This dissertation investigates the work of Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716), one of the most idiosyncratic artists of Japan’s early modern period. By employing aspects of literature and theater, as well as a focus on Kōrin’s experimentations with the effects of style, materials, and artistic media, I elucidate how his oeuvre is characterized by a continuous strive to test the faculties of painting. Following a chronological approach, the four chapters of the dissertation trace Kōrin’s life and work from his early steps as a painter to the collaboration with his brother Kenzan (1663–1743) during his final years. The chapters are framed by an introduction, a conclusion, and an appendix. The first chapter focusses on Kōrin’s earliest works: two hanging scrolls depicting the medieval poet Sōgi (1421–1502) and Hotei Playing Kemari, as well as a pair of screens entitled Poetic Meanings of the Twelve Months. These works reveal Kōrin’s intellectual indebtedness to late medieval culture and the imperial court. Kōrin’s initial engagement in the arts occurred alongside his first confrontation with medieval ink modes, which laid the foundations for Kōrin’s lifelong understanding of that material. Numerous contemporary sources testify to Kōrin’s passion for the Noh theater. This little-studied, formative period of Kōrin’s life established his aesthetic sensibilities and is thus critical for understanding his art, a connection examined in the second chapter. Kōrin’s perennial engagement with Noh put him in contact with high-level aristocrats, such as the Nijō family, as well as upper-tier clergy at the temples Daigoji and Nishi Honganji. The theater also provides a possible reading of key works by Kōrin, such as his screen painting Irises. The third and fourth chapters explore Kōrin’s diversified dialogue with the material qualities of ink. The third chapter surveys his appropriation of a particular technique, tarashikomi, first championed by Tawaraya Sōtatsu (d. ca. 1640). I propose that Kōrin turned to tarashikomi as he prepared to leave his native Kyoto for Edo, where he was active for around five years. The chapter argues that Kōrin used tarashikomi, a painting method associated with Kyoto culture, to solicit clients in the shogunal capital of Edo. The last chapter is devoted to Kōrin’s collaboration with Kenzan. From the 1710s onward, the brothers created numerous examples of sabi-e, works in iron oxide on square ceramic vessels that emulate the techniques and visuality of paintings in ink. This unprecedented expansion of the boundaries of one medium to envelop another resulted in approximations of traditional ink paintings in ceramics. In the process, Kōrin expanded the paradigm of ink to include an entirely new material component. The appendix includes the first complete English-language translation of the collection of extant Edo-period letters and other documents by and about Kōrin that are contained in the Konishi Archives, held at the Kyoto National Museum, the Osaka Municipal Museum, and various other collections in Japan.

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.

A pair of eight-fold screens entitled "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" represents a colorful world map with the figures of peoples of the world on one screen. The painting is punctuated by numerous city markers, with the largest indicating the city of Rome. On the other screen, twenty-eight cities of the world and Christian and Muslim kings in ceremonial attire on horseback are depicted. This pair of screens was probably produced in the early seventeenth century. It was most likely painted by Jesuit-trained Japanese painters who had learned western themes and painting techniques: perspective and chiaroscuro. Until the sixteenth century, Japanese experience with and knowledge of the world was limited to its neighbouring lands, such as China, Korea, and India. Beyond the realm of Japan lay worlds formed through fascination and the imagination. In 1543, however, this changed with the appearance of the Portuguese, who journeyed to Japan in the pursuit of new lands to develop trade and to spread Christianity. The Portuguese and their culture had a strong impact on Japanese thoughts and activities, including the creation of many screens with European motifs and new views of the world at large. This pair of screens was drawn upon Dutch prototype made by Petrus Kaerius (1571-1646) in 1609. In my thesis I will examine how "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens performed a two-fold function. I will first examine how the screens marked Jesuit propagation of Christianity in Japan, and second I will examine how the screens articulated what might be called an emergent sense of Japanese collective identity. By this I do not mean identity based on nationalism, which emerged in Japan only in the nineteenth century. Rather, I mean an increasing awareness of the Self in relation to Other, and not only in relation to those outside the geographic confines of Japan but also within. What I intend to explore is how definitions of geography and culture in world map screens, and specifically "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens, prompted viewers to acknowledge a more distinctive Self. The end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries was a transitional moment for both the Jesuits and Portugal. Religiously, the Jesuits were in conflict with the Japanese government and, as well their authority was undermined by Mendicants from the Philippines. These conflicts were compounded further by the spread of Protestantism in Europe. Similarly, after a short prosperous trade in Asia, rising economic and political power of the Netherlands and England gradually pushed Portuguese trade out of Asia. By comparing "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens with "In-and-Around- Kyoto" screens, I argued that the Jesuit's hidden agenda of glorifying Christendom and God's order on earth emerged. Moreover, by comparing this pair with "Four-Continent-and- Forty-Eight-People" screens, I detect the emergence of sense of a Japanese Self, that was forged in relation to the Europeans. Although the screens give the impression of the orderly and peaceful world, they mask the unstable situation which the Jesuits and Portugal were experiencing at the time. In the end, I propose that "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens transformed and reworked the Dutch prototype from a geographical mode to one that is highly decorative. Rather than articulating a Japanese view of the world, the screens maintained the notion of a powerful Catholic world.

