Tawaraya S?

tatsu and the watery poetics of Japanese

ink painting
YUKIO LIPPIT

a term, tarashikomi (literally "dripped

to one of the most recognizable
that
refers
in"),
of
Japanese painting of the early modern
techniques
of
involves the initial application
This
period.
technique
on
a layer of pigment, usually monochrome
ink,
heavily

methods.

sized paper or silk, followed by the measured

introduction of a second
layer of either ink or colorant

commonly
employed?provide
descriptive
for the visual effects with which
approximations
is associated. As the H?itsu example
tarashikomi
shows,
however, "ink staining" or "stain painting" does more

There exists

while

the first layer is still moist, causing the newly

pigment to bleed outward and form an

introduced

in the
the centrality of this technique
Although
a
amount
substantial
of
has
Rinpa repertoire
generated
to
it
sustained
has
been
commentary,
rarely
subjected
analysis.3 The Japanese term and its English
translations?"dripping"

or "pooling"

are the most

lies
amorphous mark. The visual appeal of this method
in the variegated and organic surface effects that result
from the fusion of the two different
layers of paint. A
remarkable example can be found in Cherry Tree and

it
justice to the qualities evident here. In fact, although
is not clear when the term tarashikomi emerged,
its use
does not appear to predate the modern era. It is

(fig. 1), a hanging scroll by the Japanese painter

in
in the Hosomi Art Museum
Sakai H?itsu (1761-1828)
In
of
tree
is
the
trunk
this
work
the
surface
Kyoto.

of affiliated techniques from the Edo period (1615-1868)

therefore

Thrush

complicated
by the timely introduction of malachite
a
into
green
layer of lightly graded ink,
preapplied
in the water solubility
the
inherent
qualities
exploiting
to
ink painting
localized painterly accidents.
produce
The interaction between pigments
is, at least to some
degree, beyond the control of the
emulsive patterns that ensue add
visual interest of H?itsu's work.1
is associated with
Tarashikomi
a
painters,
loosely affiliated group

painter,

and the

immeasurably

to the

the Rinpa lineage of

of artists?including

the aforementioned
H?itsu?that
claimed
inspiration
from the painter and master designer Ogata K?rin
for their abbreviated
1716).2 Celebrated
to
and
and their
approach
composition
design
on
variations
classical
themes, Rinpa
sophisticated
tarashikomi as one of their signature
painters employed
(1658-

with

small but

characterized

of

1. The yellow
in the trunk is not an independent
color
pigment
a
inwhich
rather the result of "malachite
burn" (rokush?-yake)
reaction between
the malachite
chemical
and the silk ground

a yellowish
around the green pigment.
produces
penumbra
to other professional
2. In contrast
houses of the Edo
painting
such as the Kano and Tosa schools,
the Rinpa school consisted
period,
primarily

of painters who
the early twentieth

studied

and drew

from K?rin.
inspiration
to
be
paid to the
began
ca. 1600-1640)
as a

century, attention
During
fan shop proprietor Tawaraya
S?tatsu
(active
crucial
influence on K?rin, and he was elevated
discourse
on

to the "founder''

the construction

Tamamushi

Satoko,

of the Rinpa
of the Rinpa school
Ikitsuzukeru

and Rinpa?kokusai
2004),
kokuritsu kindai bijutsukan

K?rin

shinpojiumu

in art historical

lineage. For recent scholarship

in the modern
era, see
k?bunkan,
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa
ed. Tokyo
h?kokusho,

(Tokyo: Br?cke,

2006).

that tarashikomi

important differences

overunifies
among

a group
them.

Although the visual profile of tarashikomi is

by the semifluid
intermingling of
its
successful
execution
also relies
painting pigments,
upon a careful a priori treatment of the painting ground.
This process
involves the even application
of alum
foremost

based

transforms the painting's

sizing (d?sa), which
surface. By neutralizing
support into an impermeable
the absorptive capacities of paper or silk in this way,
form results from the initial
sizing also causes whatever

a natural boundary
untransgressable
by any pigments that follow. Under
these conditions
Rinpa painters were able to achieve
certain extraordinary
effects, such as the intermingling
of ink to delineate

application

of
colors along the thin stem of a plant, no more than half
a centimeter
inwidth. A successful
tarashikomi effect
also relies upon a measured
rapidity of application,
a
because
second
infusion of paint needs to
necessary
be introduced before the initial layer dries. In this
it shares

several

similarities with

ink
splashed
the
monk
painting,
famously exemplified
by
Ink Landscape
(1495) in the
painter Sessh?'s Splashed
Museum
In
National
this
work,
Tokyo
(fig. 2).4
respect

but

possible

most

S?tatsu no suibokuga
Yoshiyasu,
(Tokyo: Zayu
in S?tatsu
"S?tatsu to suibokuga,"
1948); Yamane Y?z?,
chosakush?
ni, vol. 2 of Yamane Wz?
(Tokyo: Ch??k?ron

3. Tokugawa
hank?kai,
kenkyu

1996), pp.163-212;
bijutsu shuppan,
no hen'y?,"
in S?tatsu
"Tarashikomi
vol. 4 of Rinpa bijutsukan
Hiroyuki,
pp. 122-132.
4.

I have

unpublished
Japanese

and Nakabe Yoshitaka,

to Rinpa nogenry?,
ed.
series (Tokyo: Shueisha,

Kan?
1993),

in East Asia
addressed
the splashed
ink mode
in an
"Of Modes
inMedieval
and Manners
manuscript,
Ink Painting: Sessh?'s Splashed
Ink Landscape
of 1495."

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58

RES 51 SPRING 2007

successive
layers of inkwash are applied one on top of
in
another, each while the previous
layer is still moist,
order of lightest to darkest gradation of ink. The resulting
panoply of bleeding and blending effects intimates a
landscape primarily through fused motifs and the
ink and
of composition.
Both splashed
architectonics
to linear in
tarashikomi are planar as opposed
orientation
and somehow
suggestive of the temporality
itself. In both cases, the dynamic of
of the process
liquidity effaces the legibility of "brushwork" or the
so coded with tropes of
sensitive brush dynamics
in
East
Asian
ink
painting traditions (although
authorship
the erasure of brush traces itself would become
highly
ink differs from its spilled ink
Splashed
in
its
of more than two layers of
involvement
counterpart
ink.
its
and
reliance
solely upon monochrome
pigment
In general, tarashikomi requires a more measured
of pigment,
resulting in less splash and
application
indexical).

'

'^^^^?t' :.;.V."-VVJ^^^^^R'

'"

more

stain.

The aesthetic appeal of tarashikomi complements

In the hands of practitioners
such
itsmultivalency.
well
as H?itsu,
ink staining could be simultaneously
localized
InCherry Tree and Thrush,
abstract and representational.
that have been
the pools of malachite
for example,
into
ink
of
the
the
substrate
cherry tree create
dripped
an iridescent and abstract pattern entirely
independent
of the representational
prerogatives of the subject matter.
At the same time, these infusions of color invoke moss
dots and suggest the organic texture of the trunk surface.
in the pooling
This duality is exploited most
impressively
In
K?rin's
K?rin.
of
Eight-Planked
Ogata
techniques
Museum
of Art, for
Bridge screens in the Metropolitan
in
is
effective
tarashikomi
introducing a
highly
example,
to
mineral
the
brilliant
contrastive,
aqueous
tonality
setting, while
pigments used to depict the surrounding
a sense of the decayed wood of the
also conveying
ninth
bridge (fig. 3). The screens evoke the celebrated
I
in
which
the
of
classic
7a/es
of
the
se,
courtly
chapter
with
from
eastward
exiled protagonist,
Kyoto
traveling
an acrostic poem on a marshy
his entourage,
composes
site traversed by an eight-planked
bridge and
?rises. In this context,
the
surrounded by blooming
are
to
the
intended
evoke
rusticity
rotting bridge planks
of the setting.5

Figure 1. Sakai H?itsu (1761-1828), Cherry Tree and Thrush,

early nineteenth century. Hanging scroll, ink and colors on
silk,

130.7

x 50.2

cm.

Hosomi

Art Museum,

Kyoto.

with
his preoccupation
5. K?rin's lacquerware
confirm
designs
the same
in his famous
box depicting
this effect;
lacquer writing
in the Tokyo National Museum,
the lead inlays used to
subject
to convey
the same
represent the bridge planks are slightly corroded
quality

of dilapidation

and exilic

desolation.

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Lippit: Tawaraya S?tatsu and the watery poetics of Japanese ink painting

-1
t

1
1

Figure 2. Sessh? T?y? (1420-1506),

paper,

147.9

x 32.7

cm.

Tokyo

Splashed

National

Ink Landscape, detail 1495. Hanging

Museum.

