Obtaining Images

obtaining images rs. OBTAINING IMAGES ART, PRODUCTION AND DISPLAY IN EDO JAPAN TIMON SCREECH reaktion books This book, which is at least partly intended as an educational tool, is dedicated to my teachers James McMullen John Rosenfield Haruko Iwasaki Akiyama Teruzaku Kobayashi Tadashi Takayama Hiroshi Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 33 Great Sutton Street London ec 1v 0dx, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk This book has been published with the assistance of The Japan Foundation Additional assistance from The Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies First published 2012 Copyright © Timon Screech 2012 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, with - out the prior permission of the publishers. Printed and bound in China by C&C Offset Printing Co., Ltd British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Screech, Timon. Obtaining images : art, production and display in Edo Japan. '. Art, Japanese – Edo period, ',&& –'.,.. (. Prints, Japanese – Edo period, ',&& –'.,.. ). Art and society – Japan – History – '-th century. *. Art and society – Japan – History – '.th century. I. Title -&/.+'('&/&))-dc(( #%"$ /-. '.,'./ .'* ( CONT ENTS Introduction 7 pa rt 1 1 Legends of the Artists 19 2Auspicious Images 33 3 Buying and Selling 69 4 The Power of the Image 93 pa rt 2 5 Governing Images: The Kano School 135 6 Portraiture 165 7 Japanese Painting 205 8 Painting Within the Heart 235 9 Floating Worlds 265 10 Artistic Contact with Europe 303 Glossary 345 Chronology 347 References 349 Bibliography 373 Acknowledgements 379 Photo Acknowledgements 380 Index 382 INTRODUCTION Art history, as a discipline, often over-confines its energies. Images attract the eye and, it goes without saying, they are often made to. Yet they have other func - tions and are capable of doing other things too, in tandem or even in opposition to this. Charles Dickens created the fictional character Josiah Bounderby who acquired a painting worth £700; that was £100, he said, for each time he would look at it. 1 At about the same time, the Japanese educationalist Fukuzawa Yūkichi collected paintings, but noted he never intended to look at them at all. 2 Both men – one real, one imagined – may be derided, but over history many have behaved like this. A book that seeks to take the extra-visual aspects of images seriously, as this one does, cannot ignore attitudes simply because they seem to us odd, even ignorant. Bounderby and Fukuzawa were, in fact, both sen sible men reacting to art in a way that needs addressing. is book considers images in their multiplicity of purpose. Viewing is, of course, important, and I aspire to provide an introduction to the themes and styles of Edo-Period art for those who wish to learn them. But that project of learning, fully construed, must investigate also a plethora of other things. If we shun engagement with everything beyond the simple (actually, not so simple) act of beholding images, we will fail to grasp, literally, the whole picture. Images might be mere backgrounds, as stage sets, placed to offset more consequential enactments taking place in front; or they might acquire meaning only as exchange items, seasonal accompaniments, accessories to prayer or play; they might not have been intended to be looked at outside external dictates, and looking might not have been their primary purpose at all. To say this would not deny the limp idity of the work or the desirability of its existence. It is for these reasons that I call this book obtaining images . Although a trifle obscure, I draw on both dictionary definitions of ‘obtaining’: ‘coming into pos - session of’, that is, buying and owning, and ‘being valid’, ‘customary’, conveying senses that are accepted and understood. We will investigate how and why peo ple felt it necessary to expend money or effort on obtaining images, and then 7 obtaining images how these images obtained for them. We will consider this from both the maker’s and the consumer’s side. ‘Images’ here are understood mostly as paintings and prints. ere may be objections that this is a Western imposition. Books on European ‘art’ routinely confine themselves to work in two dimensions, but it is often argued that such a prioritization was alien to Japan. 