Original
Posting: 25 September, 2000
Updated:
Prepared by: Steven Boutcher
In the previous chapter we traced the stylistic evolution of Buddhist painting in Japan, as it gradually assimilated its borrowings from Chinese art and succeeded in working out a specifically Japanese esthetic. At the same time, in the course of the Heian period (ninth to twelfth century), secular painting in Japan gradually achieved a national style directly expressive of the life and spirit of the country.
In dealing with the imperial treasures of the Shoso-in, we noted that the T'ang style of decoration was highly popular with the Nara nobility of the eighth century. Its popularity continued unabated in the early ninth century, even after the capital had been transferred to Heian (present-day Kyoto), where fresh Chinese influences were introduced by two Japanese embassies to China (804-806 and 838-840) and, above all, bt the Chinese and Korean merchants who were beginning to ply their trade in Japanese ports. From the second half of the ninth century on, however, Japanese secular painting turned increasingly toward more familiar subjects. This trend declared itself first of all in the interior decoration of the imperial palaces and the residences of the nobility, the architecture of which was also modified in accordance with the taste of the time.
In the Nara period the builders of the imperial palace had adopted such typically Chinese features as a flag-stone pavement on ground level, a roofing of glazed green tiles and pillars painted red, as in the great Buddhist temples. Now, in the new capital of Kyoto, while the Chinese style was maintained in buildings intended for official ceremonies, certain traditional elements of the native Japanese home were incorporated in the private residence of the imperial family, without sacrificing any of its monarchical splendor. Its elevated flooring built on piles (thus protecting it from the dampness of the ground) enabled the occupants to sit on the floor in the Japanese manner, on straw cusions covered with rush mats. Chinese roofing tiles were replaced by the bark of the hinoki tree (a kind of cedar), whose dark brown color harmonized with the unpainted wooden pillars and timber-work. Naturally the aristocracy were quick to follow the new style in their own residences. Thus took form the classical architecture of the noble houses of Japan, the architecture called shinden-zukuri, grouping, in a carefully laid-out park, several pavilions at regular intervals around the central building (shinden) reserved for the head of the family, to which they are linked by corridors or bridges.
These residences, like the imperial palace, are fitted with sliding doors (shoji) which constitute the partitions of the rooms; each shoji is covered on both sides with paper or silk. The size of the rooms can be adjusted at will by means of folding screens (byobu). Both shoji and byobu, forming the setting of home life, were decorated with paintings. at first of Chinese inspiration, illustrating a fragment of a poem or a classical text which set the theme and, inscribed in cartouches, accompanied the paintings. Poems in the Japanese style (waka) soon supplanted the themes of Chinese origin, and with them the life and aspect of the country came to be reflected in wall and screen painting.
Idealized landscapes with craggy mountains gave place to softly molded hills dotted with pines, flowering cherry trees, and purple-leafed maples; the stock figures of Chinese legends gave place to scenes of daily life among both the aristocracy and the people of Japan itself. The poems written in cartouches of different colors came to play quite as prominent a part as figure scenes and landscapes. On these decorated screens the nobility appreciated three distinct elements: the plastic beauty of the paintings, the literary quality of the waka (poems of thirty-six syllables) and the elegance of their calligrapy. And the happy combination of these three elements, acting on the spectator's imagination wafted him into the realm of fancy suggested by the poetry and represented by the painting. Collections of poems of the Heian period provide many examples of pieces composed either with a view to being illustrated by paintings or as descriptions of paintings already made. Thus in the anthology of Ki-no-Tsurayuki, the most celebrated court poet of the early tenth century, five hundred and thirty-nine poems (representing nearly two-thirds of his entire output) were written to be illustrated by paintings on screens or sliding doors.
These poems, often accompanied by a prose introduction, give us a pretty definate idea of the subjects and composition of the first secular paintings of these early times, no examples of which are now extant. We thereby gather that they fell into two main groups: the first consisted of a sequence of scenes (twelve, eighteen, sometimes even more) illustrating the different occupations of the twelve months of the year (tsukinami-e) or the four seasons (shiki-e); the second, as numerous as the first, consisted of views of the most famous sites of one or more provinces (meisho-e).
Let it be said at once, however, that these landscapes did not represent a scene of nature devoid of human presence. Each of them, on the contrary, showed travelers on the road, peasants tilling the soil, nobles admiring cherry trees in bloom or hawking. In most cases the sequence was composed in such a way that the actions and occupations represented refer to a particular season. This manner of illustrating the familiar setting of everyday life, this tendency to "humanize" nature, this sensitive response to the motion of the months and seasons--these things may be said to underlie the whole esthetic of Japanese art.
