for the motifs (subdued colours, rolling contours, seasonalflowers) natural to the Yamato plains where they lived. Since these weretotally unlike the 'monumental' vistas of granite peaks and vast distancescharacteristic of Chinese landscape-painting, the result was a transform-ation of Chinese source-material so profound that its Chinese originsbecame irrelevant. (By contrast with this delicate art, intended for privateenjoyment, public images in Heian halls of state, like the outsize murals ofChinese-style worthies ranged in strict vertical parallel, reflect theprotective mirror of image-makers seeking parity with the outsideworld.)In view of their relationship, it is worth discussing in general thedifferences between Chinese and Japanese art. Chinese forms tend to beself-contained and relaxed, while Japanese forms are affected by theoverall composition of a picture, and emotional tension charges bothmotifs and the space around and between them. The inward-directedmotifs of Chinese paintings tend to stress solidity and depth (an effectoften achieved by the complex interweaving of brushstrokes), whereasthe motifs in Japanese painting, each conceived as part of a largeremotional whole, tend to reach laterally across the picture-plane in a'layered' technique, and to be drawn together by the treatment of theintervening space. The ease and grandeur of Chinese art generate formswhich are malleable: each can be slightly changed in space withoutdisturbing the overall visual harmony. Japanese art, by contrast, is oftenfocussed on nuances of emotion, and works tend to be so charged withtension that altering the position of any part would drastically change theoverall effect.This intense feeling for texture, colour, form and space is intended tosatisfy the spectator's need for emotional assurance and calm. Stepping-stones leading to a gate, for example, slow the visitor's pace. In a tea-i Stepping-stones laid in moss: acharacteristic garden path.2 Bizen unglazed vase showing straw marks,with asymmetrical ear-loop handles.Momoyama. (Seep. i>6)3 Kogo, incense-box, shaped like the comiccharacter Oto Gozei. Earthenware, withoverglaze enamels. Edo.house interior, a feeling of calm is generated by the asymmetry of thespace and the warm hues and 'woolly' textures of the surfaces. The Wayof Tea in particular highlights this aspect of Japanese sensibility, whereenvironment is structured to induce contemplation and calm, to promotea sense of social equality and brotherhood lacking in the rigid socialhierarchies of the real world. Japanese critics express their preference forKorean peasant ware over the cool perfection of Chinese celadons bysaying that 'the imperfect Korean bowl waits for me even when I am notat home, whereas the Chinese bowl waits for no one.' This statementreflects that perception of the inter-relationship of human beings andobjects which permeates Japanese life, and which causes their 'worship ofthe imperfect' (i.e. the natural). A smooth celadon bowl, like the majesticChinese landscape, is too perfect, too awesome: to the Japanese eye itseems severe, it 'waits for no one', and does not need human sympathy,'audience participation', to visualize its innate perfection.From the first moment we look at Japanese art, we are invited to relatein a personal way to the human qualities o{ imperfection built into theartwork, to the beauty of rooms with unadorned walls and texturedsurfaces, to artefacts like unglazed Bizen pottery, where straw wrappingshave been fired to leave uneven markings on the body; we are invited todiscover the strong emotive qualities of an anonymous water-jar or dish,the wit of an incense-box shaped like an actress, or the deliberateformality of a dinner-service created for a noble patron. In each case theartist gives himself wholly to the work, and reveals an unparalleled»li*3rtLJfjr*jr;awareness of his medium, to the peculiarities of which he responds in asymbiotic way. There is no boundary between planes, between art andman.Nothing expresses a people's spirit more than its folk crafts, and Japan'smingei have dazzled art-lovers around the world. Here generosity of spirit,love of simplicity, and perception of beauty in all natural things ismanifest. The simple Japanese farm-house, for example, with its rough-hewn wooden beams, unpainted walls and thatched roof, inspired thehighly sophisticated, tea-house oriented sukiya architecture so influentialtoday. In simple lacquers such as the horned wine-bucket, exactly thesame kind of peasant strength and forthrightness are expressed. There isno nervousness here about symmetry or glossy surfaces; indeed, there is arelaxed sophistication often lacking in the arts of the ruling classes.In every facet ot life, the Japanese have always devoted themselves tobringing about that sense of peace and harmony, of warmth and comfort,which they teel to be an essential part of beauty. In a Japanese meal, forexample, quantities which would seem alarmingly frugal to a Chinesegourmet are attractively arranged in a variety of vessels, and are served inslow and graceful sequencec-kotoba and the Kegon Fitigi are examples of this type. With the growinginterest in battle techniques, the detailed depiction of each stage in combatbecame a crucial feature of handscroll painting. The urgency of tacticalmanoeuvres brings to the combat narratives a dramatic new dimension.9463 Burning of the Sanjo palace in Kyoto by the rebel Minamoto forces. Detailfrom Heiji monogatari scrolls. Ink, colours on paper. Late 13th century.An early, important set of scrolls, the Heiji monogatari, describes thecrucial battle of 11 59 in the civil war between the Minamoto (Genji) andTaira (Heike) clans. The scrolls are based on a novel of the same namewritten in 1220. Another novel, about a similar conflict in the Hogen era(11 56), called the Hogen monogatari, was written in the same year. Both ofthese use a new, plain-spoken language where the battle scenes aredescribed in a direct and epic manner. Three scrolls from at least fifteendescribing the Heiji wars have survived.The illustration shows the burning of the Imperial Palace at Sanjo inKyoto, as the rebel (Minamoto) forces try to seize power by capturing theEmperor. The instigator of the revolt was Fujiwara Nobuyori, who hadconspired with Minamoto no Yoshitomo. The coup was staged inDecember of 11 59 and the retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa taken prisoner.The section illustrated shows the Imperial Palace in flames, whileMinamoto forces the Emperor to board the cart waiting to take him tocaptivity. Other soldiers are shown charging on horseback, beheadingimperial guards and spearing royal retainers; ladies weep helplessly or flee.6395The scene is packed with multiple actions some of which aresimultaneous, some sequential. It is a far more complex conception thanthe crowd scenes in Ban Dainagon or Shigisan Engi, where focus tended tobe on a single action. The pace is more urgent and the action movespurposefully from right to left, in spite of vignettes (like film 'freezeframes'), which face right. The figures are grouped in triangles or inlozenges which culminate in a point; single figures lead from each groupto the next. This spatial organization allows swift visual comprehensionand thus quickens the pace. Unlike the caricatures of twelfth-centuryscrolls which often resort to exaggeration and caricature, thirteenth-century narratives stress physical realism. Like its literature, Kamakurapainting was action-packed and spirited, dealing with real moments, withno allusions to other times or themes. The fire, for example, is seen inseveral time-lapses, from its explosive outburst to the tongues of flamelicking the adjoining roofs and then to the smoke-filled, red clouds risingheavenwards, bringing a fall-out of burning cinders. (These last weremade by flicking a paint-charged brush across the wrist, covering thepaper with red dots.) At the centre of the fire the heat is most intense andthe flames are painted sharp and straight, devouring the charred beams.Patronage has changed from the courtly Fujiwara to the martialMinamoto, and the arts sensitively reflect the shift in aesthetics.Kana calligraphy: onnadeThe Japanese regard the development and perfection of their indigenouscalligraphy style as the quintessence of the Heian contribution to art. Thisachievement is all the more remarkable because of the unbridgeabledifferences between Chinese and Japanese speech, poetry and attitudestowards written script. Between the ninth and eleventh centuries aningenious system of adapting Chinese characters was evolved, and in thehands of courtiers developed into an expression of the highest order.Since prehistoric times, the Chinese had shown a need and respect forthe art of writing. Ideographic units, either pictographs or ideographs,evolved, each representing a specific idea. They are monosyllabic andwere first used only by diviner-scribes of the priestly shaman kings suchas the Shang kings (fourteenth century bc) to communicate with ancestralspirits. Later, the deeds of Zhou nobles were recorded and writing waswidely adopted as a means of recording such things as military orders,history and poetry. Chinese verse uses couplets or quatrains of four, fiveor seven syllables: symmetry is bilateral: that is, nouns, verbs oradjectives, contrasting or paired, appear in comparable positions in the64 Suzumushi II. detail from The Tale ofGenji scrolls. Ink, colours on paper. Early[2th century. (Seep. $2)65 Yakuo Bosatsu Honjibon, detail from Heike Nogyo handscrolls. Ink, colours onpaper, with kirigane decoration, c. 1 164. (See p. 85)&0ttremendous stepforward. The Japanese language with its polysyllabic cadences and longvowel stresses, so conducive to recitation and singing, was at lastprovided with a written equivalent based on sounds and not concepts.The katakana syllabary was used for phonetic glosses to Chinese textsand for Japanese written in the Chinese kun system but needing suffixes,while the hiragana system was developed for use in transcribing Japanesepoetry (waka), for the writing of personal letters and for new literaryforms such as romances and diaries. Men thought it was unbecoming forwomen to struggle with Chinese learning and it became a tacit socialtaboo for women to be seen holding a book in Chinese. Thus menengaged in Chinese studies and used Chinese script for their Chinese andJapanese poetry, whereas women wrote only in Japanese. Their hiraganastyle of calligraphy came to be called onnade (feminine hand). By the lateeleventh century, as Fujiwara culture was reaching its peak, onnadeachieved unsurpassed internal balance and grace. The example shown 68here is the so-called masu-shikishi calligraphy, and recalls the pristinepurity of the sculpture and murals of the Phoenix Hall. There is no traceof Chinese origin or of the extravagant nourishes to come. The writingwas inscribed with a finely pointed brush usually held upright. Thediagonal swings do not detract attention from a steady vertical axis whichis never actually touched. Balance and dynamic energy arc maintained inelements of different sizes, in the contrast between light and dark, incolumn alignment and in the density and openness of the internal spirals.Furthermore, the work shows creative originality and expressivenesswhich are never allowed to interfere with legibility.The thirty-one syllable poem by Kiyohara no Fukayabu is transcribedbelow, line by line, as it appears in the calligraphy:natsu no yo wa mada yoi na- summer night still dusky andgara akenuru wo kumo yet day breaks: oh! cloudsno izukoni somewhere among themtsuki kakuru the moon is hidingra-n perhaps99The thin night air of summer is expressed in the fine lines of the firstcolumn. The artist breaks the word nagara (and yet) to gain power andmomentum in the second column, where his brush tip is freshly chargedwith more ink and applied with firmer pressure. The letters a-ke-nu of theword akenuru (daybreak) literally expand, breaking apart, the ke occupy-ing about four times the width of the preceding nagara. 'Daybreak' thusactually overlaps the no izuko (somewhere) of the next column, recreatingthe clouds which cover the moon at dawn.This poem demonstrates simultaneous confidence in verbal and visualimagery. Not only are the phonetic elements, the kana, in a non-uniformsize, but the inscription does not even conform to the internal metre of the66 (opposite above) The Flying Granary (detail) from Shigisan Engi, first scroll. 1 156-11 80. (Seep. 86)67 (below) Zemmyo transformed into a dragon, detail from Kegon Engi handscrollsby Enichi-bo Jonin. Early 13th century.poem. An oral recitation of it would produce the following lineararrangement:natsu no yo wa summer nightmada yoi nagara still dusky but alreadyakenuru wo dawn breaks. Oh!kumono izukoni somewhere amidst the cloudstsuki kakuru ra-na surely the moon hidesHowever, the calligrapher has treated his task in visual, not aural terms.This freedom from extraneous considerations is an essentially Japanesequality. In Chinese calligraphy, the column length, once established,must be maintained. If a Chinese poet had written out the above poem inJapanese kana script, he would have either used lines of equal length andbroken the metre or he would have reproduced the recitation patternshown above. Thejapanese poet has broken the lines for visual effect. TheV-shaped silhouette with serrated edges represents the clouds parting,with the short, lowest (third) column emerging in a moon-like circle.This poem was one of a pair written in an album format and latermounted separately on cards (shikishi). Such creative inscriptions ofpoetry took various forms. These included tsugi-shikishi where twocontrasting sheets of paper provided the background for two poems andlarge or small shikishi, boards mounted with plain or decorated paper,which by the early twelfth century had to rival tsukuri-e painting itself insumptuousness, as may be seen in the narrative sections of the Genjiscrolls.Eleventh century calligraphy paper was usually white or light blue;sutras, exceptionally, were done in Chinese block script, in gold paste onan indigo ground. Japanese paper designs, for poetry or prose, becameever more complicated. The material could be dyed before manufacture;the paper itself could be dyed or painted with colour and then sprinkledwith cloudy, misty shapes. Other methods involved the imprinting of inkfigures, gold or silver patterns, kirigane metal flakes, hair-fine metal slivers(noge) and metal dust (sunago). Colours included various hues of red.violet, indigo, blue, white, yellow, brown and green. Heian paper oftenimitated Chinese Tang and Song patterns and used the same woodblockprinting techniques.The high, bird's-eye-view perspective of vast expanses with low-lyinghillocks and meandering streams, often associated with Heian landscapepainting and paper decoration, had been long considered a Japanesecontribution. However, Egami Yasushi has recently pointed out that suchperspective is rare in Japanese works prior to the importation in 1073 of a102set of Buddhist commentaries written out by the Chinese Emperor SongTaizong (he reigned 976-997) and illustrated by fifty Northern Songartists, and then made into woodblock printed editions. The importedbook is a Korean copy but faithfully preserves the Song perspective andmarked diagonality. While these characteristics were abandoned in Chinain succeeding ages, they took root in Hcian Japan and contributed featuresto the Yamato-e tradition which persevere to this day.Chinese motifs on calligraphy paper included the so-called 'Chinesegrasses', bamboos, sparrows and lions, but Japanese motifs soon ap-peared, many of which are still favoured today. They include rabbits inautumn grasses, deer, flowing water (a motif traceable to Yayoi times),cherry blossoms, peaches, wild chrysanthemum and waves. Collage,where sheets torn or cut on the diagonal formed colourful designs, alsobecame fashionable. Some papers were further decorated by painting: thisprovided underdrawing for the calligraphy.Almost all Heian secular arts, picture scrolls, screens or lacquerdecoration and fan paintings contain direct or indirect literary references.Calligraphy is naturally the most literature-based form of all. TheSanjurokunin ka shil (Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets) was produced in 69the early twelfth century and marks the highest achievement in the craftsof paper making and decoration. It is thought that this collection ofhundreds of poems, inscribed by twenty calligraphers, was intended as atribute to the retired Emperor Shirakawa on his sixtieth birthday in 1 1 12.The following example is by Minamoto no Shigeyuki (died 1000):eda wakanuham ni a(h)edomomumoreAlthough the buried logencounters Spring, when£ l watbranches emerge undividedHow many years has itpassed without greening!Moemo masaradetoshi he-nuruka-naThe poem may refer to a mature woman, symbolized by the buried log,who has seen yet another spring come and go, bringing a lovelesssummer. It is painted in mica and ink upon collage-decorated paper. Inthe centre, an abandoned boat (a standard summer subject) is half hiddenby reeds. It is painted on a torn fragment of paper inserted between twolighter coloured pieces, as if it were not of the same world. Aboveturbulent mica waves, tiny ink birds scatter and a small boatcarrying twofigures heads toward a minuscule island. The calligraphic alignment of the1011ii LJ> i68 (left) Onnade calligraphy from one of theMasu-shikushi set of calligraphies.S/iiki'jr/n albumleaf. Late I ith century. (See p. 99)69 (above) Calligraphy fragment from theShigeyukishu collection from the Sanjurokunin kashil. c. 1 1 12.poem follows the speech cadences, and complex Chinese characters areused to end the piece with a firm masculine flourish. In weighted andmeasured wrist pressure the calligrapher seems to have inscribed thesecret agonies o{ the waka poem as if writing an official edict.The calligraphy here differs in several respects from that of the previousexample. It is not in the onnade or hiragana form of phonetic symbols, butin the more Chinese-oriented sogana form, where syllables are mostlymade ot cursive forms of fuller Chinese characters. Secondly, thecalligrapher pressed down more on his brush and slanted it from time totime to change the width of the strokes. There is no longer the continuityand flow of the late eleventh century nor the internal balance. The writingreveals self-conscious linkages between words and tight turns around theloops. The calligraphy occupies slightly more than half the double album-leaf format, with the literary source written out completely in Chinese inthe last column. However, the Chinese characters are written with thesame flowing quality and emphasis on lateral movement along the writingrestricts the calhgrapher's freedom in applying his script. There is a linkwith the heightened, indirectly expressed emotion of otina-e painting. Atfirst glance, the calligraphy is stately and calm but the agitation betrayedin the second line, ham ni aedomo (though encountering Spring), showsthat it is not a straightforward summer boating song but is resonant with10470 Flowing Stream with smallbirds. Maki-e on koto. 12thcentury.unfulfilled emotions. The harsh breaks within eda - wa - kanu in the firstcolumn and in ham - ni - a(h)edomo in the second are stark and sudden likepeals o{ thunder on a rainless summer day.LacquersA remarkable development in both the technique and design of lacquermaking is seen toward the latter part of the Heian period. Althoughscholars have not been able to reach a final conclusion on the origins of thetechnique (maki-e), where colour, gold and silver dust or particles aresprinkled onto still tacky lacquer, its use during the Fujiwara periodshows that it was indisputably wedded to Japanese taste. The subtleshading of the dust creates nuances previously unseen in lacquers. In theearliest form of the process only the design is lacquered (hira-makie). In thelater and more complex form, relief motifs (taka-makie), the entire surfaceof the utensil was covered with several applications of lacquer and colouror metal dust. Each lacquer layer was carefully sanded to even the surfaceand bring out the lustre, writh main motifs rising above the surface.Mother-of-pearl inlay (raden) was also widely used.In decoration, relatively crowded, evenly spread Tang Chinese motitsgave way to a new taste for asymmetrical arrangements and an increaseduse of empty space. Whether these tendencies can all be traced to Songdesigns remains to be studied, but their integration with the form of theutensil is as purely Japanese as the calligraphy described above. In one ofthe most beautiful examples of maki-e designs, gold and silver is finelywrought in the manner of late Heian decoration. In a later example fromthe Kamakura period, hidden writing (ashide), a popular practice, iscamouflaged in silver low-relief on the rocks, bank and tree trunk. Thedesign is vigorous and the techniques are more complicated.105CHAPTER FIVEKamakuraand Muromachi (1185-1573)By the mid-eleventh century rivalry between the Taira and Minamotoclans erupted in open warfare. Epic battles were fought in 1 156 and 1 160and the land was devastated by famine and plague until the final triumphof Minamoto no Yoritomo at the tragic sea-battle of Dannoura in 1185.From then until the restoration of imperial control in 1868, a succession ofmilitary dictators governed Japan in the Emperor's name.This military culture was unlike anything Japan or China had everproduced. It was founded on fidelity and honour for which one wasalways ready to die a violent death. Unlike the ceremonial swords ofHeian courtiers which were usually sheathed, and in delicately craftedscabbards, the new, warrior's sword was a lethal blade of unsurpassedlightness and strength. Made of two layers of iron and steel which weresubjected to repeated folding and beating, then to fire and immersion inwater, Japanese samurai blades were marked by a unique vapour imprintcalled ni-e, much prized by connoisseurs.The warrior developed a close relationship with Shinto shrines, likethat of Heian aristocrats with Buddhist temples. The swordsmith's workthus took on a sacred aspect with extended rites of purification andabstinence before each new blade was forged. The swordsmith also worepure white garments, an echo of the white vestments of the Shinto priest.Each sword was thought to take on its own spiritual life; success or failurein battle was attributed to the spirit in the sword.Gifts of stunning workmanship were made to Shinto shrines, begin-ning with the Taira clan's donation of the Lotus Sutra scrolls and of the71 armour of Taira no Shigcmori, Kiyomori's son. Each military comman-der identified himself with a particular shrine where he prayed for victoryand offered thanks after battle. Thus, the Minamoto clan in Kamakurahad links with the Tsurugaoka Shrine where Yoritomo made numerousgifts. His wife Masako patronized the shrine at Mishima and there offeredup her exquisite lacquer toiletry box. The early thirteenth century swordcalled Masatsune was used for warfare until the early eighteenth centurywhen the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune made it a votive offering.10671 Armour with blue yarns from Taira clan. 12th century.107Military overlordship: the Shogun and his bakufuWhen Minamoto no Yoritomo seized political control in 1 185, he movedthe seat of power from Kyoto to the rugged eastern sea-coast ofKamakura. He instituted the bakufu form of government which ruled inthe name of the nominally revered Emperor. Yoritomo's militarygovernment ruled with spartan resolution and vigour until 1333, demand-ing unquestioning obedience and rigorous discipline. In 1 192 the Emperorconfirmed Yoritomo's authority with the title of Barbarian-SubduingSupreme General - Shogun. The Minamoto family continued in thisposition until their line died out when their regents, the Hojo, tookeffective control. Government administration was in their hands, and theShogun himself (no longer of the Minamoto clan) became a puppet likethe Emperor. None the less, fierce loyalty to the 'Lord of Kamakura' livedon in generations of faithful vassal families and maintained the integrity ofthe bakufu: even after the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 128 1 whenfinances were low and internal corruption had loosened the bakufu'scontrol, when loyalist supporters of Emperor Go-Daigo (1288-1339)twice attempted revolt, they only succeeded in obtaining the Emperor'sbanishment to Oki. In 1333, after the Kemmu Restoration, rival warriorclans supported different pretenders to the throne, creating a northerncourt in Kyoto and a southern court in Yoshino. The schism lasted forfifty-seven years until the southern Emperor Go-Kameyama abdicated infavour of Emperor Go-Komatsu (1 377—1433). In 1392 the country wasonce more unified.Kamakura sculptureWhile the major arts, perfected during the Heian period, continued toflourish under martial rule, the new structure of society created newartistic demands. The great Todaiji and Kofukuji monasteries ofNarawhich had supported Yoritomo's cause had, in consequence, beendestroyed by Taira forces in 11 80. Their reconstruction now began. In1 1 83 the Chinese sculptor Chen Hoqing was brought to Nara to recast thehead of the Great Buddha of Todaiji but most of the restoration work wasundertaken by Japanese artists, particularly those of the illustrious Keischool, descended from Jocho of the Byodoin sculptures. Jocho's sons hadestablished branches in Kyoto and Nara; it was one of the Naradescendants, Unkei (died 1223) who most strongly influenced Kamakurasculpture.The restoration project at Todaiji, which lasted for several generations,involved close study of the Tang models and Tang-inspired works for108repairs to the sculptures. This study, combined with the new, stimulatingcontact with Chinese Song models, led to heightened realism andsimplicity; colouring became more subdued and new, emphaticallyhuman iconological types appeared. The spirit of reform in Buddhism,with its mass appeal, has already been noted in connection with theKozanji paintings.Early works of the Unkei school are the last highpoint in Japanesesculptural history. At first sight, these sculptures appear to revive theeighth-century Nara style of realism; but whereas that was idealized,generic and impersonal, Kamakura realism involved both the depiction ofphysical characteristics and a clear feeling of each subject's particularspiritual likeness; dark-centred crystals were now first used to give life tothe eyes.Minamoto no Yoritomo was anxious to distance himself from de-bilitating court life, wishing to establish an image of virile, martialsimplicity which would stress inner spiritual alertness rather than exteriorgrace. He wanted his own Pure Land Paradise enshrined in Kamakura -but not in the effete beauty of the late Fujiwara style. He consulted withSeicho, Unkei's uncle, then leader o{ the Nara sculptors, and withTamehisa, a painter working in the new Song brush manner like that ofEnichi-bo Jonin. Unfortunately, the repository for this new art is nolonger extant; but we know that Unkei was in eastern Japan, either asSeicho's assistant or on his own, during its construction.A group of massive and compelling Buddhist images, some of Unkei'searly works, are now to be found in the Ganjqju-in in ShizuokaPrefecture. In 1752 an inscription was found inside one of them, statingthat Unkei began work on the project in 11 86, sponsored by Hojo noTokimasa, Yoritomo's father-in-law. It is likely that Unkei's years in theinvigorating atmosphere of Kamakura contributed to the extraordinaryvitality and intensity of his later works.These works herald the birth of true Japanese portraiture. There is littledoubt that Unkei was influenced by Song sculpture. Dry lacquer andpottery works produced in the eastern Chinese Liao-Jin dynasties betweenthe tenth and thirteenth centuries show life-like people with distinctpersonalities. This reflects an interest in capturing inner essence throughfaithful outer modelling. None of this was lost on the young Unkei. Hisfather, Kokei, assumed leadership of the Nara school when Seicho diedand Unkei returned to Nara to work on the Todaiji and Kofukujiprojects.Muchaku portrays the Indian patriarch Asanga in carved painted wood, 72and represents both Unkei's mature style and the best in Kamakura109sculpture. The holy man stands life-size, his weight on the left foot, turningan intellectual and kind face slightly to the right. Unkei docs not carve anidealized representation but portrays a real individual, probably thelikeness of a particular Japanese Buddhist master known to him. Muchakuis one of the principal figures in Kofukuji's North Octagonal HokuendoHall, and was sculpted between 1208 and 12 12. Compared to non-iconicfigures of the Nara period, such as the beautiful dry lacquer standing73 figure of Furuna in the Kofukuji which had doubtless impressed Unkeiwith its expressive force, Muchaku shows a fuller understanding of formand contraposto style. The sculptured figure is not poised as if about to fly,like the eighth-century figure: it stands balanced and relaxed. Songrealism has here been heightened by the spiritual tautness peculiar to earlyKamakura.The work of Unkei's six sons and other disciples combined Songinfluences and indigenous developments in a similar way. These includethe deep-cut and fluttering drapery in soft curves, more realistic hand andfigure positions, pronounced but not exaggerated musculature, crystaleyeballs with darker pupils set in the sockets and, above all, spiritualintensity. These characteristics, however, are only hinted at in theprincipal icons: the further Buddhist iconography moved from India, themore rigid and conservative it became, allowing little artistic individu-ality.The eldest of Unkei's six sculptor sons, Tankei (?i 173-1256) wasamong his most remarkable followers. In the Rengeo-in, popularlyknown as the Hall of the Thirty-Three Bays (Sanjusangendo) in Kyoto,Tankei and other Kei School masters left a seated senju (thousand-armed)Kannon and a thousand smaller standing thousand-armed Kannons, allworked in bright gilt. Among images of the twenty-eight lay followers ofthis Kannon, two works by Tankei especially reflect the ardour and74 intensity o( Kamakura popular Buddhism. Basu-sen is shown as an oldhermit of frail body but powerful features. Gaunt and bearded, he leanson a staff. As he stoops forward his right shoulder-bone protrudes; heholds a sutra scroll in his raised hand. The wrinkled face and swollenfinger-joints show his age and deteriorated physical condition, but faith,piety and benevolence transform the lined face, with its sunken eyes andlong curved nose, into a thing of beauty. Perhaps most compelling in its75 simplicity and single-minded faith is a companion piece. Mawara-nyo,who stands erect with folded hands. Her neck muscles are taut; her mouthis firmly closed; her large eyes are wide and unblinking; her thoughts arefocussed on inner spiritual realities, oblivious of passers-by. There is littlehere of such Heian qualities as mono no aware. Kamakura was not a time to1 1072 Muchaku, bv Unkei. H. 1 88 cm. Kamakura, 1208-12.73 Furuna (one of Ten Great Disciples). Painted dry lacquer. H. 149 cm. Nara,c 734-74> 75 (l?ft) Basu-scn (detail), (right) Mawara-nyo (detail), both by Tankei. Paintedwood. Early 13th century.indulge in self-centred fears or regrets, but to cultivate instead the samuraivalues of asceticism and selflessness. This tendency was given a greatboost with the arrival of Chan Buddhism from China.Zen BuddhismAs contact with China was resumed, increasing numbers ot Japanesereformist Buddhist masters like Eisai (1141-1215) and Dogen (1200-1253), studied there and brought back the self-reliant teaching known asChan (or Zen in Japanese). It was ascetic and pragmatic, and eschewed allexternal rituals. This no-nonsense approach held a strong appeal for theJapanese warrior class and soon found official patronage. Zen monasteriesin Chinese style were founded in quick succession, the Kenninji (1202)and Tofukuji (1243) in Kyoto, and the Kenchoji (1253) and Engakuji(12S2) in Kamakura.Although Zen teaching stressed the futility ot extraneous intellectualAnd artistic activity, there was gradually built up a corpus of poems andink paintings used by Zen masters to demonstrate various aspects ofenlightenment. While these products may on occasion jolt the recipientinto a degree of enlightenment, they proved a double-edged sword:playing as they did on the practitioner's desire for perfection in poetry orpainting, they risked distracting him from his Path.1 12A genre of patriarchal portraiture, chinzo, often charting a master'sactive life, flourished with the proliferation of Zen monasteries. Chinzorepresents theessential personal and direct transmission of the Law. Aportrait of the master, with an appropriate inscription of dedication, wasgiven to the disciple only when he had achieved a measure of enlighten-ment. It acknowledged the bond of karma which formed an importantpart of the disciple's life. Many portraits of famous Chinese masters werebrought back by grateful Japanese disciples; the personal messages 'fromMind to Mind' strengthened the disciple's spiritual self-control. JanFontein and Money Hickman have observed that 'there is perhaps noother form of Chinese and Japanese art in which painting and calligraphyare so intimately connected in their purpose and meaning.'In 1246 the great Southern Song Chan master Lanqi Daolong (1213-78)arrived in Japan. Two years later he went to Kamakura and converted theHojo regent Tokiyori. A magnificent monastery, Kenchqji, was built onthe slopes just north of the city and was inaugurated in 1253 with Daolongas its founding abbot. This was the first purely Chinese Chan ritual everheld in Japan. With shogunal patronage Zen quickly spread throughoutJapan. A portrait of Lanqi Daolong in the Kenchqji, by an unknownJapanese painter, shows the founder about seven years before his death.He is seated in the master's high chair, feet tucked under his habit, holding7-*''.77 Minamoto no Yoritomo byFujiwara Takanobu (i 142-1205). Hanging scroll; ink,colour on silk. 12th century.78 Portrait ofEmperorHanazono, by Goshin.Hanging scroll; ink, colourson paper. 