Urakami Gyokudo¯: an Intoxicology of Japanese Literati Painting

YUKIO LIPPIT Harvard University Urakami Gyokud o¯: An Intoxicology of Japanese Literati Painting or some time now it has been difficult to conditions and commercial nature of literati make sweeping statements about the nature cultural transactions. 3 These conditions F and history of literati painting in East Asia. were frequently masked by the rhetoric of Scholarly inquiry of the past several decades lofty amateurism, the conceit that the literati has balkanized what was once comfortably painter painted only for his or her own enjoy - viewed as a self-contained tradition of paint - ment or that of friends. Long accepted at ing by scholar-amateurs with shared prin - face value, this rhetoric was especially well ciples. According to the once-prevailing view, received in the English-language sphere dur - literati painting originated among Chinese ing the early postwar period, when the Cold scholar-officials of the eleventh century and War provided a framework within which was centered on the ideals of friendship, the literati ideal of autonomous artistic pro - classical learning, and naturalness of expres - duction was overvalorized. 4 Greater sensi - sion, pictorially expressed through a cir - tivity to the gaps between this posture and cumscribed menu of allegorical subjects and the circumstances of livelihood and exchange an array of unpolished brush effects, the that underpinned it has enabled a vastly corollary of which was an aversion to so- more nuanced understanding of literati sub - called courtly or professional modes of pic - jectivity and sociality. 5 Moreover, the mode torial representation. Now this putative of painting with which this layered subjec - tradition tends to be understood as a con - tivity is associated can now be more precisely stellation of individual and local practices understood as merely one of several spheres that were only loosely related and all sig - —along with poetry, calligraphy, and the nificantly marked by differing historical and authorship of specific categories of texts—in regional contingencies. 1 Compared to a gen - which this particular form of selfhood was eration ago, there is now a much greater performed and maintained. 6 Such insights awareness of the constructedness of the also go a long way toward illuminating literati canon, with regard to not only the the complex economies of obligation and “Southern School” genealogy outlined by exchange within which literati artifacts the influential scholar-official and aestheti - acquired meaning and value. cian Dong Qichang ( 1555 –1636 ), but also This essay attempts to build on this new 1. Urakami Gyokud o¯, the pan-Asian literati tradition formulated in awareness in the study of literati painting by Eastern Clouds, Sifted Snow the s and s by Chinese and Japan - further exploring the inner mechanics of (To¯un shisetsu zu ), c. 1811 – 1910 1920 2 1812 , vertical hanging scroll, ese painter-intellectuals. the newly articulated performative aspect ink and light colors on paper Considerable effort has also been devoted of literati cultural production through an Kawabata Foundation, Kanagawa Prefecture to local excavations of the socioeconomic examination of the paintings of the Japanese 167 artist Urakami Gyoku do¯(1745 –1820 ). 7 More shimmering, kinetically charged represen - famous in his own time as a musician and tations (fig. 2). Gyoku do¯ ’s oeuvre departs so poet, Gyoku do¯ was rediscovered early in the dramatically from anything else in the literati twentieth century for his small corpus of canon that this alterity alone would suffice landscape paintings, remarkable in their to render him deserving of sustained critical sketchy and brooding appeal (fig. 1). Exe - examination. In this instance, however, it is cuted on paper in mostly monochrome ink, Gyoku do¯ ’s reputation as the drunken painter these paintings are typically accompanied par excellence that makes him such an in- by poetic inscriptions and signatures in triguing case study in literati pictorialism. Gyokud o¯’s inimitable seal-script calligraphy. The relationship of Gyoku do¯’s art to alco - Most are landscapes conjured up through hol has until now been assumed rather than an accu mulation of rapid, horizontal, and assessed. But a proper assessment is crucial, abbreviated brushstrokes combined with if only because the trope of the drunken rhythmically peppered dabs that result in artist had a long history in East Asian cul - 2. Urakami Gyokud o¯, Hazy Mist Captured amid Mountains (Ro¯en jakuji zu ), c. 1815 , vertical hanging scroll, ink on paper Idemitsu Art Museum, Tokyo 168 lippit tural production; Gyoku do¯’s instantiation symbiosis of word and image. With regard of it needs at least to be brought into con - to Gyokud o¯, these insights are all the more