Page 14 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

Plate 0.1 Anonymous, Portrait of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, early 15th Plate 0.2 Josetsu 如拙, Gourd and Catfish (Hyōnen zu 瓢鮎図), c.
century. Colours on silk, height 80.5cm, width 39.5cm. Roku’on-ji 1413. Ink on paper, height 111.5cm, width 75.8cm. Taizo-in, Kyoto
Temple, Kyoto

unfortunately (as so often in Anglophone scholarship) given (Pl. 0.5), the great Sesshū Tōyō 雪舟等楊 (1420–1506),
no sustained treatment here. It is also regretted that it has prestige which was partly based on his own travels to Ming
not been possible to include more work here on the China itself, which made the 15th-century moment of
important ties of culture, commerce and conflict which, as Chinese-Japanese pictorial interaction so decisive in the
with Korea, bound early Ming China to its near neighbour, history of Japanese art (Pls 0.6–0.7).
Japan. A paper entitled ‘Sino-Japanese ink: Ashikaga envoys The essays which do appear here are designed to stand
to the Ming and Muromachi ink painters’ by Yukio Lippit of alone (hence a certain amount of repetition has been left in
Harvard University was presented at the conference, but it place), but also cumulatively to open up a number of areas of
has not in the end been possible to include this important current work in the period, with the inevitable result that the
contribution here. However, its absence is at least partially gaps in our present understanding only become more visible.
compensated for by the illustration of several of the key Although contiguous chapters may deal with cognate
works of the period most telling of the cultural relations themes, such as the Ming intervention in Southeast Asia, the
between Ming China and Japan in the early 15th century. important exchange of images and ideas between the Ming
The paper dealt with the increase in the sophistication of and Joseon Korea, or the imperial patronage of religious
Japanese picture-making after about 1400, based on the shift institutions, the reader is above all invited to choose for
towards direct patronage of monk-painters by the Ashikaga themselves which themes speak most eloquently to them.
shoguns (Pl. 0.1), whose rich collections of Ming and Other directions for future research might also be noted
pre-Ming Chinese works provided the inspiration for new in passing. A number of contributors to this volume treat the
directions in Japanese ink painting. Gourd and Catfish (Pl. theme of eunuch agency and eunuch patronage, and the role
0.2), painted around 1413 by Josetsu 如拙 (fl. early 1400s– of eunuchs in both the politics and the culture of the early
early 15th century), was shown to be explicitly described as Ming is certainly ripe for a comprehensive reassessment,
being in this ‘new manner’, and it was demonstrated how it is moving beyond the moralistic discourses which see them as
22
possible to trace direct appropriation from specific Chinese the natural enemies of ‘literati’ officials. Greater weight
treasures in the shogunal holdings in later 15th-century needs to be given in future to the evidence of cordial
Japanese works like Scholar Viewing a Waterfall (Pl. 0.3) by relations between these two bodies of imperial servants, as
Shingei Gei’ami 真芸芸阿弥 (1431–85) or Mountain and River when the high official Wang Zhi 王直 (1379–1462), one of the
(Pl. 0.4) by Kenkō Shōkei 賢江祥啓 (active c. 1478–after scholarly participants in the Elegant Gathering in the Apricot
1523). It was the subsequent prestige of another monk-painter Garden (on which see Chapter 11 in this volume), provided in

4 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450