Japanese Art, Architecture, Poems & Plays

Art & Architecture• Japan borrowed artistic ideas from China and Korea• Japanese artisans made many things with shiny red and black

lacquer coating, such as:• Wooden Statues * Furniture * Household Items• Learned “Landscape Paintings” from the Chinese• Used Ink or Watercolors• Painted Images of Nature or battles on paper scrolls or on silk• Origami – Japanese nobles learned to fold paper to make

decorative objects • Flower arranging• Buddhist monks and the Samurai Tea Drinking into a beautiful

ceremony

ART, ARCHITECTURE

Shinto Shrines Buddhist Temples

• Built in the Japanese Style• Built near a sacred rock,

tree, or other natural feature

• Usually a wooden building with a single room and a roof made of rice straw

• People enter the shrine through a sacred gate called a “Torii”

• Built in the Chinese style

• Had massive tile roofs held up by thin wooden pillars

• Richly decorated• Had many statues,

paintings, and altars

Religious Shrines

BuddhistTemple

Shinto Shrine

Poems & Plays• Japanese borrowed China’s writing system

– Wrote the language of Chinese pictures that stood for whole words• Since the Japanese & Chinese languages were so different, in the A.D. 800’s

they added symbols that stood for sounds (much like the alphabet)– Made reading and writing easier

• Believed a person’s handwriting revealed much about a person’s education, social standing, and character

• Wrote poems, stories, and plays– Oldest form of poetry was the Tanka

• Tanka is an unrhymed poem of five lines (captured Nature’s beauty and the joys and sorrows of life)

– Haiku formed in the 1600’s • Consisted of three lines of words with a total of 17 syllables

– Were colorful and full of emotion and imagery• Created Plays

Plays

Created Plays

– The oldest type of plays were called “NOH”• Used to teach Buddhist ideas in the 1300s• Performed on a simple, bare stage• Actors wore masks and elaborate robes• They danced, gestured, and chanted poetry to the beat

of drums and flutes