More on Musashi's Monkey

Not by Musashi, but by a contemporay; Kano Sansetsu (1589-1651) indulges
 his humorous side with this monkey.

I have written a little on Musashi's monkey design (& Part 2) before, but seeing Kano Sansetsu's version of the theme was too good an opportunity to miss. It reminded me of the mention Musashi makes of the shuko, or Autumn monkey. 

The admonition he gives in the sections in both Gorin no Sho and Hyoho 35 Gokajo (35 Articles on Strategy) is not to stretch out the arms in striking, and so the natural assumption (and one followed by the first few translators of A Book of Five Rings) is that it referred to the a short-armed monkey, such as the native Japanese macaque. 

I thought so too, but the puzzling question was the use of the term 'Autumn monkey', and several theories have been advanced as to the reason for this. None of them are entirely convincing, but as it was obviously a reference to a short-armed monkey, that didn't seem to matter all that much.

But when it comes to symbolism, all is not as it seems. Although there is a rich tradition of monkey lore in Japan, much of this is related to Shinto traditions, and is quite explicitly attached to specific deities enshrined in particular locations.  Given Musashi's links with aspects of culture related to Buddhism, and especially Zen, it seems more likely that he would be drawing from this tradition. His paintings at Toji Temple in Kyoto date from quite early in his career, long before his time in Kumamoto, and it is possible that he had seen or at least heard of the paintings by Hasegawa Tohaku.

Tohaku's 'Monkey Reaching for the Moon'
in Konchi-in

There are several similar versions of these works, held by different paintings around Kyoto. The only one still in situ is in Konchi-in in the Nanzenji temple complex, and it was moved there some time after the painter's death.  Others are owned by Ryosen-an and Shokokuji. 

The fur of the monkey was painted with a brush with split bamboo 'hairs' to create the scratchy, fuzzy appearance, and in this we can see his indebtedness to the work of Mu Qi (Mokkei), the Chinese painter, whose works had been brought to Japan (and kept at Daitokuji Temple in Kyoto) some two hundred+ years previously.

Mu Qi

Hasegawa Tohaku

We have evidence of Musashi using the image of a gibbon reaching for the moon in his art (in the fittings for a sword), so it seems possible that this is the shuko, rather than the short-armed type. Given the fate of the monkey that stretched out for the moon (it came to an unhappy end) this can clearly serve as a warning of the dangers of so doing. But still, the use of the term Autumn monkey was puzzling. Why Autumn? The answer is, of course, obvious if you think a little more widely. If any season was associated with the moon, it would be Autumn; after all, this was when the yearly moon viewing festival was held. In some circles, the viewers, like the monkey, would view the moon's reflection in the surface of a pond. It makes far more sense to associate the Autumn of Musashi's Autumn monkey with the moon, than with seasonal aspects of monkey behavior.

This suggests that a broader reading of symbols is important if we are to understand the range of meanings they hold. Much of the creativity in Japanese art is to be found in the way in which well-known motifs are reinterpreted, and the richness and layering of meaning is one of the pleasures of art – however limited one's knowledge may be, there is a little thrill when you identify the origins of an image. Oblique references are common and are part of the way knowledge and experience are presented – being able to unpack references enriches the experience of art, offering new and alternative meanings, additional subtleties, and allows the receiver room for creative interpretation.

Traditionally, in Japan, clothes, accessories, plates and bowls, hanging scrolls etc. are all matched with the time of year, according to the motifs of the season – season being not just the major four seasons, but specific times of year, such as cherry blossom time or Boys Day. This is a well-recognized aspect of haiku, for example, but still features in everyday life as well as more artistic pursuits. Unlike the heavy-handed approach we see with festivals such as Halloween and Christmas, when it comes to seasonal decoration, these motifs were seen as the proper work of serious artists, and the cleverness and skill with which they used well-known motifs is a source of enjoyment throughout the year. Even at a simple level, this use of natural motifs is something that Japanese culture is attuned to in a way that western culture is not.

