Category: art

Kurodani’s Buddha

At the cemetery of Kurodani temple (the official name is Konkai Komyo-ji) is this unique Buddha statue.

It is called the Gokoshiyui Amida Statue, but, for obvious reasons, it is better known as the “Afro Buddha”. The story goes that this Buddha had such an incredibly long period of training/meditation that the hair grew to this size and shape.

And indeed, the name “Gokoshiyui” can be translated to “5 kalpa thought”, where a kalpa is an aeon, an incredibly long time. Interestingly, while there are definitions of the length of a kalpa in Hinduism (4.32 billion years), Buddhism prefers to use analogies rather than explicit numbers. Wikipedia states that in some definitions, a regular kalpa is 16.8 million years, and there are small, medium and great kalpas as well, the last one being about 1.3 trillion years.

I guess after such a long time of meditation, you can be excused for having a bad hair day. His face also has a wonderful, serene expression, and I wonder what stories he might tell…

Okoku Konoshima

What makes an artist famous? His works must appeal to at least some of his contemporaries to begin with, but a certain timeless quality is necessary as well to attract new admirers in the future. And of course, the right connections are necessary, or in other words: marketing. Nobody gets famous by working away alone in their basement. Still, things can be more complicated than that.

Kyoto-born Okoku Konoshima is one of these cases. Although he was a prolific artist, many of his large-scale paintings were bought by museums during in lifetime, and he was commissioned to decorate all the fusuma in the main hall of Nanyo-in temple, he doesn’t count among the circle of the truly famous. Only recently, his work has garnered renewed interest. Part of this may well be because he mostly withdrew from artist’s circles in his later life. But let’s start at the beginning.

Okoku Konoshima was born in 1877 as Bunjiro, the second son of a businessman in Kyoto’s bustling Sanjo-Muramachi district. His father’s house saw many guests of different walks of life, and Konoshima was able to meet tea masters, painters, poets, and other creative people from a young age. Although he was meant to study business, likely to take over or at least get involved in his father’s furniture business, he dropped out of the commercial school he was enrolled in and took painting classes instead. 

In 1893, when he was 16, he began to take classes from Imao Keinen, one of the leaders of the Maruyama-Shijo school. This particular school of painting put a great focus on sketches, and over his lifetime, Konoshima filled 674 sketchbooks with animals, flowers, and other drawings. And already in 1899, at the age of 22, Konoshima’s painting “Uryu Brothers” won a prize at an exhibition and was subsequently bought by the Imperial Household Agency.

Konoshima is best known for his paintings of animals. He received free annual passes for Kyoto City Zoo, but was happy to take inspiration from everywhere. His animals are very realistically drawn, but at the same time, they are done in an almost lyrical style that shows a great affection for them.

Besides his animal paintings, there are his landscapes. Konoshima travelled extensively from age 26 or so and filled dozens of sketchbooks on his yearly trips through Japan. They became the basis for large-scale landscape paintings on folding screens and fusuma sliding doors. With these ink paintings, Konoshima created a modernized style rooted in traditional Chinese paintings by incorporating the spatial perspectives of Western paintings. In a way, he was able to transplant these traditional landscapes from China to Japan, creating vistas that were both new and familiar.

As mentioned above, Konoshima withdrew from painter’s circles later in life and instead focused on poetry and calligraphy. His reasons for that are unknown, but he was fond of poetry throughout his life. He died in 1938 when he was hit by a train in Osaka.

I’ll add some images tomorrow.

Shimabara’s Last Tayu

Together with maiko and geisha, the tayu are traditional female entertainers of Japan. And yet, they are much less known to the (foreign) public, partly because today, there are even fewer of them than there are geisha, and partly because of their origin: In the Edo period, tayu were courtesans.

At that time, prostitution in Japan was legal and strictly regulated. The three largest cities – Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka – had city districts dedicated to the love for sale. In Kyoto, this was the Shimabara district, which lies near Kyoto station and still maintains some of its charms (if not the prostitutes). In Edo, it was the famous Yoshiwara district, and old photographs show women sitting in rows behind wooden lattices, ready for work.