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scroll, ink on

59

60

RES 51 SPRING 2007

Figure 3. Ogata K?rin (1658-1716), Eight-Planked Bridge, detail, early eighteenth century. Pair of six-panel folding screens,
colors, and gold foil on paper, 179 x 371.5 cm each. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Its uniquely prismatic abstraction and pictorial

poetics have made tarashikomi one of the most
innovations
celebrated
and at the same time inscrutable
identifiable
of Edo-period painting. As the most
it
technique of Rinpa painting from H?itsu's era onward,
the latter-day
role in conditioning
played a decisive
in orientation. The
reception of Rinpa as decorative
techniques of Rinpa painters were
dripping and blotching
art into
to notions of ornamental
according
with many other traditions of
which
Japanese art?along
art?was
non-European
being assimilated during the late
understood

and early twentieth century. The orientalist

nineteenth
of Rinpa and Japanese art as a whole
understanding
within
the framework of parlor ornamentation
clearly
In this
calls for some form of discursive disarticulation.6

6. While
dans

Japonais
commentators

Louis Gonse
what
referred to as the g?nie des
(the title of an 1888 essay), Euro-American
the structure
of this period were
firmly situated within

valorizing
le d?cor

ink,

regard, tarashikomi offers an intriguing case study of a

genesis and semantic
striking optical effect whose
potential has never been fully considered.
of a beaux

as
arts hierarchy
arts could function
inwhich
the decorative
Even while
than parlor ornamentation.
inverting
seemingly
this structure,
the resulting discourse
conceptualized
Japanese art
of neutral environmental
the framework
adornment.
objects within
little more

left its most enduring mark on art historical

Ironically, this view
in Japan itself, asTamamushi
Satoko has demonstrated
(see
practice
note 2). Numerous
recent inquiries
into premodem
Japanese concepts
and practices
of artful adornment
to restore
in attempting

approach

have often
context

taken

an anthropological
and design

to the visual

of Japanese art objects. The art historian Tsuji Nobuo

has
qualities
taken the lead in rallying scholars around
this line of interrogation,
'Kazar? no Nihon
the idea of kazari. See, for example,
specifically
1998) and Kazari:
bunka, ed. Tsuji (Tokyo: Kadokawa
shoten,
Decoration
in Japan, I5th-19th
and Display
ed. Nicole
Centuries,
Rousmaniere
(New York: Japan Society Gallery,
2002). Tsuji's
Coolidge
is not unproblematic,
in its essential
ist
however,
approach
especially
positing

of a "culture

indigenous

Japanese

of kazari"

as somehow

aesthetic.

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reflective

of an

Lippit: Tawaraya S?tatsu and the watery poetics of Japanese ink painting

61

As a modest

the present essay

step in this direction,
in the early
the origins of the technique
in
seventeenth
the
work
of
the
century,
painter Tawaraya
S?tatsu (act. 1600-1640).
The head of the Tawaraya fan
shop and painting atelier in Kyoto, S?tatsu was little

examines

known

until the early twentieth century, when his

as one of
reputation spread among artists and collectors
the most innovative artisans of Japan's early modern era.
By now he is a canonical
figure in Japanese art history,
is known about his
the
fact
that
almost
despite
nothing
life. A large corpus of attributed works and fragmentary
records relate that S?tatsu was a painter and paper
among the aristocracy
designer with a large constituency
to
and mercantile
elite. One of his main contributions
the history of Japanese art was the transposition of habits
of representation
unique to courtly papermaking
traditions to the medium
and formats of painting.
Because K?rin, a distant relative of S?tatsu, based much
of his own artistry on that of his predecessor,
S?tatsu
as the founder of the Rinpa school.
The conditions
under which his paintings conveyed
differed from those of his so-called Rinpa
meaning
that also applies to his
followers, however, a difference
use of tarashikomi. Of direct relevance
in this regard is a

would

later be hailed

ink paintings from

remarkable group of monochrome
in its initial
S?tatsu's hand representing
tarashikomi
most
is
Lotus and
famous among these
phases.7 The
in the Kyoto National Museum. As its title
suggests, the painting depicts two waterfowl
swimming
amidst lotus flowers in varying degrees of bloom and

Waterfowl

decay (fig. 4). Subtle spongiform effects, resulting from

the intermingling of sequential
layers of inkwash, can
on
be discerned
the lotus leaves and in the area around
in planar
ink has been applied
the flowers, where
fashion. The mottling
that results infinitely nuances the
surface and enables the scroll's compositional
ambiguity,
as evident toward the top of the scroll where
the lotus
into the inked-in area above. Through
its
leaf blends
use of
structure and minimal
simple compositional
Lotus and Waterfowl
its author's
showcases
materials,
keen awareness of the liquescent potential of ink.
one important way
Lotus and Waterfowl
demonstrates
use
inwhich S?tatsu's
of tarashikomi should be
from that of his followers. Most
latter-day
distinguished
to local
Rinpa painters selectively
applied the technique
areas of a painting, whereas
to
it
S?tatsu tended
make

7. This group
(Tokyo: Ch??k?ron
Yamane
shinbun,

Y?z?,
1977).

vol.

is discussed

en masse

in Yamane

1962),
bijutsu shuppan,
1 in Rinpa kaiga zensh?

Y?z?, S?tatsu
and S?tatsu ha ichi, ed.
series (Tokyo: Nihon
keizai

Figure

4. Tawaraya

S?tatsu

(act.

ca.

1600-1640),

Lotus

and

Waterfowl, early seventeenth century. Hanging scroll, ink on

paper, 119 x 48.3 cm. Kyoto National Museum.

the generative pictorial method out of which other

Inworks such as
effects in a painting were achieved.
Lotus and Waterfowl,
tarashikomi might be understood
less as a technique
than as a mode of picture making.
Hence the presence of numerous monochrome
in
works
S?tatsu's oeuvre that explore the full tonal spectrum of
ink painting. A noteworthy aspect of this corpus
is that
to the large
itsworks bear little technical
resemblance

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62

RES 51 SPRING 2007

body of ink paintings of similar subject matter produced

inmedieval
Japan. Such works, created primarily by Zen
Buddhist monk painters from the thirteenth through
sixteenth century, followed well-established
traditions of
brushwork

and composition.8

Instead, S?tatsu

consistently

pictorialized
subjects through sequential
tonal fields
layerings of ink, building up variegated
traversed by myriad wash effects.
Until now, the question of how he arrived at this

has taken precedence

unique form of picture-making
over the question of why he did so. There is at least one
work, however, that provides traction for an explanation
two
of the latter. It is a pair of hanging scrolls depicting
a
in
bulls in the collection
monastery
Kyoto
Ch?my?ji,
as a
(fig. 5). As will be argued, Bulls can be understood
locus classicus of tarashikomi technique, due to the way
its extraordinary
inkwork facilitates
insights into the
subject matter. Because of its inscriptions and what can
be gleaned about its production
context, this pair of
to explore the
scrolls provides a unique opportunity
was
to
which
tarashikomi
initially put.
painterly agendas
Stated another way, Bulls offers an important window
onto the contexts for the motivated
technical
in S?tatsu's now
resulted
that
experimentation
ultimately
famous

staining technique.
are executed
in
The bulls of Ch?my?ji
entirely
ink on paper, unaccompanied
monochrome
by settings
or motifs of any kind. This isolation calls attention to
set against lightly inked-in
their bovine silhouettes,
its bull
the left scroll depicts
backgrounds. While
its
and
the
scroll
depicts
right
standing
facing rightward,
left. Upon
bull squatting and facing toward the viewer's
closer inspection, however, the poses of both animals
between
appear more ambiguous.
They lay somewhere
as if
taut
with
tension
their
bodies
motion and stillness,
the invisible ether. As pursued below,
has much to do
of these dispositions

struggling against
the indeterminacy

the original narrative contexts of their pictorial

models. The signatures and seals in the lower outside
corners of the scrolls indicate both S?tatsu's authorship

in Chinese.

written

The poems, addressed below,

insights into the representational

provide significant
mandate of their accompanying
paintings.
Recent scholarly scrutiny has further specified
the
Bulls. Based
dating and original format of the Ch?my?ji
of Mitsuhiro's
upon a careful analysis of the progression
for their
ciphers, a date circa 1631 has been proposed
creation.9 Speculation
the
date
and
other
concerning
is
in
of
the
fact
the
that
aspects
pair
complicated
by
both cases a paper seam separates the inscription and
There is a general consensus
that the
on
of
the
left
the
scroll,
style
inscription
calligraphic
which depicts the standing bull, differs in significant
respects from that on the right scroll.10 Furthermore,
there has been a tendency among some S?tatsu
to view the standing bull as the product of a
specialists
the painting

below.

its kneeling counterpart. This

in
from certain perceived
infelicities
of three of the four
the former, such as the repetitiveness
of the bull's tail to a fifth leg,
legs, or the resemblance
with something closer to a hoof than a tuft of hair at the
different

hand from
arises

attribution

its shank.11 Such differences,

however, are not
to warrant
its dismissal
from S?tatsu's milieu.
The quality and wear of the paper are remarkably
similar in both scrolls. Furthermore, no known animal
end of

sufficient

studio
paintings by any of S?tatsu's followers?including
works or later scrolls pressed with his seal?come
close
to achieving
the sophistication
of ink application
witnessed
here. The present analysis thus assumes that
both works were painted by S?tatsu, and that Mitsuhiro's
calligraphy on the standing bull scroll represents a copy
own time.
not too far removed from Mitsuhiro's
The original format of Bulls also merits consideration.
While
the two scrolls form a complementary
pair, they
have been conceived
of as individual
may originally
to be collected

paintings

"pasted painting

onto
and eventually mounted
screens" (oshi-e~bari by?bu). Such

with

title "Bridge of the Dharma"

