Chapter 25: Japanese Art

Key Notes

• Time Period: 1789–1848
• Culture, beliefs, and physical settings
  • Ancient Japanese civilizations were very advanced for their time.
  • Shared cultural ideas throughout Asia stimulated artistic production.
  • Figural subjects are common in Japanese painting.
  • Zen rock gardens and ink paintings were popular in Japan.
• Cultural interactions
  • Asian art is influenced by global trends, and in turn influences global trends.
  • Trade routes connected Asia with the world.
  • Buddhism was imported from Korea and China and was widely popular in part because of courtly patronage.
• Material Processes and Techniques
  • The art of Japan is some of the oldest in the world with the longest continuous tradition.
  • Distinctive to Japan is the development of rock gardens, teahouses, and wood-block printing.
  • Japanese architecture uses natural materials such as wood and stone.
  • Calligraphy is highly prized in Japan.
  • Elaborate floral and animal-inspired artwork is a Japanese specialty.
• Audience, functions, and patron
  • Japanese art featured a counterculture approach that highlighted the achievements of nonprofessional artists with new types of subject matter.
  • Architecture is generally religious.
• Theories and Interpretations
  • Art history as a science is subject to differing interpretations and theories that change over time.

Historical Background

• Japan has never been successfully invaded by an outside army.
• The Mongols attempted to invade in 1281 but their fleet was destroyed by a typhoon called kamikaze.
• Allies in World War II never invaded Japan's four principal islands.
• Japan has a greater proportion of its traditional artistic patrimony than almost any other country due to relatively sheltered nature and infrequency of foreign interference.
• Commodore Perry opened Japan to outside influence in 1854.
• One by-product of Perry's intervention was the shipment of ukiyo-e prints to European markets.
• Ukiyo-e prints achieved enduring fame in nineteenth-century Europe and America.
• The upper classes in Japan looked down upon ukiyo-e prints and were willing to export them.

Patronage and Artistic Life

• Japanese artists received commissions for their work from both the royal court and religious institutions.
• Workshops were run by masters who had a range of assistants.
• The tradition in Japan was for family-run businesses, with the eldest son inheriting the trade.
• Assistants learned the trade from the ground up, including making paper and ink.
• The master created the composition, while assistants worked on the colors and details.
• Painting was highly regarded in Japan, and both male and female aristocrats learned and excelled in the art form.

Key Terms

• Continuous narrative: a work of art that contains several scenes of the same story painted or sculpted in continuous succession
• Genre painting: painting in which scenes of everyday life are depicted
• Haboku (splashed ink): a monochrome Japanese ink painting done in a free style in which ink seems to be splashed on a surface Kondo: a hall used for Buddhist teachings
• Mandorla: (Italian, meaning “almond”) a term that describes a large almond-shaped orb around holy figures like Christ and Buddha
• Tarashikomi: a Japanese painting technique in which paint is applied to a surface that has not already dried from a previous application
• Ukiyo-e: translated as “pictures of the floating world,” a Japanese genre painting popular from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century
• Yamato-e: a style of Japanese painting that is characterized by native subject matter, stylized features, and thick bright pigments
• Zen: a metaphysical branch of Buddhism that teaches fulfillment through self-discipline and intuition

Zen Buddhism

• Zen is a type of Buddhism that came to East Asia from China in the late twelfth century.
• Zen had a strong influence on Japanese art due to its warm embrace in Japan.
• Zen philosophy rejects materialism and physical adornment, and emphasizes austerity, self-control, courage, and loyalty.
• Meditation is essential for enlightenment, and samurai warriors use it to perform acts of bravery and physical endurance.
• Zen teachings rely on intuition and introspection, rather than books and scripture.
• Both warriors and artists adopted Zen philosophy quickly.

The Japanese Tea Ceremony

• The tea ceremony is a highly sophisticated ritual that may seem simple to the Westerner.
• The ceremony involves simple details, crude vessels, refined tea, and uncomplicated gestures.
• Teahouses have bamboo and wooden walls, floor mats of woven straw, and everything is arranged with straightforwardness and delicacy.
• Visitors enter through a low doorway symbolizing humbleness, into a private setting.
• The space has an unadorned alcove with a Zen painting to enhance an intimate atmosphere of warm and dark spaces.
• Participants sit on the floor in a small space designed for about five people and drink tea.
• The ceremony requires four principles: Purity, harmony, respect, and tranquility.
• All elements of the ceremony are prescribed, including the purification ritual of hand washing and the types of conversation allowed.

