A Ritsuo Writing Box Zoya Street

The object of my study is a writing box of brown lacquer inlaid with pottery, ivory and shell, in the shape of a bronze temple-gong with votive papers. Inside the box is a writing stone and water dropper in the shape of a gourd. It was made in Japan in 1746 by an artist called Ogawa Haritsu, more commonly known in Britain as Ritsuo. The height is 5 cm, and its diameter is 25 cm.

Edo Japan

• Early modern

• ‘Alternate attendance’ in Edo

• Samurai and merchants

• Diverse culture

First, a quick look at the general historical context of the object. It is marked with the date 1746, which falls into a time period known variously as the Tokugawa period (because Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate) the Edo period (because the capital city of Japan was Edo, now known as Tokyo) and the early modern period (for various reasons, including the rise of the merchant class, urbanisation and the spread of literacy). The political structure of the Tokugawa shogunate is known as the baku-han system, so named because of the balance of power between the central government and the provinces - bakufu and han. Under the baku-han system feudal lords, or Daimyo, were required to spend six months a year in their provinces and six months a year in the capital, Edo. This system was known as alternate attendance, or sankin kotai. As a result Edo was a densely populated, martial environment, packed with Samurai lords and their entourages, and with merchants keen on selling them beautiful high-status accoutrements. Edo culture had a spectacular breadth and diversity, with merchants and samurai alike keen to adorn themselves, in a literal sense with decorative objects such as sword fittings and netsuke, and in a metaphorical sense with cultural learning such as tea ceremony, haiku and other arts and skills.

Lacquer and work

• Layering

• Preparing the wood

• Poisonous

• Outsourcing

Lacquer varnishing is an enormously labour-intensive activity. Japanese domestic lacquer objects can require as many as 20 layers of lacquer to be applied, and each layer must be left to dry and smoothed with charcoal. The wooden base must be treated well in advance of the lacquering process if warping and breakage are to be avoided. Lac sap itself is poisonous, a relative of poison ivy. In the Edo period labour was saved by outsourcing preliminary stages, such as lac preparation and wooden box making, to other workshops. The same size and shape of box would be commissioned in large quantities, resulting in the standard format of an oblong black lacquer writing box with gold decoration. So an object such as this which is unusual in shape would have required planning and extra work.

Ritsuo himself Typical Edoite nice guy

Ritsuo's life story seems to personally typify an Edoite lifestyle. Born in Ise to a Samurai family, he moved to Edo as a young man. Legendary accounts claim either that he was exiled from his family because of bad behaviour, or that he gave up the sword to pursue the arts of peace. In Edo he seems to have spent many years living in poverty, while studying a variety of arts including drawing, pottery, writing haiku poetry with Basho and lacquering. His lacquer work was one of the most famous product of Edo in the 1720s. He is known for his inventive designs that simulate other materials, and for his technical innovation in inlaying ceramic into lacquer. Here are some stories about Ritsuo:

Ritsuo was noticed by Basho while walking in the Kiso mountains. Basho instantly recognised that he was an extraordinary person. They passed each other, but Ritsuo looked back over at Basho and recited a haiku poem. Basho was impressed and asked him to join his poetry group.

Ritsuo was noticed by the Daimyo of Tsugaru while selling his lacquer wares on Ryogoku bridge, which is pictured above. Back then Ritsuo's income was unstable, and there were days that he would have to go without food, but he is said to have never complained. The Daimyo of Tsugaru saw his wares and instantly recognised their peerless quality, and had him become his vassal. As a result of this arrangement the Tsugaru family to this day have a large collection of Ritsuo's work.

Ritsuo seems to have been a calming influence on people based on accounts of his life while living with his haiku poetry group in Edo. People used to steal rice from the communal pot and replace it with other things, so Ritsuo would periodically check to make sure that the rice was intact. He set up a beautiful Buddhist shrine in the poets' residence by carving out a circle in the wall, spreading gravel and enshrining a statue of the Buddha as a child.

Ritsuo as a lacquerer

• Town lacquerers were experimental

• Why would a Daimyo hire Ritsuo?

• Maverick Daimyo

• Fame of works

In the Edo period lacquering was carried out by craftsmen in three different situations, and it is usually understood that these three situations fostered different design styles. These were itinerant lacquerers, town lacquerers and official lacquerers employed as vassals of daimyo. From the 17th century a growing merchant class was increasingly able to afford to buy lacquer from town lacquerers. The opening of a new market for lacquer allowed designers to experiment with new motifs and ideas, breaking away from the literary themes preferred by the conservative aristocracy. Town lacquerers had a reputation for cutting corners in their workmanship in order to turn over a quick profit, but they were also able to produce experimental designs such as reproductions of Ukiyo-e prints. To quickly note, the fact that Ritsuo is described as living on an unstable income may be to set him apart from your typical town lacquerer - the implication is that rather than cutting corners in order to put rice on the table, he produced great lacquer work and stoicially went without food, a common theme in Edo period morality tales written for merchants.

The tastes of the daimyo are usually described as conservative in contrast to the tastes of the Edo merchant class. However, the daimyo of Tsugaru took on Ritsuo, the most experimental and daring lacquerer of the time, as a vassal. I want to find out what can explain this break away from the expected tastes of a daimyo. One possible explanation would be that the daimyo of Tsugaru was a maverick - to further explore this I will have to study accounts of his life. Another explanation is that Ritsuo was so famous as the best lacquerer in Edo, and his work so valuable, that the daimyo would gain more cultural capital from hiring him as a vassal than he could have gained from hiring a more traditional lacquerer. When this box was made, 1746, Ritsuo had been working as a vassal for around 20 years. It can be understood as typical of the impressive works that the daimyo of Tsugaru benefitted from owning.