1338.his staff and observing the world attentively with benign yet stern eyes.He looks young for his age, nearly seventy; despite his slight and bonyframe, his skin is clear and firm. The fluid, undulating ink brush-strokesshow direct Song influence as does the coloration in transparent washes ofdark and light browns. A new era of Chinese culture is launched, in spiteof strict Chan injunctions against attachment, even attachment to culture.Kamakura paintingThe clear-sighted Zen view of the world injected a striking new realisminto Japanese protraiture of the period. Some early examples are the set ofportraits in Jingoji temple in Kyoto, attributed to Fujiwara Takanobu77 ( 1 142-1205). The portrait of the Shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo is stilltinged with some Heian opacity and formality. It had been consideredrude in Heian times to copy a person's likeness. But here the artist has nothesitated to bring out his subject's thick lips, protruding mouth suggest-ing buck teeth, small ear-lobes, flat cranium and slightly rounded, narrownose and, above all, his vehement and ruthless personality. The cold,fierce eyes, for example, partially closed, borrow from the conventionused in depicting angry Buddhist deities. The 'single lines' are in tact builtup from a series of hair-fine brush-strokes. The black figured brocade, red114inner collar, gold scabbard, ivory tablet of state and gold-encrusted frontsash are still opaque, in conformity with Heian practice, but the eyelids,nostrils, ears and lips are discreetly shaded to suggest real dimensions.Takanobu was famous for realistic rendering; he painted only the facesof his subjects, leaving the rest to specialists. In 1 173, a courtier recordedin his diary that Takanobu's mural of the Emperor and his court was solife-like that he, the courtier, was able to recognize everyone and thankedthe Gods that he himself had not been present at the occasion - a clearexample of the Heian aversion to life-like portraiture. It is significant,even so, that this same group portrait was commissioned by the EmperorGo-Shirakawa-in himself. Although opposition courtiers described thepainting as coarse and dreary, and closed the building in which it washoused, the allure of realism proved irresistible. By the early thirteenthcentury, many more painted records of this type had been commissionedby the palace and courtiers were even identified on the paintings by theirnames and ages.Another example of the informal but penetrating style is the revealingfourteenth-century portrait by Goshin, a descendant of Takanobu, of theEmperor Hanazono (1297- 1348). It is painted in ink on paper and washedin transparent colours. The emperor abdicated in 13 18 and took Buddhistvows in 1334. A highly erudite man, he is shown here at the age of forty-two, in a grey monk's habit, holding a rosary and a fan, gazing wearily at-NIISthe world. A patchwork brocade mantle, with a golden chrysanthemumand grasses on a white ground, offsets the clerical habit. The face is ascholar's, sensitive and effete; Hanazono himself paid tribute to therealism of the painting by inscribing on it, left, 'My deplorable nature,painted by Goshin in the Autumn of 1338.'Muromachi ink paintingThrough patronage of Zen monasteries and associated cultural activities,the martial rulers in Kamakura sought to produce a cultural legacy to rivalthat of the aristocratic Fujiwara, and thus to establish legitimacy. Theypatronized Zen monastries which were centres of Chinese learning; intime, some Japanese monks became so absorbed in Chinese literature,scholarship and arts that they came to be chastised as bunjinso or 'literatimonks'. Many spent long years in China and the quality and character oftheir artistic output often approached that of Chinese Chan monks andliterati. Although Chan teachings held a profound appeal for the Japanese,the Chinese language, script and ink monochrome painting were alien atbest, anathema at worst, and shogunal promotion of Chinese cultureproved to be, for Japanese artist-monks, a formidable task.Throughout the Yuan dynasty in China, the Chan School was aninternational community with frequent and enthusiastic exchanges acrossthe Yellow Sea. Chinese abbots were invited to found Japanese Zenmonasteries and Japanese monks went to study in China, some eventuallybecoming abbots there. Chinese poetry and calligraphy by Japanesemonks such as Sesson Yubai (1290- 1346) were highly regarded in bothcountries. Another painter-monk, Mokuan Reien(fi. 13 30s- 1345), whowent to China about 1329, became primate of a Chinese monastery.79 In the Four Sleepers Mokuan portrays a favourite Chan theme: thelegendary eccentrics, Hanshan and Shide, with Fenggan and his tiger, allsoundly asleep. The younger men, Hanshan and Shide, have beenidentified in later writings as avatars of the bodhisattvas Manjusri andSamantabhadra. (The Chan School added the mounted Fenggan andcreated its own trinity.) Mokuan's style reveals a full grasp of Chinese inkwash techniques in the fluid descriptive lines, and wet areas where darkerink is allowed to blur, the extremely dry brush in shading Fenggan's faceand belly, and the use of fine, almost invisible, lines for all the facialfeatures. This style is a development of the Southern Song Chan inkpainting tradition, 'apparition painting', wanglianghua (Japanese mdryoga).While Mokuan was in China, the seat of power shifted from Kamak-ura. In [368, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (ruled 1368-94) from the Muromachi11679 Four Sleepers by MokuanReicn, inscribed by XiangfuShaomi. Hanging scroll; ink onpaper. 14th century.district in Kyoto became the new Shogun. Unlike Minamoto noYoritomo, who disdained court life, Yoshimitsu was determined to rivalit in both culture and opulence. In the Kamakura period, the restoration ofBuddhist monasteries destroyed in the civil war had had priority. In theMuromachi period, the Shogun promoted Chinese-style ink painting,pavilions, gardens and tea-houses as aesthetic alternatives to the nnpen.iltaste for Japanese culture.11-Due to restrictive Ming policies, Japanese monastic artists now had towork without livingand studying in China or having guidance fromChinese masters. This vital missing link accounts for the peculiarlyunfulfilled character of Muromachi art in its Chinese oriented works.Although, through most of the fourteenth century, Zen traffic to Chinahad been brisk and scholarship intense, Japanese monasteries had notestablished Chinese-style ateliers to ensure proper transmission of Zen-related art - understandable in a philosophy which eschewed sutras andicons. The artistic Chan repertory of Yuan China had consisted in generalof highly abbreviated ink monochrome representations of men,orchids, bamboo, pines, or landscapes which summed up well knownmotifs in a few strokes. Japanese artists were thus confronted with thepictorial equivalent of shorthand but without recourse to the fuller script.This first serious encounter with China's ink painting coincided with itsevolution towards yet further abbreviation, verging on formal dissolu-tion. Chan works of a wide range of quality now entered Japan, frompoor to sublime. The Japanese artist could either slavishly copy hiscontinental model or adapt it.The latter option, though more suited to the creative impulse, wasrestricted by the need for iconographical fidelity. Since Chinese Chanworks expressed spontaneous exhilaration or insight, the Japanese artisthad to enliven his version with a degree of inspiration and freedom butcould not inject any different vision of his own. His artistic inclinationscould not fully surface, but were inevitably routed through the mediumof incompatible Chinese models. This was particularly true after the Mingrestoration of 1368, when travel to and from China was curtailed.While outwardly adhering to the continental vocabulary, to complywith iconographic or shogunal demands, Japanese Zen ink painting wasnevertheless being slowly transformed into a more poetic and indigenousexpression. This was achieved by altering the morphology and expressionof the models but without changing compositional elements. Thus,Muromachi ink painting was deprived of the complete artistic freedomwhich had marked the development in the Heian period of Tang blue andgreen styles into Yamato-e. And for viewers today, it may lack the totalityof transformation and fulfilment so apparent in onna-e painting, onnadecalligraphy, raku pottery, Rimpa painting and calligraphy or uhiyo-ewoodblock prints, genres where Japan's artistic genius was given fullestexpression.However, rearrangement of Chinese elements in a Japanese manner80 was not only possible, but inevitable. In Orchids, Gyokuen Bompo (1 348—1420) demonstrates that a poetic version of China's philosophical118« «££m *isi*,80 Orchids by Gyokuen Bompo.Hanging scroll; ink on paper. Late 14thcentury.prototype can be successfully made without changing motifs or tech-nique. (Bompo was a literatus or bunjinsd and once served as abbot ofNanzcnji in Kyoto. He was celebrated as a poet and calligrapher but aboveall for his orchid paintings.) In this painting, the standard rocks and plantsare depicted; but instead of radiating outwards to capture and controlspace, as is often the case in Chinese orchid paintings, Bompd's elements.119*> •*•L*i m^s* "- ,«*, -,i&*'#!—— >^ fcS *~ **>**^JmsamsimV / .silIPm Golden Pavilion. Kyoto, 1398. (The original was destroyed by fire in 1950 andrebuilt in 1964.)82 White-robed Kannon with flanking landscapes by Ue Gukei. Hanging scrolls; inkon silk. Late 14th century.in gentle and fluid strokes of graded ink wash, enfold an open and mobilespace which is charged with peculiar psychic energy.While the genre of orchids, bamboo, etc., in ink derived specificallyfrom scholarly Yuan Chan sources, other Japanese works produced underZen influence are of diverse origins and show a marked degree ofeclecticism and syncretism. A good example is the triptych by Ue Gukei{ft. 1361-75), showing a White-robed Kannon flanked by landscapes.Although landscapes were known to form the backdrop of patriarchal andarhat paintings, this is the earliest example of a triptych where landscape isbrought forward in such a dramatic manner. There is an ebullience,perhaps inspired by Korean models, and the abbreviated brush techniquesuggests familiarity with the work of the Southern Song master, Yujian.In the central panel the ingenuous Kannon floats placidly on a rock which121fairly erupts from the water, while to the right and left mountains, treesand rocks rush, uprooted, towards the figure in the central panel. Theartist's interest here is not in stability, solidity or spatial clarity; instead, heshows an illusionistic landscape swirling with gravity-defying motion,while each of the three figures, the Kannon, woodsman and fisherman, isutterly absorbed, oblivious of the commotion.One of the most accomplished monk painters was Ryozen{fl.mid-fourteenth century) who may have come from Kyushu. All his works areof Buddhist subjects and suggest a busy, professional painter of con-siderable attainment, surprising in a monk thought to have held highS3 ecclesiastic rank. One of his best known paintings is of a white heron.Although ostensibly a secular subject, various bird species were usedsymbolically in Zen painting. Here the heron, painted in white upon theink-washed paper, is caught mid-step just as it stoops forward, recoilingits long neck in preparation for the lunge at an unseen fish. In the rightforeground a few reeds and leaves balance the tension created at the left.Ryozen's brushwork in the fine, fluid water lines, the feather and beakstrokes and the more impulsive upward strokes of the reeds is masterly. Inthis simple picture, doubtless based on continental models, Ryozen hasachieved the intensity and purity which are characteristic goals of Zenmeditation.Gardens and landscape paintingBy 1265 Tenryuji temple had been completed on the site, to the northwestof Kyoto, oC an ancient garden which had been a favourite retreat ofS4 courtiers since the tenth century. A remarkable rock arrangement in thepond, suggesting the Chinese isle of immortals, Penglai, may well havebeen constructed by visiting Chinese craftsmen. The seven stones create athree-dimensional Song landscape- a soaring central pinnacle, flanked bysubordinate peaks - and may well be the only extant example of Songrock-garden art.The collection of Chinese works and their reinterpretation, hithertopurely a monastic activity, was now enthusiastically encouraged by theShogun. Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (who died in 1408) bought an ancientestate renowed for its garden and built a splendid study now known as the8i Kmkaku or Golden Pavilion, which he used for reading and theenjoyment ot his art collection. The Heian pond garden, originallydesigned to be viewed as changing perspectives as one progressed in amoving boat, could now be seen in its entirety and from a single vantage-point, his three-storey pavilion. The emphasis in this static view of the12283 White Heron by Ryozen. Ink on paper.Mid- 1 4th century.84 Penglai, the immortals' isle. Rockarrangement in the pond garden ofTenryuji, Kyoto. Completed by 1265.garden art has shifted from the Heian idea of social boating parties to oneof quiet, Zen oriented contemplation.The Shoguns not only collected and displayed Chinese Chan-related artoriginally imported by and for Japanese monasteries, but also made acollection of Chinese Imperial Academy works related to Southern Songcourt painting in an attempt at parity with the Emperor. (In 1382, forexample, Yoshimitsu ordered the building of the Shokokuji monastery,and employed its painter-monks to decorate his own manor as well.) Inthis way Zen-related art works, once the creations of the spontaneousexhilaration of erudite clerics for their mutual appreciation, came toassume a secular andornamental function.In the late fourteenth century, reflecting the secularization among Chanmonks in China and Korea where literary accomplishment replacedspiritual quest, a form of poem painting (shigajiku) evolved; in it,landscape painting complements the group of poems composed during agathering of literary monks. It had been largely the product of monasticliterary associations until a Shogun, probably Yoshimitsu, specificallyordered such a work to be produced as a backdrop screen for his dais. Heasked distinguished monks from Kyoto to compose poems, and commis-sioned Josetsu ifl. early fifteenth century) of his Shokokuji monastery topaint in the 'new style' (of the Southern Song academician and Chan85 painter Liang Kai). The theme of the painting was the Zen riddle oncatching the slippery catfish with the smooth-skinned gourd. Josetsu'scompelling work is largely in monochrome, with a touch of red to accentthe gourd. The Liang Kai manner can be seen in the hooked and angularlines of the drapery. The sweep of the bank is remarkable, from the denseconfluence of streams on the left to the opening up to grand dissolution onthe right (a reversal of the usual narrative flow from right to left). Thegentle curves oi bank, bamboo, catfish, gourd and flowing water areoffset by the bristling intensity of the reeds on the right, and by theextraordinary face of the aspirant. This screen was subsequently re-mounted in its present hanging scroll format.'Studio paintings' which portray an idealized mountain retreat also86.88 appeared as shigajiku. Reading in the Bamboo Studio is by Josetsu's pupilShubun (fl. [423-58), who in turn taught the great Sesshu. Shubunfurther developed the current monastic 'mind-landscape1style. Heretained Southern Song elements which enhance the sense of expandingspace (houses and boats sunk deeply among trees and reeds, mists whichseparate planes, reduced figures walking hunched over), and thus'archaized' the Chinese models then becoming available. Just as Bompotransformed the orchid, so Shubun turned the increasingly solid forms124# m *fc -$£Arlk 3 Xi ± Ak it.it it Mb 5-wffi^k%Jkaui4r."W-.JblSPs;-'.V£k>^£\.-IIS > - A it. J +94 v i-*-Br « ft •> T V it• f ta. p;i *Ir A- * \ R bi * T £H.4. «rF • K t tfr t »•; «; «, i, ^ ^ „» ;». ,K ^-«^*.*„* >fc ^ ift i 1-.* J» v ..-.* fc ic t. -f, > *, 4jj fc s»; 1* >g& t # M- •=£•>JL * r >ijf& % * *- fr-4§ 5*-*6 * T "--' fr •', $ *l # ?AJ 2 A*>i; -|r #/ *?nftfc>-% $.. - -»'' Uf*• .-r•f«t «r* ^• 1-"H £ (*.-H M cd A; l*; riM •»•*# &88 Reading in the Bamboo Studio,complete scroll showing the poeticinscriptions by six monks (Seepi. 86)89 West Lake by Bunsei, inscribed by Zuikei Shuhcand Ichijo Kanera. Hanging scroll; ink on paper.Before 1473.One of the most lyrical extant works of the period is West Lake by 89Bunsei(fl.1460s), a mature statement of the Shubun 'mind-landscape'ideal. Like Tenyu and Shubun before him, Bunsei worked with Yuan andMing works in the Xia Gui style, keeping in mind Southern Song notionsof scale, and arranged elements from diverse sources in a Japanese formaland spatial relationship. As good Chinese works were scarce and spannedsome 250 years, and as the Shogun often specified that Chinese stylesshould be followed, it became common practice among Muromachipainters to produce highly eclectic works incorporating not only vignettesfrom various Chinese sources, but also the structural changes made atdifferent periods. It is also noteworthy that while most of the Chinesesources were in the intimate format of fan paintings, album leaves orhorizontal handscrolls (favoured in Southern Song and Yuan), works ofthe time were mostly narrow, vertical hanging scrolls (fashionable incontemporary Ming) or large-scale sliding door paintings (fusuma-e) andscreens (bydbu). In Bunsei's working of vignettes from different Chinesecompositions into a coherent vertical format, we see Japanese genius atwork. In the quiet, contemplative space of the mind-landscape we see thescholarly equivalent of the 'emotive cloud' found in Heian Yamato-epainting. Not so passionate, the mood is nature-oriented and moreprofound, the space flowing in a generous S-curve to the middle left andthen up to the right. Elements from Xia Gui landscape prototypes are laidout along a consistent groundplane. Each group of motifs is consistentwithin itself, but the diminution of the bridge section in the foreground inrelation to the rock and twin pines draws the entire scene together andcreates a hush which reverberates from vignette to vignette.The Shogun also collected works associated with the scholar-amateurtradition later called the Southern School in China. Unlike the 'Northern'academic landscapes, which feature jagged rocks painted in slanted 'axe'strokes, the Southern 'literati' landscapes derive from a tradition ofrounded hills and expansive lake vistas, where the texturing was donelargely with a more upright brush in ropey 'hemp-fibre' strokes. InMuromachi collections this Southern style is represented by worksassociated with the Chan monk Muqi (who died between 1269 and 1274),including Buddhist figures, animals, flowers and landscapes. MostJapanese landscapists worked in the Northern academy style, but one ofthe Shogun's curators, Soami (who died in 1525), was able to produceworks in the Southern style, such as the breathtaking Eight Views of theXiao and Xiang on the sliding door panels of the Daisenin sub-temple ofthe Daitokuji monastery. These incorporate major features of the Chinese-literati traditions related to the Song masters Juran and Mi Youren. (The12990 Eight Views ofthe Xiao and Xiang by Soami. Detail ofone of 23 sliding doorpanels in Muqi style. Early 16th century.90Ami family had for generations acted as curators, conservators, appraisersand connoisseurs for the Ashikaga, and Soami had grown up in thesinophile milieu of Yoshimasa's court, acquiring intimate knowledge ofChinese painting styles from direct study.) This large work, spanningover twenty panels, demonstrates Soami's understanding of the Chineseliterati mode, and shows the greater suitability of the Southern mode forJapanese expression. None the less, shogunal preference for academicstyles precluded the development in Japan of a Southern style. Thisdevelopment had to wait till the Tokugawa period when independentpainters took it up on their own.In the detail shown, originally on one of the western sliding doors butnow remounted in hanging scroll format, Soami achievesa fine synthesisof Chinese Southern imagery and technique with Japanese setting and13091 Portrait ofZen master Ikkyu Sojun by Bokusai. Hanging scroll; ink, colours onpaper. Late 14th century.expression. Low-lying, rolling hills swathed in rising autumnal mistsyield to marshy grasslands where boats are moored and geese descend information. There is a striking resemblance to the half dormant, halfwaking mood of the Early spring landscape among the Phoenix Hall murals 57(p. 79). The houses tucked beneath the mountain are wrapped in quiet;only the occasional wild goose breaks the silence of the chilly air. Twoboats are moored among the reeds in the middleground and twofishermen by the lowest bank are all but lost in the vast, evening calm.Like an emotive cloud, the expanding mist is free-form, rising, allenveloping. Soami's composition is mid-way between the void-centredworks of the Shubun School, and the mass-centred works of the ScsshuSchool to follow. His mastery of the Southern idiom with soft, plianttexture strokes, wet, inky one-line tree trunks, and the consummate useof inkwash in the evanescent mists make this - the earliest example ofnanga or Southern-style landscape created in Japan - one of the master-pieces ofJapanese ink painting.Portraiture, meanwhile, continued to be vigorously realistic. The greatZen master, Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481), was of royal birth and beganBuddhist studies as a boy. He attained advanced spiritual learning, andrefused the abbacy of the Daitokuji because of its administrativecorruption. In his portrait by Bokusai, painted during his lifetime, he is 91depicted with economy of line and great sensitivity. Bokusai concentrates131on the worn, thoughtful face and, in particular, on suggesting theMaster's penetrating mind.The intense cultural activities of Kyoto were not lost on provincialrulers, daimyo, and the later fifteenth century saw the growth of regionalpatronage and art collections. The greatest master of Japanese inklandscape, Sesshu Toyo (1420- 1506) came from this regional tradition.Having studied Zen painting at the Shokokuji in Kyoto under Shubun, hefounded the Unkoku-an studio at the south-western tip ofJapan's mainisland, close to the Chinese trade route. From 1467 to 1469, heaccompanied a trade mission to China, where he plunged into feverishactivity, painting a mural in Peking, sketching the countryside anddirectly experiencing Ming academic painting. This exposure to themassiveness, solidity and relative self-sufficiency of Chinese painting insitu profoundly altered Sesshu's own vision. On his return to Japan, hereplaced the spatial ambiguity and inconsistencies of scale which hadcharacterized the poetic Shubun style with a substantive, rational order. Ina very late work, however, paying tribute to his Japanese teacher,92 he nostalgically returned to traditional Shubun motifs. But the focus ofthe work has moved from empty space to solid masses. The dominantfeature is the central mountain. The viewer's response is no longer to driftin reverie but to follow the measured steps of the travellers. They wendtheir way from the stone path, lower left, around the foreground boulder,past pavilions tucked beneath the road, to the rocky promontory andpavilion on the left where they will gaze past the jutting peaks on to thelake. However, the twin pines which used to enfold Shubun's space nowobliterate the lake expanse with their central position and assertive,upward surge. By the time of this work Sesshu had already startled theworld with his virile granite forms (such as the famous Autumn and Winterlandscapes) in his personal version of the Xia Gui style, the explosiverenditions of the splattered ink landscape works after Yujian (ft. thirteenthcentury), and the introduction of his interpretation of the Yuan masterGao Kegong. But here he recalls the poetic legacy of his Japanese teachers,even though his emphasis on physical reality has indelibly marked theage.Sesshu's legacy flourished in various styles. His favourite pupil at theUnkoku-an was Soen (ft. 1489- 1500), who received the master's famoushaboku (splattered ink) landscape as certificate of his proficiency in the93 style. In Soen's own haboku landscape the handling of brushwork and inkis far closer to Sesshu than to Shubun or the original Southern Songmaster Yujian. More poetic than Sesshu's works, the organization ofspace is nevertheless conditioned by mass and motion. The mist-92 Landscape by Scsshu Toyo,inscribed by Ryoan Keigo in 1507Hanging scroll; ink and lightcolours on paper. 15th century.•ftT93 Haboku landscape by Soen. Ink onpaper. Late 15th or early [6th century94 Evening Snow from Eight Views ofthe Xiao and Xiang by Toshun. One of eighthanging scrolls; ink on paper. Early 16th century.engirdled central range twists into the picture plane in an S-curve, whilean arrow-straight boat heads for the centre from the left, and a firm plankbridge brings in (potential) motion from the right. All forces converge atthe central foreground in a dynamic thrust ofjet black strokes. This is indirect opposition to the dispersing nature of Shubun School works.Another follower of Sesshu, Toshun(fi. 1506-42), echoes the master'ssense of turbulence in a splattered ink version of Yujian's views o{ the94 Xiao and Xiang. Instead of the Southern Song master's inwardness andquiescence, Toshun's work is closer to Sesshu's in both brush techniqueand expression. The snow mountain on the left is reserved in white, whilea waterfall flows from a crevice over snow-covered rocks. A wintry galeis blowing snow towards the mountain across a darkening sky. This is noscene of poetic wandering; mass and motion rule.With the waning of Ashikaga fortunes and restlessness ot regionalrulers, art works of the later fifteenth century imbue the sense of motionwith a foreboding of violence, and increasingly reflect a martial mien.Sesson Shukei (c. 1504-89) was active largely in northeastern Japan; his95 famous Hawk on Pine perfectly captures the aggressive mood of the time.Done in rapid ink strokes, the work centres on the bird of prey; bristling95 Hawk on Pine by Sesson Shukei. One ot\\ pair of hanging scrolls; ink on paper.Mid- 1 6th century.tension charges the entire conception, down to the last pine needle. In ay6 late work. Landscape in Wind. Sesson depicts a solid world in turmoil. Hismature style is brilliant in its total fusion of modelling strokes (which haderstwhile merely adhered) to the forms. His remarkable integration ofdescription with expression reveals a new, idiosyncratic vocabulary ofvolatile forms marked by rocks resembling solid projectiles which piercethe space with new violence. Here a startling contrast of stillness andmotion, perhaps of peace and war, is evoked by the juxtaposition of themoonlit islet jutting from tranquil waters on the left, with the mightycentral rocks whose energy charges at gale force, bending the trees andgrasses and virtually dissolving the mass in the process. The fishermanseems incongruous, attempting his daily chore in all the commotion.97 The Dry Landscape garden in Ryoanji. Kyoto, though by contrast amonument to stillness, nevertheless sums up all the artistic tensions of theMuromachi age. This Zen garden, framed by a wall and meant to beviewed from the veranda of the adjoining building, creates a seascapeusing only rocks (for mountains) and white pebbles (sea). Seventeen rocksare arranged in five groups amidst the raked (wavy) pebbles to produce96 Landscape in Wind by Shukei. Hanging scroll; ink on paper. Late 16th century.^Hi 3indistance: it is a brilliant use of built-in perspective to make the modestspace appear far larger. To change the position of a single rock woulddissipate the psychological energy so generated. This supreme statementof reality/illusion has been the despair of successive generations of gardenmasters vainly trying to repeat the effect in other settings, and hasremained a major challenge for scholars of the history of Japanesegardens.137CHAFTLR SIXAzuchi-Momoyama and Edo (1576-1867)Castle muralsIn 1576, Oda Nobunaga seized control ofJapan, and made Azuchi into astronghold centred on a walled castle, the whole completed in 1579. (Inthese times, many ambitious men built fortified castles on enormousstone ramparts, their stone walls pierced by small windows and topped bymassive timbers.) Interior walls of the Azuchi castle were decorated bymembers of the prolific studio led by Kano Eitoku (1543-90). Thecompletion of the Azuchi castle marks the start of the Azuchi-Momo-yama period, named after the castle-towns of the contending warlords.The Kano painters, who had never been monks, had been in the serviceof the Shogun for several generations, and by the Edo period werecreating the official style for the Tokugawa shogunate. Although most ofthe great castles have now long been destroyed, Kano Eitoku's work canstill be seen in monasteries such as the Jukoin sub-temple of Daitokuji in98 Kyoto. Works like Pine and Crane display the young artist's virtuosity inbrushwork, in the handling of form; they also demonstrate the ebullienceand martial vigour characteristic of the age. Eitoku, working here in theSouthern style of Muqi (once so perfectly japanized by Soami) hastransformed the distant subject's soft parallel modelling strokes and gentlemoss dots into bristling, angular configurations of rocky shores andmassive craggy pines that dominate the space. The crackling tension isnearly audible. His forms fill the large sliding doors and extend implicitlybeyond them.99 The small windows of castles such as Himeji encouraged screenpainting on gold surfaces to help reflect light into the dark rooms: entirewalls and ceilings were ornately decorated in this way. Kano mastersspent much tune creating imposing, heroic designs in impasto, such as the100 magnificent Great Pine murals. These are by the hand, or school, of KanoTanyu (1602-74). Room after room, hall after hall, was decorated withpaintings of Chinese curly-maned lions. Zen dragons and tigers, the tourseasons, moored boats and curved bridges, gardens and peonies, allexecuted in encrusted pigments and lavishly finished in gold toil. Tous98 Pine and Crane by Kano Eitoku. Sliding door panels; ink on paper. 1 566.convince the masses that he was there to stay, Hideyoshi, the newwarlord, exploited every means of self-aggrandizement: once, for ex-ample, he gave a mass tea party, lasting for several days, to no less thanfive thousand guests.The art of mural decoration is rooted in the traditions of Japanesepainting. Even if one ignores the cave paintings of the Tumulus period,professional painting on a large scale had begun as early as the eighthcentury, with the decoration of Horyuji. Heian domestic architectureincluded many large paintings on screens which functioned as movablewalls and which became a firmly established interior feature with theinvention of the sliding door (fusuma). Almost nothing of these earlyworks remains apart from a few landscape screens and, if it had not beenfor the meticulous detail of interior scenes depicted in narrative handscrolls surviving -from each century, the modern viewer could supposethat mural painting was a late phenomenon in Japan.The usual Momoyama wall coverings were sumptuous paintings offlowers, landscapes or figures upon gold foil walls or sliding doors. InWhite Peonies by Kano Sanraku (1559- 163 5), even the petals and leavesshow the characteristic glitter, ostentation and extroversion of the age.10113999 Himeji castle with stone ramparts, Hyogo Prefecture. Late 1 6th century,ioo Great Puie murals, Nijo castle, Kyoto. School of Kano Tanyii. 1624-26.ioi White Peonies by Kano Sanraku. Detail of sliding door panels; colours andimpasto on gold foil. Early 17th century.One of the most remarkable painters of the Edo period was KanoTanyu (1602-74), grandson of Eitoku. He worked in both Edo andKyoto and produced paintings for the imperial palace and for theShogun's castle in Nagoya. The green and gold pines in Nijo castle inKyoto are generally thought to be his work. In 1636 he painted Legends ofthe Toshogu Shrine at Nikko, handling the delicate Tosa hand scroll stylewith ease. Tanyu helped reinvigorate the court-favoured Tosa traditionwhich was then on the point of dissolution from a half millennium'srecycling of the same motifs.Tanyu's insatiable interest in all manners of painting, whether Chineseor Japanese, resulted in the first collection of art-historical records ofworks he had seen. Scroll after scroll contains concise notes and reducedsketches (shukuzit) which not only reproduce general outlines but alsoaccurately reflect the original brushwork. This tradition of recordingworks was continued by Tanyu's followers and 'Kano shukuzu' arc aninvaluable resource for art historians today.In the mural Sight Fishing with Cormorants Tanyu casts a keen andsympathetic eye over his contemporary world. It is night and the scene is102141?