(hokky?),
court
1620.
Both
works
sometime
the
after
by
courtier
bear inscriptions at the top by the well-known
The one on the
Karasumaru Mitsuhiro
(1579-1638):
a
the
in
classic
waka
poem
thirty-one syllables,
right
one on the left a quatrain of seven-character
lines
and his honorific

9. See KasashimaTadayuki,
"Tawaraya S?tatsu keoky? e no arata
na shihy??Karasumaru
no ka? wo megutte?,"
Mitsuhiro
Kajima
15(1998):49-60.
bijutsu zaidan
kenky? nenp?
10. Tanaka

conferred

8.
modal

I have
painting

Kano Artists,
(Ph.D. diss.,

to the concept
of
conventions
according
Lippit, "The Birth of Japanese Painting History:
in the Seventeenth
and Authenticated
Century"

analyzed
in Yukio

Authors,
Princeton

these

University,

2003),

ch. 2.

679

(1995):66-75.

whatever

reason,

to oshi-e-bari
by?bu," Nihon
Eiji, "Oshi-e
on page
The paper seam ismentioned
this observation

from Tanaka's

omitted

article when

bijutsu k?gei
70. For

the paper seam was

concerning
in Kan'ei bunka
itwas
republished

no sekai, ed. Iwama Kaoru and Oka

Shibunkaku
1998), pp. 215-224.
(Kyoto:
shuppan,
11. Mizuo
Hiroshi,
"Tawaraya S?tatsu hitsu Ushi zu/' Kokka 833
A Joint
(August 1961 ):362-369;
Sandy Kita, "The Bulls of Chomyoji:
Monumenta
Work
(Winter
NipponicaA7A
by S?tatsu and Mitsuhiro/'
no nettowaaku?'Kakumeiki'

Keiko

1992):495-519.
which

represents

The present article

the first substantial

language.

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is greatly
analysis

indebted
of S?tatsu's

to Kita's
Bulls

study,
in any

Lippit: Tawaraya S?tatsu and the watery poetics of Japanese ink painting

63

inscribed by Karasumaru Mitsuhiro (1579-1638),

Figure 5. Tawaraya S?tatsu (act. ca. 1600-1640),
Bulls, circa 1631. Pair of hanging scrolls, ink on paper, 94.8 x 43.6 cm each. Ch?my?ji temple,
Kyoto.

screens, which became highly popular from around

1610 onward for several decades,
typically bore neutral
decorated backgrounds;
paintings
gold-foil or generically
be pasted onto individual panels, usually in
groups of six or twelve. These groupings could be based
theme such as Zen eccentrics,
upon a common
such
landscapes, or birds and flowers, or combine

seems to have been that it allowed

for the compilation
of prominent
"ink traces" while mixing and matching
various painting subjects.12

would

themes miscellaneously.
inscribed by
They were
prominent monks or courtiers of the day; indeed, an
format
important part of the appeal of this composite

12.

See Namiki

(1983):467-488.
Zen monastic
Tawaraya,
painting

10
Seishi, "Oshi-e-bari
by?bu shiron," Kinko s?sho
Namiki explores
in medieval
the origins of this genre
culture. By the early 1600s, painters of the Kaih?, Soga,

Iwasa, and Kan?

screens.

studios were

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producing

works

for pasted

64

RES 51 SPRING 2007

"v """'
$?*?.

Figure 6. Bulls (see figure 5), detail from right scroll.

S?tatsu is known to have produced works for pasted

painting screens, although these screens have
been dispersed and individual paintings
subsequently
remounted as hanging scrolls.13 Such paintings typically
cm in height. Based upon the
some 100-120
measure

and that
often commissioned
by intermediaries,
was the painter or the inscriber the driving force
in this format.15
the production
of a painting
to later examples,
the tarashikomi
Compared
bulls is unusually sophisticated
(fig. 6). The body

rarely
behind
of the
of the

dimensions of the Ch?my?ji Bulls (96 cm high by 45

kneeling bull of the right scroll isdepicted with the

cm wide), Tanaka Eiji has speculated

that they originally
were made for pasted-painting
screens, and only
remounted as hanging scrolls. According
subsequently

lightest possible gradation of ink, the bottom half in

particular so faint that the animal appears to vanish into
the paper. The scale and quality of the splotches formed
by the tarashikomi suggest that only small amounts of
the ground
introduced at once, while
inky liquid were
layer was still relatively moist. Furthermore, as opposed

to Tanaka, itwas during the remounting that the areas

between
the inscriptions and paintings were trimmed,
resulting in the paper seams evident today. By the early
the scrolls were donated to
century, when
eighteenth
during the abbacy of Shinn?-in Nitt? (d. 1730),
as a pair.14 Although
it is unclear
mounted
it is
for originally,
which
format Bulls was conceived
as
that this work was intended to be mounted
possible
both hanging scrolls or folding screens in its various
incarnations. Many paintings from this period were
remounted from one format to another, and
continually
Ch?my?ji
they were

to consider such
it ultimately may be anachronistic
small-scale works as suitable for only one format.
Records of the period also indicate that such works were

to later tarashikomi practice, the first and second

layers
of ink appear to have been of roughly the same degree
of dilution (fig. 7). The standing bull of the left scroll, on
the other hand, is somewhat darker and more variegated
in its tone-scape. The scalloped edges of the ink ridges
inwhich
the
here suggest the highly deliberate manner
load of pigment
painter's brush introduced the second
into the first layer, slowly pressing the fleshy part of the
brush into the body of the animal as if recording a
fingerprint. The resulting tie-dye-like effect also suggests
15.

13. See Tanaka

14.

Ibid.

(note

10), pp. 68-69.

See examples

in Tanaka

(ibid.) drawn

from Kakumeiki,

diary of the Sh?kokujimonk H?rin Sh?sh? (1593-1668), and

elsewhere.

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the

Lippit: Tawaraya S?tatsu and the watery poetics of Japanese ink painting

65

T;V

Figure 7. Bulls (see figure 5), detail from left scroll.

that the initial layer was nearly dry when the brushprint
was taken. In both scrolls these aqueous
residues are
contour
lines that harken
enhanced
by extremely pale
back to a technique of classical
Japanese figure painting,
inwhich
the outlines of the underdrawing
of a painted
were
left uncovered while
the remainder of the
figure
figure was colored over.16 The resulting outlines appear
to be etched
into the surface of the animals, somehow
both articulating and subverting their sense of mass at
the same time. The tarashikomi patterns complement
in the vaguest manner
this ambiguity by suggesting
the musculature
of the bulls' bodies. By
possible
ink painters conveyed
the
contrast, medieval
of bulls through the meticulous
corporeality
of fur, rendering each hair legible while
representation
to indicate the swells and
darkening or shifting direction
recessions of the volume underneath. Although
the
watery surfaces of S?tatsu's animals are equally dynamic
in their suggestion of volume,
they also promote the
outcome
of dematerializing
their subjects.
contradictory

16. The
painted,"
through

colorant.

thirteenth-century
dispersed

is known as horinuri,
literally "carved and
lines appear to have been excavated
by carving
inworks
It can best be witnessed
such as the

technique
because
the

among

Satake
numerous

Version

Immortal
Thirty-Six
in the United
collections

Poets, now
States and

Japan.

The cross-purposes

to which

facture

is put

in the

Ch?my?ji bulls ultimately highlight their insubstantiality

as representations.
Here tarashikomi serves to posit a
subject of pictorial representation
only to set inmotion
its own liquidation.
Over

the past half century

there has been

considerable

the types of
speculation
concerning
to such a striking technique, which
has
precedents
settled into two main hypotheses. The first, proposed

by
the dean of S?tatsu studies, Yamane Y?z? (1919-2001
),
to transpose
asserted that S?tatsu was attempting
into
in his
pictorial terms certain effects that he had achieved
for the calligrapher
gold-and-silver
underdesigns
A fair number of these
Hon'ami K?etsu (1558-1637).17
stencils or molds to repeat
designs employ wooden
forms across the lateral surfaces of handscrolls.
In these
in gold or silver ink
instances, the molds were dipped
and then pressed onto the paper; the lift off of the paper
resulted inmottling and puddling effects that, in
Yamane's view, were not unlike those associated with

17. The
"S?tatsu

fullest

technique
"naturally
world"
(p. 170).

of this idea can be found

in Yamane,
that tarashikomi
(see note 3). Yamane writes
arose from the way S?tatsu viewed
or grasped

elaboration

to suibokuga"

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the

66

RES 51 SPRING 2007

Figure 8. Inscribed by Takasabu Ry?tatsu, underdesigns by Tawaraya S?tatsu (active ca. 1600-1640), Songs by Ry?tatsu,
1605. Fragment from handscroll, inkwith gold and silver woodblock printed designs on paper, 33.5 x 90.1 cm. Kyoto
mingeikan.

