Page 333 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

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188 brated Benten Shrine, approached by painting. The Akita daimyo Satake
Odano Naotake (1749-1780) a bridge from the right. Puffy white Shozan (1748-1785) strongly promoted
Shinobazu Pond clouds (of unpainted silk) scud in the such studies and was a creditable
blue sky, and the silhouetted forms painter himself. Naotake became
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
3
97.5x132.5 (38 /8X52Vs) cast carefully observed mirror images friends with the western-influenced
into the
reflective lake. Although
Renaissance man Hiraga Gennai
Akita Museum of Modern Art hybrid in style, the picture was exe- (1726 -1779) who was invited to Akita
Important Cultural Property
cuted in traditional materials. This to supervise mining. When Naotake
site in the heart of the world's largest was later sent to learn metallurgy in
• This unique painting merges ram-
pant eclecticism in an unexpectedly metropolis was (and still is) a popular Edo, he stayed in Gennai's lodgings in
area for taking the air and seeing the the capital. Unfortunately, as so often
harmonious vision. An enormous urn sights. Here it is eerily denatured, happened in a society subscribing to
of pink and white peonies, a smaller silent, static, and rarefied in a manner the system of collective responsibility,
but equally colorful flowerpot behind typical of Akita-school painting.
it, and a portion of a tree trunk — all Gennai became embroiled in a scandal,
rendered with almost photographic Odano Naotake, whose father was a was imprisoned, and died shortly
thereafter. Naotake was among those
clarity and careful attention to a retainer of the daimyo of Akita in
unified light source in the western northern Japan, was tutored in the taken down with Gennai: he was
manner — serve as agents of repous- cultural pursuits usual for a young stripped of his position, recalled to
soir against an East Asian ink-and- samurai: Confucian studies and Akita in disgrace, and dispossessed.
All this seems to have been
so devas-
wash backdrop. The view is of Edo's painting. But because the Akita area tating that he died soon afterward,
famous Shinobazu Pond and its cele- was a center for investigations of his brilliant career cut short at the
western science known as Dutch age of thirty-one. MT
studies, Naotake also learned about
western techniques of mining and