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Zen as a Creative Agency: Picturing in and from the Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries

by

Meng Ying Fan

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Department of University of Toronto

© Copyright by Meng Ying Fan 2020

Zen as a Creative Agency: Picturing Landscape in China and Japan from the Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries

Meng Ying Fan

Master of Arts

Department of Studies University of Toronto

2020

Abstract

This essay explores the impact of Chan/Zen on the art of landscape in China and Japan via literary/visual materials from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. By rethinking the aesthetic significance of “Zen painting” beyond the art and literary genres, this essay investigates how the

Chan/Zen culture transformed the aesthetic attitudes and technical manifestations of picturing the , which are related to the philosophical thinking in mind. Furthermore, this essay emphasizes the problems of the “pattern” in Muromachi to criticize the arguments made by D.T. Suzuki and his colleagues in the field of Zen and culture.

Finally, this essay studies the cultural interaction of Zen painting between China and Japan, taking the traveling landscape images of of by and Yujian from China to

Japan as a case. By comparing the different opinions about the artists in the two regions, this essay decodes the universality and localizations of the images of Chan/Zen.

ii Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratefulness to Professor Johanna Liu, my supervisor and mentor, whose expertise in Chinese aesthetics and art theories has led me to pursue my in East Asian studies. The completion of my MA thesis would not have been possible without her patient guidance and constructive critiques on each stage of my research works. I am deeply indebted to Professor Amada Goodman, whose course on Zen has widened the perspectives of my research; and to Professor Yue Meng, for her insightful inspirations to me on the ecological studies on nature and environment; as well as to Professor Graham Sanders, whose poetic teaching has enlightened me in the studies of classical Chinese literature and translations. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Chen Shen, ROM Vice President, whose course on pre- art has provided me skillful training on my archaeological approach to museum studies. I have benefited greatly from my volunteer works in ROM under the mentorship of Dr. Wen-chein Cheng, Louise Hawley Stone Chair of East Asian Art. I am also very grateful to Dr. Hsiao-wei Rupprecht, for establishing my confidence through her support and encouragement. Many thanks to Yanfei , Eric Ma, Yun Wang, Summer Wen, Yu Wen, Iris Wu, Leslie Zhang, and all my friends, who made my graduate experience wonderful and unforgettable. My sincere gratitude also goes to the administrative support at the Department of East Asian Studies. This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Dr. Yujiang Fan and Jie Liang, who have always supported me with love. I appreciate very much the company of my aunt Tracy Liang during the years of my studies in Canada. Finally, to my husband Zongjie Kou, for his warmest understanding, tolerance, and love, I am thankful for having him in my life.

iii Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... iii

List of Figures ...... v

Chapter One The Connotations of Chan/Zen Painting and Debates ...... 1

Chapter Two Chan and Landscape Painting in China ...... 9

1. Landscape in Early Theories ...... 9

2. Dwelling in Mind: Huineng’s Innovation on Mind and Emptiness ...... 14

3. Alternative Seeing: Muqi and His Innovation of gufa 古法 (the Classical Standards) ...... 22

Chapter Three Aesthetic Thinking of Arts in the Twentieth Century ...... 33

1. Okakura Kakuzo: Zen and the Individualism ...... 33

2. Daisetz T. Suzuki: A Phenomenological Reading of Zen Art ...... 38

3. Hisamatsu Shinichi: the Formless Self and the Art of Zen ...... 42

Chapter Four Landscape Painting in Muromachi Japan (1336-1573) ...... 45

1. The Problems of hitsuyo 筆様 (Brush Patterns) ...... 45

2. Pattern as an Inspiration: Landscape of Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506) ...... 54

Chapter Five The Journey of Image of the Eight Views from China to Japan ...... 58

1. The Tradition of and its Spread to Japan ...... 58

2. Muqi and Yujian’s Eight Views of Xiaoxiang as a Pattern ...... 61

3. Chan/Zen and Emptiness in Muqi and Yujian’s Landscapes ...... 70

Conclusion ...... 74

Bibliography ...... 78

iv List of Figures

Figure 2.1 Attributed to Li Sixun. Sailing Boats and a Riverside Mansion. . National , ...... 13 Figure 2.2 . Storied Mountains and Dense Forests. Five dynasties (907-960). , Taipei...... 20 Figure 2.3 Liang Kai. Snowy Landscape. Southern . National Museum, Tokyo...... 23 Figure 2.4 . Sailboat in Rainstorm. Southern Song dynasty. Museum of Fine Arts, ...... 24 Figure 2.5 Muqi Fachang. , Crane, and Gibbons. Southern Song dynasty. Daitoku-ji, ...... 30 Figure 2.6 Unknown. The 10th Plate, Both Vanished. Retrieved from Du Songbai 杜松柏 , ed., Chanshi Muniutu Song Huibian 禪詩牧牛圖頌彙編 [Compilation of Oxherding Pictures’ Chan Poetry] (Taipei: Li Ming Cultural Enterprise, 1983), 120...... 32

Figure 3.1 Liang Kai. Shakyamuni Emerging from Mountains. Southern Song dynasty. , Tokyo. 43

Figure 4.1 Kano Masanobu. Zhou Maoshu Appreciating Lotuses. 15th century. Kyushu National Museum, Dasaifu. 51 Figure 4.2 Sesshu Toyo. Winter Landscapes. 1470. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo...... 55 Figure 4.3 Kano Tsunenobu. copied from Sesshu Toyo. Winter Landscapes. 17th century. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo...... 56 Figure 4.4 Xia Gui. Part of Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains. 13th century. National Palace Museum, Taipei...... 56

Figure 5.1 Mi . Part of Mountains and Pines in Spring. Northern Song dynasty. National Palace Museum, Taipei. 63 Figure 5 2 Mi Youren. Cloudy Mountains. Northern Song dynasty. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York...... 63 Figure 5.3 Attributed to Muqi. Returning Sails off a Distant Shore. Southern Song dynasty. , Kyoto...... 64

v Figure 5 4 Attributed to Muqi. Fishing Village in Evening Glow. Southern Song dynasty. Nezu Art Museum, Tokyo...... 64 Figure 5.5 Attributed to Muqi. Evening Bell from a Mist-Shrouded Temple. Southern Song dynasty. Hatakeyama Memorial Museum of , Tokyo...... 65 Figure 5.6 Attributed to Muqi. Wild Geese Descending to Sandbar. Southern Song dynasty. Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo...... 65 Figure 5.7 Yujian. Mountain Marked in Clearing Mist. Southern Song dynasty. Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo...... 66 Figure 5.8 Soami. Half of Landscape of the Four Seasons (Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers). Early 16th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York...... 67

vi Chapter One

The Connotations of Chan/Zen Painting and Debates

“At first I could not appreciate painting, but then by practicing Chan I

came to understand the efficacy of effortlessness, and by studying Dao I

realized that perfected Dao is simple. Then when I looked at paintings I

could completely understand their degrees of skillfulness and quality,

grasping their details and penetrating their subtleties.”1

余初未嘗識畫，然參禪而知無功之功， 學道而知至道不煩。於是觀圖畫悉知其巧拙工俗，造微入妙 。

— Tingjian 黃庭堅 (1045-1105), Compilation of Shangu’s Prefaces and Postscripts

In , Chan/Zen2 painting has been classified as one of the painting genres, paralleled with landscape painting, figure painting, and flower and bird painting. Aesthetically, the term

“Chan/Zen painting” refers more than a genre of art and alludes to an artistic way of spiritual resonance with the living world. In Chinese, the term hua 畫 is both a noun (a painting) and a verb

(to paint). Chanhua 禪畫 (literally Chan painting) thus can also be understood as to paint with Zen attitude or to paint in a Zen way. A contemporary Chinese Chan painter, the Venerable Hui Wan had interpreted the aesthetic meaning of chanhua as Zen’s creative agency in the process of making a painting. In discussing the relationship between chanhua and art of Chinese garden, the Ven. Hui

1 黃庭堅 , Shangu Tiba 山谷 题跋 [Compilation of Shangu’s Prefaces and Postscripts], in Zhongguo Shuhua Quanshu 中國書畫全書 一 [A Complete Compilation of and Texts vol. 1] ed. Lu Fusheng (: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2009), 678. 2 In this essay, the term Zen refers to universal and general discourse of “Zen”, which include but not limited to “Chan” in China, “Seon” in , “Zen” in Japan, and “Thiền” in .

1 Wan revealed that chanhua is not only a concrete work of art. Instead, it refers to the poetic and spiritual horizon of art, and the allegorical pursuing of the culture of ours.3 Furthermore, as a

Buddhist master, the Ven. Hui Wan proclaimed that “the essence of chanhua is the spiritual acting of prajnaparamita (the perfection of wisdom), satyadvaya (the doctrine of the two truths), and

Dharani in the Buddhist cultivation.”4 Thus the imperative in the process of making chanhua involves a sense of growing.

There has been Zen’s engagement in the art activities in East Asia ever since Chan

Buddhism emerged in China and spread to Japan as Zen Buddhism and Korea as Seon Buddhism.

In premodern China, the artistic influence of Chan was not limited to monastic communities but extended to the educated class, or the literati class. The idea of Chan mingled with Daoist and

Confucian ideas and permeated into society in a philosophical and ideological level.5 As many scholars have recognized, the contemplation of Chan Buddhist thought had a relative influence on the literati conversion of artistic attitude and the aesthetic ideal of Chinese landscape painting into the tradition we recognize today. In Japan, the elites first embraced the doctrines of Zen

Buddhism. Zen’s idea gradually grew beyond its influence on the spiritual life of the people, and

“has entered internally into every phase of the cultural life.”6

However, the designation of “Zen painting” as a unique group of artworks was a post-war movement. In Chinese art history, the term “Chan painting” did not appear in any Tang or Song dynasty (the Tang dynasty, 618-907; the Song dynasty, 960-1279) documents and seemed not to

3 The Ven. Hui Wan 釋曉雲 , “Chanhua Yu Yuanlin Sixiang” 禪畫與園林思想 [Chan Painting and Chinese Garden; Chan Painting and Thinking in Art of Garden], in Fojiao Yishu Lunji 佛教藝術論集 [Essays on Buddhist Arts], (Taipei: Yuanchuan Publications, 1994), 214. 4 Ibid., 277. 5 Cf. Li Zehou 李澤厚 and Liu Gangji 劉綱紀 , Zhongguo Meixue Shi Xia 中國美學史 下 [History of Chinese Aesthetics Vol. 2] (: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1987). 6 Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, “General Remarks on Japanese Art Culture,” in Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 21.

2 have been recognized as a category of the painting by traditional Chinese writers.7 This was also the case in Japan. One of the first scholars to establish a worldwide recognition of Zen painting was Kurt Brasch. In the 1950s, he popularized the term zenga 禅 画 , literally the Japanese pronunciation of “Zen painting,” of which he identified as a group of paintings by Zen monk amateur painters in Edo Japan (1603-1868), centred by the influential Hakuin Ekaku

白隠慧鶴 (1686-1769) and Sengai Gibon 仙厓義梵 (1750-1837).8 Their paintings feature the use of sizeable blank space incorporated with minimalistic strong strokes. In an unusual way, these paintings differentiate themselves significantly from the earlier paintings of Song China (960-

1279) and Muromachi Japan (1336-1573). In the modern context, zenga refers mainly to the Edo evolution of the Japanese Zen painting tradition. There have been debates about the definitions and connotations of “Chan/Zen painting,” varying due to the different opinions on the authorship, functions, and meaning of Zen. Broadly, Zen painting loosely refers to the works of art produced by well-known Zen masters, paintings that are inscribed by Zen monks, works depicting Zen

Buddhist stories, and portraits of Zen masters.

The aesthetic exploration of Zen painting reveals various problems pertaining to Zen and art. For example, how is Zen cultivation related to painting? Does producing and understanding

Zen painting require Zen enlightenment? If one achieves a certain level of Zen awakening, can the artist ignore the lack of skills to create a great piece of art? Furthermore, if Zen asserts to break from reality and is even iconoclastic, how is it related to its painting styles? Nevertheless, “Zen painting” becomes a medium through which scholars could congregate and disperse problems

7 Charles H. Lachman, “Art,” in Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 41. 8 Prior to Brasch’s designation of the term, zenga appeared in several texts, yet was not explicitly explained. For Brasch’s work on zenga, see Kurt Brasch, Hakuin und die Zen-Malerei (Berlin: Japanisch-Deutsche Gesellschaft, 1957).

3 associated with the concept of Zen, imagery, and painting in one mechanism. To use Gregory

Levine’s observation on recent researches regarding Zen art, “it allows us to ask questions and seek answers, to believe certain things and build upon them and renew our thinking…Zen Art seems at its clearest today when imagined as a field of converging and colliding objects, notions, and interpretations in which the visual is open to debate.”9 For this reason, the Zen painting is an open concept, where it is possible to explore various problems regarding religion, art, history, etc.

The pivotal questions of Zen painting always begin by asking, “what is Zen?” In the contemporary context, Zen signifies “a diverse range of meanings, of ritual practices, beliefs, philosophical concepts, modes of consciousness, states of being, creative practices, and aesthetic qualities.”10 The word Zen is the Japanese reading of the Chinese word chan 禅, a transliteration of the dhyana, meaning “deep meditation.” Originally, chan was called 禅那 and referred to the essential meditative practice of , one of the three principal methods of the

Buddhist paths. When Zen Buddhism began to blossom in the East Asian soil, the term Zen then also referred to the Buddhist awakening that was inexpressible through any words. Thus Linji

Yixuan 臨濟義玄 (died ca. 866) said, “My old teacher [Tang monk Nanyue Huairang 南嶽懷讓

(677-744)] once said ‘open your mouth, already a mistake.’”11

However, contradictory to this claim, Zen Buddhism has witnessed considerably large bodies of literary works, featuring a novel use of language and new narrative forms, all endeavoured to preach the direct and sudden realization of Buddhist awakening to its audience.

Prior to the formation of in the Tang and Song dynasties, Buddhist monks and

9 Gregory P. A. Levine, “Two (or More) Truths: Reconsidering Zen Art in the West,” in Gregory Levine, Yukio Lippit eds, Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan (New York: Japan Society, 2007), 59. 10 Gregory P. A. Levine, “Critical Zen Art History,” Journal of Art Historiography no. 15 (December 2016: 1. 11 Retrieved from Stephen Addiss, Stanley Lombardo, and Judith Roitman, ed., Zen Sourcebook (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2008), 50.

4 translators had actively adopted Daoist and Confucian terminologies to explain the Buddhist religious thoughts, and were also inspired by the Daoist conception of the universe. On the other hand, Chinese literati, who were interested in Chan, also expanded the term’s connotation and philosophical dimensions.

Such consequences of monastic-lay conversations on Chan were brought to Japan along with the first of two great waves of importations, denoted as kowatari 古渡り (old crossings), which took place around the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.12 Called as Zen, it attracted the attention of the samurai and developed concurrently to Chan on its own, involving the indigenous

Japanese thoughts such as Shinto. Thus, in search of Zen painting, one must be aware of the diverse and manifold overtones in different regions.

Gregory Levine observed two general trends of Zen art study in the post-war period in the

Japan and Europe-North American scholarship. 13 The first attempt explored paintings and calligraphys mainly within the “modern experiential, transcendentalist frame,” in which Japanese intellectuals Okakura Kakuzo 岡倉覚三 (also referred as Okakura Tenshin 岡倉天心 , 1862-1913)

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki 鈴木大拙 (1870-1966), Hisamatsu Shinichi 久松真一 (1889-1980), and their followers from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries promoted that the spirituality

12 There are different opinions on the specific terminologies of importations. For example, Yonezawa agreed on three waves, kowatari (after , Muromachi) nakawatari (After the end of Muromachi to Edo) imawatari (after period). Yonezawa Yoshiho 米澤嘉圃 and Nakada Yujiro 中田勇次郎 , Genshoku Nihon no Bijutsu 29 Seirai Bijutsu 原色日本の美術 29 請來美術 [Fundamental Colours, the Art of Japan 29 Imported Art] (Tokyo: Shogaku kan, 1976), 164. Kohara Hironobu divided the imported Chinese paintings in Japan into two groups: kowatari (in which the painters’ names do not appear in Chinese documents) and imawatari (which was imported mainly during 1921-1931 with emphasis on the painting styles not seen in imawatari). Kohara Hironobu 古原宏伸 , “Jindai Bashi Nian Lai Zhongguo Huihua Shi Yanjiu de Huigu” 近八十年來的中國繪畫史研究的回顧 [Chinese Painting History Research in Japan in the Past 80 years], in Duoyun Di 67 Ji—Zhongguo Meishu Shixue Yanjiu 朵雲第 67 集 --中國美術史學研究 [Duoyun No. 67—Chinese Art History Studies], ed. Lu Fusheng (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua, 2008), 259-262. 13 Gregory Levine analyzes the history of scholarly contributions on the field of Zen art from the late nineteenth century to modern days, which he referred to as the “critical Zen art studies” project. See Levine, “Critical Zen Art Hisory,” 1-30.

5 of aesthetic and religious experience behind the Zen art is fundamentally timeless and universal.

Modern Western reception of Zen as a mystic experience, which was a modern creation,14 was primarily a legacy from their writings. Furthermore, Awakawa Koichi 淡川康一 (1902-1976) took a social-historical approach and identified zenga in Edo as the unique art evolution inspired by Zen

Buddhism. Zenga became a vehicle on which the masters spread their teachings of Zen to the masses. In this sense, Awakawa designated “Zen painting” as a significant painting tradition in

Japanese art history.15 Following their efforts, recent attempt in art establishment by Japanese scholars related to the formation of Japanese art history has been seen in identifying great works of Zen art and great Zen artists, as seen in the case of Sesshu Toyo 雪舟等楊 (1420-1506). Many

Japanese scholars also centred on Chinese Chan painting preserved in Japan, as a response to the

Chinese studies in Japanese academia since the early twentieth. For example, Mokkei, Gyokkan edited by Today Teisuke 戸田禎佑 studied the works of Chan monk artists Muqi Fachang 牧溪法

常 (fl. mid 13th century) and Yujian 玉澗 (dates unknown). 16 In conventional Chinese connoisseurship, the styles of these paintings were not necessarily praised. An underlying purpose in the researches on Chan painting was, however, to prove the intimate relationship between early

Chinese masterpieces to later Japanese Zen painting development. 17 Internationally, Ernest

Fenollosa (1853-1908) and Arthur Waley (1889-1966) also contributed to establishing Zen art as a Japanese cultural identity.

