Page 25 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

Fig. 3 ogata Kōrin (1658 – 1716). Irises, edo period (1615 – 1868), ca. 1701. In Kōrin’s time, among well-read audiences, the
pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and color on gold-leafed paper, appearance of the plank bridge with irises would have
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each screen 59 /2 ∞ 11 ft. 9 /4 in. (151.2 ∞ 358.8 cm). nezu Museum,
tokyo (National Treasure) called to mind this poem from the tale or perhaps the
noh play based on it, also called Irises (Kakitsubata), which
attempted to depict the scene literally. Upon reaching the dramatizes the poetic vignette. Gazing at the oversize
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marsh, the protagonist in The Ise Stories composes an acrostic screens, with their large clusters of flowers, the viewer
poem in which the first syllable of each line forms the can imagine being present at the iris marsh as the courtier-

Japanese word for “irises” (kakitsubata), keeping in mind protagonist of The Ise Stories, Ariwara no narihira, recites
that ha and ba were written with the same character in the poem to his fellow travelers. The absence of any fig-
ancient times. Although the English translation here is ures in either of Kōrin’s versions allows viewers to place
unable to convey the complex wordplay of the original, it themselves in the imaginative narrative space. Such “pat-
approximates the poem’s intended effect: terns without human figures” (rusu moyō), where plants

or objects suggest or symbolize a setting involving
karagoromo I wear robes with well-worn hems, human interaction, had been a common device in Japa-
kitsutsu narenishi Reminding me of my dear wife nese art, especially lacquerware and textiles, since the

tsuma shi areba I fondly think of always, Muromachi period.
harubaru kinuru So as my sojourn stretches on The Metropolitan Museum’s Yatsuhashi differs from
tabi o shi zo omou Ever farther from home, the nezu Irises in significant ways beyond the presence of the
Sadness fills my thoughts. bridge, most notably in how the clusters of flowers and the
a history of rinpa

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