Highlights from Japanese Art

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FACES OF BATTLE: Japanese Prints from the Permanent Collection
On display from May 26 - September 26, 2006
This installation explores the themes of samurai virtue in conflicts ranging from legends of pre-history to epic moments of civil war in the late 19th century.

The thirty woodblock prints from the installation are also presented online in an interactive feature with stories of the protagonists, zoom screens enabling close inspection of the images, and a brief biography of the influential printmaker Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-92).

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This impressive pottery vessel of the middle Jomon period (c. 3000–2000 b.c.) was made during Japan ’s earliest ceramic culture and is one of the most intriguing Neolithic works in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Such flamboyant pottery vases elaborately adorned with castellated rims and bold, textured surfaces were created in central Japan and found in the prefectures of Nagano and Niigata . Its grooved, meandering lines, loops and spirals produce a rich interplay of light and dark, and positive and negative space, that create an engaging work of sculpture. The vessel’s surface is composed in registers, with vertical spirals at the bottom, a band of horizontal lines and vertical lugs and loops in the middle, and horizontal wavelike patterns and small, open loops in the swelling shoulder area. The top register breaks into open loops between horizontal bands around the rim. Series of swirls run between the shoulder and rim registers.

Reverence for the written word is one of the distinctive features of East Asian civilization. As a result, enormous attention was lavished on the utensils associated with writing: the stationery box, writing box, brush, inkstone, and the ink itself. In Japan , this embellishment of writing utensils was often achieved with lacquer techniques, which are some of Japan ’s greatest contributions to the decorative arts. In particular, maki-e (gold lacquer) and mother-of-pearl inlay were employed to transform lacquer into a medium of unparalleled beauty.

This large stationery box was made to hold sheets of handmade Japanese paper and was probably accompanied by a smaller box of similar design, which held the inkstone, brushes, and ink. Boxes of this type were often made for presentation to high officials or aristocrats, and the design scheme was typically of some auspicious motif such as birds and flowers. This box, however, is covered with a scene of farmers transplanting seedlings into rice paddies, a design known to occur on only three other boxes from the seventeenth century. The artist executed this rare genre scene in various techniques of gold lacquer; mother-of-pearl is used exclusively for the seedlings, whether already transplanted, in the hands of the farmers, or still bunched in the basket on the back of the ox. Another unusual feature of this box is the artist’s three-dimensional composition: the path between the rice paddies (with their stylized ripples) meanders down three sides of the box, emphasizing the volume and mass of the object. The artist has given careful consideration both to the box’s surface decoration and to its distinctive shape.

Sokan is identified as the painter of this landscape by a seal in the lower left corner. Nothing is known of Sokan’s life, but on stylistic grounds, he can be placed in the second quarter of the sixteenth century. The painting is within the tradition of monochromatic ink painting established by Tensho Shubun (fl.1414–63) based on his study of recent and contemporary Korean painting. Its closest model, however, appears to be the work of Gakuo Zokyu, who was active in the first two decades of the sixteenth century. Gakuo's style is brought to mind by a number of factors. Foremost is the complicated spatial treatment that gives the impression of a two-dimensional presentation of the fore-, middle, and background. Gakuo's style is also notable in the preoccupation with atmospheric voids, isolation of peaks within the landscape, and layered brushstrokes creating striking tonal contrasts. Elements typical of the Muromachi period include using arbitrary scale, weighting the composition to one side, and contrasting strongly vertical land masses with voids. The harmonious arrangement of a multitude of visual elements within a complex, tripartite composition reveals a talented artist of the late Muromachi period.

Paintings of scholars or philosophers surrounded by remote pinnacles, tall pines, waterfalls, and mists, with no company except that of country people, reflect ideals familiar in Western literature and paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These themes of isolation, reflection, and simplicity are conventions that Japanese artists and scholars, emulating the lifestyle and aesthetic preoccupation of their Chinese mentors, readily adopted. This reflective, somewhat romantic ink landscape includes pale touches of red and yellow, which enhance its lyrical quality.

This beguiling figure of a seated warrior is a haniwa (cylinder), which was used to decorate the tomb of a noble during the Kofun, or Tumulus, era (250–600 a.d.). Originating in the mid-second century as simple cylindrical forms, haniwa evolved into more complex figural representations of houses, weapons, animals, and humans. They show us much about life at that time. This warrior, identified as such by his helmet and sword, wears a belted tunic, trousers, and beads. His hands, positioned in front of his chest, probably held a spear. The reddish, low-fired, and iron-rich clay of this haniwa is typical, as are the neatly cut eye and mouth holes. Nearly all seated figures such as this one have disproportionately tiny legs, perhaps indicating that the head and torso were perceived as the defining section of the figure. The warrior’s hairstyle—parted in the middle, with loops of hair tied in front of the ears—was common for men at the time. This haniwa was made during the late Kofun era (late 5th–6th century), when most figural haniwa were created. Such figural haniwa were placed either low along the bank of the keyhole-shaped tomb mound opposite the entrance to the tomb, or were clustered near its entrance.

This print, often called Red Fuji, is the greatest design in Hokusai’s most famous series of prints, Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji. It is also one of the most successful works in the history of printmaking. Red Fuji epitomizes the phrase "economy of means": it uses only three colors and a single outline that pulls the weight of the composition into tense asymmetry. The perfection of this composition grew from Hokusai's long study and analysis of form, and his use of line, circles, triangles, and squares to create balanced and monumental images. The resulting impression is one of massive weight and power.

Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji
In Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji, Hokusai’s most acclaimed series of prints, he distilled all of his compositional and narrative genius. His aim in producing the series was to show the most famous landmark in Japan in all seasons, in all possible scenic variations, and in a multitude of atmospheric conditions. He succeeded in evoking the reaction of the local inhabitants to this monumental volcanic formation. Red Fuji is the only print in the series that shows no inhabitants: it concentrates wholly on the mountain. Hokusai shows Fuji during the ominous moments before a storm blows in from the south.

Prior to this series, much of the subject matter in Japanese prints revolved around the ukiyo (floating world), the world of transient pleasures that included courtesans and actors. When these subjects were prohibited by reform law during the Kansei era (1789–1801), legendary and historical prints entered the genre. After travel restrictions were relaxed, resulting in a "travel boom" among the general populace in the late 1820s and early 1830s, prints as travel souvenirs became popular, especially Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji , as with many of the awe-inspiring geographic features in Japan , is considered to be the home of a kami (Shinto deity) and is a center for both Shinto veneration and Buddhist mountain-worshipping cults. During Hokusai's lifetime, pilgrims to Fuji were his main customers for these prints.

The total number of prints in this series is forty-six: the thirty-six that comprise the original set plus a supplement of ten. Early impressions of the original set were done with a Prussian blue outline, following a brief fad for this color, but later impressions and all supplementary prints have the usual black outlines.

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