^2$wiAlit by torches from boats forming a semicircle in the bay. A richmerchant, top left, sits enjoying the lively scene of rippling water, divingcormorants and busy fishermen, while an elder regales him with stories.The interest in this scene is in the diverse poses of this activity; thesurrounding rocks and reeds are sketched economically, in gentle hues, incontrast to Tanyu's usually more formal style.Tanyu's visual experience was among the broadest of his time, as hehad access to imperial and shogunal collections of ancient and contempor-ary works, both Chinese and Japanese. As their study-sketches of worksincluded those by Chinese masters of the Southern literati School, he andhis followers could have produced works in this idiom, had they wished,but the orthodox shogunal style had long been set either in the formaltour-square Ma-Xia idiom or in the nearly brushless, abbreviated Yujianstyle m ink wash. Southern Painting in the manner of the Chinese idealistpainters began elsewhere.A lively native movement had been developing among the aristocracyand upper merchant class (machishu) during the fifteenth and sixteenthH2102 Night Fishing with Cormorants by Kano Tanyu. Six-fold screen. Mid-I7thcentury.centuries. Even the town painters, the anonymous screen decorators ofthe late Muromachi period, were producing great numbers of expandedlandscapes based on Yamato-e painting. The subjects were the eternalJapanese themes: famous places with poetic associations, the four seasons,pines, reeds and boats. The sun and moon feature in some of the mostremarkable works of all. In a work of the Tosa School, for example, thefour seasons are worked into a unified screen format with the winter sceneappearing third in the sequence. On the right, a full, noon sun, goldenover tall, round mountains bright with spring blooms, is the standardopening. The second group of mountains is shown in summer; at theirfeet the waves are turbulent. In the third section, the snow-covered foldsof hills are contoured to balance the misty autumnal mountains furtherleft. This layering of mountains in a frontal manner, an old Yamato-e10314355 device, can also be seen in the thirteenth-century Amida Descending over theMountains (Yamagoshi Amida). Eighteenth-century Japanese theoristscalled this Japan's own blue-green landscape style. It had always survivedin both monastic andsecular painting, in spite of all the periods of Chinesedominance.Evocative muralsTawaraya Sotatsu (who died in ?i643), the greatest master of evocativescreen-painting, was bred in this delicate, archaizing tradition. Sotatsuproduced creative and original variations on the centuries-old themes. HisMatsushima screens in the Freer Gallery, Washington DC, arc one of hismost striking works. This compelling image of a turbulent sea crashingonto small, pine-covered islets may be a view of Ise, the home ofJapan'simperial shrine. However, Sotatsu's rendition is less a rearrangement otwell-worn forms than a completely new perception of their latentpossibilities.The theme of waves, rocks and pines had long been treated expertly onscreens. The favourite Muromachi arrangement is to align the pine-topped rocks along the foreground, leaving the upper two thirds for the10S, 109 waves, interspersed by two or more protruding rocks. Sotatsu's arrange-ment, three rocky isles and three sandy shoals across two screens,dramatically exploits these Heian motifs. Here, however, each element isseen from a different perspective. The largest rocky cliff, which leads infrom the right, is seen from an elevated vantage point, while the middleand third cliffs, in diminution, are shown from increasingly lowerperspectives while the middle one is seen frontally. The left-hand screenshows three sandbanks, the largest one on a flat, gold ground, extendinginto the right-hand screen, where it changes into a cloud. On the left-handscreen it is in fact shown from directly overhead and its two giant pinesare laterally spread out to give a better view. Above and below, twoshrub-covered sandy islands are depicted in an unprecedented mixture otink, gold and silver paste. These islands too, seen from overhead, appearat this same time like floating clouds. (The only genuine cloud in the workextends from the top of the right-hand screen.) Once drawn into thepicture, the viewer is taken on a somersault flight proceeding trom theright. First he dives into the waves but is then hurled skyward over thebeaches. The viewer becomes the playful plover (namichidori) conspicu-ously absent but implied. The waves are rendered throughout from thesame 45-degree elevation; their whirlpools and rushing crests are in starkcontrast to the stillness of the rocks and trees.44103 Landscape with Sun and Moon, anonymous, Tosa school. Right-hand screen(detail) of double six-fold screen; ink, colours and gold on paper. Mid-i6thcentury.Inkwash muralsJapanese artists had long perfected the use of inkwash to renderatmospheric mist in fine gradations, and the use of long, curving linesover a large area. The Azuchi-Momoyama period saw the final triumphover this latest of Chinese artistic imports in the thorough japanization ofink monochrome painting. Artists now covered entire palace andmonastery walls with continuous murals, as if wrapping the halls in gianthand scrolls. It was a common practice for rooms to be surrounded by theEight Views of Xiao and Xiang, by giant trees or by stormy seas.Pine and Plum by Moonlight is a superb example of the late style of KaihoYusho (i 533-161-5), an outstanding artist of the age. Twin curvingstreams emerge from the thick mists, which function as emotive cloudscreating an evocative, expansive space. Pine and prunus trees flank themoonlit scene; half hidden by mist and branches, some dandelions andspring grasses can just be seen. In spite of the economy of line and theabbreviated rendering of forms, unctuous brush work gives the scene a104,105145104, I0 5 Pine an& Plum by Moonlight by Kaiho Yusho. Pair of six-panel screens; inkand light colour on paper. Late 16th century.striking, almost tactile reality. Streams in Moonlight is not only an eclecticsynthesis of Yamato-e and Rimpa styles (see below) but an originalmasterpiece.Perhaps the most extraordinary transformation of the ink monochrome106,107 idiom is the double six-fold screen Pine Forest by Hasegawa Tohaku(1 539-1610). most of whose other surviving works are of the colours-on-gold genre of the Kano school. Having made extensive studies of the styleof the Song master, Muqi, and particularly of his paintings of monkeysand cranes now in the Daitokuji, Tohaku achieves in his Pine screen asuperb synthesis of Chinese techniques and Japanese motifs. Four groupsm-.iof beach pines, hamamatsu, are placed across the twelve panels. Nearlyeighty-five per cent of the painting surface is left blank and yet the entirescreen is suffused with a sense of the mists and quietness of an autumndawn. Whereas Yamato-e painters usually showed the pines in twisting,curving forms, Tohaku shows them tall and gaunt, using a straw brushon thin, coarse paper, varying the intensity of his ink from faint to dark inswift, sure strokes. In the distance, a snowy peak adds to the feeling ofgrandeur and calm. This scene does not reflect the interests and activitiesof warlords but the Way of Tea, the new contemplative fashion which isin such striking contrast to the gaudy splendour of the feudal court.106, 107 Pine Forest by Hasegawa Tohaku. Pair of six-panel screens; ink on paper.Late 1 6th centurv.io8, 109 Matsushima (Pine Island) by Tawaraya Sotatsu. Double six-panel screen;ink and colours on gold paper. Early 17th century.The Way of TeaPerhaps to counter his tendency to extravagance, Hideyoshi engaged ashis mentor the most distinguished tea-master of the wealthy Sakaimerchant class, Sen no Rikyu (1 521-91). Rikyu's spartan views on theWay of Tea have since had a profound influence on both 'tea architecture'and on Japanese aesthetics as a whole.Drinking tea in quiet surroundings had been instituted by the fifteenth-century tea-master Shuko in the time of the aesthete Shogun Yoshimasa.He invented the ceremony of tea as an art form to be enjoyed in a smallroom specially designed for it, containing selected 'tea' paintings,calligraphy scrolls or Chinese celadons. Sen no Rikyu eschewed the jade-like perfection of celadons and favoured rough-textured and irregularpeasant ware. He promoted spiritual ideals of 'harmony, respect, purityand tranquillity' and in 1582 built his tea room, the Tai-an, in a hut in hisnative Yamazaki. This small cedar structure is simple and rustic, based onasymmetric and irregular forms, with rough-textured earthen walls,unpolished, exposed beams, a cedar-board covered ceiling ot two levelsand papered windows of different shapes set at different heights above theseated guests' heads. The guest was invited to leave his worldly concernsoutside with his sword, to crawl into the teahouse by the waist-highwriggling-in-opening (nigiri guchi), and to enter the warm, dark and148^ -vÂintimate atmosphere. In this timeless world, friends commune, collected,at ease and in close proximity where the tea master's every move becomesone's own. In a recessed alcove, the host might choose to focus attentionon a specially treasured art work or on an allusive floral arrangementwhich may induce 'spiritual one-pointedness'. To this day tea menmaintain that it is a unique aesthetic experience which integrates the spiritof Zen, the beauty of art and of mundane things.For his tea bowls, Rikyu commissioned the tile maker Chqjiro (1516-92) to produce raku ware. His rejection of Song celadons in favour ofsimple peasant ware produced the aesthetic which Okakura Tenshin hastermed 'Japan's worship of the imperfect'. The irregular glaze, shape anddecoration of raku was intended to echo the asymmetry of the teahouse asa whole; it was also felt that dazzling decoration on pottery would breakthe contemplative mood. Chqjiro's celebrated tea bowl Katsujishi istypical. It has a straight edge but an irregular mouth and foot, tapersslightly at the sides and rises upwards from the baseon lacquered trays. Quantity is not a concern.\2Instead, Japanese consciousness works through an aesthetic appreciationof the entire physical and psychological context of the meal. This includesseasonal as well as social considerations, but above all it satisfies thediner's senses. The timing of the dishes, and their appearance in bowls ofvaried shape, decoration and materials, are beautifully harmonized. Thehungry Chinese would perhaps be astonished to realize that the feeling ofsatisfaction arises not from gorging oneself, but from savouring thecarefully timed harmony of the food and its service (even down to matterslike the waitresses' walk and gesture). Appreciation of such subtleties isessential to the enjoyment ofJapanese culture in general, and of its arts inparticular.In the same way, the key to understanding the relationship of theJapanese artist or craftsman to his work lies in one word: union. Whetherit be the chopstick-rest one finds in a fish restaurant, or a signed painting,one sees a particularly developed artistic sensibility at work. Painters ofold caught exactly this quality of creative absorption in their depictions ofcarpenters, tatami floor-mat and bamboo-blind makers and mounters ofpaintings. In literature, the perfection of renga or linked verse is believedto come only through repeated group practice among the poets. Morethan in any other culture, Japanese poets incorporate each other's essence;potters incorporate the essence of the potting process (including fingcr-^Minka, farm-house, of theTsubokawa family. Late17th century.5 Horned sake cask. Blacklacquer. H. 57 cm. 19thcentury.prints and kiln accidents); woodworkers or print-makers incorporatewoodgrain and chisel marks as an integral and essential part of the finishedwork.The artist and his materials, clay, wood or ink-brush and paper,together create the work. This factor is of paramount importance.Considerations basic to other cultures, such as personal uniqueness, theobliteration of all traces of the creative process (such as rough edges,fingerprints or chisel marks), as well as preconceived margins or thedistinction of planes, are often ofno importance. A six-sided Japanese boxmay be decorated in one continuous design which surrounds the form andunifies the planes. The common - and curious - practice in other culturesof decorating ceramic vessels in arbitrary horizontal strata is joyfullyabsent from Japanese ceramics, where decoration and form are aspects of asingle whole.When patrons demanded imported qualities unpalatable to Japanesetaste (such as unequivocal statement, regularity, repetition, hard or shinysurfaces, equilateral symmetry, monumentality, rigid spaces in roads orrooms - in short, any qualities which stress self-sufficiency), the artist'sresponse was usually to adjust and transform in accordance with his ownfeeling and personal taste. Philosophy, interest in building up in depth(whether in architectural space or dense brushstrokes on a paintingsurface), concepts of permanence and immutability are to a large extentalien. But these qualities are often precisely those which generated theChinese forms which later entered Japan, and it is with this basicincompatibility in mind that we must watch Japan's genius unfold,untiringly transforming the continental model to suit its own expression.The poet Shinkei (1406-75) describes the way to artistic maturity thus(the italics are mine):Unless a verse is by one whose very being has been transfixedby the truth o{ the impermanence and change of this world,so that he is never forgetful of it in any circumstance,it cannot truly hold deep feeling.UCHAPTER TWOPrehistoric Period (11th mil. Bc-6th c. ad)Japanese archaeology is the oldest and most systematic in East Asia. At itsofficial centenary in 1977, 100,000 sites had been documented, yielding afascinating array of artefacts ranging from Paleolithic tool-kits toMesolithic and Neolithic ceramics. Many of these are so distinct in stylefrom those of Japan's immediate continental neighbours as to suggestpossible migrations from as far west as northern Europe.Its geographical situation, at the eastern extreme of the Asian continen-tal land mass, may have made prehistoric Japan the terminal point fornumerous cultural migrations by peoples from Europe, Central Asia andthe Altaic Mountain range, and Siberia. Seafaring peoples from SouthChina, Southeast Asia and the Polynesian isles have also left their culturalimprint on Japanese architecture, regional dances and vowel structure.From earliest times, the blend of differing cultural styles is evident. Theceramic strata unearthed by archaeology reveal legacies from cultureswidely differing in social structure, religious ceremonies and cuisine.Archaeologists divide the Japanese Paleolithic Age into two periods,Early (50,000-30,000 bc) and Late (30,000-11,000 bc). The divisioncomes with technological evolution from crude and simple scrapers andcutting tools to more sophisticated blades, knives and small tools forengraving, drilling, scraping and piercing.Jomon culture (11 ,000-300 bc)Japanese archaeologists date the following, or Mesolithic, period (charac-terized by a hunting, fishing and gathering way of life) from 11,000-300bc. It is also called by the blanket name Jomon ('cord-impressed'), afterthe distinctive surface decoration of its pottery. (However, the very firstpottery of all (11,000-c. 7500) is startlingly different from what followed,and more closely resembles the work of Neolithic societies elsewhere 111the world. These early vessels were quickly and easily made, by kneadingand punching in the hand, and utilized the natural qualities of clay. Theyhad smooth sides and generous interiors, enabling easy storage andretrieval, as befits utilitarian vessels used for food; they were sparinglydecorated. Some scholars term this ware 'incipient-' or 'proto-' Jomon,suggesting a continuity and internal development between it and Jomonwares. But the new ware, 'Archaic' or 'Earliest' Jomon, suggestsmarkedly different attitudes to ceramic form and also to everyday eatingand living. It seems doubtful that both styles could have come from asingle developing culture; It would be more appropriate therefore to callthis earliest phase pre-Jomon.)Archaic or Earliest Jomon ware first appeared around 7500 bc.Examples have been found along the whole main archipelago fromHokkaido to Okinawa, and on outlying islands such as Tsushima, Sado,Oki and the Izu isles. It is highly textured, incised or cord-impressed, andhas the qualities of low-relief sculpture. It is usually built up from piled orcoiled clay rings, hand-joined inside and outside, and the outer surface isentirely covered with texture decoration, painstakingly applied. Thetypical pot is conical in form with a sharply pointed bottom, a flaring,often quatrifoil rim and a constricted and inaccessible interior. This formis far more difficult and time-consuming to make than are pots with openinteriors such as the pre-Jomon ware. Even more time-consuming is theapplication of the cord marks (by rolling a cord-covered stick smartlyalong the still damp, fragile surface of the clay cone), even if the pot wereupturned with the point on top. For ordinary household storage orcooking, such elaborate effort far exceeds necessity and one must ask:what was the real function of these early vessels which were un-pot-like,hard to make, unlidded and impractical?MiddleJomon sees even more extraordinary developments. The base isflattened, the rim rises majestically to a height equalling the vessel body,and the lip is often topped with rippling scallops. The entire surface isalive with curvilinear, high-raised decoration with writhing coils formingspirals, S-shapes and meanders; the soaring, flame-like loops areto allow a clear view101 10 Katsujishi, raku waretea-bowl by TanakaChqjiro. Black slip glaze.H. 8.8, diam. 10.9 cm. 16thcentury.1 1 i Myokian, tea house by Sen no Rikyu, 1582. Embedded stones lead to theentrance and the windows are framed by bamboo and wistaria.1 12 Tai-an tea room of Myokian tea house. (Notice recessed tokonoma alcove andtwo-level, cedar-board ceiling.)113114of the foot-rim. The entire bowl is glazed in a dull matt black slip o{irregular density, permitting the body's buff colour to lighten the tone incertain areas and to highlight its rough, pitted quality.Although the smallncss of Rikyu's Tai-an tea room did not have lastinginfluence, the sukiya style of architecture based on its aesthetic developedinto a major tradition which eventually extended to domestic architec-ture, with or without a teahouse. Like onna-c painting, onnade calligraphyand waka poetry, the teahouse was a personal art form, catering to theintense Japanese need for the preservation of the private self as distinctfrom the public face. Both demand expression in art forms as in life styles.(Hideyoshi himself reflects the extremes. At one moment he wouldindulge in public displays of wealth and in the next he would crawlhumbly into the darkness and intimacy of Rikyu's teahouse.)The contrast between public and private architecture is nowhere betterseen than in the ostentatious vulgarity of the shogunal Nikko Toshogu onthe one hand and the pure taste of the detached imperial villa Katsura onthe other. Both date from the early seventeenth century. The firstISOii3 Yomei-mon (Sunlight Gate), Nikko Toshogu in Nikko. Early 17th century.114 Katsura, villa and garden of Prince Hachijo Toshihito. 1642.*mw0mmm'''4^€'" -f • ,' ^Z^^^^M•-:.L*tf\*t.11lllllllllllll1ii. '—- -~^» &•)*}* fc2S^J?*-jS;»>Tokugawa Shogun ordered a family shrine-mausoleum to be constructedin mountainous Nikko. Every surface of this monumental project islavishly decorated in painted relief or in lacquer and gold work. Bycontrast, the aristocracy having rarely felt the need for self-assertion,Prince Hachijo Toshihito and his son Noritada created in the Katsuraimperial villa an idealized private world: cedar-roofed buildings, pondsand a garden designed to be walked in and enjoyed from differentvantage-points at different seasons. Like the Tai-an, structural elementsare exposed but never lacquered, echoing the effect of rusticity andairiness which harmonizes the interior and exterior space. Critics havesuggested that the continual stressing of rusticity and creative innovation(sakui) of tea men sometimes itself borders on artifice. But in works suchas this villa, it is clear that even when such effort is discernible it is directedaway from showy confrontation and towards harmonious union.External influences and the artsThe Onin wars (1467-77) ended Ashikaga power and the subsequentdecades of civil strife saw the emergence of several dictator-warlords.During the same period, a new merchant class arose whose fortunes lay inbrewing and money lending in Kyoto. This rising upper merchant class(machishu) and the increasingly impoverished aristocracy (kuge) shared thesame political interests. The crude and often violent methods of theprovincial military upstarts, for example, could hardly fail to provokeresistance among those who had hitherto enjoyed luxury and freedom.The aristocracy often depended on the machishu to bail them out offinancial difficulties and the latter, through frequent contacts with thecourt, soon developed similar cultural preferences.Nobunaga, who destroyed the Muromachi bakufu in 1573 and burntdown northern Kyoto as a reprisal for alleged insubordination, wasassassinated in 1582 and his successor, Hideyoshi, took over control offoreign trade which had spawned Japanese mercantile colonies in Manila,Siam, and other ports of Southeast Asia. Hideyoshi exacted punishinglevies to finance his disastrous Korean compaigns of 1592 and 1597. Hedied in 1598 and his remaining forces were vanquished by TokugawaIeyasu who instituted a central government in Edo (Tokyo). Ieyasueventually gained complete control and subjected all potential rivals tosevere regulations. The most effective of these was a system of hostagesand attendance at the Shogun's court in Edo, where the families ot all thedaimyd (provincial feudal lords) had to live, while the daimyd themselvesspent alternate years in Edo and their own domains. In time the daimydIS2began to vie with each other for bigger and more splendid mansions inEdo; this rivalry kept their economic strength in check and stimulated adiverse and lively phase of artistic production in the new capital.Contact with Europeans also affected Japanese culture at this time. By1580 there were over 150,000 Christians in Japan and double that numberfifty years later. European traders were quick to follow the Christianmissionaries. Portuguese traders came to western Kyushu by 1543 andwere followed in 1593 by Spanish Franciscans. Protestant Dutch set uptheir trading post in Hirado in 1690 and were joined by the English in161 3. The Protestants convinced Ieyasu that foreign trade did not dependon missionaries, and that allegiance to God above all posed a potentialthreat. By 161 7 the Christian faith was so strongly rooted that Ieyasubanned it on penalty of death. Tokugawa Iemitsu expelled the Spanishand the Portuguese and in 1636 decreed that no Japanese was to leave thecountry and no 'foreigners', not even the thousands ofJapanese colonialsthen living abroad, were ever to set foot on Japanese soil. This left Japan'sforeign trade to Chinese and Dutch ships, which were allowed to dock atNagasaki and its small island of Dejima respectively. Despite thisisolationist policy, foreign trade with China, Korea and Southeast Asiaflourished. Korean trade was conducted by the So clan, lords ofTsushima. The Chinese trade remained in the hands of Ming loyalistssailing from resistance centres in Fujian, and until the 1680s, decades afterthe Manchu conquest of China, the Tokugawa court held debates on theloyalists' request for military aid in arms and personnel.However, once passion for western knowledge, or 'Dutch learning',had been fired it could not be extinguished. In spite ofJapan's politicallyisolationist stand, European trade continued under Dutch auspices.Astronomy, medicine, the natural sciences and foreign languages wereeagerly studied. In the arts, perspective drawing and life sketches of floraand fauna became permanently established. Oil painting, which beganwith the copying of Christian icons, was also practised. But the mostattractive novelty for the Japanese painter was the depiction of 'SouthernBarbarians' (Namban). The Europeans, with their curious, waistcd 115garments and plumed head gear, their sharply chiselled features and curlyhair, were portrayed with a keen eye for detail. Their enormous galleonswere of special 'interest. European textile patterns, fabrics and colourschemes found their way into Japan; the bi-cultural ceramics of FurutaOribe and his followers are particularly striking examples of artisticassimilation.During Hideyoshi's Korean campaigns, the Way of Tea was fashion-able and daimyo in western Japan quickly noticed the artless simplicity ofi>3*X•(NV^«*wISrclass(machishu) in major manufacturing and commercial centres such as Sakai,Kyoto and Hakata. Fresh ceramic styles such as Shino, Oribe and YellowSeto vied with the original Kamakura Seto wares, and kilns graduallyshifted from Seto in Owan to Mino further west. The warm, cream-white-bodied Shino ware, usually covered with a rich feldspathic glaze,often with simple under-glaze designs in iron slip, is typical of theMomoyama period. Usually the rosy tone of the body glows frombeneath the glaze. This heavily potted, thickly glazed ware is still highlyregarded for the simplicity of its decoration and its sense of vulnerabilityand imperfection. The water-jar Kogatt (Ancient Shore) is hand-crafted ingenerous proportions and decorated to reflect the rural interests of nativepotters: three reeds and criss-cross grasses are swiftly but confidently154brushed on, and the bottom of the foot-rim is tooled with a sharp knife. Itis prized for the cracks and glaze imperfections which enhance the feelingof distant antiquity and a sense of yearning. In another, later type of Shinoware, a grey-toned (nezumi) vessel was first covered with a high iron slip, 1 16parts of which were scraped off to reveal the white body. Then the richShino glaze was applied and the pot was fired in a reduction kiln whichturned the underlying iron to a dark mouse-grey.Bizen ware is rich, reddish-brown and unglazed. After the scratchingand gouging, the potter allowed natural ash to drift over parts of theinverted 'old hag's mouth' and the cylindrical body. Asymmetrical car-handle loops were added, and the indentation caused when removing thefreshly potted vase from its wheel base was left uncorrected. Thesedetails, partly natural and partly devised for the much admired effect ofcreative ingenuity (sakui), were greatly prized by tea men.Iga ware is thickly glazed with deep cracks and a rough texture. TheMomoyama water-jar Yubure bukuro (Broken Pouch) is typical. The 1 18coarse clay contained quartz particles which made it difficult to handle onthe wheel, so Iga wares were often hand-coiled. When it was fired, the1 16Small dish in nezumi Shino glazeMomoyama, i6th-i7th century.117 (below left) Kogan (Ancient Shore) water-jar in Shino ware. Momoyama, 16th—17thcentury.118 (below right) Iga ware, Yabure-Bukuro(Torn Pouch), water-jar. Momoyama, 16th-17th centuryquartz particles came to the surface and, with the flying wood ash swirlingin the kiln, fused into a blue-grey glaze with scorched and greenish spots.In the late twentieth century it is easy to accept such pots as 'art objects'.Indeed, contemporary ceramic art around the world is still deeplyinfluenced by Bernard Leach's discovery and emulation ofJapanese folkpottery. With complete freedom, the Japanese folk potter prizes expres-sion above technique. Through his wares, Western ceramists learned tobreak the geometric concept of form, and plane-oriented decoration - amajor breakthrough in Western pottery design.At the same time as Bizen and other major tea-ware kilns flourished,Korean artisans were introducing technical innovations such as theclimbing kiln and high-fired porcelains. These lustrous, thin, whiteporcelains with under-glaze blue-line designs were shipped from the portof Imari, hence the generic name 'Imari ware'. In 1616, the Korean potterRi Sampei eventually found white potting clay at Arita where he built hisfirst linked-chamber climbing kiln. In Europe, Korean and Chineseporcelains were highly prized and were being imported in large quan-tities. The daimyo were naturally keen to reproduce such wares locally andmany kilns for porcelain were built in the area. By the Genroku era (1688—1704) their continental style of decoration had been replaced by Japanesemotifs.In 1628 the official kiln of the Nabeshima domain was founded to raisestandards and ensure clan control of the proceeds. In 1675 the kiln site was120 moved to Okochiyama where the finest Nabeshima ware was produced.Plates, bowls, side-dishes and sake decanters were made. Their innersurfaces are finished in smooth curves and their decoration, often echoinglacquer designs, features the newly mastered technique of filling theunderglaze blue outlines in bright overglaze colours of green and yellow,together with an unusually attractive and subdued beige-tinted red. Later,a lovely pale aubergine was added to the palette. The designs treat theentire surface as a continuous background unbroken by planes; overglazeenamels arc carefully applied so as not to spill out beyond the underglazeoutlines beneath. One ofJapan's authorities on ceramics, Mikami Tsugio,complains of Nabeshima ware that 'beauty itself is subordinate to the all-important standard'. This is a typical Japanese observation, reflecting apreference for spontaneity and originality above technical perfection.As Nabeshima wares flourished, so did their folk counterpart and121 predecessor in overglaze enamels, Old Imari, also in Arita. These areunabashedly decorated in bright primary colours, often with the additionof gilt. In the southern tip of Kyushu the Satsuma kilns produced a buffware with a hne-crackled glaze and distinctive, colourful decorations1*6tf$i1 19 Five small plates signed by Ogata Kenzan. White slip and rust glaze, decoratedwith grey and gold pigment. Edo, early 1 8th century.120 Nabcshima plate with design of flowering buckwheat. Overglaze enamels onporcelain. Early 19th century.121 Old Imari sake bottle depicting Europeans. Edo, 17th century.often marked with gold bosses. During the second half of the seventeenthcentury, when China was too embroiled in war for trade, the Dutch EastIndia Company turned to Kyushu and encouraged the export of Imari andKakiemon wares, with their characteristic iron-red lip-rings, from theArita area.As well as in pots, Tokugawra foreign trade also dealt in lacquers andmetalwork, often completely inlaid with intricate ivory or mother-of-pearl, in manners pleasing to the European eye. The Victoria and AlbertMuseum, London, for example, has a group of lacquered inlays,imported before the Hirado port was closed in 1623, which includesbowls, chests and other items specifically made to western orders.Europeans enjoyed Japanese ceramics as much as Chinese wares, butdeveloped a special fondness for Japanese lacquers, called japon in France.The interplay of influences between European and Japanese craftsmen canbe seen m household furnishings and ceramics of this period.158122 Lacquered wooden chest with floral inlay of mother-of-pearl and gold foilpaper. Early 1 8th century. (Seep. 169)Art ofthe MachishuBy the early eighteenth century Japanese society was resigned to theTokugawa hegemony. Although the nobility and upper merchant classhad paid a heavy price in power and influence, it was nonetheless this classwhich, in the late sixteenth century, had launched the last and mostglorious reincarnation ofJapan's classical traditions.Hon'ami Koetsu (1 558-1637) was from a distinguished family of swordconnoisseurs well known among the wealthy patrician families in theimperial cultural circle. In 161 5 Tokugawa Ieyasu, perhaps as a gesture ofappeasement toward the machishu, granted Koetsu a large tract of land inTakagamine, north-east of Kyoto. There Koetsu established a colony ofcraftsmen of the Nichiren Buddhist school and inspired and directed theproduction of art works of unparalleled quality and diversity. Koetsu hadbeen educated in the Heian-oriented courtly arts and in the earlyfourteenth century Shorenin style of royal calligraphy. He also studied thecalligraphy style of the fourth-century Chinese aristocratic Wang Xizhi159123, 124 ^ses by Ogata Korin. Double six-fold screen; colours and gold foil onpaper. Early 1 8th century. (Seep. 169)125126and was judged oneof the finest calligraphers of his day. He brought hisgenius to bear on lacquer, painting, gardens, poetry, tea and ceramics: noform of art failed to benefit from his influence. He dazzled Kyoto societyby publishing the tenth-century Tale ofhe and the twelfth-century Hojo-ki, inscribed in his own elegant calligraphy on specially produced paperdecorated with his own designs based on Heian ideals. He also publishedsong-books from the No theatre: this too focussed cultural attention onthe past.Koetsu's colony included not only artists but also paper-makers,lacqucrcrs and brush-makers. These craftsmen, inspired by Koetsu'sguiding spirit, collaborated with the artists and with each other toproduce works of a standard unmatched since Heian times. A fineexample is the writing box called Boat Bridge, which contains inkstone,ink and brush. It is clearly inspired by Heian lacquers such as the twelfthcentury Waves and Wheel of Life, with its gold and mother-of-pearl inlaidwave design interspersed with a wheel motif. Koetsu added the commonbase metal, lead, to gold and silver - a striking innovation - laying itacross the convex top and the sides in the form of a bridge, floating ongold lacquer supporting boats in low relief. Although the box is nearlysquare, the decoration is entirely asymmetrical. Three boats bob up anddown out of phase; the tiny raised-line waves lap in yet another rhythmand the bridge, which gives the box its name, is wrapped around theentire work at an angle. Balance is restored by Koetsu's inscription of awaka poem, applied in high relief in silver over the whole scene.160125 Boat Bridge, writing-box by Hon'ami Koetsu.Inkstone case, lead andmother-of-pearl on goldlacquer. Early 17th century.126 Waves and Wheel ofLife.Lacquer handbox; gold andmother-of-pearl inlay.Heian, 12th century.161+L'V ....#.?.* ^4***LM127 Fujisan, raku ware tea-bowl by Koetsu. Momoyafna, early 17th century.[28 Kuto Oribe chawan, tea-bowl by Furuta Oribe. Momoyama.i6th-i7th century.A man of tea, Koetsu made many tea bowls. In Fujisan, doubtless by his 127own hand, he created the most superb Japanese raku tea bowl of all time.It has taut, straight sides tapering slightly towards the bottom. Thereddish body is covered entirely in a blackish matt slip with opaque whiteglaze over the upper half, leaving the darker glaze for the bottom: theeffect produced by firing is that of gently falling snow. The vigour andgrandeur ofMont Fuji are suggested. There is nothing of the cleverness orcuteness which are so often the downfall of tea bowl makers with toomuch zest for sakui. The impression is of monumentality. In tea ware suchas this, Koetsu echoed the simplicity and purity of Rikyu's time,following the forthright form produced by Chqjiro. His work was instark contrast to that of his contemporary, Furuta Oribe (1 543-161 5) whohad achieved a lively and remarkable synthesis of free-form raku ceramic 128style and Western patterns and colouring.Koetsu collaborated with the sensitive and skilled painter Sotatsu (whonever joined the Takagamine artistic colony but worked out of his Kyotoestablishment which sold decorated paper and painted fans to the machishuand aristocracy). Sotatsu produced beautiful designs for Koetsu's calli-graphy paper in long handscrolls, fan shapes and square board shikishi. Heapplied them in silver and gold by hand and by woodblock impressions.Both masters were inspired by Heian waka inscriptions on decoratedpaper. In the example shown here, Sotatsu, with a brush dipped 129alternately in gold and silver, has painted flowers and grasses of the fourseasons in sequence. The ancient Chinese method of 'boneless' painting'& *#in129 Flowers and Grasses ofthe Four Seasons by Koctsu (calligraphy) and Sotatsu(painting). Detail of handscroll. Momoyama, early 17th century.Ii(without mk outlines) was given a new sense of liveliness by Sotatsu whocombined it with a pooling device called tarashikomi. This Japanesemethod of dropping ink or colour pigment on to still-wet areas of thepaper or silk may well have been invented by Sotatsu. Here the silverflowers and golden leaves appear in different intensities, seeming toemerge from dense mists.Koetsu's calligraphy equally reflects classical preferences. Even onrelatively unabsorbent paper he fully controls every stroke and dot. Theinclusion of cursive Chinese characters among the kana syllabary echoesthe effect of leaves and flowers among stems. Koetsu alternates betweenthick and thin, large and small strokes but the wrist pressure is steady,changing with the column rather than within single letter or wordconfigurations. Koetsu's calligraphy is more stately than Heian proto-types, carrying traces of the China-inspired symmetry of the Muromachiperiod, and producing a synthesis of the two styles.130 Flowers and Grasses by Korin. Handscroll; colours and white pigment on paper.c. 1705. (See p. 169)^* gF !1*'m& 1131 Pme Tree at Karasaki by Yosa Buson. Detail from handscroll. 