Page 167 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

i66 cat. 95
Okamoto Toyohiko,
Moored Boats in Autumn,
detail from a pair
of six-panel screens;
ink and light color on paper,
each 136 x 276
(53V2X loSVs),
Kyoto National Museum

Maruyama Okyo, reinterpreted the theme of a woman from Ohara as a "beauty portrait" (bijinga). The
woman looks suggestively at the viewer, her left hand delicately pulling a cord to balance the enormous
bundle of firewood on her head. Her clothing is a heterogeneous mix of richly decorated and simply
dyed cottons, materials legally befitting her status. Under her burden, and within the limitations of her
station, she exudes tremendous personal power. This paradoxical treatment is not a matter of fantasy
alone. The commoner of the middle Edo period was totally circumscribed by governmental regulations
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restricting dress, housing, and the display of possessions. Within these restraints, however, common-
ers managed to create their own cultural milieu, often in diametric opposition to the government's
principles.

LITERATURE Though the place of the commoner had been enhanced during the Momoyama and early Edo periods
INTO ART by the development of commerce and the new position of merchants and artisans among the educated
elites, the suffocating restrictions imposed on the populace as the Edo period progressed caused a
return to the ideals of eremitism. Some turned to the evanescent pleasures of the "floating world"
depicted in ukiyoe, others to travel or vicarious escapism. For painters of the Japanese literati school
(Nanga or Bunjinga), who followed the tenets of the Chinese scholar-artists, painting bucolic landscapes
that featured fishermen and woodcutters was a viable means of casting one's mind away from a