You would search in vain for a tayu among them, though. Just like their geisha sisters in the hanamachi, tayu were highly trained and honed their skills in dance, playing instruments, and seductive banter for years. As a tayu, the top-ranking courtesan of the town, she commanded the highest prices for a meeting, and her lovers counted among the country’s elite, financial or in society.

And so were the tayu. In old Japan, the views on prostitution differed greatly from that in the West. It was simply another job. In fact, the young women in the photo above may have come to the Yoshiwara only temporarily to help with family finances. When they returned home, their reputations – and even marriage prospects – were untarnished.

In Kyoto, the famous Yoshino Tayu is revered to this day. She is said to have been the most beautiful tayu in history, and she is featured in kabuki plays and Japanese novels. Her wealth was such, that she could afford to donate a new front gate to Joshoji temple in Kyoto. She was laid to rest there, and has a festival in spring dedicated in her honour.

Kyoto’s Shimabara district and its entertainments are long gone, and although there is still a tayu in Kyoto, she doesn’t usually perform in public. However, I was lucky to see her dance at an exhibition with photos of her, and it was truly special.

As you can see, the style of her dress is so much more flamboyant than that of any geisha – notice the colour red everywhere! The obi is tied in front where it is easy to undo – a nod to her work of old. I was quite surprised by the dragon painted on her outer kimono (which is a family heirloom, possibly more than 100 years old, btw.) as dragons are usually associated with men. Her hairstyle with the dozens of kanzashi pins must be very time-consuming to maintain, and yes, this is her real hair. She also has blackened teeth, something that was normal for married women in the Edo period.

The dance, at first, seemed not much different than the ones that geisha perform. A fan, a letter used as props to tell a story, delicate hand gestures, little kicks to get the long kimono out of the way. And yet, her dance seemed so much more erotically charged, and I’m not sure why. Was it the smiles, the raised eyebrows? The shy looks flashed to the audience from behind the fan? Or her naked toes peeking out from beneath her red underkimono?

I guess, where a geisha means to symbolize an almost maiden-like modesty, a tayu is seen as a grown woman who knows what she wants – and how to get it.

Takigi Noh

As mentioned, I went to see this year’s Takigi Noh, a two-hour-long Noh/Kyogen performance on an outdoor stage set up at Heian shrine. The surroundings with vermilion buildings reminiscent of Kyoto’s Imperial Palace lend a special ambience when stacks of fire and paper lanterns are lit just before dusk to light the stage. After all, Takigi Noh means “outdoor fire-lit Noh”.

The Takigi Noh at Heian Shrine was first staged at the end of May 1950. From 1955 on, the dates were fixed to June 1 and 2. On these two days, 8 plays are shown, two of them are kyogen. Japan’s top actors are invited each year to make this event truly special. However, this is not the only firelight Noh performance, merely the biggest. In Kyoto, Shiramine shrine has a pretty famous one too, and many other shrines show Noh plays at special festivals.

In fact, Takigi Noh has its roots more than 1000 years ago, at Kofukuji temple in Nara, where religious ceremonies called Shunigatsu-e were held in the 2nd month of the year. At that time, Takigi-sarugaku performances took place, early precursors of what later developed into the Takigi Noh theatre of today. Takigi Noh reached the peak of its popularity in the Edo period, fell out of favour after the Meiji Restoration, and was revived again after WWII.

Heian Jingu’s Takigi Noh features 8 plays, and often, there is a common theme that runs through one day. For example, the plays I have seen all had the overarching theme of “heavenly intervention”. It’s not just the atmosphere that makes this Takigi Noh special. The plays are condensed to their most visually exciting parts. Written synopses of all plays are available – even in English – and if you miss getting a leaflet at the entrance, the plays are introduced by two kyogen players who manage to weave in a commentary of current events. Finally, the speech that is given after the fire lighting ceremony is translated into English, something I was especially grateful for.

Unfortunately, taking pictures during the performance was not allowed, that’s why you’re just getting this year’s poster as illustration… Anyway, overall, I had a great evening, and I’m really considering making this a regular occurrence.

