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?”

Recent Publications

In the interest of those readers of this blog whose first language is not English, I have been a little remiss in not publicizing the two translated versions of my book, The Samurai Mind.

There are, in fact, two other versions:

Italian

La Mente del Samurai, Roma: Astrolabio, Ulbatini Editore. 2011

Spanish

La Mente del Samurái, Barcelona: Editorial Kairós. 2012

I do have a couple of the Italian ones, which I would be happy to send to anyone who drops me a line (first come, first served), but unfortunately, none of the Spanish edition.

If you are a Spanish or Italian reader, please pick up a copy and see what you have been missing. 

While we are talking of publications, be sure to check out the latest version of Kendo World (available in Kindle edition, too). This is, as the name suggests, primarily of interest to Kendo enthusiasts, but it is well-written and professionally produced and well worth a look for anyone with an interest in  such things.

The latest edition has Miyamoto Musashi as its focus, and it includes one of my articles: Confucian Voices in Swordsmanship II: Kenjutsu no Fushikihen. 

As the title suggests, it examines the relationship between Conficianism and swordsmanship in the work ‘Kenjutsu no Fushikihen’. This is a little studied work even in Japanese, but it’s inclusion in one of the major collections of original documents on martial arts at the beginning of the twentieth century suggests that it deserves to be examined more closely. 

Western readers have had very little exposure to it (if they haven’t read The Samurai Mind, that is), although a few quotes pop up here and there, from DT Suzuki’s Zen and Japanese Culture, where he casts it in a decidedly Zen light, also doubting that the writer can have achieved much in the way of enlightenment. In actual fact, it is a work steeped in Neo-Confucianism, although the references to Zen might confuse a casual reader. The title, however, is a pointed reference to Zen – or could be taken as such. Fushiki is the Japanese translation of the answer Bodhidharma is said to have given to the Emperor Wu when asked who he was, “I do not know.”  The O Yomei (Wang Yangming) branch of Neo-Confucianism was familiar with Zen, and the founder was strongly critical of it. Nevertheless, they often used references to Zen in their teachings, so this doesn't seem at all unusual. (I know I am always criticizing Suzuki, and he does deserve it, but it must be said in his defense that he wrote extensively (if partially) on subjects that had received very little serious treatment in English before then.)

I wrote a little more about Confucianism previously, (The Confucian Swordsman I & II) and of course, the complete text of Kenjutsu no Fushikihen is included in The Samurai Mind.

Although it is a little obscure in places, it is a fascinating explanation of how to teach an art that relies on spontaneity to be effective. It is, in effect, the criticism of a jazz musician for classical training as a way to prepare someone for a jam session. As someone whose own music training (not to a very high degree, I must admit, but I did play the trumpet from the age of eight until starting university) left him very poorly prepared to jam, I appreciate it.