What do you see? A careless tangle of rocks, a stream, and young trees in an ill-cared for corner? A careful arrangement of rocks, a stream, and young trees to create an illusion of nature left to its own devices?
The West had had a thing for Japanese art from when Japanese art reached the West after the country opened up in the 1850s after American ships entered Tokyo Bay.
Before that, Japan was a closed society by order of the authorities, permitting only limited trading with certain countries in a very small part of the country.
Sakoku is a Japanese word that means to cut off extraneous inputs so as to allow one to think more freely. It continued until brought to an end from outside.
The military strength of the Black Ships, as the American ships were called by the Japanese, started a revolution in Japanese society.
Among other things, it brought two hundred years of Ukiyo-e to an end as Japan recognised it had to change, and grabbed modernisation with both hands – in technology, fashion, education, and the power structure of the country.
From there, the arc of history led to the Russo-Japanese War, the imperial aspirations in the twenties and thirties, the Second World War in the Pacific, and the rise of Japan after the war.
Ukiyo-e
So what is Ukiyo-e? It means ‘pictures of the floating world’. It was a way of seeing life as ever-changing, with bittersweet fleeting moments. And always the feeling that life was ephemeral and impossible to grasp.
It developed at a time when Edo (the old name for Tokyo) was changing and a new merchant class appeared that had aspirations to acquire art to which they could relate.
Ukiyo-e artists responded with themes about ordinary life. Nothing was out of bounds – theatres, brothels, tea houses, labourers, travellers, artists, prostitutes, lovers.
They painted their designs, which were then transferred onto woodblocks and printed in a collaboration between the artist, the woodblock carver, and the printer.
And because designs could be printed again and again, the prints were affordable.
Ukiyo-e captured the essence of Edo’s culture and lifestyle. And Edo provided the buyers and the money for artists to work.
Kurofune
Kurofune means Black Ships and it symbolises the end of isolation because of a superior force from outside, a feeling tinged with regret and an uncertain future.
But that future was a two-way street. When Japan opened to the West in the 19th century, the flat perspective in Japanese art dazzled the Impressionist and post-Impressionists in the West, where it became known as the Japonisme movement.
Van Gogh openly used Japanese themes with a flat perspective. Cezanne mixed the foreground and background into a flattened perspective as though the scene was viewed from several viewpoints simultaneously.
The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists in France collaborated with businesses, which brought the businesses and the artists to the attention of the public. It was the beginning of the democratisation of art in Europe. Think of Toulouse-Lautrec and his Folies Bergère posters. Think of the advertisements for Parisian cafes.
And Yet
With modernisation the Ukiyo-e culture that underpinned Japanese art was swept away. And yet, when I visited Japan in 1993 and Tamara and I visited last year, one can see that there is a part of Japan still beating to that drum.
Look at the casual arrangement of the saplings and rocks. But they did not just happen to be where they are. Every rock was placed and every young tree bent to appear to be the natural outcome of natural forces that run unseen through the scene.
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