3 ere is a kernel of truth here, though the case has been much overstated, for the truth is that Japan (taking the lead from China and Korea) had a long tradition of thinking about painting alone, and of isolat - ing it as a special category within creative endeavour. And in Japan (unlike China and Korea) there was also a tradition, though of more recent vintage, of some, though not all, recognized painters turning their hands to print. An Edo-Period artist or art user, I contend, would not have felt a book on ‘images’ that focused on painting and prints to be, in and of itself, a misrepresentation of their practices. e above concedes that I accord scant space to the three-dimensional arts. A longer book would have allowed for wider scope, but there is an intellectual ex tenuation too: Japan had virtually no tradition of important secular sculpture, albeit there was carving of minor things, like ornamental toggles ( netsuke ) or ar chi - tectural transoms ( ranma ). ese might be expensive and fine, but no Edo-Period person would have thought a book on ‘images’ required their inclusion. I hope the modern reader can tolerate their absence too, depleting though they may find it. I also do not address the carving of seals, which was a major artistic endeavour. is leaves non-secular, or religious sculpture, which cannot be neglected with out vio lating the integrity of Buddhist art, and so is incorporated here in the relevant chapter. Beyond carving, there were many excellent applied arts, such as ceramics and armour. An Edo person might treasure such things in their collections, but would have placed them under a different rubric from painting and prints. Excision of these objects in no way implies that I regard craft as unworthy of attention. More problematic is the omission of calligraphy. is was taken as the part - ner of painting in the two arts of the brush. I reluctantly exclude calligraphy for reasons of space, but also out of openly admitted ignorance. Being the art of writing, calligraphy cannot be seriously studied without engagement in the meaning of the words, and these may be recondite and intractable (sometimes deliberately so); theorizing on the modalities of the brush-stroke takes consider - able fami liarization. I leave it to those better placed than me to present this to Eng lish-language readers. Much Japanese painting took the form of handscrolls illustrating literary themes. ese are discussed in part below, but again, even if the pictures are treated apart from the calligraphic texts accompanying them, to be understood properly the underlying stories need to be known, and the graphs used to write 8 introduction them recognized in meaning and in the nuances of their form and shape. Provid - ing that goes beyond the capacity of this, already long, book. That is rather a lot about what this book is not about. What it is about, pri marily, is free-standing paintings and prints, and their wider worlds. I wish to introduce these, but also consider how the people who first made and owned them understood them. It is a dual task: to outline the trajectories of artistic endeavour on the one hand, and on the other to reconstruct, distanced as we are by hundreds of years of time and thousands of miles of space, just how these objects obtained then . In the pages that follow, Japanese art is not expounded as if it were Western art just with other people’s names attached. I do not invoke difference for the sake of it, of course, but I allow alternatives to show through. We will see Edo-Period art, and also its differences, but I hope to explain how those differences make perfect sense as, in fact, Bounderby’s and Fukuzawa’s statements do, if read in the context of the period in which they were made. It is by achieving this fullest sort of understanding that the reader will be able to know, and also enjoy, Edo-Period images in all their aspects. us the use of the word ‘art’ in the subtitle of this book accepts that such a concept existed, and it did. Copious period writings, many quoted below, prove this. e notion of ‘art’ is properly conceptualized here and will not, I hope, be contested. What, though, of ‘production and display’? East Asian practice has tended to place emphasis on the actions involved in making. Production was not some prior, distanced deed in which the consumer did not need to participate. Studio activity is therefore part of our topic. Viewers sought access not just to paintings, but to the places where paintings were made. Production also entails commissioning, commanding, paying and receiving pay ment, details too often neglected by art historians. And then display. Bounderby displayed his painting, and others might have looked at it more than he did. Fukuzawa hid his collection, but people still knew he had it. Even without much looking, owning can be an important fact, and dis play is a complex of physical and emotional concerns, and comes with its sisters, concealment and, at the most extreme, oblivion. ere will be a sliding scale between these poles. Some images can be seen by everybody and some by nobody; most will have access variously controlled. Who is permitted to see a work, and who is not, will be part of the meaning of that image, part of how it obtained , and this must be addressed for the image to be understood.

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