Although by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the most
fruitful periods of cultural contact between Japan and China were
over, Japanese woodblock print artists continued to draw inspiration
from Chinese themes and motifs that had entered Japanese culture
over the preceding millennium. Sometimes straightforward, sometimes
wittily allusive, these prints aptly illustrate the ingenuity of
Japanese artists at translating imagery derived from China into
pictures relevant to the lives and tastes of audiences in Edo Period
Japan.
This exhibition, composed primarily of prints from the AMAM's
Ainsworth collection, examines several different types of Chinese-
derived imagery found in Japanese prints. It includes prints with
subjects drawn from Chinese popular religion and culture, prints
illustrating figures from Chinese history and literature, landscape
prints, and bird and flower prints. As a group, these images testify
to the enduring importance and rich complexity of Sino-Japanese
cultural relations in the pre-modern era.