1778. (Seep. 175)Sotatsu's association with Koetsu and machishu collectors, with theirnostalgia for the art of the past, and his own contact with the finest Heiantraditions in painting when he restored the Heike nogyo and othermasterworks, led him to create a new world of poetic imagery in anenergetic revival and reinvigoration of Heian motifs. His school came tobe known as Rimpa. (This style has often mistakenly been calleddecorative. If 'decorative' means 'serving to decorate' or 'purely orna-mental', then we must say that there is hardly anything decorative inJapanese art at all, at least since Shosoin days. Japanese artists seemincapable of static, purely visual, patternistic decoration. Be it lyrical,contemplative, dramatic or aggressive, nearly all Japanese art is united inone essence: emotion. It may be more appropriate to call the Rimpa styleevocative.)Everything Sotatsu created, whether fan and screen paintings, under-paintings for Koetsu or his own ink monochrome works, such as theOxen in the Chomyqji in Kyoto, combines visual beauty with con-siderable emotional intensity. Vignettes taken from Chinese woodblock65165fprinted books arc radically transformed and japanized. The elements inLotus and Swimming Birds arc so placed as to share the space, not to divide 132it. The forms are not self-contained and permanent, each commanding itssphere; rather, they depend on and interact with each other. Thepsychological energy typical ofJapanese forms is mostly turned outward.The use of watery ink in pooled tarashikomi, especially on the leaves, givesa sense of expansion and, as in the 'emotive cloud' device, creates anemotional quickening analogous to a blush or the sound of breathing. Butthe ebullience of the Momoyama period marks the works of Koetsu andSotatsu with energy and immediacy, in contrast to the dreaminess of theirHeian models.About half a century after Koetsu and Sotatsu, the Ogata brothersKorin (1658-1716) and Kenzan (1663-1743) consolidated the Rimpa style.Their father had been a member of Koetsu's artistic community andtransmitted its spirit to his sons. Kenzan, the younger brother, was a 119,133calligrapher and ceramicist. He studied first with Ninsei, then withKoetsu's grandson, Kuchu, and became a celebrated potter, combiningthe dignity and nobility of Koetsu with the inventiveness of Oribe. A ZenBuddhist in his late twenties and thirties, Kenzan felt that beauty of thingswas seen as such, and had no place for mono-no-aware or other associativesentiments. His brushwork is weighty and disciplined, his style compel-ling and reserved.If Kenzan was introvert, Korin was a determined extrovert. The twobrothers lived in the boisterous Genroku period (1688-1704) which sawthe eclipse of the machishu elite by the lower merchantclasses (chonin) andKorin entered drunkenly, sardonically into the spirit of the times. Once at132 (opposite) Lotus and Swimming Birds bySotatsu. Hanging scroll; ink on paper.Momoyama, early 17th century.133 Waterfall tea-bowl by Kenzan. Whiteslip glaze and rust painting. Early 18thcentury.167134 Fruit by Kobayashi Kokei. Hanging scroll; mineral pigments on paper. Early20th century. (Seep. 193)135 Stream by Tokuoka Shinsen. Colours on paper. 1954. (See p. 196)a picnic, while the bourgeois displayed their elaborately lacquered goldand silver picnic boxes, Korin astounded them by unwrapping his foodfrom plain bamboo leaves which turned out to be gold-foiled on theinside and which he proceeded to toss casually into the river. On anotheroccasion, he engineered a beauty contest so that the winner was abeautiful woman plainly dressed in white with a black wrapper, while herattendant wore sumptuous colours.Korin's work, in textile and lacquer design as well as in painting, wasnotable for its urbane elegance. It is less a nostalgic recreation of Heianstyle than a deliberate display of virtuosity. Typical of his work at itsflamboyant best are the Red and White Prunus screens in the AtamiMuseum, the Waves screens at the Metropolitan Museum, New York,and his copy of Sotatsu's Thunder and Lightning Gods. In Irises he boldly 123,124covers a double six-fold screen with brilliant repetitions of a single motif:blue irises, green leaves. The four groups on the right, in inverted triangleformation, gently descend, while five unequal groups on the left-handscreen increase in size and height towards the left. The rest is gold-foil.There are no plank-bridges, rippling waves, meandering earthen banks oremotive clouds: the work is hard-edged and uncompromising. Motion iscreated in the asymmetrical grouping and the out-of-phase repetition ofthe motif. It is here and in his daring and unrelenting use of gold, blue andgreen that Korin displays his supreme self-confidence. Since Heian times,irises had been associated with the eight-fold plank bridge, yatsu hashi,zig-zagging over swamps, among wild flowers. In the Heian Tale of Isethe hero pauses by a stream banked with wild irises. Korin removed thebridge and the hero, reducing the image to the flowers alone. As Sotatsuhad turned his viewer into an aerobatic sea bird, so Korin turned him intothe hero of the Ise tale, enchanted mid-bridge. By removing all externalprops, 'framework' or 'borders', both men plunge the viewer into thescene, and create a sense of immediacy and personal involvement.Throughout his work, Korin took the asymmetry of Koetsu andSotatsu to exaggerated extremes. His lacquer inkstone box, for example, 136uses gold, silver, mother-of-pearl and pewter in another reworking of theyatsu hashi bridge-and-iris theme. The bridge is inlaid with lead likeKoetsu's but the angle is much steeper. Similarly, in studies of flyingcranes, Korin's fly upwards at a much sharper angle than those of Koetsuor Sotatsu. This tendency to sharpen the angle and to tilt the ground uptowards the vertical plane, also present in Korin's landscapes, is particu-larly dramatic in his Red and White Prunus.Korin's watercolour sketches are quite distinct from the stylish glitterof his other works. Flowers and Grasses for example, which probably dates 130169136 Inkstone box with yatsu hashi(eight-fold plank bridge); designed byKorin. Edo, 1 8th century.from 1705 when he first went to live in Edo, is relaxed and intimate.Working in a 'boneless' technique, he outlines the blue and white flowerpetals in a fluid, evocative calligraphic style and the leaves and smallerflowers are borderless and further softened by the use of tarashikomi.U7TextilesBy the middle of the seventeenth century Japan's own silk industryflourished, bringing an end to reliance on Chinese imports. In textiles, asin all Japanese tactile arts created for the private, not public domain (floor,wall and ceiling surfaces, ceramics), native preferences dominated. Therichness of fabric production and variety of design proclaim a time ofpeace and prosperity.The creation and decoration ofJapanese garments, like ceramics, wereconceived as a single artistic activity and the design was integral to thegarment. Clothes, with long or short but always broad sleeves, werecreated in designs of stunning daring, seldom matched even in Parisfashion houses. A robe spread on a lacquer hanger might well be used as aroom-divider, like an evocative screen. Geometric waves and birds on ablack ground or a diagonal grouping of wisteria and chrysanthemum on awhite ground are typical patterns.Momoyama and Edo artisans were masters of several techniques whichincluded dyeing, embroidery, brocade, appliquee, raised gold-threadrepousse and hand-painting. The demand for innovation in textiles wasinsatiable, not only in No theatre and noble houses but also among thewealthy machishil and chonin. This example is from a shogunal householdand shows the sophistication of these techniques; embroidery has been70used to accent the flower-and-leaf shapes already created in the dyeingprocess and the peacock ground and feather loops made with goldrepousse. Another striking robe, made for a courtesan, uses gold-foil fordramatic effect. It features a hawk and a dragon in action and is made ofvelvet, a European fabric, whose novelty coupled with the remarkabledesign must have achieved the desired startling effect.Humbler folk wore cottons and, occasionally, silks. They enjoyed avariety of designs with largely Southeast Asian (rather than continental)sources. The ancient technique of ikat was often used to create bolddesigns. Cotton yarn was tied in sections and dyed indigo; the result wasan alternation of white and indigo in the weaving. Warp or weft yarns, orboth, could be partially dyed in this way. Warp-ikat fabrics are the mostcommon; weft-ikat is rarer and double-ikat, the most difficult to make, is138137 Detail of peacock on kosode (short-sleeved*^Lk^. J5^ 5| robe). Gold thread repoussee and embroidery.Edo.138 Hawk and Dragon, courtesan's kosode. Goldj4 on black velvet. Edo, early 19th century.171139 Rooster and Flowering Tree, cottonpanel, originally a bedcover. Resist-dyed on an indigo ground andmounted as a double screen. Meiji,late 19th century.rarer still. All three methods were common in Japan during the Edoperiod, and were called kasuri. Another technique with Southeast Asian139 origins is batik (resist-dye) which, using only dark and light indigo onwhite, nevertheless provided a great variety of designs for peasant wear.Humbler still are the banded and striped fabrics which combine cottonyarns of different colours in a straight weave. Home dyers also used apaste-resist method which seems to have been derived from twelfth-century China. A mixture o{ boiled, glutinous rice and rice bran wasapplied through a tube or poured or stencilled on to the cloth, which wasthen dyed. The process could be repeated with several colours, giving asplendid polychrome effect. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in BritishColumbia, Canada, has some handsome examples of this folk art; clearly,a strong awareness of beauty and design was present injapanese society atevery level.Nanga (Idealist painting)In an effort to promote loyalty towards themselves, the Tokugawashogunate established Confucian centres of learning and produced a new72class of esteemed but powerless Confucianists. The 250-year spread ofChinese learning, however, resulted in some unexpected turns ofthought. Foremost was the notion that loyalty was owed to the Emperor,not to his military spokesman; this, together with a growing awareness ofthe outside world, eventually led to the overthrow of the bakuju andrestoration of imperial authority in 1868. Meanwhile,China's contagiouslove of its own past created something like an identity crisis amongJapanese sinophiles. They found themselves yearning for what they hadcome to regard as the source of their civilization: ancient China. Inpainting, the ideal of the Chinese scholar-amateur-painter was introducedand the Japanese were appalled to discover they had been following thelesser tradition, and that Japan had missed the true essence of Chinesepainting by pursuing the styles of Southern Song and Ming academiesrather than the free expression of lofty ideals represented in the wenrenpainting of Chinese scholar-amateurs.In China, idealist painting was enjoyed by the leisured class as anactivity of taste and cultivation. Originally such paintings incorporatedpoetry written in superb calligraphy and the works were meant for theprivate enjoyment of small groups of highly cultivated associates. Japanlacked a scholar-bureaucrat class, and idealist painting became an avenuefor departure from traditions of various kinds: it was taken up bydiscontented members of the samurai class, by the new breed of scholars,by monks, physicians, merchants and professional painters. Late MingChinese texts called idealist painting Nanzong-hua (Southern SchoolPainting); in Japan it was called Nanga (Southern painting) but was strictlyfor sale. (Geographical and technical features distinguish the NorthernAcademy (rocky peaks, angular brushwork) from the Southern Amateur(rounded hills; long, rope-like brush-strokes) traditions in China; InJapan, the Shubun school had worked mostly in Northern styles, whileSoami's works were often of Southern origin. But this was clearly notunderstood by Soami or early Tokugawa theorists, and the distinctionbetween the two schools was not fully appreciated till the end of theeighteenth century.The first experiments of Japanese painters in the new mode producedsome curious results drawn largely from a mixture of contemporaryChinese provincial imports. The Mampukuji monastery outside Kyoto,founded in 1661 under Tokugawa patronage, became the very centre ofChinese culture in Japan, and its (largely Fujianese) clergy were permittedChinese imports and totally Chinese lifestyles. Their artistic and otherimports from strife-ridden China were avidly sought after by Japanesefanciers without regard to quality or stylistic origins. The professional173\m*i140 Pine Tree and Waves by Ikeno Taiga. One of a double six-fold screen; lightcolours on paper, c. 1765-70.140painter Sakaki Hyakusen (1698-1753), however, drew upon works ofhigher calibre from late Ming Suzhou. Ikeno Taiga (1723- 1776) boldlyand radically transformed his models, even though his contact withChinese paintings and Japanese collectors was limited largely to theMampukuji circle, as he did not have the access to the imperial andshogunal treasuries granted to orthodox painters like Kano Tanyu. Onthe other hand, running his own fan shop in Kyoto gave him independ-ence from particularized patronage, and more artistic freedom thanTanyu. Tanyu's study of Chinese paintings was academic: precise linecopies of ancient masterpieces in shogunal and other collections. Taigainterpolated, mixed and invented, and even produced manual-scrolls ofSouthern School methods, playfully attributing Chinese names withoutreal basis. Pine Tree and Waves, done in his forties, displays a thoroughlyJapanese use of ink and brush, and transforms what had been a rather stiffprovincial Fujian manner into a comfortable picture o{ an ancient tree atease. The rendering is abbreviated, with only traces of the Fujian modelsavailable to him in Mampukuji (with notable circular bark strokes) andharmonizes perfectly with waves done in traditional Japanese style. By thetime of this painting. Taiga had confidently absorbed and transformed174diverse traditions, but his own vision speaks above them all. Themediocrity of his models was immaterial, as he selected only composi-tional motifs and technical innovations which interested him.Taiga transformed the sedate and introspective Chinese scholar-amateur tradition into something thoroughly extrovert, endowing thegenre with luminosity and lyricism. A host of pupils and followers carriedhis vision forwards and made of nanga a viable tradition. The celebratedhaiku poet Yosa Buson (1716-83), who enlivened his verse inscriptionswith whimsical haiga illustrations, also painted in the newly fashionablemanner. His Pine Tree at Karasaki was painted in 1778, two years afterTaiga's death. The giant, ancient pine, resting on wooden supports,dwarfs the small house. The brush is charged with wet colour wash tosuch an extent that the image seems flooded with unreal light, as ifalluding to some unstated past. In contrast, Buson's calligraphy is crisp,fluid and assured, speaking of the present.The samurai Uragami Gyokudo (1745-1820) served the branch of theIkeda family until 1794 when, despondent over his wife's death andgenerally disillusioned, he resigned his post to take up nanga painting. Hisstyle is notable for its highly personal brushwork. James Cahill points outa resemblance to seventeenth-century Chinese painters who overlaid drybrush-strokes over we,t, light strokes over dark, creating a tapestry effect.A critical and profound difference is that Gyokudo applied the strokeseries in layers. Thus, a layer of horizontal modelling strokes might be141131141 Sumo Wrestling by Yosa Buson.Hanging scroll; ink, light colours onpaper, inscribed with haiku verses byBuson. Mid-i 8th century. (See alsopl- 131)5 K*§If 4 if£̂175v142 Hi^/j W/Wj and BankingGeese by Uragami Gyokudo.Album leaf; ink and light colourson paper. 1817.143 (opposite) BirthdayFelicitations by Aoki Mokubei.Hanging scroll; ink and lightcolours on satin. 1830.covered in turn by a layer of cross-hatching, a layer of wet dots, and alayer of dry black-ink scratches. The result is that what had been depictedin Chinese paintings in depth, the strokes intertwining as in a nest andbuilt up perpendicularly to the painting surface, was in its Japanesetransformation re-ordered along the picture plane, creating lateral tensionbetween the elements; the method, often mis-identified as merelydecorative, in fact achieves the visual clarity and luminosity beloved in142 Japan. A fine example is High Winds and Banking Geese, a work from(iyokudo's seventy-third year. Archaic Chinese script, rendered withdeliberate awkwardness, contrasts with the explosive energy of theswirling, cyclone-like brush-work. All motion is circular: even moun-tains arc reshaped into cylinders and rounded rocks. The geese and thetishing-boats are incidental; the subject o{ the picture is energy, direct,raw and exhilarating: being alive.Among the most original nanga masters is the painter and potter AokiMokubei (1767- 183 3) whose works in diverse media are marked withdynamic inner cohesion and a strong sense of inter-relatedness, bothamong the pictorial elements and between work and viewer. In Birthday143 Felicitations (1830), he celebrates a friend's seventieth birthday in a sceneaglow with serenity and wellbeing. Painted on satin, the swirling mists176(done in dry ink lines) suggest a cipher for a dragon, providing the gravityand mystery proper to the occasion. Psychological energy convergestowards the centre (and the viewer), from the craggy pine of longevity onthe right and from the left from the God of Longevity himself as heambles towards the centre, followed by his child attendant with theparasol of state. The focal point is the confluence of clouds, tree energyand long life beneath the mountain peak (placed left of centre to balancewith the inscription on the upper right).Diversification ofschoolsThe long peace brought wealth, and its wider distribution brought morepatrons,and more art. In Kyoto alone, besides the traditional styles ofKano and Rimpa and the newly-established nanga, yet another styleappeared and was soon to dominate. Maruyama Okyo (1733-95) hadstudied with Kano masters and then became interested in Westernperspective and Chinese painting: his style was a synthesis of all threetraditions. Not the least of his activities was to paint Japanese scenes forthe newly-imported Chinese viewing-device, where a picture wasreflected and magnified. In China, Suzhou artists had been producinge7 vL> ^- a +W :177i_44 Sketches ofCicadas (detail) by MaruyamaOkyo, from his Sketchbook ofInsects. Ink and lightcolours on paper. Mid- 19th century.145 The Itsukushima Shrine, fifth view of EightViews ofMiyajima (Hiroshima) by NagasawaRosetsu. Album leaf; ink and colours on silk.1794-woodblock prints with Western perspectives for such viewing boxes;Okyo supplied the demand for new and Japanese views. He also producedscrolls and large screens, combining a gold ground with majestic pines, orpeacocks on rocks in the Chinese academic style, or wisteria in Japanese-style colour wash. He investigated, in short, every available style, formatand subject. He taught his pupils to sketch directly from nature, and144 produced some of his own most charming works in this genre.Okyo was enthusiastically supported by a former pupil of Buson,Matsumura Goshun (1752-1811) and their combination of talents came tobe known as the Maruyama-Shijo school. For a while it was lively andactive but in the nineteenth century it quickly declined into saccharinesentimentality.The most individual of Okyo's pupils, Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754-99),possessed a vision which is as fresh and vital today as it must have seemedto his contemporaries. From a warrior family, he changed his name inorder to paint rather than be subject to official positions. His first workswere in the manner of Okyo, but after mastering Western techniques ofperspective and chiaroscuro, he began to contribute to the eccentric andgrotesque modes then fashionable. He worked in ink wash as well as in178-'ksfcA,fine lines and colours, on silk and paper, painting everything from fans tomurals. In four to five months in 1786, travelling through Kii, Rosetsupainted no less than 180 wall-panels and sliding doors for four separatemonasteries. The Itsukushima Shrine from Rosetsu's Eight Views of 145Miyajima (1794) is a bird's-eye view rendered deftly in ink, sometimesvery fine and dry, sometimes wet and diffused. The twisting coveredwalk and the main hall (with its stage-like front for performing sacreddances) both rise on stilts from the water. It is twilight, and stone-and-paper lanterns have been lit to dispel the misty gloom, descending uponthe pine-clad isle.Another great individualist was Itojakuchu (1716-1800). His works arein colours and ink monochrome and show barnyard fowl, vegetables,flowers and trees in elegant distortion. He combined foreshortening andperspective techniques with a flat, highly chromatic use of ink andbrilliant colours. He turned his animal paintings into still-lifes with asharp wit, posturing the figures in an exaggerated manner, comicallysuggesting human behaviour. His strutting male and submissive femalebirds, for example, strike poses reminiscent of ukiyo-e actor prints.Jakuchu was influenced by several schools: the Chinese Zhejiang style of179Shcn Nanping (which became in Japan the Nagasaki school) introduced inthe 1 730s, the late Ming Fujianese Obaku (Mampukuji) techniques ofChen Xian, Japanese Kano gold screen decoration, as well as the Westernulcas mentioned above. The peculiar use of a very wet brush charged withpale ink 111 a rapid series of parallel strokes to form textured surfaces suchas dragons, feathers and the like, suggests familiarity with the 'trance'folk-painting of religious festivals. He also originated a most bizarre andlaborious painting technique. A double six-fold screen features a phoenixand an enormous white elephant each surrounded by outlandish birds andanimals. In this astonishing compositionjakuchu imitates in paint mosaic,certain effects of Indian calico cloth, or Qing paintings on woven paperstrips forming tiny squares. Each screen was underpainted with 310vertical and 140 horizontal lines making approximately 43,000 squareseach measuring 1.2 cm. After the paper was primed with white, each180146 Phoenix and White Elephant by Ito Jakuchu. One of a pair of six-fold screens.Ink and colour impasto on paper. Mid- 1 8th century.square was separately filled with colour. In the centre of each square was asmaller area of the same or lighter tone. This extraordinary style had noimitators; the few works which survive all originate from Jakuchu himselfor his atelier.Although Edo (Tokyo) was a new, upstart city compared with Kyoto(Heian), the shogunal presence drew many talents there; there was aproliferation of artistic schools working for the daimyo, and it was a centrefor Chinese and Western ('Dutch') learning. The Edo master TaniBuncho (1763- 1 840) had a typically eclectic style: often counted amongXanga painters, he had also studied Kano, Tosa, Nagasaki, ukiyo-e and1S1147 Frog an& Snail byGibbon Sengai.Hanging scroll; ink onpaper. Early 19thcentury.Western techniques. Born into an established samurai family, Buncho(unlike his fellow Nanga painters, who often represented anti-establish-ment sentiments) moved in prominent political circles. He wrote treatiseson painting, and produced a series of woodblock prints featuring famousmountains. In the later years of his life he developed his well-knownspontaneous, abbreviated style.Always the clergy were enthusiastic calligraphers and painters. The Zenmaster Gibbon Sengai (1750- 183 7) was the abbot of Shofukuji in Hakatafrom 1790 until his retirement in 181 1. His painting was in a simple, directand spontaneous style; it was widely appreciated, and thought particularly147 appropriate to the world of Tea. His characteristic Frog and Snail was donein a few rapid strokes with the brush only half-charged with wet ink. Thisresults in unevenly inked line-edges, in both the calligraphy and thesubject. The seven Chinese characters blend perfectly into the picture.Their meaning, 'Swallow the Three Buddhas, Past, Present and Future, inOne Mouthful,' refers to the innate perfection of all: of frog, of snail, ofswallowing. The lowly status but sacred potential of the frog was acommon Buddhist theme.The Zen master Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768), who more than anyonerevitalized andjapanized Zen, expressed himself in a particularly bold and149 powerful st vie. In a large portrait of Daruma (222.8 by 36.5 cms), he usedhis brush with such vehemence that the tip splayed in places, producing adramatically rough-edged effect. Another Zen artist of this time, thesculptor-monk EnkCi (1628-95), wandered round the country and leftmany statues of Buddha and bodhisattvas in rough-hewn wood forpeasants worshipping at regional Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.182148 (left) Sho Kannon Bosatsu by Enku. Unpaintedwood. Late 17th century.149 {above) Daruma (Bodhidharma) by HakuinEkaku. Hanging scroll; ink on paper. 1751.183rGenre painting and the woodblock printIn the Edo period, diversity and elegance in the fine arts was easilymatched by the robust humour and virile self-confidence of the risinglower mercantile class. Anonymous craftsmen working on everydayitems such as ceramics, textiles, farm implements, architecture, house-hold furnishings, book illustration and printing catered for mass tastes.For ordinary people, peasants and townsmen alike, this was a vigorousartistic period. And it is this new urban culture which marks the mostnotable departure from previous eras. Although the Tokugawa hadplaced merchantsbeneath farmers and artisans in the new social hierarchy,this enterprising class nevertheless came increasingly to dominate To-[84kugawa life. In cities and in towns, they created a vigorous commercialeconomy: during this period Kyoto finally regained its importance as acentre for fine silks and ceramics. Enormously wealthy families (such asthe Mitsui, who by the early twentieth century controlled the largestfinancial empire in the world) flourished; mass literacy was among thehighest in the world; popular and satirical novels were extremelyfashionable, and the printing business flourished.Since the early sixteenth century a favourite art-form among the risingbourgeoisie had been genre-painting. These works featured a variety ofpopular recreations and amusements. Some showed elegant, beautifulwomen in leisurely pursuits; they meticulously recorded details of dress.Later forms featured the more down-market activities of low gradeprostitutes or bath-house attendants. One particularly popular typedepicted entire city blocks and included street dancing, festival floats andinteriors and exteriors of every kind. Scenes such as the anonymous Shijo-Kawara are the apotheosis of bourgeois collective (if edited) self-portraiture. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, as the appeal ofthis kind of art increased, it began to be mass-produced. Urban lifeseemed at its most elegant and extravagant in the demi-monde of Edo,Kyoto, and Osaka: here, as the late Sir George Sansom put it, was 'theworld of fugitive pleasures, of theatres and restaurants, wrestling boothsand houses of assignation, with their permanent population of actors,151150150 {opposite) Shijo-Kawara, one of apair of bi-fold screens by ananonymous artist. Colours on goldpaper. Early 17th century.1 51Dancing under the Cherry Treesby Kano Naganobu. Detail fromdouble six-fold screen; colours onpaper. Early 17th century.singers, story-tellers, jesters, courtesans, bathgirls and itinerant purvey-ors, among whom mixed the profligate sons of rich merchants, dissolutesamurai and naughty apprentices'. The Japanese themselves confessed:Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures ofthe moon, sun, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves, singing songs,drinking wine, and diverting ourselves just in floating, floating, caringnot a whit for the pauperism staring us in the face, refusing to bedisheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current: this iswhat we call the floating world (ukiyo) (from Asai Ryoi, Tales of theFloating World).This 'floating world' formed the prime subject matter both of genrepaintings and of the (now world-famous) Japanese woodblock prints.Printed illustrations had been known in Buddhist circles since the Heianperiod, but with the Edo boom in communications, the printed bookbecame an independent art-form. The literate bourgeoisie was hungry forprinted literature of the outspoken type which had long been part of thevernacular tradition. Illustrations, particularly to bawdy tales, were ingreat demand and astute publishers accordingly commissioned andproduced some of the world's most frank and joyous celebrations ofearthy pleasures. Equally, the spread of scientific interest and knowledgeresulted in the publication of medical and botanical books containingexquisite drawings of plants and herbs. It was during this time that thewoodblock-carver's art soared to unexcelled heights.In Edo, Hishikawa Moronobu and others began to produce black andwhite prints, hand-coloured in orange-red. Many of these were overtlyand extravagantly erotic, and their style imitated the calligraphic characterof the ink-brushed line. By the early eighteenth century, a wider range ofcolours, including an attractive rose-red and a deep-toned black resem-bling lacquer, was added. A great many hand-coloured actor-prints ofthis type were produced in the early eighteenth century. In about 1745, amore elaborate and expensive technique of multiblock colour printing(probably learned from China) was used to produce limited editions ofcalendar prints. Here, since each colour required a separate block,meticulous accuracy in positioning the blocks was achieved by the use ofguide marks (kento). Prints of this kind, large or small, were oftencommissioned by a patron for distribution among friends.The 'brocade prints' (nishiki-e) of Suzuki Harunobu ifl. 1765-70) were152 the first to perfect the new and more costly techniques. In Viewing MapleLeaves by the Waterfall a tipsy roue, kimono in disarray, holds a faninscribed with a line of poetry. He is oblivious to all but his nearercompanion who is holding him up by his belt, while the other woman186152 Viewing Maple Leaves by theWaterfall by Suzuki Harunobu.'Brocade print' (chuban nishiki-e)Mid- 1 8th century.H6iKMw155 View on a Fine Breezy Day by Katsushika Hokusai, from Thirty-Six Views ofMount Fuji. Polychrome wood-block print. 1822-32.figure, set against the ominous, mica-flecked background, show how thedesigner can convey a sense of the drama by distortion. In fact at thisperiod figurative prints, including those of actors, became increasinglygrotesque; the phenomenon is also apparent in the paintings o{ Rosetsu,Jakuchu and others.Little of this baroque exaggerationis found in the work of KatsushikaHokusai (1760-1849) whose fame grew out of his numerous cartoons(manga) or humorous sketches. His landscape prints discovered vigorousnew life in an ancient form. He was the Scsshu of his day, drawing on adazzling variety of sources, and fired by extraordinary creative energy; ashe himself noted:From the age of six I have had a mania for sketching the forms of things.From about the age of fifty I produced a number of designs, yet of all Idrew prior to the age of seventy there is truly nothing of any great note.At the age of seventy-three I finally came to understand somewhat thenature of birds, animals, insects, fishes - the vital nature of grasses and1 891 56 Snow Lit Kambara by Ando Hiroshigc, from Fifty-Six Stations ofthe Tokaido.Polychrome wood-block print. 1833.trees. Therefore at eighty I shall have made great progress, at ninety I shallhave penetrated even further the deeper meaning of things, and at onehundred I shall have become truly marvellous, and at one hundred andten, each dot, each line shall surely possess a life of its own.(trans. Richard Lane)iss His famous views of Mount Fuji, so overexposed as to seem banal,remain nevertheless a synthesis of supreme draftsmanship tinged with aremarkably humane view of the world he knows.Encouraged by Hokusai's example, Ando Hiroshige (1797- 1858)perfected a new genre of travelogue prints, with numerous series such asi$6 The Fifty-Three Stages of the Tokaido Highway. Although he was lessdynamic or gifted than Hokusai, he provided a more lyrical vision inwhich the poetry of mood is given often memorable expression, as here inthe feeling ot loneliness and quietude in the snow-covered pass atKambara.190CHAPTER SEVENModern Japan (1868- )By the middle of the nineteenth century the conservative and isolationistpolicies of the Tokugawa bakufu had been rendered untenable by severalforces: the Confucian notion that the Emperor (Son of Heaven) was theonly legitimate source of rule, the presence of Western gunboatsdemanding trade relations and a growing feeling among the intelligentsiathat Japan was socially, politically and militarily backward among theworld's nations. With the Meiji restoration in 1867, the Japanese madewesternization and modernization their goals.The cultural experience of the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras included amassive ingestion of European and American learning. Japanese studentsstudied in the West and foreigners established universities and colleges inJapan. The young Meiji Emperor and Empress were photographed inWestern dress. Architecture aped British-Victorian grandeur. Western oilpainting was called Yoga and students in Europe for long periods wereable to effect japanization of its themes and techniques far more rapidlythan in the Tokugawa period when foreign travel was banned. A goodexample of this is Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924) whose 1897 Yoga painting (inoils on canvas), Lake Shore, shows a woman resting by a lake after 157bathing. Kuroda studied painting for nine years in Paris before returningto Japan in 1893 to open his own art school. (He later became the firstJapanese Professor of Western-style Painting at the Tokyo School of FineArts.) Lake Shore is an ingenious fusion of late nineteenth-century Frenchstyles with the courtesan-prints popular in Japan for over a century. Buthere the woman is emancipated, and ennui is replaced by intelligence.Kuroda demonstrates a breadth of vision which is beyond the chauvinismor narrow parochialism prevalent among hidebound Japanese image-makers both then and now. For it is only when an artist has lived abroadand has fully absorbed a foreign culture that he can see his own withclarity and objectivity. The inferiority complex in face of technologically'more advanced' nations dissolves and a true synthesis of old and new,East and West, takes place.191i s~ Lake Shore bv Kuroda Sciki. Oil on canvas. Western stvle painting {yoga).