Sansetsu's monkey is also reaching for the
moon, but it is just out of the picture here.

So, for Musashi, using the image of a monkey as a teaching aid would have been the re-stating of a well-known image to students/readers who were used to seeing just such symbols in various guises. The majority of western readers have little familiarity with the original image – (although, indeed, the same assumptions have been made by Japanese commentators on this passage)... so sometimes the helpful gloss by the translator may not be so helpful after all. 

 

The Glories of the Kyoto Kano School: Kano Sanraku and Kano Sansetsu at the Kyoto National Museum

 

Kano Sanraku... this dragon is paired with the tiger and leopard below. It looses everything in such a small reproduction, but if you click on the picture, you will be able to appreciate it far better.

The Kano School was the greatest and most successful of all the Japanese schools of painting. It was founded in the Muromachi period and representatives continued until the end of the Edo period and even beyond. Although its later generations fell into what is usually regarded as sterile copying (although sometimes very beautiful), the earlier generations were full of visual and creative power and energy.

           

It is two of these earlier artists, Kano Sanraku and his son-in-law and adopted son, Sansetsu, who are the subject of a lavish exhibition at the Kyoto National Museum. I had seen some of their paintings earlier, and without knowing much of their history, admired the elegance of Sanraku far more than the boisterous energy of his adoptive father, Eitoku, who did so much to promote his family and secure their position as the foremost artists of their day.

One of Sansetsu's most famous works, The Old Plum Tree, as it would look
in situ.

Eitoku was official painter to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and at his suggestion, adopted his most promising pupil and made him his successor. So far, so good for Sanraku, who succeeded in fulfilling his early promise. However, he fell foul of the changing political climate, and as a member of the Toyotomi entourage, was held in deep suspicion when Tokugawa Ieyasu took over and had to flee for his life.

He was able to resume painting as things quieted down, but was never granted a position as official painter to the shogunate. That honour went to the brilliant Kano Tanyu, who moved to Edo and established the Edo branch of the family, while Sanraku stayed in Kyoto to continue what had become the more minor branch of the family. Sansetsu was to follow him, and there have been some suggestions that some bitterness existed between the two branches.

The exhibition itself is a marvelous opportunity to see so many fine paintings by the two painters – all of them are of a very high standard and enjoy and compare their work. Although the exhibition is weighted in numbers towards Sansetsu, the layout does not really give that impression, and I felt that both artists got an equal showing.

 

Sanraku's tigers. Yes, I know it's a leopard, but it is meant to be a female tiger.
They are looking at the dragon who is at the top of the page. Here we see them
flat, but in the exhibition, the screen was standing semi-folded, so the effect was
quite different.

Seeing such fine works close up is always a treat, and I find the more I look, the more I see. The first room contained Sanraku’s Tiger and Dragon  pair of folding screens, which I hadn’t seen for over twenty years. This is probably the most famous tiger painting in the Japanese tradition, and I remember being quite surprised by the simplicity of treatment when seen from close up. My eye has become more sophisticated since then, but it is true that the strong outlines and flatness of some of the supporting elements does stand out far more when you are in front of the real thing than they do in reproductions (and even more so in Eitoku’s work).

Not my photo, but this is how it looks from the
side.

This time I particularly noted (as well as the way the pigment was applied for the fur) something that I have only come to appreciate in the last few years, which is the way that the nature of the folding screens can add to the spatial effect of the images, giving depth to the painting. There is certainly a knack required to appreciate this, but once acquired, the foreshortening that occurs when looking from an angle, and the layering of successive parts of the picture, gives an added subtlety to the effects of distance, making it very different from the flat fusuma-e (pictures on sliding doors) which is how so many paintings are seen.

This screen, though not by either of these painters, gives
something of an idea of the effect of the folds. 

Wheras previously I had found screens slightly annoying as they disrupted the flat view, now I find the variation they contain far more interesting.

