Page 165 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

9o Mount Fuji Although unsigned and without seals, near shore under the darkening sky against
attributed to Kenkô Shókei the painting has been attributed to Kenkô which, like a tall white screen, a range of
(fl. 1478-1506/1518) Shôkei a painter-monk of Kenchôji. He snow-covered mountains looms. On the
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper was sometimes called Kei Shoki, or Kei the roof of the study a sheet of snow inches to-
66.0 x 30.0 (26 x ii3/ 4) Secretary, from his monastic position of ward the eaves. Trees atop the cliff above
Muromachi period, no later than 1490 shoki, whose role it was to keep the official still glisten under the chilling snow.
records of the monastery. The attribution At the lower left corner is a square in-
Tokyo National Museum
is not entirety unreasonable, for the artist taglio seal, which reads Senka, the name of
Mount Fuji stands against a gray sky in the was closely connected with the inscriber an artist active during the first half of the
center of the composition. In the right Shijun who, around 1493, wrote a poem sixteenth century in the Kamakura region,
foreground is an undulating range of hills; for the artist about "Hinrakusai" (Joy in near present-day Tokyo. Very little is
two other ranges recede toward Fuji. Trees Poverty Study). This was the name of the known about the painter Senka. The for-
and vegetation dot the crests and valleys artist's study as well as his artistic pseudo- mat of the painting is archaistic in that it is
of the two closest ranges. A filmy blue nym. Early accounts of the artist's career a shigajiku, a type that by this time had
wash defines the most distant range, at Kenchôji are not verifiable from con- lost its vitality in Kyoto, where innovative,
which floats like a wafting band of mist at temporary sources, but he is traditionally large-scale painting formats were being ex-
the foot of Fuji. Apart from this blue and believed to have been a student of Chüan plored by the Kano artists (cat. 97). This
the faint reddish brown and green on the Shinkó, another painter-monk at Kenchôji painting lacks the atmospheric spatial re-
other two ranges, the painting is mono- who was active around the middle of the cession typical of the earlier Shübun style.
chromatic. The white pigment applied to fifteenth century. Chüan Shinkó exe- Despite the small size of the scroll, the
the stylized, three-pinnacled form of cuted a painting of Mount Fuji in ink, now foreground trees, rocks, bamboo bushes,
Mount Fuji creates visual contrast with in the collection of Nezu Institute of Fine and pavilion, and the temple buildings
the surrounding ink-washed sky. The rev- Arts in Tokyo. In 1478, during a lull after across the lake are clearly legible. This
erence felt for Mount Fuji is evident in the Onin civil war (1467-1477), Shôkei work shows the influence of Ming-period
the frequent depictions of it in Japanese went to Kyoto to study painting under Chinese landscape painting, which had
art, from thirteenth-century narrative Geiami (1431-1485), then a leading painter been actively studied by Japanese artists
paintings to the dramatic woodblock in the capital, who was also an artistic con- such as Sesshu Tôyô (cat. 88, 96) and
prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige in the sultant (ddbdshu) to the Ashikaga shogun Kenkô Shôkei (cat. 90) since the third
nineteenth century. and the curator of the shogunal collection. quarter of the fifteenth century.
The long inscription, dated to 1490, is In 1480 Shôkei returned to Kamakura, but An inscription in three sections occu-
by the Zen monk Shijun Tokuyü (dates un- in 1493 he was again back in Kyoto. By pies the upper two-thirds of the scroll. It
known). The first half of the text describes 1499, he had returned to Kamakura where consists of the title of the painting, a pref-
how, for centuries, Fuji has been regarded he was active through 1506 or 1518. His ace, and poems typical of the shosaizu
as the sacred mountain of the nation; the death date is unknown. (painting celebrating a scholar's study). At
second half explains that the painting was In the dotted forms of the vegetation, the very top are three large characters
executed for a certain "sagacious Lord the schematic tree shapes, and the parallel Setsu-rei-sai (Snow Peak Study), which is
Minamoto, the heir to the shogunal dep- brushstrokes that describe the ranges of both the name of the pavilion depicted in
uty in Kamakura." Shijun was the i59th hills, the style of the painting recalls that the painting and the title of the painting.
abbot of the Kenchôji monastery in Kama- of Kenkô Shókei's landscapes, though These large characters were written by
kura before he wrote the inscription, many of these are stylistically datable to Ashikaga Haruuji (d. 1560), a deputy sho-
signed Shijun, the monk Tokuyü, a former his late years, almost two decades after gun in the Kanto region (Kantô kubd),
[abbot] ofKenchd. Recent Japanese schol- this Mount Fuji painting was executed. whose kaô appears at the lower left. The
arship has astutely established that this The most convincing evidence for the at- middle section of the inscription com-
work was painted for the warrior Ashikaga tribution of this painting to Kenkô Shôkei, prises a long prose preface and a short
Masauji (1466-1531), who "loved the lofti- however, is the form of the mountain it- •poem, dated to the autumn of 1538, by the
ness of Mount Fuji, ordered an artist to self. In its stylization, it recalls a Mount Zen monk Rinchu Soshô, at one time the
paint it and had it mounted as a hanging Fuji painted a few decades earlier by abbot of the Kenchôji Zen monastery in
scroll." Masauji personally sent the scroll Chüan Shinkó, the artist's earlier mentor Kamakura. The preface, which was writ-
to Shijun requesting that he write an at Kenchôji. YS ten in the Chdshdken (Listening to the
inscription. Pines Study) of the abbot's living quarters
Masauji was a member of a branch 91 Snow Peak Study of Kenchôji, gives a brief history of the in-
family of the Ashikaga in the east and the Senka (fl. i6th century) scribing of the scroll and elaborates on the
grandfather of Haruuji (see cat. 91). He title calligraphy by Ashikaga Haruuji lofty symbolism of snow and the snowy
was based at Koga in Shimôsa Province (d. 1560) landscape depicted in the scroll. In the
(now Ibaragi Prefecture) during the last hanging scroll; ink and color on paper bottom row are two more poems by Zen
decade of the fifteenth century, when the 97.5 x 17.0 (383/8 x 6?/s) monks who were contemporaries of
entire eastern region was embroiled in mil- Muromachi period, no later than 1538 Rinchü Soshô:
itary conflicts among several contending Setsureisai
powers attempting to unify the area. In Goto Museum, Tokyo poem and preface
1490, Masauji was twenty-four years old Important Art Object
and on his way to attaining the post of Two deciduous trees rise atop a rocky No sound was heard in the humble
deputy shogun (hubo) of the Kanto region, slope at the lower left, their branches dwelling and no voice came from the blue
which he achieved seven years later, in hanging over a craggy lakeside embank- mountains—a moment of repose—when
1497. His ambition to unify the region, ment. A narrow path leads toward the wa- my disciple Gyoku, Head of the Kitchen,
however, was never realized, and the brought out a scroll, a small one, which he
armed conflicts went on for another sev- ter's edge, where a scholar's study stands handed to this rustic. As the scroll was un-
open. A gentleman seated inside
with shdji
eral decades. In the inscription Shijun ex- gazes across a lake at a temple gate and a rolled there were three large characters, setsu
pressed his sincere hope that Masauji pagoda, which rise above the wafting mist rei sai [Snow Peak Study] accompanying a
would become the unifier. voiceless poem, [that is, a painting]. These
at the right. A sailboat heads toward the

152