sideration as the primary context for his trenchant for the way in which facture reception, both in his own time and later on, and rhetoric were so thoroughly imbri- as a scholar-amateur unfettered by conven - cated. Thus a sober examination of his self- tion. If literati cultural production was meant representation facilitates a heightened sen - in large part to authenticate the fidelity of its sitivity not only to his brush dynamics but creators and recipients to the ideals cherished also, more generally, to patterns of personi - by the imagined community to which they fication in literati visual representation as a claimed membership—erudition, autonomy, whole. friendship, and amateurism—the converse was also true: the cultural authenticity of a Such an inquiry is best prefaced by a con - literati artifact had to be guaranteed by the sideration of the rules of amateur painterly social reputations of its creator and owner. expression on which Gyokud o¯’s painting was Oftentimes their good standing was attested generally premised. It was axiomatic that a to by the work’s textual enclosures, includ - literati painter cultivate the appearance of ing its title, occasional and signatorial inscrip - amateurishness in his or her work in order to tion, and, most important, its colophons. distinguish it from what the Chinese scholar- In the realm of painting, however, inscrip - official and literati aesthetic theorist Dong tive accoutrements could only do so much. Qichang ( 1555 –1636 ) called “the demon The general principles of literati identity world” of professional painting. 8 Doing so always had to be somehow manifest in the was, however, a much trickier proposition pictorial representation itself. The role of than might be supposed, for there was never literatus was a mode of being that was con - any clear consensus as to what an authenti - tinuously performed through, among other cally amateur painting looked like, or how a things, specific pictorial strategies and brush lack of professional skill should be commu - effects. Although textual enclosures could nicated in the ink-painting medium. Indeed, provide more specific information concern - in the history of literati painting, a wide ing the circumstances of exchange and sit - range of painterly effects were coded as non - uate the work more precisely in accordance professional over the centuries. Most painters with any local consensus governing the pro - who assumed the ideals of the scholar- tocols of scholar-official production, the official class in fact usually had some facil - morphology of a painted object was ulti - ity with the painter’s brush and developed mately what rendered it legible as an artifact sophisticated techniques of de-skilling in of literati aspirations. order to cultivate an amateurity of expression. A key question that governs this inquiry Some turned to the ancients for models of is in what balance the rules of literati mark a primitive pictorial appearance; others making operated alongside the narrative transposed the brush habits of calligraphic frames that enabled its acceptance as some - handwriting to the realm of painting; and how authentic. Gyoku do¯ ’s case is a reminder still others defined their amateurism in con - that these frames could contribute to the sistently negative terms simply as non- overall semantic agenda of a literati painting professional painting, consisting primarily of by conveying a complementary rhetorical absences: the absence of expensive materials structure emphasizing certain dispositions— such as silk or mineral pigments, of elaborate including drunkenness, playfulness, reclu - compositions or minute details, and of other- sion, unwillingness, or even madness—to wise prettifying gestures. It helped that there facilitate the recognition of the work as a emerged a wide-ranging menu of allegorical properly literati representation. Although subjects, including bamboo, orchids, and with - such dispositions are not reflected in all ered trees, all part of an iconography of literati literati paintings, or perhaps even in the virtue, that lent itself well to the demon - majority, where they do appear they offer stration of purposeful undercrafting. insight into the ways a communicative As mentioned above, the adoption of agenda could be crafted through the careful semifictitious personas also enhanced the lippit 169 reception of a painting as a reflection of the ining his unique brush effects and intoxicated unadorned self. But eventually the most personations. common method by which to achieve the appearance of the dilettante who painted Gyokud o¯ was a samurai official from the only for friends was to mimic the approaches Kamogata Ikeda domain of Bizen Province, of earlier exemplars of the genre. Ironically, located

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