Page 168 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

fig. 6
Attributed to Kaihô Yùshô,
Fishing Nets,
one of a pair of six-panel
screens; ink, color, and
gold on paper,
each 159.6 x 352
(627/8x13872),
Museum of the Imperial
Collections,
Imperial Household Agency

I6 7

restrictive existence and returning to a more objective view of the world. Yosa Buson (1716-1783), a
haiku poet as well as a painter, repeatedly rendered scrolls and screens of peasants, fishermen, and
woodcutters in the countryside. While the more humanistic painters of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries would incorporate the hardships of these peasants into their portrayals, Buson's
works maintain the ideals extolled in Chinese poetry: the man of the world yearning for the freedom
of the fisherman or woodcutter and envying their untrammeled rural existence.
The eleventh-century Chinese philosopher, poet, and painter Su Dongpo praised fishermen
and woodcutters for their unfettered existence. A poem by his follower Zhao Pingwen puts forth the
ideal of the fisherman and woodcutter and their happy disenfranchisement from the system prom-
ulgated by the government:

These two old men have long forgotten the world,
And taken trees and rocks as their followers.
When they happen to meet each other,

Wind and moon must have directed them there.
Decline and rise [of empires] is not my business;
Why should I be engaged in these petty affairs? 23
Literary themes of work were drawn not only from poetry but from theater, especially no,

and from parables. Watanabe Kazan explored the Chinese parable of Count Yu (cat. 98), who lived his
life properly as a fair and honest judge and jailer and then expanded the gate of his village to fit a
four-horse carriage; he had complete faith that these actions would bring success to his descendants.
Kazan, though probably under house arrest at the time that he executed this painting, advocated
the ideals of the government, especially in its Confucianist philosophical bent. The principle of loyalty
central to Confucianism is embodied in this parable and picture. In the painting workers industriously
construct the gate to the village, as a man kneels in homage to Count Yu at the lower right, and Yu's
sons and his dogs — a symbol of loyalty — play by the gate and near the village wall. Perhaps Kazan
was endeavoring to show the importance of this ethic in his life at a time when his loyalty to the
regime was called into question.