This dissertation is the first monographic study of the monk-calligrapher Yishan Yining (1247-1317), who was sent to Japan in 1299 as an imperial envoy by Emperor Chengzong (Temur, 1265-1307. r. 1294-1307), and achieved unprecedented success there. Through careful visual analysis of his extant oeuvre, this study situates Yishan’s calligraphy synchronically in the context of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy at the turn of the 14th century and diachronically in the history of the relationship between calligraphy and Buddhism. This study also examines Yishan’s prolific inscriptional practice, in particular the relationship between text and image, and its connection to the rise of ink monochrome landscape painting genre in 14th century Japan. This study fills a gap in the history of Chinese calligraphy, from which monk-calligraphers and their practices have received little attention. It also contributes to existing Japanese scholarship on bokuseki by relating Zen calligraphy to religious and political currents in Kamakura Japan. Furthermore, this study questions the validity of the “China influences Japan” model in the history of calligraphy and proposes a more fluid and nuanced model of synthesis between the wa and the kan (Japanese and Chinese) in examining cultural practices in East Asian culture.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2007. / Description based on contents viewed Oct. 5, 2007; title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-102).

My dissertation, The Female Body, Motherhood, and Old Age: Representations of Women in Hell in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Japan, examines the literary and visual representations of women in hell in late medieval and early modern Japan, with particular attention to the female body, motherhood, and old age. My focus is the late Muromachi and early Edo periods, when a constellation of new hells began to be conceptualized that had serious ramifications for representation of women. I examine a group of otogizōshi texts and hell paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which were disseminated widely through different media (picture scrolls, screen paintings, and narrative texts) and which generated a set of motifs representing women in the afterlife. I relate the emergence of these motifs to the larger history of the discursive construction of the female body and the evolution of representations of hell in premodern Japan. I argue that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, representations of women in hell in these texts and paintings shifted in their focus to domestic relationships, specifically mother-child and wife-husband relationships. This change is best exemplified by the late medieval set of gendered hells (The Hell of Barren Women, The Hell of Two Wives, and Children’s Limbo), which represent the body of the woman from three perspectives: 1) as infertile (as in the Hell of Barren Women), 2) as related to animals (such as the serpentine queen in Daibutsu no go-engi (The Venerable Origins of the Great Buddha) and the serpent-women in the Hell of Two Wives), and 3) as stigmatized or punished for excess desire/attachment in their mother-child and wife-husband relationships (as in the Hell of Two Wives). This dissertation also analyzes woman as erotic object, as mother, and as aging body from a comparative Japan-China perspective. By comparing similar motifs that emerged at approximately the same historical moments—the snake queen falling into hell in Daibutsu no go-engi with the snake queen in “Empress Xi turning into a python,” and Datsueba (Clothes-snatching Hag) with Meng Po (Lady of Forgetfulness)—I am able to highlight distinctive features of these new hells for women as well as compare the differing functions of hell shown by these Japanese and Chinese examples. In Chapter 1, “Women Falling Into Hell in Early Medieval Japan,” I analyze three early medieval tales of women journeying to and from Tateyama hell in the eleventh-century Dai Nihonkoku Hokkekyō genki and twelfth-century Konjaku monogatari shū in order to provide background for my later discussion on the new concerns for women that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I show how the salvation of the deceased female protagonists depended on the proper rituals being performed by family members and I make clear the significance that motherhood was accorded in early medieval Buddhist tales of women in hell. I then examine how representations of women evolved and became more complex in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the emergence of the Hell of Barren Women, where childless women are punished, and the Hell of Two Wives, in which two serpent women coil their bodies around a man with whom they had become involved in a triangular relationship. In Chapter 2, “Barren Women Hells and Daibutsu no go-engi (The Venerable Origins of the Great Buddha),” I show how the Hell of Barren Women stresses the reproductive responsibilities of women. The representations of the Hell of Barren Women, reflecting a growing female audience in the late Muromachi and early Edo periods, are clear evidence of a belief that it is motherhood that is a woman’s passport to salvation. In Chapter 3, I examine “The Serpentine Queen and the Chinese Tale of Empress Xi Hui Turning Into a Python.” A comparison with Daibutsu no go-engi shows that the Chinese stories about Empress Xi focus more on the feelings and observations of the living, while Daibutsu no go-engi stresses the accumulation and elimination of negative karma. Chapter 4, “The Hell of Two Wives: Transformed Women and the Jealousy of Joint-Wives,” examines the motif of the “transformed woman” found in the Lotus Sutra, the eleventh-century Hokke genki, and the mid-sixteenth century Dōjōji engi, showing how a negative connection between women and the dragon-serpent body was established, and how the animalized female body relates to the question of desire. The entwined threesome in the Hell of Two Wives not only exemplifies a domestic narrative of betrayal and resentment; it also shows a transition from a general stigmatization of the female body towards a more specific condemnation of lust, jealousy, and resentment—which are all gendered female. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women’s roles evolved to reflect a desire to maintain the stability of family. At the same time, these representations began focusing more on situations in which women’s efforts to control body or mind met with failure. Chapter 5, “Old Women as Keepers of the Borders: Datsueba and Meng Po,” analyzes two figures of hags in hell: Datsueba in Japan and Meng Po in China. While Datsueba watches over the dead as they descend to the depths of hell to receive judgment, Meng Po cares for them as they make their way out of hell to achieve reincarnation. I argue that both Datsueba and Meng Po reinforce the border of hell by depriving the deceased of their social identities, but while Datsueba punishes and purifies the deceased, Meng Po focuses on the transitional stage between death and the next life, and her memory-erasing function shows that, paradoxically, in Chinese hell deceased souls are not liberated from the basic Confucian relationships that are so important to the living.

