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| From the Shoguns to the Present: The Art of Later Japan |
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| An Age Of Upheaval And War :: Modern Japan | Images courtesy of Saskia Ltd. |
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| AN AGE OF UPHEAVAL AND WAR Muromachi Period (13341573) Shoguns and samurai: In 1336, the Ashikaga clan formed Japan's second shogunate, and ruled from the Muromachi district of Kyoto. Under the Ashikaga shoguns, local lords had considerable power over local affairs, and ultimately vied for control of the country. The discipline of Zen: Zen Buddhism flourished alongside other sects, especially Pure Land Buddhism. Because Zen emphasized rigorous discipline and personal responsibility, it held a special attraction for samurai (warriors). Aristocrats and merchants also supported Zen temples, which were centers for the study of Chinese art, literature, and learning. Meditative Zen gardens: The Saihoji temple gardens exemplify the continuities and transitions that marked religious art in the Muromachi period. After this Pure Land temple was transformed into a Zen institution, the gardens continued to evoke the beauty of Amida's Pure Land while serving the Zen faith's more meditative needs. The gardens echo the complementary roles of the two Buddhist sects in the Muromachi period. The iridescently green mosses of Saihoji's lower gardens, which seem to belong to another world, contrast with early examples of dry landscape gardening on the hillsides. In eastern Asia, gazing at dramatic natural scenery was considered beneficial to the human spirit. Arranging stones to suggest landscapes, as seen in Chinese paintings, encouraged aesthetic and spiritual engagement with the scene, which could be fully visualized only in the mind. 27-1: Dry cascade and pools, upper garden, Saihoji temple, Kyoto, Japan, modified in Muromachi period, fourteenth century. Broken-Ink Painting: Styles and subjects of ink painting in the Muromachi period usually followed Chinese precedents closely. Most of the ink painting masters were at least ostensibly Zen monks. TOYO SESSHU (14201506) was one of the few artists who traveled to China, and learned much from Ming painters. In his splashed-ink pictures, spontaneity is balanced with a thorough knowledge of the painting tradition. |
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27-2: TOYO SESSHU, broken-ink landscape, Japan, Muromachi period, 1495. Hanging scroll, ink on paper, 4 10 1/4 x 1 7/8. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo.
Two major paintung schools the Tosa School and the Kano School emerged in Japan in the 15th and 16th centuries. Tosa Nitsunobu, director of the Painting Bureau and chief painter at the imperial court, was the pivotal figure in the history of the Tosa School. The Tosa style featured bright contrasting color, detailed textile patterns, and thickly applied paint. The Kano school, contemporary with the Tosa School, became the virtual national academy of the 17th century. As an independent painter in the tumultuous early sixteenth century. KANO MOTONOBU (14761559) formed an efficient workshop and adapted his own broad repertoire to its needs. The Kano style is characterized by bold outlines and the presentation of objects along th evertical plane of the painting surface. Motonobu's Zen Patriarch Xiangyen Zhixian Sweeping with a Broom depicts the monk experiencing the moment of enlightenment. The work incorporates features of Chinese academic modes of ink painting. Motonobu's picture was one of a set of sliding doors for a Zen temple. Such architectural decoration formed a growing component of the repertoires of the Kano School and later rivals. 27-3: KANO MOTONOBU, Zen Patriarch Xiangyen Zhixian Sweeping with a Broom, Japan, Muromachi period, ca. 1513. Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, 5 7 3/8 x 2 10 3/4. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo.
