Page 317 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

green landscape of rolling hills with a few rocky sioned, dominates the lower part of the picture.
cliffs, but only on the second screen, as we Cloud bands supply a major part of the visual
approach human courtly life and the divine impact of the image and serve also to divide this
realms, do we find flowering trees. Both screens depiction of the ascent into clear stages. Pil-
are in the yamato-e style inherited by the Tosa grims clad in purifying white, though tiny in
school: a harmonious palette of bright mineral scale, are clearly seen. At the very bottom of
colors, softly undulating terrain and trees, the picture is the Pine Beach at Miho (Miho no
loving attention to details, an interest in secular Matsubara), about fifteen kilometers southwest
life obvious even in the depiction of religious of Fuji along Suruga Bay, one of Japan's "scenic
themes. Framing the panorama is a golden sun wonders" (and one of the few native sites
at the far right and a silver moon on the far left. painted by at least one of the ink painters in the
Scattered along the upper register of both "new manner").
screens are pages of text, purposefully and deco- Portraiture in the traditional idiom contin-
ratively superimposed on the landscape. These ued, especially of subjects associated with the
were written both in Chinese script (kanji) and imperial court or the shogunate. The portrait of
in the abbreviated and flowing Japanese cursive Ashikaga Yoshimasa, shogun and aesthete (cat.
(kana). In the final two panels of the left-hand 214), is a smaller-scale, more retiring version of
screen an imaginative and literal rendition of a the large, assertive yamato-e portraits done at
Buddhist paradise (hensd, apparitional vision) the beginning of the Kamakura period (1185-
has been set into the landscape. Perhaps the 1333). Only the setting of monochrome ink-
monk-artist(?) was prompted by Amida raigo painted sliding panels suggests changes in taste.
paintings (cat. 211) to reproduce the sacred The portrait of his successor, attributed to Kano
Taima Mandala —a detailed depiction of Amida Motonobu, is from a different tradition, but
fig. i. Attributed to Kenko Shokei (act. c. 1478-
1506). Fuji Pilgrimage Mandala. i6th century. Buddha's Western Paradise —as a vision set in a equally formal. Its antecedents are yamato-e
Japanese. Hanging scroll; color on silk. 180.6 x landscape. But the superimposition of texts over representations of mounted warriors as often
118.2. Fuji-san Hongu Hengen Sengen Jingu, Shi- the hensd and, even stranger, the omission of seen in the narrative handscrolls of military
zuoka Prefecture. the upper left corner of the hensd so that one subjects. The horse, sharply and stiffly deline-
sees the landscape topped by the moon beyond, ated, is a formal counterpart to two votive
suggest either confusion in execution or an tablets painted by Motonobu as offerings to
matter. The To-ji screen shows a charming arbitrary decision to include the moon for sym- Kamo Shrine in Kyoto. The stabled horse,
green landscape with figures that were deemed metry with the sun at the beginning of the whether a battle charger or one of many "divine
appropriate for imperial ceremonies. But most right-hand screen. In any case, the result is steeds" quartered at Shinto shrines, was already
screens were used to decorate and divide rooms, daring and effective, an apotheosis of Taima- particularly favored by the warrior class as a
and their subject matter was landscapes, dera's most precious possession, the Chinese subject for six-fold screens.
flowers-and-birds (kacho), martial themes and, Tang dynasty (618-907) tapestry showing the Beach of Pine Trees (Hamamatsu) is one of
later, classic narratives such as the Tale of Genji. Western Paradise of Amida bordered by illustra- the most striking demonstrations of a tradi-
The Jikkai screens, however, are certainly reli- tions of Buddhist legend and of prescribed con- tional style rising to a new occasion. The sub-
gious in subject matter, and the realms of rein- templative exercises. ject occurs in various narrative handscrolls of
carnation include visions of hell, cruelty, and Provincial cults motivated other variations on the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as land-
suffering customarily confined to hand- or traditional themes. We have seen syncretic scape accompaniment to human activity. The
hanging scrolls. Most surprisingly, the screens Buddhist-Shinto iconography associated with yamato-e manner emphasized the decorative,
end with a copy of the most precious and ancient shrines and sites. Mt. Fuji, dominating rhythmical repetition of the boughs and trunks
famous of all mandalas (J: mandara, schematic the Pacific side of central Honshu, has always and the rolling, sinuous curves of the beach,
representations of cosmic beings or forces, used been a sacred mountain, usually associated with and made the waves conform to a kind of pat-
in religious meditation or ritual), the Talma the Shinto goddess Konohana no Sakuya Hime. terning used not only in painting but on deco-
Mandala, belonging also to the temple that It was one of the centers for the Shugendo sect, rated lacquer writing boxes. Beginning in the
commissioned the screens, Taima-dera in Nara a uniquely Japanese synthesis of Esoteric Bud- later fifteenth century the demand for pairs of
Prefecture. dhism and Shinto, partial to ascetic practices in six-fold screens and for sliding screens led
Compositionally the screens combined the remote mountain locales. Fuji was also con- painters to experiment with enlarging the tradi-
vertical orientation of the hanging scroll (cat. sidered a manifestation of Dainichi Nyorai (the tional subject in the traditional manner—an
212) with the horizontal linkage provided by Supreme Buddha, the Center). By the second experiment crowned with total success.
cloud-bands (a common feature in narrative half of the sixteenth century making the ascent Other enlargements of traditional subjects,
handscrolls; see cat. 216). From right to left on of Fuji had become a popular way of achieving such as Sesshu's Flowers and Birds screens (cat.
the screens the realms of reincarnation unfold grace by the practice of austerity, and it is this 233), were also tried by the Tosa masters in
in order of amelioration: realms of Hell, aspect of the mountain that is presented in a their refined yamato-e style (cat. 215). This
Hungry Ghosts, Demons, Beasts, Humans, and Fuji Pilgrimage Mandala. Only the three tiny Flowers and Birds of the Four Seasons, probably
five stages of Heaven —as prescribed by the Buddhist deities on Fuji's tripartite crest witness by a Tosa master circa 1500, combines the
monk Genshin (942-1017) in his Ojo Yoshu the Buddhist element in this now dominantly native vocabulary of decorative water patterns,
(Essentials of Salvation). The scenes of horror Shinto icon. The Sengen shrine, still the owner rolling green hummocks, writhing pine trees
on the right screen are incongruously set in a of this "pilgrimage mandala" which it commis- and rich, opaque color with a Chinese style of

316 CIRCA 1492