Treasures of Asia: Japanese Painting

by Akiyama Terukazu, 1961

Chapter 1: Pre-Buddhist Painting

In the past decade or so a fresh interest has been taken in the earliest forms of Japanese art, and the beauty of the primitive arts of prehistoric times, before the introduction of Buddhism into Japan, is being discovered and appreciated. The dogu (clay figurines) of the Jomon culture (seventh to first millennium B.C.), with their dynamic expression and highly modern stylization, have begun to arouse the enthusiasm of all who have taste for the arts. The haniwa (terracotta funerary statuettes) of the Tumulus period (third to sixth century A.D.) have an even greater charm, owing to a naive naturalism which we may divine one of the sources of the Japanese artistic temperament. To the little known pre-Buddhist paintings which form the background to the history of Japanese art, the opening chapter of our book will be devoted.

The unceasing efforts of field archeologists in recent years have at last succeeded confirming the existence of a Paleolithic age in Japan. From the north to the south the country, chipped flint implements (unaccompanied by pottery) have been discored in different diluvial strata, the earliest of which may go back to about IOO,OOO B.C. the basis of radio-carbon tests, moreover, the Jomon culture of Neolithic Japan may now be said to have begun nine thousand years ago--a much earlier date than hitherto supposed. This early culture of hunters and fishermen, characterized by pottery decorated with rope designs (jomon), lasted until the third or second century B.C. in the west and center of the Japanese archipelago, and a little longer in the east and north. In the course a long stylistic evolution, this Jomon pottery maintained a plastic power which distinguishes it from the Neolithic ware of the rest of the world. The same power and dynamism characterize the anthropomorphic figurines (dogu) which no doubt had some magic significance attaching to them in the primitive society of those early times.

No trace of painting survives from the long ages spanned by the Paleolithic and neolithic periods. The plastic genius of the Jomon men found its sole expression in modeling and sculpture. Not until the advent of the Bronze Age, the Yayoi culture, do we find the first manifestations of the art of painting. About the third century B.C., in northern Kyushu, Japanese civilization entered a new phase with the introduction the Asiatic mainland of agriculture (chiefly rice-growing) and of metal-working. With the transition from hunting and gathering to settled life, a change gradually came over all the products of human industry, affecting pottery in particular, which provides the surest evidence we have for an evaluation of the prehistoric cultures.

There now appeared a new type of pottery, called Yayoi (from the district of Tokyo where it was first identified), which differs markedly from vases of the Jomon type. Between the Jomon and Yayoi cultures, however, archeologists can discern no gap or discontinuity, while anthropologists incline to the view that no foreign invasion or any important racial change took place. How then are we to account for the striking differences of form and expression between Jomon and Yayoi ware?

Instead of the grotesque and animated designs in high relief of the earlier period, the dominant features of Yayoi pottery are simplicity, serenity and equilibrium. These qualities reflect a different mode of life: the calm and confidence of a settled people, who must have been more responsive to nature and the cycle of the seasons and accordingly resorted to pictorial techniques to represent what they observed around them.

The earliest known examples of "pictorial art" in Japan occur in the so-called Middle Yayoi period (first century A.D.) and take two forms: designs engraved on vases and line reliefs on dotaku (bronze bells).

The ceramics decorated with these primitive line drawings come chiefly from Karako, south of Nara, where a large Bronze Age village was discovered. The stratigraphic excavations of I936-I937 established the fact that these designs appear only on Type IV pottery of the late Middle Yayoi period. The most frequent themes are animals, chiefly stags, rendered with a liveliness that shows clearly how familiar these animals were to the inhabitants of the village. Anthropomorphic figures, very primitive and crudely drawn, are always shown with uplifted arms. There is also a boating scene, with three men rowing and some water birds near by; another shows a house on piles, with two men mounting the ladder. But on the whole the very notion of composition is absent; the design comes as the fanciful outpouring of a naive and spontaneous spirit.

