The Smithsonian InstitutionRegents of the University of Michigan

Rimpa Kaiga Zenshū [Transliteration of Work Title in Chinese] by Yamane Yūzō[Transliteration of Work Author in Chinese]Review by: Christine Guth KandaArs Orientalis, Vol. 12 (1981), pp. 81-83Published by: Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution and Department of the Historyof Art, University of MichiganStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4434257 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 81

In these cases I do not think it particularly partial to observe simply that Loehr is wrong, and let it go at that.

When Loehr's purely formal approach works, which it does most of the time, it can be most impressive. Perhaps the best example is his long discussion of Tung Yuan. Precise, perceptive descriptions of the monuments are followed by a persuasive summary of the artist's style and the most plausible theory one could draw at this time regarding his probable development. This section of the book and the briefer treatment of Chu-jan that follows should be recommended to students as the most credible source on the tenth-century Chiang-nan style. In parti- cular, I would endorse Loehr's reading of the Shanghai Summer Mountains. Having only recently seen it for the first time, I found it to obviously predate the Cleveland Mi Yu-jen of 1130 and to bear all of the nuances and subtleties of an original work. It shows none of the obvious signs of a copy and undoubtedly belongs, as Loehr observes, with The Hsiao and Hsiang Rivers, The Riverbank, and Wintry Groves and Layered Banks in the essential group defining Tung Yuan's historical position and his evolution from early to late. Loehr's careful reading of the famous Lung- su chiao-min is also welcome and should replace the apparently popular view that the painting is more revealing of Chao Meng-fu and Sheng Mou than of Tung Yuan.

Equally admirable is the chapter on painters of the Southern Sung, a gem of taste and historical judgment. Loehr's mastery of terse, clear, revealing formal descrip- tion is here precisely suited to his monuments.

Not anticipated by any of Loehr's earlier publications known to me are the two chapters on Six Dynasties and T'ang figure painting. They contain some of the most perceptive and sympathetic analyses of figure painting I have ever encountered. Every student of Chinese painting should study the author's treatment of Kuan-hsiu to understand how a great art historian can forever change one's perceptions of works of art by sharp formal analysis and the discernment of an intellectual-historical frame- work within which they exist-or, better, which they themselves define. Equally, the art of Chang Hsuan and Chou Fang has never been more acutely presented, or their relation to prevailing styles better described. All of the great early masters are here, in what is surely the finest historical treatment of early figure painting yet written.

The chapter on T'ang landscape painting is marred by a disinterest in the anonymous monuments at Tun-huang, the Shos6in, and in the T'ang imperial tombs, which are the necessary matter of any true understanding of T'ang landscape. Confined, as his title indicates, to painters, not paintings, however, his treatment of attributed works and their reputed authors is of considerable interest. One finds here even Chang Nan-pen, the fire painter, whose achievement is inventively suggested by reference to two Japanese paintings of the time (the color illustrations of which are reversed).

While the treatment of Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing painters is relatively briefer than the earlier chapters, the author's views are almost always apt and fair, making one wish only that he had been able to devote more space to the later

masters. He avoids the popular dichotomy of professional- amateur distinction, for example, approaching the Che School and Wu Wei with the same impartiality and appreciation he brings to Shen Chou and the Wu School. One might wish that he had chosen something other than Wang Hui's exact copy of Fan K'uan to illustrate the achievement of the former, but one cannot argue with his characterization of the "orthodox" masters in general.

For the Yuan, if Loehr would only realize that several of the works here given to Li Ch'eng, Hsu Tao-ning, or Kuo Hsi were in fact painted by fourteenth-century Li-Kuo followers, his assessment of that tradition would be fairer. Especially admirable in his treatment of Ch'ien Hsuian, Chao Meng-fu, and the Four Great Masters of Yuan is the absence of wen-jen cant. Loehr approaches each master's oeuvre coolly and analytically, perceiving a plausible chronological development and precisely assessing the salient formal characteristics. No one does this nearly so well, and the dispassionate calm of his analyses is a bracing antidote to much recent writing on the period. He also shows himself willing throughout to reexamine afresh long-neglected or disputed works such as the late, wet album leaves attributed to Wu Chen (fig. 127) or the Wang Meng formerly in the Saito collection (fig. 129). These are attractive and interesting pictures that may or may not be as attributed, but which should not be ignored.

