Golden Week Lecture Series— Four Masterpieces of Japanese Painting: A Symposium
Miyeko Murase, Former Consultant for Japanese Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the
Takeo and Itsuko Atsumi Professor Emerita, Columbia University

It has been quite some years since I last spoke here at this museum, so many in fact that I have lost count. It is really wonderful to be back, and I want to thank director Mimi Gates and curator Yukiko Shirahara, who invited me to speak today on the world-famous Deer Scroll by Sōtatsu and Kōetsu. This proud possession of the Seattle Art Museum is one of the most beautiful paintings ever created by Japanese artists. [1]

The scroll just came back from Japan after extensive restorative work. Although the handscroll itself does not bear any title, it is generally known as the Deer Scroll because the entire scroll is filled with images of deer, which are shown either singly, in couples, or in large herds. The animals are painted only in gold and/or silver ink, as is the very simple setting of sky, mist, and ground. As you may have noticed, these beautiful pictures of deer are really a background for the equally exquisite writings of waka poems in black ink. Here we have a symphony of three arts - poetry, painting, and calligraphy - as a testimonial to the ancient credo of Asia that these three arts occupy an equally important place in life and culture.

The only naturalistic landscape element in this work is a hill rising at the very end of the scroll, at the foot of which is a signature reading “TokuyÅ«sai Kōetsu.” [2] One of Japan’s greatest calligraphers, Hon’ami Kōetsu lived from 1558 to 1637. Leaving a respectful distance from this signature, Sōtatsu, the painter of these beautiful animals, placed a large round seal reading “Inen.” [3] I will speak more about both artists later.

Although beautiful, the pictures of deer were made as a decorative element for the paper on which Kōetsu wrote a series of waka poems which were, however, not his own creations. Kōetsu simply copied them from Japan’s popular old anthology called the Shin KokinshÅ«, (New Collection of Old and New Poems) which was compiled in 1205.

The life of the calligrapher Kōetsu is well known, since he came from one of Kyoto’s wealthiest and most sophisticated upper class families, which specialized in polishing and connoisseurship of swords. He had a large circle of friends and acquaintances, some of which were members of the Imperial family while others were warriors or upper class merchants. He made acquaintances with them not only through his family business, but also through personal connections involving artistic and cultural activities. He corresponded frequently with this circle of friends and colleagues and today more than three hundred of such correspondences remain. This letter is a testimonial to his friendships with powerful men of the time.

Dated about 1605, when he was in his late 40s, Kōetsu wrote this letter to a certain Katō Akinari, asking him to come and help him prepare for the tea ceremony the following day to which he invited Furuta Oribe as a guest. [4]  Oribe, as you may know, was the leading tea master of the time. He took over the mantle of Sen no RikyÅ« in 1591, when RikyÅ« was forced to commit seppuku, ritual suicide, at Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s command. You may recall that Oribe himself would meet the same fate ten years later in 1615 at the command of Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Highly sophisticated in artistic matters, Kōetsu is often admiringly referred to in Japan as a “Renaissance Man.” He was regarded as one of the three greatest calligraphers of his time. He was, of course, also a connoisseur of swords.

He was a tea master and made many beautiful tea bowls, one of which is designated today as a National Treasure. This one is named Mt. Fuji and is in a private collection in Japan. [5]  He is known to have designed decorations on lacquer ware and metal ware, and some historians claim that he was a painter as well. [6]  Not only was he a versatile artist, he also seems to have been deeply committed, like many of his courtier friends, to reviveing the courtly tradition of Japanese art and literature. This conviction strongly resonates in the poems that he wrote on Sōtatsu-decorated scrolls and poem cards as you will see today. He is truly worthy of the accolade, a “Renaissance Man.” It must be also remembered that he was a catalyst to many future artistic projects.

In sharp contrast to Kōetsu, very little is known about the life of Sōtatsu. We do know that he was married to one of Kōetsu’s cousins, and he seems to have come from another artisan family of Kyoto, most likely a weaver’s family. When he first appears in historical records, Sōtatsu was already involved with Kōetsu and his circle.

In the closing years of the sixteenth century there was an ambitious publishing venture which is known as the Sagabon, or Saga Books, a publication venture that involved the imperial court and Kōetsu’s circle of friends. These books, some with illustrations, were called the Saga Books because they were published in the Saga area northwest of Kyoto. They included Chinese and Japanese classics, Buddhist texts, and many other kinds of books. What was unique about this publishing project was that in the past, Japanese publications such as Buddhist sutras were always printed using woodblocks, which were the size of a page of a book or sheet of paper, just like the ukiyo-e prints of later years. Saga books were instead printed with movable type, or stamps, almost like a modern press, in the technique that had been introduced from Korea in the late sixteenth century. A particularly beautiful group of books that came out of Saga was a series of Noh libretti, which were either printed or hand-written in books, decorated with designs, and printed with mica or silver using stamps. [7]  Mica or silver was not easily absorbed into wood stamps, and produced smudgy but attractive effects, which you will see in Sōtatsu’s decorative designs. Ink dots you see in between lines of text are notations for recitation. Sōtatsu, who was involved with this project, seems to have been inspired by the new technique of printing and hit on the novel idea of using stamps for his pictures as well. We note that Sōtatsu decorated the paper using stamps for the waves and flowers, or for the pines and the moon. [8]

He would repeat the same small stamps on other projects. [9] Or sometimes he made a large design, like this long plum branch, and used elements of the design on other projects. [10] He could combine different stamps, which enabled him to create an infinite number of variations and new compositions using a small number of stamps. This experience made a deep impression on young Sōtatsu and cannot be overemphasized. Much later when he became a full-fledged painter, of which I shall speak later today, Sōtatsu used the same principle in creating paintings with a surprising result that no other painters of Japan had ever used.

In 1602 Sōtatsu produced stunningly beautiful covers and frontispieces as replacements for some of the famous twelfth-century Buddhist sutras, which the Heike clan donated in 1164 to the Itsukushima Shrine in the Inland Sea. [11]  Known as the Heike Sutras, this group of thirty-three scrolls of the Lotus Sutra represents one of the most lavishly decorated Buddhist scriptures in Japan.

An inscription on the box that contains the scrolls states that in 1602 a powerful warlord named Fukushima Masanori sponsored the repair of some damaged scrolls. Although Sōtatsu’s name is not mentioned, it is clear from stylistic analysis that he was responsible for replacing covers and frontispieces of three scrolls from this group.  [12]