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Feudal JapanART 102 Gardner’s - Chapter 34

Jean Thobaben

Instructor

From 1336-1980:

The Art of Later Japan

Shoguns and Samurai

Pictures of the Floating World

Teahouses and Tea Ceremonies

MODERN

JAPAN

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Feudal Japan

• 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.

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Zen Buddhism

• 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.

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• 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.

Green Moss Garden

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• 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.

Dry cascade – Upper Gardens

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• 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.

Garden, Saihoji, Kyoto, modified in Muromachi period, 14th century.

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Splashed-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.

• Toya Sesshu (1420–1506) was one of the few artists who

traveled to China, and learned much from Ming painters.

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• The strength of his brushwork and

brilliance ink handling justify his

high position in Japanese art.

Hanging scroll, ink

on paper, mounted

on brocade. Unigned

but sealed Toyo. An

excellent example of

Haboku

(flung ink)

brushwork.

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• Note that the angularity

of line provokes a

sense of energy to the

artwork.

Sesshu Toyo,

"Winter landscape.“Ink on silk, late 15th century

(Ashikaga-Muromachi

period).

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Birds and Flowers in a Landscape of the Four Seasons, follower of Toyo

Sesshu

(1420 - 1506) second half of the 16th century, Cleveland Museum of Art

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Schools of Art

• The Tosa School and the more influential Kano School

emerged during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

• Tosa Mitsunobu (1434–1525), director of the Painting Bureau

and chief painter at the imperial court, also worked for great

temples allied to the court and the Ashikaga shoguns.

• His Tale of Genji illustrations incorporate more narrative

elements in elegant arrangements, without the intimate moods of

earlier versions.

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• Lady Murasaki’s epic tale of the life and loves of Genjii made up the

world’s first novel.

Attributed to Tosa Mitsunobu, Tale of Genji ("Yugao," scene 4), early 16th century.

Album, ink and color on paper, approx. 9 1/2" X 7". Harvard University.

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• Traditional yamato-e painting is characterized by native subject matter, often taken from literature, and themes associated with famous places or the four seasons.

• Stylistically it features striking compositions, the frequent use of flat planes of rich color, and a number of codified pictorial devices such as fukinuki yatai ("room with roof blown away").

Six-panel screen,Color on paper,152.0 x 357.2,Muromachi period

In addition to scrolls and album leaves, the multi-paneled

folding-screen was a popular surface for decoration.

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The Kano School

• As an independent painter in

the tumultuous early

sixteenth century, Kano

Moionobu (1476–1559)

formed an efficient workshop

and adapted his own broad

repertoire to its needs.

• Motonobu's Zen Patriarch

Xiangyen Zhixian Sweeping with

a Broom depicts the monk

experiencing the moment of

enlightenment.

• 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.

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Momoyama Period (1573–1615)

• 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.

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• In the late 15th 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.

Tea-ceremony water jar, or Kogan (ancient stream bank),

Momoyama period, late sixteenth century. Shino ware with

underglaze design, 7" high. Hatakeyama Memorial

Museum, Tokyo.

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Shino Ware Tea Bowl, named 'Bridge

Princess' (Hashihime)

• Other examples:

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Tea Houses• 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 Rikyo

(1522–1591).

• 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.

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• 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.

Taian teahouse (interior view),

1582, Myokian Temple,

Kyoto, Japan.

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Momoyama Painting• In the Momoyama period, a succession of three great warlords

imposed peace on a country civil war had ravaged since the late

fifteenth century.

• 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.

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• Motonobu's grandson, Kano Eitoku (1543–1590), 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.

Kano Eotoku, Chinese Lions, late 16th century. Six-panel screen, color, ink, and gold-leaf on

paper, 7' 4" X 14'10". Imperial Household Agency, Tokyo.

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• Hasegawa Tohaku (1539–1610), a protegé of Rikyu,

sometimes worked in the loose ink-monochrome manner of the

thirteenth-century Chinese Chan monk Muqi.

• In Pine Forest, 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.