Overall, Sanraku’s works exhibited a calmness and elegance throughout. The style makes much of the process visible to the viewer, and part of what is so interesting about these works, as well as their very obvious beauty, is looking at the techniques the artists utilized.

Rocks by Sanraku

...and by Sansetsu

In the case of these two, although their styles were very close in many aspects, there were differences. I noticed the way Sanraku used the repetition of marks denoting surface texture to build up a measured rhythm across his compositions. This is visible in features such as rocks and trees. If you compare this to Sansetsu, you can see that he favoured an approach that utilized skillful bokashi, blending the lines into the surface.

Sansetsu’s own character was very noticeable in the faces of his animals which all displayed an unusual sense of humour. This aspect has, in fact, been pounced upon as evidence of his place as a predecessor of the 18^th century eccentrics Jakuchu and Sohaku. I’m not sure I would go so far – his technical discipline and adherence to (the Kano school’s canon of) elegance and beauty was greater than theirs – but he was clearly an individual, and expressed this quality in his work.

Both of these painters maintained or even raised the standards of the Kano school, with their emphasis on grace and elegance, producing works of technical brilliance, power and beauty.

If you happen to be in Kyoto, you shouldn’t miss it!

The Real Musashi: The Bukoden

I have been sitting on this book, waiting for the time to give it the review it deserves, and even so, I will have to skimp a little.

It is the second in the series by William Lange, the first being The Bushu Denraiki, which I reviewed here.

A complementary volume, "Miyamoto Musashi: a life in arms" which looks to go into the life of Musashi in more depth, from a variety of original sources is due out soon, so perhaps this is timely. 

Like The Bushu Denraiki, this volume consists of a translation of one of the main source documents concerned with the life of Miyamoto Musashi, together with copious notes and explanations.

Both the Bushu Denraiki (1727) and the Bukoden (1755) were later rewritten ­– as the Heiho Senshi Denki (1782) and the Nitenki (1776) respectively, by a former pupil (in the case of the former) and the son (for the latter) of the original authors. It is these 2^nd generation works that tended to be drawn on by later generations of writers, especially the Nitenki. Both the Bushu Denraiki and the Bukoden were compiled from handed-down accounts of those who had known or had contact with Musashi, and thus provide a fascinating picture that goes beyond the well known anecdotes that many of us are already familiar with.

Both of them have strong connections with the followers of Musashi’s style of swordsmanship, and although they are not technical works, they are particularly recommended for those who are studying Niten Ichi-ryu, as examples of historical documents relating to their study.

Matsui Toyoyuki (1704-1771) head of the Matsui
clan at the time the Bukoden was written. (Courtesy
of Yatsuhiro Museum, Kumamoto).

The Bukoden was written by Toyoda Masanaga, who was a senior retainer of the Nagaoka (Matsui) family, who were vassals of the Hosokawa, an important daimyo family based in Kumamoto and with whom Musashi spent the last years of his life as a guest. The Nagaoka family had direct dealings with Musashi both during his early years (as sponsor for his duel with Sasaki Kojiro) and later on, and were assigned to care for him in the very last months of his life. To this day the Matsui Collection has some very impressive examples of Musashi’s artwork (I wrote about it here) as well as much else, and Toyoda Masanaga was fencing instructor to the family in Nito Ichi Ryu, Musashi’s style.

Given that he was based in Kumamoto, Masanaga’s account has more detail on the later period of Musashi’s life, complementing the Bushu Denraiki (which tends to be stronger on the earlier period), and Masanaga had access to his father’s collection of oral traditions, writings, letters and artwork. His father had also been sword instructor to the Nagaoka and had compiled his own technical treatise many years earlier.

The Shadow of Musashi's father - a painting
by Inoue Takehiko.