The line reliefs on the dotaku are more sharply designed and show a well-defined stylization. This difference seems to be due above all to the exigencies of casting. Incising the designs in the mold called for greater precision of line, and greater simplicity of form. The word dotaku designates a kind of bronze bell--the most characteristic type of prehistoric Japanese bronzes. Though its origin is still an open question, the dotaku certainly derives from some continental musical instrument, the small flat bell of ancient China or more probably the horse-bell of southern Korea. The oldest specimens of the dotaku are quite small (7 or 8 inches high), with a clapper, and may have been used as a sort of instrument. But the most highly developed types, the largest one measuring 5I inches in height, were no doubt used solely for ritual purposes.

Figures of men and animals appear for the most part on dotaku of the Middle Yayoi period, and are more varied than those of the incised designs on pottery. Among the animals represented, the preference always goes to stags, often laid out in rhythmically patterned rows producing a fine decorative effect. We often find water birds, long-legged waders such as cranes and a few palmipeds, and also fish, turtles, dragon-flies, praying mantises and spiders.

Among the decorated dotaku, one in particular calls for comment: that in the Ohashi Collection, Tokyo, which apparently comes from the Kagawa prefecture in Shikoku. (Illustration page13) This is an extremely rare work, over I6 inches high; each of the two sides is divided into six panels by horizontal and vertical bands. Each panel has a different subject, treated in a more or less elaborate design. On one side we have (I) a dragon-fly, (2) a tortoise, (3) a salamander and a tortoise, (4) two praying mantises, (5) two herons and (6) a boar hunt; on the other, (7) a salamander, (8) a man winding thread, (9) two men husking rice, (IO) a dragon-fly, (II) a stag hunt and (I2) a storehouse of rice. Our plate illustrates scenes 8 and 9. The upper panel was long interpreted as a dance; but the man actually seems to be holding a primitive reel for winding thread. The lower panel represents a method of husking rice, with a kind of pestle, still in use today in the islands of southern Japan. A Japanese archeologist, Kobayashi Yukio, a specialist in prehistoric painting, has proposed a general interpretation of the themes on this dotaku. He has pointed out that each of the animals represented on it lives by capturing other animals; and that some of them (the tortoises and herons, for example), are shown with their prey in their beak or jaws. The animals, in turn, are hunted and killed by man. These panels are thus intended to evoke the struggle for survival in nature, or the precarious life led by hunters and fishermen. The scenes of husking rice and winding thread, on the other hand, together with the storehouse of rice, evoke a different mode of life, a more peaceful, more secure existence. In any case, it is safe to say that these scenes were not chosen at random or for a purely decorative effect; everything points to their having been expressly designed to glorify a settled, agricultural way of life.

In the villages, at the period of the Yayoi culture, power tended to concentrate in the hands of the strongest, and tribal chieftains rapidly gained an increasing measure of authority. These social changes and the formation of a ruling class are symbolized by the construction of huge tumuli for the burial of the dead, the earliest of which go back to the third century A.D. Hence the name by which this protohistoric era is known: the Tumulus Period, or Period of the Great Burial Mounds. Terracotta statuettes (haniwa) were placed all around these tumuli. The burial mounds of the fifth and sixth centuries were also decorated with paintings and bas-reliefs; these, however, are confined almost exclusively to northern Kyushu, the province nearest to Korea.

Seventy-two such tombs have been discovered. The paintings usually cover the stone walls of the funerary chamber and the antechamber. They contain both geometric designs (concentric circles, triangles, etc.) and figurative forms (armor, boats, men and animals). The most representative of these many tombs are those of Otsuka (Royal Tomb) and Takehara-kofun (Ancient Tomb in the village of Takehara).

The Otsuka paintings entirely cover the inner walls of the funerary chamber (13 1/2 feet long, IO feet wide, I2 1/4, feet high), the antechamber, and the funerary niche. (Illustration page 14) The rough surface of the stone slabs was first coated with a thin layer of clay, and to this support the paints were applied. Chemical analyses carried out by Professor Yamazaki Kazuo of Nagoya University revealed five differerent colors: red ochre, yellow ochre, green (powdered green rock), white (clay) and black (pyrolusite, or mineral manganese).