14 Robert H. Sharf, “Experience,” in Critical Terms in Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 94-116. 15 Cf. Awakawa Koichi 淡川康一 , Zenga no Kokoro 禅画 の心 [The Spirit of Zen Painting ] (Tokyo: Yukonsha, 1970). 16 Toda Teisuke 戸田禎佑 , ed., Suiboku Bijutsu Taikei 3: Mokkei, Gyokkan 水墨美術大系 第 3 巻 : 牧谿 ・玉澗 [Compendium of Water and Ink Fine Arts: Muqi, Yujian] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1973). 17 For example, Shimada Shujiro 島田修二郎 and Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義高, eds, Zenrin Gasan: Chusei Suibokuga wo Yomu 禅林画賛 ―中世水墨画を 読む [Paintings and Inscriptions of the Zen Institution: Reading Medieval Ink Paintings] (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun, 1987).

6 Another approach emerged as a response to the ahistorical and de-contextual writings of the prior. Scholars has emphasized historical truths within a humanistic study and posited questions toward Zen art from a social study point of view. For example, Hu Shi (1891-1962) criticized the framework of Suzuki for being ahistorical. 18 Furthermore, the unconcerned of political, religious, historical discussions of the transformation and transmission. However, for many Europe-American scholars, they still adopted the Suzuki-Hisamatsu frame when discussing religious contexts.19 Since the 1990s, the scholarship on Zen art and Zen painting has shifted to “a plurality of forms,” involving the critical approach of emphasizing historical, political, and cultural critiques. According to Levine, the broader trend of Zen art in post-war was the following:

Modern commentary seems to move from the relative absence of Zen art as a category during the

late nineteenth century, to an interest in the “pure form” of transcendental Zen art during the first

decades of the twentieth, followed by a scholarly proclivity in the post-war years to study Zen art

as ‘”cultural form,” and now to a plurality of forms…it suggests the labile reception and study of

Chan/Sŏn/Zen art leading to the emergence of scholarship since the 1990s that reflects recent

developments in Chan/Sŏn/Zen studies as well as critical theory and historiography in art history.20

In Chinese scholarship on Zen art since the 1980s, art historians firstly centred on Chan paintings and Chan painters, which were discussed in Japanese Zen art studies that were largely ignored by traditional Chinese writers.21 In recent years, Chinese scholars also approached the

18 The question of history was central to the post-war debate between Suzuki and Hu Shi. See James Robson, "Formulation and Fabrication in the History and Historiography of Chan Buddhism,” Harvard Journal of Asiastic Studies 71, no. 2 (2011): 320-321. 19 For example, Stephen Addiss linked the Suzuki view on Zen art to connoisseurship, artist, and -based historical study. See Stephen Addiss, The Art of Zen (New York: Harry Abrams, 1989). 20 Levine, “Zen Critical Art History,” 11. 21 Muqi has been relatively popular. For example, Li Lan 黎蘭 , Muxi Huihua Yanjiu 牧溪繪畫研 究 [A Study on Muqi’s Paintings] (Taipei: Hanguang gufen youxian gongsi, 1988), and Xu Jianrong 徐建融 , Fachang Chanhua Yishu 法常禪畫藝術 [Fachang’s Chan Art Painting] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin meishu chubanshe, 1989).

7 problems of Chan and art with theoretical reviews on the relationship between Chan thoughts and the literati art theories, relying heavily on Chinese literary materials. For example, Huang Hetao provided a comprehensive analysis of philosophical conversations about Chan and art from the historical. Huang wrote that Chan had a crucial role in the development of Chinese art thought.22

This essay explores the process of Chan/Zen’s power in developing landscape painting in

China and Japan. By examining literary and pictorial materials on the landscape in China during

Tang and Song dynasties, chapter 2 traces how the idea of Chan, particularly the idea of “mind” as proposed by the Sixth Patriarch Huineng 慧能 (638-713), had impacted the aesthetic experience of landscape. Chapter 2 also inquiries into a varied landscape painting style, represented by the

Southern Song monk Muqi Fachang and explores the problems of 法 (standards) and its relationship to the aesthetic category of yi 逸 (free or untrammeled). Chapter 3 explores the post- war readings of Zen art by three prominent Japanese scholars, Okakura Kakuzo, D. T. Suzuki, and

Hisamatsu Shinichi. In Japan, although Zen Buddhism was a vital medium through which landscape painting spread to and developed in Muromachi Japan, chapter 4 criticizes the postwar assertion that Zen awakening was the sole ground on which Muromachi painting grew.

Furthermore, chapter 4 visits the issues of hitsuyo 筆様 (brush patterns) in Muromachi art and reconsiders Zen’s role in the development of Muromachi landscape painting. Finally, chapter 5 traces how Chan/Zen shapes the image of landscape painting, as manifested in the theme of Eight

Views of Xiaoxiang traveling from China and Japan.

22 Cf. Huang Hetao 黃河濤 , Chan yu Zhongguo Yishu Jingshen 禪與中國藝術精神 [Chan and Chinese Art Thought]. Series on the Zen Studies, edited by Ji Xianlin 季羨林 (Beijing: Zhongguo yanshi chubanshe, 2006).

8 Chapter Two Chan and Landscape Painting in China

1. Landscape in Early Chinese Art Theories

It is rare elsewhere than East Asia where landscape painting became an important genre of art and a “cultural model,” which embodies a shared image of the human-nature relationship.23 In Western art, landscape painting was explicit first in and relates to the problem of sublime and picturesque. Picturing landscape in the West focuses on the visuality of nature which intimately refers to specific spatial and time conditions: light, season, and climate. In East Asia, “landscape painting” specifically denotes to shanshuihua (Ch.) 山水畫 / sansuiga (Jp.) 山水画 , literally

“mountain and water/rivers painting” in Chinese and Japanese, and depicts imaginary spaces without relating to specific sceneries. “Landscape painting” in this essay all refers to the East Asian denotation.

According to Augustin Berque, in all cultures and at all stages, the notion towards landscape does not universally exist. Berque proposed six criteria for distinguishing whether a culture holds a notion of landscape, then he introduced a formula that represents Reality: S/P. S is the Earth or the physical environment, and P is the environment grasped through the senses and the ideas of beings. According to this, a notion of the landscape appeared in China by the time of

23 Shi Shouqian proposed the concept of “cultural models,” which refer to the shared (but also localized) images of imaginary places, famous landscapes/figures, objects, and anecdotes/legends in East Asia, established through multi- faceted levels of communications. Landscape painting is one of the cultural models. See Shi Shouqian 石 守謙 , Yidong de Taohuayuan - Dongya Shijie Zhong de Shasnhuihua 移動的桃花源 ──東亞世界中的山水畫 [The Moving Peach Blossom Land – Landscape Painting in East Asia] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2015), 7-18, 23.

9 the Six Dynasties, which could be seen in Zong Bing’s literary work. The landscape is ji 跡 (a trace) of nature, and only through a work of art or literature of landscape, one may see traces of nature.24

Landscape and nature have been one of the essential themes in . As the landscape theories developed in China, landscape painting became the dominant form of art practiced by the literati. The literati directed the moral education of the people. They dominated the connoisseurship of literary, philosophical, poetic, and artistic taste preserved to the later generations and probably had more cultural influence than the royal houses since the Song dynasty.

Therefore, when Chan Buddhism sought to spread its teachings, educated monks and translators proactively interpreted Buddhist philosophies in Confucian and Daoist terms and concepts (which also helped sublimate Buddhist thinking) in poetry and literary writings. Vice versa, many literati found Buddhist insights and the cultivations on Chan provided a vehicle through which they could explore new perspectives that possibly widened their understandings and pursuit of human, nature, and universe. Many scholars acknowledged the mutual influences and contributions of Chan and literati establishment on theories of landscape painting. In short, by late Tang, the landscape became the bearer on which the literati reposed their emotions, aspirations, and ideals, which were manifested in the form of poetry and painting. Chan monks also painted landscape paintings enthusiastically.

In the pre-Qin period (before 221 BCE), the Confucians regarded landscape as an analogy and symbol of the moral ideals. The said, “The wise delight in water, the virtuous

24 Cf. Augustin Berque, “Landscape and the Overcoming of Modernity—Zong Bing’s Principle,” Universitas 39 no. 11 (November 2012): 7-26.

10 delight in mountains.”25 On the other hand, Daoists sought spiritual comfort and liberation from nature. 莊子 (ca. 4th century BCE) connected the beauty of nature to his philosophy of xiaoyao 逍遙 (untroubled), wuwei 無為 (inaction), and you 遊 (play). Zhuangzi’s theory suggested that his aesthetic could only be fully settled in nature.26 Zhuangzi emphasized that the most aesthetic qualities were the plain and the unadorned: “The heaven and the earth have the highest virtue, but they do not speak in a single word.”27 老子 (ca. 6th century BCE) spoke of the importance of nature in exploring the Dao and the relationship of universe/nature

As earth must follow heaven’s rule,

And heaven the rule of the Way itself;

And the moving Way is following

The self-momentum of all becoming.28

During the Wei and Jin dynasties (220-589 CE), there were three phases of changes in the aesthetic appreciation of the landscape, accompanied by the philosophical and aesthetic emphasis shifted from human to nature.29 At the same time, Neo-Daoism, which was primarily influenced by Zhuangzi, came to replace to be the central thinking promoted by the educated class. In the first phase, educated elites alluded individuals’ appearances/talents/demeanors to the beauty of the landscape. Secondly, as the later Wei-Jin elites were more permeated into the Daoist thoughts, they did not limit nature as the carrier of Dao, but more importantly, as the way of life.

25 Confucius, Lunyu Jinyi 論語今譯 ： 漢英對照 [The Analects of Confucius: Chinese-English Bilingual Edition], modern Chinese trans. by Yang Bojun 楊伯峻 and Wu Shuping 吳樹平 , English trans. by Pan Fu’en 潘富恩 and Wen Shaoxia 溫少霞 (Ji’nan: lupress, 1993), 62-63. 26 Xu Fuguan 徐復觀, Zhongguo YishuJingshen 中國藝術精神 [Chinese Art Thought] (Hubei: Huben renmin chubanshe), 52-56. 27 Retrieved from Zhuangzi 莊子, Zhuangzi, modern Chinese trans. Qin Xuqing 秦旭卿 and Sun Yongchang 孫雍 長, English translated by Wang Rongpei 汪榕培 (: Hunan People’s Publishing House, 1999), 365. 28 Retrieved from Laozi 老子, Dao De – The Bok of the Way, trans. and comm. Moss Roberts (California: University of California Press, 2001), 164. The connotation of also suggests the idea of nature to be equivalent to Dao. In Laozi and Zhuangzi’s writings, ziran refers to “itself in the way it is,” in later China, ziran means nature. 29 Cf. Li, Zhongguo Meixue Shi, 502-509.

11 Therefore, elites believed that traveling among nature and being intimate to the landscape were essential for a distinguished individual. The final phase witnessed a change from finding peace within the landscape to regard the beauty of the landscape as an embodiment of Buddhist awakening, as reflected in Huiyuan’s 慧遠 (334-416) analogy of as the manifestation of Buddha. Prior to the emergence of Chan Buddhism, the Chinese perception of the landscape had already involved a Buddhist worldview.

As mentioned earlier, the East Asian landscape painting depicts imagined sceneries that manifest a human-nature relationship. The tradition of landscape painting originated in China.

However, there have been disputes on when did it appear. Scholars generally agree on the sixth century, based on Zong Bing’s 宗炳 (375-443) “Hua Shuanshui Xu” 畫山水序 (“Introduction to

Painting Landscape”), in which expresses a Daoist and Buddhist approach to landscape painting.30

Many also support the eighth century, according to Zhang Yanyuan’s 張彥遠 (815-907) Lidai

Minghuaji 歷代名畫記 (Record of All the Famous Painters of All the Dynasties): “the development of landscape (painting) began with Wu, and was perfected by the two Li’s.”31 The two Li’s are the

Tang father and son painters Li Sixun 李思訓 (651-718) and Li Zhaodao 李昭道 (675-758). This

“perfection” refers to the shift of popular contemporary panting subjects from figures to landscapes. However, what the two Li’s painted were not in ink monochrome, but the gold- bluegreen landscapes with a highly decorative and meticulous fashion, for example, Li Sixun’s

Sailing Boats and a Riverside Mansion (Figure 2.1).

30 Cf. Susan Bush. “Tsung Ping’s Essay on Painting Landscape and the ‘Landscape Buddhism’ of Mt. Lu,” in Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 31 Retrieved from William Reynolds Beal Acker, Some T'ang and Pre-T'ang Texts on Chinese Painting (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1954), 156.

12 Shi Shouqian believed it was the tenth century

when the tradition of landscape painting we recognize

today emerged. It was by that time when an image of

imaginations on human-nature relationships began to

appear in pictorial practices of landscape painting.

Before this, landscapes were mainly passively depicted

as natural sceneries. The landscape painting tradition

later spread to Korea by the 12th century, and to Japan

by the 14th century.32 By the time of the mid to late Tang

dynasty, landscape painting had become a widely

practiced form of art by many well-known artists, such

as 王維 (699-761), Zhang Zao 張璪 (active

8th century), and Liu Dan 劉單 (710-771).33

Figure 2.1 Attributed to Li Sixun. Sailing Boats and a Riverside Mansion. Tang dynasty. National Palace The entry of Chan thoughts into Chinese landscape Museum, Taipei. art theories seemed to appear far earlier than practical

artistic activities. The earliest example is the devout lay Chan practitioner and active theorist Zong

Bing’s “Introduction to Painting Landscape,” in which he fuses Daoist and Buddhist ideas of the

landscape. Zong was influenced by Huiyuan’s theory that everything tangible on earth is the xing

形 (shape) and ying 影 (shadow) of bodiless Buddha. Zong Bing wrote “Landscapes display the

beauty of the [Dao] through their forms and humane men delight in this,” and “furthermore,

the essence of spirit, being limitless, resides in forms and responds to species, and truth enters into

32 Shi, Yidong, 23. 33 Huang, Chan, 191-192.

13 reflections and traces.”34 Through brushes, he declared, the great visual of mountains and the quintessence of spirit may be presented in a single picture.35 Thus when confronting the painting, he could freely expand his spirit. Zong Bing also advocated for the idea of woyou 臥游 (spiritual travel) through landscape painting. For Zong, landscape, real or painted, was a medium for spiritual exercise and no less than a religious ritual to obtain Dao. Nonetheless, the profound impact of Chan on landscape painting did not arrive until the Sixth Patriarch Huineng brought a revolution in the Chan Buddhist thought in the seventh and eighth centuries.

2. Dwelling in Mind: Huineng’s Innovation on Mind and Emptiness

The idea of emptiness is one of the foundations of Chinese viewing the world. Francois Cheng analyzed that in the Daoist ontology emptiness is perceived as belonging to the two realms: the noumenal, where emptiness is regarded as wu 無 (nothingness, in opposed to you 有 (being)) and xu 虛 (void, as opposed to shi 實 (fullness)); and the phenomenal, where the emptiness enables all things that are full to attain their complete fullness.36

What Huineng bestowed in the seventh century was relating the idea of emptiness to mind.

After the First Patriarch left the Liang court in the early sixth century, he promoted the method of biguan 壁觀 (wall meditation), conveyed through his treatise Rrzhong ru 二種入

(The Two Paths). The core of the two paths— liru 理入 (entering through principles) and xingru

34 Retrieved from Bush, “Tsung Ping’s Essay,” 145. 35 Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037-1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555-1636) (: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 13-14. 36 Francois Chang, Empty and Full: The Language of Chinese Painting, trans. Micheal H. Kohn (Boston&London: Shambhala, 1994) 43-49.

14 行入 (entering through practices)— is anxin 安心 (maintain the serenity of inner truth).

Bodhidharma asked the mind to focus in a serene state by emphasizing the action of “maintaining”, that is, the attention was given to the environment that keeps the tranquility of the mind rather than the mind itself. In other words, in Bodhidharma’s Chan, the pure mind and formless reality does not collapse into coequals.37

Huineng’s Chan, alternatively, brought the focus of Buddhist cultivation from the external environments towards the mind itself. This was also the key reason for Huineng, instead of Yuquan

Shenxiu 玉泉神秀 (607-706), to be able to receive the transmission from the Fifth Patriarch

Hongren 弘忍 (601-674). In response to Hongren’s quest for exhibiting proof of religious achievement, Shenxiu wrote the stanza,

The body is the tree of enlightenment.

The mind is the stand of a bright mirror.

Wipe it constantly and with ever-watchful diligence,

To keep it uncontaminated by the worldly dust.38

Shenxiu’s response presented a view similar to Bodhidharma’s approach, that is, an emphasis on the environment and regarding mind to the “a neutral kind of emptiness.” Reading his answer,

Huineng responded with the stanza,

Enlightenment is no tree,

Nor is the Bright Mirror a stand.

Since it is not a thing at all,

Where could it be contaminated by dust?39

37 Huang, Chan, 172. 38 Retrieved from John C. H. Wu, The Golden Age of Zen (Taipei: United Publishing Centre, 1975), 60. 39 Retrieved from Ibid., 62.

15 Hence Huineng demonstrated himself the successor of Hongren’s dharma transmission. Huineng negated Shenxiu’s view, and Huineng was further enlightened when Hongren read the line from the Diamond , “Keep your mind alive and free without abiding in anything or anywhere.”

Hearing this, Huineng responded,

How could I expect that the self-nature is in and of itself so pure and quiet! How could I expect

that the self-nature is in and of itself unborn and undying! How could I expect that the self-nature

is in and of itself self-sufficient, with nothing lacking in it! How could I expect that the self-nature

is in and of itself immutable and imperturbable! How could I expect that the self-nature is capable

of giving birth to all !40

Huineng asserted that the self-nature was not to be found elsewhere, so does the emptiness. For

Huineng, the cultivation of mind involved the state of experiencing a true emptiness. During his preach, Huineng warned the danger in the effort to keep the mind empty without thinking, what he referred to as “a neutral kind of emptiness”41:

The capacity of the mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on

emptiness. If you do you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun,

moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and

good men, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The

emptiness of human nature is also like this. Self-nature contains the ten thousand things—this is

‘great.’ The ten thousand things are all in self-nature. Although you see all men and non-men, evil

and good, evil things and good things, you must not throw them, but you must regard them as

being like the empty sky.42

40 Retrieved from Wu, The Golden Age, 62-63. 41 In Chan Buddhist term, emptiness is regarded as kong 空 , but in the Platform Sutra, Huineng referred the emptiness as xukong 虚空 , which involves the Daoist concept. 42 Huineng 慧能 , “The Platform Sutra,” trans. Philip B. Yampolsky, in The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch — The Text of the Tun-Huang Manuscript, ed. Philip B. Yampolsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012) 146-147.