The terminus ante quem of Ch'ien Hsuan's Dwelling in the Mountains in Shanghai, by the way, is not 1317, the date of Ch'iu Yuian's colophon, but 1275, the date of the death of Chia Ssu-tao, whose seal is affixed to the right of Ch'iu's colophon. This is a Sung painting and the only identifiable early landscape painting by Ch'ien Hsuan. That fact helps greatly to understand the curiously tentative, yet original and attractive style of the scroll.

I imagine that Max Loehr will be very patient with these comments. Over the years he has instructed me in many ways, including the toleration of junior scholars. It may not be the least of his achievements that even when he seems most certainly wrong, I have always felt the need to go back and study again the subjects of his interest. If, then, I am still convinced that he is wrong, I can also imagine him saying, with that look captured so well in the photograph which decorates the jacket of his book: "But you must look again."

RICHARD BARNHART

Rimpa Kaiga Zenshii i Edited by Yamane Yiuz- W1]t.f . 5 vols. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shim- bunsha, 1977-78. 60.000 yen per volume.

Rimpa, whether defined narrowly as the painting of Korin t) f4 (1658-1716) and his followers or more broadly to include the school of Sotatsu +A (died ca. 1640), is a term of relatively recent vintage. The art of S6tatsu, Koetsu k[52, K6rin, Kenzan rLLt , H-oitsu ]t- , and Kiitsu M:-, who have come to be regarded as the key figures in

this multifaceted tradition, has nevertheless long held a great appeal in the West. Early connoisseurs, such as

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82 BOOK REVIEWS

Ernest Fenollosa, the author of Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art, saw in what he termed the K5etsu-K6rin school the expression of a distinctly Japanese aesthetic outlook. The opinionated Fenollosa had nothing but contempt for literati painting in Japan, which he described as "hardly more than an awkward joke," 1 but of the K6etsu-Korin school, he wrote:

The Koyetsu-Korin school of design-painting and industries- is, first of all, a prime sign of that natural return to Japanese subject, after the Ashikaga debauch of idealism.... [It] was specifically grounded in a study of Japanese forms, first of all in a profound re-study of all the great work of the ancient Tosa and Fujiwara schools, and then in a restatement of this through personal genius, a clear readaptation to new conditions. It got far closer to the heart of the creators of 1200 than the pseudo-Tosas could do, because its purpose was not scholastic but creative.2

While contemporary scholars might not agree with the specifics of this statement, which appeared in 1912, in general spirit it is still consonant with a widely held view of Rimpa.

During the last years of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth centuries, many paintings of the Rimpa tradition entered Western collections-the Freer Gallery's Matsushima screens by Sotatsu, the screen of the same subject with Korin's seal and signature in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and the screens of Ascending and Descending Dragons by Sotatsu, also in the Freer, to name only a few. Reproduction and discussion of these as well as many other previously unpublished works housed in American collections is but one reason Rimpa Kaiga Zenshiu should make a valuable addition to the library of every major museum with a Far Eastern collection or university with a program in Far Eastern art. Unfor- tunately, the cost (60.000 yen per volume), if not the sheer weight of this five-volume set, puts it beyond the reach of most individuals.

Rimpa Kaiga Zenshiu, published under the editorial supervision of Yamane Yu-z6 between 1977 and 1978, just prior to his retirement from Tokyo University, is a tribute to Yamane both as a scholar and as a teacher. A pioneer in the study of S6tatsu, during his many years as professor of Japanese art, Yamane guided students into previously unexplored corners of the vast field of Edo painting. His former students, who now dominate the study of Rimpa in Japan, contributed the majority of the essays contained in this collection. Those best represented are Tsuji Nobuo @ 1tAt, Yamane's successor at Tokyo University, Takeda Tsuneo A fflfi , Kobayashi Tadashi q ,> and Kono Motoaki {JTfK'HX . Yamane himself wrote at least one article for each volume.