Pine Forest, Momoyama period, late 16th c., screens, ink on paper, 5' 1 3/8" X 11' 4".

Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo.

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Edo Period (1615–1868)

• In 1615, Tokugawa Ieyasu established a new shogunate,

centered in Edo. (Modern Tokyo)

• 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.

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• 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.

Katsura Imperial Villa, Kyoto, Edo period, 1620–1663.

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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.

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Interior view

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• 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

School 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 (1576–1643), laid its foundations a few

generations earlier.

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• 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.

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• Hon'ami Kôetsu (1558 - 1637) and Tawaraya Sôtatsu are

generally regarded as among the most important figures in

Japanese art of the early modern period.

• Kôetsu's pottery and calligraphy and Sôtatsu's painting represent

the greatest achievement of the age and a high point in the history

of Japanese culture.

Tawaraya Sôtatsu, Handscroll of Poems from the Anthology of Thirty-six

Immortal Poets, Kyoto National Museun

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• The son of a textile merchant,

Ogata Korin (1658–1716) took

the principles Koetsu and Sotatsu

developed into the eighteenth

century.

• White Plum Blossoms, Korin

offers a dramatic contrast of forms

and visual textures.

• The mottling of

the trees comes

from a signature

Rinpa technique

called

tarashikomi.

• The contrasting

pattern in the

stream has the

precision and

elegant

stylization of a

textile design

produced by

applying pigment

through a paper

stencil. White Plum Blossoms, ink, color, and gold-and-silver leaf on paper,

each screen 5' 1 5/8" X 5' 7 7/8". Museum of Art, Atami

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• In the 17th and 18th 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.

Popular Art and Culture

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• An outstanding

early example of

Japanese literati

painting was

Yosa Buson(1716–1783).

• 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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• While the Japanese literati catered to people with an

intellectual bent, the school of Maruyama Okyo(1733–1795) achieved a wide following among people

attracted to naturalism and sheer painterly skill.

• Okyo looked to a variety of East Asian styles and also

to the West.

• Western approaches to naturalistic depiction had

become fairly widely known in Japan by this time.

Maruyama

Okyo,

Peacocks and

Peonies, Edo

period, 1776.

Hanging

scroll, color

on silk, 4' 3

1/3" X 2' 2

7/8". Imperial

Household

Collection,

Tokyo.

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• Okyo's Peacocks and Peonies is an outstanding example of

his synthesis of naturalism with elements of Kano painting and

a type of Chinese painting one might call "decorative

naturalism.“

• The combination of rich detail, brilliant colors, and naturalistic

modeling appealed to urban sensibilities.

• His The Dragon Screen, although more imaginative, is more

subtle and monochromatic in style.

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• 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.

Early Morning Mist in Ogi,

woodblock print,

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• One of the most admired and emulated eighteenth-century

designers, Suzuki Harunobu (1725–1770), 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 Parlor series.

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• 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.

Evening Bell of the Clock, from Eight

Views of the Parlor series, Edo period,

ca. 1765. Woodblock print,

11 1/4" X 8 1/2".

Art Institute of Chicago,

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• Another subject, landscapes, often incorporated Western

perspective techniques.

• One of the most famous designers in this style was

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849).

• 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.

Hokusai, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series,

1826–1833. Woodblock print, 9 7/8" X 1' 2 3/4" Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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• Another view from the same series.

• Notice how “modern” this print seems by today’s

standards.

• What qualities make it seem so?

The Red Mt. Fuji, from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series, Edo period,

1826–1833. Woodblock print, 9 7/8" X 1' 2 3/4" wide.

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• The other great Edo period

artist was Ando Hiroshige(1797-1858) a Japanese

painter and printmaker, known

especially for his landscape

prints.

• The last great figure of the

Ukiyo-e, or popular, school of

printmaking, he transmuted

everyday landscapes into

intimate, lyrical scenes that

made him even more

successful than his

contemporary, Hokusai.

• His work was not as bold or

innovative as that of the

older master, but he

captured, in a poetic, gentle

way that all could

understand.

