Page 280 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

evident as in the heavens, so it is no coincidence that this new way of seeing opened up vistas by
means of the lowered horizon and a spacious, naturalistic sky. Probably underlying this new emphasis
on putting objects in their (measured) place within a vast space was the growing realization that Japan
was a small island within an enormous, unknown outside world. And perhaps it is not stretching
credulity too much to associate the arrival of pronounced circular compositions in the late eighteenth
century, such as Naotake's Shinobazu Pond and Oshin's Lake Biwa (cats. 188,189), with the circular
view through the telescope, and even more fundamentally, with the curved contours that circumscribe
the human eye's natural field of vision.
The panoramic view was not new to Japan, nor indeed was the handscroll format, but the
attempt to combine these with the depiction of measurable space and a perceptible horizon line 279
produced astonishingly innovative schemes, such as Bunchó's Traveling by Boat in Kumano and Okyo's

Both Banks of the Yodo River (cats. 185,190). With a handscroll, artists seeking to suggest infinite space
on a two-dimensional format could put off indefinitely the termination of the view simply by adding
additional pieces of paper. In theory the image could extend forever! While Bunchô presents one
horizon line, Ôkyo manages to produce two, affording a simultaneous multiple perspective that is
both conceptual and perceptual.
These two paintings are a good place to conclude. They fold the emotional, literary, and his-
torical aspects of famous places — what is felt and known — into the theme of travel. Both represent
journeys over space and time. They build on ancient formats and styles. The archaic blue green and
gold manner that formed the basis of Yamatoe and the topos of the riverboat journey are both ven-
erable, thousand-year-old Chinese inventions. The two pictures respectively invoke the time-honored
conventions of written labels and multiple perspectives seen in the ancient mapping tradition
(cats. 141,142), but they also partake of the new Edo vision. They seem to possess space by measuring
it, scaling it, parsing it, and describing it. They assert the viewer's place, flexibly but rationally, in the
larger scheme. And they attest to the endless mutability of landscape as a cultural process.