Recreating China: an Examination of Design Motifs on Imported Chinese Porcelains and Their Early Japanese Counterparts

RECREATING CHINA: AN EXAMINATION OF DESIGN MOTIFS ON IMPORTED CHINESE PORCELAINS AND THEIR EARLY JAPANESE COUNTERPARTS Nicole Coolidgc Rousmaniere A STRONG UNDERLYING THEME IN EARLY 17TH- Figure /. Closc-up of a Nantban screen, beginning of the 17th century Japanese art is the employment of Chinese century, Suntory Museum, Tokyo. imager)' and symbolism. When these images and symbols are examined they reveal not just a direct Another advantage in using archaeologically recov transference of motifs from China, but also a ered materials, or objects that have been matched in Japanese reconstruction of a specific Chinese the archaeological record, is that their authenticity is aesthetic. Chinese-style imagery appears on all not in question. artistic media in the Japanese early modern period, Before discussing porcelain motifs, it is important from painted screens and architecture to textiles and to make brief mention about terminology. The word ceramics. In this paper, I address primarily motifs ‘China’ is used in two different ways in this paper. executed on early Japanese porcelains compared to The first is the standard use of the word China, as in the motifs found on Chinese porcelains that were Ming period China - or Chinese domestic taste - imported contemporaneously into Japan. The data meaning the taste of the Chinese people. The second for this comparison comes almost exclusively from use of China, and the one that is mostly utilised in recent archaeological investigations correlated with this paper, refers to the Japanese construction of an existing heirloomed collections (dcnseilwi). Because idealised China. This idealised China, while readily of the advanced state of archaeology in Japan with recognisable to the Japanese of the period, had very 20,000 sites excavated on the average each year little to do with the country called China. Contact (25,367 alone in 1989 of which one quarter are from and trade was sustained to varying degrees between the Edo period [1603-1868]), we can date porcelains the two countries since at least the beginnings of a almost to the decade of manufacture. We are also Japanese state. Through the Japanese monks, officials able to know how, where and when they are used. and traders who travelled to China and brought back 10 what they had found and studied, China became a things foreign and was interchangeable in the 17th wondrous source of amazement, learning, and and 18th centuries with karanwuo-suki, or taste for inventions for the island-bound Japanese. These things Chinese, reflecting the exotic nature in which objects and techniques had a large impact not only Chinese objects were viewed. It is important to note on Japanese production, but also on Japanese that in English the word ‘other’ is a relatively neutral word, meaning that which is not the self, but in Japanese the word ikoku has the added dimension of longing for the exotic, for something better than the self, something to be desired and possessed. In the 17th century this idea of China as romanti cised other (haraniono/ikoku) manifested in a fanta sised display on screen painting and in architectural design. It was also utilised for didactic purposes by the new military ruling elite, the Tokugawa, who used fantastic Chinese (ikoku) designs to align themselves with perceived Chinese authority linked with Confucian values. In particular the Kano school, which was the official painting school of the Tokugawa Shogunate, designed many monuments that epitomised this fictionalised China, at places like the Tokugawa death mortuaries (Toshogu) of Kunozan in Shizuoka and at Nikko, as well as the Tokugawa residence of Nijo Castle in Kyoto.3 The fictionalised China, and indeed of all other non-Japanese lands (such as the world of the nanibau or Southern barbarian), was envisioned with bright colours replete in gold detailing. Every inch was covered in symmetrical decoration, including most clothing and even tiles on the floor. Particularly common were karakusa or scrolling vine pattern, karahafu or Chinese-style archways and karamado, or ogival windows. Figure l is a close up of a Namban screen in the Suntory Museum Collection in Tokyo. The early 17th century Kano School painted screen Figure 2. Close-up of one of the Sooji Screens, c. 1630s, depicts Portuguese men and women living in their Rcimci-kai, Nagoya. home land. On close inspection, the scene is based on a fictionalised Chinese-style scene. The women aesthetics. are loosely depicted as Chinese, the men - though To cite an example of the element of fantasy appropriately dressed as Portuguese - are sitting on incorporated into the concept of China, ‘things Ming period chairs.4 The verandah is covered with Chinese’ were called in Japanese early modern Chinese floral tiles and the Chinese arch (karahafu) period documents karamono, which literally means through which the women and servants walk is Tang period (618-906) [Chinese] objects. There was decorated with a scrolling green dragon vaguely even a phrase for people with a taste for things reminiscent of Chinese export Longquan ware. Chinese, karaniono-suki. By the very' wording an Every inch is covered with highly ornate decoration, archaised - even romanticised - vision of China is mostly in a scrolling vine pattern (karakusa). There is conjured up. Taste for things Chinese changed in an extreme sense of opulent luxury in everything Japan with different periods, but several underlying from the clothing to the leisurely manner of the themes remained constant.1 To Japan, China repre inhabitants, with the colour palate of gold, red, blue, sented what can be called ‘the other, or what Japan and green, the filling up of all available space with was thought not to be.2 The term most often used in patterns (mostly floral or geometric), and a mixing of Japanese early Modern period documents for this motifs that surely seemed coherent in the mind of concept is ikoku, literally meaning ‘other country’ or the painter. just ‘other’. Ere-1868, this term almost always Another style of screen popular in around the referred to China or the Continent, which included 1630s (Kan’ei period) was the merry making type of both China and Korea. Ikoku-shumi means taste for screen of which the most famous is the pair of Sooji 11 screens housed in the Reimei-kai in Nagoya. The economy that increased economic growth. screens, linked from their production to the The vying between the regional lords in Japan Tokugawa family,5 depict a camivalesque scene in (about 280 of them in the early Edo period) had and outside a fantasy mansion. It is a virtual encyclo helped to establish marketing and distribution pedia of pleasures of the period, showing 400 people centres, organisation of large military forces, and the in various states of repose. This close-up scene in constructions of castles and castle towns. Studies of figure 2 gives us a slightly voyeuristic peep through a silver specie flows between China and Japan in the Chincse-style window (karamado) at a Japanese 17th century show that most of the domains and the samurai studying what could be a Chinese scholarly Tokugawa government itself invested a substantial text in a Chinese inspired room with a Southern part of their wealth in foreign trade during the first Song-style ink painting, a Chinese (or Ryukyu) table half of the 17th century. As a result, Japanese silver and Chinese lion-shaped incense burner. The exports soared and Japan along with Mexico became imagery on the screen reflects the value placed by in the early 1600s one of the world’s largest silver the governing Tokugawa family in the 1620-40s on exporters. Alone in 1603, the first year of the Edo what was thought to be Chinese culture. It was just period, Japan exported 200,000 kilograms of silver at this period of popularity of the screens, when ideas mostly destined for China.6 of Chinese-style refinements and pleasures were The high quality of the silver specie attracted embraced wholeheartedly by the ruling elite, that many trading partners to Japan, among whom were porcelain was introduced for the first time in Japan. the Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Dutch, stimu The inception of porcelain production in Japan lating trade to an extent never experienced before. It falls at an important moment in East Asian history is from this background that porcelain began to be interrelating the three countries. China witnessed the manufactured in Japan. The various daimyo or lords slow fall of the Ming and the rise of the foreign were all vying for status and prestige as well as stock Qing dynasty. The Korean peninsula was devastated piling bullion. Each domain had to try to build up its by Japan’s two invasions of 1592 and 1598 along local economy and exploit the natural resources with the fortunes of certain Japanese military families found within it. One of the logistical problems of that were sent over to Korea and the coffers of the the newly arisen Tokugawa military government was Ming government which had helped to fund the that once it had instilled peace throughout the land, Korean resistance. And the close of the Momoyama its prescribed role was over. True authority lay only period in Japan brought decades of internecine with the emperor in Kyoto, and the Tokugawa had warfare to an end. A new power structure arose with the Tokugawa military government which took over Figure 3. Overglazc polychrome enamel Chinese bowl Japan officially in 1603. The unification was made excavated from the Tominaga-cho Site, Swatow ware, later possible in part by the rapid monetisation of the 16th century. 12 to redefine its function in order to keep a legitimate claim to rule. The Capital was shifted from Kyoto, the traditional centre for the emperor and aristoc racy, to the newly reclaimed land around Edo, which was Tokugawa Ieyasu’s new powerbase, about 1,200 kilometres to the East.

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