16 In this sense, self-nature parallels to emptiness, and this emptiness is not something vague or nonexistent. It is dynamic and active. For Huineng, realizing this was the primal step for awakening. In essence, “understanding mind and see nature,” and then for the first time, “becoming a Buddha.”

Huineng's Chan brought a revolutionary impact on landscape painting theory. The impact is reflected in the recorded incidents of Zhang Zao Record of All the Famous Painters of All the

Dynasties:

Earlier, the Senior President of the Crown Prince's Grand Secretariat, Pi Hung [Bi Hong 毕宏 , fl.

8th century], was the period's most famous [painter]. Once he had seen [Zhang Zao’s painting], he

exclaimed in astonishment. He marveled that Tsao [Zao] used only blunt brushes, or else rubbed

the with his hands, hence he asked from whom Tsao [Zao] had learned [his techniques]. Tsao

[Zao] replied: " Externally all Creation is my master. Internally I have found the mind's sources.43

Zhang’s understanding stepped beyond Zong Bing’s assertion that picturing landscape is to visualize Dao embraced within its form. Now picturing landscape requires observation on nature. However, it could not be done without the manifestation of an artist’s 心 (mind).

Conversely, landscape painting has the possibility of visualizing the artist’s mind. From this point of view, landscape painting became highly valued in Chinese art, because in the literati’s art theories, exhibition and connoisseurship of the artist’s mind through poetry and painting has been one of the central concerns.

In Chinese literary thought, conveying one’s zhi 志 (mind or intention) has been the crucial purpose for the literati. The Book of Documents gives the canonical statement on the ideas of zhi

43 Retrieved from Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1985), 65.

17 and shi 詩 (poetry): “The Poem articulates what is on the mind intently.”44 It is an assumption that shi is “what was in the mind of the person.”45 Stephen Owen pointed out the problem of the English translation of zhi as “intention.” He argued that zhi is not an intentional quality, but a

“preoccupation.”46 The artists are stirred by the outside world to create the artwork, and they have their own intentions on what to express through their art/shi. If there is zhi perceived in reading the shi, it will be the true zhi, whether or not that is what the writer “intends” to be revealed.47

The literati-scholars also asserted that painting has the possibility of possessing the same quality of shi. 蘇軾 (1037-1101), in praising Wang Wei’s landscape painting, famously announced:

When one savors Mo-chieh's [Mojie’s, Wang Wei’s ] poems, there are paintings in

them,

When one looks at Mo-chieh's [Mojie’s] pictures, there are poems.48

Hence poetry and painting are considered equivalent art forms. Landscape painting comes to embody zhi that pursues the realm of Dao in which emptiness is in fullness. Chan’s contribution in art was not limited to the turning of an aesthetic attitude. The Buddhist cultivation on Chan also expanded and deepened the aesthetic contemplation on art.

In Chinese poetry, the poets, who were also scholars of Chinese philosophy, found the cultivation on Chan Buddhist thought, particularly of emptiness, widened the paths towards the advancement of poetry. Chan’s inspiration on poetic ventures not only encouraged lay practitioners

44 Retrieved from Stephen Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1992), 26. 45 Retrieved from Ibid., 27. 46 Ibid., 26. 47 Ibid., 28. 48 Retrieved from Bush, The Chinese Literati, 25.

18 such as Wang Wei, but also motivated great poets in the Tang dynasty, such as 李白 (701–

762), Du Fu 杜甫 (712–770), and Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846). The lay scholar-bureaucrats of

Buddhism adopted activities of “explicating poetry through Chan” and “entering poetry through

Chan.” The Chan helped the poets to realize that “in looking at natural processes, the radical insubstantiality of empty forms.”49

Unfortunately, Wang Wei's landscape paintings did not survive. Yet his image of Chan is found from his poems on the landscape, for example:

Man at leisure, cassia flowers fall.

The night still, spring mountain empty.

The moon emerges, startling mountain birds:

At times they call within the spring valley.50

A mountain landscape opens up wherein the very processes of nature are used to make manifest the Chan insight into the immanence of the Buddha-nature, the embodiment of emptiness.

As discussed above, the landscape painting manifests the perfect integration of man and nature. Inspired by Chan Buddhist thought, the painters also regard landscape as the embodiment of self-nature that is filled with the fullness of emptiness. In visual expression, this was signified by the change of the use of gold green-blue colours to ink monochrome. The colour of ink relates to xuan 玄 , a term connoting various meanings, mainly as “black,” but especially as Dao itself.

Chan Buddhism also adopted these meanings. Furthermore, the use of brush, affiliated to the field

49 Rafal Stepien, “The Imagery of Emptiness in the Poetry of Wang Wei,” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 16, no. 2 (2014): 212-213. 50 Wang Wei, The Poetry of Wang Wei, trans. Pauline Yu (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 200.

19 of calligraphy, creates paintings in spontaneity and allows

the forms in dynamism. Therefore, Song Chuo of the Song

dynasty said, “The brush to give birth to substance and

form, the ink to capture color and light.”51

The development of Chinese landscape painting

can be seen in Juran’s 巨然 (fl. latter half of 10th century)

Storied Mountains and Dense Forests (Figure 2.2) to Li

Sixun’s painting (Figure 2.1). Mountains are piled one

after another. Colours disappear, where a various

spectrum of gray create forms of mountains and trees.

Juran’s painting incorporates wider and more varied

perspectives. The subjects of the landscape do not intend

to refer to any specific sceneries. Therefore, despite

stylistic differences, classical masterpieces share some

common characteristics, including monumentality,

generalization, and universality.52

Probably partly due to the emphasis on zhi, the first

law of Xie He’s 謝赫 (flourished sixth century) Six

Principles became the cornerstone of Chinese art theory:

Figure 2.2 Juran. Storied Mountains and Dense “Qiyun 氣韻 ; this is engendering movement.”53 Qiyun is Forests. Five dynasties (907-960). National Palace Museum, Taipei.

51 Retrieved from Chang, Empty, 65. 52 Sophia Suk-mun Law, “Being in Traditional Chinese Landscape Painting,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 32 no. 4 (August 2011): 372. 53 Paul R. Goldin. “Two Notes on Xie He’s 謝 赫 ’Six Criteria’ (liufa 六法 ), Aided by Digital Databases,” T’oung Pao 104 (2018): 497.

20 often regarded as “spiritual resonance” or “spiritual consonance.” It has had various connotations throughout Chinese art history but has conceived continuously as the expression of a man’s nature.54 Guo Ruoxu 郭若虛 (early Southern Song) related the idea of qiyun to the Buddhist term xinyin 心印 (mind ), in which “mind” refers to the Buddhist mind and “seal” to the recognition of dharma transmission:

If a man's condition has been high, his spirit consonance cannot but be lofty. If spirit consonance

is already lofty, animation cannot but be achieved. As it has been said, “in the highest heights of

the spiritual, he can deal with the quintessence.” In general, a painting must be complete in spirit

consonance to be hailed as a treasure of the age. Otherwise, even though it reaches the utmost in

clever thought, it will be no more than common artisans’ work. Although called “painting,” it will

not be painting…In a comparable fashion, moreover, in the common practice of judging personal

signatures, these are called “mind-prints [mind seal].” They originate from the source of the mind

and are perfected in the imagination to take shape as traces, which, being in accord with the mind

are called “prints.”55

In Chan Buddhism, the mind itself is the seal, as found in the idea of “mind-to-mind transmission.”

However, for Guo, the painting was the seal, which was the form manifested from the mind. In other words, landscape painting is a visual expression of the artist’s self-nature.

54 Bush, The Chinese Literati, 19. 55 Guo Ruoxu 郭若虚 , Tuhua Jianwen Zhi 圖畫見聞志 [Experiences in Painting]. Translated Alexander Coburn Soper. Retrieved from Bush, Early Chinese, 95-96.

21 3. Alternative Seeing: Muqi and His Innovation of gufa 古法 (the Classical Standards)

In Japanese Zen art history, scholars refer to several Tang, Song, and Yuan (1271-1367) paintings as the masterpieces of early Zen art tradition that inspired the Muromachi and later Japanese Zen art development. Most of these paintings are kept outside of China today and are found in Japanese

Zen temples and museums. In Hisamatsu Shinichi’s Zen and the Fine Arts, he provided a list of what he considered to be the Chinese classical “paintings typical of this unique Zen style”: 56

• Figure paintings: Shi Ke’s 石恪 (fl. 10th century) the Second Patriarch in Contemplation,

Liang Kai’s 梁楷 (c. 1140 - c. 1210) The Chinese Monks Hanshan and , Muqi’s

Bodhidharma and Portrait of Laozi, and Yintuoluo’s 因陀羅 (fl. late ),

Hanshan and Shide.

• Landscape paintings: the Eight Views of Xiao by both Muqi and Yujian, Snowy Landscape

by Liang Kai, and Sailboat in Rainstorm by Xia Gui 夏珪 (died 1224).

• Bird and animal painting: Muqi’s Pa-pa Bird on an Old Pine,57 Wild Geese Among Reeds,

Monkeys, and Crane.

• Botanical paintings: Muqi’s Peony, Xuechuang’s 雪窗 /雪窓 (fl. 14th century) Orchid, and

Riguan’s 日觀 (fl. late 13th century) Grapes.

This list suggests that Muqi’s works were particularly influential in Japan. Muqi’s name is found in all of the four categories. In the tradition of landscape painting, Hisamatsu regarded Muqi and

Yujian’s Eight Views of Xiaoxiang as excellent examples of Zen art and they will be discussed in

56 Hisamatsu Shinichi, Zen and the Fine Art, trans. Gishin Tokiwa (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1971), 22. 57 Also called Myna Bird. It is unclear which painting Hisamatsu had in mind, because Hisamatsu did not include it in the plate, nor put a reference for the painting. There are several Muqi’s bird paintings, most of them are now in Japan. Pa-pa Bird on an Old Pine probably refers to the painting in the private collection of Count Matsudaira Naoaki (1865-1940).

22 detail in the following chapters. Hisamatsu

also referred to Liang Kai’s Snowy Landscape

(Figure 2.3) and Xia Gui’s Sailboat in

Rainstorm (Figure 2.4). Liang Kai depicted a

storm-threatened scene that recedes into the

far distance. He created imposing snow-

covered mountains as the background for two

travelers and a flock of geese drawn in

exceedingly fine detail. Xia Gui’s work

represented a style of a composition in which

only a small part of the scenery is revealed,

which was popular during the Muromachi

period. The rest is being concealed in mist.

The styles of these paintings represent

a different tendency of tradition from the ones

preferred by conventional Chinese art

historians. 58 In Japanese art history, the

aforementioned Chinese paintings are referred

as sogenga 宋元画 , literally “Song and Yuan

Figure 2.3 Liang Kai. Snowy Landscape. Southern Song dynasty. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo.

58 董其昌 (1555-1636) divided the Chinese painting into two traditions: the Northern and Southern schools. Stylistically, there were four main traditions of landscape paintings during the Song dynasty: 1. The majestic and thick landscape of the North, represented by , , , etc.; 2. the plain and undramatic landscape of Jiangnan, represented by and Juran; 3. The simple and authentic style, represented by Mi Fu and Mi Youren; and 4. The Vigorous style, represented by , , and Xia Gui, etc. Cf. Li, Muxi, 21.

23 paintings” in Japanese. Sogenga loosely includes

paintings that were brought from China to Japan

along with many other objects during the kowatari,

which took place around the twelfth to fourteenth

centuries. The most preferred sogenga mainly

includes artworks by monks and professional artists

practicing within the communities of the Chinese

imperial art academy. Some scholars argued that the

Figure 2.4 Xia Gui. Sailboat in Rainstorm. Southern Song paintings done by monks, especially those who left dynasty. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. their names on records, were used as the decoration of a large reception hall where the abbot would entertain officials and literati. 59 Charles H.

Lachman discussed that most of the monk painters were associated with literati-like subjects: , plum, orchids, and landscape, exemplars of which are found in sogenga. In fact, these paintings are “not so much as embodiments of enlightenment, perhaps, as advertisements of enlightened refinement and shared sensibilities.” On the other hand, the Buddhist subjects were mostly associated with members of imperial painting academy, such as Liang Kai.60

Yonezawa Yoshiho pointed out that there were different aesthetic tastes between the

Chinese and Japanese traditions of collecting and connoisseurship in paintings from Song and

Yuan dynasties. 61 These painters possessed several aesthetic qualities favoured by Ashikaga shoguns and Japanese monks and were regarded as excellent examples of art. Those preserved in

59 T. Griffith Foulk, and Robert H. Sharf, “On the Ritual Use of Ch'an Portraiture,” Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 7 (1993): 182. 60 Charles H. Lachman, “Art,” in Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 48-49. 61 Yonezawa, Genshoku, 164-168.

24 China were of the taste of the literati tradition.62 As a result, painters of the preferred styles in sogenga rarely survived in China and did not gain relative attention in Chinese documents.

Landscape painting especially reflected this difference. Amongst those preferred painters, Muqi

Fachang was one of the most studied artists. He was a Chan monk painter who lived at the end of the Southern Song dynasty. Wu Taisu 吳太素 (fl. Yuan dynasty), in his Songzhai Meipu 松斋 梅

谱 (Manual on Plum in the Pine House, which only copy was preserved in Japan), introduced

Muqi as a prominent artist, being capable of various subjects including dragons, tigers, monkeys, cranes, birds, landscape, stones, and portraits. His works were famous among the literati circle in his time and several later generations, with high demand in the art market to the extent that art forgery of his works appeared.63

It seemed that, however, in later orthodox Chinese art history, Wu’s appraisal of Muqi was an opinion of the minority. Charles Lachman observed that Muqi was “completely ignored by contemporary Southern Song chroniclers, art historians and critics, and what little notice he does receive in subsequent Yuan-period texts is almost universally negative.”64 Among these Yuan records, Zhuang Su 莊肅 (fl. Yuan dynasty), in his Huaji Buyi 畫繼補遺 (Addendum to Painters

Continued), wrote that Muqi’s paintings “are not for elegant appreciation. They are only for decorations in Buddhist and Daoist rooms to help [them] calm oneself.”65

62 James Cahill, “Early Chinese Paintings in Japan: An Outsider’s View,” James Cahill’s blog, http://jamescahill.info/the-writings-of-james-cahill/cahill-lectures-and-papers/323--early-chinese-paintings-in-japan- an-outsiders-. Retrieved on Jan. 12, 2020. 63 Wu Taisu 吳太素 , Songzhai Meipu 松斋 梅谱 [Manual on Plum in the Pine House], in Zhongguo Shuhua Quanshu San 中國書畫全書 三 [A Complete Compilation of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy Documents vol. 3], ed. Lu Fusheng (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2009), 276. 64 Lachman, “Art,” 43. 65 Zhuang Su 莊肅 , Huaji Buyi 畫 繼 補遺 [Addendum to Painters Continued], in Zhongguo Shuhua Quanshu San, ed. Lu Fusheng (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2009), 488.

25 Other influential monk painters of sogenga received similar treatment in Chinese art chronicles. In the case of artist Yujian, there were four monks bear the name Yujian active from the Southern Song period to Yuan Dynasty in Chinese document. However, the exact identity of

Yujian, who painted the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang preserved in Japan, is unknown. 66 As of

Yintuoluo, a Chan monk painter popular in Japan, there were no records for this Yuan monk survived in China. Other than Chan monks, the Chinese artists who were regarded as the masters in Japan include Xia Gui and Ma Yuan 馬遠 (1160-1225.67 Their painting compositions “One side

Xia” and “One corner Ma” were extensively influential for Japanese landscape painting. Both Xia

Gui and Ma Yuan were professional Royal Academy painters in the Song dynasty and have been regarded as one of the four outstanding painters of Southern Song. Nonetheless, in traditional

Chinese art history, landscape paintings in Southern Song are considered inferior to the later dynasties that were dominated by literati painters.

Sogenga came to represent Chinese paintings that lay outside the boundaries prescribed by the Chinese literati critics that might otherwise not have been preserved. The diverse attitudes, aesthetic preferences, historical issues surrounding Muqi and his works from the two regions provide a medium through which several multicultural problems of aesthetics, social-historical issues could be further explored.

In appraising Muqi’s works, Tang Hou’s 湯 垕 Gujin Huajian 古今畫鑒 (Examinations of

Painters Then and Now) introduced Muqi from a scholar-literati’s point of view. In a single line,

Tang said: “The recent monk Muqi Fachang frequently did ink-plays. They were coarse and

66 Watanabe Akiyoshi 渡辺明義 , ed., Shosho Hakkei Zu—Mihon no Bijutu 瀟湘八景図 日本の美術 No. 124 [Eight Views of Xiaoxiang—Japanese Art No. 124] (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1976), 33. 67 Lachman made the observation that during the Song and Yuan dynasties, many royal art academy members painted Buddhist subjects, while monk painters were associated with literati-like subjects such as bamboo, plum, orchids, and landscape, which were “not so much as embodiments of enlightenment, perhaps, as advertisements of enlightened refinement and shared sensibilities.” See Lachman, “Art,” 48-49.

26 without gufa 古法 (classical standards).”68 Muqi did not follow the traditional standards of styles and brushwork. The paintings were “coarse,” that is, absent from the aesthetic quality of ya 雅

(elegant). According to Toda Teisuke, Tang Hou’s evaluation was based on Muqi’s ink bamboo works, and gufa here probably referred to the literati’s traditional way of painting bamboo with ink play since the Northern Song dynasty. Tang Hou’s attitudes towards Muqi was a reaction that took Muqi as an invader to the literati’s ink play of bamboo as an exclusive genre. At the same time, Tang also considered Muqi as a comparison to the literati Mengfu, another great artist that lived in the Yuan dynasty. Nevertheless, Tang Hou’s works also suggested that the fame of

Muqi during his time was non-negligible.69

Han Zhuo 韓拙 (fl. ca. 1095-ca. 1125) wrote of the importance of following the standards:

Indeed, since the Southern T’ang period…it is true that [the painters] were knowledgeable about

all these [ancient] standards. Those men who are without learning may be said to be without

standards; that is, without the standards and the method of the ancients. How can such men discards

methods and consider themselves superior to the renowned ancient and modern sages?70

Learning classic examples have been essential for traditional Chinese painters. Those who did not were regarded scant of learning and said to possess an excessively impetuous nature, a quality that any scholars would want to avoid. The rules and standards give services for the spontaneous spirit energy of creativity. For the traditional literati artists, the cultivation of antiquity was the premise on which painters could manifest their mind. According to Han Zhuo:

68 Tang Hou 湯 垕 , Gujin Huajian 古今畫鑒 [Examinations of Painters Then and Now], in Zhongguo Shuhua Quanshu San, ed. Lu Fusheng (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2009), 475. 69 Toda Teisuke 戶田禎佑 , ed., Suiboku Bijutsu Taikei 3: Mokkei, Gyokkan 水墨美術大系 第 3 巻 : 牧谿 ・玉澗 [Compendium of Ink Fine Arts: Muqi, Yujian] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1973), 49. 70 Retrieved Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1985), 161.