S?tatsu's
tarashikomi (fig. 8). Because he understood
with K?etsu to have taken place during
collaborations
the first two decades of the seventeenth
century, Yamane
the master artisan
imagined a career trajectory wherein
in his later years reproduced and developed
by brush
those effects he had achieved earlier in his career by
as the
is thus conceived
stencil. Tarashikomi
of xylographie

transposition
ink painting.
A second

effects

into the idiom of

monochrome

works of Chinese monk painters of the

and Yuan (1272-1368)
Song (960-1272)
periods.18
These works were brought back by Japanese Zen pilgrim
monks during the medieval
period and formed the basis
of the Japanese ink painting tradition. Examples raised in

include the Chinese

support of this line of causality
monk painter Muqi's famous White-Robed
Guanyin
In the central scroll depicting
triptych at Daitokuji.
in his island-mountain
abode, graded washes
Guanyin
are superimposed
to build up a highly atmospheric
setting, evoking both the earthen texture and moist air of
sits. Another, and
the grotto inwhich
the bodhisattva
more
is found in the
convincing,
perhaps
precedent

shintenkai?,"
taikei

bijutsu

Yoshiho,
in Hachidai

series

"Kakizatsuga
sanjin, Y?sh?

(Tokyo: K?dansha,

josetsu?kinsei
hakkai, vol.
1978),

suibokuga
11 of Suiboku

pp. 39-74.

visual effect, in this case of hibiscus flowers in the

rain.19 The major difference with the technique
found
S?tatsu's Bulls is the former's use of unsized paper,

in

in the behavior of subsequent

resulting in far less control
ink layers. In the Chinese practice of dropped
ink, the
influences the outcome
of laissez-faire
ground actively
pigmentation
through its absorption of the ink.
it places on the tonal
the premium
Nevertheless,

offered early on by the Chinese

hypothesis,
and
painting historian Yonezawa Yoshiho (1906-1993)
located
elaborated
upon by others,
subsequently
in the
S?tatsu's inspiration for his signature technique

18. Yonezawa

in Daitokuji
also preserved
Hibiscus,
Muqi-attributed
to represent the Song
is understood
(fig. 9). Hibiscus
(Chinese, luomo) in
period technique of dropped-ink
which,
similarly to tarashikomi, different gradations of
inkwere blended together to produce a metamorphic

no

of intermingled water-based
vicissitudes
pigments puts
luomo in intriguing proximity to tarashikomi. Because
works by Muqi and other Chinese monks associated
were collected
with Zen communities
avidly in Japan,
have
S?tatsu, it is reasoned, would
to study the techniques
opportunity
A third proposal concerning
the
tarashikomi, uniquely made by the

19.
Toyoz?,
reprinted
181-189.
dropped
Chinese
Painting
97-100.

had ample
on display here.
origins of
art historian

For a classic

see Tanaka
to luomo technique,
introduction
16.10 (1941),
rakubokuka," Mita bungaku
in Ch?goku
1964),
bijutsu no kenkyd
(Tokyo: Nigensha,
an extended
Bickford provides
discussion
of
Maggie

"NanT?

ink and
painter
Genre

no

itsmost
Xu Xi,

pp.

famous practitioner,
the eleventh-century
in Ink Plum: The Making
of a Chinese
Scholar

(Cambridge:

Cambridge

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

University

Press,

1996),

pp.

Lippit: Tawaraya S?tatsu and the watery poetics of Japanese ink painting

Figure 9. Attributed to Muqi (active late thirteenth century), Hibiscus,

thirteenth century. Hanging scroll, ink on paper, 34.5 x 36.7 cm.
Daitokuji monastery, Kyoto.

as
deserves mention
(1895-2001),
MinamotoToyomune
asserted that the various effects of
well. Minamoto
in S?tatsu's oeuvre
vyitnessed
opacity and transparency
as an extension of traditional
can be understood
in the
yamato-e painting practice, as seen for example
narrative
of medieval
landscape representations
handscrolls.20 As close analysis of his oeuvre reveals,
S?tatsu was clearly studying early handscrolls
carefully
and acquiring motifs and habits of representation
the
observations
them.21 Minamoto's
anticipated
20.

As an example

Minamoto

cites

various

from

parts of the handscroll

IllustratedLifeof Ippen (Yugy?engi emaki; 1323) in the Shink?ji

inMinamotoToyomune,
See his "Tawaraya S?tatsu,"
ed.,
vol. 14 of Ni hon bijutsu kaiga zensh?
(Tokyo:

collection.
Tawaraya

S?tatsu,

1977), pp. 97-118.

Sh?eisha,
21. Concerning
S?tatsu's
Y?z?,
kaiga

"S?tatsu
zensh?

reprinted

see Yamane
patterns of motif borrowing,
zu by?bu ni tsuite," Rinpa
Sekiya Miotsukushi
S?tatsu ha ichi (Tokyo: Nihon
keizai shinbunsha,
1977),
hitsu

in S?tatsu

(Tokyo: Ch??k?ron
"S?tatsu
Shunroku,

kenky?

ni, vol.

2 of Yamane

to Rinpa
ed., S?tatsu
Hiroyuki,
series (Tokyo: Sh?eisha,
1993),

no genry?,
vol.
pp. 110-121.

late

to view S?tatsu
inmore recent commentary
tendency
not as a classicist
reviving early courtly traditions, but
rather as an artisan whose
practice can be understood
norms
insightfully on a continuum with medieval
of craft design and pictorial representation.22
there is no clear-cut consensus
among
Although
all
of the above-mentioned
theories have
specialists,
to an understanding
merit and contribute
of the
most

innovations

in S?tatsu's painting. None of them,

a definitive precursor
in visual terms
identifies
however,
for tarashikomi or provides a convincing
for
explanation
In East Asian painting, perhaps the most
its emergence.
proximate handling of ink is found in the works of the
Chinese painter XuWei
(1521-1593)
sixteenth-century
his late flowers-and-plants
scrolls.
(fig. 10), especially
These works demonstrate what one contemporary
referred to as a "muddy" use of ink that manipulated

Y?z? chosakush?

1996), pp. 78-95,

bijutsu shuppan,
wo ch?shin
no in'y?h??suibokuga

and Okudaira
ni?,"

1 of Rinpa

in Kan?

bijutsukan

67

22.
Revival/"

1600-1700,
Press,

"Tawaraya S?tatsu and the 'Yamato-e

on Classicism
in Japanese
Painting,
of Hawai'i
(Honolulu:
University
Lillehoj

See SatokoTamamushi,
in Critical Perspectives
ed.

Elizabeth

2004).

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68

RES 51 SPRING 2007

Figure 10. XuWei

Handscroll,

ink on

(1521-1593),
paper,

28.2

Miscellaneous
x 665.2

cm.

Tokyo

application.23
gradation through sequential, wet-on-wet
Xu Wei's paintings were often executed on heavily-sized
the initial layer of ink to settle into a
paper that enabled
crisp, "boneless" silhouette despite
lacking a contour
to suggest
line. Because
there is little historical evidence
or
an awareness of Xu Wei's
inkwork
anything similar in
and
S?tatsu's milieu, however, the question of models
inspirations remains an open one.
Itmay be that the establishment
of trajectories of
in relation
influence has received far too much attention
to sustained consideration
of the environment
that
enabled the emergence
of tarashikomi. By the early
was an established
seventeenth
century, accidentalism
as it
in
part of elite craft production
Kyoto, especially
was mediated
tea
ceremony
(chanoyu). Among
by the
numerous ways
in particular there developed
ceramics
kiln effects inwares deemed
of foregrounding
accidental
tea.
The qualities by which
suitable for the practice of
uneven
such ceramics were characterized?for
example,
or collapsed
bodies, kiln grit, and naturally occurring
of medieval
always been a component
glazes?had
utilitarian wares

but were

developed

Flowers and Plants, detail,

and rendered

in the Marketplace:
23. See Kathleen
Ryor, "Bright Pearls Hanging
in the Painting of Xu Wei"
and Commodification
(Ph.D.
Self-Expression
Institute of Fine Arts, New York University,
1998).
diss.,

National

late sixteenth century.

Museum.

further conspicuous
by tea masters such as Sen no Riky?
Such
(1522-1591
) and Furuta Oribe
(1544-1615).
features enabled discourses
that privileged
rusticity and
in keeping with the general
imperfection,
ideology of
as developed
tea
the tea ceremony
by Sakai's merchant
masters. Accidentalism
also facilitated the individuation
of tea bowls and other objects by inviting the projection
onto their idiosyncracies,
of associations
thereby
their value and the aestheticist
enhancing
profiles of
their owners. Hence
the emergence
of naming practices
in the tea culture of this time, culminating
in the craze
or
for meibutsu
"named objects."24
Given the contemporary
it
ethos in craft production,
in
is not surprising that similar effects would be explored
and painting. As the
the realms of paper decoration
master artisan of the Tawaraya shop, with ties to several
of the leading cultural figures of his time, S?tatsu
to
undoubtedly was aware of such trends and motivated
explore the possibility of resonant effects in pictorial
representation. Toward this end, it is not difficult to
imagine a wide variety of inspirations for the pursuit of
ink layering, drawn primarily from the various
sequential
traditions of classical painting available for study to the
24.