Ikenobo & Ikebana

A few weeks ago, I visited the Ikebana Spring Exhibition at the Ikenobo Headquarters in Kyoto. On no fewer than 8 floors, there were hundreds of flower arrangements, so many that at the end, they all blurred together. I wish I had done a bit of research earlier, but better late than never. The photos below show flower arrangements from that exhibition, I’m afraid I chose not overly traditional ones (because they are more fun).

The Ikenobo is the oldest school of flower arrangement in Japan. It dates back to 8th century Kyoto, and its headquarters are still at the same spot, at Rokkaku-do temple in the heart of Kyoto. Rokkaku-do itself was founded by Shotoku Taishi in 587, long before the capital was moved here. The temple’s priests lived in a hut (bo) at a nearby pond (ike), and over time, the people began to call them ike-no-bo. The priests made flower offerings at the temple every day.

So, Ikebana has its roots in such flower offerings at Buddhist altars, and as such, it is an import from India and China. However, at first, these offerings took the simple form of putting flowers into a vase in front of the Buddha, whereas Japanese ikebana over time developed into a style with dozens of formal rules.

These rules crystallized during the Muromachi period into tatehana, a simple style that presented flowers as they occurred in nature, meaning “standing up”. At this time, flower arrangements were quite large and therefore only shown in temples and the homes of wealthy aristocrats.

The term ikebana – it means arranging flowers or living flowers – can be traced back to the 15th century, however the oldest book on the subject, the Sendensho is dated 1445 and already gives very detailed instructions for arrangements for special occasions.

In the first half of the 16th century, Senno Ikenobo wrote another book on the art, called Kadensho. There, he mentions the importance of finding the inner beauty of plants through the arrangement, instead of merely appreciating beautiful flowers. At this time, the style of rikka became popular, and Senno Ikenobo was not only its main artist, he also formalized the style as a combination of fixed elements that needed to be present in every arrangement. In this manner, virtually everybody could produce pleasing arrangements, but on the other hand, artistic expression was rather limited.

In the 18th century, a simpler style was created that used a reduced number of the parts in a rikka arrangement. This style is called seika or shoka (pure flowers), and its significantly smaller end results found their way into private homes of fairly wealthy but common people as well.

In the Meiji era, Japanese traditions lost their appeal under the influences of new art and lifestyle introduced from the West. However, through new styles like the nagairebana (thrown-in flowers) and moribana (piled-up flowers), as well as permitting Western flowers in the arrangements, ikebana saw a renaissance. This was reinforced when ikebana, together with tea ceremony and calligraphy, was seen as essential in the education of women, especially of the upper classes.

So far, the last innovation in ikebana was the introduction of the jiyuka style (free flowers) after WWII. As the name suggests, there are no more rules and the focus lies on creativity, so much so, that even non-flower materials are permitted.

Over time, dozens of new ikebana schools have been formed, all with slightly different rules for their arrangements and a varying emphasis on formality and creativity, respectively. Today, ikebana is taught worldwide, but nowhere else has it such a recognition as in Japan. In Kyoto, the birthplace of ikebana, the Ikenobo school operates an entire college dedicated to it.

Uemura Shoen

There must be something in the air in Kyoto that is especially conducive to artists. Clearly, while Kyoto was the capital of Japan, this was the place to be if you wanted to make a living as an artist, or even as a craftsperson. But even today, Kyoto is a hub of Japan’s art world and many people with strong ties to the city become leaders in their fields, be it ukiyo-e, paintings, calligraphy, ceramics etc.

One of the most famous Japanese artists – and a woman to boot – is Uemura Shoen (1875 – 1949). She stands out as one of the few female painters from the Meiji/Taisho/Showa eras of Japan who rose not only to national but even to international fame during her lifetime.

When she was born in 1875 as the second daughter of a tea merchant in Kyoto’s Shimogyoku district, she was named Tsune. Her father had died two months before her birth, so she grew up in a household dominated by her mother and aunts. Tsune’s mother ran a popular teashop called “Chikiri-ya” which attracted affluent clients purchasing tea and other items for tea ceremony.