The unification of Japan: During the Momoyama period, the government was centralized, laying the foundation for the establishment of a Japanese nation. The eras designation, Momoyama (Peach Blossom Hill), is derived from the scenic foliage at the castle of one of three powerful warlords. Chinese lions on a Japanese screen: The warlords erected huge castles with palatial residences, and asked the Kano painters and their rivals to decorate them. Gold screens had been known since Muromachi times, but Momoyama painters made them even bolder, reducing in number and often greatly enlarging the motifs against flat fields of gold leaf. Motonobu's grandson, KANO EITOKU (15431590), was the dominant painter of such murals and screens. Because of the enormous scope of Eitoku's decoration projects, he often worked in the monumental style typified by Chinese Lions. The lions, defined by broad contour lines, stride forward within a gold field, seeming more like brash emblems of power than Buddhist symbols. 27-4: KANO EITOKU, Chinese Lions, Japan, Momoyama period, late sixteenth century. Six-panel screen, color, ink, and gold-leaf on paper, 7 4 x 14 10. Imperial Household Agency, Tokyo. A Forest in the Mist: HASEGAWA TOHAKU (15391610), a protegι of Rikyu, sometimes worked in the loose ink-monochrome manner of the thirteenth-century Chinese Chan monk Muqi. In Pine Forest, the trees emerge from and recede into a heavy mist. In Zen terms, the picture suggests the illusory nature of mundane reality while evoking a meditative mood. |
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| 27-5: HASEGAWA TOHAKU, Pine Forest, Japan, Momoyama period, late sixteenth century. One of a pair of six-panel screens, ink on paper, 5 1 3/8 x 11 4. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo.
The Role of the Tea Ceremony: The favorite exercise of cultivation in the Momoyama period was the tea ceremony, which eventually carried political and ideological implications. The ceremony also acquired special social significance as it gained acceptance as a major expression of aesthetic and even spiritual sophistication. A New Refined Rusticity: In the late fifteenth century, the new aesthetic of refined rusticity, or wabi, included appreciation of rustic Korean and Japanese wares, as well as the design of very simple tea rooms and teahouses. Zen concepts also played an important role in this aesthetic. The Shino water jar named Kogan shows the wabi aesthetic's influence in the tea ceremony. The coarse stoneware body, simple form, and casual decoration offer the same aesthetic and interpretive challenges and opportunities as the dry landscape gardens of Zen temples. 27-6: Tea-ceremony water jar, or Kogan (ancient stream bank), Japan, Momoyama period, late sixteenth century. Shino ware with underglaze design, 7 high. Hatakeyama Memorial Museum, Tokyo. Ceremonial tea spaces: The ultimate representation of the new wabi aesthetic in the Momoyama period was the Taian teahouse, designed under the direction of the most renowned tea master, SEN NO RIKYU (15221591). The interior displays two standard features of Japanese residential architecture that developed in the late Muromachi period-very thick, rigid straw mats (tatami) and an alcove (tokonoma), a place to hang painting or calligraphy and to display other prized objects. The room's dimness and tiny size produce a cavelike feel and force intimacy among the tea host and guests. The small entrance emphasizes a guest's passage into a ceremonial space. Rikyu was tea adviser to two of Japan's great reunifiers. In contrast, the second Momoyama warlord held grand tea ceremonies in lavish surroundings. Such were the extremes of Momoyama aesthetics. 27-7: SEN NO RIKYU, Taian teahouse (interior view), Myokian Temple, Kyoto, Japan, Momoyama period, ca. 1582. Edo Period (16151868) In 1615, Tokugawa Ieyasu established a new shogunate, centered in Edo. The new regime instituted many policies designed to limit Japan's pace of social and cultural change. The expansion of urban centers, the spread of literacy, and a growing thirst for knowledge and diversion, however, made for a very lively popular culture. A princely villa at Kyoto: The imperial court continued to influence taste and culture. The harmonious integration of building and garden in the Katsura Imperial Villa became one of the great ideals of Japanese residential architecture, and has also inspired architects worldwide. While many of its design features derive from earlier teahouses, the Katsura Villa also incorporates elements of courtly gracefulness. The architecture's appeal relies on subtleties of proportion, color, and texture. 27-8: Eastern facade of Katsura Imperial Villa, Kyoto, Japan, Edo period, 16201663.