See

and Tokugawa

the catalogue
Meibutsu
Art Museums,
1988).

chaki

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(Tokyo and Nagoya:

Nezu

Lippit: Tawaraya S?tatsu and the watery poetics of Japanese ink painting

69

as the Ten Oxherd

then pictorial ?zed
the ox could also

A plausible cultural context can thus be

connected.
out
for
the pursuit and privileging of collateral
mapped
and painting.
visual effects in S?tatsu's paper decoration
The lines of causal interrogation first raised by Yamane,
and Minamoto
have muddied
the issue by
Yonezawa,

ing Stages, developed

in verse and
in twelfth-century
China. The figure of
ideal of naturalness
invoke the Daoist
to what
it
is
and self-governance,
unclear
although
extent this represents a borrowing
from Buddhist

shifting emphasis away from the relationship between

In the
tarashikomi and synchronie contexts of meaning.
it is all the more
absence of obvious prototypes,
important to work through specific case studies of

literature. During the Song period the

inwhich oxen could signify tended
capacities
into an opposition
between a state of
its antithesis might be,
and whatever
emancipation
to
service or attachment
whether
government
bondage

well

use of this technique

in order to further explore
the local contingencies
of signification were for its
Bulls provides a unique
emergence.
Ch?my?ji's
to
do
this
because of its sophisticated
just
opportunity
S?tatsu's

what

inkwork and because of what

its interpretive community.

can be determined

about

commentarial

multiple
to settle

to the mundane world.

This polyvalency
of the ox in East Asian painting
itsmobility
enhanced
among many different
communities
the
Instead of being
during
Song period.
one
as a roaming
to
the
bull
served
meaning,
yoked
that could

metaphor
The meanings
of pictorial representations
of ?xen in
InChina there
East Asia was thoroughly overdetermined.
was a long-standing
the ox?
tradition of associating
as either the yellow ox or the
usually understood
water buffalo?with
the pastoral ideal.
domesticated
this capacity, the ox embodied
the eremitism and
freedom from officialdom
in
that were privileged

In

ideology; large herds of grazing oxen could

as a metaphor
also be understood
for good governance.
from the Song period onward were
Scholar-officials
known to give paintings of oxen to fellow officials who

Confucian

were

assuming a new post.25 Both the bull and the

a privileged place in the
oxherd thus were accorded
of
culture. Paralleling this
iconography
gentlemanly
was
a
in Buddhist discourse
tradition
that
phenomenon
a
as
the
bull
for
the
employed
privileged
exegesis
figure
of religious doctrine. This could take myriad forms?
perhaps the most common was to borrow the
nature of the ox as a figure for the
unrestrained

of the human mind

potentially destructive wanderings
that had to be harnessed
\n order to achieve awakening.
On the other hand, these wanderings
could be seen as
a metaphor
for the search for the Buddha nature within
oneself.
The same animal
enslavement

could also serve as a symbol for

to the mundane world, especially
in its
capacity. Finally, tending to the ox was

domesticated
likened to the monk's cultivation of his Buddha nature
and path toward enlightenment.
In the last instance, the
practicing monk was recast as an oxherd, a figure who
would

become

central

to allegories

of awakening,

to the prerogatives

appeal

of

constituencies

upon
simultaneously.
Depending
the proverbial beast of
allegiances,
burden could embody or catalyze the aspirations of
In
monks, officials, adepts, and all types in between.
sites for the mixing
many cases, however, oxen became
multiple
one's philosophical

and matching of different rhetorical regimes. The

following poem by the scholar official Lou Yue (1137
1213), inscribed on an ox painting by the Daoist monk
Fan Tzumin, demonstrates
inwhich
the multiple ways
the draft animal
concept

within

could embody
a single verse:

essentially

the same

Someone asked me why I love this ox

The Immortal Fan's true brush enhances elegance.
Although being pulled with a rope is no comparison to
being free;
It is surely better than being trapped with a golden halter.26
As Scarlett Jang has demonstrated,
Lou Yue here
makes allusion through the image of the golden halter to
a classical parable concerning
and the
scholar-officials
reclusive
ideal.27 At the same time, the image of the ox
being pulled by a rope recalls within Chan symbolism
the idea of the wayward mind reigned in by Buddhist
practice. "Being free" in this context can connote
or Daoist realization,
the latter
reclusi?n, enlightenment,
of special resonance
in Lou Yue's poem given the status
of the painter whose work
it addresses.
In this way, the
verse is anything but isotropic in its rhetorical
sensitivities. Chan Buddhists understood
particularly

such
26.

in ibid., p. 65.
The parable
involves the hermit Dao Hongqing
of the sixth
asked by the Liang Emperor Wu Di (reigned 502-549)
century. When
to serve in his court, Dao responded
two oxen, one with
by painting
Translated

27.

25.
Dynasty,"

See Scarlett
Artibus

Ju-yu Jang, "Ox-Herding

Asiae
Lll 1/2 (1992):54-92.

Painting

in the Sung

golden

halter,

the other without.

See

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ibid., p. 55.

RES 51 SPRING 2007

70

the multidirectionality
of such figures, which were
over
over
for the scholar-official
?zed
and
class
pictorial
as a way of expressing
a commonality
of endeavor and
of recruiting sympathy and patronage.

well

is the context within

Such

which

to understand
the
oxen
of
imagery

charge of the large volume

that circulated
throughout East Asia up through S?tatsu's
time in the form of painting, verse, and prose
themes such as the Ten
commentary. Although
Stages are closely associated with Zen
Oxherding
semantic

is trapped for the duration of this incarnation,

into a condition of servitude. Thus "the world
is full
of sorrows" (yo no naka ushi totemo). Kita notes that the
term sorrow (ushi) here can also mean bull, functioning
as a pivot word that fulcrums meaning
toward the final

which
born

"Like a bull untethered,

be, then, at
no
ease" (tsunaganu ushi
yasuki sugata ni). The bull in
this instance clearly is a zoomorphic
of
expression
or lack thereof. Its floating, unattached
tetheredness
lines of the verse:

agendas were
allegory, their communicative
In
context
such
multilateral.
the
Japanese
typically
for the aristocratic and warrior
themes were reproduced

form here indicates a state of grace that comes with an

and acceptance
of the mundane.
understanding
The Chinese poem inscribed above the standing bull
reads as follows:

instead of the scholar-official

class. Indeed, one
of
the
historical
role of Zen
way
understanding
in Japan is as a rhetorical and institutional
Buddhism
culture anew for
field that distilled classical continental

All say the bull is a benevolent creature,

This single-horned beast, drawn in sand,
Is from side to side, top to bottom, sufficient unto itself.
Why, then, should it seek for grass or sprouts?30

Buddhist

elite

local constituencies
throughout much of the premodern
context
within which a courtier such
This
is
the
period.
as Karasumaru Mitsuhiro,
the inscriber of the bulls of
and members

Ch?my?ji,

and been

experienced
the ox.

of his circle would

attracted

have

to the iconography

of

on Bulls clearly indicate

The inscriptions by Mitsuhiro
his awareness of the Zen claim on the bull metaphor,
borne out by the fact that both poems revolve around
The thirty
the concepts of freedom and self-sufficiency.
one syllable waka verse, inscribed over the kneeling or
bull,

squatting

reads as follows:

Think of your station,

The world is full of sorrows.
Like a bull untethered,
Be,

then,

no

at ease.28

naka

ushi

totemo

tsunaganu ushi no
yasuki sugata ni)

when he is then called back to the capital.

"Think of your station" (mi no hodo ni omoe) refers to
not have
the fact that Akashi was of a rank that would
In this
in the capital.
suitable to Genji
been deemed
heartbroken

28.
29.

corresponds

by Kita
Ibid., p. 511.

