Page 269 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

Landscapes like these thus constitute a palimpsest of biographical and cultural layering. They
represent a quasi-utopian vision where men and women endeavor to cut themselves free from social
constraints. In that sense they serve as autobiographical portraits.

NOSTALGIC It is a commonplace to say that in Japan nothing is ever discarded. Even in an age like the Edo period,
LANDSCAPES where the up-to-date could barely keep pace with itself, lingering nostalgia for the culture of the halcyon
Heian period (794-1185) provided a means of inserting elegiac elegance into the everyday. The past
spoke to something enduring in the present. As the poet Ki no Tsurayuki (c. 892 - 945) recognized in his

268 preface to the first imperial poetry anthology, basic emotions lie at the heart of all human experience.
The political chaos of the sixteenth century sent court culture into the provinces, carried by
noble refugees from Kyoto. The classical revival triggered by this exodus continued unabated through-
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out the Edo period. The beloved favorites Tale ofGenji and Tales oflse, and others such as One Hundred
Poems by One Hundred Poets (see cats. 100-105), took hold of the popular imagination. Motifs from the
classics appeared on clothing, items of personal decoration, ceramics, and lacquer (cat. 6). Pastimes
from the classical era, such as the incense game and the shell game (cats. 246, 273), once the purview
of court aristocrats and later of samurai imitators of court culture, entered middle-class life during
the Edo period. What we might call nostalgic landscape was a part of this domain.
The Tale ofGenji (late tenth/early eleventh century) is not noted for extensive landscape imagery.
Places, although many are mentioned, serve as an emotional foil for human activity. Once set in motion,
though, texts generate new texts. The narrative of Murasaki Shikibu's writing the Tale ofGenji at Ishiya-
madera became embedded in Genji lore, due in part to the efforts of that temple to claim this work
as part of its official historical-religious chronicle. Just as Ishiyamadera was seen as a cradle for Genji,
renditions of Ishiyamadera became a stock motif for the decoration of containers cradling
volumes of the story (cats. 159,160).
The other locus classicus of courtly nostalgia, the older Tales oflse, is richer in landscape imagery,
mainly because exile is a major theme. The hero, associated with the courtier Ariwara no Narihira,
wanders through the provinces, leaving in his wake a trail of places newly canonized. Like the recitation
of toponyms in a no play, these sites have to do with mood, not topography. Interest in the physical
properties of famous poetic places was limited to a few identifying motifs. Their combination was
governed by set rules for "packing" the image, which was then "unpacked" by the viewer. By this means
fig-3
generic landscapes became specific ones. By the seventeenth century illustrations based on motifs Eight-Fold Bridge, from
from Tales oflse enjoyed tremendous popularity (fig. s). 18 Tales oflse (1629),
New York Public Library,
The scene from Tales oflse pictured most often comes from the ninth chapter, as the hero and Spencer Collection, Astor,
his companions reach a place called the eight-fold bridge (yatsuhashi). As they sit down to lunch, the Lenox, and Tilden Foundations,
vol. i, episode 9
beauty of the swamp-blooming iris moves them to compose a poem. In early seventeenth-century
depictions of the eight-fold bridge, usually executed in the traditional Tosa style, the hero and his com-
panions sit in a generic landscape whose traditional cloud-and-wave patterns have been garnished by
the bridge and iris — tropes to identify the narrative. Codices of place names (utamakura) and their
assigned meanings provided poets and painters with the specific motifs needed to suggest poetic
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toponyms. In cases where there was an accompanying text, it would have been written by a courtier
or famous calligrapher, underscoring the rift in status between the painter and the loftier personages
privileged as inscribers.