Page 53 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

open trade relations with America. The island nation seemed to hold great potential in the imagina-
tions of Americans and Europeans. It enjoyed an advanced intellectual and arts culture that had blos-
somed during the two and a half centuries of the Edo period, although western countries were familiar
with only a small selection of its porcelain and lacquer goods.
Forced to accept a series of unequal trade agreements, theTokugawa government failed, and a
new regime, one of "enlightened rule" (Meiji), was installed. The Meiji era was characterized by an open-
door policy toward American and European culture, and a new ideology and even vocabulary were intro-

duced that still exist today. An official announcement in 1873 coined the term bijutsu (noble skill) —
derived from the German schóne kunst — which would be used to encompass what was known in the
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52 West as music, painting, sculpture, and the literary arts. For the applied arts, the term kôgei (mechanical
skill) was used. These words were especially created for Japan to participate in the Vienna International
Exposition of 1873 to help raise much-needed foreign cash reserves by stimulating "arts" trade. Japan
participated in numerous international expositions, sending technically advanced, often detailed, and
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intricate objects that were geared toward what was perceived to be European taste. The Japanese entries
were highly successful, and along with other exports they helped feed a boom in japonisme, confirming
Japanese arts in American and European eyes as being decorative (applied) as opposed to fine (high) art.
It is thus ironic that during the same period a new word for decoration (soshofeu) was introduced,
based on European precedents, and is still in use today. Previously no Japanese word existed to separate
decorative from artistic production or to indicate a hierarchical ordering of craft media as such. Skill
was more important than medium. The term kazari, best translated as "ornament" rather than "decora-
tion," had been in use in Japan since at least the eighth century and is based on a different concept
than its English counterpart. Fundamentally, kazari refers not only to the object but also to the use of
the object, to the act of viewing, using, or adorning the object. Kazari takes its form in process, and the
viewer is an active participant — through prior knowledge, parody, elegant re-creations, play, performance.

To understand the role of ornament and the meaning of Edo style, it is necessary to appreciate
that the Japanese arts are not meant to be merely visual but to appeal to all of the senses. In Ogata Kórin
and Ogata Kenzan's square dish (cat. 25) the viewer is meant to touch and eat from the dish, read the
poem, see the crane, and hear the crane's cry. Similarly, we might hear the insects rubbing their wings in
the Ogawa Haritsu boxes or the music from the blind man's shamisen in the Uikone Screen (cats. 37, 233).
Another aspect of Japanese aesthetics that informs both ornament and style is the quality of
incompleteness. Japanese poetry and arts were stimulated by the transience of natural beauty, as noted
by Yoshida Kenkô, a Shinto priest, in his famous Essays in Idleness (1330-1333):

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while
looking at the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring — these are even more deeply
moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration.... People
commonly regret that the cherry blossoms scatter or that the moon sinks in the sky, and this is natural; but only an
exceptionally insensitive man would say, "This branch and that branch have lost their blossoms. There is nothing
worth seeing now.".. .The moon that appears close to dawn after we have long waited for it moves us more profoundly
than the full moon shining cloudless over a thousand leagues

Are we to look at the moon and the cherry blossoms with our eyes alone? How much more evocative and pleasing it
is to think about the spring without stirring from the house, to dream of the moonlight though we remain in our room! 6