This dissertation presents an in-depth examination of Sumiyoshi Gukei’s (住吉 具慶, 1631–1705) masterwork handscrolls Illustrated Legends of the Two Masters (Ryōdaishi engi emaki, 1680), pictorial biographies of the Tendai Buddhist patriarchs Tenkai (天海, 1536–1643) and Ryōgen (良源, 912–985). These scrolls played a crucial role in Gukei’s 1685 appointment to shogunal painter (goyō eshi), distinguishing him as the first artist trained in the native yamato-e style to be hired to the position by the Tokugawa. Illustrated Legends of the Two Masters demonstrates the manner in which Gukei utilized visual tropes steeped in the prestige of an idealized past to devise an entirely new iconography suitable to satisfy the desires of Kan’eiji, the shogunal temple that commissioned these narratives. The yamato-e of the Edo period inherently embodies a tension between lionizing the visual tropes of the historic past and refreshing them with novel interpretations, a balance perfectly struck by Gukei’s expressive, idiosyncratic, and narratively rich take on the mode. From its founding in 1663, the members of Sumiyoshi school had a reputation for working in an orthodox style of yamato-e, resulting from the Tosa school training of the founder Sumiyoshi Jokei (住吉 如慶, 1598–1670), and his thorough experience copying classic paragons of courtly grace; as the second head of the school, Gukei’s interpretation exhibits a noteworthy departure from previous conventions. This deft appropriation of imperial visual culture and adroit repackaging to suit contemporary tastes appealed to the Tokugawa shogunate, itself seeking a visual vocabulary with which to maintain cultural dominion over the realm.

This dissertation examines a phenomenon that arose in modern Japanese art and architecture in the late 1920s and early 1930s, which I term “integrated art.” I argue that “integrated art” was a distinct genre of art characterized by several impulses toward totality: the unification of multiple artistic media, the melding of art and its viewership, and most notably, the collapse of traditional Japanese arts (the “past”) with modernism (the “present”). “Integrated art” was indebted both to 19th century European notions of the Gesamtkunstwerk (the "total artwork") that had begun circulating in Japan in the 1900s, and to tea and other Japanese art practices. It also a particular local response to the rapid modernization and disorienting Westernization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The genre’s fascination with the “past” sprouted from a growing concern over the preservation of Japanese culture in modern times, and a perceived disconnect between extant practices of fine art and cultural identity. To define this genre of total art, I examine three cases that can be understood as “integrated art”: the “total flowers” of ikebana master Teshigahara Sōfū (1900-1979), the teahouse-inspired structures of architect Horiguchi Sutemi (1895-1984), and the stage performances of the artist collective Jikken Kōbō (active 1951-1957). The sum of these three artistic practices gives shape and weight to the amorphous tendency of “integrated art,” making its characteristics and goals visible. By conducting visual analyses of each case study’s works, their photographic documentation, and related writings, I show that each creator or group of creators pursued an intangible—and largely impossible—totality: a holistic, timeless Japanese art practice that resolved the fractured, modern present. In doing so, I offer a narrative of modern Japanese art that not only traverses diverse media and practices, but also interrogates the aesthetic and political stakes of traditional arts, modernism, and totality. Questions of totality permeate modernism in various regions of the world—by analyzing “integrated art,” this study not only enriches our understanding of these transnationally linked ideas, but also celebrates the cultural particularities of total art in pre-World War II through early postwar Japan.