27 By all means follow rules and standards, but base your painting on spontaneous spirit resonance.

By doing so you will certainly attain a sense of life in the painting…Generally, before you even

grasp the brush, you must concentrate your spirit and clarify your thoughts, then the image will

seem to be before your very eyes. Hence, “the idea exists before the brush.” Afterwards, if by means

of standards you have carried out your ideas, then it can be said that what has been obtained from

the mind has been responded to by the hand.71

Therefore, in the process of creation, the painter has to follow the logic of the ancient standards, guided by the rules of brushwork. However, radical experimentation and breaking of the convention to create a new style in China had not been rejected.

The innovation on styles in the Chinese art is related to the idea of yi 逸 (free or untrammeled). In Chinese art history, painting masters were classified into three conventional classes: shen 神 (divine or inspired), miao 妙 (wonderful), and neng 能 (competent). Zhang Zao mentioned above was placed within the highest shen class, bottom grade.72 Outside of the three classes, Zhu Jingxuan’s 朱景玄 (fl. 9th century) Tangchao Minghua Lu 唐朝 名畫 錄 (On Famous

Painters of the Tang Period) listed three men in yipin 逸品 (untrammeled class) of masters who rejected conventional methods. Two of the painters, especially Wang Mo 王 墨 (ca. 734-805), were said to have painted in an impulsive and spontaneous way, using abbreviated, sketchy brushstrokes.73 In his Yizhou Minghua Lu 益州名畫錄 (Famous Paintings from ), Huang

Xiufu 黃 休 復 (fl. 10th and 11th centuries) placed yipin higher than the conventional three classes.

Artists of yinpin not only painted with revolutionary techniques but also had noble temperament:

71 Retrieved from Bush, Early Chinese, 182. 72 Ibid., 65. 73 Susan E. Nelson, “I-p’in in Later Painting Criticism,” in Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 397.

28 Huang nonetheless sees in i [yi] painting an elemnent of order and reason, for in the end “the forms

are complete.” This completeness, not to be explained in terms of conventional painting discipline,

is a project of the artist’s inner life; and so “it cannot be imitated; for its source is the expression of

ideas.”74

By the twelfth century, yipin in Chinese art circles had greatly changed. The core models of later yipin were Mi Fu 米芾 (1012-1107) and 倪瓚 (1301-1374), and the connotations of yi became affiliated to the formal techniques the two painters:

From Wang Mo’s uproarious spattering and stamping to the “refined,” “subtle” quality of Ni Tsan’s

[Ni Zan] “everyday” scenes; plainly the sense of the term i in later criticism differed in significant

ways from what is known of pre-Sung untrammeled painting.75

According to the connotation of yi prior to the 12th century, Muqi’s paintings could be considered the art of yi. In fact, Muqi was not unaware of the classical standards of painting. He was a professional monk painter who received fair educations about Chinese art traditions. His famed

Guanyin, Crane, and Gibbons (Figure 2.5) exemplifies an exiquite uses of brushes and compositions. His paintings were executed with high techniques and manifested his image of Chan with completeness.

Xu Jianrong argued that the conviction of Muqi’s lack of gufa relates to the problems of spontaneity and simplicity. In addition, this conviction was set against Muqi’s more cursory and simpler style, for example, The Eight Views of Xiaoxiang (see Chapter 5), Six Persimmons, and

Master Cham, as opposed to his precise, careful, and more conventional style seen in Guanyin,

Crane, and Gibbons and Head of a Dragon.76

74 Ibid., 398. 75 Nelson, “I-p’in,” 415. 76 Xu, Fachang, 68-71.

29 As exemplified by various 公案 (public cases), the Chan masters pursued a direct or spontaneous reactions to various questions and incidencts, which reflected their Chan teachings.

Thus, when Muqi painted, he often used surrounding objects instead of brushes. Muqi “did not apply any colours, and often used the leftover of sugarcanes as brush and grass juice as ink, all of which done in a spontaneous and lightly touched [manner].”77 However, in conventional Chinese art tradition, the process of creation required an attitude of concentration and focus, as spoken in

Guo Xi’s 郭熙 (ca. 1000-ca. 1087) Linquan Gaozhi 林泉高致 (The Lofty Message of Forest and

Streams):

Each scene in a painting, regardless of size of complexity, must be unified through attention to its

essence. If the essence is missed, the spirit will lost integrity. It must by completed with the spirit

in every part, otherwise the essence will not by clear. The artist must accord his work overriding

Figure 2.5 Muqi Fachang. Guanyin, Crane, and Gibbons. Southern Song dynasty. Daitoku-ji, Kyoto.

77 Wu, Songzhai, 276.

30 respect, otherwise the thought will have no depth. Fastidious attention must be given throughout,

otherwise the scene will seem incomplete.78

Furthermore, paintings influenced by Chan thought embraced simplicity, because the exploration of Chan eventually arrives to emptiness and wordless.Wumen Huikai’s 無門惠 開 (1183-1260) verse, in commenting the case twenty-seven of Wumen Guan 無門關 (The Gateless Barrier), said:

Too much kindness loses its virtue;

Not speaking is more truly useful.

The blue ocean may be transformed,

But in the end, it cannot be explained.79

The explanation of Chan involves sophisticated languages, yet everything returns to the state where it “cannot be explained.” Puming 普明 (died ca. 1352), in the final stage of the “Ten

Oxherding Pictures,” suangming 雙泯 (Both Vanished), wrote that that:

Both the man and the animal have disappeared, no traces are left,

The bright moon-light is empty and shadowless with all the ten-thousand objects in it;

If anyone should ask the meaning of this,

Behold the lilies of the filed in its fresh sweet-scented vendure.80

Accompanied with the poems were an image with an empty circle (Figure 2.6). In the end, Chan returns to an emptiness. Following this image of Chan, in Muqi’s paintings, “the intention is simple and proper, not troubled by adornment.”81

According to Xu, in the extreme end of the revolution of Chan’s sudden enlightenment on art, manifested in Muqi paintings’ spontaneity and simplicity, was “non-existence” of paintings:

78 Retrieved from Bush, Early Chinese, 156. 79 Retrieved from Stephen Addiss, Zen Sourcebook, 103. 80 Translated by D. T. Suzuki. For all ten stages of the “Ten Oxherding Pictures” and translations on the poems, see Puming, “The Ten Oxherding Pictures,” trans. D. T. Suzuki, in Manual of Zen Buddhism (Kyoto: Eastern Buddhist Society, 1934), 150-171. 81 Wu, Songzhai, 267.

31 the great image has no form. The literati’s resistance against the style of Muqi and other monk painters was to protect the artist’s “subjectivity of painting.”82 Nevertheless, in Japan, Muqi’s works were regarded as one of the highest examples of art and extensively studied since the

Muromachi period. Muqi’s influence in Japan is discussed in the following chapters.

Figure 2.6 Unknown. The 10th Plate, Both Vanished. Retrieved from Du Songbai 杜松柏 , ed., Chanshi Muniutu Song Huibian 禪詩牧牛圖頌彙編 [Compilation of Oxherding Pictures’ Chan Poetry] (Taipei: Li Ming Cultural Enterprise, 1983), 120.

82 Xu, Fachang, 72.

32 Chapter Three

Aesthetic Thinking of Japanese Zen Arts in the Twentieth Century

1. Okakura Kakuzo: Zen and the Individualism

An underlying narrative in Okakura, Suzuki, and Hisamatsu’s English works was to establish the superiority of Japanese Zen and culture over Asia, which in turn, became part of “Zen nationalism.”83 The ideological agenda of Japanese government propagandists and the nativist movement of the early ninteenth century — kokutai 国体 (national polity ideology) — incorporated the attempt to render Japan as a culturally homogeneous and spiritually evolved nation, politically unified under the divine rule of the emperor.84 In the case of Zen and art, scholars emphasized Zen art’s decline in China and ascendance in Japan. Zen developed significantly after coming to Japan.

In China, Zen excelled, but only during the Song and Yuan periods. During the Ming and after,

China had little to offer. Thus, they assumed a metaphysical continuity of Zen’s transmission of

India-China-Japan.

Unlike his teacher ’s (1853-1908) “cosmopolitan” aestheticism view on

Japanese art, Okakura considered the role of art to be political.85 In art, Okakura perceived an

83 Robert H. Sharf, "Whose Zen? Zen Nationalism Revisited," in Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, ed. James W. Heisig and John C. Maraldo (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994), 43. 84 Robert H. Sharf, “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism,” History of Religions 33 no. 1 (1993): 110. 85 Okakura believed that art was the only sphere in which the East could compete with the West. See Karatani Kojin, “Japan as Art Museum: Okakura Tenshin and Fenollosa,” in A History of Modern , ed. Michael Marra (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), 48.

33 oneness in Asia and pointed out the specialty of Japan as “a museum of Asiatic civilisation.”86

What Japan exhibited through its art culture is the preservation of the Indian and Chinese varieties, derived from the “love for the Ultimate and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race.”87 These varieties are what have ceased to exist in their birthplace but survived and adapted in Japan. Eventually, they have become part of Japanese aesthetic philosophy.88 Zen Buddhism was one of the “loves” in this process. For Okakura, Zen was more than a religion. It is an ideal89 resulted from interchange within the Asia continent and possesses the essence of Hinduism and Chan Buddhism. To borrow Sister Nivedita’s words, “The thing we call Buddhism cannot in itself have been a defined and formulated creed, with strict boundaries and clearly demarcated heresies… Rather must we regard it as the name given to the vast synthesis known as Hinduism, when received by a foreign consciousness.”90 More precisely, Zen was “the

Indian trend of the Japanese mind,” 91 which was perfected under the Song Dynasty by the

“Southern Chinese mind.”92 Okakura suggested Zen’s affinity to Daoism. He noted that both Zen

86 Okakura Kakuzo, The Ideal of the East: with Special Reference to the Art of Japan (London: John Murray, 1903), 7. 87 Ibid., 1. 88 Fenollosa was responsible for perceiving Japanese artworks as “art” for the first time and dealt it as part of a broader scheme going back to the arts of ancient Greece and the Pacific. Karatani Kojin examined on the aesthetic philosophy and national identity of Japan constructed by Okakura and Fenollosa in the Meiji era in order to address the larger issues of “originality” and “national characteristics.” See Karatani, “Japan as Art Museum.” 89 Karatani explained that Okakura uses “ideal” in the sense of Hegal’s Idea (Idee)—not a goal to be reached but something that already exists. However, Okakura understood that politically, the oneness of the East could only be recognized as a result of Western colonization process, thus the ideals of the East did not exist. For Oakakura, the “East” was an ideal that had to be uncovered from the standpoint of art. See Karatani, “Japan as Art Museum,” 47- 48. 90 Sister Nivedita, “Introduction” to Okakura’s The Ideal of the East, XV. For episodes between Sister Nivedita and Okakura, see John Rosenfield, “Okakura Kakuzo and Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita): A Brief Episode,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society vol. 24 (2012): 58-69. 91 Okakura, The Ideals of the East, 167. 92 Ibid., 149. Okakura divided Chinese thought into the Southern with Laoism and Daoism and the Northern, which expressed itself in Confucianism. See Okakura, “Confucianism—Northern China” and “Laoism and — Southern China,” in The Ideals of the East.

34 Buddhism and Daoism are “worship of Relativity” and “advocate of individualism,” and he believed that truth could be attained through the “comprehension of opposites.”93

For Okakura, the samurai in Japan intimately embraced these features of Zen. Zen was introduced as a new Buddhist school in Japan in the twelfth century during the

(1185-1333) after the samurai class seized power from the aristocratic elites and established a new political regime. Before this, Buddhism had already spread widely under the earlier ruling aristocratic priesthood and commoners since its first arrival in the sixth century. Zen became popular after the Kamakura samurai elites adopted the teachings of Zen as their philosophical and religious ideals. However, Okakura believed that it was only during the Muromachi period94 when

Zen started to become intrinsic in Japanese culture. Zen’s involvement in Japanese culture was a top-down process that first occurred within the samurai ideology.95 Zen went beyond religious practices and was incorporated into the spirit of 武士道 , “the way of warriors.” Okakura emphasized the individuality of Zen and its ideals of “self-control and strength of will.”96 This individualism intimately relates to Daoist metaphor of the Vacuum, or xu, spoken by Laozi. What matters is the vacant space framed within but not the frame itself.97 Achieving Zen thus takes place within individuals through methods of self-control, and therefore it is “the essence of true freedom” and victories over the inner self98:

93 Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea (New York: Fox, Duffield & Company, 1906), 66. 94 Okakura referred to as the Ashikaga period. In Japanese history, the designation of premodern periodization derived from the names of political centres, for example, , , , Kamakura period, and . This is also the case of , but since the Ashikaga clan rules over the Muromachi shogunate regime, this period is also called the Ashikaga period. 95 The most important Zen school to the samurai ideal of Muromach was probably Rinzai (ch. Linji), a school favoured by the Ashikaga shoguns. The emphasizes on kensho 見性 (seeing one’s true nature) as the gateway to authentic Buddhist practice. Rinzai also insists on many years of exhaustive post-kensho training to embody the free functioning of wisdom within the activities of daily life. On Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism, see Jorn Borup, Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism: Myoshinji, A Living Religion (Leidon: Brill, 2008). 96 Okakura, The Ideal of the East, 149. 97 Okakura, The Book of Tea, 50. 98 Okakura, The Ideal of the East, 162.

35 The idea of conquest was completely orientalised, in passing from that which is without to that

which is within a man himself. Not to use the sword, but to be the sword—pure, serene,

immovable, pointing ever to the polar star—was the ideal of the Ashikaga knight. Everything was

sought in the soul, as a means of freeing thought from the fetters in which all forms of knowledge

tended to enchain it.99

Together with the samurai, the Muromachi artists “were all Zen priests, or laymen who lived almost like monks” and were able to absorb “the Zen idea in all its intensity and purity.” The best among them, according to Okakura, were the painters Sesshu and Sesson:

Sesshu owes his position to that directness and self-control so typical of the Zen mind. Face to

face with his paintings, we learn the security and calm which no other artist ever gives. To Sesson,

on the other hand, belong the freedom, ease, and playfulness which constituted another essential

trait of the Zen ideal. It is as if to him the whole of experience were but a pastime, and his strong

soul could take delight in all the exuberance of virile nature.100

In addition to the self-control, aesthetically, Zen is expressed as something free, ease, and playful.

Zen aims directly to the inner nature of things, regarding their outward accessories as impediments to the Truth. This “love of the Abstract” is what led to the simple ink-sketches and a few bold lines from the strong, high-toned drawing and colouring, and the delicate curves of earlier artists of the

Kamakura period.101

Zen also values the journey and the present rather than the result. Successful Zen art is thus works of “a universe in itself, must conform to the laws that govern all existence,” “an essay on nature” rather than a depiction of nature.102 While this idea applies to art forms such as painting

99 Okakura, The Ideal of the East, 161. 100 Ibid., 169. 101 Okakura, The Book of Tea, 67. 102 Okakura, The Ideals of the East, 168.

36 and calligraphy, it is also responsible for the praising of tea, which Okakura termed as “Teaism” and identified it as a religion of aestheticism, a unique cultural development of Japanese culture.

An emphasis was put on the process rather than the result. Okakura acknowledged that beauty is to be discovered in the process of growth. Thus, visually and textually, the essential aesthetic quality is “the Imperfect.”103 Consequently, in Zen, the mundane has equal importance with the spiritual. Zen was expressed through every detail of the ritual woven of architecture, tea, flowers, and paintings. “It held that in the great relation of things, there was no distinction of slight and great, an atom possessing equal possibilities with the universe.”104

Okakura Kakuzo launched the discussion in his The Ideals of the East that pure and simplistic form of Zen is contracted to the formalism of Confucianism, where art activities follow certain sets of rules that are passed down from the ancestors.105 For Okakura, the characteristic of

Zen was:

Everything was sought in the soul, as a means of freeing thought from the fetters in which all forms

of knowledge tended to enchain it. Zenism was even iconoclastic, in the sense of ignoring forms

and rituals, for Buddhist images were cast into the fire by Zen who obtained enlightenment. Words

were considered as encumbrance to thought, and the Zenist doctrines were set forth in broke

sentences and powerful metaphor, to the great disparagement of the studied language of the

Chinese literati.106

In his other known The Book of the Tea, Okakura approached the problem of Zen from a cultural perspective through the Zen art of cha no yu 茶の湯 (Teaism). It refers to the rituals of tea that initiated from Zen Buddhist ritual practices and related to the Daoist theory of the Vacuum.

103 Okakura, The Book of Tea, 3, 18, 95. 104 Ibid., 63. 105 Okakura, The Ideals of the East, 167. 106 Ibid., 105-106.

37 Okakura introduced that “the ceremony was an improvised drama whose plot was woven about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings…all movements to be performed simply and naturally— such were the aims of the tea-ceremony. And strangely enough it was often successful. A subtle philosophy lay behind it all. Teaism was Taoism in disguise.”107

2. Daisetz T. Suzuki: A Phenomenological Reading of Zen Art

Unlike Okakura, Suzuki considered that Confucianism and Zen were rather intellectually related.

Suzuki discussed the philosophies of the Song Dynasty and narrated a Zen-oriented intellectual history of China and Japan. In particular, he detailed the impact of Chan thought on the Neo-

Confucianism of 朱熹 (1130-1200) and Daoism, noting that Japanese Zen masters, mostly from the Rinzai school, studied Confucianism, following the tradition at contemporary Chinese temples. Suzuki claimed that “Zen has nothing to do with nationalism.”108 In both Okakura and

Suzuki’s writings, they seemed to be more focused on ideas rather than the works of art themselves.

They elaborated extensively on the concept of Zen, Zen and the samurai, Zen and the art of tea, etc., but only explored briefly the actual paintings by masters, a point they are often criticized for.109

In Suzuki’s understanding, Zen Buddhism had gone beyond the influence of the spiritual life of and had entered every phase of the cultural life.110 Suzuki asserted this idea

107 Okakura, The Book of Tea, 32. 108 D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 38-57. 109 For criticism from 1959-1960 on Suzuki’s argument of Zen and Japanese Culture, see Levine, “Two (and More Truths),” 55. 110 Cf. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture.

