The Politics of Reclusion
Brown, Kendall H.,The Politics of Reclusion. Painting and Power in Momoyama Japan. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 1997. ISBN 0-8248-1913-6By J.P. Lamers
The question Brown sets out to answer in his study is what accounts for the popularity in Momoyama period Japan (1576-1615) of depictions of Chinese hermits such as the semi-historical Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and the legendary Four Greybeards of Mount Shang. Hermit-theme paintings not only appealed to the military rulers of Japan who established themselves in this era, but they also found favour with aristocrats and priests who saw their power usurped or nullified by these new military leaders. Traditional interpretations of Momoyama painting cannot explain this widespread acceptance. Why was it, Brown asks, that 'competing social groups' had their residences adorned by identical Chinese-figure subjects? How could the hermit themes cater both to the people in power and to those excluded from power in late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-century Japan?The answer proposed by Brown is that the hermit-theme paintings possessed a 'multivalent meaning', which derived from their Chinese origins. 'The values of eremitism' in China could be either political or personal, involving either the renunciation of public office or the affirmative choice for self-cultivation. In addition, the theme of the Four Greybeards showed 'the duty of good Confucians to withdraw in protest of bad government and, conversely, to serve when good administration was restored'. Although transformed to some extent in the transmission process, 'the original Chinese implications of these subjects' were by and large maintained in Japan. Brown argues that they were still recognized by the Japanese of the sixteenth century. Most Japanese representations of these themes created 'an idealized world where groups of lofty scholars live in communion with nature and where they engage in refined activities'. It was this kind of 'aesthetic reclusion' which made the Momoyama paintings featuring the Seven Sages or the Four Greybeards politically ambivalent: such paintings could be expressions of political legitimation, while they could also be the carriers of soft-spoken political protest. It all depended on who was doing the reading.
The body of Brown's study is in fact an attempt to 'articulate the Japanese discourse on reclusion'. Chapter Two traces the hermit-themes of the Seven Sages and Four Greybeards from their origins in China to their reception and adaptation in Japanese literature and poetry. He draws our attention to the Chinese sources of Japanese culture, while emphasizing that the Japanese also reinterpreted the Chinese cultural heritage. In Chapter Three the topic of aesthetic reclusion is placed in the Momoyama 'sociopolitical context'. The tea ceremony is analysed as a 'paradigm of eremitism'; like the hermit paintings, it had ambivalent political implications, serving both the purposes of those in and those out of power. Brown draws upon the ideas of the anthropologist Victor Turner and interprets the tea ceremony as 'a ritual antistructure' to normative society. Chapter Four discusses the hermit paintings themselves according to five characteristics of aesthetic reclusion: Communitas, scholarly pursuits, appreciation of nature, elegant rusticity, and evocation of the Chinese past. The fifth chapter concludes with the biographical sketches of a number of actual aesthete recluses from the seventeenth century. Finally, it overreaches itself by arguing that the idea of aesthetic reclusion functioned as a connection between hermit-theme paintings, tea, and the neo-Confucianism of Fujiwara Seika (1561-1619).
The most obvious objection that can be raised against this book is the way it has been illustrated. Many of the illustrations convey a gloomy and grey impression of Momoyama paintings that are commonly known for their gaudy and brilliant colors.
Another problem is that the entire study rests on secondary literature. Not for a moment does the author give the impression of being intimately familiar with the Japanese classical literature from which he so abundantly quotes. His command of the secondary literature, too, is less than perfect: the elaborate treatment of the wall paintings inside Azuchi Castle, commissioned by Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) to Kano Eitoku (1543-1590), is based on the Tenshu sashizu, allegedly the castle's floor plan. But in 1977 the architectural historian Miyakami Shigetaka had conclusively proved that this floor plan is 'almost worthless' for the reconstruction of Azuchi castle. Unfortunately, the same goes for Brown's interpretation, as it hinges on the positioning of the paintings in relation to each other. Moreover, the author has taken far too little trouble to make his book worthwhile for non-Japanese-language specialists. On page 34 he writes: 'Kara monogatari mixes the setsuwa format with waka and thus resembles an uta monogatai'. I fear that such prose is incomprehensible to readers who are lay persons in the field of Japanese Studies, but are nevertheless interested in the interaction between power and art.
The relation between art and power in Momoyama Japan is a fascinating and attractive topic, but the apparent dichotomy that Brown seeks to explain is a pseudo-problem. New military leaders such as Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) keenly appropriated existing cultural practices, such as the tea ceremony, to enhance their own status. No wonder that they shared the cultural values of the aristocrats and priests they had apparently 'displaced or marginalized'. However, the warriors and the aristocrats of the Momoyama period cannot be separated into clearly defined 'competing social groups'. The noble Konoe Sakihisa (1536-1612), a former imperial chancellor, rose to a position of considerable influence and wealth while Nobunaga was in power. The military hegemon Hideyoshi, on the other hand, joined the ranks of the court aristocracy in order to obscure his lack of legitimacy by descent and translate his power into authority.
:Jeroen P. Lamers (JPLamers@let.leidenuniv.nl) is a Research Assistant at the Center for Japanese and Korean Studies, University of Leiden, the Netherlands.