Our researches in the texts of the period make it clear that this type of decorative wall painting was designated at the time as yamato-e ("painting in the Japanese manner") a term whose meaning was subsequently corrupted and broadened. Opposed to yamato-e was the art form known as kara-e (i.e. decorative painting of continental inspiration, chiefly imaginative landscapes in the Chinese manner and illustrations of Chinese legends and tales). The latter, in spite of the increasing popularity of yamato-e, continued to be practised throughout the tenth, eIeventh and twelfth centuries, though its use was confined to official and religious ceremonies.
Owing to the very few vestiges of work dating to this period, it is difficult to trace the technical and stylistic evolution of the two art forms, yamato-e and kara-e. Judging however from documentary evidence and above all from literary sources, it may be surmised that Japanese themes made their appearance in the third quarter of the ninth century in the wall paintings of the imperial palace; and that, as they became increasingly popular during the last quarter of the century, they enjoyed their first flowering in the reign of the emperor Daigo in the early tenth century. These themes inspired by Japanese life obliged artists to work out a mode of expression better calculated to appeal to the nobles of the period, and to modify accordingly the Chinese style on which they had relied for generations. It is therefore to the efforts of the court painters commissioned to decorate the imperial palace and patronized by the great nobles, that we should attribute the rise of a national style of secular painting.
It is a point of some importance that the painters of the Heian court enjoyed a higher social status than those of the Painters' Bureau of the Nara period. The latter were regarded as mere artisans, of a standing inferior to that of the sculptors, and no mention of their personal qualities ever occurs in the official records. For the most part they worked in teams, sharing the various tasks entailed by large-scale paintings. The system of the Painters' Bureau was abolished in 808, immediately after the transfer of the capital, and there only remained two masters and ten painter-workmen attached to the Construction Bureau. Authority over all pictorial work was finally vested in the painting Office (E-dokoro) of the imperial court, founded before 886. About the same time the names of a few artists particularly admired for their personal talent begin to figure in the records, and to some of these names cling marvelous legends. After Kudara--no--Kawanari (789-853), an officer of the imperial guard renowned for the astonishing realism of his drawings, came Kose-no-Kanaoka who is mentioned on several occasions as the first great genius of Japanese painting. Superintendent of the imperial Shinsen-en park, he received every mark of respect from the intellectuals of the period, such as Sugawara Michizane, the minister and poet. Some time between 868 and 872 the latter asked him for a landscape of the park, and from this recorded fact we may infer that on occasion Kanaoka tried to give an accurate rendering of the actual view before him, though he also painted imaginative scenes based on Chinese texts for ritual screens. Kanaoka's descendants succeeded him in the post of painter to the imperial court, forming from the end of the ninth century the first important school in the history of Japanese painting--the Kose school. In the mid-tenth century, Kintada and Kinmochi, presumably grandsons of Kanaoka, were working at the court of the emperor Murakami with another famous painter, Asukabe-no-Tsunenori. Then, in the early eleventh century, the golden age of aristocratic culture, Kose-no-Hirotaka was in charge of the Painting Office at the court and painted a great variety of works, both secular and religious.
Although no genuine works by these early secular painters have survived, written records warrant the assumption that, by Hirotaka's time, both landscape and figure painting had achieved a mature style corresponding to the tastes and sensibility of the great noblemen. This is borne out, as a matter of fact, by the paintings which decorate the interior of the Phoenix Hall (Hoo-do) of the Byodo-in, built in I053. As we have already noted in connection with Buddhist painting, the doors and walls of this extraordinary monument–erected by Fujiwara Yorimichi, head of the great aristocratic family, as an attempt to realize in this world the vision of the Western Paradise–are decorated with different scenes representing the Descent of Amida with his attendants, come to receive the souls of the faithful into his paradise; and in each of these compositions the divine processions are hovering over lovely Japanese landscapes which distinctly recall the quiet countryside of the Kyoto region. (illustration page 43) Although these are religious works (raigo), they are, at the same time, large-scale landscape paintings, carefully composed and including many details imbued with poetry. It will be noticed, moreover, that each landscape represents a particular time of year, so that one of the four seasons figures on each of the four walls of the building: spring on the north wall (right side), summer on the east (on the facade), autumn on the south (left side) and winter on the west (at the back). Some time ago, in examining the details of each composition, particularly of the painting on the doors which is the best preserved of them all, we came to the conclusion that, in keeping with a common practice of the day both in painting and literature, the four landscapes were intended to represent the four seasons; and this was confirmed by the discovery in I955 of inscriptions to that effect written in India ink on the edges of the pictures, beneath the wooden frames.