Japanese Architecture and Sculpture

• Zen philosophy emphasizes austerity and simplicity in architecture.
• Traditional Japanese structures are usually made of undressed wood and designed to harmonize with the natural environment.
• Pillars are placed at wide intervals to support the roof, creating open interiors that connect with the outdoors.
• Floors are raised to reduce humidity and allow air circulation.
• Eaves are long to provide shade in summer and steeply pitched to allow for quick runoff of rain and snow.
• Interiors have mobile spaces created by sliding screens that act as room dividers.
• Japanese design includes the Zen garden, featuring meticulous arrangements of raked sand, stones, and plants for spiritual refreshment and contemplation.
• Japanese culture has a deep respect for the natural world, reflected in the use of wood for building and stone for Zen gardens.

➼  Todai-ji

• Details

  • 743; rebuilt on c. 1700
  • wood with ceramic tile roofing
  • Found in Nara, Japan

• Form

  • A two-story building with long, graceful eaves hanging over the edges: the eaves protect the interior from the sun and rain.
  • Seven external bays on the façade.

• Function

  • This is the original center of the Buddhist faith in Japan, from which ancillary temples around the country were served.
  • The building expresses an imperial and political authority combined with religious overtones.
  • It served as a center for the training of scholar monks, who studied Buddhist doctrines.

• Context

  • The name Great Eastern Temple refers to its location on the eastern edge of the city of Nara, Japan (called Daibutuden).
  • The temple is noted for its colossal sculpture of seated Vairocana Buddha.
  • The temple and Buddha have been razed several times during military unrest.
  • The Buddha is influenced by monumental Chinese sculptures

• Image

  

➼  Great Buddha

• Function and Context

  • Largest metal statue of Buddha in the world.
  • Monumental feat of casting.
  • Emperor Shōmu embraced Buddhism and erected sculpture as a way of stabilizing Japanese population during a time of economic crisis.
  • Mudra: right hand means “do not fear”; left hand means “welcome.”

• Image

  

➼  Nio Guardian Figures (c. 1203)

• Function and Context

  • They are placed on either side of the Todai-ji south gate.
  • The sculptures are a series of complexly joined woodblock pieces.
  • Masculine, frightening figures that protect the Buddha derived from Chinese guardian figures such as those at Luoyang.
  • Fierce, forbidding looks and gestures.
  • Intricate swirling drapery.

• Image

  

➼  Great South Gate (1181–1203)

• Function and Context

  • This is the main gate of Todai-ji.
  • Nandaimon: great south gate, with five bays—three central bays for passing and two outer bays that are closed.
  • The two stories are the same size: unusual in Japanese architecture (usually the upper story is smaller).
  • Deep eaves are supported by the six-stepped bracket complex, which rise in tiers with no bracketed arms.
  • The roof is supported by huge pillars.
  • Unusual in that it has no ceiling; the roof is exposed from below.
  • Overall effect is of proportion and stateliness.

• Image

  

➼  Ryoan-Ji

• Details

  • From Muromachi period
  • c. 1480; current design 18th century
  • rock garden
  • Found in Kyoto, Japan

• Garden

  • Garden as a microcosm of nature.
  • Zen dry garden:
  • Gravel represents water; gravel is raked in wavy patterns daily by monks.
  • Rocks represent mountain ranges.
  • Asymmetrical arrangement.
  • The garden is bounded on two sides by a low, yellow wall.
  • Fifteen rocks arranged in three groups interpreted as:
    • Islands in a floating sea.
    • Mountain peaks above clouds.
    • Constellations in the sky.
    • A tiger taking her cubs across a stream.
  • Meant to be viewed from a veranda in a nearby building, the abbot’s residence.
  • From no viewpoint is the entire garden viewable at once.
  • Garden served as a focus for meditation; in a sense, a garden entered by the mind.
  • ■Wet garden:
  • Contains a teahouse.
  • Seemingly arbitrary in placement, the plants are actually placed in a highly organized and structured environment symbolizing the natural world.
  • Water symbolizes purification; used in rituals.

