5 Paintings You Need to See in Japan

Ogata Kōrin was born into a rich merchant-class family that owned a textile shop in Kyōto patronized by the ladies of feudal lords and nobles. Kōrin was influenced by the tradition that the artists Kōetsu and Sōtatsu had developed at the artistic community Takagamine, where his grandfather was a member. The Rinpa (“School of Rin”) style established by his two predecessors in fact takes its name from Kōrin, who consolidated the style with his brother Kenzan. After losing the family fortune, Kōrin and Kenzan made their living by designing textiles, screens, lacquer, and ceramics. Irises is a symbolic representation of a scene from the Eight Plank Bridge of the Tales of Ise, a compilation of lyrical episodes written in the Heian period. By removing the hero and the bridge central to the tale from his depiction, Kōrin created a rhythmic composition based on repetition in an almost abstract manner. The flowers are painted in mokkotsu, the boneless brushwork style without ink outlines. Kōrin made a number of drawings of nature from life, but in his paintings objects are often reduced to their essence, presented in flat and simplified designs. Kōrin reworked the decorative style and the yamato-e (native Japanese painting) themes employed by Sōtatsu, whose paintings Kōrin copied to learn the techniques. The Rinpa school is known for its abundant use of colors, gold leaf, and silver. A hundred years later, Sakai Hōitsu revived the Rinpa tradition in Edo, present-day Tokyo, after studying Kōrin’s works. Irises is in the Nezu Museum in Tokyo. (Fuyubi Nakamura)

Hishikawa Moronobu is often credited with the advancement of the ukiyo-e, a style of Japanese print and painting developed during the Edo period. Ukiyo-e was a popular pictorial expression of the world of Kabuki theater, the Yoshiwara pleasure district, and other scenes of urban life, often peopled with actors and courtesans. The word ukiyo was originally used in the religious context of Buddhism, referring to the ephemeral nature of human life, but in the Edo period it acquired a new connotation as it became associated with the fleetingness of urban society. Born into a family of textile embroiderers near Tokyo, Moronobu’s first artistic experience was making underdrawings on fabrics. After moving to Edo (present-day Tokyo), he produced book illustrations using woodblock prints. By making sets of single-sheet illustrations independently from their accompanying text, he established a new ukiyo-e idiom. His prints were usually monochrome and often hand-painted. Beauty Looking Back, which is part of the collection of the Tokyo National Museum, is an example of a genre which portrayed beautiful women from the Kanbun period. Hand-painted ukiyo-e pictures were not the original pictures used for woodblock print reproductions but singular pieces made to be viewed in their own right. By showing the back of a woman, Moronobu effectively displays the fashions of the day as seen in the hairstyle and kimono pattern. Ukiyo-e prints were a source of inspiration for Art Nouveau and many Impressionist painters, including Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet, in 19th-century Europe. (Fuyubi Nakamura)

Many consider the Zen Buddhist priest Sesshū as the greatest master of Japanese ink painting. Traveling around the country as an itinerate priest, Sesshū devoted his life to art. As a youth, he entered Shukoku-ji Temple in Kyōto, where he received training in Zen and painting under the guidance of Shūbun. Winter Landscape, in the Tokyo National Museum, was created in his personal version of the Xia Gui style, marked by its use of hatsuboku (splattered ink). The poetic legacy of his Japanese teachers is also recalled here. Sesshū depicted mountains, cliffs, and rocks in a technique known as shumpu, which combines bold outlines with more delicate lines to create a feeling of three-dimensionality. Long before the early modern period, he had already established his reputation as an artistic genius—the sheer number of disciples he had in his lifetime testifies to his influence and popularity. (Fuyubi Nakamura)

Kichijōten is the oldest extant color painting of a single figure in Japan and is a superb example of Nara period arts, which incorporated elements of the arts of the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907). The Buddhist deity Kichijōten derives from Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity. Buddhism was introduced to Japan from China and Korea in the 6th century and heavily influenced Japanese art. Yet Buddhism’s encounter with Shintō, the indigenous religion of Japan, distinguished Japanese Buddhism from other Asian traditions, and distinctive Japanese styles evolved. Painted in polychrome, Kichijōten depicts an idealized Asian beauty with full cheeks and crescent-shaped eyebrows dressed in the robes of the Tang court. Her right hand forms a mudra, a hand gesture symbolizing the special feature of a Buddhist deity and on her left hand lies a hōju, a sacred gem. The painting is in the Yakushi-ji temple complex in Nara. (Fuyubi Nakamura)

Splendorous images and the abundant use of gold leaf characterize the art of the Momoyama period. A union of architecture and painting in the building and decorating of castles and mansions of feudal lords and nobles resulted in an elaborate style of interior paintings of folding screens, sliding panels, and walls. Kanō Eitoku was the master painter of this style, establishing the aesthetic canons of the Kanō school, founded by Kanō Masanobu, Eitoku’s grandfather. Eitoku excelled in brush techniques from an early age under the guidance of his grandfather, and he worked in a variety of styles and mediums. The Chinese Lions folding screen is one of the rare extant large-scale works by Eitoku. (It is in the Museum of the Imperial Collections in Tokyo.) Commissioned by feudal lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, it depicts two guardian lions with their manes and tails in stylized flame patterns. These lions, believed to have mythic protective powers, traditionally stood in front of palaces, temples, tombs, and homes of the wealthy. Eitoku invented a new style of painting on gold-leaf backgrounds to achieve dramatic effects suitable for shoguns’ displays of power. He might have taken the idea from newly arrived Spanish and Portuguese religious paintings. The Kanō School’s influence was widespread and dominated Japanese painting from the 15th through the mid-19th century. Kanō artists combined the Chinese Zhe School style of ink painting with decorative elements derived from the Japanese indigenous yamato-e style. They were also renowned for their monochrome ink landscapes. (Fuyubi Nakamura)