[897.Another Meiji effort at mirror-parity was to ape the West in havingonly one religion. To this end, Shinto was disentangled from foreignBuddhism. Buddhist monasteries and art treasures were systematicallydestroyed, and had it not been for the timely appointment of Dr ErnestFennollosa (1853-1908) as Professor of Philosophy at the ImperialUniversity ot Tokyo, and the arrival of his wealthy Boston friendWilliam Bigelow, much more would have been lost. Together theypurchased the huge collection o{ ancient Japanese Buddhist art whichtonus the core ot the Asian collections in the Boston Museum of FineArts. More important for Japan, perhaps, was Fennollosa's advice to theJapanese government that indigenous artistic traditions should be pre-served and practised - for at the time all branches of art studies, from oilpainting to industrial design, were of Western origin.The modified traditional Japanese painting style promoted by Fennollo-sa was called Nihonga, to be distinguished from Western-style oil paintingYoga). He maintained that powerful, expressive Japanese line was192essential but that it should be reinforced with more realistic Westernchiaroscuro and a brighter range of colours. By 1891, when Fennollosa leftJapan to become director of the Oriental art department of the BostonMuseum of Fine Arts, the survival of Nihonga painting in Japan wasassured. His brilliant disciple, the philosopher Okakura Tenshin (1862-191 3) became director of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. In contrast toFennellosa's stress on the bold Kano-school line, Okakura promoted adelicately expressive line derived from Yamato-e. (Okakura often wroteand lectured in English on Japanese aesthetics and was as instrumental inpromoting Japanese art abroad as he was in retaining native traditions athome.)Traditional Japanese influences and styles in Nihonga painting includepure ink landscapes, colour-wash styles and thick impasto screens withcoloured designs on gold. (Although originally painted on screens or inhanging scroll format, Nihonga works today are usually framed inWestern style since mineral pigments are easily damaged by repeatedrolling and unrolling.) Themes include standard Eastern figures andlandscape compositions, as well as Western motifs and near-abstractdesigns; the mode is unified by the materials (writing brush, and ink ormineral pigment, on silk or paper).Among the major artists at the turn of the century was the short-livedHishida Shunso (1 874-1910), a student of Okakura Tenshin. (He studiedin Tokyo and later taught at Tenshin's Japan Institute of Fine Arts.) Hisstyle was a new departure for that time, using no overt line-work, andwas condemned by critics as being muddled or incompetent. In Fallen 158Leaves, Shunso combines Western realism with the poetry of space: treesseem to recede into an all-pervading mist, losing definition. (There is areference to Tohaku's magnificent Pine Forest but the statement isotherwise in the language of Western realism.)The giants of more typical, representative Nihonga are two old friendswho toured Europe together in the twenties and visited China severaltimes, Kobayashi Kokei (1883-1967) and Maeda Seison (1885-1977).Kokei encloses his forms with fine, taut lines which seem to have a life oftheir own. Often a subtle reverse shading from light to dark progressesfrom outline to centre of each form, as if the hues, startled by the line,have withdrawn in haste. Similarly, the delicate shading enveloping hismotifs functions like the 'emotive cloud' and 'blush' or 'breathe' or both.A famed New York critic confessed he found Nihonga lifeless and dull andwondered why the Japanese love it so. This is because he was waiting forthe work to arouse him. Instead, he should have 'entered' the paintingquietly and receptively. Then the dramatic tension of Kokei's Fruit which 134193158 Fallen Leaves by Hishida Shunso. Right-hand screen of double-six-fold screen;mineral pigments on paper, Japanese style painting (Nihonga). 19 10.electrifies the still life and charges the air, the subtle depiction of the fruit'scolour, the quivering emotive space, would have transported him to theworld of Japanese sensibilities which have quickened screens and scrollsfor over a thousand years.Kokei's gentle perception of the world contrasts with the vigorousvision of Maeda Seison, his lifelong friend, and instructor to the Empresstill his death in 1977. Most halls in the Gosho Imperial Palace in Tokyo159 display a single Nihonga work; Seison's magnificent Lion Dancer AwaitingCue (1955) enlivens the enclosing space with typical tautness. The maskedand robed actor is shown at the moment of highest psychological tension,just prior to breaking into dance. Seison's works are usually highlyrestrained, holding in reserve formidable energies. As in onna-e painting,he explores the world of inner emotional turbulence beneath surface calm.The difference is that Seison's subjects are not victims of affairs of theheart but often warriors before battle, medical students at the anatomylesson (an autopsy), women at the bath, etc. In the manner of theFrolicking Animals scroll, Seison once painted a long ink monochromehand-scroll of Monkey's Journey to the West. He explored all majortraditions, bringing a new life to each. In 1930, he even rivalled thesumptuous Konn, challenging his Iris screen with a stupendous doublesix-fold screen of red and white Poppies on a gold ground: impasto flowers194of the same height range across both screens in one daring, continuoushorizontal band, against a flat, gold ground (white poppies in full bloomon the right screen, red poppies still in firm bud along the left screen). Therelentless continuum is dramatically broken towards the end of the leftscreen where the field flowers have been trampled down, revealing acurved depression and - relieving the greens of the entire panel - one and ahalf full blooms in an outrageous red. Seison is one of very few Japaneseartists ever to contrast red and green in this bold fashion and to convey asense of continental grandeur and monumentality in his works.In the Nihonga paintings of Fukuda Heichachiro (1892- 1972) andTokuoka Shinsen (1 896-1972), done in traditional pigments on silk and159 Lion Dancer Awaiting Cue by Maeda Seison. Nihonga panel for the ImperialPalace, Tokyo. 1955.195l6o35161paper, the tonus arc rendered in a near-abstract manner, like thatcommon in non-Japanese abstract painting; but their expression is just asmuch suffused with Japanese aesthetic preferences as is the work ofKuroda Seiki. Fukuda's Virgin Snow of 1948 is an evocative portrait ofwhite snow-softness in a garden setting where six stepping stones areshaded in various hues. The description yiigen, 'mysterious and pro-found', has often been applied to Tokuoka Shinsen whose Stream of 1954can hardly be identified without its title. In spite of their evocative moodor emotive clouds, works such as this are entirely 'modern'; even so theireffect is achieved without strained mimicry of Western modernisttechniques.One of the greatest Nihonga artists is Higashiyama Kaii (born in 1908)whose intellectual approach brings a new dimension to this style ofpainting. Many of his works exploit single motifs in single colours. Themineral pigment is burned periodically to darken its hue as the workprogresses. When in 1977 his murals for the Toshodaiji in Nara were thesubject of a major exhibition in Paris, the whole room was reproduced toscale in order to show the scale and function of his panels: they were toadorn the space in which the now secret image of Ganjin is kept. Theexhibition demonstrated how the arts of the Japanese present relate160 Virgin Snow by Fukuda Heihachiro.Colours on silk, in the abstractexpressionist manner. 1948.161 (opposite) Rhythm ofSnow Countryby Higashiyama Kan. Nihonga panel.1963.^"1**»;?*"W TI'* itiintimately and harmoniously to those of the past. Nihonga in theSeventies, however, began to turn more towards the Viennese school offantasy: today's works are often treated as if painted in oils in a congestedmanner and v/ith high colour contrast. The movement is in danger oflosing its once unique potential.Because of its unassertive qualities, Nihonga painting, like kana calli-graphy, has not received the attention it deserves from the West. Theprint movement, however (in spite of the indifference o{ a governmentanxious to foster a Western image through conceptual art, steel and lasersculpture, etc.), has gone from strength to strength. In the Taisho era(1912-26) artists began to design, carve and pull their own prints in a'creative print' movement (sosaku hanga). Studies in black (such as blackfigures walking on rainy nights) reveal particular ingenuity. KawaseHasui ( 1 883-1957) produced landscapes where Japanese scenery is re-viewed in the light of new western realism and dramatic colouration. By197contrast, Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) portrayed a world of pastelsentimentality echoing that of his western counterpart J. Walter Phillips.The most dynamic and original master who brought Japan's new printmovement to international renown was Munakata Shiko (1905-77). Hisirrepressible energy and joie de vivre were translated into vigorous,unprecedented forms. To the end of his life he worked only with162 woodblock, even though most of his contemporaries had switched overto the more fashionable styles of mixed-media print. Like Enku andHakuin, Munakata was an anomaly in his own time, the creator of atorrent of frenzied works of alarming intensity and impulse: watchinghim work one formed the impression that the print possessed him ratherthan the other way round. His 'primitive' lack of inhibition earned himthe derisive - or admiring - nickname 'Jomon Man'.Japanese artists today form a major force in world art, and many workin international circles. (An avant-garde image, despite vigorous pro-motion by the establishment, lacks a genuine basis and remains an oddphenomenon within Japan. The other arts, however, rooted in longtraditions, fairly burst with vitality.) The architect Tange Kenzo (b. 191 3)whose revolutionary stadium and surrounding village for the 1964163 Olympics animates all the space around, designs all manner of buildingsin many countries. Japanese architecture, in both its traditional and its162 From Uto no Hanga sakuby Munakata Shiko. Inkmonochrome wood-blockprint. 1938.163 (opposite) Olympicstadium in Tokyo by TangeKenzo. Reinforced steel,concrete. 1964.19S» * »-- •«*a*mm*mmJ£££ -•»SU" 1^saisii^iiisa-ss-j-ju-^contemporary form, has made substantial contributions to modernconcepts of modular construction and the inter-relation of outdoor andindoor space. Simple lines, diffused lighting and warm textures, standardattributes of Japanese buildings for centuries, are now commonplacethroughout the world.Although Japanese sculpture lagged in the doldrums since the four-teenth century, the twentieth century has already offered the world twogreat masters, Noguchi Isamu (b.1904) and more recently NagareMasayuki (b. 1923). Both explore the contrast of rough stone finishes(warehada) and highly polished surfaces. Nagare, whose works have neverbeen false to their Japanese roots, has been largely ignored by theestablishment at home for fear of promoting antiquated standards, in spiteof his growing prestige abroad. Like many Japanese artists of vision, hehas suffered from the post-war frenzy to create an international face forJapan (in commerce, shipbuilding and GNP as well as in the arts) and theresulting imposition of a rather self-conscious western standard on164199[64 Flight sculptureby Nagare Masayuki, made of400 tons of Swedish granite.From Manhattan Trade Towers, c. 1970.Japanese artists. Whether they have lived abroad or not, artists arenowadays encouraged to emulate the latest innovation seen in foreign artjournals (and immediately published in local monthlies). Contemporaryart in Japan has become a political commodity and its managers areusually ignorant ofJapan's own distinguished history and contributions.Professor lenaga Saburo, describing a similar situation in eighth-centuryNara (where most art mirrored the Chinese), observed, 'though it waspossible to import material things ... it was impossible to import thesocial basis for their creation (italics mine). Consequently continentalinfluences extended only to such matters as exterior ornamentations. . .They tailed to generate a profound change in the ways of thinking andliving. ..' To a large extent, this had also been true for most ot thetwentieth century; whenever there have been self-doubts, Japan has heldup its defensive mirror to the world and displayed art forms whosegenesis lay outside Japan's own socio-cultural sphere.200The recent rise in nationalism has, however, produced signs of achanging attitude and a growing awareness that Japan's own traditions arevital and valid. The younger artists, many of whom have lived abroad,have developed a new perspective and make objective use of indigenous aswell as foreign traditions. (For example, many Japanese printmakers fromWilliam Hayter's Atelier 17 in Paris have returned to Japan, and nowcontribute many of the finest works in print exhibitions.)The oldest art industry of all, pottery, continues to produce excitingwork. Anonymous potters from regional folk kilns sell at Folk Artcounters in department stores; potters like Yagi Kazuo (1919-1979) haveintroduced an urbane witticism to Japanese ceramics. His ocuvre is 165strikingly varied, ranging from glass and bronze to white and blackpottery. The art of calligraphy, in a country which boasts one of theworld's highest rates of literacy, has a large and active group ofpractitioners. Annual exhibitions include calligraphy in Chinese style, 166Japanese style, avant-garde style, and literary style (where instead ofsingle or few words, entire poems or passages are inked). Avant-gardestylists have broken the legibility barrier and produce pyrotechnics in ink 167or lacquer on silk, paper or board. Calligraphy appears on book titles,magazine covers, film titles, names on buildings, handbag clasps, textiles,bar signs and napkins. There is hardly an aspect of contemporary Japanese165 Letter by YagiKazuo. Black pottery.28.5X41X10.5 cm.1964.2011 66 Uraurato tereru haru bi ni. Calligraphy inonnade (now called kana) style by KanMakiko. 1977.167 {below) En (Round) by Morita Shiryu.Avant-garde calligraphy; ink on paper. 1967.life untouched by the well-turned calligraph, be it in Chinese characters,the fluid hiragana or the angular katakana often used for foreign sounds.Although the average Japanese today is schooled to distinguish Tine art'(placed on museum pedestals) from applied art (in clothing, houses,pottery, garden-design or trains), he is nevertheless as susceptible to thebeauty or to the sadness of things as ever. For to him all things in natureare potentially beautiful - and, if they are made by man, ought to be. Forthe Japanese, as for peoples of few other nations, this quality of beautywhich touches them, and its expression in art, is an inseparable part of lifeitself.Select BibliographyGeneralRene Grousset, Les Civilizations de VOrient, vol IV,Le Japan, Paris, 1930The Japan Foundation, An Introductory BibliographyforJapanese StudiesJ. Edward Kidder, Jr., Japanese Temples: Sculpture,Paintings, Gardens and Architecture, London, 1964Sherman E. Lee, A History of Far Eastern Art, NewYork and London, 1964Seiroku Noma, The Arts ofJapan, 2 vols, trans. JohnRosenfield and Glenn Webb, Tokyo, 1966-67Kakuzo Okakura, The Ideals of the East, London,1920— The Book of Tea, 1906, Tokyo reprint, 1956.Robert Treat Paine and Alexander C. Soper, TheArt and Architecture ofJapan, London 1955Robert K. Reischauer, Early Japanese History, 2 vols,Princeton, 1937Laurance P. Roberts, A Connoisseur's Guide to Japan-ese Museums, Tokyo, 1967— A Dictionary ofJapanese Artists, Tokyo, 1976George G. Sansom, Japan, A Short Cultural History,London, 193 1, revised ed. London 1948— A History ofJapan, 3 vols, Stanford, 1958-63Peter Swann, A Concise History of Japanese Art,Tokyo, 1979, revised ed. of An Introduction to theArts ofJapan, Oxford, 1958Yukio Yashiro (ed.), Art Treasures ofJapan, 2 vols,Tokyo, i960EarlyCM. Aikens and T. Higuchi, Prehistory ofJapan,New York and London, 1982Namio Egami, The Beginnings ofJapanese Art, NewYork and Tokyo, 1973J. Edward Kidder Jr., Early Japanese Art: the GreatTombs and Treasures, Princeton and London, 1964— The Birth of Japanese Art, New York andWashington, 1965— Japan before Buddhism, new ed., London, 1966— Prehistoric Japanese Arts: Jbmon Pottery, Tokyo,1968Fumio Miki, Haniwa, New York and Tokyo, 1974E.S. Morse, Shell Mounds ofOmori, Memoirs of theScience Department, University of Tokyo, 1879,reprinted 1968Robert J. Smith and Richard K. Beardsley (eds.),Japanese Culture: Its Development and Characteris-tics, Chicago, 1962ArchitectureWerner Blaser, Japanese Temples and Tea Houses,New York, 1956— Structure and Form in Japan, New York, 1963Y. Katsura Ishimoto, Tradition and Creation in Japan-ese Architecture (texts by Walter Gropius andTange Kenzo), New Haven, i960Teiji Ito and Y. Futagawa, The Essential JapaneseHouse, Tokyo, 1967— The Elegant Japanese House, Tokyo, 1969Japan Architect, English language ed. of Shin-ken-chiku (New Architecture), monthly journal pub-lished by Shin-kenchiku-sha, TokyoJ. Edward Kidder Jr., Japanese Temples, Tokyo,1966Harumichi Kitao, Shoin Architecture in Detailed Illus-trations, Tokyo, 1956Bunji Kobayashi, Japanese Architecture, Tokyo,1968, revised 1970Hirotaro Ota, Japanese Architecture and Gardens,Tokyo, 1966CeramicsRand Castile, The Way of Tea, New York andTokyo, 1971Louise Cort, Shigaraki, Potters' Valley, Tokyo, 1979Williams Bowyer Honey, The Ceramic Art of Chinaand Other Countries of the Far East, London [948203[enyns, Japanese Porcelain, London, 1965— Japanese Pottery, London, 1971Fujio Koyama The Heritage of Japanese Ceramics,trans, and adapted by Sir John Figgess, NewYork and lokyo, 1973Bernard Leach, A Potter in Japan, London, 1971Mikann, The Art ofJapanese Ceramics, NewYork and Tokyo, 1972Roy Andrew Miller, Japanese Ceramics, Rutland and[okyo, i960Hugo Munsterberg, The Folk Arts ofJapan, Ver-mont and lokyo, 1958Daniel Rhodes, Tamba Pottery, Tokyo, 1970Masahiko Sato, Kyoto Ceramics, New York and1 okyo, 1973N Saunders, The World of Japanese Ceramics,1 okyo, 1967Joan Stanley-Baker, Mingei: Folkcrafis ofJapan, Vic-toria. B.C., 1979GardensMasao Hayakuwa, The Garden Art ofJapan, NewYork and Tokyo, 1973— The Carden Art ofJapan, trans. R.L. Cage, NewYork and Tokyo, 1974Loraine L. Kuck, The World of the Japanese Garden:From Chinese Origins to Modern Landscape Art,New York and Tokyo, 1968Osamu Mori. Katsura Villa, Tokyo, 1930, new ed.— TypicalJapanese Gardens, lokyo, 1962— Kobori Enshu, Tokyo, 1974P. and S Rambach, Sakuten-ki on le Livre Secret desJardins Japonais, Geneva, 1973I Schaarschmidt-Richter, Japanische Garten, Baden-Baden, 1977— and Osamu Mori, Japanese Gardens, New York,S Shimoyama, Sakuteri-ki, The Hook oj Gardens,I okyo, 1976Lacquers, Textiles and ArmourRaymond Bushel], The Inro Handbook, New Yorkand 1 okyo, 1979II arle, An Introduction to Netsuke, London, 1980Helen Benton Mmnich and Nomura Shojiro, Japan-Costume and the Makers of itschargedwith an intensity suggesting an outreach toward the supernatural. Thereis still a marked absence of 'tableware': bowls, dishes, cups, ewers oramphorae. Vessels of the period are mostly elaborate urns or jars, andwere probably used for making ritual offerings.In the Late Jomon period (2500 bc onwards) another dramatic changereflects the arrival of a ceramic-rooted culture which emphasized thenatural properties and forms of clay. There is a hint of Central Asianstyles, with double-rhyton-shaped vessels, pouring vessels with open andclosed spouts and short, squat, lidded pots with cylindrical spoutsattached. Bowls and round-bottomed vessels reappear, as well asamphorae with narrowed necks and serving-bowls with handles. These166 Uamataka fired clayurn in basketworkform. H. 32 cm.MiddleJomon.indicate a major shift in culinary habits, which includes the discovery offermentation. (The new typological development, however, retains theraised surface designs characteristic ofJomon ware.)From 1000-300 bc (Terminal Jomon), stemmed ware began to appear:shallow serving-bowls and amphorae with long narrow necks. Thesesuggest acquaintance with wheel-thrown ware, though they themselvesremain hand-built. Once again, the exact function of some vessels is hardto determine. A stemmed dish with an openwork dome, reminiscent ofmetalwork, for example, could have been used as an oil lamp or a hand-warmer.It would seem that Jomon culture did not develop entirely in isolationduring its ten thousand year span, and that significant changes in Jomonman's habits were periodically introduced. Aside from its spectacularpottery, Jomon culture produced decorated blades of ivory, horn andbone, bracelets and earrings.For his spiritual needs, Jomon man carved figurines from stone andmoulded them in clay. At about the same time that MiddleJomon potteryurns were developing elaborate features, these figurines also underwent adramatic transformation. Previous figurines had minimal facial features(such as a pinched nose and punctures for eyes); mid-J6mon figurineshave raised-line eyebrows and rather startling eyes: large perforations,round or almond shaped. By Late Jomon (2500-1000 bc) they assume a1-7 Clay figurine showingcrown-shaped hair and'insect' eyes. H. 31.7 cm.Terminal Jomon.8 (opposite) Sonakado stonegroup in 'sundial'arrangement at the centre of aburial pit. LateJomon.mask-like quality and in some areas become highly ornate with shamanis-tic features surmounted by all kinds of decorative paraphernalia. At theend of the period, in Terminal Jomon (1000-300 bc), extremelysophisticated vessels and figures appear. The hollow body (whether of potor figurine) is covered with elaborate, raised cord-impressed patterns andthe figurines have enormous insect or shell shaped eyes. This kind ofcord-impressed pattern, over a plain 'cord-erased' background, is aparticularly sophisticated use of negative' (ie, undecorated) space.(Although their ritual use is still unknown, these late figurines have suchenormous, horizontally slitted eyes that some scholars say they are theproduct of an age of deep superstition and fear; it is, however, difficult toreconcile superstition and fear with the uninhibited decoration alsocharacteristic of these artefacts, which seems far more readily attributableto Jomon man's exuberance and general delight in 'the dance of life'.)The most significant religious legacy of the Jomon period is the stonecircles and menhirs found 111 the Tohoku area in Akita and further north inHokkaido, some measuring as much as thirty metres across. Each centreson a square burial-pit in which bones were placed, covered with pebbles.These tombs resemble those found in Siberia from the Bronze Age intothe early Iron Age. A peculiarly Japanese feature of each site, however, isthe placing of a large upright stone in the centre from which other longstones, laid flat, radiate like the spokes of a wheel. This sundial-likearrangement suggests an agrarian society, aware of seasonal changes; butthe link - if any - with the following Yayoi culture is not yet clear.Yayoi culture (c. 300 bc-c. ad 300)Yayoi culture derives its name from the characteristic wheel-thrownpottery first discovered at the Yayoi site near Tokyo. This is entirelydifferent from Jomon ware. Some scholars believe that the Yayoi (calledthe Wa or Wo people by Chinese chroniclers) were the first people tosettle in Japan whom we might recognize as Japanese today. They arrivedfrom the continent and settled on the southern tip of the Korean peninsulaand in northern Kyushu. They had a highly civilized technology ofbronze and iron, wheel-thrown ceramics and wet-rice cultivation. Theirsea-borne trade flourished, reaching as far as Lolan, the Han Comman-dery in Northern Korea. They drove the Jomon people north and south;though traces of Jomon styles of pot-decoration remained in northernJapan throughout the Yayoi period, elsewhere (beginning in northernKyushu and spreading gradually through Honshu) wheel-thrown Yayoipottery effectively replaced the earlier Jomon ware.Ceramics of the Yayoi period included combed bowls, jars with wide9 bellies and flaring necks, lidded jars and tall urns. Towards the middleYayoi period there began to appear goblets, narrow-necked bottles, high-footed wide dishes, ewers and handled cups. All of these indicate a highlevel of skill with the potter's wheel: it is clear that 'tableware' had nowbegun to replace purely functional or ritual pots. (The existence of vesselscontaining traces of grain confirms the agrarian nature of this age.)The new, wheel-thrown wares have smooth surfaces, and the red orincised decoration tends to be horizontal, combed or zigzag bands acrossthe vessel. This contrasts with the tactile surface and predominantlyvertical decoration ofJomon pottery.Since metallurgy was introduced to Japan and not indigenouslydeveloped, bronze and iron appeared simultaneously around the thirdcentury bc. But the introduced forms were quickly adapted to serve theneeds of Yayoi man: bronze war-swords from the continent, for example,became, in the hands of native craftsmen, broader and longer peace-swords for use in burials. One of the most striking importations of all was10 the dotaku bronze bell, with its characteristic oval shape and protrudingflanges. At first these bells were small, but they were gradually madelarger and larger, and were often adorned in twelve sections to symbolizethe twelve-month year. The magical ryiisui, or flowing-water designs (C-or S-spirals in bands of parallel raised lines) meander in zigzags. (Thesepatterns are also found on pottery and tombs; they became part of thelater Japanese artistic vocabulary.) Some of the later bells rise splendidly inmajesty, with double C-spirals extending beyond the flanges which arenow entirely ornamental; they may have been used in ritual, perhaps assymbols of state. Dotaku bells are found in isolated areas, far fromsettlements and carefully buried. They seem a purely Yayoi phenomenon;certainly they were never made again once the Kofun culture appeared.While intimate Yayoi contact with Korea is well documented, evidencealso suggests some form of direct contact with China. A great number o{Chinese bronzes, especially Han mirrors, have been found in Yayoi sites,far more numerous than those found in Korea and those of Koreanmanufacture. This suggests not only direct contact with China, but also amarked selectivity on the part of the Yayoi when it came to importedartefacts.Mirrors, dotaku, ceremonial swords, and cashew-nut-shaped jades andagates (magatama or Korean fertility jewels) are the principal ritual artobjects of the Yayoi period. They are propitiatory objects, and show209 Clay pitcher showing horizontal decoration and openwork footrim.Elegant Tradition,Vermont and Tokyo, I06jSeiroku Noma. Japanese Costume and Textile Arts,New York and Tokyo, [979Beatrix von Rague, A History ofJapanese Lacquer-work, Toronto and Buffalo, 1976W. Robinson, Arms and Armour of Old Japan,London, 1951— The Arts of the Japanese Sword, London, 1961,1970Painting, Calligraphy and PrintsTerukazu Akiyama, Japanese Painting, Geneva,1961, New York, 1977Laurence Binyon and J. I. O. Sexton, Japanese ColourPrints, New York 1923, 2nd ed. Basil and Grey(eds.), London, i960James Cahill, Scholar Painters of Japan: the NangaSchool, New York, 1972Arthur D. Ficke, Chats on Japanese Prints, London,1928, reprint Vermont and Tokyo, 1958Jan Fontein and Money L. Hickman, Zen Paintingand Calligraphy , Boston, 1970Calvin, L. French, Shiba Kokan: Artist, Innovator andPioneer in the Westernization ofJapan, New Yorkand Tokyo, 1974Elise Grilli, The Art oftheJapanese Screen, New Yorkand Tokyo, 1970Jack Hillier, The Japanese Print: a New Approach,Vermont and Tokyo, 1975— The Uninhibited Brush, London, 1974— and L. Smith, Japanese Prints: 300 Years ofAlbumsand Books, London, 1980Saburo Ienaga, Painting in the Yamato Style, NewYork and Tokyo, 1973Hiroshi Kanazawa, Japanese Ink Painting, Tokyo.1979Richard Lane, Masters of the Japanese Print, London,1962Takaaki Matsushita, Ink Painting, New York andTokyo, 1974Kurt Meissner, Japanese Woodblock Prints in Minia-ture: the Genre of Surimono, Vermont and Tokyo,1970James A. Michcner, Japanese Prints: From the EarlyMasters to the Modern, Vermont and Tokyo, 1959Hiroshi Mizuo, Edo Painting: Sotatsu and Konn, NewYork and Tokyo, 1972Yujiro Nakata, The Art ofJapanese Calligraphy, NewYork and Tokyo, 1973Yoshitomo Okamoto, The Namban Art ofJapan,New York and Tokyo, 1972Hideo Okudaira, Narrative Picture Scrolls, no. 5 mArts ofJapan series. New York and Tokyo, 1973John M. Rosenficld and Furmko and Edwin Cran-204ston, The Courtly Tradition in Japanese Art andLiterature, Tokyo, 1973John M. Rosenfield and Shimada Shujiro, TraditionsofJapanese Art, Cambridge, Mass., 1970Johei Sasaki, Okyo and the Maruyama-shijo School ofJapanese Painting, St Louis, 1980Dietrich Seckel and Akihisa Hase, Emakimono: theArt of the Japanese Painted Handscroll, London andNew York, 1959Yoshiaki Shimizu and Carolyn Wheelwright (eds.),Japanese Ink Paintings, Princeton, 1976Joan Stanley-Baker, Nanga: Idealist Painting ofJapan,Victoria, B.C., 1980— The Calligraphy of Kan Makiko, Victoria B.C.,1979Harold P. Stern, Master Prints of Japan: Ukiyo-eHanga, New York, 1969Seiichiro Takahashi, Traditional Woodblock Prints ofJapan, New York and Tokyo, 1972Ichimatsu Tanaka, Japanese Ink Painting: FromShiibun to Sesshu, vol. 12 in Survey ofJapanese Art,New York and Tokyo, 1972William Watson, Sotatsu, London, 1959— Buson, London, i960SculptureMichiaki Kawakita, Modern Currents in Japanese Art,New York and TokyoJ. Edward Kidder Jr., Masterpieces ofJapanese Sculp-ture, Vermont and Tokyo, 1961Seiichi Mizuno, Asuka Buddhist Art: Horyu-ji, NewYork and Tokyo, 1974Hisashi Mori, Sculpture of the Kamakura Period, NewYork and Tokyo, 1974Tanio Nakamura, Contemporary Japanese-style Paint-ing, Tokyo, 1969Minoru Ooka, Temples of Nara and Their Art, NewYork and Tokyo, 1973Takaaki Sawa, Art in Japanese Esoteric Buddhism,New York and Tokyo, 1972William Watson, Sculpture ofJapan, London, 1959205Korea and Japan in the protohistoric period. (Modern cities are marked in italics.)206Japan, main districts and prefectures.207List of IllustrationsMeasurements are given in centimetres followed byD. = diameter or depth.i Stepping-stones in a bed of moss in a garden.2 Bizen vase. Momoyama period. Unglazedpottery. H. 25.2 (9.9) D. at mouth 8.5 (3.3).Goto Museum, Tokyo.3 Kogo incense box in the shape of an actress. Edoperiod Awaji ware with overglaze enamels onearthenware body. H. 6.5 (2.6.) W. 4.3 (1.7).Collection of the Montreal Museum of FineArts Gift ofJoseph-Arthur Simard.4 Minka (farm-house) of the Tsubokawa family.Late 17th century. Maruoka-cho, Sakai-gun,Fukui.5 Horned sake cask. 19th century. Black lacquer.H. 57.8(22.8). Chido Museum, Tsuruoka.6 ( 'amataka urn. Middle Jomon period. Firedclay. H. 32(12.6). Excavated from Niigata Pre-fecture Private collection.7 Clay figurine with crown-shaped hair andinsect' eyes. Late Jomon period. H. 36 (14.3)W. 22 (8.7). Excavated from the Ebisudagakoisite, Miyagi. Tohoku University, Sendai.8 Nonakado stone group in 'sundial' arrangementat centre of burial pit. Late Jomon period. Oyu,Akita.9 Pitcher of whitish clay showing horizontaldecoration and openwork footrim. Mid Yayoiperiod H 22 (8.7) D. at mouth 9.7 (3.8). Exca-vated from Arazawa, Nara. Yamato HistoricalMuseum, Nara.10 Dotaku, bronze bell. Late Yayoi period.H 44.8 (17 .6). Excavated from Kaichiyami site,Yao, Osaka. National Museum, Tokyo11 Aerial view of tumulus of Emperor Nintoku.Tumulus period. Overall length, includingmoats, 1000 metres (0.62 miles). Sakai, Osaka.12 Haniwa pottery farmer. Late Tumulus period.H 92 (36.3). Excavated from tomb at Alcabori-mura. Gumma. National Museum, Tokyo.13 Wall painting ot\\ man leading a horse. LateTumulus period. Painted slab. W. c. 218.4 (86).Takewara Tomb, Wakamiya, Fukuoka.14 Back of. bronze mirror of chokkomon type. 5thcentury. H. 28 (11). From the Otsuka Tomb,iclu H. = height, W. = width, L. = length andShinayama, Umami in Kita-katsuragi County,Nara. National Museum. Tokyo.15 Izumo Taisha Shinto shrine showing coveredstairway and Main Sanctuary. Rebuilt 1744.10.9 sq. metres (35.8 sq. feet). Shimane.16 Aerial view of the Isejingu showing Naiku'stwo sectors. 4th century. Photo: Watanabe.17 Aerial view of Horyuji compound, pagoda towest, Golden Hall to east. Late 7th century.Ikaruga, Nara.18 Buddhist Tiger jataka, left panel from base ofTamamushi Shrine. Mid-7th century. Oil onlacquered cypress. H. 65 (25.7) W. 35.5 (14).Horyuji, Nara.19 Tamamushi Shrine with roof of camphor andcypress wood. Asuka period, c. 650. TotalH. 233 (91.7). Horyuji, Nara.20 Tenjukoku Mandala (detail), silk embroideryfragment. Asuka period. Chuguji, Horyuji,Nara.21 Shaka Triad, Tori school. 623. Bronze ShakaBuddha H. 86.3 (34), attendants H. 91 (35.8).Golden Hall, Horyuji, Nara.22 Guze Kannon (detail). Early 7th century.Gilded camphor wood. H. 197 (78). Yumedono,Horyuji, Nara.23 Meditating Miroku Bosatsu. Early 7th cen-tury. Red pine. H. 123.5 (48. 6). Horyuji, Kyoto.24 Meditating bodhisattva (detail). Early 7thcentury. Wood. H. 87.5 (34.4). Chuguji con-vent, Nara.25 Zojyo Ten (Virudhaka), one of the fourGuardian Kings. Before 646. Wood. H. 20.7(52.5). Golden Hall, Horyuji, Nara.26 One of six standing bodhisattvas (detail). Late7th century. Camphor wood. H. 85.7 (33. 8).Horyuji, Nara.27 Gakko bodhisattva from the Yakushi Triad.688. Gilt bronze. H. 315.3 (124). Kondo Hall,Yakushiji, Nara.28 Amida and two attendants, a screen in LadyTachibana's Shrine. 733. Gilt bronze. H. 33 (13).Horyuji, Nara.20829 'Yumetagai Kannon'. Late Hakuho period.Bronze. H. 85.7 (33.8). Horyuji, Nara.30 Monju bodhisattva from Horyuji pagoda.Tempyo period, 711. Clay. H. 50.9 (20). Horyu-ji, Nara.31 Fukukenjaku Kannon (detail). 746. Gilded drylacquer. H. 360.3 (141. 8). Hokkedo, Todaiji,Nara.32 Rushana Buddha. 759. Gilded dry lacquer.H. 303 (134). Toshodaiji, Nara.33 Kannon from the Amida Paradise (detail)from the Kondo, Horyuji. 711. Colour on plas-ter. Panel No. 6, H. 312 (120) W. 265 (102).Horyuji Museum, Nara.34 Todaiji scene showing the Great Buddha inthe Shigisan Engi. 12th century. Narrative hand-scroll, ink and light colour wash on paper.H. 31.5 (12). Chogosonshiji, Mt. Shigi, Nara.35 Kondo (Golden Hall) of Toshodaiji. Naraperiod, late 8th century. H. 14.65 metres(48.4feet) L. 28 metres (91.9 feet). Nara. Photo:Sakamoto Photo Research Laboratories.36 Kodo (Lecture Hall) of Toshodaiji. c. 748.Moved to present site in 760, remodelled in 1275and 1675. L. 33.8 metres (no. 9 feet). Nara.Photo: Sakamoto Photo Research Laboratories.37 Ganjin (detail). Late 8th century. Dry lacquer.H. 79.7 (31-4)- Kaizan do, Toshodaiji, Nara.38 Painting of entertainers on inside surface oflong bow. Before 756. Ink, lacquer on catalpawood. Overall L. 162 (63.7). Shosoin, Todaiji,Nara.39 Pair of knives. 8th century. Rhinoceros-hornhilt and silver scabbard, decorated with jewels.L. 22.9 (9). Shosoin, Todaiji, Nara.40 Ruan Xian (4-stringed lute). Early 7th cen-tury. Wood and inlaid mother-of-pearl. L. 100.4(39.5) D. 39 (15.4). Shosoin, Todaiji, Nara.41 Covered medicine jar. 811. Ash-glaze onshoulders. H. 18.5 (7.3) D. 23 (9.1). Shosoin,Todaiji, Nara.42 Landscape with figures: plectrum guard ofbiwa lute. Before 756. Shitan wood decoratedwith marquetry. H. 38.6 (15.2) L. 17.7 (6.7).Shosoin, Todaiji, Nara.43 Map of Todaiji, precincts (detail). 