Little Tsune loved to draw from an early age and impressed her family so much with her talent that she was sent to the Kyoto Prefectural Art School to study when she was only 12 years old. Just three years later, her painting The Beauty of Four Seasons was sent to an art exhibition and was promptly bought by Prince Arthur, the third son of Queen Victoria, who was visiting Japan at that time. From one day to another, the young girl now known as Uemura Shoen became a celebrity.

At that time, this was highly unusual. Even though many women, especially of the higher classes, learned how to paint (mostly in the traditional Japanese style), they practised the art as a pastime rather than as a profession. While other professional female painters did exist at the time (for example, Ito Shoba and Kajiwara Hisako), most of Japan’s art scene was dominated by men, in particular outside of Tokyo. Uemura’s international success – a version of The Beauty of Four Seasons won an award at the 1893 World Exposition in Chicago – was unprecedented.

Uemura Shoen studied under several teachers (Suzuki Shonen who gave her the first kanji of his name, Kono Bairei and Takeuchi Seiho) and in her work integrated the traditional Maruyama Shijo, Kano, and Sesshu schools of painting. She also drew influences from ukiyo-e and Chinese landscape paintings.

The majority of Uemura Shoen’s works are so-called bijin-ga, paintings of beautiful women, doubtlessly influenced by all the women who visited her mother’s teashop. Their bodies often take up most of the painting and draw the focus towards the intricate details of their kimono and hair ornaments, painted with unparalleled delicacy. Many of her works were inspired by Noh theater. Even though women are not allowed to perform, Uemura’s paintings of Noh show women in classical dance poses and with a strong and determined mien.

When Uemura was 27 and unmarried, she gave birth to a son, Uemura Shoko, who later became a painter himself. She raised him and his sister, born a few years later, as a single mother, and never revealed the name of their father. It is speculated, however, that it may have been her teacher, Suzuki Shonen. Not only did he allow her to use the first character of his name in her own pseudonym, but he also accelerated her education and let her learn and practice the painting of figures in his own atelier instead of at school. Already at that time, people suspected an affair between the two, and her reputation took a downwards turn. However, in the long run, her exceptional talent silenced all critics, whether of her work or her private conduct.

In her later years, Uemura Shoen’s status as outstanding female painter was officially recognized. She became the pioneer in numerous top-ranking awards: first female painter accepted in the Imperial Art Academy (1941), second female court artist to the Imperial Household Agency (1944), and first woman to receive the Order of Culture (1948). Her painting Jo no mai of a female Noh dancer was the first painting by a Japanese woman rated as Important Cultural Propery. Uemura Shoen died in 1949, aged 74, still painting until the very end.

Uemura Shoen was a very prolific painter. To see a wide range of her pieces, you don’t have to go far (from Kyoto, that is): The Shohaku Art Museum in Nara focuses on her works, as well as those of her son and grandson.

Zenbi Kagizen Art Museum

I found out about this new museum recently and just had to check it out (I love my job). It’s always special to find something brand new in Kyoto, where everything else dates back hundreds of years and even people are not considered “real” Kyoto people unless their family moved to Kyoto “before the war” – the Onin War of 1467, mind you…

The Zenbi Kagizen Art Museum in Gion was established last year, and it is housed in a newly-built building in zen-like style, very minimalistic. An effort has been made to make it fit among the surroundings, which also show a traditional exterior.

This little museum is a private one, founded by the Kagizen Yoshifusa, a maker of traditional Kyoto sweets that dates back to the Edo period. Usually, sweets shops like these cater to monks and tea houses, since traditional kyo-gashi confectionary is most often used at tea ceremonies or to offer to guests. However, back in the Showa period, the then-head of the family, Zenzo, managed to establish the Kagizen as a salon for artists, writers, researchers, in short: the intellectual crowd of Kyoto. Their sweets have been immensely popular among general citizens as well.

So, said Zenzo, the 12th generation head of the family, made lots of connections to the local art scene, and especially the mingei movement (folk art) headed by Kawai Kanjiro was favoured by him. He also established a deep friendship with Tatsuaki Kuroda, a wood craftsman and lacquer artist, who designed pieces for the Kagizen store and teahouse. This friendship laid the foundations of the museum’s collection, and I wish I had found the museum already last year, because the very first exhibition was about the connection between Kuroda and Zenzo – and I love lacquerware.