Translated

virtues of Confucian
thought. The
items of poetic
of two such contrastive
juxtaposition
interest in
the aesthetic
syntax and imagery generates
of continental
In turn, this matching
and
this pairing.
a
centuries
versification
bears
of
regimes
archipelagic
the foundational

As Sandy Kita has pointed out, the first line, "[t]hink

of your station," makes an allusion to the courtly
In the novel a certain Lady
narrative The Tale ofGenji.29
Prince Genji
Akashi falls in love with the protagonist
while he is in exile in the province of Suma, only to be

regard her situation

to very different
composed
according
Although
this
of
five-character
lines revolves
conventions,
quatrain
in the partner
around the same concept as the waka
that the last line alludes to the sixth
scroll. Kita observes
states that
Ten
of
the
stage
Stages, which
Oxherding
when
the herdboy reaches enlightenment,
"the ox lacks
. . . and does not cast a glance at the grass."
nothing
its recourse to the Zen archive is clear, the poetic
While
verse lies in the way
it reimagines
interest of Mitsuhiro's
to the norms of classical
Zen metaphors
according
a
Thus
the
bull has undergone
Chinese
textuality.
a
into
transformation
beast,"
lycanthropic
"single-horned
a reference to the qilin of Chinese mythology,
and is
as a "benevolent
described
creature,"
invoking one of

(mi no hodo ni omoe,

yo

(Sen iwaku k?re jinj? to

insha no ikkakugy?
j?? shin onozukara tari
s?shuku mata nani o ka motomen)

(see note

11).

to that of the bull,

in Japanese courtly practice.31 The charge

long pedigree
is positioned within
the
pairing, however,
generated by
framework of the Zen Buddhist habit of
the overarching
to distill representations
and
using the ox metaphor
expressions

of Buddha

30.

Translation

31.

See David

nature. Thus the term single

by Kita in ibid., p. 498, with

slight adjustments.
Pol lack, The Fracture of Meaning:
Japan's Synthesis

of China from the Eighth Through the EighteenthCenturies (Princeton:

Princeton

University

Press,

1986).

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71

Lippit: Tawaraya S?tatsu and the watery poetics of Japanese ink painting

is also a reference to the Buddha,32

"sufficient unto itself suggests the idea
nature can be found within oneself,

horned (ikkaku)
while
the phrase
that the Buddha
recourse

to external

without

aids.

The masterfully
pair of verses on
counterpoised
as a product of the
S?tatsu's Bulls can be understood
culture of aristocratic Zen in early seventeenth-century

Within

the imperial circle, however, Mitsuhiro may

have been particularly
fervent in his spiritual
commitments.
He first met Isshi in the spring of 1630
thereafter built a retreat named H?k?
and immediately
an for the Zen master
to
inTanba province.36 According
a eulogy
inscribed by Isshi on a memorial
portrait of
in Kyoto, upon
in H?'unzen-in
monastery
the master, Mitsuhiro was given the famous
meeting
k?an, with which he
Dog Has No Buddha-Nature"
or
a
seven
six
for
years before achieving
struggled

Mitsuhiro

as such, the
not always recognized
Kyoto. Although
was
of
this
involved
closely
period
courtly community
in the study and practice of Zen Buddhism under the

"A

insight into this celebrated

breakthrough.37 The courtier's
Zen case study, discussed
is recorded in several
below,
no
verses"
(t?ki
ge) that still survive.38
"enlightenment
Of direct relevance to his poems on the Ch?my?ji
Bulls
verse
are his calligraphic
inscriptions of
by the medieval

leading monks of the Kyoto monastic world. Mitsuhiro

and short-lived
himself was a devotee of the charismatic
monk
Isshi Bunju (1608?-1646).
Having switched
to Zen under the
sectarian affiliation from Nichiren

the Daitokuji monkTakuan S?h? (1573- 1645). After

based on the Ten

poet Sh?tetsu (1381-1459)
on
a
in the Metropolitan
ing Stages,
Oxherd
handscroll
Museum
of Art.39 These inscriptions are accompanied
by
simple ink sketches of each stage within a roundel, most

from the capital by the Tokugawa

banishment
in
the
Purple Robe Affair of 1629, Mitsuhiro
shogunate
received religious instruction for the last eight years of
his life from Isshi.33 He was by no means alone in his

illustrations. A
likely based upon woodblock-printed
separate hanging scroll, also in a Japanese private
inscribes only a third of Sh?tetsu's verses and
collection,
is also accompanied
sketch.40
by a roundel-framed

monk

from whom
influence of Hosokawa Y?sai (1534-1610),
he was also bequeathed
the secrets of the courtly poetic
tradition (kokin denju), Mitsuhiro
initially studied under
Takuan's

admiration

Fellow courtier Konoe

Isshi to court as soon as
a region
himself in Nishioka,

this phenomenon.35

33.

The

Shogakkan,
(Tokyo:

1982)

11), p. 508.
account
of Mitsuhiro's

1982), pp. 206-211.

35. This is one
of the writings

Isao, GoMizuno'o-in

of the main

of Tsuji Zennosuke

themes

scrolls, more

painting

36.

specifically

Later this retreat would

become

39.
to

(Tokyo: Asahi

(ibid.), as well
Tatsusabur?.

of Kumakura

and Hayashiya

40.
41.
Mitsuhiro

shinbunsha,
as

The Miraculous

the foundation

of H?j?-ji

which
still stands today.
monastery,
37. The portrait was made
for rituals marking Mitsuhiro's
third
in the Itabashi Ward Museum
death anniversary,
and is illustrated

(Kameoka)

in Karasumaru Mitsuhiro
to Tawaraya S?tatsu
S?tatsu/'
Itabashi Ward Museum,
exhibition
1982), unpaginated

catalogue.
34. See Kumakura

which
the Ch?my?ji
pair emerged.41
This context offers new interpretive possibilities
for
the formal qualities of S?tatsu's oxen.
In this regard,
in
their tarashikomi staining cannot be understood
assume.
isolation from the poses they
Numerous
commentators
have observed
that these poses ultimately
are derived from S?tatsu's study of Japanese narrative

(see note 33), pi. 59.

catalogue
38. See ibid., pis. 61 and 62.
1637 or 1638 and are preserved

to Zen
is
relationship
Karasumaru Mitsuhiro
(Tokyo:
Shigemi,
"Karasumaru Mitsuhiro
and Yasumasa Toshinobu,

following
to Komatsu

indebted

Tawaraya

(see note

in formal terms from

the religious
Bulls, they further document
that
environment
the
from
characterized
dispositions

Zen k?an, riddles of language and logic that were meant

as heuristic devices
in religious training.34 Cultural
historians have noted that during the 1620s and 30s,
led the GoMizuno'o
circle to focus
political disaffection
with particular
intensity on cultural pursuits based upon
the revival of classical norms of cultural production;
the
turn to Zen Buddhism among
individual aristocrats at
as one manifestation
this time might be understood
of

Kita

are far removed

S?tatsu's

invited

(1565-1614)
had established
south of Kyoto. Retired Emperor GoMizuno'o
and
counted themselves
among his
Empress T?fukumon'in
numerous adherents; surviving
letters from GoMizuno'o
to Nobutada
discuss their study under Isshi of various

32.

these works

While

for the Zen master.

Nobutada
the monk

monasteries,
Ibid., pi. 2.
Ibid., pi. 11.

Another

scroll

is reproduced
to the Ch?my?ji

Both are believed

in H?'unzen-in

to date

to around

(Kyoto) and H?j?-ji

respectively.

of a bull painted
in ibid, pi. 69.

by S?tatsu
Its features

and

inscribed

are strikingly
the tarashikomi

by

similar
in the way
is
pair, especially
the poem
is similar in tone and imagery to Mitsuhiro's
applied, while
waka poem on the kneeling
bull scroll. Overall,
the quality
however,
as well as S?tatsu's
of the painting
signature and seal strongly suggest
that this

is a much

later work.

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72

RES 51 SPRING 2007

Origins of the Kitano

not surprising, given
motifs from S?tatsu's
indebted to the rich

Tenjin Shrine.42 Such borrowing

that numerous
figurai and animal
other known works are also

is

repository of similar imagery found

in the handscroll
tradition.43 Close to the time Bulls was
is known to have
painted, for example, Mitsuhiro
borrowed
the narrative painting Tales of Saigy?, painted
in the early sixteenth century, from the
by Kaita Uneme
at
Palace
the request of the warrior Honda
Imperial
and to have had S?tatsu copy the painting
Tomimasa,
while Mitsuhiro
transcribed the text.44 In such a manner,
is imagined to have had access to numerous
classical handscrolls
Rather
through elite connections.
than a direct reference to any specific work, however,
the gestures assumed by the bulls are more plausibly
as a reflection of the large repository of
understood

S?tatsu

images built up over the course of time in the

exemplary
Tawaraya atelier, formed through the close study of early
Japanese courtly painting. These may have included
both narrative handscrolls
and the tradition of "excellent
oxen" paintings
(sungy? zu), which often consisted of
of
portraits
prized cattle owned by the aristocracy.45
Given this accumulation
of stock motifs, the significance
of any specific morphological
echo can be
is the fact that the
Of greater significance
bulls
of
both
the
left
and
Ch?my?ji
right scrolls appear
to have been derived from representations
of tethered
oxen. This derivation
is obvious
from the poses of the
in both cases appear to be shifting their
beasts, which
overestimated.

backwards

and rearing their heads, perhaps

body weight
the
against
imaginary pull of an oxherd; the ox of the
scroll
appears to be squatting to increase its
right
leverage against the tug of the harness. A comparison
with a similarly struggling ox from S?tatsu's The Tale of
Genji screens in the Seikad? Museum
(fig. 11), to take
but one example,
confirms that the original models
for
inwhich
both Ch?my?ji
bulls derived from contexts
the
animals were yoked.