In this slide I’ve highlighted the three votive papers. The first is one of his artist names, ‘Muchuan,’ the second is the year, and the third is his given name, Haritsu with his artist’s seal above it.

The name 'Muchuan,' hermitage in dreams, may hint at a failure to match up to his own Buddhist ideals. The religious life of the hermit, traditionally glorified in Japan, was a far cry from his life as an Edo merchant.

Haiku

• Kojiki ni moKau wa nararenuKakashi ka na

• Begging for food

• Katana sageteAyashiki shimo noJizou ka na

• As I lay down my swordDid I see in the strange frostBodhisattva Kshitigarbha?

• Kane motazuUezu kotoshi moKure ni keri

• With no moneyNot hungry or thirstyI can live this year too

I'm trying to find out more in detail about his own religious beliefs from his haiku poems. I haven't been able to produce definitive translations of them, but I'll reproduce a couple of them here and highlight the words that I have been able to make sense of. In this poem, for instance, Ritsuo refers to begging for food, another aspect of the idealised Buddhist hermit or monastic life, and in a similar vein in this one he talks about having no money but no hunger either. The next refers to a vision of the Bodhisattva Kshitigarbha.

• Institutionally strong

• Spiritually dead?

• Cultural role: zen art and ridicule

Buddhism in Edo Japan

To give some historical background, the state of Buddhism in the Edo period has been a subject of debate in academia. Buddhism as an institution was very strong, as the Tokugawa government required everyone to register at birth with a temple (Totman). This has led some to claim that Buddhism in the Edo period was spiritually dead and became little more than an arm of the bureauracy in a debauched society (Pruning the Bodhi Tree?). However, the beautiful Zen art produced in the Edo period has led others to claim that Buddhism was flourishing spiritually, but in a way that is not, perhaps cannot, be expressed in textual sources (the Art of Zen). In any case, Buddhist monks and even apocryphal figures were routinely parodied and ridiculed in Edo cultural works such as this print comparing the Zen figure Bodhidharma to a prostitute. This shows that there was some contemporary cultural tension with Buddhism at least as an institution, a tension that Ritsuo would have been aware of and may even have been acknowledging here while at the same time expressing his personal Buddhist faith.

The depiction of the temple gong with votive papers appears at first sight to be an image taken straight from active temple life. However, for papers to fall on a gong in this way it would have to be taken from its stand and left unused. The gong appears aged and worn, which makes it similar to a Ritsuo netsuke studied by Christine. Like the netsuke, there is a sense of surprise as you lift the object at how light it is, in spite of its metallic appearance. This dissonance between the appearance of the object and its feel in the hands seems to further undermine the past splendour of the gong. Lacquer is a very sturdy material, and will outlast most other materials with little damage from moisture. However, it cannot be polished like bronze. This gong will never shine, and it will never ring. Its agedness is permanent, its essential emptiness given away by its lack of physical weight. It could be taken as a poignant reminder of the fact that all things will age and die, a fact that 85-year-old Ritsuo would have been very aware of when he made this object.

A spider lurking inside the lid adds to the sense that the gong is disused, while at the same time adding a humorous, personal element. The spider is alive, while the gong lies aged and unused. Perhaps the viewer is tempted to identify with the spider, as a poetic comment about being a 'small man'. I particularly like the idea that the small man sits inside the temple gong even as it lies unused in a spiritually stagnant institution.

Michael Tomkinson

• ‘[Ritsuo] is one of the epoch-making geniuses of Japan, whose authentic handiwork serve as standards, and form the land-marks for collection.’

• 'In the use of lacquer Japan stands alone. Not merely is the art she has evolved for its decoration unique and supreme, beyond imitation and without rival, but the technical mastery of the material has been perfected beyond the possibility of improvement... The prodigal invention and superb mastery displayed in the designs would appal a Western draughtsman, were they executed in ordinary pigment on paper; but... the result is so amazing, that you can readily forgive any exaggeration of praise in which enthusiasts may indulge...'(Emphasis added)

Before being purchased by the V&A Museum, the box was in the collection of Michael Tomkinson. His collection is described in a book published in 1898, but my box is not listed, which may mean that he purchased it after the publication of this book. However, the book is an interesting source of information on his own opinions on lacquer. He described Ritsuo as epoch-making, so this writing box may have been one of the more treasured objects in his collection. The section on lacquer opens with the quote below. Although the quote is long, there are a couple of points I want to highlight as they are key issues in my study of British tastes in Japanese lacquer in the 19th century, which unfortunately I don’t have time to go into detail about. Technical mastery was prized in lacquer partly because the material reveals the work required to make it so readily in its texture, shine and inlaid details. The comparison to paper highlights this interest in lacquer as a unique material.

More Tomkinson quotes

• 'It is far more reasonable to look forward to another great sculptor than ... a future Ritsuo... it would seem that the conditions which permitted the leisurely preparation of these masterpieces are never likely to recur...’

• ‘...it must not be forgotten that as a rule the most superb pieces of lacquer were intended for actual use, and well fitted for active service...'

Tomkinson and other collectors also prized lacquer because it was seen as a dying art form from a lost time and a mystical, foreign land, as can be seen in the top quote. The quote below is an example of Tomkinson’s love for Japanese design objects as things that were intended for actual use, to add beauty to everyday life. Since the box in question shows signs of use on the inkstone, I assume that this contributed to its appeal to Tomkinson.