Painting
Heian Period: 794-1185
After Emperor Kanmu moved his capital from Nara that named Heian-kyō (“Capital of Peace and Tranquility,” present-day Kyoto), he wanted new Buddhist sects and sponsored the monks Saichō and Kūkai to study in China. When they returned to Japan, they brought back new ideas that profoundly influenced Japan’s art and culture.
Saichō and Kūkai started their own sects: the Tendai Lotus School and Shingon (“True Word”), respectively and collectively grouped under the category of Esoteric Buddhism. Later the monk Ennin (793-864) sponsored by Kanmu’s grandson returned from study in China to introduce the Pure Land recitation practices (nembutsu) which laid the foundation for the Amidism. Amidism believes that Amida Buddha presides over the Western Paradise, or Pure Land, and shows compassion by welcoming the dying into the Western Paradise.
Esoteric Buddhism and Amidism relied heavily on visual aids in their practices. Esoteric Buddhism used visual mandalas that represent the cosmos to show Buddha’s teaching. Amidism art centered on rebirth in the Western Paradise, depicting Amida welcoming the souls of the dying, called raigōzu (Descent of Amida painting).
Kūkai used calligraphy as a spiritual exercise. He was posthumously named as the Patron of Calligraphy. Heian beliefs held writing as a window to the soul. Aristocrats used calligraphy to express emotions and feelings. Esoteric Buddhism incorporated it as a personal mandala.
After the 9th century, Japan had lost contact with a China in political turmoil and chaos. Japanese art and culture had been imitating Chinese models. Afterwards Japan began to develop its own art forms and by the end of the Heian Period there was a clear distinction between paintings with Chinese influence (kara-e) and those with Japanese subjects and techniques (yamato-e).
Three examples of Chinese influences being absorbed in Japanese art are folding screens, hanging scrolls, and hand scrolls. Folding screens called byōbu (“wind wall”) are made from several joined panels, with decorative painting and calligraphy. The hanging scroll was used as permanent room decoration with paintings, calligraphy and designs. The handscroll, emaki, is a long, narrow, horizontal scroll used for calligraphy or paintings. Emakimono combine both text and image in telling a story to provide cultural information and teach moral values. All came from China and all initially exhibited kara-e but by the 12th century yamato-e predominated.
Kamakura Period Art
A military regime headquartered in Kamakura came to power and ruled from 1185 to 1333, the Kamakura Period.
Kamakura Period religious painting was influenced by the Amidist sects and Zen. Amidist painting depicted figures from the Pure Land pantheon, the Six Realms of Existence, and Amida descending from paradise to greet souls of the recently departed (raigū painting). Zen painting concentrated on mentor and patriarch portraiture, and subjects not obviously religious in theme such as bird and flower paintings and of landscape paintings that symbolized personal spiritual journeys.
Secular subjects centered on war and portraiture of famous people, including poets. Portraits of the period tend to present the subject in the stiff, opaque, and decorative surrounding typical of Heian style, but faces are more realistically and individually rendered.
The narrative scroll format grew in importance. Religious foundations made extensive use of the narrative scroll format to recount important times and the history of the sect.
The Golden Age of Japanese Art and Muromachi Culture
The Muromachi Period (1333–1600) takes its name from a district in Kyoto where the Ashikaga shoguns established residence.
Muromachi Culture can be divided into two periods, Kitayama bunka and Higashiyama bunka, named after areas of Kyoto.
Kitayama bunka (“north mountain culture”) occurred during the rule of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358 – 1408), at Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion). Yoshimitsu encouraged many art forms including painting with his sponsorship of the Ami family, who painted in the style of the Chinese Southern Song painters.
Higashiyama bunka (“east mountain culture”) originated and was promoted by Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436 – 1490) at Ginkaku-ji (Temple of the Silver Pavilion). He assembled a great number of the leading artists of the time, including great painters, whose ideals and aesthetics were heavily influence by the concept of wabi-sabi (beauty in simplicity).
The most profound development in painting was the widespread use of Chinese ink wash or monochrome ink painting, suiboku-ga or sumi-e in Japanese. The painter-monk Mokuan Reien returned from Zen studies in China with knowledge of suiboku and a collection of Chinese art works, especially of Muqi, the great Chinese monochrome ink painter. Suiboku-ga reached its zenith during the Muromachi period.
Suiboku-ga, or sumi-e, uses only water and the same black ink as in calligraphy. Tonality (the different colors in a painting in this case, white to black) and shading is achieved by varying the density of the ink. This is accomplished in the mixing (grinding) the ink stick in water or by changing the ink load and pressure with each brush stroke, which requires great skill.
The goal suiboku-ga was not to reproduce the appearance of a subject but, rather, its spirit or essence, much like Zen meditation. In practice, the ink wash artist paints not the flower’s petals, color, and stem, but tries to capture its fragrance.
Around 1413, Shogun Yoshimochi (1386-1428) commissioned the monk-artist Josetsu to produce a painting in the “new style” based on the Zen kōan, “How do you catch a catfish with a gourd?” The finished work and its author influenced many future Japanese painters. It shows a comical-looking man holding a small gourd and looking at a large catfish against a background of a winding river and a bamboo grove. This is perhaps the most famous work by the Josetsu and is at Taizō-in, a sub-temple of Myōshin-ji.
Tenshō Shūbun (active 1414 –1465) studied under Josetsu. Shūbun’s pupils included Sesshū Tōyō and Kanō Masanobu.
Sesshū Tōyō (1420-1506) was the most prominent master suiboku-ga from the middle Muromachi period. Some of his most dramatic works are in the Chinese haboku style in which the painter meditates, visualizes the image, then in a clear empty mind applies brushstrokes intuitively to capture the true essence of the subject. He established the “School of Sesshū.”
