Page 132 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

images or those made to celebrate the first month of the lunar new year, marking
the beginning of spring. By virtue of these positive associations, the crane became
one of the archetypal images of the Rinpa visual idiom, and the bird appears as a

key motif in one of the greatest masterpieces in all of Japanese art: a long scroll
with waka poems transcribed in dynamic calligraphy by Hon’ami Kōetsu and
with underpainting of cranes standing and in flight by Tawaraya Sōtatsu (Kyoto

National Museum). Contemporary potter Wakao Toshisada revived the age-old
Rinpa motif of cranes glimpsed flying across the rising sun — as seen in Kiitsu’s
composition on the same subject — in abstract ceramic form, a vivid demonstra-
tion of how the Rinpa aesthetic remains alive even today (cat. 59).
Kōrin’s younger brother Kenzan worked in a decidedly less elegant manner

than other proponents of the Rinpa style, and if not for the fact that he, too, was
steeped in the Ogata family project of reviving the Sōtatsu style, then he would not
be classified as “Rinpa.” Yet Kenzan’s oeuvre accords with his brother’s in its reli-

ance on abbreviated natural forms, bold outlines, and themes drawn from poetry
and classical literature. Among his finest surviving works on paper (as opposed to
ceramics, his true métier) are the poem-paintings inspired by Fujiwara no Teika’s
poetry collection Birds and Flowers of the Twelve Months, which Kenzan published
in his personal anthology Gleanings of Foolish Grasses (Shūigusō) (cats. 54, 55).

Keeping in mind that in the lunar calendar summer extended from the fourth to
the sixth month, the fourth month of Kenzan’s cycle shows a cuckoo (hototogisu)
and deutzia flower (unohana), both linked by poetic convention to early summer,

while the sixth month contains images of cormorants (u) and wild pinks
(tokonatsu or nadeshiko), associated with late summer. Cormorants, which are excel-
lent swimmers, dive into rivers and streams to catch fish and are still used today in
Japan for nighttime fishing; a cord is tied around the bird’s long neck so that it
cannot swallow the fish after catching one in its beak (see also cat. 40).

The small birds that are ubiquitous in Rinpa-style textile patterns are plovers
(chidori), shorebirds that often feature in Japanese classical poems set in winter.
Because the plover’s small, plump body is easily limned by a simple ovoid shape,

and since they tend to fly in tight groups, plovers were the ideal avian motif for a
repeating design, as seen on a textile fragment (cat. 56). These types of patterns designing nature
came to be known as Kōrin moyō, or “Kōrin motifs,” a reflection of the pervasive
influence of Kōrin’s design sensibilities on the Japanese textile and craft industries

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