Hakkei
June 8th 2008 06:48
HAKKEI
How a Lake in China is linked to a Japanese Print!
How a Lake in China is linked to a Japanese Print!
How can a Lake in Southern China be linked to a Japanese Ukiyo-e Print!
Look at the upper right hand corner of the image of a Harunobu print below.
Can you see the boats sailing?
A Ukiyo-e print linked to Chinese painting!
These distant sails are a reference to a favorite theme with both printmakers and painters, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
Chinese painters of several eras, schools, and styles, liked to paint views of the Xiao and Xiang rivers. If painted as a set there were usually eight views and one of them was Sails returning form a distant shore.
Now the Japanese took this theme over and changed it to the Omi Hakkei or Eight Views of Omi.
The actual 8 views were based on 8 specific locations south west of Lake Biwa in Omi province (now called Shiga Prefecture) and one of them was Sails returning to Yabase.
Now I suspect one of the reasons for the fondness of sets of 8 was due to the use of paired four fold screens in Japanese housing to create room divisions however the Japanese seem to have had a thing for sets of eight.
The theme was used by the ooh so serious artists of the Kano school and family but also both adopted and adapted by the Ukiyo-e illustrators for books prints and posters and a particularly famous set is that by Hiroshige.
Themes change. The Japanese artists begin to create sets of Eight Views of Edo or areas thereof with prints of 8 views of the Sumida river and a further sub genre and theme was created of Interior Views, Zashiki Hakkei, scenes in which the focus is on indoors human relationships and activities but there's always a reference either as a scroll hanging on a wall or a window opening to a view of a landscape.
The Japanese Ukiyo-e artists loved Visual Puns and were also very proud of their city EDO!
Having those sails in the background was a way of doing a thumbs up at the artistic elite's obsession with China and also adding depth to a simple scene of urban life.
More on the Hakkei on and off over the next month as I sort thru my notes on htis topic.
I also have to find some more non copyrighted images to share with you!
Keep an eye out for the next in the Hakkei series!
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