38 by arguing that the features of Japanese art are intertwined with “the world conception of Zen,” expressed in the paradoxes “the One of the Many and the Many in the One” and “the One remaining as one in the Many individually and collectively.”111 In short, the most conspicuous features of Japanese art are: imbalance, asymmetry, the “one-corner,” poverty, simplification, and aloneness. These ideas were all cognate and are also found in the ideals of wabi and sabi.

Japanese pursuit of the aesthetic value of wabi derived from Zen’s ideal of a mind free from attachments or judgments. Thus, the Japanese aspire to breakthrough artificiality and even materiality. They are driven to “appreciation of transcendental aloofness in the midst of multiplicities,” an attitude which Suzuki described as “the cult of wabi.”112 The essential meaning of wabi, according to Suzuki, is:

To be poor, that is, not to be dependent on things worldly—wealth, power, and reputation—and

yet to feel inwardly the presence of something of the highest value, above time and social

position.113

When the sense of time or antiquity joins the naturalness and imperfectness of wabi,

Japanese then see the aesthetic element of sabi: “rustic unpretentiousness or archaic imperfection, apparent simplicity or effortlessness in execution, and richness in historical associations…and, lastly, it contains inexplicable elements that raise the object in question to the rank of an artistic production.”114 Poetically, sabi’s “loneliness” or “solitude” is expressed by a tea master Fujiwara

Sadaie 藤原定家 (1162-1241):

As I come out

111 Ibid., 22, 27-28. It is important to note that for Suzuki “Zen is anything but a philosophy in the Western sense of the word,” and can be studies first as a psychological problem. Cf. D.T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (Kyoto: Eastern Buddhist Society, 1934). 112 Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, 22-23. 113 Ibid., 23. 114 Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, 24.

39 To this fishing village,

Late in the autumn day,

No flowers in bloom I see,

Nor any tinted maple leaves.115

Okakura did not discuss wabi and sabi in his writings, but his idea of “the Imperfect” connoted the meaning of wabi. Suzuki’s Japanese contemporary colleague Onishi Yoshinori 大西

克礼 (1888-1959) also researched extensively on the connotations of sabi from an aesthetic perspective, and proposed a different direction from Suzuki. Onish argued that the aesthetic category of sabi referred to the consciousness that attempted to discover the fulfillment of mind from destitution and deficiency.116

Suzuki asserted that in ink paintings, which are referred as sumie, the aesthetic value of wabi is expressed through the “one-corner” style (originated from the Southern Song artist Ma

Yuan) and “thrifty brush” tradition of retaining the least possible number of lines or strokes.

Through “one-corner” style, a Zen sense of Alone could be achieved: “A simple fishing boat in the midst of the rippling water is enough to awaken in the mind of the beholder a sense of the vastness of the sea and at the same time of peace and contentment.”117 Moreover, the simple strokes partly corresponds to the Zen ideal of an abrupt awakening, and also to Chan and Zen masters’ spontaneous words and actions in that seemingly paradoxical and sometimes nonsense but true to the Reality.118

115 Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, 25. 116 In his intercultural system, Onishi proposed three Asian aesthetic categories, aware, yugen, and sabi as counterparts to the European forms of beautiful [die Grazie], sublime [das Tragische], and comic [das Komische]. Cf. Onishi Yoshinari 大西克礼 . Yugen, Aware, Sabi 幽玄 ・あはれ ・さび (Tokyo: Shoshi Shinsui, 2012-2013). 117 Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, 22. 118 Suzuki quotes several cases from The Blue Cliff Records to address his argument.

40 At the same time, the ideal of the painting is also associated to the Zen experience of emptiness, or sunyata and “transcendental wisdom,” or prajna as opposed to “relative knowledge,” or jna,119 a state of mind achieved by “no mind,” or mushin of the awakened Zen master. Mushin, in fact, “is where all arts merge into Zen…[and the artist] transforms his own life into a work of creation.”120 Essentially, it refers to the One of the Many and the Many in the One. However, no mind does not make Zen nihilistic. Rather it revealed the truth of Reality: “Willows are green and flowers red.”121 Taking bamboo as the example: “just because of Emptiness the bamboo cannot be anything but bamboo and not a pine tree.”122

Furthermore, Suzuki emphasized Zen’s contribution to Japanese art was the creativity. Zen is against regularity and morality,123 and moved the artist to paint a spirit moving over the picture:

The painter’s business thus is not just to copy or imitate nature, but to give to the object something

living in its own right. It is the same with the Zen master. When he says that the willow is green

and the flower is red, he is not just giving us a description of how nature looks, but something

whereby green is green and red is red. This something is what I call the spirit of creativity.124

However, according to Suzuki, for the artists to be able to create in a Zen way, he had to have at least a glimpse of satori (enlightenment): “Satori is the raison d’être of Zen without which Zen is no Zen.”125 Creativity appeares when the enlightenment opens up a new viewpoint of nature. It is a state of perception of opening to something. Thus many Zen masters have also been art masters because their discipline seems to stir up their artistic instincts if they were all susceptible to art.

119 Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, 32. 120 Ibid., 94. 121 Ibid., 36. With extensive reference to Zen koans and anecdotes, Suzuki dedicates a whole chapter to negate the idea of Zen being nihilistic. See Suzuki, “Is Zen Nihilistic?,” in An Introduction to Zen Buddhism, 48-57. 122 Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, 36. 123 Ibid., 27, 124 Ibid., 36-37. 125 Suzuki, An Introduction, 95.

41 3. Hisamatsu Shinichi: the Formless Self and the Art of Zen

Hisamatsu Shinichi’s writings in experimental and phenomenological approaches on Zen and art echoed to a great extent to the works of his colleague Suzuki. Hisamatsu asserted that everything from Chinese landscape painting and calligraphy to garden design and No drama are expressions of Zen experience. According to Sharf, Hisamatsu’s assertion on Zen incorporated: 1. the rhetoric of “pure experience” of the philosopher Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945); 2. the notion that Zen is the essence of all religious teachings; and 3. the evolution of a fully laicized Zen practice.126

On the subject of Zen and art, Hisamatsu in his Zen and the Fine Art formulated seven characteristics of “Zen Aesthetics” in his book Zen and the Fine Arts: Asymmetry 不均斉 ,

Simplicity 簡素 , Austere sublimity or lofty dryness 枯高 , Naturalness 自然 , Subtle profundity or profound subtlety 幽玄 , Break from routine 脱俗 , and Tranquility 静寂 .127 At a glance, all of these characteristics referred to experiences of encountering, except for “Asymmetry,” which is a formal feature. It is possible, then, to perceive Hisamatsu’s Zen aesthetics as responses and receptions of the viewers, independent of formal qualities, contexts of material, or visual culture.

At the core of Hisamatsu’s Zen aesthetic system was the religious thinking of what he termed as muso no jiko 無相の自己 (the Formless Self), which is an ideal state of being, generated within the Zen practitioner. It is embodied neither in a physical form (such as the material surface of a painting) nor in an abstract mental formation (such as the notion of a painting’s aesthetic value).128 Hisamatsu argued that this Formless Self is related to Zen art as a psychological reaction to the principle embodied in objects: “The fundamental subject of expression [in Zen art] can only

126 Sharf, “Zen and Japanese Nationalism,” 29. Hisamatsu was the founder of the lay Zen society F.A.S. (Formless self-awakening itself/All humankind/Superhistorical history) and an avid campaigner for Zen as a transcultural truth of “Oriental nothingness” that was simultaneously unique to the Japanese 127 Hisamatsu, Zen, 28-38. 128 Ibid., 45-46.

42 be considered in the context of Zen… Zen is the

Self-Awareness of the Formless Self.”129 When this mind of Zen operates in any artworks or theatrical arts and movements, there is a vital working of Zen itself, what Hisamatsu defined as

“Zen Activity”: “Zen Activity may manifest itself at any time, at any place, and through any object.”130 The Formless Self has seven positive characteristics, each associated with the aesthetic elements introduced earlier, respectively. 131

Hisamatsu presented Zen’s aesthetic system as not only self-contained but also self-generating.

Zen is a self-expressive, creative subject, and when Zen expressed itself, there existed all of the seven characteristics of Formless Self. In the art of Zen, the seven aesthetic elements always coexist at the same time, with perhaps different extent of degrees. Within this framework, artistic

Figure 3.1 Liang Kai. Shakyamuni Emerging from works or artistic activities identified as Zen, Mountains. Southern Song dynasty. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo.

129 Hisamatsu, Zen, 45. 130 Ibid., 12. 131 Asymmetry with the Unmanifest or no rule 無法 , Simplicity With No complexity 無 雑 ; Austere sublimity or lofty dryness with No rank 無位 , Naturalness with a state of No mind 無心 , Subtle profundity or profound subtlety with No bottom 無底 (an unfathomable quality that equates to release from the discriminating mind), Freedom from attachment with No hinderance 無礙 (the absence of obstruction), and Tranquillity with No stirring 無動 . Ibid., 53- 9.

43 including paintings, gardens, the tea ceremony, become the agency where the viewer encountered the ultimate experience of Zen. Thus, the pre-requisite for both the artist and the viewer is the satori of Zen.132

In the field of painting, Zen expresses itself through the subject matters. Like Okakura and

Suzuki, Hisamatsu was unconcerned of the artworks’ historical context of production. Rather he emphasized the phenomenological experience of viewing. In the discussion of Liang Kai’s

Shakyamuni Emerging from Mountains (Figure 3.1), Hisamatsu lightly touched that of the seven characteristics, tranquillity was best expressed in this painting and expressed by the use of broken ink style brushwork haboku 破墨 (splash ink). Instead of putting attention on the iconographic significance of Shakyamuni as the founder of Chan and Zen lineages, Hisamatsu’s attention was on its exegesis on Zen ideology. By assigning Shakyamuni Emerging from Mountains to one of 37

“appreciation” painting, Hisamatsu concentrated on its instruments to engender religious awakening.133 Other Zen painting examples were examined in similar ways. To Hisamatsu, art historical inquiry was perhaps a means to an end, which was the religious experience of Zen.

Though Hisamatsu’s seven characteristics function primarily as a platform for pedagogy on modern laymen’s Zen, they remain the most systematic attempt to articulate a distinctive quality to Zen art.134

132 Hisamatsu wrote that he had “awakened to his formless, free True Self” in his first rohatsu-sesshin 臘八接 心 , a Zen event of sleepless from November 1st to 8th of lunar calendar in celebration of Shakyamuni’s enlightenment. Hisamatsu, "Memories of My Academic Life," The Eastern Buddhist 18 no. 1 (1985): 25-26. 133 Hisamatsu, Zen, 62. 134 Sharf discussed Suzuki and Hisamatsu’s shared position as lay practitioners, noting that lay Zen was neither respected nor accepted by the orthodoxies of Japanese Zen monasticism. Sharf “Zen and Japanese Nationalism,” 40.

44 Chapter Four

Landscape Painting in Muromachi Japan (1336-1573)

1. The Problems of hitsuyo 筆様 (Brush Patterns)

The previous chapter discussed that Okakura, Suzuki, Hisamatsu and their followers from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries assumed that the Japanese art culture owes its to the full embrace of the genuine and ineffable Zen. It is especially manifested in the ink painting. The ink painting celebrates painters’ religious views and personal convictions. As Levine observes,

For Suzuki, sumi-e [墨絵 ], literally “ink pictures,” didn't require the searching gaze and explicit

prodding preferred by art historians because they are self-evident embodiments of the mystical

Zen experience of nothingness, which is manifested visually in suggestion, irregularity, and

unexpectedness; within the confines of a piece of paper, we find infinity and absolute being. As

Suzuki slyly put it, they “may not be art” but instead "perfect in [their] artlessness," because the

sumi-e painter engages in the spontaneous transfer of artistic inspiration without the intrusion of

logic or deliberation; artist and brush fuse together such that the “brush by itself executes the work

quite outside the artist, who just lets it move on without his conscious efforts.” This implies that

the sumi-e painter works in an artistic void, exclusive of surrounding pictorial traditions and

taste.135

Hence, an authentic sumie entails religious achievement, and painting skills can be ignored to certain degrees. However, sumie in Suzuki’s writings had rather vague definitions. His use of the

135 Levine, “Two (or More) Truths”, 55.

45 word (and Okakura called it “ink-painting”) “homogenized and conflates a historically diverse field of pictorial practice in ink monochrome, with antecedents, schools, styles, subjects, and commentaries that have little or nothing to do with Zen.”136

In fact, by the fifteenth century, the “Zen style” was not the only practiced tradition of painting. There were mainly three painting traditions national wide: 1. Yamatoe 大和絵 (), practiced by professional yamatoe painters in royal ateliers in Kyoto; 2. traditional

Buddhist paintings, of which belonged to the répertoire of professional Buddhist painters based in

Nara and Kyoto’s monasteries; and 3. kanga 漢画 (Chinese painting), a new style that practiced and developed mainly in Zen monastic ateliers under the protection and patronage of that based itself on paintings of Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. The third style was called karae 唐絵 during that time.137 In art history, sumie can be used to broadly include yamatoe,

Buddhist paintings, and kanga, as long as the painting used ink. Stylistically, what Suzuki and

Okakura delineated as the “Zen style” falls in to the category of karae in the Muromachi period.

Recent historical, social, political, textual, architectural, and material studies on

Muromachi artists who worked within monastic contexts in relation to elite patronage and connoisseurship uncovered that this new “Zen style” was part of the gradual development that involved material and textual communications as well as the efforts of generations of artists assimilating the Chinese Song and Yuan tradition, especially the styles of

Northern Song royal academy and Chan monk painters, into what is known today as Japanese

136 Levine, “Two (or More) Truths”, 60. 137 The first two traditions were long-established practices that traced back to the Heian period. The denotation of yamatoe emerged after the fourteenth century to distinguish from karae, paintings that adopted techniques transmitted since the Song China. At the same time, karae also referred to Chinese paintings brought to Japan. Tsuji Nobuo 辻惟雄 , “Kano Ha no Tanjo to Koryu: Masanobu, Motonobu, Eitoku” 狩野派の誕生と興隆 : 正信 ・元 信 ・永徳 [The Birth and Rise of Kano: Masanobu, Motonobu, and Eitoku], Shubi 3 (2012): 9.

46 suibokuga 水墨画 (ink wash painting tradition).138 In looking at this process, one may question against Okakura, Suzuki, and Hisamatsu’s assumption that Zen experience is the ultimate explanation of ink wash painting with Zen:

The relationship between suibokuga by Japanese Zen monks and Zen is uncertain. At least it is

impossible to point out concretely the internal relationship between the landscape of the foremost

monk painter Sesshu and Zen…It is perhaps better to consider that Zen Buddhism in the

Muromachi period gives birth to the genius painter Sesshu. In this sense, the religious,

philosophical Zen has become cultural and artistic Zen.139

Probably due to this reason, the postwar scholars placed the inquiries of Zen painting and calligraphy firstly within East Asian art rather than religious studies.140

During the process of developing the suibokuga tradition, the ideals and cultivations of Zen was inevitably important in the aesthetic meaning of ink wash painting. However, the learning of brushwork, composition, and techniques were also not less essential. There was a unique method of production adopted by Muromachi painters, what Japanese art historians termed as hitsuyo seisaku 筆様 制作 (brush styles/patterns production). In Chinese art history, yang 様 refers to the

138 This process already began in the Kamakura period. Postwar Japanese scholars generally agree that there were two main approaches in Chinese ink painting tradition: one was hyakubyoga 白描画 (plain sketch painting), culminated by the Tang artist Wu Daozi; another one was suibokuga (ink wash painting) developed after the prior. Kamakura and Muromachi Japan received the influence of both traditions, but the ink wash tradition that represented Muromachi art today inherited from the Southern Song styles of royal academy and Chan monk painters, whose works did not survive rarely in modern China. For a comprehensive exploration on the development of Chinese paintings traditions and their receptions in Japan. Cf. Tanaka Ichimatsu 田中一松 and Yonezawa Yoshiho 米澤嘉圃 ed., Suiboku Bijutsu Taikei 1, Hyakubyoga Kara Suibokuga he no Tenkai 水墨美術大系 第 1 巻 , 百描画から水墨画への展開 [Series of Ink Wash Art Volume 1, Development from Plain Sketch Painting to Ink Wash Painting] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1975). 139 Cf. Imaizumi Yoshio 今泉淑夫, “Muromachi Bumka toshite no Zenshu” 室町文化としての禅宗 [Zen Buddhism as Muromachi Culture], in Nihon Bijutsu Zenshu 日本美術全集 11 [Complete Works of Japanese Fine Art] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1993). Retrieved from Shimao Arata 島尾 新 , “Sesshu Toyo no Kenkyu 3 —Shuto Sansui Zu no Johogaku Sho” 雪舟等楊の研究（三）―「秋冬山水図」の情報学（ 上）[Research on Sesshu Toyo 3— Informatics of Landscapes of Autumn and Winter], The Journal of Art Studies (1999): 110. 140 Levine, “Critical Zen Art History,” 20.

47 final proof, after several times of drafts, that are ready for the actual painting. On the other hand, in Japan, yo 様 connotes the meaning of style and pattern. To complete a new painting, the

Muromachi painters combined one or more paintings by Chinese predecessors available in Japan.

They arranged one or more brush works and styles from sogenga to produce a new painting. By the end of Muromachi period, the ateliers under the patronage of the Ashikaga shogunate had developed a systematic way of the brush patterns production.

Inryoken Nichiroku 蔭涼軒日録 (Inryoken’s Diary), an official monastic diary that records

Buddhist, political, and art incidents from 1435-1493, writes down how Kano Masanobu 狩野正

信 (1434-1530) produced a series of shoji paintings in Tougudo 東求堂 , Silver Pavilion, Kyoto in

1485. At first, patrons and his advisors decided the theme of “Ten Monk Figures.” Then the artist and the consultants determined the works’ “brush patterns,” which were mostly of Chinese painters. Upon inquired of his preference in patterns, the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa said,

“whether Xia Gui or Ma Yuan, whoever it is paint one.” The artists could borrow the paintings they intended to model from the shogun’s art collection. When the shogun approved Masanobu’s draft, the final painting on shoji could finally begin. The whole process took almost seven months.141

Other well-known evidence of “brush patterns” is Sesshu’s “Ryusho Tegakami” 流書手鑑

(Album of Ryusho), which includs twelve album patterns by six Chinese painters: Muqi, Yujian,

Liang Kai, Xia Gui, Mi Youren, and Li Tang.142 For Sesshu, it functioned as a menu of “brush patterns” for his patrons to choose from.143 In some paintings, the painters indicated who they

141 Shimao Arata 島尾新 , “Muromachi Suigokuga no Hyogen—so no Tokushitsu to Sesshu no Ichi” 室町水墨画の 表現 ―その特質と雪舟の位置 ― [The Expression of Muromachi Ink Wash Painting — its Characteristics and the Position of Sesshu], Shubi 2 (2012): 26-27. 142 The album survived as a copy by Kano Tsunenobu 狩野常信 (1636-1713). 143 Shimao, “Muromachi,” 27.

