Page 277 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

groups. The Shinto priests at the Atago Shrine who received the oil-style painting The Seven-League
Beach from Shiba Kókan (cat. 186) perceived the western-style realism it displayed to be offensive to
the native gods. They had the painting removed. Odd gaps appear when the traditional function of
painting — to reveal vast emotional, literary, and other kinds of interior worlds (as witnessed by the
multiple nuances cued into depictions of famous places) — gives way to the encroaching notion
that the ideology of vision might be an end in itself. Paintings like Scenes of Japan by Odano Naotake
(cat. 187) strip away the emotional resonance from the traditional topographical scene, and substitute
western technique (the lowered horizon, unified light source, and repoussoir) as the subject, leaving an
image one imagines would be unsatisfying to contemporary viewers other than ardent Europhiles.

2 7 6 People of the Edo period were insatiably, relentlessly curious. The complexity of society was cat. 190
Maruyama Ôkyo
reflected in the complexity of the art market, whose diverse clientele lacked the investment in tradition Both Banks of the Yodo River,
that tied previous high-ranking patrons to accepted formal language. Experimentation with imported 1765, handscroll;
ink and color on silk,
techniques provided welcome stimulation in rethinking the traditional processes of picture making. 40.2 x 1690.5 (i5 /s x 66572),
7
The Arc-en-Ciel
It is a relatively simple matter to mimic western-style linear perspective while rendering form
Foundation, Tokyo
itself in the traditional flat, outlined style. This was the approach taken in Korean Mission by Hanegawa
Tóei and in Nihonbashi by Katsushika Hokusai (cats. 155,173). Japanese artists, however, never accepted
(or perhaps never realized) that one-point perspective, itself the product of elaborate Renaissance
notions of the relation between the human and the divine, "suggests a single person and an unmoving
45
eye." Hence in these two pictures perspective became but one element of a new experimental order
of viewing. Embedded in the rhetorical messages of the pictures is the notion that the mundane
was fixed in the grid that literally held human affairs in (visual) coherence, while the supramundane,
such as Mount Fuji or the shogun's castle, operated independently of these strictures/structures.
Many artists devoted themselves to an innovative opticity in the rendition of forms. It had
taken a millennium to progress from depiction of seasons — the first temporal element in Japanese
painting — and the occasional introduction of the nocturnal view by simple means of a darkened sky.