42. Mizuo,
'Tawaraya S?tatsu hitsu Ushi zu" (see note 11).
43. Okudaira
(see note 21).
44. The borrowing
in the ninth month
took place
of 1630, and
to the S?tatsu copy, formerly
in the colophon
in the M?ri
recorded
and now in the Manno
family collection
45. On "excellent
cattle" paintings

inOsaka.

Museum
in relation

to S?tatsu's

Bulls

an overview
of the
11), pp. 505-506.
JinboT?ru provides
in "Sungy? zu dankan,"
in Emakimono
s?ran, ed. Jinbo et al.
genre
For an intriguing
shoten,
1995), pp. 504-505.
(Tokyo: Kadokawa
see Nakai Kaoru, "Sungy? ekotoba,
discussion,
j?zu,
Kokugy?
Kita

(note

Hakugy?raku
50-57.

k? no kaidai,"

Nihon

jut shigaku

is

zasshi

31

(1994.3):

see

Figure 11. Tawaraya S?tatsu (active ca. 1600-1640), The Tale of

Genji, detail, 1631. Pair of six-panel folding screens, ink,
colors, and gold on paper, 152.3 x 355.6 cm each. Seikad?
Library Museum.

The disconnect
upon an initial
inevitably experienced
oxen
of
in
these
results
from
the fact that
viewing
part
are
motifs?a
rope harness,
they
unaccompanied
by any
an oxherd, any setting at all?that would
suggest the
inwhich
their poses were conceived.
original contexts
Thus unfamiliarized,
the bodily dispositions
of the oxen
are thoroughly ambiguous.
and
Floating
writhing
without?a
against?or
background,
they can be
as fettered and unfettered at the same time.
understood
Their pale contour
lines only serve to set them off
further from the inked-in void around them, itself an
space. The oxen are represented with a quiet
of
and
intensity
activity, each beast flexing itsmuscles
its
somewhere
between
and
straining
joints,
captivity
status is only
unbridled freedom. Their indeterminate
are
as binary
states
if
these
understood
oxymoronic
as
not
two
same
and
of
the
condition,
opposites
registers
indistinct

of supramundane
freedom discovered within mundane
In this regard, the un interpretable body
servitude.
language of the bulls corresponds
remarkably well to
the ontological
of
the
inscribed above
poems
ambiguity
them. They are attached to (or born into) their "station"
but "untethered," "at ease" in a "world full of sorrows."
Each is both a bull and a "single-horned
beast,"
and "sufficient unto itself."
Within
this resonant descriptive
field, the role of the
tarashikomi can be articulated with greater precision.
The sophisticated monochrome
staining techniques
found on the bodies of the animals visually complement
the discursive context within which
the pair is framed
"benevolent"

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73

Lippit: Tawaraya S?tatsu and the watery poetics of Japanese ink painting

and gesturally situated. They do so by creating another

in the representation whereby
register of indeterminacy
volume
and a certain watery
tarashikomi
both
implies
so
In
the
technique effectively
doing
^substantiality.
their ink
dematerializes
the bulls, setting inmotion
of this dissolution
liquefaction. The incompleteness
turns them

into visual conundrums.

familiarity
Although
allows for an
tarashikomi dripping methods
of the bulls' inky profiles as resulting from
understanding
a second
layer,
layer of ink infusing a still-moist previous
at a purely visual register it is unclear whether
the
resulting spongiform marks represent a slow outward

with

or a gradual centripetal coagulation.

the hydraulics of tarashikomi
Furthermore, because
erase
traces that would otherwise
index
brush
effectively
a painter's contribution,
the oxen appear that much
more convincingly
to be unauthored,
that is to say,
a
of ink?or
formed
coalescence
through
spontaneously
emulsion

an oxidation of energy, if you will.

In this regard they
are "self-sufficient"
well
the burden of
beasts that bear
the rich metaphoric
prism through which oxen were
viewed

in Zen Buddhist

commentary.
Bulls scrolls represent

The Ch?my?ji
the most striking
example of tarashikomi to have survived, as well as one
itdoes
of its earliest examples.
Bulls looks the way
to develop,
because S?tatsu likely was given a mandate
out of the various accidental
daubing and smearing
in his repertoire, an ink painting
effects already nascent
patterns of Zen Buddhist
technique that complemented
inMitsuhiro's
circle
embraced
expression
metaphoric
is supported by the
circa 1630. This line of speculation
fact that several other animal paintings attributed to
tarashikomi
S?tatsu?in
this case dogs?that
employ
were understood
as complementing
similar discursive
habits. The group of some ten dog paintings attributed to
include two examples bearing
S?tatsu, for example,
that
make
reference to the Zen k?an "A Dog
inscriptions
Has No Buddha-Nature."46
This corpus needs to be
treated with caution, as none of the scrolls therein can
be convincingly
attributed to the master artisan himself.
in this group can
the most accomplished
Nevertheless,
a
be ascribed to the hand of Tawaraya assistant or later
as being based in some
follower, and understood
manner

on S?tatsu's menu

of subjects. A hanging scroll

two puppies playfully
in a private collection
depicting
in a
tarashikomi
interacting, for example, employs

are collated
in S?tatsu-ha
ichi (see note 7).
The dog paintings
See also the discussion
"Rinpa no shudai?S?tatsu
by K?no Motoaki,
no ba'ai,"
in Nihon
bi no seika-Rinpa,
ed. Asahi shinbunsha
(Tokyo:
46.

Asahi

shinbunsha,

1994),

pp. 7-18.

manner

it
remarkably similar to Bulls (fig. 12). Although
bears a later inscription by the Obaku monkTangai
Musen
the painting
itself can be dated to
(1693-1763),
the early- to mid-seventeenth
century and is closely
reflective of S?tatsu's own treatment of the subject. The
that
lies in its suggestion
of this work
significance
of dogs, which
traditionally
pictorial representations
served in East Asia as auspicious
images for the delivery
of abundant offspring, were understood among the
serviced by S?tatsu in the
interpretive community
context of the celebrated
k?an.47
is the first example
"A Dog Has No Buddha-Nature"
in the famous thirteenth-century
Chinese k?an
The Gateless

collection

Gate

(Chinese, Wumenguan;
Japanese, Mumonkan),
compiled
by the monk Wumen
No k?an ismore abbreviated
Huikai (1183-1260).
and
more deceptively
complex:
A monk asked Zhaozhou Zongshen:
the

Buddha-nature?"

Zhaozhou

"Does a dog also have

answered:

"Wu/"

[Japanese, Mu]
"A Dog Has No Buddha-Nature"
is a prime
representative of the k?an genre as it had evolved by the
thirteenth century; initially these "case studies" were
attributed to early
dialogues
masters.
went
As
time
on, they were
religious
their bizarre and
enhancing
increasingly abbreviated,
inscrutable nature, while accruing an increasingly
extensive commentarial
literature. Although
there was
from encounter

drawn

the Song period as to what role

Zen
these dialogic fragments played in Sino-Japanese
as providing
practice, they are traditionally understood
of enlightened
behavior and speech whose
precedents
through in order to
illogicality needed to be worked

much

debate

during

transcend dualistic thought.48

K?an became a prominent part of the Zen literary
inmedieval
curriculum
Japan and, as we have seen, "A
was the example by
Dog Has No Buddha-Nature"

is also

in K?no (ibid.). The other S?tatsu

suggested
with an inscription bears a verse by none other
cannot be attributed
to
than Isshi Bunju. Again,
the painting
although
S?tatsu unproblematically,
it is nevertheless
of Isshi's
suggestive
47.

This point

attributed

dog

understanding
Ward Museum

painting

of this painting

subject;

see

the catalogue

of

Itabashi

(note 33), pi. 73.

48. See the collected
in The K?an: Texts and Context
in Zen
essays
ed. Steven Heine and Dale S.Wright
(Oxford: Oxford
Buddhism,
For "A Dog Has No Buddha-Nature"
in
Press, 2000).
University
see Ishii Sh?d?,
"Kung-an Ch'an and theTsung-men
particular,
t'ung
and Morten
"'Before the Empty Eon'
yao chi," pp. 110-136
Schlutter,
versus
'A Dog Has No Buddha-Nature':
in the Ts'ao-tung
Kung-an Use

Tradition

andTa'hui's

Kung-an

Introspection

that book.

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Ch'an,"

pp.