The Edo period painters produced a dazzling variety of styles. Although the Kano School enjoyed official governmental sponsorship, individualist painters and other schools also emerged and flourished. The earliest major alternative school in the Edo period, Rinpa aesthetics and principles attracted a variety of individuals. The term Rinpa is derived from the name of its ostensible founder, Ogata Korin. However, two closely linked artists, HONAMI KOETSU (1558-1637) and Tawaraya Sotatsu (15761643), laid its foundations a few generations earlier. Combining painting and craft: Koetsu, heir to a family of sword experts in Kyoto, was a greatly admired calligrapher, and made tea ceramics. He and Sotatsu, proprietor of a fan-painting shop, together drew on ancient traditions of painting and craft decoration to collapse boundaries between the two arts. Most Rinpa works also display knowledge of court literary and material traditions. Koetsu's Boat Bridge writing box exhibits motifs drawn from classical poetry. The lid presents a subtle, gold-on-gold scene of small boats supporting a temporary bridge. The poem describes the experience of crossing such a bridge as evoking reflection on life's insecurities. The box shows the dramatic contrasts marking Rinpa aesthetics. 27-9: HONAMI KOETSU, Boat Bridge, writing box, Japan, Edo period, early seventeenth century. Lacquered wood with sprinkled gold and inlay, 9 1/2 x 4 5/8. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo. Plum blossoms and Tarashikomi: Ogata Korin developed the principles that Koetsu and Sotatsu established. One of Korins masterpieces is a pair of twofold screens depicting red and white blossoming plum trees separated by a stream. The literati style: In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Japan's increasingly urban, educated population spurred a cultural and social restlessness among commoners and samurai of lesser rank. People eagerly sought new ideas and images, directing their attention primarily to China, but also to the West. Several Japanese painters and their followers embraced elements of the Chinese literati style. Illustrations in printed books and actual paintings of lesser quality brought limited knowledge of the literati style into Japan. However, the newly seen Chinese models supported emerging ideals of self-expression in painting by offering an alternative to the Kano School's standardized repertoire. One of the outstanding early representatives of Japanese literati painting was YOSA BUSON (17161783). He incorporated basic elements of Chinese and Japanese literati style by rounding the landscape forms, rendering their texture in fine fibrous brush strokes, and including dense foliage patterns. Although Buson imitated the vocabulary of brush strokes associated with the Chinese literati, his touch was bolder and more abstract, and the palette of pale colors was his own. |
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| 27-10: YOSA BUSON, Cuckoo Flying over New Verdure, Japan, Edo period, late eighteenth century. Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 5 1/2 x 2 7 1/4. Hiraki Ukiyo-e Museum, Yokohama, Japan.
Edo's flloating world: The urban population's restlessness also found an outlet in the popular theaters and pleasure houses of Edo's Yoshiwara brothel district, where prosperous townspeople, as well as many samurai, sought entertainment. Many who participated in the urban culture were also highly educated in literature, music, and the other arts. The best-known products of this sophisticated counterculture are the paintings and (especially) prints whose main subjects come from the ukiyo-e (floating world)the Yoshiwara brothels and the popular theater. Views of an Ukiyo-e parlor: One of the most admired and emulated eighteenth-century designers, SUZUKI HARUNOBU (ca. 17251770), played a key role in developing some of the earliest brocade prints, pictures printed in many colors. Harunobu applied techniques from his limited-edition commissions to his more commercial prints, and also issued some of the private designs for popular consumption. A sophisticated example is Evening Bell of the Clock, one of Harunobu's parlor-series prints that draw playfully on an ancient Chinese landscape theme, Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers. Instead of the traditional temple bell, however, Harunobu depicted a modern clock. This humorous juxtaposition of past and present also displays the cultural sophistication of the floating world's inhabitants. The flatness and rich color recall the traditions of court painting. 27-11: SUZUKI HARUNOBU, Evening Bell at the Clock, from Eight Views of the Parlor series, Japan, Edo period, ca. 1765. Woodblock print, 11 1/4 x 8 1/2. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (Clarence Buckingham Collection). Western Perspective in Prints: Another subject, landscapes, often incorporated Western perspective techniques. One of the most famous designers in this genre was KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (17601849). In The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, the huge foreground wave dwarfs distant Mount Fuji. Hokusai places the wave's more traditionally flat and powerfully graphic forms against the low horizon, typical of Western perspective painting. 27-12: KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series, Japan, Edo period, ca. 18261833. Woodblock print oban, ink and colors on paper, 9 7/8 x 1 2 3/4. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Spaulding Collection). |
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| An Age Of Upheaval And War :: Modern Japan | ||||