Page 334 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

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Karasaki Pine, or the Great Seta depicted at all, they are so minute as
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Maruyama Ôshin (1790-1838) Bridge. The purpose of such paintings to blend in unobtrusively with the
Lake Biiua was literary and evocative rather total view. Ôshin rather astonishingly
than objective and visual. chose to include a depiction of a
Dated 1824
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk Maruyama Ôshin, the adopted son of Korean mission in the scene. The last
57.5X146.6 (22 /8X57 /4) Maruyama Ôkyo's successor, became Korean mission passed through the
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The Museum of Shiga Prefecture, the third head of the Maruyama line. area in 1764, sixty years earlier, so
Biwako-Bunkakan He learned the master's lessons well, Ôshin must have depended on sketch-
as shown by a comparison of this models in Ôkyo's studio for his ren-
• Lake Biwa has been shown as part painting with Ôkyo's Both Banks of the dition. Perhaps the sixty-year interval
of the Eight Views of Orni Province Yodo River (cat. 190). Both embellish (the length of a calendrical cycle) is
significant, and this is a commemor-
in traditional painting since at least huge panoramas with tiny forms,
the Muromachi period (1392 -1573). eradicate the literary element, use ative depiction of the event. MT
Under this Chinese-style rubric, washes of gold for mists, devote an
painters conflated familiar stock poetic audacious amount of space to the
motifs such as Evening Bell from a watery element, and model the moun-
Distant Temple or Geese Alighting on tains in such a way as to suggest the
a Sandbar with traditional scenes fall of light. The pronounced curvature
such as Ishiyamadera, Miidera, the of this composition was perhaps
designed to demonstrate the artist's
knowledge that the earth is round.
If the famous sights of Lake Biwa are