Happy New Year 2022 - Year of the Tiger

A rather friendly looking tiger from the Kano school

A Happy New Year to all my readers! 2021 has been a far less productive year than I had hoped, but fingers crossed that 2022 will be better. Japan having adopted a cross between the western and Chinese New Years, January 1st sees the start of the year of the Tiger, the perfect opportunity to take a look at tigers as the subject of traditional Japanese painting.

Tiger paintings have a long history in Japan, but the motif and much knowledge and lore concerning this most Asian of animals came from the mainland, especially China. Korea, of course, had a strong tradition of tiger painting, and this was also a major influence on Japanese artists.

Artists on the mainland had an advantage in that they may have had the opportunity to see live tigers. This was not the case in Japan, where the work of previous artists served as models. At least one famous artist (Maruyama Okyo) went as far as to buy the skin of a tiger to use as a model and this is probably as close to a real tiger as many artists would have come until the late C19th.

Japanese tigers come in many forms, and were used as a motif on hanging scrolls, folding screens and sliding doors, sometimes covering all four walls of a room. The necessary element of the imagination served to give the best of these images an impressive sense of energy and an identity and charm all of their own.  

This painting by Muqi, was the inspiration
for many later Japanese painters

The Chinese painter Muqi (Mokkei) (1210?-1269?) seems to have provided the initial models of tigers for Japanese artists. Not coincidentally, he also provided the first known example (in Japan) of the dragon and tiger motif. A Zen monk as well as a painter, Muqi seems to have been the master of a thriving atelier, and some of the work attributed to him may well be from the hand of painters who worked under him. His work was not regarded as highly in his homeland as it was in Japan - and the pieces held by the great Japanese Zen institutions of the time are among the finest examples of his work.

Not a great reproduction, but it shows the dragon
tiger pairing. You can also see the poetic lines about clouds
and wind at the bottom of each painting.

This pairing of the dragon and the tiger is rich in symbolism. Together, they represent the balance of forces in nature, the yang dragon in the sky also represents spring, while the yin tiger on the ground is a symbol of autumn. They are also associated with the clouds and wind respectively, and bamboo in the case of the tiger. This is an early association – the most famous pair of Muqi’s dragon and tiger paintings (see above) bear the lines ‘The dragon soars and brings the clouds; the tiger's roar, the ferocious winds’. The two creatures are always pictorially balanced, with the tiger at the bottom left (in early paintings this seems to be an invariable rule) and the dragon the top right. There is, too, the yin within yang and vice versa: although soaring in the clouds, the dragon has risen from the depths of the sea; similarly, while land bound, the tiger is associated with the mountains, and thus there is an acknowledgement of the opposite within each image. Both of them represent power, and they were often used to refer to well-matched opponents whose strength lay in different areas. A good example of this is the two well-known rival warlords, Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen, both among the strongest generals of the Sengoku period, though different in their personalities. They were known as the Dragon of Echigo and the Tiger of Kai.

Tigers pop up quite a bit in Zen, and this may help to explain why they became popular with Zen temples. As well as the works of Muqi, many of the earlier hanging scrolls and screens were painted by monk painters. The late Muromachi period saw the proliferation of professional painting studios, principally those of the Kano, who produced decorative schemes with whole rooms or suites of rooms being given over to tigers (amongst other motifs). These include the temples of Nanzen-ji, Manshu-in and Eikando in Kyoto, where they can still be seen in their somewhat faded but nonetheless impressive glory. These schemes were adopted from the warlords of the period, and it is easy to see why the military class would favor this symbol of power and control.

Nijo Castle - an old picture showing the original paintings. 

The virtuous, upright bamboo is clearly visible.

Nijo Castle in Kyoto offers a fine example of the warlords’ taste, although the original paintings are no longer in situ, having been replaced with newly painted copies. (I also wrote about this here: http://ichijoji.blogspot.com/2020/06. The symbolism is not subtle and it is used in the service of power, both legitimizing and intimidating visitors to the rooms. The visitors would be visiting lords, and the intention was not only to awe them with the trappings of power and wealth, underlining the visitors' own vulnerability, but to reinforce the message with specific reference to the motifs in the decorations.

Nijo Castle - a male and female 'tiger'

While the tiger represents power and ferocity - military virtues - a ruler should also be virtuous, an attribute which is signalled by the bamboo, which grows upright and remains unchanging, true to its nature, throughout the seasons. It also possesses the flexibility required of a virtuous ruler. As well as tigers, we can also see leopards (which were thought to be female tigers) in some of the rooms. This was no accident, but a reference to mating and thus the continuation of the shogun’s line.

Nanzenji - although a Zen temple, it adopted the motifs of the military class.

Temples also employed the same artists. There may be a greater emphasis on

the peaceful nature of the tigers in the temple scenes, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The intention to intimidate is obvious in the case of the bushi class, but in the grand decorative schemes in Zen temples, the meaning is a little less apparent. As noted before, tigers do crop up in Zen writings: the enlightened man is likened to a dragon in the depths or a tiger in its mountain fastness, serenely confident and at ease in his own attainment. While this might do for personal contemplation, they were also a means of impressing visitors. Partly, this would have been allowing them the pleasure and privilege of seeing such fine works of art. It also served to underline the importance of the abbot (and his temple) in having access to the very best in artists - the same ones, in fact, that were employed by the highest and most powerful figures in the realm. Religious institutions, it must not be forgotten, were very much a part of the body politic, and their abbots were powerful figures.

There is much more to be said of tiger paintings, and in the next post I intend to look a little closer at some of the major styles in Japan, as well as a recently discovered and deeper role in the arts of war.

More about this one in the next post.