Page 64 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

A typical example of Kano Motonobu's work is the set of four sliding
door panels from Reiun'in exhibited here (cat. 97). During the Momo-
yama period, the various studios operated by the Kano family members
contracted to execute specific projects, and Eitoku's studio was very
much in demand. In fact Eitoku was so busy with the commissions that
came from Nobunaga and Hideyoshi that the artist could hardly take
care of his own household. At Azuchi, Eitoku, Mitsunobu, and assistants
executed panel paintings in ink and gold. The paintings of Buddhist
subjects and Chinese Confucian, and Daoist narrative themes were on
the upper floors. Landscapes and paintings of flowers and birds and
animals were distributed throughout the lower floors. Although the
Azuchi paintings have been destroyed, the evidence of other surviving
works contemporary with Eitoku, including the set of sliding door panels
from Myôrenji (cat. 121), permits us to speculate that the Azuchi panels
must have been monumental, brilliant due to the lavish use of gold, and
dynamic in design. In 1582 Nobunaga was assassinated, and Hideyoshi
assumed control of military affairs and the government. In 1583 he began
the construction of Osaka Castle and commissioned Eitoku and his ate-
lier to decorate its interior. None of the panels survived the fall of the
castle to the Tokugawa forces in 1614 and 1615, but Eitoku's legacy is
unabashedly reflected in the style of a monumental composition by
Kano Tan'yü (1602-1674), Eitoku's grandson and painter in service to the
Tokugawa shogunate. The Kano style patronized by the shogunate in
turn became a model emulated by the various daimyo who caused artis-
tic styles to be disseminated in the provinces during the Edo period.
The monumental and heroic style of painting associated with
Eitoku cannot be separated from the mood of the age and the personality
of his major patron, Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi's personality and artistic tem-
perament were complex and even contradictory; he aspired to be stoic,
but could not resist epicurean pursuits. On one hand he sought the
rusticity of a humble tearoom, and on the other, he displayed ostenta-
tiously a gold tea house in his castle mansion in Osaka, of which a
description survives: "from the tatami-matted floor to the ceiling, from
pillar to the cross beams, all were covered with gold; teabowls, kettle,
spoon, everything was gold." Yet Hideyoshi was an enthusiastic patron of
indigenous Raku wares, characterized by simplicity and directness of
form and color (cats. 285, 286). In Hideyoshi the timbre and behavior of
the ruthless military hegemon seem to have been conditioned by the
famous art objects he owned.
Particularly during the last quarter of the sixteenth century,
many famous art treasures once in the collections of the fifteenth-
century Ashikaga shoguns had been broken up. Individual paintings and
artworks fell into the hands of daimyo in the provinces or entered the
collections of wealthy merchant-aesthetes and tea adepts in Sakai, Nara,
Kyoto, and Hakata. Written records document the movement and pedi-
grees of some of the most coveted tea ceremony utensils and Chinese
paintings. Both Nobunaga and Hideyoshi had inherited some of the
prized works from the Ashikaga collections. A collection inherited by
Nobunaga was destroyed by fire in 1582, though some artworks were
handed to Hideyoshi who, known for his shrewd and level-headed de-
meanor during fierce battles, also set up a tea room where he served tea
between battles. On the very spot where one's life might vanish like the
morning dew, he used and admired the famous teabowls and Chinese
ink paintings he inherited from Nobunaga.
In the seventeenth century, when the peaceful Tokugawa sho-
gunate was established, the warrior class continued to serve as custodi-
ans, practitioners, and patrons of the arts. Later, following Hideyoshi's
example, the Edo shogunate had tea masters in place for generations.
The tea master Kobori Enshü (1579-1647) developed his own set of rules
of tea aesthetics; he amassed his own collection of art, some of it trace-

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