Much of the content of The Bukoden will be more familiar to readers than was the case with The Bushu Denraiki, and there are few surprises in the general outline it gives of Musahi’s life. The anecdotes it includes are interesting, and several were completely new to me. One interesting story told how Lord Hosokawa’s attendants had, at the instigation of their lord, planned to slam a pair of sliding doors on Musashi as he bowed prior to entering the anteroom to the lord’s chambers. Musashi had placed his fan in the grooves the doors ran in and so the doors were jammed open, earning Lord Hosokawa’s praise. The same story is also told of Araki Murashige, who had earned the wrath of Oda Nobunaga, and it is possible this same story was handed down and the names changed. In this version, it was planned as a trick or a test, but in the Araki version, the intent is murderous. As well as the nature of the attack and the response, there is another connection between the two,– Musashi’s father appears to have had a close connection with the founder of the Araki Ryu (Araki Murashige’s father), and it may even be that this precaution was passed down within Musashi’s father’s teachings.

Where de Lange shines is the detail he puts into the background notes. This is a valuable resource especially where it fleshes out minor characters referred to in the text. However, the nature of this kind of material can make it somewhat hard going, and this is not helped when details are repeated or material is included which has only a passing relevance to the text (relating to the Bushu Denraiki , for example) and I think some tighter editing might have been helpful here. The same goes for the appendices, which include details which seem quite unrelated to the text, in fact.

But these are minor quibbles, and this book is a valuable addition to the field. If you want to know where all those stories of Musashi came from, this is one of the primary sources, and as such, should be on the reading list for all serious Musashi afficianados.

The Demon's Sermon – a swordsman’s perspective

A print by Kawanabe Kyosai (2 panels of a triptych) showing Ushiwakamaru
(later known as Minamoto Yoshitsune) practicing swordsmanship with the tengu.

The Asian martial arts are intimately connected with language and concepts that seem esoteric and difficult to pin down. This is partly exacerbated by the problems of translation, where specific, and sometimes technical, terms become glossed into language that is general and quite difficult to pin down. Typical of this are terms such as kokoro or shin, i, and ki. The problem lies partly with the way in which the term is used in the original language, and partly with our own knowledge of these areas as reflected in our own language.

Take kokoro. This is often translated as mind, or heart, or heart-mind, or spirit. Though this gives us a general idea of the concept, it is quite difficult to conceptualize without further points of reference. When specific instruction on this point is being explained, it can make it almost impossible to grasp the real meaning of a text – all the more so when other terms that refer to related mental or physical faculties are used.

Nearly all the famous texts on swordsmanship include these terms, but I feel that much of the specific flavour and, indeed, meaning, is difficult to grasp without a clear personal understanding of what these terms refer to – a perfectly good translation may or may not provide this understanding.

But that is not all. Sometimes the original writer may not understand what he is talking about. 

Print by Utagawa Kunisada showingg Ushiwakamaru training with tengu
in the mountains of Kurama, outside Kyoto.

Let us take the Tengu Geijutsuron, written by Chozan Issai and translated by William Scott Wilson as The Demon’s Sermon on the Martial Arts. This is a good translation, and worth reading, especially since it appears to have been quite widely read in its time and to have influenced several other works. It is, I believe, the first Japanese work on swordsmanship written for a general readership.

It is not an easy text to follow, however, and the author’s own admission that he was not an expert in swordsmanship may put doubts into the reader’s mind, not least of which might be, “Is it worth trying to understand exactly what he’s saying?” And this is an important point, because he talks at some length and in some detail about a variety of topics pertaining to learning and developing skill in the martial arts. From my own perspective, there are aspects of it that are interesting, mingled with others that smack of armchair theory… and this is just what Otsuka Yoshioka wrote in his work Kenjutsuron, which appeared in the mid 18^th century, not so long after Tengu Geijutsuron.

Otsuka himself was a third generation student of Miura Mugan, who created the Mugan Ryu of swordsmanship. He also founded his own school, the Otsuka Ryu, and so his opinions are worth considering. What is more, his criticisms include his own explanations of these quite abstruse concepts and make for interesting reading in their own right. It is also interesting as it is not often that we get to see a master of swordsmanship directly criticize another work on the subject.

