Page 43 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

which would position it at a distance from the ukiyoe. Indeed a painter like Shiba Kokan (1747 -1818)
decided he had to abandon ukiyoe altogether in order to be taken seriously as an artist. 68 Simplifying
somewhat, one might say that ukiyoe were located closer to Hokusai's books of random sketches
(manga) and thus, in the eyes of the bunjin or literati, at the opposite end of the pictographic tradition.
The art field's topography looked different depending on one's position in it. It was not clear where
its borders lay.
The ideal of the pure Nanga artist is one who paints for himself or herself (in late Tokugawa,
69
there were some women Nanga painters). Nanga should express an inner state of quietude, removed
from the hustle and bustle of everyday (city) life. The proper subject matter, which was shared by
42 professional painters, was dictated by that social distance which is the necessary condition to achieve
an internal mental unfetteredness.
The distinction between manga (or ukiyoe) and Nanga was not that one was produced for the
market and thus tainted by commercialism, whereas the other was art proper, the disinterested work
of amateurs. By the end of the eighteenth century manga cartoonists and Nanga painters were both

professionals in the sense that their wares were for sale or commissioned. The ideal of the amateur
Nanga painter seeking to give expression in a contemplative manner to a finely cultivated self was
not what mattered for most Tokugawa-era painters whose subsistence depended on their sales. What
separated the one from the other was, perhaps more than anything else, the subject matter and pos-
sibly the buyers.
Nature usually fills the whole space of a literati painting (see cat. 156), and representations of
nature, large and small (but mainly large), poured out vistas of mountain scenery, forests, mountain
rivers, and distant waterfalls, or sometimes close-ups of twigs and bushes with birds and flowers. Lofty,
distant views from above and from afar predominate, eliciting a detached uninvolvement, inviting one
to sit back, rest the eye, and contemplate.
Humans are barely there, if at all. One usually discovers them later as one peruses the land-
scape, not on first sight, and they are invariably men, elderly men, never women or children. Specifically,
they are gentlemen, men at leisure, sometimes reading, but often in the act of contemplation or on
their way to the mountains to contemplate, to attend to their minds, by and for themselves. They are

solitary men, never in crowds — only trees and foliage appear in great multitudes; at most one can find
small groups of close friends relaxing in the shade by a riverbank. The larger society does not exist in
these paintings, and neither does the activity that occupies most other people in society: work or labor.
In contrast, Hokusai's sketches and prints cataloguing every kind of labor for itself (cats. 106,107)
belong to a different cultural, social, and thereby artistic and imaginary universe.
Nanga paintings, for the most part, do not tell stories either. History as event is not to be found.
Everyday life as event is absent too. Nature is uneventful, timeless: no thunderstorms, no dramatic
sunsets; at most a distant, cloudy mist. Mist that hangs. It does not move, it just is. Nature is not active,
and it is without striking colors; its only drama, if that is the right word, is the imposing but still majesty
of mountains and their forests — nature not worked over by human activity, not for productivity nor
for cultural enjoyment: neither paddy fields nor Japanese gardens.
Typically devoid of narrative content — whether it be historical, quotidian, or natural — these
paintings are thus devoid of references to human practice. Rather than re-present, make present again,
or bring objects nearer for close observation, the landscape paintings (arguably Nanga's most treated