The scene reproduced here figures on the upper part of the east panel of the north door. (illustration page 68) It represents a landscape in early spring: a river winds its way between low hills; on a sand shoal and on the river bank, dead reeds are waving to and fro; thin patches of snow remain on the ground; beyond a pine-clad hill two thatched cottages suggest the drab existence of the peasant woman who is crossing the river with a boatload of firewood. This glimpse of the Japanese countryside is handled with great technical skill, in soft colors, with freely flowing linework. Following the course of the river on to the other doorpanel, we see horses in a pasture, drinking beside the river; in the mountains beyond, cherry blossoms stand out against the greenery in the background. All these pastoral details are to be found in the poetry of the period, from which painters drew motifs for screens decorated on the theme of the Four Seasons.
The lyricism of this eleventh-century painting in the Phoenix Hall stands at a if remove from the strictly composed landscapes of the eighth century, in the T'ang yle, like the one in the background of Shaka-muni Preaching (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), or those in the Shoso-in miniatures. (illustration page 26) Grandiose landscape views of the rugged mountains of China have given place to the smoothly rounded hills of the Kyoto countryside. (illustration page 32) The towering, superimposed mountains of T'ang painting conveyed an impression of depth and distance symbolizing the superhuman power of nature; these Japanese artists, on the other hand, sought to record nature in her more intimate moods, more congenial to man. To deep valleys flanked by dangerous peaks, they prefer lazy rivers flowing through quiet meadows or between smiling hills. The sharp angles of rocks and crags swept with vigorous brushstrokes are replaced by supple lines building up expressive forms lyrically interpreted. Such was the achievement of Japanese secular painting, the outcome of two centuries of experiment.
Another important remnant of the eleventh century, better preserved and slightly later in date than the Hoo-do paintings, also vouches for this change of style. This is the famous Senzui-byobu (landscape screen), preserved for centuries in the To-ji (or, more exactly, the Kyoo-gokoku-ji) in Kyoto and since I958 in the possession of the Commission for Protection of Cultural Properties, Tokyo. (illustration page 71) This silk screen was originally a non-religious painting of Chinese inspiration (kara-e) peopled with figures in T'ang costume. Later it was given a religious significance and used in the temple for ordination ceremonies. In the center of the composition stands a cabin in the woods, in springtime; there a poet hermit sits in the throes of inspiration, with a sheet of paper and a brush in his hand, while at the door appears a young nobleman with his retinue, who, out of respect; admiration, has come to pay him a visit on a richly harnessed horse. The venerated poet probably represents the famous Po Chu-i (772-846), whose works were highly esteemed by Japanese literati, just as his life in a hermitage far from "all the dust of the vulgar world" was idealized by Japanese poets. This screen painting probably derives from a Chinese prototype, but by dint of copying it repeatedly Japanese artists gradually adapted it to the national taste. Though the figures are Chinese, the landscape here is even more typically Japanese than those of the Hoo-do, with the woods carpeted with wistaria and the distant lake nestling in hills covered with flowering cherry trees.
Along with large-sized secular pictures decorating folding screens and sliding doors there arose a new type of painting in two forms, especially intended for the delectation of the private connoisseur and closely connected with the development of literature: the album leaf (soshi) and, above all, the long, illuminated handscroll opening out horizontally (e-maki). Both art forms derived from the Chinese tradition, and early examples of them executed in Japan, down to the end of the ninth century, treat subjects of continental inspiration. The progress of literature, however, and in particular of Japanese novel, led to an abundant production of scrolls illustrating a text; and so times the illustration played a more prominent part than the text itself.