In fact, he is critical of a number of points in Tengu Geijutsuron, but to begin with, lets look at how the two writers explain the relationship between mind (kokoro) and ki (which Wilson calls ch’i, following the Chinese pronunciation.)

Tengu Geijutsuron

“Listen, form follows ch’i and ch’i follows the mind. When the mind does not move, there is no movement of ch’i; when the mind is at peace and there is nothing to agitate it, the ch’i is also in harmony, follows the mind, and technique responds to circumstances naturally. When there is something in the mind, ch’i is obstructed and the arms and legs cannot respond with their function. When the mind resides in technique, the ch’i is hindered and is not in harmony.”

The Demon’s Sermon on the Martial Arts p. 97

Otsuka comments on the passage as follows:

“He writes, ‘when the mind is still, the ki does not move.’ To say ‘the mind does not move’ is correct. ‘The ki does not move’ is incorrect. As mentioned previously, the ki must move, up and around, without stopping even for a moment. It preserves the outer circulation. If this energy doesn’t stop circulating even for a moment, it cannot respond to outer influences. Therefore it is called ki. You should think of preserving ki. If it does not move, does not circulate, it is not living ki. Usually, those who discourse on the state of mind and ki, blithely confuse the two.”

As you can see, the first passage closely links the mind and ki, making them, in effect, manifestations of the same phenomenon, as if ki is a slightly more solid version of mind. Otsuka, however, draws a clear distinction between them, envisaging them as complementary concepts. He goes on to explain them in greater detail – if you have an understanding of what he is referring to, this can be understood without too much difficulty; certainly, it is possible to recognize the use of mind and ki from ones own training. Without this personal experience, it might be difficult.

For those interested, I have included some of his further descriptions of mind and ki:

“The movement of the mind holds back the ki. If the ki is still it holds back the mind. When it is held back by the mind, the ki should ride over the mind. When the mind is held back by the ki, it should master the ki. If you cannot use the mind to master the ki, or use the ki to ride over the mind, you will be unable to reach the level where you can respond with complete freedom. This is not limited to swordsmen; among scholars too, there are many who keep their minds fixed and undistracted and have learnt not to stop the movement of their ki.”

This makes sense if ki is understood as something physical; if you think of it as an intangible energy, it might be more difficult to make sense of this.

“To settle the ki is not like a cloud settling on the edge of a mountain. Settling the mind is certainly like the wind stopping and the rain ceasing, when everything becomes calm. Settling the ki is more like settling affairs of state, making good use of everything, neglecting nothing. The ways of settling the mind and the ki are completely different.”

A superb late 18th century suit of armour
designed to look like a tengu.

The Tengu Geijutsuron also speaks at length on settling the mind and the ki, but the images it presents do not really distinguish between the two. The basic message is that if you do something for long enough, even difficult tasks will become natural for you, you will do them easily, thus your mind will be settled. If your mind is settled, your ki can move freely as the occasion demands. The examples he gives, such as a boatman running up and down the deck of a fast moving boat, ignore the one problem that has beset practitioners of fighting arts over the ages, and came to be a topic of contention during the Edo period in Japan ­– it is all very well to develop merely physical skills, such as moving on a boat, by repetition, but how do you train someone to fight, when not only is the situation continually changing, but someone is actively trying to hurt you just as you are trying to hurt them? How do you keep the mind ‘still’ in this kind of situation? How do you have the leisure to learn in such a lethal environment? And how do you develop skills that are sufficiently superior to your adversary’s to ensure a high probability of survival?

These are questions that continue to tax martial artists to this day. Tengu Geijutsuron doesn’t really offer any answers. Otsuka’s comments suggest that he did have answers, and I believe it is this level of insight that the masters of swordsmanship tried to convey in their writings, and what makes them worth reading.

I will leave Otsuka to have the last word for now:

“Even if we outline the method of distinguishing the mind and the ki nevertheless, it is for the most part insufficient - is it not necessary to complete intense training?”