Opposite the entrance of the tomb stands the wall, pierced by a door, that separates the antechamber from the funerary chamber. Painted on either side of the door are horses, guardians of the inner chamber: three on the left, superimposed one above the other (two black horses separated by a red one), and two on the right (a black horse above a red one). A rider, much too small for his mount, is barely distinguishable on the back of each horse, all five of which are treated with a naive naturalism. All the rest of this wall is covered with decorative designs: triangles, fern patterns and two-stemmed rosettes. A short passage leads into the richly decorated funerary chamber. Here, on the inner wall (to right and left of the door), figure two rows of quivers and swords treated as purely decorative motifs; on the side walls, quivers (on the right) and shields (on the left) are aligned in two rows. These motifs give place on the back wall of the chamber to geometric designs. The niche at the back, which held two coffins, is lavishly decorated with polychrome triangles. The two slabs of stone flanking this niche-known as "lamp stones" on account of the hole in the top which probably contained lamp-oil are decorated with fern patterns and rosettes. (Illustration page 14) The walls are surmounted by a domed ceiling painted red and sprinkled with with yellow dots; this is presumably intended to represent the starry night sky. On the whole, the decoration of this tomb has a unity and harmony suggestive of a peaceful way of life in which beautiful and costly things were appr for their own sake.

With these decorations of the Otsuka tomb, which extend over the entire walls pace and perhaps reflect a horror vacui, the single painting at Takehara-kofun forms a contrast. (Illustration page 10) Discovered in I956, this tomb of average size (the funerary chamber is not quite 9 feet long, 7 feet wide, 9 1/2 feet high) contains on the back wall the most succesful composition of all pre-Buddhist painting. It consists of but two colors, red ochre and black (this time a carbon black), applied directly to the rock face with no intervening support. The pigments are so thick that brushstrokes are clearly visible. This composition is the sole ornament of the funerary chamber; the other walls and the vault are quite bare. So the decorative technique employed here is totally different from tha Otsuka tomb.

In the center of the Takehara painting stands a helmeted man in baggy trousers holding back an animal which, though relatively small, seems to be a horse. The man's face and the edge of his trousers are painted in red to striking effect. Above this group rears a large mythical animal with talons, a long spiny tail and a red tongue, which brings to mind the dragons in early Chinese paintings, though its body is rather like that of a horse. In the wall paintings of ancient Korea (Koguryo kingdom)-those for example the tombs of the Chi-an region, such as the Tomb of the Four Divinities-we often find a dragon of similar shape, shown flying through the air with a divinity on its back. The Takehara animal, then, may be taken to represent a horse-dragon flying across the sky. Below the groom holding the horse, an object resembling an overturned "C" painted red and outlined in black, represents a boat. Another, smaller boat can be made out above, to the left of the dragon. The boat which conveys the dead man's soul to the Other World is a common theme in funerary paintings.

Mori Teijiro, who first published the precious Takehara painting, has proposed an interesting interpretation of these motifs: the horse travels by land, the boat plies the sea, and the dragon flies through the air; the conjunction of these three figures expresses the wish that the dead man's soul may find smooth and ready passage to the next world.

To the right of the large boat, five red and black triangles linked by a stem seem to represent a standard symbolizing the power or authority held by the dead man. Four arge fern-like motifs form the lower part of the composition. They may be purely decorative or they may stand for waves, i.e. the sea crossed by the ship of the dead. Two disks at the top of decorated stems flank the composition on either side. This signicant motif can be identified with the large sunshade-fans held over noblemen by their attendants in the ceremonies of ancient China. These ritual fans, modeled in the round, are also found among the clay sculptures known as haniwa. In this tomb they symbolize the dignity of the deceased.

It should be added that in the antechamber Mr Mori discovered the figures of two fabulous animals, one on either side of the passage-way leading to the inner chamber. On the right is a fabulous bird, all but effaced, yet reminiscent of the "divine bird" (red sparrow, guardian of the south) of ancient Chinese tradition. Distinguishable on the left is a large tortoise which brings to mind the tortoise with two snake-heads (black tortoise, symbol of the north). It is interesting to note several elements in the decoration of this tomb which clearly point to an influence from the mainland, from Korea. Neverheless, as compared with the Koguryo wall paintings of Korea, the Japanese composition ; seen to be especially remarkable for the same naivete and clarity of expression which lend so much charm to the haniwa.