In the first half of the tenth century, when the development of Japanese poetry was nationalizing the subject matter of screen and door paintings, the first novels in the vernacular appeared, written with the aid of the Japanese syllabary. Such were the Taketori--monogatari and the Ise--monogatari. The new Iiterary form reached its height in the Tale of Genji (Genji-monogatari), a celebrated love-story written in the early eleventh century by Murasaki-shikibu, a lady-in-waiting of the empress. These novels were illustrated from the very outset, to flatter the taste of the great ladies of the nobility who prided themselves on their appreciation of painting and on their ability to draw correctly themselves. The art of illumination, imbued with the aristocratic and effeminate taste of the court, reached perfection in the famous series of Scroll Paintings illustrating the Tale of Genji (Genji-monogatari-e-maki), which post-date the novel itself by a century. (illustration page 72,75)
Originally, as the present writer recently demonstrated, this extensive picture sequence consisted of ten scrolls containing in all from eighty to ninety scenes illustrating the fifty-four chapters of this long "prose epic of real life." All that now survive are nineteen scenes, corresponding to thirteen chapters; these are preserved in the Tokugawa Museum, Nagoya, and the Goto Museum, Tokyo. The illustrations were carefully executed on sheets of paper of the same size (8 5/8 inches high, I8 7/8 or I4 1/8 inches wide); each one represents a key episode of the novel and is preceded by a passage from the text beautifully written in a running hand on richly decorated paper. The choice of subjects shows that the artist, instead of dwelling on the actions in which the characters are involved sought rather to convey pictorially something of the lyricism and sentimentality that inform the story.
These scenes keep in effect to the same peculiar perspective, very different from Western habits of vision: they are viewed obliquely from above, looking down from right to left, following the natural movement of the eye when the scroll is unrolled from right to left. In accordance with another convention, the artist omits the roofs of houses in order to bring the whole interior clearly into view. Equally remarkable is the handling of figures: faces are always indicated by the same conventional signs, a hook for the nose, two slits slightly accentuated in the center for the eyes, a red dot for the lips. No hint of character or personal feelings is allowed to show through. This stylization, however, cannot be said to spring from any lack of experience in the portrayal of facial features. The faces of Buddhist gods and the portraits of monks dealt with in the previous chapter reveal a great variety of facial expression and accordingly testify to considerable technical skill. In this same scroll, moreover, lower-class figures are portrayed in a more realistic manner. The facial uniformity of the leading characters, then, is undoubtedly deliberate; the reason for it probably lies in the fact that the high-born personages who owned and dmired these paintings could thereby more readily identify themselves with the heroes and heroines of the story.
In this set of works, one of the gems of Japanese painting, the symbolic use of colors plays a very important part. Colors are laid on in thick, opaque coats which prevent the paper from showing through. The long hair of the women and the coiffures of the noblemen form an ever-varied rhythm of black patches within the color scheme as a whole. The choice and sequence of the colors has been carefully worked out beforehand, and each scene is dominated by a particular color appropriate to the subject. Take for example the third scene of the Kashiwagi chapter. Celebrating the fiftieth day after the birth of his son Kaoru, Prince Hikaru Genji, hero of the novel, is shown holding the babe in his arms. (illustration page 72) For all the impassiveness of his face (which recalls the neutral expression of the masks worn in No plays), can we not feel something of the prince's chagrin at the sight of this baby boy, the love-child of Princess Nyosannomiya, his wife, and their young nephew Kashiwagi ? Thus at the end of a life full of glory and amorous conquests, the hero is punished for the criminal passion for his mother-in-law to which he gave way in his youth. This stroke of fate, which forms the climax of the first part of the novel, is symbolized in this scene by the figure of Genji: his white costume, now tinged with mauve through an alteration of the pigments, is indicative of old age and emphasizes his solitude by contrast with the bright colors around him, particularly the reds of the small ritual tables and the luxurious robes worn by the ladies-in-waiting or placed between the curtains to decorate the palace.
From the second part of the novel, which deals with the love adventures of Genji's succesors after his death, we illustrate an episode in the Yadorigi chapter. In a room thrown open on a park in autumn, Prince Niou-no-miya, Genji's grandson, is playing the biwa to soothe his wife, Princess Uji, who is angry with him for having made love to his sister-in-law Ukifune. The rustling of the transparent bamboo curtain and the waving of the grass outside hint at the autumn wind that has sprung up between the married couple, symbolizing their discord. The slightly unbalanced composition, the bleakness of the colors, and even the pose of her figure, conspire to suggest the melancholy of the forsaken princess.