756. Inkand light colours on hemp. H. 297 (1 16.9) W. 221(87). Shosoin, Todaiji, Nara.44 Womb Mandala (detail). Heian period, 859—880. Ink and colours on silk. H. 183.3 (72 - 2)W. 154 (60.6). Toji, Kyoto.45 Amida on a cloud: 1 central panel of Amidatriptych. Early nth century. Colours on silk.H. 186.7 (73-5) W. 143.4 (56.5). Hokkeji, Nara.46 Blue Fudo and his doji attendants. Mid-nthcentury. Colours on silk. H. 203.3 (80) W. 148.8(58.6). Shorenin, Kyoto.47 Yakushi Nyorai (detail). Early 9th century.Painted cypress wood. H. 170.3 (67). GoldenHall, Jingoji, Kyoto.48 Shaka Nyorai. Late 9th century. Wood.H. 238 (93.7). Golden Hall, Muroji, Nara.49 View of the Phoenix Hall, Byodoin, Uji,Kyoto, completed in 1053.50 Raigo ofAmida and Celestial Host (detail) frommural in Phoenix Hall. 1053. Colours on wood.H. 75 (29.5). W. 17.5 (8.9). Byodoin, Uji,Kyoto.51 Celestial bodhisattva on a cloud, by the schoolofjocho. 1053. Painted wood. H. c. 50 (c. 19.7).Phoenix Hall, Byodoin, Uji, Kyoto.52 Buddha Amida by Jocho. 1053. Gold leaf andlacquer on wood. H. 295 (116). Phoenix Hall,Byodoin, Uji, Kyoto.53 Suiten (Water Deva), one of twelve. 1127.Colours and gold on silk. H. 144.2 (56.8)W. 126.6 (49.8). Toji, Kyoto.54 Raigo Kannon Bosatsu. 1094. Lacquered andgilded wood. H. 96.7 (38.4). Sokujoji, Kyoto.55 Descent ofAmida over the Mountains. Early 13 thcentury. Hanging scroll, colours and gold onsilk. H. 138 (49) W. 118 (32). Zenrinji, Kyoto.56 Haya raigo of Amida and bodhisattvas. 13thcentury. Hanging scroll, colours and gold onsilk. H. 145.1 (57.1) W. 154.5 (60.8). Chionin,Kyoto.57 Early Spring Landscape, door panel in PhoenixHall. 1053. Painted wood. H. 374.5 (147.4)W. 138.6 (54.6). Byodoin, Kyoto.58 Kashiwagi I, detail from The Tale of Genji.Early 12th century. Handscroll, ink and colourson paper. H. 21.8 (8.6) W. 48.3 (19). TokugawaCollection, Nagoya.59 Ban Dainagon E-kotoba, second of three scrolls.Late 12th century. Ink and colours on paper.Sakai Collection, Tokyo.60 Simian Prelate worshipping Frog Buddha fromthe Chojii Giga scroll I. Late 12th century. Ink onpaper. H. 31 (12.2). Kozanji Collection, Kyoto.61 Hungry Ghosts wait to feast on Feces from theGaki Zosni scroll (Kawamoto version). Late 12thcentury. Ink and colours on paper. H. 27.3(10.7). National Museum, Tokyo.62 Enichi-bo Jonin, Myoe meditating. Early 13thcentury. Hanging scroll, ink ana colours onpaper. H. 145 (57) W. 48.8 (19.2). Kozanji Col-lection, Kyoto.63 Burning of the Sanjo Palace. Detail from theHeiji monogatari handscroll I. Late 13th century.Ink and colours on paper. H.41.3 (16.3)W. 699.7 (275-4)- Courtesy, Museum of FineArts, Boston. Fenollosa-Weld Collection.64 Suzumushi II, detail from The Tale of Genjihandscrolls. Early 12th centurv. Ink and colouron paper. H. 21.8 (8.6) W.482 (19). GotoMuseum, Tokyo.20965 Yakuo Bosatsu Honjibon. Frontispiece to the23rd scroll of the Heike Xogyo. c. 1164. Coloursand kirigane on paper. Itsukushima Shrine,Hiroshima.66 The Flying Granary, detail from the firstShigisan Engi nandscrou. r. 1156-1180. Ink andcolours on paper. H. 31.5 (12.4). Chdgosonshiji,Mt. Shim. Nara.67 Enicni-bo |6nin, Zemmyo transformed into aDragon, detail from the Kegon Engi handscrolls.Early 13th century. Ink and colours on paper.H 31.6 (12.4). Kdzanji, Kyoto.68 Onnade calligraphy ot" Kijohara Fukayabufrom one of the Masu-shikushi set of calligraphiesascribed to Fujiwara no Yukinan. Late nthcentury. Album leaf mounted as shikishi. Ink onpaper H. 13.8 (5.4) W.I 1.8 (4.7). Private collec-tion, japan.69 Calligraphy fragment from the Shigeyukishucollection from the Sanjurokunin ka shu, c. 11 12.Ink on decorated paper. H.20.1 (7.9) W. 31.8Nishi Honganji, Kyoto.70 So (horizontal harp) with flowing stream andsmall birds. 12th century. Lacquered wood withmaki~e. L. 151.9 (59.8). Kasuga-Taisha ShintoShrine. Nara.71 Armour with blue yarns from the Taira clan.12th century. H. 39.5 (15.6). Itsukushima Shrine,Hiroshima.72 L'nkei (d. 1223), Muchaku. 1208-12. Paintedwood. H. [88 ~4 Kofukuji, Nara.73 Furuna, one of Ten Great Disciples. Naraperiod, r. ^34. Painted dry lacquer. H. 149(58.7).Kofukuji, Nara.74 Tankei (U73?-I2S6), Basu-sen (detail). Early13th century. Polychrome painted wood.11 1 >4 ~ (60.9). Myoho-in, Kyoto.75 Tankei (1173^-1256), Mawara-nyo (detail).nth century. Polychrome painted wood.H. 153.7 (60.5). Myoho-in, Kyoto.76 Lanqi Daolong (121 3- 1278) (detail). 1271.Hanging scroll, ink and colours on silk. H. 104.8.V 46.4 (18.3). Kenchdji, Kamakura.77 Fujiwara I akanobu (1 142-1205), The ShogunMinamoto no Yoritomo. Hanging scroll, ink andcolours on silk. H. 139,4 (54) W. in. 8 (44).Jingoji, Kyoto.78 Uoshui (active 1334-49). the EmperorHanazono. 1338. Hanging scroll, ink and colourson paper. H.31.2 (12.9) W.97.3 (3«-3)-c hofukuji, Kyoto.79 Mokuan Reien (d. 1345), Fout Sleepers. In-scription by Xiangtu Shaomi. Hanging scroll,ink on paper H 73.4 (28.9) W. 32.4 (l2.8). TheMaeda tkutokukai Collection, Tokyo.80 Gyokuen Bompo (r. [347-r. 1420). OrchidsandRoeks Hanging scroll, ink on paper. H. 106.5W \4 - 1 3 • - Metropolitan Museum oiArt, The Harry G. C. Packard Collection ofAsian Art.81 Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion), Kyoto, 1398.Original destroyed by fire in 1950 and rebuilt in1964.82 Gukei (active 1361-75), White-robed Kannonwith Flanking Landscapes. Hanging scrolls, ink onsilk. H.98.6 (38.8) W. 40.3 (15.9) each. White-robed Kannon in Yamato Bunkaken Collection,Nara. Landscapes in Masuda Collection, Kyoto.83 Rydzen (active mid-i4th century), WhiteHeron. Hanging scroll, ink on paper. H.35.1(13.9) W. 32 (12.6). Nagatake Asamo Collection.84 Penglai, the immortals' isle, arrangement ofseven rocks in the pond garden of Tenryuji,Kyoto, completed by 1265.85 Josetsu (active early 15th century), CatchingCatfish with a Gourd. 1408. Hanging scroll, inkand colours on paper with inscriptions by thirtymonks. H. 111.5 (43.9) W. 76 (29.9). Taizoin,Kyoto.86 Shubun (active 1423-60), Reading in theBamboo Studio (detail). Mid-I5th century. Hang-ing scroll, ink on paper. H. 134.8 (53) W. 33.3(13). National Museum, Tokyo.87 Shokei Tenyu (active 1436-65), Small LakeLandscape. Hanging scroll, ink and colours onpaper. H. 121. 5 (47.8) W. 34.8 (13.7). Fujh Col-lection, Hyogo.88 Reading in the Bamboo Studio (whole). See 86.89 Bunsei (active 1460s), West Lake, inscribed byZuikei Shuho and Ichijo Kanera. Before 1473.Hanging scroll, ink on paper. H. 80.8 (31.8)W. 33.4 (13. 1). Masaki Art Museum, Osaka.90 Soami (d. 1525), Eight Views of the Xiao andXiang, detail of one of the 23 sliding door panels.1509. Ink on paper. H. 174.8 (68.8) W. 140.2(55.2). Daisen-in, Daitokuji, Kyoto.91 Bokusai (d. 1492). Ikkyu Sojun. Before14S1.Hanging scroll, ink and colours on paper. H. 46(17) W. 26.5 (10). National Museum, Tokyo.92 Sesshu Toy6 (1420- 1506), Landscape (detail),inscribed by Ryoan Keigo in 1507. Hangingscroll, ink and light colours on paper. H. 119(46.9) W. 35.3 (13.9). Ohara Kenichiro Collec-tion, Osaka.93 Soen (active 1489- 1500), Haboku landscape.Late 15th or early 16th century. Ink on paper.Ando Collection, Tokyo.94 Toshun (active first half of the 15th century),livening Snow from Eight Views of the Xiao andXiang. Hanging scroll, ink on paper. H. 22 (8.7)W. 31.7 (12.5). Masaki Art Museum, Osaka.95 Sesson Shukei (c. 1504-89), Hawk on Pine.Mid-i6th century. One of pair ot hangingscrolls, ink on paper. H. 126.5 (49.9) W. 53.6(21. 1). National Museum, Tokyo.96 Sesson Shukei (c. 1504-89), Landscape in Wind.210Hanging scroll, ink on paper. H. 27.3 (10.8)W. 78.6 (18.8) (painting only). Sanso Collection,U.S.A.97 Dry landscape garden in Ryoanji, Kyoto,constructed in the 1480s. Japan Tourist Organ-isation.98 Kano Eitoku (1 543-1 590), Pine and Crane.1566. Sliding door panels, ink on paper. H. 176(69.3). Jukoin, Daitokuji, Kyoto.99 Himeji castle, Hyogo Prefecture, built late16th century.100 Great Pine murals in the Great Hall ofNinomaru Goten, attributed to Kano Tanyu(1602-74). 1624-26. Ink and colours on gold-foiled paper panels. Nijo Castle, Kyoto.101 Kano Sanraku (1559- 163 5), White Peonies(detail). Early 17th century. Sliding door panel,colours and impasto on gold foil. H. 184.5 (72.6)W. 99 (40). Daitokuji, Kyoto.102 Kano Tanyu (1602-74), Night Fishing withCormorants. Mid- 17th century. A six-fold screenin ink, colours and gold. Okura Bunkazaidan,Tokyo.103 Tosa school, Landscape with Sun and Moon(detail). Mid-i6th century. Panels 2-5 of theright-hand screen. Double six-fold screen, ink,colours and gold on paper. Each H. 147 (57.8)W. 316 (124.4). Kongoji, Osaka.104 {left), 105 (right) Kaiho Yusho (1 533-161 5),Pine and Plum by Moonlight. Late 16th century. Apair of six-panel screens, ink and slight colour onpaper. Each H. 169 (66.5) W. 353 (139). Collec-tion, Atkins Museum of Fine Art, Kansas City,U.S.A.106 (left), 107 (right) Hasegawa Tohaku (1539-1610), Pine Forest. Late 16th century. A pair ofsix-panel screens, ink on paper. Each H. 156(61.4) W. 347 (136.6). National Museum,Tokyo.108 (left), 109 (right) Tawaraya Sotatsu (active1602-40?), Matsushima (Pine Island). Early 17thcentury. Double six-fold screen, ink, colours andgold on paper. H. 166 (59.8) W. 367.7 (141. 3).Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institu-tion, Washington D.C.no Tanaka Chojiro (1516-92), Katsujishi, rakuware tea-bowl. 16th century. Black slip glaze.H. 8.8 (3.5) Diam. 10.9 (4.3). Mingei-kan Folk-craft Museum, Kyoto.Ill (exterior), 1 12 (interior) Sen no Rikyu (1521-91), Myokian, teahouse. 1582. Myokian, Kyoto.113 Yomei-mon (Sunlight Gate), Toshogu.Early 17th century. Nikko, Tochigi. Japan Tour-ist Organization.114 Katsura, detached imperial villa and garden.1642. Tochigi.115 Portuguese Missionaries and Traders arriving inJapan, c. 1600. Namban (southern barbarians)folding screen, ink, colours and gold on paper.H. 157.5 (62) W. 367 (144.5). Victoria and AlbertMuseum, London.116 Small dish in nezumi Shino glaze with whiteslip painting of wagtail on rock. Momoyamaperiod, 16th— 17th century. H. 8.9 (3.5) D. 26.8(10.6). Agency for Cultural Affairs, Tokyo.117 Kogan (Ancient Shore) water-jar in Shinoware. Momoyama period, 1 6th- 17th century.H. 17.5 (6.9) D. 19.2 (7.6). Hatakeyama Kinen-kan Museum, Tokyo.118 Yabure-Bukuro (Torn Pouch) water-jar, Igaware. Momoyama period, late 16th, early 17thcentury. Stoneware. H. 21.6 (8.5) D. of rim 15.8(6.2)^ Goto Museum, Tokyo.119 Ogata Kenzan (1663-1743), five small plates.Edo period, early 1 8th century. White slip andrust glaze, decorated with grey and gold pig-ment. Each H. 2.4 (0.9) D. 11 (4.3). Nezu Insti-tute of Fine Arts, Tokyo.120 Nabeshima ware plate with design of flower-ing buckwheat. Early 19th century. Overglazeenamels on porcelain. H. 9.1 (3.6) D. 30 (1 1.8).121 Old Imari ware sake bottle depicting Euro-peans. Edo period, 17th century. Porcelain.H. 56 (22). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Giftof Ralph King.122 Lacquered wooden chest with floral inlay ofmother-of-pearl and metal, ivory handles. Early17th century. H. 30.5 (12) W. 42.6 (16.8) D. 26.7(10.5). Victoria and Albert Museum, London.123 (left), 124 (right) Ogata Korin (1658-1 716),Irises. Early 1 8th century. Double six-foldscreen, colours on gold foil over paper. EachH. 151.2 (59.5) W. 360.7 (142). Nezu ArtMuseum, Tokyo.125 Hon'ami Koetsu (1 558—1637), Boat Bridge,writing-box. Early 17th century. Inkstone case,lead and mother-of-pearl on gold lacquer.H. 1 1.8 (4.6) W. 24.2 (9.5) D. 22.7 (8.9). Nation-al Museum, Tokyo.126 Waves and Wheel of Life lacquer handbox.Heian period, 12th century. Gold and mother-of-pearl inlay. H. 13 (5.1) W. 22.5 (8.9) L.30.5(12). National Museum, Tokyo.127 Hon'ami Koetsu (1 558-1637), Fujisan (Mt.Fuji), raku ware tea-bowl. Momoyama period,early 17th century. D. n. 6 (4.6). Sakai Tadam-asa Collection, Tokyo.128 Furuta Oribe (1 543-161 5), Kuro OribtChawan, tea-bowl. Momoyama period, late16th, early 17th century. H. 8.5 (3.4) D. 15 (5.9).Umezawa Memorial Museum, Tokyo.129 Hon'ami Koetsu (1 558-1637) (calligraphy)and Tawaraya Sotatsu (1602-40?) (painting),Flowers and Grasses of the Four Seasons (detail).Momoyama period, early 17th century. Poemhandscroll, ink, silver and gold on paper. H. 33.721 I(13 -3) W. 924 i (363.8). Hatakeyama KmenkanMuseum, Tol130 Ogata Korin, Flowers and Grasses, c. 1705.I ramea handscroll, ink, colours and white pig-ment on Paper. H. 36 (14.2) W. 131 (51.6).Private collection.131 Yosa Buson (1716—83), Pine Tree at Karasaki.Detail with Weatherworn Traveller. 1778. Hand-scroll now mounted on six-told screen, ink andcolours on paper Hamaguchi Gihei Collection,Chiba.132 rawaraya Sdtatsu (active 1602-40?), Lotusand Swimming Birds. Early 17th century. Hangingscroll, ink on paper. H. 116.5 (45) W. 50.3 (20).National Museum. Kyoto.U3 Ogata Kenzan (1663- 1743), Waterfall, tea-bowl Early 18th century. White slip glaze andrust painting. H. 8 (}.z) I). 10.3 (4.1). Privatecollection.134 Kobayashi Kokei (1883- 1957), Fruit. Early20th century. Hanging scroll, mineral pigmentson paper. Yamatane Museum of Art, Tokyo.135 1 okuoka Shinsen (1896-1972), Stream. 1954.Colours on paper. H. 133.4 (52.5) W. 177.3Private collection.ij6 lnkstone box with yatsu hashi design byOgata Korin (1658-1716). Edo period, 1 8thcentury. H. 14.2 (5.6) L. 27.4 (10.8) W. 19.7(7.8). National Museum, Tokyo.137 Peacock kosode (short-sleeved robe) (detail).Edo period, Gold thread repoussee and em-broidery.138 Ha wk and Dragon, courtesan's kosode. Edoperiod, early 19th century, (iold and lame onblack velvet. National Museum, Tokyo.139 Rooster and Flowering Tree. Meni period, late[Oth century. Cotton panel, probably a bed-cover, resist-dyed on an indigo ground,mounted as a double screen. H. 146 (57.5) W. 125(49.2). Collection of the Art Gallery of GreaterVictoria. Canada.140 Ikeno I aiga (1723-76), Pine Tree and Waves.1765—70$. One of double six-panel screen,light colours on paper. H. 58.5 (2}) W. 118.9(46.8).141 Yosa Buson (1716-83), Sumo Wrestling,inscribed with haiku verses by Buson. Mid-i8thcentury. Hanging scroll, ink and light colours onpaper H. 26l (102.8) W.22.8 (9). Private collec-tion. Japan.142 Uragami Gyokudo (1745-1820), High Windsand Banking Geese. Album leaf from Kokiti Yojijo.Ink and light colours on paper. H.31 (12.2)\V 25(9.8). rakemoto Collection, Aichi.143 Aoki Mokubei 1 Birthday Felicita-tions. [830. Hanging scroll, ink and light colourson sum Hi- tsu Collec-tion. Kanaeawa.144 Maruyama Okyo (1733-95), SketchesofCicadas (detail) from Sketchbook of Insects. Mid-19th century. Ink and light colours on paper. Sizeof sketchbook H. 26.7 (10.5) W. 19.4 (7.6). Na-tional Museum, Tokyo.145 Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754-99), The Itsukushi-ma Shrine, fifth view of Eight Views of Miyajima(Hiroshima). 1794. Album leaf, ink and colourson silk. H. 34.5 (13.6) W.46.5 (18.3). YasudaChuzo Collection, Hiroshima.146 Ito Jakuchu (1 716- 1800), Phoenix and WhiteElephant. Mid-i8th century. One of pair of six-fold screens, ink and colour impasto on paper.H. 176 (69.3) W. 376 (148). National Museum,Tokyo.147 Gibon Sengai (1750- 1837), Frog and Snail.Early 19th century. Hanging scroll, ink onpaper. H. 35.1 (13.8) W. 52.7 (20.7). Sanso Col-lection, California.148 Enku (1628-95), Sho Kannon Bosatsu. Late17th century. Unpainted wood. H. 157. 1 (61.9).Seihqji, Gifu.149 Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768), Daruma(Bodhidharma). 1751. Hanging scroll, ink onpaper. H. 222.8 (87.7) W. 36.5 (14.3). Shqjuji,Aichi.150 Shijo-Kawara (detail). Early 17th century.One of pair of bi-fold screens, colours on goldpaper. H. 152.2 (59.9) W. 157.2 (61.9). SeikadoCollection, Tokyo.151 Kano Naganobu (1577- 1654), Dancing underthe Cherry Trees (detail). Early 17th century. Oneof pair of six-fold screens, colours on paper.H. 149 (58.7) W. 348 (137). National Museum,Tokyo.152 Suzuki Harunobu (1724-70), Viewing MapleLeaves by the Waterfall. Late 1760s. 'Brocadeprint' (chuban nishiki-e). H. 27.6 (10.9) W. 20.4(8).153 Kitagawa Utamaro (1754- 1806), The Co-quettish Type from the series Ten PhysiognomicTypes of Women. Early 1790s. Polychromewoodblock print. H. 37.9 (14.9) W. 24.4 (9.6).154 Sharaku (active 1794-95), Sakata Hangoro IIIas the Villain Mizuyemon, from Hana-ayame Bun-roku Soga. 1794. Polychrome woodblock print,with a mica-dusted background. Art Institute ofChicago.155 Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), View on aFine Breezy Day, from Thirty-Six I 'iews ofMountFuji, 1822-32. Polychrome woodblock print.H. 25.5 (10) L. 38 (15). Sekai-kyusei-kyo Collec-tion, Atami Museum, Shizuoka.156 Ando Hiroshige (1797- 1858), Snow at Kam-bara from Fifty-Six Stations of the Tokaido. 1833.Polychrome woodblock print. H. 24.2 (9.5)W. 36.7 (14.5).157 Kuroda Seiki (1866- 1924), Lake Shore. 1897.212Oil on canvas. H. 68 (26.8) L. 83.3 (32.8). Na-tional Institute of Art Research, Tokyo.158 Hishida Shunso (1874-1910), Fallen Leaves.Right-hand screen of double six-fold pair, col-ours on paper. Each H. 156.2 (61.5) W. 365(143.8). Courtesy of the Eiseibunko Museum,Tokyo.159 Maeda Seison (188 5- 1977), Lion DancerAwaiting Cue. 1955. Painting inlaid in wall,mineral pigments on gold foiled paper. H. 159.5(62.8) W. 201.5 (79-3)- Hall of the Lion Dance,Imperial Palace Collection, Tokyo.160 Fukuda Heihachiro (1892- 1972), VirginSnow. 1948. Colours on silk. H. 113 (44.5)W. 81.9 (32.3). Private collection.161 Higashiyama Kaii (b. 1908), Rhythm ofSnowCountry. 1963. Colour on paper. H. 156.2 (61.5)L. 213 (84). National Theatre, Tokyo.162 Munakata Shiko (1908-75), The Visit fromUto no Hanga saku. 1938. Ink monochromewoodblock print. H. 25.4 (10) W. 28.7 (1 1.3).163 Olympic stadium in Tokyo, designed byTange Kenzo (b. 19 13). 1964. Reinforced steel,concrete.164 Nagare Masayuki (b. 1923), Flight. 1970. 400tons of black Swedish granite. World TradeCentre, New York. Photo courtesy of Bank ofAmerica.165 Yagi Kazuo (1919-1979), Letter. 1964. Blackburnished clay. H. 28.5 (1 1.2) L. 41 (16) W. 10.5(4-1).166 Kan Makiko (b. 1933), Uraurato tereru ham hini. 1977. Hanging scroll, ink on coloured andspeckled ryoshi paper. H. 37 (14.6) W. 33 (13).Collection the author.167 Morita Shiryu (b. 1912), En (Round). 1967.Ink on paper H. 69 (27.2) W. 91 (35.8). PrivateCollection, Japan.213IndexFigures in italit refet to illustration numbersAmida, cull til 63-8, 60-77; see alsoByddo-in; Pure Land paradisepaintingAndo Hiroshige 190. 150Aoki Mokubei 176-7, 145archicecture 12. 27-9. 31-3. 4 (,). SO, 62.69, 80. 148-52. 198-9. 4, is, 16, ;-.15, jo, 49. 111-14, '6jarmour 106. ;jAsai Ryoi 186ashidt (hidden writing) 86, 105Ashikaga Yoshitnasa 130Ashikaga Yoshimitsu 116-17, 122Asuka period 30-40; architecture 31-3. i'. painting 33-5. 18, 19: sculp-ture 36-40. 21-t. tapestry 35, 20Azucht-Momoyama see Edo periodbaltuju 94. 10SBan Ddhtagon E-kotoba 80. 87, 94. 96.Bizen ware s6. 155, 2Bokusai 131. 91Bompo t( Gyokuen Bompoboneless painting 163—4. 170. 129bronze: doiaku 20, 10. mirrors 20. 14,Sillan 24. statues 37, 40-3. 21, 27-9swords 20brushwork 10, B6-7. 90. 129. 180Buddhism 30-1. 36, 45-6. S9-62.112-14. 192. architecture 31-3. 46,/ 1 ban) I 12-22. 124.Amida, cull ofBuncho tee I am Bunchobunjinso (literati monks) n6, 119Bunsei -burial mounds 22-6. 1 1busk-idBuson -. 149-50. I53-8, 163. 201Chen Hoqing 108Chinese influence 7-13. 5°; in archi-tecture 50, 62, 69, 80; in bronze 20;in calligraphy 9-10, 34, 96-9, 102,104; in ceramics 54-5; in gardens122; in painting 9, 34, 57-8. 77, 80.116. 117-18, 121, 125, 129-31, 132,142, 145-6; in sculpture 40-2, 63,108-9chinzd portraiture 113Chqjiro see Tanaka ChojiroChoju Gi$a (Frolicking Animals) 88,60chokkomon design 26, 14chonin (lower merchant class) 167, 170Christianity 153Confucianism 45, 59, 172-3, 191contraposto 44, 1 10, 72cunfa (texture strokes) 78daimyo (provincial lords), 152, 153-4Dannoura, battle of 106Dogen 1 12Dunhuang cave paintings 44, 62'Dutch learning' 153, 181dyes: batik 172; ikat 171-2; resist 55.172ebushi 86Edo period 138-90; architecture 148-52. 4, 111-14. calligraphy 160. 163-4. 125. 129, 155; ceramics 149-50,154-8, 163. no, 116-21, 12--S;murals 138-42, 144-8. 100: painting165-70, 172-86, 1U, 140--, 149-.sj; prints 186-90. /s^-6; textiles170-2. 137-9Egami Yasushi 102-3hisai 1 12Eitoku see Kano Eitokuemaki-mono see handscroll painting'emotive cloud' 78-80. 129-31. 145.193. 57, 90, 104-5Emchi-bo Jonin 91-2. 109. 62, 67Enku 182. 198. 14*eshi 44. 80. 86European contacts 153. 158. 191FenoDosa, Ernest 192-3figurines 17-18, 23—4, ?Fontein. Jan 113foreign influences 7-8; Central Asian24, 44, 55; Indian 44, 63; Korean 20,24. 30-1, 33-6, 44, 98. 121, 153-4.156; Middle Eastern 57; Persian 24,33, 54; prehistoric 24; Scythian 24;Scytho-Siberian 33, 36-7; Siberian19; Sino-Tibetan 62; Western 153,177, 1 8 1-2, 191 -2, 200-1; see alsoChinese influence; Koguryo in-fluence; Paekche influenceFour Sleepers by Mokuan 116, 79Fudo Myo-6 (Acalanatha) 63, 66, 46Fujianese culture 173-4, 180Fujiwara clan 68, 77, 80, 99, 116Fujiwara no Michinaga 68-9Fujiwara Takanobu 1 14-15, 77fitkitiuki yatai (bird's-eye perspective)77, 82, 102. 58, 64Fukuda Heihachiro 195-6. levFukukenjaku Kannon of Sangatsudo47. 63, 31Furuna 1 10. 73Furuta Oribe 153. 163. 128Ganjin (Jianzhen) 53, 196, s_?gardens 122-3. 1 36—7. 84, 07Getiji, The Tale 0/80-3. 84. 86. 87, 92.94. 102, 58, 64, 81, 96genre painting 185. 186. 150-1Genroku period 156, 167Genshin 66Gibbon Sengai 182. i4~Gisho (I-sang) 92gokuraku (paradise) sculpture 73, .^Gosenshu 79Goshin 115, 78Go-Shirakawa. Emperor 95. 115Great Buddha of Todaiji 46. 4S. 57,108. 54guilds 44Guze Kannon 37. 22Gyokudo see Uragami GyokudoGyokuen Bompo 118-20. 80luboku (splattered ink) technique 132.92-3liakubyd painting B4, sS. 60Hakuho period 40-5: murals 44-5-sculpture 40-4. 27-30Hakuin Ekaku 182. iyV 149Hanazono. Emperor 11 5- 16. 115214handscroll painting 80-90, 92-6, 193,58-61, 63-5haniwa 23-4,25, 12Harunobu see Suzuki HarunobuHasegawa Tohaku 146-7, 193, 106-7Heian period 9-10, 63-73, 77-9°, 96-105; calligraphy 96-105, 68-9; gar-dens 122-3, 84; handscrolls 80-90,58-60; lacquers 105, 70; motif revi-val 165-6; religious art 63-78, 45-8,50-6; secular painting 77-8, 57Heian-kyo (Kyoto) 59Heiji monogatari 95, 65Heike Sogyo 84-5, 165, 65Hickman, Money 113Hideyoshi see Toyotomi HideyoshiHigashiyama Kaii 196, 161hikime kagihana (line-eye hook-nose)technique 82, 83, 87, 58-9, 64Himeji castle 138, 99hira maki-e (lacquer technique) 105hiragana script 84, 99, 202Hiroshige see Ando HiroshigeHishida Shunso 193, 156Hishikavva Moronobu 186Hokkeji, triptych 68, 73, 45Hokqji 3 1Hokusai see Katsushika HokusaiHon'ami Koetsu 159-64, 125, 127, 129Horyuji temple 32-40 passim, 58, 17;murals 43, 44-5, 33; sculptures 42-4, 21-6, 28-30; Tamamushi shrine33-5, 18-19; tapestry 35, 20Hungry Ghosts scroll 90, 61Ienaga Saburo 200Ieyasu see Tokugawa IeyasuIga ware 155-6. 118ikeno Taiga 174-5, 140Ikkyu Sqjun 13 1-2, 91impasto (encrusted pigment) 138, 193Imari ware 156-8, 121immigrant artists: Chinese 30-1, 44,122; Korean 30-1, 44inkwash painting 145-7, 104-5, 106-7Ise Jingu 27-9, 16Itojakuchu 179-81, 146Itsukushima Shrine 85, 145Izumo Taisha 27, 15Jakuchu see ItojakuchuJapanese assimilation: see Buddhism;Chinese influences; Confucianism;foreign influencesJapanese (language) 98jataka 34, 18Jocho 68-73, 108, 52Jogan sculpture 63, 47-8Jomon period 15-19; ceramics 15-17,6; engraving 17; figurines 17-18, 7;stone circles 18-19, 8Josetsu 124, 85Kabuki actors 188-9Kaiho Yusho 145-6, 104, 105Kakiemon ware 158Kamakura period 73-7, 90-6, 108-16;handscroll painting 90-1, 92-6, 61,63-5; lacquers 105; portraiture 114-16, 77-8; religious painting 73-7,55-6; sculpture 108-12, 72-5Kammu, Emperor 59, 60Kan Makiko 166kana calligraphy 77, 81, 102, 104, 164,197Kanrion of the Thirty-Three Manifes-tations 85Kannon, Horyuji 40, 26Kannon, Kinryuji 40Kano Eitoku 138, 98Kano Naganobu 151Kano Sanraku 139, 101Kano Tanyu 138, 140-2, 174, 100, 102Kano school of painting, 146, 177, 180Kara-e 80Kashiwagi / 81, 82, 58katakana calligraphy 199, 202Katsura villa 150-2, 114Katsushika Hokusai 90, 188-9, 155Kawase Hasui 197Keene, Donald 79Kegon School 91-2Kegon Engi 92, 94, 67Kei school of sculptors 73, 108-12,72-5Kenzan see Ogata Kenzankilns 156Ki no Tomonori 79Kinkaku (Golden Pavilion) 122kirigane decorative technique 84, 102Kitagawa Utamaro 187-8, 153Kiyohara no Fukayabu 99Kiyonaga see Torn KiyonagaKobayashi Kokei 193-4, '34Koetsu see Hon'ami KoetsuKofukuji 108, 109, noKofun period 22-6; ceramics 24;equestrian culture 24, 36; haniwa 23-4, 12; motifs 26, 14; tombs, early 22,11; tombs, later 24-6, 13Koguryo influence 31, 35-6, 37-8, 47,20-3, 31Kokei see Kobayashi KokeiKokei 109Korean folkware 153-4Korin see Ogata KonnKoryuji (Hachioka-dera) 39Kozanji painting style 91, 62kubon raigo-zu 74, 77Kukai 60, 62kumogata see 'emotive cloud'Kuni-naka Muraji Kimimaro 47kun-yomi ideographic system 98Kuroda Seiki 191, 157Kuya 66lacquers 12, 55, 105, 160, 169, 125,126, 136; techniques 105Lane, Richard 190Lanqi Daolong 1 13-14, 76Leach, Bernard 156Liang Kai style 124Lotus Sutra 31. 60, 85-6, 65machishu (upper merchant class) 142.152, 163, 165, 170; art of 142-4,159-70, 103, 119, 123-9, 130, /?ee Sen no Rikyunmpa style 118, 146, 165-70, 177, 104-5, 119, 123-4, >3°, 132~3, 136rokudo-e (painting of the six paths) 90Rosetsu tee Nagasawa RosetsuRydanji, rock garden 136-7, 971 22, 83ryumi design 20, 10Saicho 59-60Sakaki Hyakusen 174Sakamoto Hanjiro 9sakm (creative innovation) 152, 163samurai 106, 112, 173, 175Sanjurokunin ka $mt 103, 69Sansom, Sir George 63Satsuma ware 1 56sculpture 16-44. 46-53, 63, 69-70, 73,108-12, 199Sci Shonagon, Lady 83Seicho 109Seison see Maeda SeisonSen no Rikyu 148—50, 111, 112Sengai see (nbbon SengaiSesshu royo 124 131, 132, 92Sesson Shukei 134—41, 95, 96Sesson Yiibai 1 16Scti) ware 1 S4Shaka Nyorai of Muroji 63, 47Sharaku 188, 154Shen Nanping style 180Shiba Ton 37-8, 21, 22; style 38, 42,shigajiku (poem painting) 124Shigisan Engi 86, 87, 92, 94, 96, 66shikishi (poem mounting) 102, 163Shingon (Mantra) School 60-3Shinkei 14Shino ware 154-5, 116, 117Shinto religion 22, 27-9, 63, 106, 192;architecture 27-9, 50, 15-16, 36Shogunal rule 108Shokei Tenyu 125, 87Shomu, Emperor 45, 46, 48, 51, 53Shosoin repository 46, 53-6, 38-43Shotoku, Prince 31-2, 35-6, 98Shubun 124-5, 173. M, 88Shuko 148shukuzu (reduced pictures) 141Silla 24, 33, 40, 92single-block sculpture 73Soami 129-31, 138, 173, 90Soen 132-4, 93Soga clan 31Sotatsu see Tawaraya Sotatsusprinkled pigment technique see 'emo-tive cloud'stone dolmens 24, 37, 13Suiten (Water Deva) 73, 53Suzuki Harunobu 186-7, 152Suzumushi I 82, 83, 64swords 54, 106, 39Tai-an 148, 150, 112Taiga see Ikeno TaigaTaika Reform 40Taira (Heike) clan 85, 95, 106, 108Taira no Kiyomori 85Taira no Shigemon 106taka maki-e (lacquer technique) 105Takagamine colony 159-60Takanobu see Fujiwara TakanobuTale o/Genji, The see Genji, The TaleofTamehisa 109Tanaka Chojiro 149, 110Tang ware 56Tange Kenzo 198-9, 163Tani Buncho 18 1-2Tankei 1 10-12, 74, 75Tanyu see Kano Tanyutapestry 30-1, 35, 20tarashikomi (painting technique) 164,167, 170Tawayara Sotatsu 144, 163-7, 108-9,132tea ware 149-50, 154-5. no, 116. 127Tea, Way ofn, 148-9, 153-4; archi-tecture 148-52, 154-8, 111-12Tempyo period 45-58; painting 57-8,38; sculpture 46-53, 31-2, 37; secu-lar objects 53-6, 38-41Tenyu see Shokei Tenyutextiles 55, 170-2, 137-9; see also dyesTodaiji temple 46-7, 48, 50, 53, 59,91, 108, 109Tohaku see Hasegawa TohakuTokugawa Ieyasu 152, 159Tokugawa Shogunate 152-3, 158-9,172, 184, 191Tokuoka Shinsen 196, 135Ton school 38Torii Kiyonaga 187Tosa school 143, 181, 103Toshodaiji temple 47-8, 50-1, 12. ?s-6Toshun 134, 94Toyotomi Hideyoshi 139, 148, 152tsukuri-e (colouring technique) 84, 86,87, 102Ue Gukei 121, 82ukiyo-e 118, 179, 181, 185-90Umehara Sueji 23Unkei 108, 109-10, 72Uragami Gyokudo 175-6, 142Utamaro see Kitagawa Utamarowaka poetry 99, 103-4, !50, 160Wakakusadera 31Wang Xizhi 54, 159war tales 92-6, 63warihagi (sculpting technique) 73Water Deva (Suiten) of Toji 73, 53Xia Gui style 9, 125, 129, 132, 142Yagi Kazuo 201, 165Yakushi Healing Buddha 37, 22Yakushi Nyorai ofJingoji 63, 4#Yakushi Triad 40. 42, 27Yamato-e 57, 77-80, 86, 103, 142-3,146, 147Yanagisawa Taka 62Yayoi period 19-21; ceramics 19-20,9; metalware 20, 10; motifs 20, 103Yoga style 191, 192, 157Yosa Buson 175, 131, 141yosegi (sculpting technique) 73Yoshida Hiroshi 198Yujian style 121, 132, 134. 142Zen see Buddhism2l6BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY3 9999 02599 598 4Boston Public LibraryBRIGHTONBRANCH LIBRARYThe Date Due Card in the pocket indi-cates the date on or before which thisbook should be returned to the Library.Please do not remove cards from thispocket.H-T^,Japanese ArtJoan Stanley-Baker. 167 illustrations, 20 in colorThe uniqueness ofJapanese culture rests on the factthat, throughout its history, Japan has continually taken,adapted and transformed diverse influences, whetherfrom Korea, China, the South Seas, Europe or America,into distinct traditions of its own. This book surveysauthoritatively and provocatively the arts ofJapan fromthe prehistoric period to the present, bringing togetherthe results of the most recent research on the subject.Profusely illustrated with examples from all the arts —painting, calligraphy, the decorative arts and architectureand with a wide-ranging bibliography, Japanese Artaddresses itself equally to those who come to the subjectfor the first time and to the student: it is a concise yetthought-provokingly argued overview of a fascinatingbut perplexing culture, in which interest has never beengreater than it is today.Thames and HudsonOn the cover:Scene from The Tale of Genji:probably painted by SumiyoshiHiromichi 17th centuryBritish Museum, LondonPrinted in JapanFPT ISBN D-SDD-SDnE-7 >>*^%'H. 22 cm.Mid-Yayoi.10 Dotaku ritual bronze bell. H. 44.8 cm. Late Yayoi. (Note the similar shape of theKofun tomb below.)11Aerial view of the thrice-moated 'keyhole' tumulus ofEmperor Nintoku.Kofun.-m%,^->- xdependence on the land and the weather. The robust, surface-orientedsculptural forms of the Jomon hunter give way to more stately, noblevessels more demonstrative of the potter's craft: exterior shape conformsto interior space, and the decoration is simple and understated. Quietdignity is achieved through purified forms.Compared to the previous Jomon or subsequent Kofun cultures, theYayoi seem to have been particularly civilized, peaceful and refined, usingadvanced technology to bring about a rise in living standards and tocontribute to a religious consciousness which seems more rational andserene than in other periods. It is in the time of the Yayoi that a preferencefor artistic purity, in both form and decoration, first appears. This purityis the quintessential expression of Shinto (Way of the Gods), the spiritualbelief and practice which is thought to have developed about this time.The kami or super-consciousness is thought to reside everywhere: inancient trees, in enormous boulders, in elevated wooden shrines plainlymade and without decoration. The love of unadorned materials andpristine freshness, those fundamental attributes ofJapanese art, first foundexpression in the Yayoi period.The Kofun period (300-600 ad)The third and last prehistoric period is named after its characteristictumuli, or Kofun: huge, mounded tombs, at first round, then keyhole-shaped.The earlier tombs, found in many areas, from southern Kyushu tonorthern Tohoku, number in the thousands. The earliest of all areconcentrated in the Yamato Plains, and continue the traditions of Yayoiculture. (It may even be argued that the early Kofun tombs are actually anextension of Yayoi burial practice. The use of cosmic mirrors, forexample, is common to both.) The grandest tombs of all are close in timeand are not found inland, but on the Kawachi Plain in Osaka Prefecture,near the Inland Sea. They are Imperial mausolea, and the finest of them,such as those of the Emperors Ojin (reigned c. 346-95) and Nintoku(reigned c. 395-427) are situated by the port, suggesting that these earlyrulers had come into Japan from the continent, via northern Kyushu,advancing along the Inland Sea to the Kinai region, where they settled.11The largest mausoleum is that of the Emperor Nintoku. It consists of arounded, keyhole-shaped mound with trapezoidal elevations in front(thought to have been a ritual altar). If we include the three surroundingmoats, the total length of the tomb is 480 metres, and at its highest pointthe mound rises to 35 metres. The area is 110,950 square metres (about22458 acres); the total volume 1,405, 866 cubic metres. The archaeologistUmehara Sueji has calculated that if one person could move about onecubic metre of earth a day, it would have taken 1000 people, workingdaily, four years to complete the mound.A characteristic feature of Kofun tombs is pottery figures called haniwa.These first appeared (as jars with stands) in the Okayama region facing theInland Sea; later (in the fourth century) they became cylindrical and wereplaced 'on guard' around the central area of each tomb; later still theywere placed in concentric circles enclosing an earthen platform at whosecentre was the pottery house, thought to be the abode of the dead person'ssoul, and also surrounded by pottery shields and ceremonial sunshades.At the end of the fourth century, haniwa became anthropomorphic,hollow figures dressed in minutely detailed costumes. During the sixthcentury animals (chickens, horses, wild boar, deer, dogs, cats, cattle andfish) were added. These were placed in rows facing outwards, aboveground; the sacred central area was reserved for birds, boats and houses,#r12 Haniwa figure: farmer carryingplough blade. H. 92 cm. Excavated froma tomb. Late Kofun.presumably linked symbolically with the transport of the soul to its finalresting-place.12 The human haniwa figures - many with deep-set eyes and abundantcurly hair, suggesting a race distinctly non-Japanese - give a fascinatingglimpse of the society which created them. They include falconers,grooms, farmers, soldiers in armour, priestesses, ladies of the court, andmusicians and dancers posed as if performing for the deceased.From the fifth century onwards, Kofun artefacts begin to suggest thepresence of a new, equestrian and military culture. (It is as yet un-named,and has no specific terminal dates; but the evidence of the artworksuggests that it was authoritarian and martial, distinctly at variance withthe agrarian and peaceable society of Yayoi and early Kofun.) It sharesfeatures with the contemporary Silla culture of Southern Korea, andmany types of artefacts appear on both sides o{ the Tsushima Straits.There are gilt-bronze accoutrements of the mounted archer: crownsadorned with 'branches' from which hang golden leaves and magatamajewels, bronze stirrups, openwork pommels and peaked golden helmets;even domestic objects like mirrors and bracelets are often adorned withhorsebells. A bronze crown is surmounted by horses in silhouette, and byjingling leaf-discs. Finally there is the Silla/Sueki ware, a thin, high-fired,dark pottery in metallic forms with jingling attachments. (There arestylistic affinities here with Scythian and Central Asian cultures: not onlythe tree-imagery and the openwork design, but motifs like the gryphonand palmette, imported from even further west. The enormous range oftrade as far as the Middle East is shown by the presence, in one sixth-century tomb, of a glass bowl made in Persia.)A striking late Kofun development in Kyushu was the dolmen type of13 tomb, whose stone-lined inner chambers had decorated walls andsometimes contained stone sarcophagi decorated with incised or painteddesigns. (The colours are red hematite, black charcoal, yellow ochre,white china clay and green chlorite.) The earliest of these tombs (those inthe centre of present-day Kumamoto) are decorated with red and blackdiamond patchwork. Later, painted tombs appeared over a wider area;those in the northern area of Fukuoka are decorated with the figures ofhorses, grooms, birds and boats as well as with the magic spirals andconcentric circles found elsewhere. Large drawings of quivers, and doubleC-coils, are prominent, as are the horses, birds and boats associated withthe soul's last journey.The most striking image which can be associated with the Kofun periodis the decorative motif known as the chokkomon (kstraight-lines-and-arcs').This consists of a series of broken arcs drawn over opposed diagonals or2413 Takewara dolmen wall painting of man leading a horse. Late Kofun.i14 Bronze mirror showing chokkomon design. 