A pair of eight-fold screens entitled "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" represents a colorful world map with the figures of peoples of the world on one screen. The painting is punctuated by numerous city markers, with the largest indicating the city of Rome. On the other screen, twenty-eight cities of the world and Christian and Muslim kings in ceremonial attire on horseback are depicted. This pair of screens was probably produced in the early seventeenth century. It was most likely painted by Jesuit-trained Japanese painters who had learned western themes and painting techniques: perspective and chiaroscuro. Until the sixteenth century, Japanese experience with and knowledge of the world was limited to its neighbouring lands, such as China, Korea, and India. Beyond the realm of Japan lay worlds formed through fascination and the imagination. In 1543, however, this changed with the appearance of the Portuguese, who journeyed to Japan in the pursuit of new lands to develop trade and to spread Christianity. The Portuguese and their culture had a strong impact on Japanese thoughts and activities, including the creation of many screens with European motifs and new views of the world at large. This pair of screens was drawn upon Dutch prototype made by Petrus Kaerius (1571-1646) in 1609. In my thesis I will examine how "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens performed a two-fold function. I will first examine how the screens marked Jesuit propagation of Christianity in Japan, and second I will examine how the screens articulated what might be called an emergent sense of Japanese collective identity. By this I do not mean identity based on nationalism, which emerged in Japan only in the nineteenth century. Rather, I mean an increasing awareness of the Self in relation to Other, and not only in relation to those outside the geographic confines of Japan but also within. What I intend to explore is how definitions of geography and culture in world map screens, and specifically "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens, prompted viewers to acknowledge a more distinctive Self. The end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries was a transitional moment for both the Jesuits and Portugal. Religiously, the Jesuits were in conflict with the Japanese government and, as well their authority was undermined by Mendicants from the Philippines. These conflicts were compounded further by the spread of Protestantism in Europe. Similarly, after a short prosperous trade in Asia, rising economic and political power of the Netherlands and England gradually pushed Portuguese trade out of Asia. By comparing "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens with "In-and-Around- Kyoto" screens, I argued that the Jesuit's hidden agenda of glorifying Christendom and God's order on earth emerged. Moreover, by comparing this pair with "Four-Continent-and- Forty-Eight-People" screens, I detect the emergence of sense of a Japanese Self, that was forged in relation to the Europeans. Although the screens give the impression of the orderly and peaceful world, they mask the unstable situation which the Jesuits and Portugal were experiencing at the time. In the end, I propose that "World-Map-and-Twenty-Eight-City" screens transformed and reworked the Dutch prototype from a geographical mode to one that is highly decorative. Rather than articulating a Japanese view of the world, the screens maintained the notion of a powerful Catholic world. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

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.