• Image

  

Japanese Painting and Printmaking

• Japanese artists mastered Chinese painting techniques and formats, such as handscrolls, hanging scrolls, and decorative screens.
• Characteristics of Japanese painting style include elevated viewpoints, diagonal lines, and depersonalized faces.
• Haboku, or ink-splashed painting, is a Japanese specialty that creates the illusion of being splashed on the surface in a free and open style.
• Yamato-e, developed in the twelfth century, features tales from Japanese history and literature depicted in long narrative scrolls, with strong diagonals and depersonalized figures.
• Ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world," dominated genre painting in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries and depicted scenes of everyday life or pleasure.
  • Ukiyo-e was immensely popular and produced through a collaborative process between artist, publisher, woodblock carver, and printer.
• Polychrome prints, introduced in 1765, were popular despite being time-consuming and expensive to create, and were known for their subtle and delicate colors separated by black lines.
• Suzuki Harunobu was the first successful ukiyo-e artist in the polychrome tradition, and Hokusai explored the relationship between ukiyo-e and landscape painting.
• Western artists were taken with ukiyo-e prints for their flat areas of color, lack of shadows, odd compositional angles, and unexpected cropping of forms.

➼ Night Attack on the Sanjô Palace

• Details

  • Kamakura period
  • c. 1250–1300
  • Handscroll (ink and color on paper)
  • Found in Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

• Form

  • A narrative work that is read from right to left as the scroll is unrolled.
  • Point of view: one looks down from above onto the scene, which takes place in Kyoto.
  • Strong diagonals emphasize movement and action.
  • Swift, active brushstrokes.
  • Depersonalized figures; many with only one stroke for the eyes, ears, and mouth.
  • Tangled mass of forms accentuated by Japanese armor.
  • Final scene: lone archer leads the escape from the burning palace with the Japanese commander behind him.

• Function: Hand scroll, meant to be read and studied, not meant to be placed on permanent display.

• Context

  • Military rule in Japan from 1185 on had an interest in the code of the warrior; reflected in the large quantity of war-related literature and paintings.
  • Scroll depicts a coup staged in 1159 as Emperor Go-Shirakawa is taken prisoner.
  • Burning of the imperial palace at Sanjô in Kyoto as rebel forces try to seize power by capturing a retired emperor.
  • Imperial palace in flames; rebels force the emperor to board a cart waiting to take him into captivity.
  • Rebels kill those opposed and place their heads on sticks and parade them as trophies.
  • Painted a hundred years after the civil war depicted in the scene.
  • Unrolls like a film sequence; as one unrolls, time advances.

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➼ White and Red Plum Blossoms

• Details

  • By Ogata Korin
  • 1710–1716
  • ink, watercolor, and gold leaf on paper
  • Found in Museum of Art, Atami, Japan

• Form

  • A stream cuts rhythmically through the scene; swirls in the paint surface indicate water currents.
  • White plum blossoms on left; red on right.
  • The artist worked in vivid colors or ink monochrome on gold ground.
  • This work has more abstracted and simplified forms than the compositions of Ogata’s predecessors.
  • Old tree on left is balanced by new tree on right.

• Function: Japanese screen, usually used to separate spaces in a room.

• Context

  • Japanese rinpa style named for Ogata (Rin, for Ko-rin, and pa, meaning “school”).
  • The work is influenced by the yamato-e style of painting.
  • Tarashikomi technique, in which paint is applied to a surface that has not already dried from a previous application; creates a dripping effect, useful in depicting streams or flowers.
  • The artist was a member of a Kyoto family of textile merchants that serviced samurai, a few nobility, and city dwellers.

• Image

  

➼ Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura)

• Details

  • Also known as the Great Wave
  • from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
  • 1830–1833
  • polychrome wood-block print; ink and color on paper
  • Found in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

• Form

  • Personification of nature; the wave seems intent on drowning the figures in boats.
  • Mount Fuji, sacred mountain to the Japanese, seems to be one of the waves.
  • The striking design contrasts water and sky with large areas of negative space.
  • Imported color: Prussian blue, which made the print seem unusual and special to contemporaries.

• Function: Part of series of prints called Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

• Materials and Techniques

  • Each wood-block print required the collaboration of a designer, an engraver, a printer, and a publisher.
  • Conceived of as a commercial opportunity by the publisher, who may have doubled as a book dealer.
  • The publisher determined the theme.
  • The print was designed by an artist on paper, and then an engraver copied the design onto a woodblock.
  • The printer rubs ink onto the block and places paper over the block to make a print.
  • Many colored prints were made by using a separate block for each color.
  • Prussian blue was highly prized in Japan; acquired through trade with Europe.

• Context

  • Mount Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan, is known for its symmetrical cone.
  • Mount Fuji is considered a sacred site.
  • In Shintoism, the forces of nature unite as one, as they do in the Hokusai print.
  • This was the first time a landscape was a major theme in Japanese prints.

• Image

  

  \n Chapter 26: Art of the Americas