Page 216 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

than 144 painted doors and wall paintings, bad deeds of Chinese emperors. Through right, and the evocative landscape at the
was destroyed by aerial bombardment. the efforts of Toyotomi Hideyori (1593- left are executed in Tan'yü's typical ink
More than 662 moveable sliding door 1615), a son of Hideyoshi (1537-1598), a Jap- painting style. Tan'yü was thirty-two years
paintings, painted wooden doors, and ceil- anese edition appeared in 1606. Painters old when he executed this work, some
ing panels had previously been evacuated, began to take up the theme, basing their seven years after his work at Nijo Castle
and thus escaped destruction. The doors compositions on the printed versions. (cat. 125). YS
shown here originally were installed in a Kano Sanraku's (1559-1635) ink paintings
southwestern room, the First Chamber pasted onto a pair of six-fold screens (pri-
(Ichi no ma), of the Jôrakuden, as part of a vate collection, Japan) are the earliest ex- 127 Bamboo grove, leopards, and a tiger
sequence painted by Kano Tan'yü (1602- tant Japanese example of painted set of four sliding door panels, ink,
1674; illustrating a Chinese theme, Exem- translations of the Exemplary Emperors color, and gold leaf on paper
plary Emperors (Teikan, or literally theme. each 185.0 x 140.0
"Mirrors of Emperors"). These panels The sliding doors shown here illus- Edo period, c. 1614
were on the east side of the chamber, trate the Han-Dynasty Emperor Xuan Di Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture
facing west. (r. 73-49 BC) generously rewarding provin- Important Cultural Property
The theme of the Exemplary Emper- cial civil magistrates, so that they would be
ors, with its characteristic Confucian, di- encouraged to stay on in their posts and The four sliding door panels shown here
dactic overtone, was introduced from effectively and benevolently administer once separated two chambers of the for-
China sometime during the third quarter the affairs of the populace. The emperor, mal omote shoin nucleus of the main
of the sixteenth century through a seated on the throne, entertains two kneel- building (honmaru) of Nagoya Castle, one
woodblock-printed book, Illustrated tales of ing magistrates by offering food on large on the west side, the other on the east side
Exemplary Emperors (Di jian tu shuo), plates carried by chamberlains. Apart from facing the entrance (genkan). The hon-
compiled in 1572 and presented to the Wan the red throne and the green robes of maru was built for a branch family of the
Li emperor (r. 1573-1620) in the following three figures—the emperor, one of the Tokugawa, the Matsudaira of Owari Prov-
year by Zhang Juzheng (1525-1582), a chamberlains, and one of the ince (now Aichi Prefecture). It was com-
scholar and senior Grand Secretary of the magistrates—the overall monochromatic pleted in 1614. Its interior decoration
Ming court. It contained a total of 117 illus- composition contrasts with the extensive included more than one thousand paint-
trated didactic tales, of which 81 depicted application of gold flakes and paint used to ings mounted on the walls and on sliding
the good deeds and the remaining 36 the produce an atmospheric effect. The surg- doors. In 1945 the Nagoya Castle complex
ing pine tree, the bulky rock at the lower was destroyed by aerial bombing. Fortu-

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