AHIS10003 Chap.8 Defining Japan and Japanese Aesthetics
Defining Japan and Japanese Aesthetics
Week 7 argues that a national aesthetic is not something a country has but something that gets built, by particular people, at particular moments, usually for an audience. It demonstrates that on two works which look like pure expressions of Japaneseness.
A pair of six-panel folding screens, each 150.9 by 338.8 centimetres in ink, colour and gold leaf, is described as deceptively simple: an abstracted design carrying dense literary and social content, made by an artist who inserted himself into a descent line from earlier masters.
A colour woodblock print of about 1830, 25.7 by 37.7 centimetres and one sheet of a marketed series, is famous for reasons the week refuses to attribute to quality, setting out instead seven intersecting forces whose convergence produced an icon.
What this chapter covers
- 01
A national aesthetic as something constructed rather than possessed
- 02
A unique object in precious materials against a commercial sheet in an edition
- 03
Deceptive simplicity: minimal design carrying dense literary content
- 04
Manufactured lineage, and treating a descent claim as a claim
- 05
The idealised poetic past as the screens' real subject
- 06
Image and text resonance, and naming the device that carries an allusion
- 07
Rinpa as the named aesthetic the set reading uses
- 08
Why an image becomes iconic: seven intersecting vectors
- 09
Localism, nationalism, tradition, rationalism, commercialism, religiosity, tourism
- 10
Differentiation: what separates a print from others on the same subject
- 11
Commercial life, imitation and circulation as evidence about meaning
- 12
Pigment as marketing, and a technical fact carrying economic weight
- 13
What a folding screen does that a canvas cannot
Turning a national aesthetic into a historical claim
- 2Take the screens first: an apparent simplicity the week identifies as a deliberate reach towards an idealised poetic past, by an artist who inserted himself into a lineage that is claimed rather than inherited.
- 1Take the print second, in the opposite register: a commercial sheet of 25.7 by 37.7 centimetres, one unit of a numbered series.
- 1Attribute its fame as the week does, to the intersection of seven forces rather than to inherent quality.
- 1State the conclusion without denying that the works are Japanese.
Key terms
- Rinpa
- The Japanese decorative aesthetic and lineage named in the set reading on the screens.
- Six-panel folding screen
- The format of the screens: a pair, six panels each, articulated by five joins per screen and seen at angles when in use.
- Gold leaf ground
- The metallic ground over which the irises are painted, which catches light differently as the screen folds.
- Manufactured lineage
- An artist's self-inserted descent line from earlier masters, treated as a constructed claim rather than as a fact of influence.
- Iconicity
- Fame treated as an outcome with causes, which the week attributes to seven intersecting forces rather than to chance or quality.
Defining Japan and Japanese Aesthetics FAQ
What are the seven forces that made the print iconic?
The week names seven forces at once: tourism, commerce, religion, nationalism, local pride, tradition and a rationalising outlook. It locates iconicity where they meet rather than in any one of them. The value of the list is methodological: each vector implies a different archive, so an unanswerable question about fame becomes several answerable ones.
Why does the week call the screens deceptively simple?
Because an abstracted, minimal design of irises on a gold ground turns out to carry dense literary and social content, including a reach towards an idealised poetic past and a resonance with a widely known story and poem. The simplicity is a surface, and the analysis is about the gap between it and what is inside.
What is manufactured lineage, and why does the word manufactured matter?
It is an artist's claim of descent from earlier masters. The word matters because a lineage is a claim made by someone with something to gain, whether authority, patronage or a position in a tradition. Treating it as constructed rather than as a fact of influence is the analytical move, and it is the same move Part 2 made with a landscape school.
Why is pigment relevant to an art-historical argument?
The reading points at the commercial significance of a specific blue in how the print was promoted. It is a model for research writing because it takes the most technical and least glamorous fact about a work and shows it carrying economic and art-historical weight at once.
Exam move
Both works reward starting from format. For the screens, list what follows from the phrase pair of six-panel folding screens: it is furniture as well as painting, it is articulated by joins, it is not flat when in use, and it is a pair whose relationship is part of the work.
For the print, keep two questions apart that essays routinely collapse: what the sheet did in the Japanese print market of the 1830s, and what it has done since as a global emblem. Learn the seven vectors as a checklist for any famous image, not as facts about this one.
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