The Art of Japan - Part I

The story of the art of Japan is a story which constantly moves between native Japanese inventions and adaptations on the one hand, and the influence of mainland Korea and China on the other. It moves between the Japanese native religion and the introduced ideas of Taoism and Buddhism, and it moves between internecine war and inner peace. And from this story are forged two of the central ideas of Japanese aesthetics, Wabi-sabi and Mono no Aware. Wabi-sabi, the aesthetic of simplicity, can perhaps best be seen in Shinto shrines and rusticated teaware for the tea ceremony. It is above all a native aesthetic in contrast to the imported grandeur of China. Mono no Aware is an aesthetic of the sadness of transient things, the result of introduced Buddhism, and perhaps the war-torn history of the successive shogunates. Shinto is Japan's native religion, To meaning way and Shin meaning spirit or god. It's an animistic religion, believing that the spirits inhabit many aspects of nature, large rocks, mountains, old trees, lakes, even the wind or any other thing that a kami or spirit might inhabit. Mount Fuji itself is a sacred site. Another famous site is the Miyoto Iwa, the married couple rocks, in the Futami Bay in the Ise Prefecture, the second image from the left. Often the sacred space is marked with a tori, or wooden arch, acting as a gateway to the site, such as those to the right of this page. Also, shrines may contain folded, zig-zagging paper, called shide, as seen in the lowest image here. Sometimes these are tied to thick rice-straw rope, called a shiminawa. Shinto shrines are periodically rebuilt, but one of the oldest shrines, the Ise Jingu Shrine, the upper of the two images furthest to the left, dates back to the 4th century. The Mesolithic age in Japan ran from 15,000 BC to 300 BC, and is known as the Jomon period. Pottery from the latter part of the early period, around 7,500 BC, involved ceramic pots made by coiling clay, which was then shaped and decorated by using thin rope to impress patterns in the vase's surface. Middle Jomon saw vases with rims almost as tall as the pots themselves, shaped in scallops, spirals, or flame-like loops with a supernatural intensity, and suggesting a ritual function. Late Jomon pottery shows an acquaintance with wheel-thrown vases, even though they were still made through the coil technique. Meanwhile, figurines, known as togu, which served some religious purpose, became similarly elaborate during the late Jomon period, with shamanistic features and enormous eyes, which some writers ascribe to an age of deep superstition and fear. The Yayoi period, beginning in 300 BC, involved contact with Korea and China, and the introduction of a culture which created smooth, wheel-thrown pottery. Metallurgy was also introduced, and bronze ritual bells, called dotaku, were cast with elaborate decoration. One style, the ryūsui, or flowing water pattern, would remain a source for later Japanese decorative arts. The Kofun period, beginning in 300 AD, is named for its burial mounds, or kofun, which began as round tumuli and increased in size with the growing centralization of power to become giant, keyhole-shaped hills surrounded by moats, the largest of them being on the right of this picture, Daisenryō Kofun, the mausoleum of Emperor Nintoku. The Hosoka period saw the introduction of Buddhism to Japan. Despite some resistance from the Shinto sect, the religion was sanctioned by the ruling classes. Over the following two and a half centuries, Mahayana Buddhism and the Shinto religion merged, and by the beginning of the 9th century, the more esoteric Vajrayana Buddhism, with its vast pantheon of deities, was introduced, before finally, in the 12th century, Zen, a Chinese form of Buddhism based on Taoism, became influential. Horyū-ji is one of the earliest temple complexes, or garan, in Japan, and features a Chinese invention based on the Buddhist reliquary stupas, namely the pagoda. The condo or golden hall of the temple complex at Horyū-ji contains its artistic treasures, such as this mural of Buddha, which survived the 1949 fire, and this triad of Buddha and Bodhisattvas, or saints. As the inscription on the back of the work attests, the triad was begun by the master sculptor Toribushi, shortly before the death of Prince Shotoku, who had been responsible for the growth of Buddhism in Japan. The following is an extract from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a text from Vajrayana Buddhism. All things that appear are manifestations of mind. The surrounding environment, which appears to be inanimate, that, too, is mind. This work of the famous Buddhist monk Myōshō-nin meditating, painted by his disciple Enichibō-jōnin, captures that worldview. Myōi is portrayed at the centre of a forest which seems stylised and abstract in its complexity, and the natural world seems to grow out of his figure, just as the external environment in Vajrayana Buddhism is treated as a manifestation of mind. The 12th century had seen the Minamoto clan emerge victorious from the wars against the Taira clan, and the newly established