48 imitated after (who were usually Song, Yuan, and Ming painters) beside their signatures. In “brush patterns” production, several Chinese painters’ names were often connected to particular subjects.

For example, in figure paintings, popular brush patterns were works by Liang Kai and 颜

辉 (fl. 13th century), and ink plum paintings often imitated after Wang Mian 王冕 (1335-1407) and

Wu Taisu. The production of “brush patterns” was particularly apparent in the landscape painting, one of the main subjects practiced in the Muromachi ink wash painting. The most preferred prototypes of styles were those by Muqi, Yujian, Xia Gui, and Ma Yuan.144

The “brush patterns” production in Muromachi suggested a tendency toward canonicity, with Chinese predecessors setting up the standard of subjects, techniques, styles, and even compositions. Following a Chinese standard was partly political, where the samurai elites attempted to establish their legitimacy through patronage and connoisseurship of the arts that

“aggressively claimed Chinese antiquity as part of their own cultural heritage.”145 These paintings, among the imported Chinese artifacts, called karamono 唐物 (Chinese things)146 became essential decorations of elite’s houses, public spaces, and kaisho 会所 (the meeting centre) where social and

144 During the Muromachi period, China was under the rule of Ming, with whom Japan traded extensively. The problem of why Japanese art collection preferred the styles represented by painters like Ma Yuan and Muqi from the Southern Song dynasty instead of a Ming literati style is still under discussion. The preference for a Southern Song ink painting style was reflected in the 8th shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa’s 足利義政 (1436-1490) art collection titled Higashiyama Gomotsu 东山御物 (Higashiyama Treasure) and Kundai Kansou Choki 君台観左右帳記 (The Reference for the Display of Objects of Beauty). For a detailed exploration on Higashiyama Treasure, see Shimao Arata, “Higashiyama Gomotsu Zuiso – Ime-ji no naka no Chugoku Gajin Tachi”「東山御物」隨想 ——イメージ のなか の 中国画人たち [Random Reflections on Higashiyama Treasure – the Chinese Painters within Images], in Nanso Kaiga-Saijoyachi no Sekai 南宋 絵画 —才情雅致の世界 [Southern Song Paintings-the World of Talent and Elegance] (Tokyo: Nezu Art Museum, 2004), 25-37. 145 Andrew M. Watsky, “Locating ‘China’ in the Arts of Sixteenth-Century Japan,” Art History 29 no. 4 (2006): 601. 146 Literally “Tang things” in Japanese. The term has been used in various contexts since the ninth century, signifying Japanese fascination for the exoticism and prestige of . In the Muromachi period, karamono broadly refers to imported goods of paintings, books, silk, spices, medicine, artifacts, ceramics, metal objects, etc from China, Korean Peninsula, and Ryukyu. For a study on karamono and its chronological significance over Japanese culture, see Kawazoe Fusae 河添房江 and Minagawa Masaki 皆川雅樹 ed., Karamono to Higashi Ajia: Kusaihin wo meiguru Bunka Koryu Shi 唐物と東アジア : 舶載品をめぐる文化交流史 [Tang Things and East Asia: History of Cultural Commination through Imported Goods] (Tokyo: Bensen Shuppan, 2016).

49 political gatherings took place. The qualities and varieties of karamono became important self- manifestations and communicative mediums in the social events of the upper class. Possession of karamono came to represent economic power and the exquisite taste of the owner.

During the process of assimilating Chinese examples to Japanese ink wash painting tradition, Zen Buddhism played a vital role in the conduit of knowledge of subjects (Daoist and

Buddhist patriarchal and mythical subjects, bird-and-flower compositions, and landscapes), styles, techniques, and aesthetic ideals. 147 The prototypes of paintings were not only found from collections of the warrior-class elites, but also from burgeoning Zen temples, who were enthusiastic collectors of Chinese objects.148

However, what transmitted through Zen Buddhism was not limited to Zen Buddhist thought, but also Chinese literati culture. Muromachi Zen monks identified themselves as both

Zen’s religious practitioner and “literati,” intellectuals who embodied the authority of Chinese culture in Japan. Among the aforementioned Chinese painters who Japanese artists imitated after,

147 In Japan, painters first receive the new style of ink monochrome painting from the traveling Chan and Zen monks. Unlike China since the Song dynasty where the literati class were responsible for the mainstream of painting tradition, in Muromachi Japan, Zen monasteries, especially those within the gozan temples system, become centres of intellectual and aesthetic leadership where consideration, assimilation, and dissemination of continental culture took place. The artistic innovation of gozan monastic circle was not limited to painting, the literate Zen monks also worked toward religious, philosophical, and poetic innovations. For an exploration on the religious and philosophical innovation of gozan monks in the 13th and 14th centuries, see Joseph D. Parker, “Playful Nonduality: Japanese Zen Interpretations of Landscape paintings from the Oei Era (1394-1427)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1989) and Watanabe, Shosho, 35-48. 148 For an excellent summary of early, China-inspired ink painting in Japan, see Yoshiaki Shimizu and Carolyn Wheelwright, eds, Japanese Ink Paintings from American Collections: The Muromachi Period, An Exhibition in Honor of Shimada Shujiro (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 17–40.

50 only Muqi and Yujian were Chan monks. Many painting subjects of ink wash paintings also suggested Chinese literati influences beyond

Chan and Zen. For example, Kano Masanobu’s

狩 野 正信 (ca. 1434- ca. 1530) Zhou Maoshu

Appreciating Lotuses 周茂叔愛蓮図 (Figure

4.1) was inspired from the Northern Song literati ’s 周敦頤 (1017-1073) well- known poem “On the Love of the Lotus.” This is a work of “Ma Yuan pattern,” following his compositions and brushwork. Furthermore,

Japanese Zen monks brought landscape painting to its highest pitch during the

Muromachi period, where the idea of “hermit at court,” a thought deeply affiliated to Chinese thought, became a cultural phenomenon.

“Hermit at court” reached its peak and played a significant role in the interpretation of the landscape, building on the Chinese Yuan tendency “to associate landscape with the transcendence of society and the purity and joy

149 of retreat or exile from government service.” Figure 4.1 Kano Masanobu. Zhou Maoshu Appreciating Lotuses. 15th century. Kyushu National Museum, Dasaifu.

149 Parker, “Playful Nonduality,” 42.

51 Nevertheless, Zen continued to be the central term in Muromachi art history. However, the tradition of “brush patterns” delineated a narrative that almost goes against what Okakura and

Suzuki asserted. The painters learned through Chinese examples directly. However, little could be done on examining how much religious practice was involved in this process. The idea of “brush patterns” also counters to what Okakura wrote that Sesshu and Sesson “divest art of foreign elements” and develop a style that is characterized as “simple ink-sketches and a few bold lines” in opposed to Kamakura’s “strong, high-toned drawing and colouring, and the delicate curves.”150

Some scholars argued that Zen Buddhism that dominated the samurai’s spiritual life was different to what Suzuki and Hisamatsu explained, where Zen involved a universal image of Zen:

What enters in Japan is Chan practiced in the Song dynasty. As often indicated in Chan Buddhist

history, it differs greatly from Tang and earlier Chan Buddhism. Roughly speaking, during the

Song dynasty, Chan Buddhism comes to be governed under state power. Thus in administration it

becomes more systematic, and in theory it receives more refinement in literary manifestation

through intimate communications with the literati. On the other hand, [Chan in Song] loses its

yahisa 野卑さ (vulgarity) that fills the earlier Chan. At the same time, it has also weakened the

spirit to revolt against political power.151

Furthermore, recent studies on historical documents uncovered that it was rather rare to find a “systematic brush patterns” production like the shoji painting creation in Dogudo mentioned above. Toda Teisuke argued that the phenomenon of “brush patterns” production was also seen in the by the literati painters, who emphasized a returning to the archaic style.152

Shimao added that by 15th century, the Ashikaga shogunate’s power had comparatively ceased,

150 Okakura, The Ideal of the East, 179. 151 Shimao Arata, “Sesshu Toyo no Kenkyu 3”, 110 152 Cf. Toda Teisuke 戶田禎佑 , “Sesshu Kenkyu ni Kansuru Ni San no Mondai” 雪舟研究に関する二、三の問題 [Two, Three Problems Regarding Sesshu’s Research], in Nihon Kaiga Shi no Kenkyu 日本絵画史の研究 [Researches of Japanese Painting History] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobukan, 1988).

52 thus the emphasis on a systematic “brush patterns” could be Ashikaga’s attempt to “recover the power that is escaping” or “to regain the authority from the past.”153

Therefore, culturally, the motivation behind the production and connoisseurship of “brush patterns” was “not the canonization of past.” Rather, it was the “longing toward exotic cultural centre.”154 It was also an attempt of “aesthetic colonization” that aimed to claim “the Chinese past” as part of Japanese cultural heritage.155 In this sense, “brush patterns” came to represent Chinese legitimacy and a medium through which the Chinese past was imagined in art.

For Muromachi artists, the “brush patterns” were also crucial ways to learn and technicalize this exotic tradition of paintings that had an unfamiliar visual expression, a new structure of manifestation, and distinct spatial compositions. The artists approached the novel style without knowledge of holistic Chinese painting traditions and history. 156 However, little historical documents have provided information on how particularly Zen ideas and cultivation were involved in Muromachi art production. At a glance, patterns connote prototypes and restrictions. Pursuing canonicity goes against Zen’s assertion of breaking from the relative truths, sometimes even iconoclastic. If so, how does “brush patterns” production relate to Zen nothingness and breaking of norms? Patterns suggest a conventional and fixed mode of painting. How does Zen relate to patterns during the development of Muromachi ink wash painting?

153 Shimao Arata, “Sesshu Toyo no Kenkyu 4 —Shuto Sansui Zu no Johogaku ” 雪舟等楊の研究（四）― 「秋冬山水図」の情報学（中）[Research on Sesshu Toyo 4—Informatics of Landscapes of Autumn and Winter], The Journal of Art Studies (2002): 367. 154 Ibid., 365. 155 Watsky, “Locating,” 600. 156 Watanabe, Shosho, 38.

53

2. Pattern as an Inspiration: Landscape Paintings of Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506)

Sesshu Toyo was regarded as the most prominent ink and wash painting masters in the Muromachi period, who was given the credit of developing an authentic “Japanese ink wash painting” style from Chinese tradition. However, as mentioned earlier, the relationship between Sesshu’s landscape paintings and Zen has been questioned. In Sesshu’s works the idea of “brush patterns” is constantly present, for example, the “brush patterns” menu “Album of Ryusho.” In many of

Sesshu’s paintings, he indicated which “brush pattern” he adopted by writing down the painters’ names outside the painting frames. Sesshu activity related his painting style to master predecessors.

According to Shimao Arata, during Sesshu’s earlier years, he probably failed to gain high social status in the Five Mountain monasteries. Therefore, in order to increase his reputation, he tried to establish himself as the follower of “Zen and Chinese legitimacy” in his later years after coming back from China,157and “brush patterns” became part of his strategy. He actively suggested that he was the art discipline of Shubun 周文 , who learned from Josetsu, which is similar to the idea of Zen transmission from the master to disciples.158 Sesshu traveled to Ming China and saw

Chinese paintings that were far greater in range than paintings found in Muromachi Japan. In his

“Album of Ryusho,” Sesshu presented his knowledge of Chinese styles by confidently including

Mi Youren and Li Tang, who were not known in the Muroamchi Japan.

157 Cf. Shimao Arata, “Sesshu Toyo no Kenkyu 1 —Sesshu no Ime-ji Senryaku” 雪舟等楊の研究 （ 一 ） ─ 雪舟の イメージ 戦略 ― [Research on Sesshu Toyo 1—The Image War of Sesshu], The Journal of Art Studies (1992). 158 Shimao, “Sesshu Toyo no Kenkyu,” 200-201.

54 In Winter Landscapes (Figure

4.2), he declared that this

painting was a “Xia Gui pattern.”

This painting is often studied

with one of the album leaves in

“Album of Ryushu” also titled as

Winter Landscapes (Figure 4.3).

Art traced how Sesshu developed

his painting from the Xia Gui

pattern. Yet the painting has

slight conformity to Xia Gui’s

winter landscape found in Japan

(Figure 2.4). Rather, Winter

Landscapes has similar styles,

brush works, and compositions to

Xia Gui’s piece kept in National

Palace Museum (Figure 4.4). The

Figure 4.2 Sesshu Toyo. Winter Landscapes. 1470. Tokyo National Museum, brushwork of the contour lines on Tokyo. rocks is unique to Sesshu and bring the painting into a more abstract image. According to Simao Arata, “brush patterns” production did not intend to produce exact paintings copying Chinese masters. The precision of canonicity toward the original works was lenient. The painters involved various arrangements

55 when producing paintings. 159 In

Sesshu’s case, scholars explained

the paradoxes of his conformity to

canonicity and his originality in

his works as his greatness to

overcome the past. Shimao wrote

that it was indeed owing to the

system of “brush patterns” that

innovations in paintings were

made possible. Similar to the

archaizing tradition in China, Figure 4.3 Kano Tsunenobu. copied from Sesshu Toyo. Winter Landscapes. 17th century. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo. where painters like Shen Zhou 沈

周 (1427-1509) and 文徵明 (1470-1559) produced new forms of paintings based

on ’s 王蒙 (1308-1385) compositions and brushwork, in Japan, the “brush patterns”

Figure 4.4 Xia Gui. Part of Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains. 13th century. National Palace Museum, Taipei.

159 Shimao Arata, “15 Seiki ni Okeru Chugoku Kaiga Shumi”15 世紀 における中国絵画趣味 [The Interest of Chinese Paintings in the 15th Century], Museum (1989): 463.

56 production was a system and a platform where the artists could explore new ideas with reassurance.160 More generally, as exemplified in Sesshu’s “Xia Gui pattern” paintings, rather than creating originals by aiming for differences from the other, the “brush patterns” system guaranteed originality through an accumulation of references to the past.161

Following the influence of Sesshu, the late Muromachi witnesses a transition to the secularization of the ink wash painting tradition. Kano Motonobu established the dominant

Japanese painting academy, the Kano school. Kano arranged and synthesized the various “brush patterns” and yamatoe techniques into gatai 画体 (orthodox painting styles), in which he organized and developed three modes of styles: shin 真 (regular), gyo 行 (semi-formal/running), and so 草

(informal/cursive) in accordance with the three calligraphy scripts. Among them, the regular style was based on the works of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, the running from Muqi, and the cursive from

Yujian. The establishment of the three styles made organized productions available. Students who graduated with these knowledge were able to mass-produce various types of paintings together.

160 Shimao, “Muromachi,” 41. 161 Ibid.

57 Chapter Five

The Journey of Image of the Eight Views from China to Japan

1. The Tradition of Eight Views of Xiaoxiang and its Spread to Japan

In both Southern Song China and Muromachi Japan, Eight Views of Xiaoxiang was a popular landscape painting theme. Jing 景 in classical Chinese refers to sunlight. By the Wei and Jin dynasties, jing started to connote the meaning of landscape sceneries. Poetries praising for eight types of sceneries also began to emerge at the same time.162 The tradition of linking sceneries to the number “eight" derived from the Daoist allegory of the portable shrines used during rituals.163

During the Southern Song Dynasty, “Eight Views,” also called bajing 八境 (literally “eight boundaries”) referred to a general designation of eight rural landscape sceneries.

The Eight Views of Xiaoxiang is a traditional landscape painting theme depicting eight alluring scenes around Lake Dongting in Xiaoxiang region in modern Hunan Province, China.164

The tradition of associating landscapes with eight sceneries in East Asia is believed to have been initiated by the Northern Song Dynasty literati and painter 宋迪 (ca. 1015-ca. 1080), recorded in ’s 沈括 (1031-1095) Dream Brook Brush Talks. Along with his exile to

Luoyang, Song Di encountered the beautiful landscape of Xiaoxiang characterized by rich water,

162 For example, Eight Chant Poetry 八咏 诗 by Shen Yue 沈 約 (441-513). 163 I Lo-fen 衣若芬 , “Xiaoxiang Bajing: Dongya Gongtong Muti de Wenhua Yixiang” 瀟湘八景: 東亞共同母題 的 文化意象 [Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang: The Culture Image of East Asia], Journal of East Asian History of Ideas 6 (2014): 35-55. 164 For a comprehensive discussion on the cultural tradition of “the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang” in China, see Afreda Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000), 6-27. and Shi, Yidong, 65-144.

58 mist, and rain, and he painted eight individual scenes of Xiaoxiang accompanied by eight poems.165

Since then, poets and painters, especially of the Song Dynasty, has enthusiastically involved in the artistic creation of the theme.

In China, the popularity of the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang derived from the wordings and rhythm in the titles, which immediately reminded people of poetic encomium.166 Secondly, the subjects in the titles denoted recurring themes of exile and reclusion, appreciated and frequently discussed by the poets during the Song Dynasty.167 Thus by painting according to the titles, it helped the painters for expressing the images that were self-expressed in poetry. Thirdly, the eight themes offered a solution for the difficult tasks of delineating variations in landscape paintings.

After the negation of colours and abstraction of forms in landscape paintings, it had been a primary problem of how to represent the landscape in various seasonal, time, light.168 The eight themes each represented the scene under various conditions. Fourthly and more importantly, the eight themes did not correspond to a specific location in the Xiaoxiang region. Song Di chose eight images of subjects and designated the best way of appreciations he believed. For example, raining

Xiaoxiang is best perceived at night. The fishing village appears itself the most beautifully under evening glow.169 Such appointments made it possible for the imagery of the eight views to be free from the geographical constraints of Xiaoxiang. Hence, each title could connote and symbolize the ideal imagery discussed in writings and paintings.170

165 The poetic titles are characterized with four characters and also became the titles for paintings: Xiaoxiang Yeyu 瀟湘夜雨 (Night Rain on the Xiaoxiang), Pingsha Luoyan 平沙落雁 (Wild Geese Descending to Sandbar), Yansi Wanzhong 煙寺晚鐘 (Evening Bell from a Mist-Shrouded Temple), Shanshi Qinglan 山市晴嵐 (Mountain Marked in Clearing Mist), 江 天 暮雪 , Yucun Xizhao 漁村 夕照 (Fishing Village in Evening Glow), Dongting Qiuyue 洞庭 秋月 (Autumn Moon over Lade Dongting), and Yuanpu Guifan 遠浦歸帆 (Returning Sails off a Distant Shore). 166 Shi, Yidong, 78. 167 Murck, Poetry, 70-72. 168 Watanabe, Shosho, 20. 169 Shi, Yidong, 69. 170 Ibid., 78.

