Page 178 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

102 Snow landscape
Sun Junze (fl. mid-i4th century)
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
126.O X 56.1 (495/8 X 22*/8)
Yuan, mid-i4th century
Tokyo National Museum
Important Art Object

This winter landscape depicts a snowy
lake shore with a scholar's pavilion. It
bears the signature at the lower left of Sun
Junze, a Chinese painter active during the
Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368). The monumen-
tal painting typifies the fourteenth-
century Chinese development of the
academic style associated with Southern
Song-period (1127-1279) painters Ma Yuan
and Xia Gui. The landscape is devoid of
the evocative, mist-filled space typical of
Southern Song landscapes; instead it is de-
scribed in a prosaic three-part perspec-
tive—near, middle, and far distances—en-
couraging the viewer to traverse the space
logically. The motifs from near to far are
given local clarity. The peak at the upper
left is rendered as a flat silhouette, a two-
dimensional effect that would become a
marked stylistic feature of landscape paint-
ing in the subsequent Ming Dynasty. The
positioning of key motifs such as the pavil-
ion, the lake, the precipice, and the distant
range of hills resembles elements found in
later Japanese landscape paintings (for ex-
ample, cat. 91), but on a reduced scale.
The later Japanese painters in fact were in-
fluenced by the style of Chinese landscape
artists of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
The facts of Sun Junze's early biogra-
phy are not known. The fourteenth-
century Chinese source Tu huí bao jian
informs that he was a native of Hangzhou,
that he was skilled in painting landscapes
and figures, and that he emulated Ma
Yuan and Xia Gui. The limited Chinese
collection catalogues from the Ming Dy-
nasty mention his works, but little is
103 known in China about him or his works. In
Japan, however, Sun Junze's landscape
paintings were very well known in the fif-
teenth century. The Onrydken nichiroku, a
loi Budai that of a poet specializing in linked verse. daily record kept by priests of the Shôko-
hanging scroll; ink on paper Stylistically, the painting is unmistakably kuji monastery in Kyoto, provides the
Chinese. Unlike the Budai by the mid- most direct documentation of Sun Junze's
yy.l X 30.9 (303/8 X 12!/8) landscapes, which were seen by such con-
Southern Song, or early Yuan, 4th thirteenth-century Zhiweng, the artist of temporary figures as the Ashikaga shogun
quarter of i3th century this painting uses dynamic and kinesthetic
broad brushwork for the drapery contrast- Yoshinori (1394-1441) and the painter
Agency for Cultural Affairs, Tokyo ing with the carefully rendered face, torso, Oguri Sôkei (fl. 14905). In this daybook a
and left hand. The coexistence of the two set of four landscapes (presumably Land-
This remarkable Chinese ink painting of modes in figure rendition is a stylistic fea- scapes of the Four Seasons) by Sun Junze
the slumbering Budai (J: Hotei) has been ture of dated examples from the fourth is mentioned several times between 1436
in Japan since at least the fifteenth cen- quarter of the thirteenth century. and 1491. Although none of the four can
tury. It is known through the gourd- The painting has been attributed vari- be identified with extant Sun Junze works,
1
shaped relief seal Zen a stamped at the ously to a few of the Chinese painters they were very highly regarded by their
lower right, which is believed by some to known to the Japanese. The Edo connois- owners, including the warrior-aesthete and
be a collection seal of a certain Zen Ami, a seur and painter Kano Tan'yu (1602-1674) deputy shogun (kanrei) Hosokawa Shige-
garden specialist serving the Muromachi made a close copy of the painting and yuki (1434-1511). The paintings were in the
shogunate; and by others to be a seal of a added an inscription attributing it to Muqi shogunal collection in 1465, and in 1491 the
Chinese copyist; and by still others to be of the late Southern Song. YS painter Oguri Sôkei, then working on a set

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