Dyers' Quarter, Kanda, 1857 From

"One Hundred Famous Views of Edo";

Woodblock print,

13 1/4 x 8 5/8 in;

The Brooklyn Museum .

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• Hiroshige won fame as a landscape artist, reaching a peak of

success and achievement in 1833 when his masterpiece, the

print series Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (scenes on the

highway connecting Edo and Kyoto), was published.

• In this next slide, a street of houses backing on to the seashore,

and the tail-end of a daimyo's procession passing along it; behind

the houses ships moored in the bay.

• Being the first station on the highway, Shinagawa was thronged

with travellers coming and going.

• The road was lined with many teahouses, restaurants and

entertainment quarters.

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Towards the Modern Era• The Meiji and Taisho Periods (1868-1926)

• The Tokugawa shogunate toppled, in part, because of its inability to handle increasing pressure from Western nations for a more open Japan.

• Sovereignty was restored to the imperial throne, but real power rested with the emperor's cabinet.

• Japanese leaders emphasized catching up with the West in military capacity, science, and technology.

• They also promoted Western cultural elements as signs of Japan's status as a "civilized" nation, similar to the emulation of China in the Nara period.

• The government imported Western architects and artists, who also taught Japanese students.

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• Oil painting became a major genre in

the late nineteenth century.

• Oiran (Grand Courtesan) by

Takahashi Yuichi (1828–1894),

created for a client nostalgic for

vanishing elements of Japanese

culture, highlights the cultural ferment

of the early Meiji period.

• Takahashi portrayed the courtesan's

features in the analytical manner of

Western portraits, while the more

abstract garments reflect traditional

portraiture. Takahashi Yuichi, Oiran

(grand courtesan), Meiji

period, 1872. Oil on

canvas, 2' 6 1/2" X 1' 9

5/8". Tokyo National

University of Fine Arts

and Music, Tokyo.

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• Enthusiasm for Westernization led to resistance and concern over a

loss of distinctive Japanese identity.

• The American professor Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908), a former

student named Okakura Kakuzo (1862–1913), and others founded

a university dedicated to Japanese arts.

• They encouraged incorporating some Western techniques in

basically Japanese-style paintings.

• The resulting style was called nihonga (Japanese painting), as

opposed to yoga (Western painting).

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• Kutsugen, by Yokoyama Taikan (1868–1958), provides a good

example of nihonga.

• It combines a low horizon line and subtle shading effects taken from

Western painting with East Asian elements in its composition,

brushwork techniques, and use of traditional media.

• The subject, a Chinese poet who falls out of the emperor's favor, may

have resonated with Taikan and his associates.

• The poet suggests the spirit of the early nihonga painters, who

resisted powerful forces of change.

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Summary:

• Zen Buddhism flourished alongside other sects and promoted a

uniquely Japanese aesthetic.

• In Muromachi splashed-ink painting spontaneity is balanced with a

thorough knowledge of the painting tradition.

• Painters also continued painting on golden screens

making them even bolder as architectural painting becomes a more

important aspect in Japanese decorative arts.

• Yamato-e or narrative painting continues into the Momoyama period.

• In the late 15th century, the new aesthetic of refined rusticity, or wabi,

included appreciation of rustic Japanese ceramics.

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• Teahouses and homes included – tatami, and an alcove -

tokonoma-, a place to hang painting or calligraphy and to

display other prized objects.

• In the Edo period, a new middle class comes to power and

popular art includes ukiyo-e woodblock prints to display in the

homes of ordinary people.

• Katsushika Hokusai and Ando Hiroshige are among the most

famous practitioners of this art form.

• By the end of the 19th century, the ever adaptable were utilizing

western techniques and perspective while maintaining a

Japanese style in their artwork.

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LINKS:

• Cleveland Art Museum

• Metropolitan Special Exhibit (16th Cent Japan)

• Institute for Japanese Art

• Tokyo National Museum

• Japanese Gallery at CGFA

• A Hiroshige Gallery of Prints