Page 271 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

270 cat. 163
Ogata Kenzan,
The Eight-Fold Bridge,
hanging scroll; ink
and light color on paper,
35.6 X40.6 (14 x 16)
Private Collection, Kyoto,
Important Cultural Property

customarily did not execute the calligraphy in their works, Kenzan's act of inscribing the text, like
his signature on his ceramics, speaks of emerging notions of the artist's individuality. The calligraphy
contains another layer of allusion: it quotes the arthritic hand of that embodiment of court culture,
Fujiwara no Teika (1162 -1241). Teika's version of Ise was the authoritative text used in the Edo period.

L A N D S C A P E S In traditional cultures a journey of any length, no matter what its ostensible purpose, was more than
O F T R A V E L perambulation from point A to point B. Leaving one's familiar surroundings for the vast world of the
unfamiliar was fraught with the unexpected. Early Japanese travelers ventured from order into disorder:

Rest or home basically mean order and security, whereas movement is potentially dangerous. A person moving from
a state of rest into one of movement faces, especially during travel through unfamiliar space, the danger of a radical
change in personality. Home is a cosmos artificially created when people created the order of time and the rhythms
of agriculture, and, connected with these, a social and religious order... .Travel was something feared, an activity
exposing the traveler to forces outside his control. 21

Prior to the Edo period a few people voyaged for the many. It was as if, by venturing into the
unknown, travelers offered themselves up as heroic saints. The journeys of the priest-poet Saigyô
(1118-1190) exemplify the archetypal Japanese literary voyage of exploration. His travels to the northern