Kanō Masanobu (1434 –1530) is generally considered the founder of the Kanō school of painting. Masanobu was closely associated with influential Zen temples. Masanobu and his followers secured and maintained the highly lucrative favor of the Ashikaga and later rulers. During the Muromachi Period the most famous of the Kanō family was Eitoku (1543–1590). The Kanō school became one of the most famous schools of Japanese painting and lasted from the late 15th century until the Meiji period which began in 1868.
The other famous art tradition of the times was the Tosa school. It was devoted to yamato-e, specializing in subject matter and techniques derived from ancient Japanese art. In general, the Tosa style is characterized by rather flat, decorative compositions, fine line work, great attention to detail, and brilliant color.
The Kanō and Tosa schools receive separate treatment here.
Edo Period Art 1600-1868
The Edo Period (1600-1868) marks the time that the Tokugawa shogunate ruled Japan at Edo. During this period, the Tokugawa shogunate imposed a totalitarian regime and Japan went into isolation. Emperor Higashiyama upon enthronement chose the era name of Genroku, which means “original happiness.”
There were three important developments in painting. Rinpa sought to revive Heian culture. Ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) was the witty, irreverent style of urban Edo. From Ming Chinese monks came the literati culture, which resulted in bunjin-ga (“literati painting”), or nanga (“painting of the Southern School”).
The Kanō school and Tosa school that predominated from the Momoyama Period continued until the end of the Edo Period. The greatest Kanō painter of the Edo period was Kanō Tan’yu (1602–1674), who decorated many of the most important castles, including Nagoya Castle and Nijō Castle. While the two great institutions continued to attract clients from the nobility, shoguns, and emperors, they lost their creativity and innovation. The Kanō school that had become hereditary conserved old art styles. The Tosa painters simply imitated Mitsuoki, the school’s last great painter. However, the interest in everyday life by the Tosa school influenced painters in the ukiyo-e genre paintings.
Genre painting depicts ordinary people doing ordinary things. They could be humorous like Sengai Gibon’s smiling frog in meditation or Kawanabe Kyosai’s painting of the monk Daruma, the legendary founder of Zen, with his exaggerated features and look or irreverent such as Ito Jakuchi’s religious imagery of vegetables as Buddhist symbols.
Out of the Chinese, Kanō, and Tosa styles came Rinpa. It was created in 17th century Kyoto by Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–1637) and Tawaraya Sōtatsu (d. c.1643). Rinpa flourished in established cultural centers – Kyōto, Nara, and Osaka.
Rinpa artists worked in various formats such as screens, fans and hanging scrolls, woodblock printed books, lacquerware, ceramics, kimono textiles, and sliding doors and walls (fusuma). They chose subject matter from Heian traditions of yamato-e, with elements from ink wash paintings, Chinese Ming flower-and-bird paintings, as well as Momoyama period Kanō school subjects. Two of the most famous artists during the Genroku Era were the Ogata brothers Ogata Kōrin (1658-1716) and Kenzan (1663-1743). Rinpa continued well into the 19th century with various revivals.
Genroku Era
During the Genroku Era woodblock printing came into popular use. The earliest successful woodblock prints were in the 1670s by Hishikawa Moronobu (1638-1714). Ukiyo-e is a genre of woodblock prints and paintings that was produced in Japan from the 17th century to the 19th century. The subjects of ukiyo-e were often influence by urban Edo life and culture.
The centers for entertainment for the townspeople were the pleasure districts, designated areas for brothels along with other entertainment, tea houses, taverns, theaters, and geisha and courtesans. Kyoto’s pleasure district was Shimabara. Asai Ryoi, a Buddhist monk turned pleasure-seeker, used the term ukiyo in his book, Ukiyo Monogatari (Tales of the Floating World), which was from Buddhism denoting the impermanence and fleeting nature of human pleasures, to describe a bohemian concept of forgetting reality, of existing for the moment, living the life of the pleasure district to the full, singing songs, and drinking sake. The term stuck and ukiyo-e came to mean “pictures of the floating world.”
Two related areas of ukiyo-e were bijin-ga and shunga. Bijin-ga (“beautiful person picture”) is a term for pictures of beautiful women. Shunga is a term for erotic art.
Two of the most internationally famous ukiyo-e artists were Kitagawa Utamaro and Utagawa Hiroshige. They helped form the West’s perception of Japanese art, Japonism, and influenced Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Art Nouveau artists. Ukiyo-e artwork became collector’s items in West.
Toward the end of the Edo Period, the greatest ukiyo-e artist was Katsushika Hokusai who painted the Great Wave off Kanagawa
The third major development during the Edo Period was bunjin-ga (“literati painting”) or nanga (“Southern painting”). This school was made up of artists who admired traditional Chinese culture, especially the painting of Chinese academics and intellectuals called literati painting. However, what developed was uniquely Japanese. Because of Japan’s isolation, these painters had a narrow view of China and its literati painters and bunjin-ga developed from a small sampling of Chinese material. Also, the Chinese literati were intellectuals aspiring to be painters, while the Japanese were painters aspiring to be intellectuals.
Edo Period Decorative Arts
The Edo Period produced great works in the decorative arts. Many of the greatest painters worked in this field. There was a huge variety of objects used for decorative art: writing boxes; tea bowls; game boards; Noh masks; ceremonial samurai swords and armor; leather saddles and stirrups embellished with gold and lacquer; and uchiakake, the outer garments worn by samurai-class women, embroidered with blossoms, clouds and birds.
Good examples of art can be seen at Tōji, Jingo-ji, and the Phoenix Hall (Hōōdō) at the Byōdō Temple and especially the Kyoto National Museum.