59 During the Southern Song dynasty, the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang gradually turned to

“conceptualization,” “abstraction,” and “localization.” 171 Artists began to associate their geographical landscape to the titles instead of Hunan’s mountains and water sceneries. The popularity of the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang gradually ceased in China after the Song Dynasty.172

In Japan, the passion for the Eight Views flourished during the thirteenth century and

Muromachi Period. Both of Record of Display at the Muromachi Palace and Record of Paintings

Owned by the Shogun listed many examples of the Eight Views created by Chinese artists such as

Muqi, Yujian, and Xia Gui. This section focuses on Muqi and Yujian’s Eight Views of Xiaoxiang and their legacy in Japan. Almost none of the Japanese artists painting the Eight Views of

Xiaoxiang had actually visited the Xiaoxiang region. Their Eight Views of Xiaoxiang paintings were the amalgam of prototypes (“brush patterns” from China), Japanese elements of the painters’ surrounding sceneries, and their imaginations.

It was an intriguing question that why did the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang, a theme bearing a particular landscape name in China, could have such profound energy to circulate and boost more creations in East Asia. Andrew Watsky pointed out that the popularity of the Eight Views of

Xiaoxiang in Japan was a result of several causes. First of all, the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang fulfilled the artists’ admiration and imagination for profound Chinese sceneries. Secondly, the eight poetic titles and their connotations provided the latitude with which painters could approach this richly varied subject. Thirdly, the redeveloped Eight Views of Xiaoxiang paintings in Japan were

“examples of aesthetic colonization, a cultural manifestation of Japan’s concurrent military

171 Cf. I, “Xiaoxiang Bajing.” 172 After the Song Dynasty, some still painted the Eight Views of Xiao Xiang, for example, Ming painters Chen Shuqi 陳叔起 , Wang Ba 王 绂, and Zhang Longzhang 張龍章 . In their paintings of Xiaoxiang, the spatial composition and brush uses were different from the previous dynasties. The literati painters seemed to have less interest in the theme.

60 incursions into the Asian continent.” 173 Watanabe argued that the concept of Zong Bing’s

“spiritual travel” was central to the popularity and development of landscape paintings in Japan.174

The yearning for the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang and the love towards landscape stirred by the Eight

Views had led the Japanese to establish many themes of Eight Views in scenic spots, for example, the Eight Views of Omi in the Shiga Prefecture and the Eight Views of Samani in .

2. Muqi and Yujian’s Eight Views of Xiaoxiang as a Pattern

Muqi’s versions of Eight Views of Xiaoxiang, along with Yujian’s works became classic examples of the subject and left profound influences on Japanese aesthetics and painting techniques.175 The

Japanese preference over Muqi and other artists in landscape styles, which differed greatly from the styles practiced in Northern China was partly due to the fact that the Zen Buddhist community was largely responsible for the cultural communication between China and Japan. Furthermore, the great wave of communications took place during the Song dynasty, when the royal academy’s landscape painting style was established, and the style of ink washi paintings that connote the image of Zen began to shine.176 The communication also mainly took place within region in Jiangnan, China. Zhejiang is by the sea and is characterized by the beautiful landscape in high

173 Watsky, “Locating,” 620. 174 Watanabe, Shosho, 53. In “Spiritual Travel,” the viewer travels around as if he/she is in the real mountains via the imagery in landscape paintings. 175 Unfortunately, most of the originals have been lost or destroyed, and survive only in old Japanese copies attributed to Muqi. Yujian’s Eight Views were also preferred examples, however, only two sections (including copies) survive. For the influence of Yujian’s Eight Views during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Watsky, “Locating,” 604-607. 176 Watanabe, Shosho, 36.

61 humidity. Zhejiang’s sceneries, usually surrounded by flowing mist and perceived with a nuanced light, contributed to the image of “mist-locked, rain-locked Xiaoxiang.”177

Amongst the various styles of the Chinese paintings about Xiaoxiang,178 Muqi’s Eight

Views brought an image of Zen that related to the aesthetic characteristic of yunshan yanshui 雲山

煙水 (cloud-mountain-mist-water, I will refer to as “cloud-mist”), a type of landscape paintings arose in the Song Dynasty. The style is characterized with clouds and mists which dissolve the directive and often restrictive perspectives into a void and a meditative emptiness, as represented in Mi Fu’s Mountains and Pines in Spring (Figure 5.1) and Mi Youren’s 米友仁 (1082-1165)

Cloudy Mountains (Figure 5.2). Between the trees in the foreground and the mountains in the back, there flows an extensive stretch of clouds and mist to diffuse the perspectives and distances. The cloud and mist occupy more than half of the paintings, creating a feeling of endlessness. Yip Wai- lim, in delineating Mi Fu’s paintings, beautifully associated “cloud-mist” to the aesthetic category of kongying 空盈 (empty-yet-full ) and eventually to Zen’s emptiness:

The cloud-mist is concrete and yet empty, concrete as an object, a thing in Nature, empty, one

feels, in the “field” of space within the painting, or empty as a “distant haze,” a phrase Su Dongpo

often use in his poetry and writings on art to describe this condition which he also linked to Wang

Wei’s line “Mountain color, between seen and unseen” (a phrase adopted frequently by later

177 Yip Wai-lim, Pound and the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang (Taibei: Guoli daxue chuban zhongxin, 2000), 211. 178 Song Di’s Eight Views of Xiaoxiang did not survive, but it probably had a similar style to the earliest example of Eight Views preserved today: the painting by Wang Hong 王 洪 (fl. 1131-1161). According to I Lo-fen, Wang Hong’s Eight Views of Xiaoxiang had the style of Northern Chinese landscapes represented by Li Cheng and . This style of Eight Views of Xiaoxiang was also popularly painted in Korea. Cf. I, “Eight Views,” 42-43.

62 painters and theorists), and this sense of

emptiness, a subversive emptiness so to speak

that erases the lines and edges that define

chosen viewing position and chosen viewing

direction such as the use of perspective in

Western paintings. Without the restrictiveness

of framing, we are at once near and distant,

distant yet near, high and low, low yet high,

meditating and listening, as if in a trance,

stillness and the empty-yet-full condition of

totalizing Composition of a Million Things at

work.179

This influential method was inherited

by Muqi and Yujian, and eventually to

Figure 5.2 Mi Fu. Part of Mountains and Pines in Spring. Northern Japanese artists. In Muqi’s Returning Sails Song dynasty. National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Figure 5 1 Mi Youren. Cloudy Mountains. Northern Song dynasty. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

179 Wai-lim Yip, Pound and the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang (Taibei: Guoli Taiwan daxue chuban zhongxin, 2000), 223.

63 off a Distant Shore (Figure 5.3), Fishing Village in Evening Glow (Figure 5.4), the paintings are

filled with mists that contain lights. From the mists, villages, trees, fish boats, and mountains

gradually emerge, and dissolve into emptiness, beyond forms. Muqi’s Evening Bell from a Mist-

Shrouded Temple (Figure 5.5) and Wild Geese Descending to Sandbar (Figure 5.6) are more

dramatic. Almost the entire canvas is empty, with slight hints of temples, birds, forests, etc., as if

mirages suspended in the sky. Muqi brought the style of “cloud-mist” into an extreme. A

scrutinization on Muqi’s ladnscape paintings reveal that his creations involved various delicate

and difficult techniques. The manifestation of light and mist requires careful executions concerning

ink, water, and brush. Yip Wai-lim continued to describe Muqi’s painting:

It is not what one usually called landscape painting. Only the shadows/shades of a few trees in one corner.

The rest is endlessly stretching emptiness (visually speaking, negative space). Distant mountains slowly, or

continue to dissolve into the mist, or shall I say, they are being dissolved by the mist.180

Figure 5.3 Attributed to Muqi. Returning Sails off a Distant Shore. Southern Song dynasty. Kyoto National Museum, Kyoto.

Figure 5 4 Attributed to Muqi. Fishing Village in Evening Glow. Southern Song dynasty. Nezu Art Museum, Tokyo.

180 Yip, Pound and the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang, 223.

64 Figure 5.5 Attributed to Muqi. Evening Bell from a Mist-Shrouded Temple. Southern Song dynasty. Hatakeyama Memorial Museum of Fine Art, Tokyo.

Figure 5.6 Attributed to Muqi. Wild Geese Descending to Sandbar. Southern Song dynasty. Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo.

In Yujian’s Mountain Marked in Clearing Mist (Figure 5.7), the blank space also expands to cover almost three-fourth of the paintings and dramatically emphasizes the emptiness in the painting.

There is concise brushwork that successfully delineates trees and mountains in dynamic movements. The Buddhist monk painters Muqi and Yujian were attracted to the style of “cloud- mist” because it is capable of expressing the feeling of empty-yet-full. With the nuance of light, it visually helps convey a sense of contemplation on emptiness. To an extreme, some of the pieces, at a glance, only have few shallow strokes of ink wash, yet within the minimal strokes, the information provided for the viewer is limitless in its emptiness.

65 Figure 5.7 Yujian. Mountain Marked in Clearing Mist. Southern Song dynasty. Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo.

This style also attracted Japanese artists. They diligently modeled after Muqi and Yujian to paint their own Eight Views of Xiaoxiang. For example, This was seen in the works of Soami

相阿弥 (died 1525) and Sesson Shukei 雪村周 继 (1504-1589). In Soami’s Eight Views of

Xiaoxiang (Figure 5.8), the gentle mountains emerge behind an open space of water surface. This painting was often regarded as following a Muqi pattern. However, Shimao observed that Soami used a different brushwork from Muqi. As opposed to Muqi’s exquisite uses of highly skilled methods, Soami’s work depicts the forms of mountains and trees in simplification. A tranquil rhythm appears with the repetitions of these simple units.181 What Soami borrowed from Muqi was the image like “evening glow,” the bell from the “mist-shrouded temple,” and the boat from

“a distant shore.” Soami vaguely integrated Muqi’s images of the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang. In this sense, Soami’s “Muqi pattern” production went beyond references and arrangements of patterns. It involved importing, capturing, and taking in, which corresponds to the process of “from brush patterns to gatai.”182

181 Shimao, “Muromachi,”41. 182 Ibid., 47.

66 Figure 5.8 Soami. Half of Landscape of the Four Seasons (Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers). Early 16th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Japanese artists localized and innovated the theme of Eight Views of Xiaoxiang. A unique development of the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang in Japan is found in the paintings on fusuma 襖

(folding partition) and byobu 屛風 (). Fusuma and byobu are furnitures exclusive in

Japanese architecture, serving as the tools for the spatial arrangement as well as important decorations. Paintings on fusuma and byobu are a major category of paintings in the Japanese art history. Both fusuma and byobu provided the artists with large planes for painting. The tradition to paint landscapes on fusuma and byobu began since the Heian period. The architectural structures allow the viewers to be immersed and surrounded by the landscapes on the four sides of the room, helping aesthetic contemplation. As mentioned earlier, this way of perceiving landscape relates to

Chinese concept of “spiritual travel.” 183 During the Muromachi period, samurai patrons enthusiatisucally ordered the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang in the form of byobu and fusuma. By staying in the room with tremendous Eight Views of Xiaoxiang, spiritual traveling to an ideal

183 Watanabe, Shosho, 53.

67 Chinese landscape took place. For example, according to Inryoken’s Diary, in 1461, Sotan 宗湛

(1413-1481) was appointed to paint the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang at a room in Shosen-ken 松泉

軒 , Shokoku Temple 相国 寺 , Kyoto. In 1491, his son Sokei 宗 继 continued to paint in there. Kano

Shoei 狩野松栄 (1519-1592) also painted the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang in one of the rooms in

Juko-in 聚光院 in 1566. Andrew Watsky discussed Shoei’s painting as the evidence of successful

Japanese Eight Views of Xiaoxiang, which was modeled after Yujian:

It is in theme that the resonances with Yujian’s painting most strongly reverberate in Shoei’s room.

The viewer is drawn into the painting upward and diagonally along the lines of implied recession,

and across it by the horizontal thrust of the eight linked panels…No Momoyama visitor to Jukoin

would have mistaken Shoei’s painting for a Chinese original, nor would that misconception have

been desired…claiming and then physically transforming this theme in a way reminiscent of,

though less violent than, the cutting and remounting of Yujian’s …For Shoei and other

Japanese painters, Chinese paintings of Chinese places became not only objects to own, but, more

broadly, models of be minded for their own creations…relocated to Japan in the medium of ink

and on a monumental scale.184

The “spiritual travel” the viewer undertook in the room was not only imaginary traveling in the distant Chinese landscape. Through the localized Eight Views of Xiaoxiang, the viewer imagined traveling in the ideal landscape that was associated with Japanese indigenous imagery.

To better improve the “spiritual travel” experience, Japanese artists made adjustments to the composition of the painting, so that various subjects manifested by different weather, seasonal and light conditions are present could be experiment at the same time. They started to merge the various themes of scenery in one scene. In China and the early Muromachi Japan, the Eight Views

184 Watsky, “Locating,” 612-613.

68 were painted separately in eight pieces or one after another in a long scroll. In the painting scrolls, the eight views form a continuum but each view does not overlap too much with each other. The frame for observation is composited of one scene at a time. The new attempt involves the effort to merge several themes within the same plane. For example, Sesson Yubai 雪村 友梅 (1290-1348) joined two scenes in the same frame, and this attempt developed to the style of four scenes or eight scenes within one frame.

However, individual themes are still identifiable. For example, Soami’s half of Eight Views of Xiaoxiang, as seen in Figure 5.8, incorporates four themes wihin one frame, such as Evening

Bell from a Mist-Shrouded Temple and Returning Sails off a Distant Shore. The temple gate and sails are fused in the same plane and arises emotional reactions to particular themes when encountered by the viewers. Consequently, perfecting the merging of the various themes became a huge challenge for the artists. As a solution, the paintings gradually expressed an even more abstract space, where mist and clouds came to rule over the entirety of the planes.185 Other

Japanese artists who took similar effort are Hasegawa Tohaku 長谷川等伯 (1535-1610), Kaiho

Yusho 海北友松 (1533-1615), and Soga Chokuan 曽我 直庵 (fl. late 16th to early 17th century). The late Muromachi monk painter Sesson Shukei 雪村周継 (1504-1589), who was a follower of Yujian, also paints many Eight Views painting scrolls in this manner.

185 Watanabe, Shosho, 59.

69 3. Chan/Zen and Emptiness in Muqi and Yujian’s Landscapes

In Guo Xi’s The Lofty Message of Forest and Streams, he spoke of the significance of landscape:

It is generally accepted opinion that in landscape there are those through which you may travel,

those in which you may sightsee, those through which you may wander, and those in which you

may live. Any paintings attaining these effects are to be considered excellent, but those suitable for

traveling and sightseeing are not as successful in achivement as those suitable for wandering and

living…Therefore, it is with this mind that a painter should create and a critic should examine. This

is what we mean by not losing the ultimate meaning…To look at a particular painting puts you in

the corresponding frame of mind, as though you were really on the point of going there. This is the

wonderful power of a painting beyond its mere mood.186

However, in Muqi and Yujian’s paintings, the subjects’ relations to specific sceneries were deleted, thus unable “to travel, to sightsee, to wander, and to live.” They were pure, expressive images, as if they were dreams and recalled of the emptiness spoken by Huineng. Chinese thinkers found the emptiness had similar ends to Daoist philosophy and the literati pursue of xiangwai 象外 (beyond form). In Japan, on the other hand, the Buddhist concept of emptiness resonated with the aesthetic category of yugen 幽玄 (subtle profundity). The differences between the diverse connotations of emptiness in China and Japan, influenced by the concepts of xiangwai and yugen, may be responsible might be responsible for the distinct developments of the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang.

At the same time, confronting paintings with different approaches of aesthetic thinking result to diverse receptions of emptiness.

According to Yip Wai-lim, the philosophical discussion on “cloud-mist” paintings’ relationship to emptiness was initiated by Su Shi, who was a close friend of the Mi family. As a

186 Retrieved from Bush, Early Chinese, 151-154.

70 crucial figure in the Chinese art and philosophical field, he was “a leader as trend-setter and taste/flavour-setter”187:

His “poetry in painting and painting in poetry” statement refers, in particular, to [Wang Wei’s]

“Mist-rain” painting, or the effect and atmosphere of what we call yunshan yanshui. Thus, the

poetic feeling in his painting must then be “Mountain color, between seen and unseen” in his

poetry.188

Su was attracted to the “cloud-mist” because he saw the poetic element of xiangwai manifested in the paintings.189 Su’s understanding of xiangwai was elaborated in his writing: “The taste of plum ends in being sour; that of salt in being saltiness. In cooking [or the making of poetry], we cannot dispense with salt and (sour) plum, but wonderful taste/flavor that emerges from them go way beyond salt and plum.”190 In other words, the poetry can break 界 jie (boundary) to achieve the status of beyond form. The mist-cloud was also successful in breaking the boundary, and remained in the state of “becoming” instead of “being and non-being.” The poetry breaks the boundary of naming to achieve the philosophical concept of Dao. In the cloud-mist and empty-yet-full, the

“wind, seen or, more correctly, felt in the dusk, as it were, rolling the mist into the infinite wu 無

(nothingness) or the condition of the total composition of things before naming.191” Nothingness corresponds to the idea of no nothing, and inspired the Buddhist development of emptiness in

China. Therefore, an equation of xiangwai - wu - emptiness – “cloudmist” – “empty-yet-full” is formed.

187 Yip, Pound, 207. 188 Ibid., 206. 189 The discussion on xiangwai was also an important aesthetic theme of Sikong Tu 司空圖 : “The scene of poets, like ‘the warm sun in the blue fields,’ and ‘smoke engendered from pearls,’ is visible but not placeable before the eyes. Form beyond form, scene beyond scene: it is not speakable.” See Yip, Pound, 218. 190 Yip, Pound, 218. 191 Ibid., 228.