militaristic culture brought with it a populist reform of Buddhism. The new shogun, Yorimoto, encouraged a focus on inner spirituality and martial alertness. Consequently, portraiture, using dark crystal for the eyes and contrapposto stance, focused on creating realistic portrayals of spiritual essence. The Unkei school represented the birth of Japanese portraiture, and this work by Unkei is a wood carving of the Indian patriarch Asanga, known as Muchaku in Japanese. As mentioned earlier, Zen Buddhism, based on Taoism, was introduced into Japan from China in the 12th century. Tao, or the Way, developed at the same time as Buddhism, but independently of it, in the 5th century BC. Tao has elements in common with Buddhism, such as the negation of self, the negation of desire, the negation of will, and the communion with an eternal principle. But whereas Buddhist thought is expressed in direct teachings, Tao teaching is less direct. As Lao Tzu says, the way that can be spoken of is not the constant way. Arguably the most direct instruction which Chuang Tzu gave was, just be empty. Accordingly, landscape paintings by Zen monks, such as Tenshu Shobun, relate depictions of the This work, entitled Reading in the Bamboo Studio, has an emphasis on contrasts in scale between the tiny details of life on the one hand, the fishing village, or the bamboo studio itself, and the vast vagueness of the misty landscape on the other. This gives us a sense of negation of the finite dissolving in the void. At the beginning of the 17th century, under a new shogun, Tokugawa, the de facto capital of Japan, moved to Edo, in modern-day Tokyo. Within just over a century, it had become the world's most populous city, with a million inhabitants, and a new demographic brought a merchant-class culture. The word ukiyo, or the floating world, described its view of the largely based on sensory stimulation and pleasure-seeking, and ukiyo-e describes the artworks which recorded this world. Artisans such as Koetsu and Sotatsu worked together, producing works for an upper middle class and aristocratic elite, but the tastes and lives of the new middle-class merchants were reflected in the work of Ogata Korin, producing works such as this one, Irises on Screens. The use of gold ground was a remnant of its popularity that came from its ability to reflect much-needed light in aristocratic castles, with thick walls and hence small windows. But this work is not so much a landscape as an abstraction from it, using only blue and green, and repeating the same motif irregularly to create the space. Professor Joan Stanley Baker relates the work to the Heian classic text The Tale of Ise, in which the hero crosses a bridge surrounded by irises. In the absence of the bridge, we are put into the drama in the place of the hero crossing the bridge. However, other than screens such as these, that is the virtuoso works such as Korin's, and from the slide before it the aerial view meaning scenes in and around the city, the art form par excellence of the ukiyo-e was the mass-produced woodcut print. One of its most popular uses was to create a series of bijinga, or beauties, and Kitagawa Utamaro was one of its most famous practitioners. This series, entitled Kasen Koi no Pu, or The Love Section of an Anthology of Poems, features five women exhibiting five different types of love. Untypically, these women are not from the yukaku, or pleasure district, as much of Utamaro's output focused on the red-light district, creating shunga, or erotic art. This was not unusual even for reputable artists such as Kusai or Hiroshige. These two of the five images are thought to form a pair. The woman in Fukaku Shinobukoi, or Deeply Hidden Love, is smoking a pipe and has teeth which have been deliberately blackened with ohaguro, common to older females, but her eyebrows have not been shaved, hence she is unmarried. The hidden love she is thinking of may be the person she would have liked to have married. Mono Omoikoi, or Anxious Love, shows a married woman with shaven eyebrows thinking deeply on a past or future lover. This image by Katsushika Hokusai is perhaps, outside of Japan at least, the most famous Japanese work of art. Normally referred to as The Wave, its title is Under the Wave at Kanagawa. The work is from a series of woodcuts by Hokusai called 36 Views of Mount Fuji, which frame the sacred mountain in interesting ways. One image shows us the mountain through a workman's barrel, another with the mountain juxtaposed against a woman's head. The mountain, seen in the distance in this image, is the eternal motionless fulcrum around which the momentary wave turns, sweeping up with it the two oshio kuribone, narrow boats transporting fish and vegetables, and the frightened rowers laying prostrate inside. The text in the top left of the woodcut also tells a story. Inside the box it says, from top to bottom, simply Fugaku Sanjuro Kokei, which means from the 36 Views of Mount Fuji, and Kanagawa Oki, Namaura, meaning under the shore wave, off the shore of Kanagawa. Okiname, rather than tsunami, means the wave is a rogue wave, rather than one caused by