A keen eye will detect subtle differences of expression between the two scenes, notably in the treatment of figures. Study and comparison of details in the nineteen scenes now extant has led us to divide them into four groups exactly corresponding to four different styles of calligraphy, which form the vestiges of four scrolls. We have succeeded in entirely reconstituting one of the scrolls, which spans five chapters of the
novel and comprises eight scenes now divided between two collections. As already noted, the complete work, numbering fifty-four chapters, must have comprised originally from eighty to ninety illustrations spread over ten scrolls. The work seems to have been carried out by five groups of painters and calligraphers, each group being placed under the patronage and supervision of an art-loving nobleman. Each of the five patrons presumably had two scrolls written and illuminated in accordance with his own taste and judgment; then together they presented the work to some high-ranking personage, the emperor, an ex-emperor or the empress, who had originally conceived the idea of illustrating the Tale of Genji. Collective art projects of this kind are often mentioned in records of the period, either for illuminated scrolls, albums of illustrated poems, or sutras; mention is even made of a set of Genji illustrations commissioned by the emperor in III9.
While it is impossible for us to prove that the extant Genji scrolls are actually those made in III9, there can be no doubt that they were executed at some time in the first half of the twelfth century; a comparison of their stylistic maturity with the stiff and lifeless works of the same kind produced after II60, makes this quite clear.
Where then did the Genji style of illumination originate, an art with a technique and esthetic so peculiarly its own? It cannot be traced back to the Chinese tradition, which derives from T'ang painting. Though admittedly we have only meager remains of early secular painting to go on, especially as regards the art of illumination from the ninth to the eleventh century, there are grounds for believing that the Genji style first arose in the tenth century in the cultivated, art-minded circles of the aristocracy
particularly among the noblewomen of the day who, desiring to illustrate their favorite novels with their own hands, devised this simplified representation of figures. Closely bound up with the feminine taste for novel-reading, this style was gradually matured and refined in the more skillful hands of the professional painters who adopted it; in time it attained to the symbolic expression we noted in the Genji scrolls. We can apply the term onna-e ("painting in the feminine manner"), often employed in the literature of the time, to the style conceived and developed among the great ladies of the nobility a style whose graceful dignity and restraint reflects the atmosphere of the imperial court of the Heian period.
Delightful though it is, the style of the paintings illustrating the Tale of Genji by no means reigned supreme in all the illuminated scrolls of the period. Another style of illumination, also based on a long tradition, flourished in the second half of the twelfth century; it too, if under a very different aspect, reflected the spirit and substance of Japanese life, but of a more popular order. (illustration page 77)
This new style is exemplified in three illuminated scrolls called Shigisan-engi-e-maki (Origin of the Temple of Mount Shigi), preserved since the day they were made in the Chogo--sonshi-ji temple on Mount Shigi, southwest of Nara. They relate three miraculous legends connected with the monk Myoren, who restored this mountain monastery at the end of the ninth century.
A native of the mountainous region of Shinano, Myoren received ordination at theTodai-ji, the temple of the Great Buddha at Nara. Thereafter he led a life of austerity on Mount Shigi, praying to his heavenly patron Bishamon-ten (Vaisravana), and never again left his hermitage. For food he depended on his alms bowl, which, invested with magic powers, flew through the air on its master's errands, visiting the neighboring vilages and bringing him back such sustenance as he required. One day--relates the first scroll--a rich farmer, galled by the daily obligation of providing food for the monk, locked up the bowl in the barn where he stored his rice. But the magic bowl was not so easily balked: it flew into the air as usual, carrying with it the barn and its whole store of rice, which it duly deposited in the mountains at the feet of its master. (illustration page 77) The panic-stricken farmer went in pursuit of his runaway barn, climbing the mountain and entreating the monk at least to give him back his rice, which represented the whole extent of his fortune. Myoren was lenient with the offender and ordered the bowl to carry back the sacks of rice, which it proceeded to do; and they all flew overhead like a flight of birds and came to rest on the very spot where the barn had stood. After this anecdote in a popular vein, full of movement and surprises, a more serious miracle is related in the second scroll.
The emperor Daigo fell ill and both medical treatment and religious intervention proved unavailing. Then the fame of the hermit-monk Myoren reached the capital. An imperial envoy was forthwith dispatched to Mount Shigi to prevail upon the saint to come to the palace and pray on the emperor's behalf. Loath to undertake the journey, Myoren promised to perform a miraculous cure without stirring from the mountain. A few days later a divine figure appeared to the emperor in a dream, and he at once recovered. The monk of Mount Shigi declined all reward and continued to live the hermit's life. The third legend tells of the pilgrimage of Myoren's aged sister in search of her lost brother. Thanks to a miraculous sign from the Great Buddha of Nara, she was finally reunited with Myoren and peacefully spent the rest of her days in the hermitage on Mount Shigi.