5th century.Ucrosses, and was apparently made using compasses and a ruler. Thechokkomon design is found in places and on objects associated with burial:incised, for example, on the walls of tombs and sarcophagi, or part of thedecoration of haniwa quivers and bronze mirrors. It is one of the first ofthose striking conjunctions o{ straight and curved lines which becamesuch a prominent feature of later Japanese art.26CHAPTER THREEAsuka and Nara (552-794)Shinto shrinesThe religious practice of the early Japanese was based on a profound senseof awe for natural manifestations such as sun, water, trees, rocks, soundand silence. Man's response to these phenomena was to purify himself andto identify sacred precincts. Much later this practice was named Shinto(Way of the Gods), to distinguish it from Buddhism which had enteredJapan in the sixth century, bringing with it a full panoply of architecture,doctrine and indoor ceremonies.Although later Shinto developed its ownarchitecture, art, clergy and forms of ritual, it is essentially an indigenousreligion with neither dogma, scriptures nor form.It seems safe to say that the earliest sacred precincts were places ofparticular beauty, demarcated by rudimentary stone boundaries and bysimple, pre-architectural monuments (such as rock piles surmounted bystones) indicating the places where sacred presences were first sensed.Monuments of this kind still survive in the precincts of the Isejingu. Hereworship took its purest form, in total silence with no ritual. (Constructionof the earliest Shinto shrines seems related to palace architecture of theTumulus period, and is characterized by simplicity of both form andmaterial.) In the Isejingu precinct, a raised-floor building with a giantthatched gable supported by nine huge pillars is reached by an outsideladder, set at a steep angle. (Reconstructions of another ancient site,Izumo Taisha, in western Japan, facing Korea, suggest a particular sense isof mystery and also the intimacy, darkness and warmth associated withthe sacred domain of the spirit or kami. The worshipper climbs a longflight of steps and, once inside the hall, proceeds beyond the central pillarand turns right to the innermost quadrant before reaching the sanctumsanctorum. All this is in marked contrast to the foursquare centrality ofBuddhist architecture, where icon images dominated huge open spaces mstone-paved, ground level monastic halls.)The Isejingu, on the eastern coast, is both the ancestral shrine of the 16imperial family and the national shrine. It has been rebuilt every twentyyears since the reign of Emperor Temmu (reigned 672-686), fifty-nine2715 Izumo Taisha Shinto shrine (rebuilt1744), showing covered stairway (andMain Sanctuary with deep thatch).16 (opposite) Aerial view of Isejingushowing Naiku's two sectors. Sitedates from the 4th century.times altogether by 1973. The space is dominated by two compounds, thewestern Naiku and the eastern Geku, thought to have been first built inthe fourth and late fifth centuries respectively. They are dedicated toAmaterasu Omikami (Heaven-illuminating Great Spirit, the daughter ofIzanagi no Mikoto), traditional ancestor of the imperial house, and toToyoukeno Okami (Great Spirit of Food Abundance and grandson ofIzanagi no Mikoto, provider of the Five Grains). The site is among tallevergreens near the Isuzu River; its cool stillness is broken only by theclatter o{ cleanwashed pebbles underfoot, and it is said to have beenchosen by Amaterasu herself, in an apparition to Princess Yamato early inthe first century AD.Each compound is divided into an eastern and western sector; when onesector is in use, the other is kept empty, white and still, with its ground-covering of pebbles. Each compound is rectilinear, enclosed by fourlayered wooden fences. The buildings are aligned along the central north-south axis, beginning with thatched and gabled gates set into the southernfences. The main sanctuary (or shoden), three bays wide and two baysdeep, is poised aloft on a structure of pillars and surrounded by a coveredveranda. The approach is by a stairway leading to the central bay. Some28elements, such as alignment, the layered enclosure and the metaldecorative accents may be later features incorporated from continentalarchitecture, but distinguishing native characteristics remain: the roofwith its forked finials pointing skywards at either end, the heavy ridgecourse topped by cylindrical, tapered billets laid crosswise along theridge, and the main pillars which are embedded directly in the ground,not set in foundations. The general impression is of abstract design, ofplanes, angles, circles in simple but dynamic interaction. The naturalcolours and textures of the wood and pebbles are not sullied; the effect iswarm; the atmosphere is one of intimacy and awe.In spite of the arrival and dominance of Buddhism, Shinto shrinescontinued to be built in serene woods and beside quiet shores, and werelater often incorporated into Buddhist compounds, representing as theydid local manifestations of universal Buddhist values. Shinto silence, itssimplicity and its direct yet undefined interaction between man and natureor spirits are characteristic Japanese additions to, or modifications of,imported religion, just as the same qualities modify imported art.29Asuka 552-646The introduction of Buddhism, striking as it did at the core ofJapanesespiritual consciousness, exerted a profound and far-reaching effect uponall aspects of Japanese life. The higher presence (or kami), of which theJapanese were so intensely aware, and which possessed no specified formor attribute, now appeared in a plethora ofhuman guises. Principles of thefaith were expounded in Chinese texts and by the clergy; regiments ofmonks and nuns performed minutely prescribed religious functions insidevast halls filled with anthropomorphic statues, illumined with candles andbefogged with incense. The stillness was broken by chanting to the beatof drums, gongs and bells.With the coming of Buddhism, Japan was introduced to a concept ofsystems, routines and regulations. Buddhism channelled silent andspontaneous interaction with spirits into an organized programme ofritual observance, and explained the mysteries of life by the Law of Causeand Effect. The new theology, with its inexorable focus on the after-life,must have both disturbed and inspired followers of Shinto, who suddenlyfound previously vague sentiments now clearly articulated and vigorouslysystematized. The Aryan mind of India had been absorbed in metaphys-ical subtleties for centuries and had learned to analyse phenomena andcontrol consciousness even before the birth of Gautama (567-488 bc), thehistorical Buddha. After attaining total enlightenment the Buddhaexplained that existence is a continuing series of transformations and thatsalvation from suffering and death lies in detachment from desires.Buddhism arrived in Japan from Korea after centuries of developmentin China. The king of Paekche (Kudara) in the south-eastern corner of theKorean peninsula presented a gilt-bronze image of Buddha to EmperorKimmei of Japan in 552 ad, with the assurance that 'this doctrine cancreate religious merit and retribution without measure or bounds, andlead one to a full appreciation of the highest wisdom'. The emperor, whohad no wish to offend native spirits, was grateful but cautious: he allowedthe powerful Soga family to practise the new religion before all others.In fact, many members of the immigrant community in Japan hadpractised Buddhism for years prior to 552. The Korean scholar Wani isrecorded to have introduced (Chinese) writing to Japan in 405; otherimmigrants, in charge of various be (hereditary guilds specializing inpainting, weaving, saddlery) had settled in the Yamato area during thereign of Emperor Yuraku (457-79). During the Asuka period, everymajor building project used imported Korean specialists, many of whomsubsequently settled. (Although immigrant Chinese craftsmen are men-30tioned, some families for several generations, artistic contact, likereligious contact, between Japan and China, was largely by way of Korea.Korean dress was worn at court, as evidenced by the two Paradiseembroidery panels (Tenjukoku Mandala) produced by court ladies for therepose of Prince Shotoku's soul in 623: see page 35.)Prince Shotoku (573-621) and the rise ofBuddhismThe Asuka period is particularly notable for the life and activities of PrinceUmayado, better known by his Buddhist name Shotoku (Sagely andVirtuous), an avid scholar and learned statesman whose cultural activitiessubstantially advanced Japanese civilization at this time. In the arts, theperiod reflects cultural links with the Korean peninsularather than withChina, in particular with the kingdoms of Koguryo to the north andPaekche to the southwest.Born into a court which had been receiving Buddhist images fromKorea for twenty-one years and which was coming to terms with the newfaith, Shotoku grew up in an atmosphere of cultural ferment. Thepowerful pro-Buddhist Soga clan was withstanding pressure fromconservative elements (notably from the custodian of Shinto rituals,Nakatomi, and the military chief Mononobe, who together burned downchapels built on Soga instructions, and hurled their Buddhist statues intothe Naniwa canal). Soga no Umako (died 626) placed his niece on thethrone as Empress Suiko (reigned 592-628) and ordered Prince Shotoku,then only nineteen years old, to act as Regent. This turned out to beSoga's greatest deed, and the Suiko reign saw the rise of a literate culturethat permeated the social and political life of the aristocracy.Prince Shotoku was an ardent Buddhist scholar. At court he lecturedand wrote commentaries on the Vimalakirti sutra, the shoman-gyo, and theLotus sutra. In 607 he dispatched a scholar to Sui China to studyBuddhism and ordered the first compilation of the history ofJapan (nowlost). In 604 he had decreed the famous Seventeen Articles, aiming atsocial harmony, in an attempt to centralize power and to unify the variousclan-chiefs whose rivalries had hitherto dominated Japanese life.The Prince built his palace at Ikaruga overlooking the Yamato River(which flowed to nearby Naniwa, gateway to Korea). Next to it he built aBuddhist temple, called the Wakakusadera. Soga no Umako built anothertemple, the Hokoji, in 596. (Both this and the Wakakusadera were laidout in imitation of contemporary Paekche style, with the southern gateclose to the inner gate, and the sutra repository, belfry and lecture hall tothe north, outside the compound.) By 614, over half a century since the3117 Aerial view of Horyuji compound, pagoda to west, Golden Hall to east. Late7th century.presentation of the first Buddhist statue to Japan, there were 46 templesand 1385 ordained monks and nuns.After Shotoku's death the Soga clan sought to replace his influence withtheir own, arrested his son, and killed or forced his family to suicide.They burnt down the Ikaruga Palace in 643, and in 670 burnt theWakakusadera itself. However, Shotoku's legacy, the primacy of learningand of moral values, had been so firmly implanted among the aristocracyand the clergy that the ruined temple was soon rebuilt. The new17 compound, now called the Horyuji, lay to the northwest of theWakakusadera site. The layout of the main original (continental) model (arectilinear walled compound whose three basic structures - the chumon orinner gate, the pagoda and the main, Golden Hall - were all aligned on asouth-north axis, facing south) involved the worshipper in a progressionfrom one holy building to another, in a straight line. The rebuiltcompound, however, had its long side on the east-west axis, and thechumon at the southern end, slightly to the west. The pagoda was now tothe west, and the Golden Hall to the east; both were equidistant from the32chumon and simultaneously visible to the worshipper as he entered.Instead of proceeding into the depths of the compound through asuccession of buildings, the pilgrim now made a lateral turn. Thiseschewing of linear penetration in favour of lateral movement is one ofthe basic traits ofjapanization and is repeatedly met throughout Japanesehistory.The Tamamushi ShrineThis portable shrine is the oldest architectural example surviving from the 19Asuka period. Housed in a temple which escaped burning, it was latermoved to the Horyuji. The bronze filigree bands ornamenting thepedestal and architectural members were once inlaid with the iridescentwings of the tamamushi beetle, hence its name. (Although the same type ofbeetle is found in Korea, the choice of camphor and cypress wood nativeto Japan is evidence ofJapanese manufacture, some time during the lateAsuka period (c. 650), when many of the statues for the originalWakakusadera were being produced.) The shrine's hipped and gabledroof is tiled in such a way as to mark a distinct break between the upperand lower portions, whereas the rebuilt Horyuji temple has roofs tiled inone continuous plane, although the rafters beneath show a separationbetween the sharply pitched upper section and the more gently curvinglower section. This method gives the roof an effect of curvature andlightness which is characteristic of Asuka architecture.Asuka paintingWidescale destruction has left very little evidence of Asuka painting, butsurviving works in lacquer and in embroidery hint at a thriving co-existence of styles imported from a variety of sources. On the Tamamushishrine, for example, the lacquered wood is painted over with an oil-basedpaint in four colours. This mitsuda-e technique has distant origins in Persiaand its appearance here has puzzled those who hold China's silk routes tobe the only trading link between the Mediterranean and the Pacific.However, centuries of Scytho-Siberian activities in Korea are confirmedby the equestrian artefacts in metal found in royal tombs in Silla'sKyongju area, almost identical to those excavated in Japan from theKofun and the Asuka periods. Sillan golden drinking vessels pre-datethose (admittedly more advanced) of mid-Tang China by nearly threecenturies, and it is possible that Persian techniques were transmitted toJapan before China. It is reasonable to postulate a 'northern route' which33A 1 8, 19 Tigerjataka (left), oil on lacquered cypress, the left panel from the base of theS Tamamushi Shrine, and the Shrine itselpv^/if), with its roof ofcamphor andh cypress wood. Midvzth century.t/Vlinked West to East, bypassing China. The actual style of the Tamamushioil paintings, however, also transmitted through Korea, distinctly recallsNorthern and Western Wei prototypes from China.On the left panel of the base of the Tamamushi Shrine is a very earlyexample of that style of narrative painting which achieved unparalleled18 heights in later Japanese art. It is a jataka (a tale depicting one of theBuddha's previous lives). As Prince Mahasattva hunts in the mountainswith his two brothers, he comes upon a starving tigress and her sevencubs. The brothers flee, but Mahasattva offers his own flesh for34nourishment. This act of compassion ensures advancement to Buddha-hood in a future life. The panel tells the story in three sequential scenes: onthe cliff the prince doffs his robe; he plunges down the chasm; he is thenshown at the bottom, being devoured by the grateful tigress. His body islithe and graceful; the flowing lines and the tendency toward attenuationare characteristic of mid-century sculpture. The rock forms, also to befound in early Korean art, are derived from Six Dynasties painting. Inmid-seventh century Japan we are already seeing sympathetic andsensitive reception of cultural and technical ideas from earlier Buddhistart. Its swift assimilation shows the enormous appeal of the new religion.When Shotoku Taishi died, a pair of paradise tapestries (TenjukokuMandala) was ordered in 622, to be handsewn by court ladies. Thedesigners were immigrant artists from Korea and China. Survivingfragments show figures in contemporary Koguryo dress. It is highlyprobable that the prince and his court wore Koguryo style robes in life.The Sui-Tang style robe in which he is shown in the famous posthumouspainting of which a copy survives, now in the Imperial Collection, isdoubtless a fabrication of Nara artists in the flush of Chinese fashions andan anachronism. Korean elements permeated the lifestyles of the aristo-cracy throughout the seventh century. An eighth-century burial moundrecently excavated at Takamatsu revealed muralsof figures in Koguryodress (now up-dated, reflecting Tang proportions and poses). It wouldseem that intimate relations with Korean royal households continued in20 Tenjukoku Mandala (detail). Embroidered silk. 622.&;spite of the Chinese Sui and later Tang contacts, and that the transitionfrom Korea-oriented to China-oriented styles was a gradual process.Asuka sculptureShotoku's principal Buddhist master was Hye-cha, a Koguryo monkwhose state-oriented Buddhism (typical of Northern Wei China) differedfrom the politically more liberal southern Buddhism of Paekche andLiang China, where monks did not have to reverence the sovereign.However, the influence of Buddhist diplomats, monks, artisans andpainters from both Korean kingdoms had been felt since the mid-sixthcentury. It can be assumed that a variety of contrasting styles flourishedduring the Suiko period; the Horyuji temple alone reveals several artisticsources.One source is non-Chinese, the Scytho-Siberian equestrian culture ofthe earlier Kofun period. This is seen both in the openwork metal crowns3621 Shaka Triad. Bronze.Middle figure h. 86.3 cm,attendants 91 cm. HoryujiGolden Hall, 623.22 Guze Kannon (detail).Gilded camphor wood. H.197 cm. Early 7th century.which Shiba Tori (significantly, a third-generation Chinese member ofthe saddler's guild) used on his Buddhist sculptures (see below), and in thepanels of circles and triangles facing the overhead canopies (which recallKofun murals in the stone dolmens of Fukuoka and Kumamoto).Another source is revealed in the angular, severe and archaisticsculptural style of Shiba Tori's actual sculptures. Tori school works werethe official style of the Suiko reign; they include the Asuka Great Buddha(cast for the Hokoji temple in 606 and since extensively restored andremodelled), the tall wooden standing statue of Guze Kannon made forPrince Shotoku before his death, the Yakushi Healing Buddha of 607,whose gentleness presages that of the attendants in the Shaka Triad of 623,and several of the so-called 'Forty-Eight (bronze) Statues of Horyuji' nowin the Tokyo National Museum. These Tori works derive their regalstiffness from sixth-century Koguryo bronze statuettes: they are con-ceived frontally, in terms of planes and tubes, and have typical facia)characteristics: the Buddha's eyes slant upwards, the nose is long. Bared it22the bottom, and forms a conspicuous triangle in the ovoid, tube-like face,and the mouth is set close under the nose, which makes the chin appearlarge. The deep trough beneath the nose cuts into the upper lip, formingthe Tori hall-mark: twin points rising at a prominent angle. The lips, insimple angled planes, are pulled back in the 'archaic smile', and the dimplebeneath the lower lip is deeply etched. The neck is a smaller cylinderbeneath that of the head; the shoulders are set four-square. The body isconceived as front-facing, upright blocks; the muscles lack articulationbeneath the drapery. These characteristics link the Ton style, by way ofKogyuro reinterpretation, to earlier Chinese Wei sources.Koguryo Buddhist philosophy may account for the stern mien of Tori'smain figures, but mention should be made of the gently rounded andtender quality of his peripheral figures (for example the small seatedBuddhas of the mandorla cast in relief), qualities common in the secondhalf of the seventh century, but already evident in Tori's time. The2} meditating bodhisattva Maitreya in the Koryuji is carved from a hollowedblock of red pine, a tree which grows abundantly in Korea but not inJapan. (Japanese wooden sculptures are made either from camphor orJapanese cypress.) Its style and details are related to the famous gilt-bronzemeditating bodhisattva in Seoul's Toksu Palace Museum. The eyebrowsarch out and up; the eyes are narrow slits with a straight upper lid and thelower curved; the nose is narrow, and distinctly ridged. The groovebeneath it flares as it reaches the lips which (unlike the simple lateral planesof the Tori school) bifurcate to left and right. The chin is less prominentthan those in the Tori style, and the face more rounded. The body inclinesgently forward, and the bare torso tapers inwards below the breast. Annnpression of gentleness and absorption is part of the sculptor's intention.An exquisite bodhisattva in the Chuguji convent in Horyuji shares thecharacteristics of the Koryuji figure and of the Toksu (Seoul) bodhisattvaexcept that the downward-arching eyebrows here add an impression ofmaternal tenderness. (There are several sculptural affinities amongst thethree pieces: the spherical modelling of the eyeballs, the articulation andinclination of the torsos, the proportion of arms and legs.) Unfortunately,we know nothing of the carving and dedication of this beautiful statue,but as it is housed in Horyuji it may have been associated with PrinceShotoku and Korea.Recent investigations have established a Paekche provenance for theToksu Palace Museum bodhisattva. In 541, King Songmyong of Paekchehad sent to the Chinese Liang court for Buddhist texts, craftsmen andpainters. The resultant softening of Paekche style in the latter sixthcentury can be seen not only in the Toksu gilt bronze meditating3823 Meditating Miroku Bosatsu (detail). Red pine. H. 123.5 cm. 603?24 Meditating bodhisattva (detail). Camphor wood. Chuguji convent. H. 87.5cm. Early 7th century.bodhisattva but also in its Koryuji and Horyuji sisters. In 603 Packchepresented a gilt seated meditating bodhisattva to Prince Shotoku. ThePrince charged a nobleman to worship it, and the nobleman built theHachioka-dera (Koryuji) to house it. From separate historical accountsscholars have identified the Koryuji red pine Maitreya as the 603 Packchestatue. (Originally this work had been gilt.) The Chuguji bodhisattva ismade of the camphor wood typical ofJapanese sculpture. Its remarkableresemblance to the Koryuji and Toksu works, and the absence of itsfollowers in Japan, suggest its being the work of a Korean sculptor,working perhaps in Japan. The presence of the soft contemporaryPaekche style in Japan by the first decade of the seventh century may-account for the softened contours of peripheral Tori school works evenduring this most severe and archaistic phase of Buddhist sculpture.Another craftsman who, like Tori, was of Chinese descent and whoworked in the Koguryo-derived angular style in Horyuji, was Aya noYamakuchi no Okuchi Atahi. Among other works, he produced the Four392j Celestial Guardians or Heavenly Kings (shitenno) for the Golden Hall,some time before the Taika Reform of 646 (which ended the Soga clan'spower and patronage). The Four Kings show an advance in volumetricand three-dimensional sculpture, even though they have the unmistakablearchaistic Tori stamp. They are more rounded and the faces are fuller andmore expressive. Many of the so-called 'Forty-Eight Buddhist Statues'originally associated with Horyuji (now in the Tokyo National Museum)are of obvious Korean manufacture, but there are also several examples inthe Tori style. In short, although during the pre-Taika period under Sogainfluence the severe northern Korean style was dominant, it coexistedwith styles of southern Korean origin. After the Taika Reformation,however, gentler styles superseded the Tori style. Among the Forty-Eight Statues there are many with child-like proportions: large heads,hands and feet, and small bodies. The faces have highly arched, roundedeyebrows set high above heavy-lidded, narrow-slitted eyes; the noses areshorter than those o{ the Tori school, and the mouths are set lower,giving smaller, rounded and fleshy chins. This child-like style seems tohave influenced many larger figures during the second half of the seventhcentury, the Hakuho period, 645-710. For example, in the Kannon26 figuresofKinryuji and Horyuji (the hair parted in the middle, high abovethe brow and temple and looped over long ears), the beatific smilesuggests innocence and the inner peace of meditation. The same child-likestyle appears in the flying wooden apsaras which adorn the canopy overthe main figures in the Horyuji's Golden Hall. Seated on lotus blossoms,and playing musical instruments, they appear to descend from heaven onflying tendrils. Although made during the Hakuho period, such child-likeworks probably derive from the Paekche style seen in the tiny gilt-bronzeAsuka figurines. True Hakuho sculpture does not appear until the end otthe seventh century, in the Yakushiji Triad.The Hakuho (White Phoenix) period 64^-710In the 660s, at the same time that Silla was conquering both Paekche andKoguryo, Chinese Tang was entering its most glorious phase. In Japan, asa result of the Taika reform and the removal of the Soga clan from powerand patronage, the flood-gates were opened to Chinese influences.Hakuho Japanese sculpture shows these influences in substantial works o{imperial grandeur. There is new-found authority and grace: sculpture isrounded and more realistic.One o\~ the most powerful Hakuho sculptures is the larger-than-lifegroup ot gilt-bronze statues in the Yakushiji. The seated Yakushi40»»*•N«**;%$gmm^25 (/e/f) Zqjyo Ten (Virudhaka), one of thefour Guardian Kings from the Horyuji.Carved wood. H. 20.7 cm. Before 646.26 (above) One of six standing bodhisattvas(detail). Camphor wood. Style probablyderived from Paekche. H. 85.7cm. Late7th century.4i27 Gakko, from Yakushi Triad. Gilt bronze.H. 315.3 cm. Hakuho, 688.28 Amida Triad, seated on lotus blooms, iny Ta733.J^,"''•« Lady Tachibana's Shrine. Gilt bronze. H. 33ffl^.9 cm. 733.2729 Yumetagai Kannon. Bronze. H. 85.7 cm.Late Hakuho.(Healing Buddha) is flanked by two bodhisattvas, Nikko (Sunlight) andGakko (Moonlight), for which there are no prototypes in the HoryujiTreasure Museum or among the Forty-Eight statuettes. They arerealistically conceived in the round rather than frontally, and are incotitraposto stance, the weight on the inner foot, swinging the upper torsooutwards. The faces are full, almost spherical and the chins droop towardthe necks and thence to the chests, in three fleshy wrinkles. Thesebodhisattvas, like the Sho Kannon housed in the Kondo o{ the sametemple, have upswept hair which culminates in a high topknot and issecured on the forehead with a trifoliate crown. Both the Sho Kannon andthe Yakushi, perhaps because they are principal rather than flankingfigures, are more conservative in style and have little turning of the torso,as the body weight is centred. These figures show a clear High Tanginfluence in their rounded lips and faces, and in their expressions of deepabsorption. This influence may also be seen in the Horyuji paradisemurals.Bronze sculpture in Horyuji was more conservative in idiom and, eventoward the end of the century, retained vestiges of the Tori style. Among4^^SfScliSSthe most beautiful works here are the Yumetagai (Dream-changing) 29Kannon and the Amida Triad of Lady Tachibana's Shrine. They have the 28fuller proportions, characteristic chins and sloping necks of the Yakushijifigures; but the facial modelling is rather restrained, with angular linesalong the brows, nose and lips (which rise in twin points and bear the Toricylindrical dimple beneath). More than any other works of the time, suchpieces seem to exude a full, aristocratic confidence, and may be the workof conservative craftsmen who maintained Horyuji traditions in the faceof imported Chinese styles and techniques. New artisans, however,painted the Horyuji murals and sculpted the extensive clay panorama ofBuddha's nirvana in the Horyuji Pagoda.These clay sculptures are built into niches in the four corners of thepagoda and were completed in 711, one year after the capital moved toNara, the start of the Tempyo period. In a scene depicting theconversation between the Buddhist layman and scholar Yuima (Vim-alakirti) and the bodhisattva Monju (Manjusri) the latter even looks as if 30he could have stepped out of one of the newly-completed murals in theKondo (Golden Hall). Wearing flowing robes and a jewelled necklace, the3bodhisattva sits full-faced in regal pose, his wavy, backswept hair in ahigh topknot. The dress of the lay onlooker is in High Tang style. Theconcept of these figures is no longer frontal and linear: there is a strongfeeling of volume and the beginning of torso articulation and motion.The Horyuji muralsThe most magnificent examples of late Hakuho painting are the murals ofthe rebuilt Horyuji Golden Hall. The murals are over 3 metres high; thefour large central ones measure 2.5 metres across and the eight cornerones 1.8 metres. They are a very rare example of mural painting: this mayhave been the first time a monastery was so decorated. (The usual wall-decoration in Buddhist halls, before and since, was hangings of painted,woven or embroidered silk.) The Golden Hall was completed some timebetween 680 and 690, and the murals finished by around 711.The artisans, of immigrant Chinese and Korean descent, had beenorganized into craft guilds responsible for the decoration of palaces andtemples. The Taiho-ryo decree of 701 established a Painters' Bureau(cdahutfii-uo-tsukasa) under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and waspresided over by three civil officials. The bureau had four master-painters(esht) and sixty ordinary painters (edakumi) living in the metropolitan area,and several groups of private painters living in the provinces (sato-eshi)who could be summoned to the capital for large-scale projects. Theinstitution of official painters continued to exist in some form or other foranother thousand years, until the Meiji restoration of 1868.To make the murals, the Kondo wall surface was first covered with alayer of fine white clay. Then the artisan transferred the design from apouncing pattern using a fine even red or ink line, then added coloursincluding cinnabar, red ochre and red lead for the reds, ochre and lithargetor yellow, malachite for green and azurite for blue. The figures have thesame sensuous and fleshy presence as Chinese High Tang painting of theperiod, such as those in the Dunhuang caves dating to 642 and 698 ad,with the bodies slightly twisted and relaxed in tribhanga or contraposto posewhich separates the planes of torso, upper and lower abdomen and placesthe weight on one leg, with the other slightly lifted in motion. The most33 famous of the figures is perhaps the Kannon (Avalokitesvara) in theAmida Paradise on the West Wall. Full, sensuous lips and long, deep-seteves are vestigial traces of its Indian and Khotan sources and, still moredistant m time and space, of ancient Greece. The magnificent presence ofthe deity is captured with firm technical assurance. The stylistic relation-ship with the bodhisattva line drawing on the door panels of the Lady4430 Bodhisattva Monjufrom Horyuji Pagoda.Clay. H. 50.9 cm. EarlyTempyo, 711.Tachibana Shrine is unmistakable, suggesting variant pouncing patternsfrom the same source. When the Kondo was completed the effect of theParadise images, flanked by bodhisattvas, and with apsaras flyingoverhead in prayerful attitudes, must have been resplendent and inspiring.When the Shaka Triad for the original Kondo was moved in, it must haveseemed odd, being much too small for the enlarged hall and by now in avery antiquated style.Buddhism and centralized powerWhen Prince Shotoku embraced Chinese statecraft and Buddhism, he hadenvisioned the first, based on Confucian ethics, as underpinning thewhole administrative and penal system; Buddhism remained for him aprivate personal faith. Church and state did not finally converge, so to
  • 6 eha2018completo-479-486
  • Arte Grega: Evolução e Estilos
  • Screenshot_2025-01-14-15-17-47-047_com android chrome-edit
  • Livro-Texto - Unidade II
  • Questão 2 Aritmética Verão
  • 9 Ens Religioso - at 1 5Quinz
  • Screenshot_20240729_205144_Chrome
  • Influência da Igreja na Arte
  • A evolução da Criminologia foi marcada por contribuições significativas de várias figuras históricas. Qual das seguintes afirmações corretamente de...
  • Entre os artistas que compõem o grupo dos chamados pós-impressionistas, estão:Max Ernst e René Magritte.B )Paul Cézanne e Vincent Van Gogh.C ...
  • Max Ernst e René Magritte.B )Paul Cézanne e Vincent Van Gogh.C )André Derain e Henri Matisse.D )Jackson Pollock e Lee Krasner.E )Um...
  • decomposição dos objetos e do espaço segundo um único critério estrutural; a concepção daestrutura não mais como esqueleto ou armação fixa, e sim...
  • Qual é a importância do conceito de contraposto para a produção das estátuas gregas?A )O contraposto fez com que a arte estatuária grega alcanç...
  • Em uma relação de contraposição entre Renascimento e Barroco, é possível afirmar que:A )a arte barroca se caracterizava pelo exagero de emoções...
  • Por que o romantismo é considerado o primeiro estilo artístico internacional no ocidente?
  • Questão 8 Criado por Ana Lucia Oliveira Fernandez Gil em 30/03/2023 A respeito do período Paleolítico Superior, analise as sentenças verdadeiras (V...
  • Questão 5 Criado por Clara Aniele Schley Koepsel em Os escultores neoclássicos foram marcados pelo rigor e pela passividade e sua produção academic...
  • O Expressionismo foi um movimento artístico ocorrido num período onde havia uma constante angústia no ciclo das artes. Tal angústia, solidão e misé...
  • Leia o texto a seguir. Na arte contemporânea, diversos artistas exploram dimensões não apenas reais, mas também imaginárias e mitológicas. Um exemp...
  • Assinale a alternativa INCORRETA de acordo com o Impressionismo e o Neo-Impressionismo: Em meados do século XIX, nasceu o Impressionismo, considera...
  • Sobre a relação da neuroeducação com a arte, podemos afirmar que: Questão 16Escolha uma opção: a. A expressão artística prevê a vivência dos sent...
  • Festa Junina - Uma Tradição Nordestina em Nosso Lugar de Vivência 2
  • Explorando as Formas Geométricas no Nosso Entorno