The scope of this set far surpasses that of any previous single publication on Rimpa. The first two volumes are devoted to Sotatsu and his followers, the third and fourth to K6rin and his followers, and the fifth to Hoitsu and his followers. Each volume is arranged in five sections. The first contains large color and black-and-white photo- graphs, primarily details of key works. The second is essentially a photographic archive of small black-and- white reproductions of works by or attributed to a particular Rimpa artist. The third contains essays, the

fourth brief captions and explanatory notes on paintings not discussed elsewhere, and the final section clear, concise English summaries of the contents of each essay.

Rimpa Kaiga Zenshut provides as nearly comprehensive a photographic resource on Rimpa painting as is available outside Japan. However, its value as a reference tool is somewhat diminished by the lack of consistency in the organization of the large photographs contained in the first section. In the first two volumes, devoted to S6tatsu, material is arranged by subject; in the three subsequent ones, by media. This thematic arrangement results in a dispersal of works one would like to see presented as a group. Fan paintings of diverse subjects mounted on a single screen, for instance, must be sought under separate categories. Similarly, S6tatsu-school ink paintings of Buddhist and Taoist figures and of plants and animals are divided between volumes one and two. These organiza- tional problems are compensated, however, by the sys- tematic presentation by media in the second section.

The essays cover a wide range of topics and vary significantly in scope and approach. While of uniformly high quality on the whole, they are rather specific and narrowly focused. Some represent new research while others are adaptations of earlier publications. The diver- sity among the essays seems to have been determined in part by the special problems inherent in the study of each artist and in part by the interests of individual scholars.

The identification of S6tatsu's sources and examination of the way in which he adapts them have long been overriding concerns in research on this great innovator and forerunner of Rimpa. Yamane's "Genji Monogatari: The Sekiya and Miotsukushi Screens" *F rA * ,

( is typical of this outlook.3 Yamane dis- cerns in the Genji screens pictorial elements from six dif- ferent sources, discusses how these have been used for form rather than content, and dates the screens on the basis of their relationship to the Saigy6 monogatari scroll

Iw$J)s which Sotatsu copied in 1630. Kobayashi carries this traditional mode of investigation one step further. He not only examines the specific scenes from which S6tatsu-school Hogen and Heiji fJ-= +$` fans are derived, he also arranges the fans into recensions on the basis of the degree of their relationship to the original model. Kobayashi's "Tawaraya Sotatsu and His Fan Paintings" thus presents a methodologicql framework for the examination of other groups of fan paintings.

Takeda Tsuneo's contribution, which spans volumes one and two, is perhaps the most outstanding of the S6tatsu-related essays. His examination of the evolution of the use of gold ground in screen paintings from the late Muromachi through the early Edo periods helps in understanding S6tatsu's debt to Momoyama screen painters of the Kano school as well as his innovative exploitation of the spatial potential offered by gold background. In helping to situate Sotatsu more firmly in his period, Takeda also opens up a little-explored area of research-the nature of the sixteenth- and seventeenth- century paintings to which Sotatsu had access. While it is known that S5tatsu's Dragon screens in the Freer were modeled after an anonymous Momoyama-period work in

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BOOK REVIEWS 83

Homp6ji ; and while Takeda hints that S5tatsu might have been familiar with Kano Tan'yii's monumental decoration of Nijo Castle A , this aspect of S6tatsu's painting deserves further investigation.

While S6tatsu studies suffer from a near total lack of biographical data, quite the opposite is true of the colorful K6rin, whose provocative antics were often the talk of the town. Biographical material, including personal letters and sketchbooks, together with an exceptionally large corpus of signed and sealed paintings, is readily available for study. Such rich source material has enabled scholars to document with remarkable precision Korin's development as a painter and his artistic contacts as well as his patronage. Much of this already familiar territory is covered in volume three of this set. Particularly note- worthy, because it forces scholars to reassess the traditional view that K6rin painted sketches after nature, is the recent discovery, discussed by Nishimoto Shiuko Pi t Ji1 , that the artist's bird and animal sketchbook in the Konishi +JN#; family collection is in fact a faithful copy of a scroll painted by Kano Tan'yiu that is now in the British Museum.