168-199

in

74

RES 51 SPRING 2007

no
Mitsuhiro
achieved
awakening. Although
exegesis of the k?an in question will be attempted,
Zhaozhou's
response "Wu/" [Japanese, "Mul"], vaguely
translatable as "nothing," negates the either/or structure
of the question
itself and sets inmotion a difficult vector

which

?^ffi

of inquiry into the doctrinal tenets of Zen Buddhism.

is the idea that
More germane to the present discussion
tarashikomi, through its unique watery poetics, can be
to the self-negating
imagined to provide an equivalent
character of Zhaozhou's
response. The painter who
innovated this striking technique may have had little or
no understanding
of the religious and philosophical
his
subtleties of the inscriptions that accompanied
of line, mass, and
works.49 Yet in its dissimulation
its deconstitution
of gesture, and its total
volume,
absence of "texture" itself, tarashikomi represents the
ultimate artisanal response to the question of Buddha
nature. Its presence
in the Ch?my?ji
Bulls allows the
pair of scrolls to repose in visual terms the query to
Zhaozhou,
only this time with regard to oxen instead of
a
dogs. The tonal fusion in S?tatsu's animals becomes
visual metaphor

for the search

for the ineffable.

of tarashikomi serves as a
Sustained consideration
ink
reminder that the pictorial qualities of monochrome
upon itswater solubility. The
painting are predicated
in a limitless spectrum
ability of ink to blend with water
of ratios allows for both maximum
transparency of brush
dynamics and an infinite range of tonal gradations. An
awareness of the combinatory
potential of water and ink
was lexically encoded
in the East Asian term for this
"water-ink" painting
mode of pictorial representation,
Itwas the
(Chinese, shuimohua;
Japanese, suibokuga).
of this
possibilities
discovery of the hydroaesthetic
to
admixture that led, during the Tang period (618-907),
in China, transforming
the invention of "ink painting"
in ink from an essentially
linear mode of
brush painting
representation whose pictorial ism was mutually

to
49. S?tatsu's own religious views are too poorly documented
to have been a member
of the
He is known
explore meaningfully.
was his family's mortuary
Nichiren
sect, and Ch?my?ji
temple, a fact
in
of Bulls to the temple
that may have played a role in the donation

Figure 12. Attributed to Tawaraya S?tatsu (active ca.

1600-1640),
Hanging
collection,

Dog,
scroll,
Japan.

to mid-seventeenth
earlyx 45.0
90.3
ink on paper,

century.
cm.

Private

of the name "S?tatsu,"

the early eighteenth
century. The first character
is commonly
associated
with monks who are affiliated with
however,
Zen master Mus?
Soseki
the dharma
(1275
lineage of the renowned
to interpret
1351). A recent study has, unconvincingly,
attempted
as
screens
in Kenninji monastery
S?tatsu's Wind
and Thunder Gods
(t?ki no e). See Murase Hiroharu,
"Tawaraya
paintings"
"enlightenment
K?rin no shis?teki
S?tatsu to Ogata
raijin zu' to
chutai?'Fuji
'K?hakubai zu' wo megutte?,"
Bigaku 54.3 (Winter 2003):15-28.

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Lippit: Tawaraya S?tatsu and the watery poetics of Japanese ink painting

(stone or
among a handful of other media
one
a
to
clay sculpture, textiles, lacquer)
pianolinear
a
to
of
rich
based
upon
repertoire
unique
painting,
"brushwork" has
effects. Although
brush-and-wash
in the literature on ink
received the majority of attention
transferable

it is in techniques of
painting throughout the centuries,
most
wash that this medium
dramatically
distinguished
itself historically
from most other forms of painterly
iswhat allowed
for the staging of
representation. Wash
remarkable effects that have been likened, not
to monochromatic
mimesis.
unproblematically,
In the history of East Asian ink painting, however,
tarashikomi can be situated more specifically within a
of modes
that foregrounded
subterranean genealogy
wash as a master metaphor
for the process of creation
ink method
itself. The splashed
(Chinese, porno,
is a
of
the
hatsuboku)
Japanese,
Tang period (618-907)
in
this
of
ink
mode
wash
prominent example;
painting,
rapidly fused together in different gradations provided
the raw material out of which
landscapes were
a
in
aesthetics
participatory
imagined, relying upon
a given representation
ultimately was completed
by the viewer. The method of Wang Mo, the painter
most closely associated with the invention of splashed
as
in a ninth-century
ink, was described
compilation
ink marks on the painting
starting from spontaneous

which

surface. The way inwhich Wang derived forms from

them was "exactly like the cunning of a deity."50
the ink in such unpremeditated
marks was
Significantly,
as "thin in some places, rich in others,"
described
in splashed
indicating that wash featured prominently
ink as the raw material out of which
landscapes would
then be imagined. In later centuries arbitrary wash
as catalysts for creative
effects would be developed
and the resulting visual qualities
pictorial composition,
would
themselves
become
likened to primordial
was
This
the case in the
morphogenesis.51
especially
aesthetic discourse of the eleventh-century
scholar
official and poet Su Shi (1037-1101),
who
likened one

50.

From Celebrated

minghua
Painting,"

Painters

of the Tang Dynasty

the
"Concerning

lu); see Shimada

Sh?jir?,
trans, james Cahill, parts

1-3, Oriental

(Tangchao
l-p'in Style of
Art 7.2 (1961):66-72;

8.3 (1962):130-137; 10.1 (1964):19-26. Originally published as

"Ippingaf? ni tsuite,"Bijutsu kenky??M (1950):264-290.
51. On the afterlife of the splashed inkmethod and the role of

preferred mode of inkwash painting to "the perception

of unforced process akin to natural creation?witnessing
the thing become
itself."52 Song-period
literati
associations
ink
the
of
commented
upon
liquidity with
in numerous painting
cosmic processes
inscriptions.
ink conjured such
the visual properties of diluted
in
its
associations
shape-shifting
heteromorphism,
the paintings which
featured them
counterintuitively,
could still be read as direct reflections of the character

While

of the painter. Thus the seemingly protean "cloudy

mountain"
landscapes of the literatus Mi Youren (1074
as reflections of the painter's
1151) were understood
in such
upright character. As Peter Sturman writes,
paintings Mi Youren takes up the "well-known
challenge
earlier by Su Shi for 'superior men of
posed a generation
talent' to paint subjects of Inconstant
form
outstanding
but constant principle,'
such as clouds and mist, which
are ever-changing
but always in accordance with their
this discourse
basic nature or principle."53 While
the evanescent,
concerning
fugitive qualities of wash
in later
based painting would
survive only piecemeal
an
it
for the context
eras,
represents
important precedent
inwhich S?tatsu's tarashikomi was experienced
and
appreciated
by its initial audiences.
In all likelihood Mitsuhiro
did not commission
paintings from S?tatsu, but simply
behalf of an as-of-yet unrecovered
he was undoubtedly
Nevertheless,

inscribed

the
them on

third party.
one of the presences
for engendering
responsible
in ink. At the very least,

in the painter's milieu most

S?tatsu's experimentations
Mitsuhiro was sensitive to what tarashikomi could
of the standing
evoke, as witnessed
by his description
bull as "drawn on sand" (insha). This phrase was
inChinese aesthetic discourse
as, for
employed
on
in
the
example,
following passage
calligraphy
Zhao

Xiku's twelfth-century
Compilation
Earnings in the Realm of the Immortals

Dongtian

qinglu

in

of Pure
(Chinese,

ji):54

To speak of a painting "without brush traces" does not

mean that its ink is pale, vague, and without definition. It is
precisely the same as [thework of] a good calligrapher who

52.

(see note
Mi

Bickford

53.

Peter Sturman,
Northern
Song China

19), p. 96.
Fu: Style and

the Art of Calligraphy

in
Yale University
Press, 1997), p. 10.
from a longer passage
translated
and discussed

(New Haven:

see Ogawa
in Song painting,
"T?S?
Hiromitsu,
"imagination"
ni okeru
kara 'S?shun zu'
sansuigashi
imajineeshon?hatsuboku
'Sh?sh? gay? zukan' made?,"
Three Parts, Kokka 1034 (June

Su Shi's quote
in Susan Bush,

1980):5-17; Kokka 1035 (July1980):35-45; and Kokka 1036 (August

Press, 1971), pp. 42-43.

University
54. This source
is pointed out

1980):25-36.

75

is taken

The Chinese

to Tung Ch'i-ch'ang

Literati on Painting:

(1555-1636)

(Cambridge,
in Kita

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Su Shih
Mass.:

(see note

(1037-1101)

Harvard
11), pp. 515-516.

76

RES 51 SPRING 2007

conceals
Or

his brush tip, like drawing

a seal

making

in the sand with an awl

in paste.55

impression

In this passage Zhao goes on to describe,

in keeping
of
with orthodox
literati ideas, the equivalence
applies this idea
calligraphy and painting. Yet Mitsuhiro
to a very different type of art form, likening the
dissembling
indistinction

itself to the
quality of tarashikomi
of lines drawn in sand. Such imagery
apt when
imagined in the setting of a

is

particularly
over evanescent,
sand-writ
seashore with waves washing
as
a
It
is
for
vivid
simile
then
activated
images.
inwhich
tarashikomi,
layers of inkwash over other
layers of ink, like a cyclical and ceaseless mutation
of pictorial representation.
the very conditions

55.

Translated

in Susan

Texts on Painting
(Cambridge,
p. 206. The italics have been

Bush

and Hsio-yen
Harvard

Mass.:
added

Shih,

of

Early Chinese

University

Press,

1986),

by me.

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