If Western people expect to discover any work of realistic merit in Japanese painting they will be disappointed. This is because imagination and suggestiveness are more prominent in Japanese painting than in Western painting.
The lines, colors, notan (chiaroscuro
If Western people expect to discover any work of realistic merit in Japanese painting they will be disappointed. This is because imagination and suggestiveness are more prominent in Japanese painting than in Western painting.
The lines, colors, notan (chiaroscuro) and space compositions are used more for externalizing subjective imagination, and not so much as the means for producing realistic forms of things as in Western painting.
Beginners are therefore advised to see as many examples as possible of various pictures produced in different ages. Japanese paintings of each age have their respective characteristics and special interests of their own days as in foreign paintings. Lines, colors, notan or chiaroscuro have their own expressions of different cultural background in various ages.
Western critics may think that Japanese painting is a mere imitation of Chinese painting. But this is not true. Japanese painters no doubt received a great influence from Chinese painting, but they created their own to express their own ideas as fostered by their cultural environments.
Subjects of Japanese painting are doubtless often puzzling to foreign students of Japanese art. Here, Japanese landscape painting greatly differs from the landscape painting of the West. The imagination and technical skill worked into Japanese landscape paintings are naturally derived from Japanese thought which cannot fail to appear strange to Westerners.
The most difficult of all subjects are those of Buddhist paintings. Their colors, lines and forms have a symbolic meaning inherent to Buddhism.
In the following pages some prominent examples of Japanese painting developed in different ages will be selected and described to help the readers to appreciate Japanese painting.
The most primitive of Japanese paintings is found on the walls of chambers of burial-mounds built in the Archaic Period on Kyushu Island. They consist mainly of totemic symbols and geometric patterns in red, green, white and yellow.
In the middle of the 6th century, Buddhism was introduced through Korea, and the new style of painting was brought in with many other new crafts. The most prominent example of early Buddhist painting is that on the panels of Tamamushi-no-zushi shrine which was done in the reign of the Empress Suiko (592-628), and is still preserved in the Golden Hall of the Horyu-ji monastery, near Nara. The picture shows landscapes and Buddhist figures whose faces and limbs are slender and whose coloring is quite simple. These are characteristic features of the Chinese school of Six Dynasties.
In the 8th century, painting made a new and noteworthy development under the influence of the Indian chiaroscuro style introduced from the Tang Dynasty of China. The best example of this style will be seen in the famous fresco of the Horyu-ji monastery. The style dosely resembles the wall painting of the Cave temple of Ajanta in India. The figures in this painting are rotund and human, while those of the preceding period were romantic and transcendental.
However, the highest and most representative example of this period will be found in the figure of Kichijo-ten, the Goddess of Beauty, painted in rich colors on a hempen cloth. (Fig. 3) The Goddess appears a noble lady. Her curved eyebrows, full cheeks and graceful pose suggest beautiful womanhood as conceived by the Chinese of the rank Dynasty. In this picture, human beauty is blended with spiritual joy in earthly feeling. The painting is owned by the Yakushi-ji monastery, but now preserved in the Imperial Household Museum at Nara.
In the 9th century, a new style of painting was brought in with the introduction of Chinese esoteric Buddhism. The style developed along the lines of the Buddhist pictures which were painted by priest-painters of high rank.
Ryo