Conteúdos escolhidos para você

3 pág.

Grátis

NP1_historia da arte II.docx
1 pág.
prova historia da arte

UNIFACVEST

41 pág.
ARTE RUPESTRE E EVOLUÇÃO DA ARTE

UNIASSELVI

7 pág.
História da Arte - Unidade 2

FMU

1 pág.
Trabalho História da Arte I

UFRRJ

Perguntas dessa disciplina

Grátis

O que é Rádio Taissô? A) Dança folclórica japonesa.B) Artes marciais japonesas.C) Música tradicional japonesa.D) Ginástica de rádio.E) Ginást...

Grátis

Arte oriental japonesa tornaram-se conhecidas graças Questão 10Escolha uma opção: Tsuru Cores fortes vivas e à delicadeza de seus desenhos Re...

UNOPAR

Algumas das propostas elaboradas pelas instalações já estavam presentes na arte tradicional japonesa desde o século XV. Em que manifestação artísti...

ESTÁCIO

Quando surgiu a arte japonesa aproximadamente? A) Aproximadamente 7.000 a.C B) Aproximadamente 6.000 a.C C) Aproximadamente 8.000 a.C D) Aproximada...

UNIP

A arte na Grécia Antiga possuía características e critérios que serviram de base para outros períodos da história da arte. Alguns dos princípios da...
  • 6 eha2018completo-479-486
  • Arte Grega: Evolução e Estilos
  • Screenshot_2025-01-14-15-17-47-047_com android chrome-edit
  • Livro-Texto - Unidade II
  • Questão 2 Aritmética Verão
  • 9 Ens Religioso - at 1 5Quinz
  • Screenshot_20240729_205144_Chrome
  • Influência da Igreja na Arte
  • A evolução da Criminologia foi marcada por contribuições significativas de várias figuras históricas. Qual das seguintes afirmações corretamente de...
  • Entre os artistas que compõem o grupo dos chamados pós-impressionistas, estão:Max Ernst e René Magritte.B )Paul Cézanne e Vincent Van Gogh.C ...
  • Max Ernst e René Magritte.B )Paul Cézanne e Vincent Van Gogh.C )André Derain e Henri Matisse.D )Jackson Pollock e Lee Krasner.E )Um...
  • decomposição dos objetos e do espaço segundo um único critério estrutural; a concepção daestrutura não mais como esqueleto ou armação fixa, e sim...
  • Qual é a importância do conceito de contraposto para a produção das estátuas gregas?A )O contraposto fez com que a arte estatuária grega alcanç...
  • Em uma relação de contraposição entre Renascimento e Barroco, é possível afirmar que:A )a arte barroca se caracterizava pelo exagero de emoções...
  • Por que o romantismo é considerado o primeiro estilo artístico internacional no ocidente?
  • Questão 8 Criado por Ana Lucia Oliveira Fernandez Gil em 30/03/2023 A respeito do período Paleolítico Superior, analise as sentenças verdadeiras (V...
  • Questão 5 Criado por Clara Aniele Schley Koepsel em Os escultores neoclássicos foram marcados pelo rigor e pela passividade e sua produção academic...
  • O Expressionismo foi um movimento artístico ocorrido num período onde havia uma constante angústia no ciclo das artes. Tal angústia, solidão e misé...
  • Leia o texto a seguir. Na arte contemporânea, diversos artistas exploram dimensões não apenas reais, mas também imaginárias e mitológicas. Um exemp...
  • Assinale a alternativa INCORRETA de acordo com o Impressionismo e o Neo-Impressionismo: Em meados do século XIX, nasceu o Impressionismo, considera...
  • Sobre a relação da neuroeducação com a arte, podemos afirmar que: Questão 16Escolha uma opção: a. A expressão artística prevê a vivência dos sent...
  • Festa Junina - Uma Tradição Nordestina em Nosso Lugar de Vivência 2
  • Explorando as Formas Geométricas no Nosso Entorno
Arte Japonesa: Uma Visão Geral - História da Arte (2025)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Foster Heidenreich CPA

Last Updated:

Views: 6159

Rating: 4.6 / 5 (56 voted)

Reviews: 95% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Foster Heidenreich CPA

Birthday: 1995-01-14

Address: 55021 Usha Garden, North Larisa, DE 19209

Phone: +6812240846623

Job: Corporate Healthcare Strategist

Hobby: Singing, Listening to music, Rafting, LARPing, Gardening, Quilting, Rappelling

Introduction: My name is Foster Heidenreich CPA, I am a delightful, quaint, glorious, quaint, faithful, enchanting, fine person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.