71 On the other hand, in Japan, the Buddhist concept of emptiness was accepted and developed concerning Japanese aesthetic of yugen (subtle profundity). It is an aesthetic feeling developed by aesthetician Zeami (1363-1443) and was firstly manifested in Noh drama. Donald

Richie gave a definition on yugen when he commented on Zeami’s use of the term:

Yugen means “what lies beneath the surface;” the subtle, as opposed to the obvious; the hint, as

opposed to the statement. It is applied to the natural grace of a boy’s movements, to the gentle

restraint of a nobleman’s speech and bearing… “To watch the sun sink behind a flower-clad hill,

to wander on and on in a huge forest with no thought of return, to stand upon the shore and gaze

after a boat that goes hidden by far-off islands” … such are the gates of yugen.192

This description on yugen at one glance is closely related to the Chinese Daoist thinkings, but what yugen values the most is to sense the void that lies beyond the surface or the form. In xiangwai, what Su Shi emphasized was the capability of breaking boundary. In other words, in China, the painters used the individual themes with specific imagery in Xiaoxiang to break the boundary; while Japanese artists developed the method of merging themes within one frame as a better means to contemplate “what lies beneath the surface.” By observing the various themes at once, the aesthetic contemplation on what lies in the emptiness of the painting is more effectively operated.

Hisamatsu Shinichi described the Chinese definition of yugen as deep reserve: “being both profound and subtle could be expressed as Deep Reserve, i.e. implication rather than the naked exposure of the whole.”193 Using Muqi’s Eight Views as his example, Hisamatsu stated further:

The forms are simple enough; but here all is not disclosed, something infinite is contained. Such

works enable us to imagine the depth of content within them and to feel infinite reverberations,

something that is not possible with detail painted minutely and distinctly. Here infinity, something

192 Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics (California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007), 57. 193 Hisamatsu, Zen and the Fine Art, 33.

72 far beyond the actual, painted forms, is expressed. In this unstated, unpainted content lies the quality

of Deep Reserve, which in turn is accompanied by an inexhaustible profundity.”194

From the purely Buddhist perspective, Muqi and Yujian’s landscape paintings thus convey some definite insight into the perishability and of the world around us. The viewers pursuing the aesthetic thinking of xiangwai would find their paintings connote the image of

Xiaoxiang beyond the boundaries. For the audience inspired by yugen, the landscape paintings embody a world of fullness’s emptiness within the pictures.

194 Hisamatsu, Zen and the Fine Art, 33.

73 Conclusion

“Avalokitesvara, the Boddhisattva of all-seeing and all-

hearing, practicing deep prajna paramita, perceives the

five in their self-nature to be empty.

O Sariputra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form; form

is nothing but emptiness, emptiness is nothing but form;

that which is form is emptiness, and that which is

emptiness if form.”195

— The Maha Prajna Paramita Hrdaya Heart Sutra

The profound impact of Zen thought in East Asian art is manifested in the tradition of landscape painting. The religious thought of the Sixth Patriarch Huineng regarding the mind, emptiness, self-nature, and “no-thought” has influenced the way the Chinese confronted the art of picturing landscapes. When the Chan Buddhist views joined the Confucian and Daoist thoughts, landscapes became more than the representation of sages and Dao’s carrier. The mountains and rivers within a painting began to be contemplated as the embodiment of the artist’s mind.

Artistically, this change was demonstrated in the uses of brushes and ink monochrome, in which the painters believed was more than enough for the depictions of any substance, form, colours, and lights. Furthermore, in the landscape painting tradition, the visual presentation of mountains and rivers is generalized and universalized, incorporating more varied and broader perspectives, because the landscape equals to the mind, where no specific sceneries reside. Additionally,

195 Retreived from Addiss, Zen Sourcebook, 4.

74 depicting and appreciating a Chan’s image in the work of art has provided a wider path through which artists could communicate with each other.

The Chan Buddhist thought, particularly the cultivation towards a sudden and direct realization of self-nature, where emptiness fills in fullness, has guided the aesthetic characteristics of the landscape painting into spontaneity and simplicity, manifested in the Buddhist monk painter

Muqi’s Eight Views of Xiaoxiang. Muqi’s attitude in his artistic creation, which involves innovation of classical standards, relates the concept of yi (untrammeled). During Muqi’s time, documents indicated that his works were popular among the literati circles. However, later literati art critics refused the spontaneous and simple trend of landscape painting, as they probably feared losing subjectivity in art production.

Nevertheless, the cultivation of Chan Buddhist thought brought Muqi to exert a dynamistic and impromptu use of brushes and emphasized the empty space of painting, which embodies the aesthetic element of empty-yet-full, filled with Chan’s image. On the other hand, Muqi’s style, along with other sogenga works by Southern Song monk painters and professional artists from the royal painting academy, came to be highly praised in Japan, where their styles and aesthetic elements were studied and further developed. Together with Buddhist scriptures, their works came to represent the image of Zen that inspired Japanese artists.

The significance of Zen Buddhism in Japanese art culture has been recognized by many scholars, such as D. T. Suzuki and Hisamatsu Shinichi. They popularized the notion that Zen is the foundation of virtually all of the Japanese fine arts since the Muromachi period. They assumed a metaphysical continuity of Zen’s transmission from China to Japan and credited the success of

Muromachi painters to primarily their realization of transcendental Zen truth. However, recent studies on Muromachi art indicated that, at the early stage of Japanese landscape painting, the

75 painters learned this exotic tradition via technological studies of brushwork, styles, and composition by technicalizing the Chinese examples. Muromachi painters created new paintings by merging various Chinese paintings, and this process is referred to as the “brush patterns” production, which at a glance seemed to contradict the iconoclastic trait of Zen Buddhist thought.

However, it was indeed this “brush pattern,” which served as a platform for explorations and innovations of new styles with confidence. For the Muromachi artists, the image of Zen was presented within the exotic patterns of China. At the same time, Zen Buddhism also served as a medium through which an exotic Chinese past was imagined and incorporated into Japanese culture. Therefore, when creating new landscape painting, the painters imposed their works on top of the image of Zen stirred by the Chinese predecessors.

Moreover, the reception of the image of Zen from the landscape painting probably varied in different regions. The diverse attitudes towards the styles of sogenga represent manifold aesthetic approaches of China and Japan. Muqi’s Eight Views of Xiaoxiang and later inspired landscape paintings found resonance with the aesthetic category of yugen (subtle profundity), where the viewers confronted the sense of infinite Deep Reserve, relating to the Daoist idea of

Vacuum and the Buddhist notion of emptiness. From the viewpoint of the Chinese literati, who pursued the realm of xiangwai 象外 (beyond form), they were probably inspired by Chan’s image in Muqi’s works to have the possibility of breaking the boundaries of form, since the Great Image has no Form. Therefore, Chan/Zen’s creative agency also depends on the artist’s background, as well as self-cultivation of religious and philosophical thoughts. For the viewers, even though observing the same work of art, the perceptions of Chan/Zen’s images differ. Therefore, Qingyuan

Weixin 青原惟信 (fl. 9th century) said:

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters.

When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are

76 not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest.

For its just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.196

In conclusion, it is inferred that artworks impacted by Chan/Zen cultivation “‘is not a genre of painting,’ it is the manifestation of mind…It is the accumulation of spiritual influences, the support of literary patterns.”197

196 Retrieved from Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (New York: Pantheon Books, 1951), 126. 197 The Ven. Hui Wan, Fojiao, 214.

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78 Du, Songbai 杜松柏 , ed. Chanshi Muniutu Song Huibian 禪詩牧牛圖頌彙編 [Compilation of Oxherding Pictures’ Chan Poetry]. Taipei: Li Ming Cultural Enterprise, 1983. Huang, Hetao 黃河濤 . Chan yu Zhongguo Yishu Jingshen 禪與 中國 藝術精神 [Chan and Chinese Art Thought]. Series on the Zen Studies, edited by Ji Xianlin 季羨林 . Beijing: Zhongguo yanshi chubanshe, 2006. I, Lo-fen 衣若芬 . “Xiaoxiang Bajing: Dongya Gongtong Muti de Wenhua Yixiang” 瀟湘八景 : 東 亞共同母題的文化意象 [Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang: The Culture Image of East Asia]. Journal of East Asian History of Ideas 6 (2014): 35-55. Kohara, Hironobu 古原宏伸 . “Jindai Bashi Nian Lai de Zhongguo Huihua Shi Yanjiu de Huigu” 近八十年來的中國繪畫史研究的回顧 [Chinese Painting History Research in Japan in the Past 80 years]. In Duoyun Di 67 Ji—Zhongguo Meishu Shixue Yanjiu 朵雲第 67 集 -中國美術史學 研究 [Duoyun No. 67—Chinese Art History Studies], edited by Lu Fusheng 盧輔聖 , 258- 274. Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua, 2008. Li, Lan 黎蘭 , Muxi Huihua Yanjiu 牧溪繪畫研究 [A Study on Muqi’s Paintings]. Taipei: Hanguang gufen youxian gongsi, 1988. Li, Zehou 李澤厚 and Liu Gangji 劉綱紀 . Zhongguo Meixue Shi Xia 中國美學史 下 [History of Chinese aesthetics vol. 2]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1987. Shimao, Arata 島尾 新 , “15 Seiki ni Okeru Chugoku Kaiga Shumi”15世紀における中国絵画趣味 [The Interest of Chinese Paintings in the 15th Century]. Museum (1989): 22-34. ———. “Sesshu Toyo no Kenkyu 1 —Sesshu no Ime-ji Senryaku” 雪舟等楊の研究（一） ─ 雪 舟のイメージ 戦略 ─ [Research on Sesshu Toyo 1—The Image War of Sesshu]. The Journal of Art Studies (1992): 16-33. ———. “Sesshu Toyo no Kenkyu 3 —Shuto Sansui Zu no Johogaku Sho” 雪舟等楊の研究 （三） ─ 「秋冬山水 図」の情報 学（ 上） [Research on Sesshu Toyo 3—Informatics of Landscapes of Autumn and Winter], The Journal of Art Studies (1999): 99-117. ———. “Sesshu Toyo no Kenkyu 4 —Shuto Sansui Zu no Johogaku Chu” 雪舟等楊の研究 （四） ─ 「秋冬山水図」の情報学（中） [Research on Sesshu Toyo 4—Informatics of Landscapes of Autumn and Winter]. The Journal of Art Studies (2002): 355-371. ———. “Higashiyama Gomotsu Zuiso – Ime-ji no naka no Chugoku Gajin Tachi”「東山御物」 隨想 —— イメージのなかの中国画人たち [Random Reflections on Higashiyama Treasure –

79 the Chinese Painters within Images]. In Nanso Kaiga-Saijoyachi no Sekai 南宋絵画 — 才 情 雅 致の世界 [Southern Song Paintings-the World of Talent and Elegance, 25-37. Tokyo: Nezu Art Museum, 2004. ———. “Muromachi Suigokuga no Hyogen—so no Tokushitsu to Sesshu no Ichi” 室町水墨画の 表現 ─ その特質と雪舟の位置 ─ [The Expression of Muromachi Ink Wash Painting — its Characteristics and the Position of Sesshu]. Shubi 2 (2012): 5-52. Shimada, Shujiro 島田修二郎 and Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義高 , eds. Zenrin Gasan: Chusei Suibokuga wo Yomu 禅林画賛 ─ 中世水墨画を 読む [Paintings and Inscriptions of the Zen Institution: Reading Medieval Ink Paintings]. Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun, 1987. Shi, Shouqian 石守謙 . Yidong de Taohuayuan - Dongya Shijie Zhong de Shasnhuihua 移動的桃 花源 ── 東亞世界中的山水畫 [The Moving Peach Blossom Land – Landscape Painting in East Asia]. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2015. Tanaka, Ichimatsu 田中一松 , and Yonezawa Yoshiho 米澤嘉圃 ed. Suiboku Bijutsu Taikei 1, Hyakubyoga Kara Suibokuga he no Tenkai 水墨美術大系 第 1巻 , 百描画から水墨画への展開 [Series of Ink Wash Art Volume 1, Development from Plain Sketch Painting to Ink WashPainting]. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1975. Toda, Teisuke 戶田禎佑 , ed. Suiboku Bijutsu Taikei 3: Mokkei, Gyokkan 水墨美術大系 第 3巻 : 牧谿 ・玉澗 [Compendium of Water and Ink Fine Arts: Muqi, Yujian]. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1973. ———. “Sesshu Kenkyu ni Kansuru Ni San no Mondai” 雪舟研究に関する二、三の問題 [Two, Three Problems Regarding Sesshu’s Research] In Nihon Kaiga Shi no Kenkyu 日本絵画史の 研究 [Researches of Japanese Painting History]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobukan, 1988. Tsuji, Nobuo 辻惟雄 . “Kano Ha no Tanjo to Koryu: Masanobu, Motonobu, Eitoku” 狩野派の誕 生と興隆 : 正信 ・元信 ・永徳 [The Birth and Rise of Kano: Masanobu, Motonobu, and Eitoku]. Shubi 3 (2012): 1-22. The Ven. Hui Wan 釋曉雲 . Fojiao Yishu Lunji 佛教藝術論集 [Essays on Buddhist Arts]. Taipei: Yuanchuan publications, 1994. Watanabe, Akiyoshi 渡辺明義 , ed. Shosho Hakkei Zu—Nihon no Bijutu 瀟湘八景 図 日本の美術 No. 124 [Eight Views of Xiaoxiang—Japanese Art No. 124]. Tokyo: Shibundo, 1976.

80 Xu, Jianrong 徐建融 , Fachang Chanhua Yishu 法常禪畫藝術 [The Art of Fachang’s Chan Painting]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin meishu chubanshe, 1989. Xu Fuguan 徐復觀 , Zhongguo Yishu Jingshen 中國藝術精神 [Chinese Art Thought]. Hubei: Huben renmin chubanshe. Yonezawa, Yoshiho 米澤嘉圃 and Nakada Yujiro 中田勇次郎 . Genshoku Nihon no Bijutsu 29 Seirai Bijutsu 原色日本の美術 29 請來美術 [Fundamental Colours, the Art of Japan 29 Imported Art]. Tokyo: Shogaku kan, 1976.

Works in Western Languages

Acker, William Reynolds Beal. Some T'ang and Pre-T'ang Texts on Chinese Painting. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1954. Addiss, Stephen. The Art of Zen. New York: Harry Abrams, 1989. ———, Stanley Lombardo, and Judith Roitman, ed. Zen Sourcebook. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2008. Berque, Augustin. “Landscape and the Overcoming of Modernity—Zong Bing’s Principle.” Universitas 39 no. 11 (November 2012): 7-26. Borup, Jorn. Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism: Myoshinji, A Living Religion. Leidon: Brill, 2008. Brasch, Kurt. Hakuin und die Zen-Malerei. Berlin: Japanisch-Deutsche Gesellschaft, 1957. Bush, Susan. “Tsung Ping’s Essay on Painting Landscape and the ‘Landscape Buddhism’ of Mt. Lu.” In Theories of the Arts in China, edited by Susan Bush and Christian Murck, 132-164. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. ———, and Hsio-yen Shih. Early Chinese Texts on Painting. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1985. ———. The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037-1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555- 1636). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013. Cahill, James. “Early Chinese Paintings in Japan: An Outsider’s View.” James Cahill’s blog. http://jamescahill.info/the-writings-of-james-cahill/cahill-lectures-and-papers/323--early- chinese-paintings-in-japan-an-outsiders-.

81 Chang, Francois. Empty and Full: The Language of Chinese Painting. Translated by Micheal H. Kohn. Boston & London: Shambhala, 1994. Faure, Bernard. Chan Insights and Oversights: an Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press 268 1993. ———. 2011. "From Bodhidharma to Daruma: The Hidden Life of a Zen Patriarch." Japan Review (23):45-71. Foulk, T. Griffith and Robert H. Sharf. “On the Ritual Use of Ch'an Portraiture.” Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 7 (1993): 149-220. Goldin, Paul R.. “Two Notes on Xie He’s 謝赫 “Six Criteria” T’oung Pao 104 (2018): 496-510. Hisamatsu, Shinichi. Zen and the Fine Arts. Translated by Gishin Tokiwa. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1971. ———. "Memories of My Academic Life," The Eastern Buddhist 18 no. 1 (1985): 8-27. Karatani, Kojin. “Japan as Art Museum: Okakura Tenshin and Fenollosa.” In A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics, edited by Michael Marra, 43-52. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001. Lachman, Charles H.. “Art.” In Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr., 37-55. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Law, Sophia Suk-mun. “Being in Traditional Chinese Landscape Painting.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 32 no. 4 (August 2011): 369-382. Levine, Gregory P. A.. “Two (or More) Truths: Reconsidering Zen Art in the West.” In Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan, edited by Gregory Levine and Yukio Lippit, 52-63. New York: Japan Society, 2007. ———. “Critical Zen Art History.” Journal of Art Historiography no. 15 (December, 2016): 1- 30. Murck, Alfreda. Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000. Nelson, Susan E.. “I-p’in in Later Painting Criticism.” In Theories of the Arts in China, edited by Susan Bush and Christian Murck, 397-424. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Okakura, Kakuzo. The Ideal of the East: with Special Reference to the Art of Japan. London: John Murray, 1903. ———. The Book of Tea. New York: Fox, Duffield & Company, 1906.

82 Owen, Stephen. Readings in Chinese Literary Thought. Cambridge. Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1992. Parker, Joseph D. “Playful Nonduality: Japanese Zen Interpretations of Landscape Paintings from the Oei Era (1394-1427).” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1989. Robson, James. "Formulation and Fabrication in the History and Historiography of Chan Buddhism.” Harvard Journal of Asiastic Studies 71, no. 2 (2011): 311-349. Rosenfield, John. “Okakura Kakuzo and Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita): A Brief Episode,” in Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Vol 24,2012, 58-69. Sharf, Robert H.. “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism.” History of Religions 33 no. 1 (1993):1-43. ———. “Whose Zen? Zen Nationalism Revisited.” In Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, edited by James W. Heisig and John C., 40-51. Maraldo, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994. ———. “Experience.” In Critical Terms in Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor, 94-116. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Shimizu, Yoshiaki and Carolyn Wheelwright, eds. Japanese Ink Paintings from American Collections: The Muromachi Period, An Exhibition in Honor of Shimada Shujiro. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. Stepien, Rafal. “The Imagery of Emptiness in the Poetry of Wang Wei.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 16, no. 2 (2014): 207-238. Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. Kyoto: Eastern Buddhist Society, 1934. ———. Manual of Zen Buddhism. Kyoto: Eastern Buddhist Society, 1934. ———. Zen and Japanese Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959. Watsky, Andrew M. “Locating ‘China’ in the Arts of Sixteenth-Century Japan,” Art History 29 no. 4 (2006): 600-624. Watts, Alan. The Way of Zen. New York: Pantheon Books, 1951. Westgeest, Helen. Zen in the Fifties—Interaction in Art between East and West. Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers, 1997. Wu, John C. H.. The Golden Age of Zen. Taipei: United Publishing Centre, 1975. Yip, Wai-lim. Pound and the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang (Taibei: Guoli Taiwan daxue chuban zhongxin, 2000.

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