seismic activity. The signature to the left of this text, however, reads Hokusai Aratame Iitsuhitsu, meaning from the brush of Hokusai, who changed his name to Iitsu. It was not unusual for ukiyo-e artists to rename themselves. Hiroshige did the same. But Hokusai's names tell us much about him. Born as Tokitaro, his teacher named him Shunro, which the artist changed to Tawayarasori, then Hokusai Tomisa, and then in 1800 changed it to Katsushika Hokusai, a name he kept for 11 years of his career. Katsushika was the district of Edo where he was born. Hokusai is short for Hokushinsai, or School of the North Star, the North Star Polaris being associated with the deity Myoken in Nichiren Buddhism, of which Hokusai was a follower, and which held Mount Fuji and nearby Mount Minobu to be sacred. In this context, the cyclical movement of the wave and the rowers caught up in the cycle of birth and rebirth only stopped with contemplation of the stillness of the mountain. Later in life, after Hokusai had changed his name to Old Man Crazy to Paint, he produced a hanging scroll with the story of the Chinese 4th century BC founder of Taoism, Chuang Tzu, dreaming of butterflies. Chuang Tzu tells the story, Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, flitting around and enjoying myself. I had no idea I was Chuang Tzu. Then suddenly I woke up and I was Chuang Tzu again. But I could not tell, had I been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I was now Chuang Tzu? As Timothy Clark, head of the Japanese collection at the British Museum says of this image, Hokusai had transformed his art over many decades in order to identify ever closer with his subject. So, what better illustration of his credo? Ando, or Utagawa Hiroshige, was very much inspired by Hokusai's example, changing his name several times before naming himself after the Utagawa school, painting a series of 36 views of Mount Fuji, and dedicating himself to Buddhism, albeit very late in his life. This work of the Myoto-Iwa, the married couple rocks, shows Hokusai's influence. However, Hokusai's reputation as an eccentric bohemian, for example refusing to clean his succession of houses, contrasts with Hiroshige's samurai family background and his work as a bureaucrat. Hiroshige himself expressed what he saw as the difference between the two artists in the introduction to his Hundred Views of Mount Fuji. In the artist's words, filled with the power of his brush, Hokusai's work focused upon making things interesting. For example, he manipulated Fuji as he liked. My work differs. I simply reproduced sketches of what I had seen before my eyes. However, this is arguably an exaggeration, as Hiroshige altered views from time to time. But Hokusai would often impose his vision on the viewer with insistent framing of the spiritual symbolism, and dramatically simplified and calligraphic forms. Hiroshige, on the other hand, would generally produce wider panoramic views based on observation of nature, which often allowed the viewer's eye to discover the landscape for itself. But Hiroshige's style is an imposition of his reaction to the natural landscape, a lyrical expression of mood, rather than Hokusai's intense spiritual message. And hence it was to Hiroshige's work that many European artists were drawn. Japan's isolation had been ended by the gunboat diplomacy of the US Admiral Perry in 1857, and the 1867 World Fair in Paris started the vogue of Japonisme. Ukiyo-e prints became popular, published in art journals such as this one by the collector Siegfried Bing, and were influential, assimilated by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists such as Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir and Pissarro, as well as Gauguin and Van Gogh. Cézanne's repeated use of Mont Saint-Victoire as a motif is thought to stem from Hiroshige's homage to Hokusai's 36 views of Mount Fuji. In Vincent Van Gogh's portrait of Julien Tanguy from 1887, we can see Japanese prints on the wall, including two by Hiroshige and one by Eisen, which Van Gogh copied. Van Gogh borrowed elements of Ukiyo-e's formal and compositional vocabulary in his works. These include flat, usually bright colour planes, with strongly drawn lines, and a strongly diagonal composition. Often the central figure of the work would be trimmed, and in terms of colour, the distance was often equally as strong as the foreground. Vanishing points were often high up in the work, or a horizon would be absent, and many works show a close-up view of natural elements. This vocabulary can be seen in the Hiroshige works, which Van Gogh also made his own versions of. The bridge in the rain uses a typically strong dissecting diagonal, with large planes of colour, and a raised horizon, which is unusually tilted to emphasise the dramatic weather. The foreground action is weighed against the importance of the elements and the natural background. The flowering plum orchard has similar flat planes of bright colour, and represents a close-up of nature which cuts off the edges of the subject. However, the single tree takes meaning from the background context of the orchard.