Yamane's essay, entitled "The Evolution of Korin's Painting Style," has the broadest scope of any contribution in the volume devoted to this artist. Its primary thrust, however, is not a stylistic analysis, but rather the establishment of a chronology of Korin's works on the basis of seals. This approach is especially important in the study of Korin's painting, since the dates of only seven works by him can be firmly established.

Most publications on Rimpa tend to be monographic in approach-focusing on Sotatsu, Korin, and H6itsu-or so general that the discussion of their followers amounts to little more than name dropping. The present set rectifies this situation by giving reasonable coverage of the two Sosetsus and of later Rimpa painters such as Fukae Roshui i Th ; t, Nakamura H6chui 4i tt X t, and Suzuki Kiitsu iJ~ -. Useful biographical data and a general discussion of key paintings are included in these essays. The black-and-white photographic materials accompany- ing these articles are an especially valuable complement, since the paintings by these less well-studied artists have never been gathered into a single reference work. Both the essays and the photographs are important in helping to understand the lines of transmission and dispersal of S6tatsu and K6rin styles and models.

Sakai Hoitsu is generally regarded as the founder of a third subgroup within the Rimpa tradition. Although he was inspired by Kbrin's painting, he was born nearly fifty years after the latter's death and so cannot be considered a Korin disciple in the strict sense of the word. H6itsu is also distinguished from his Rimpa predecessors because he was active primarily in Edo rather than Kyoto and, as a result, was exposed to modes of painting fashionable in the capital. In his article on "Hbitsu and Edo Rimpa,"

Kobayashi explores the influence on Hoitsu both of Rimpa as it had developed in Edo following Korin's and Kenzan's visits there and of ukiyo-e 4f- , genre, and Western-style painting. This twofold influence, he ex- plains, gives H6itsu's work a new character expressive of an aesthetic outlook unique to Edo. While Kobayashi is successful in describing the broader cultural setting, he is less so in explaining the way in which it is manifested in H6itsu's painting.

Tsuji's article on Kiitsu, contained in the final volume, is worthy of special note. Kiitsu, regarded as the last great exponent of the Rimpa style, has become the subject of serious scholarly inquiry only during the past decade. Although writings on his individual works are scattered throughout Japanese scholarly journals, this essay pre- sents the most comprehensive data available in a single source. As is the case with Korin, establishing a chron- ology of Kiitsu's painting is a thorny problem due to the fact that a sole dated painting is known. A representation of the Asakusa Setsubun Festival jj- , painted in 1857, the year before Kiitsu's death, it is but one of the many key works by him in American collections. In his article Tsuji establishes a corpus of acceptable paintings and discusses their sequence on the basis of changes in signature, seals, and styles.

Rimpa Kaiga Zenshui is a publication aimed at the Japanese academic and scholarly community. While the excellent English summaries appended to each volume give it a more international flavor than most Japanese publications, it lacks the introduction to Rimpa, state- ment of method, and discussion of major issues in Rimpa studies that many Western scholars would expect to find in a work of this scope. Although Yamane has chosen to include artists from S6tatsu through Kiitsu under the heading "Rimpa School," nowhere does he discuss in a systematic manner the artistic outlook its members share or the way continuity was maintained from 1600 through 1868. Individual contributions justify considering these artists, so widely separated in time and space, as a school, yet no comprehensive statement to this effect is included. From a Western viewpoint, then, the major weakness of Rimpa Kaiga Zenshii lies in its lack of thematic unity. Rich in factual detail, the essays present an additive rather than a well-structured, comprehensive picture of Rimpa. These problems notwithstanding, Rimpa Kaiga Zenshui remains the most outstanding publication in the field.

Notes

1. Ernest F. Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art, 2 vols. (New York, 1912), 2:165.

2. Ibid., 2:127.

3. This rather loose translation of the title of Yamane's article is provided in the English summary, l:iii.

CHRISTINE GUTH KANDA

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