But their current exhibition on wooden molds for sweets is equally fascinating, because it explores the history of the Kagizen Yoshifusa as sweets maker famous for higashi, dried sweets. These tea-ceremony favourites are often nothing more than sugar, sometimes colored, and pressed into molds to create a large variety of shapes. Chrysanthemums and other flowers are common, as are seashells and fish. For weddings etc. there are auspicious cranes or turtles, and each new year sees the appropriate zodiac animal.

I was surprised by the variety of the shapes, and how delicately the molds were carved. Of course, this is a job for an expert, and besides molds used by the Kagizen over the years, there were also some from a collection of a 3rd generation artisan sweet-mold maker. My favourite? The astronauts!

So, if you’d like to check out this lovely new museum, here’s their website: https://zenbi.kagizen.com/ The exhibition on the sweets molds is on until April 10, 2022.

On the way home, drop by at the shop on Shijo dori and get some sweets – definitely worth it as well! https://www.kagizen.co.jp/en/store/


My Favourite Painting

I want to express my symphony in the painting by interpreting a musical score in my own way.

This is “Symphony”, a 1961 nihonga painting by Insho Domoto (1891 – 1975), one of the most versatile and prolific painters of Kyoto. In his life, he had essentially three great periods of paintings: The earliest, where he produced traditional nihonga paintings. The middle one, after WWII, is characterized by Western-style paintings, reminiscent of the art produced in Europe at that time. Finally, when already in his 70s, he turned to fully abstract art like the one above. I will talk about him in more detail in another post.

When I first saw this painting – as a postcard-sized reproduction to boot – it touched me deeply. And last Friday, when I went to the Insho Domoto Museum and saw it “for real” for the first time, it moved me to tears.

What you cannot see in this reproduction is that the black ink strokes are textured, like seams of coal that have been excavated from the earth with shovels. The large golden dots to the right of the center stand out of the painting like buttons.

When I stood before it on Friday, I thought that the black figure in the center is a bird; the head the large slanted stroke to the left, connected to the feathery body with a long neck, like a black heron. I find it very hard to describe what I feel when I look at this painting. It overwhelms me, somehow, and I had to step back and go elsewhere three or four times while I was looking at it, almost to calm my nerves. I think this is a masterpiece, but do I think so because of its artistic value or because of the feelings it invokes in me?

Photogenic Cat Exhibition

We had a holiday today, the autumnal equinox. I’m still very busy with work; there are four projects I’m involved in right now with European clients; with steep workloads and tight deadlines. However, somehow this week all four got delayed for some reason or other, and when I hadn’t received a single job this morning, I jumped at the occasion and took the day off.

I now have to admit that I was very naughty. Instead of staying at home reading, as I would have done otherwise, I joined friends of mine on a day trip to Otsu on Lake Biwa. Why naughty? Because we’re still under a state of emergency until the end of the month; we shouldn’t travel at all, and definitely not across prefectural borders…

However, all four of us have been fully vaccinated; the venue is less than 30 minutes drive away from my place (and 11 minutes by train from Kyoto station); and I guess that half of Otsu’s population work in Kyoto or Osaka anyway. “Dear God, please make sure I always have an excuse handy.”

This is why we didn’t think twice when Kosuke Ota announced his exhibition “The Story of Biwako Cats”. Ota-san is a retired war photographer who worked in the Yugoslavian war, in Iraq etc. In his retirement, he moved to Otsu and documents the feral cat population that roams the area around the Biwako Otsukan, where the exhibition was held.

Taken from Ota-san’s blog: http://uchino-toramaru.blog.jp/

We met the photographer there, who kindly signed two of his books for my friend. And afterwards we had delicious Belgian waffles in the restaurant on the first floor. Towards late afternoon, we met some of the cats starring in the exhibition and took some pictures of our own (not quite so masterfully though).

I had a great day, and it was worth going out. This is the first time I left Kyoto since last October, when I went on the Lake Biwa Canal Cruise – for which, I now see, have never posted any pictures… Well, it’s been almost a year, so it’s time for that soon.