A far cry from the fashionable life of the imperial court, the scenes and incidents illustrated on these three scrolls are intensely human, wholly popular in their appeal, featuring peasants, a farmer and his family, a hermit-monk and an aged nun, his sister. This racy, unsophisticated handling of character and incident was new in painting, but a similar trend had been under way in literature for some time. As early as the end of the eleventh century, noblemen were showing an interest in lower-class life and collecting curious legends of the provinces; much of this lore was picked up and brought to the capital by returning governors and officials, by itinerant merchants and pilgrims. The best proof of this new interest in pea.sant life is the Konjaku-monogatari, an extensive compilation of Buddhist legends and folklore, in which the ways and customs of the people are depicted in plain-spoken terms, at times even coarse and ribald, but always vivid and pungent. The life of Myoren, in a slightly different form, is already told in this book, which must have been written at the very beginning of the twelfth century. A similar compilation, recently discovered and (its original title being unknown) designated simply as Kohon-setsuwa-shu (Ancient Collection of Legends), goes back to about II30 and contains three anecdotes of the hermit-monk closely resembling those of the illuminated scrolls. In the great social change then coming over Japan--and described above in connection with the rise of the warrior class--it was only natural for legends of this kind to appear in painting. What is more important for the history of art is the fact that an artist of the period was able to forge a new style particularly suited to recording incidents full of action and movement, by stringing the scenes together in an uninterrupted, skillfully contrived sequence of compositions.
(illustration page 77) Examine the opening scene of the first scroll. The alms bowl, carrying with the rice-filled barn, is already aloft and flying over the river, while the farmer and his family are hurrying after it. The running figures, with dismay and astonishment written on their faces, are freely depicted with telling strokes of the brush. This wonderful mastery of ink linework is characteristic of all three of the Shigisan-engi scrolls. One is struck too by the caricatural touch with which the faces of men, women, children and monks are handled, their expressions caught and rendered with a keen sense of observation. Even in the second scroll, where the subject (the emperor's miraculous recovery) required more restrained and austere expression, the spirit of caricature breaks out in details and in such secondary figures as court servants.
Was this new expression of movement and incident, with its insights into the life of the common people, the spontaneous creation of a single artist, a sudden innovation in the middle of the twelfth century? Was it in lay or clerical circles that this masterpiece came into being? These are difficult problems to settle and opinions differ. As an approach to a plausible solution, let us examine the style of the mountains and river in the plate illustrated on this page. Waves are represented by supple, highly refined linework attesting a perfect mastery of the traditional techniques of secular painting as derived from T'ang art and developed in Japan by several generations of professional painters in the Heian period. The same mastery is discernible in the handling of colors, which are now very much faded, though originally they played an important part in the composition. A further point is this: the Sheiryo-den, the emperor's usual residence, forming the most secluded and inaccessible part of the palace, is represented in minute detail with unerring precision; and so are the costumes of the noblemen. We therefore feel justified in holding the master of the Shigisan-engi scrolls to have been one of the professional painters of the imperial court.
Furthermore, the facial expressions of the figures, which seem so spontaneous and even caricatural, will also be found to have precedents in the Japanese tradition. Recent restorations of temples have brought to light sketches in a highly spontaneous style made by artists, by way of amusement, on the edges of paintings, which were then covered over by the frames. These ink drawings represent, for the most part with humor and gusto, faces and figures which the artists saw around them at the time. The most remarkabIe of them were discovered on the east door of the Hoo-do (Phoenix Hall), of which much has been said in an earlier chapter. The faces of two old men and thirteen figure sketches of clerks and servants in the employ of noblemen are rendered with appealing realism in a few strokes of the brush. Here is proof that the painters engaged on the large compositions showing the Descent of Amida against panoramic landscape backgrounds could also have recorded the humbler life around them, the scenes and people that caught their eye, had circumstances allowed them a little more freedom in the choice of subject matter.
The art of ink line drawing, as a medium of rendering movement and life, was worked out over the centuries in the studios of professional painters, but its practice was impeded by the thematic repertory imposed by aristocratic taste. At last its opportunity came: it flourished in the mid-twelfth century and the master of the Shigisan-engi scrolls displayed his genius to the full in the three legends, more popular than hieratic, of the hermit Myoren.
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter 9 / Chapter 10 / Bibliography