General Works

Getting Started. Where is the first place to turn, if one wants to find out something about Japanese art? The answer depends partly on what sorts of things one is looking for, but usually a good place to begin is with the best one-volume work on the subject, Penelope Mason's History of Japanese Art (New York: Abrams, 1993), which contains some 400 double-column pages, a readable text, and an astounding 456 illustrations, including 75 color plates. Mason limited her coverage, however, to painting, sculpture, architecture, and ceramics; missing are such topics as textiles, lacquerwares, swords, and folk art. Still, if you want a quick introduction to some aspect of the four areas that Mason covers - let's say, prehistoric clay sculpture, or early Buddhist temples, or Katsura Imperial Villa, or zenga (chiefly 18th-century ink paintings by Zen monks), or contemporary painting, Mason will give you a good start. (Other one-volume books will be mentioned later.)

Another good way to begin is with The Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan, 1996). The Dictionary is a 34-volume work; in volume 17 - the J's - "Japan" gets 430 double-column pages. This part of the Dictionary alone, then, is comparable in coverage to Mason's book, although it has no color plates and indeed the black-and-white images are not very sharp - but there is more, because the coverage of Japanese art extends through all of the volumes of the Dictionary. Thus, if you consult the index (volume 34) for the name of an artist, you probably will find a reference to a brief treatment in the J volume, and also a reference to a somewhat fuller treatment under the artist's name in the appropriate volume. The calligrapher and ink painter Hakuin, for instance, gets half a column under "Japan" (in the entry on painting), but two-and-a-half columns in the H volume, along with an illustration and ten bibliographic citations. In Mason's volume, Hakuin gets about a column-and-a-half of text, and an additional column devoted to one illustration.

Until the publication of the Dictionary, the most useful encyclopedia was the nine-volume Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1983). This work has excellent long articles on such subjects as Buddhist art, calligraphy, ceramics, and the history of Japan, as well as countless short articles on each of the major temples, sects, artists, and schools of art. Although the quality of the illustrations is poor, the Kodansha Encyclopedia, like Mason's book and the Dictionary of Art, is a good place to begin.

If you are looking not so much for detailed information as for assistance in experiencing Japanese art, assistance in (so to speak) seeing it, you may want to consult Stephen Addiss, How to Look at Japanese Art (New York: Abrams, 1996). This short book has chapters on ceramics, sculpture, painting, prints, and gardens (the chapter on gardens is by Audrey Seo). Each chapter concludes with "Key Questions" intended to stimulate a viewer's responses. For instance, at the end of the chapter on painting, among the questions are these: "Is the work on paper, silk, or another material? Does it use ink only, or color. Why?" "What is the subject of this painting? Is it traditional or new?" "What is the brushwork like? Simple or complex? Free or restrained?"

One-volume surveys other than Penelope Mason's: Very short introductory surveys of Japanese art inevitably are highly limited, but something can be learned from Joan Stanley-Baker, Japanese Art (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1984) and Peter C. Swann, Concise History of Japanese Art (New York: Kodansha International, 1979), although the reproductions in Swann are notably poor. Langdon Warner, The Enduring Art of Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), a more personal work than either of these, is less comprehensive and less up-to-date in its scholarship, but unrivaled for elegance and evocativeness.

For a rich collection of illustrations in one volume (794, of which 176 are in color), consult Danielle and Vadime Elisseeff, Art of Japan, translated by I. Mark Paris (New York: Abrams, 1985), a massive book with an erudite text that is organized thematically rather than chronologically. Preoccupied with the cultural background, the Elisseeffs rarely analyze individual works at any length, and although the book is in some ways encyclopedic (including nine triple-column pages of biographies and a six-page chronological table), there are large gaps; for instance, it says nothing about calligraphy or folk art and very little about any Japanese art after 1700. Somewhat more focused on art, but still with an emphasis on the cultural background, is a two-volume, handsomely illustrated work, Seiroku Noma, The Arts of Japan, translated and adapted by John Rosenfield and Glenn T. Webb (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1966).

Two other general surveys, more or less midway between Stanley-Baker's compact book and the Elisseeffs' massive book, should be mentioned. The first, and most important, is J. Edward Kidder, Jr., The Art of Japan (New York: Park Lane, 1985), an oversize book of some 300 pages, about half of which are devoted to 227 large color illustrations. The pictures, often of objects not illustrated in other books, provide a good introduction to Japanese art up to about 1650; art after 1650 gets only 27 pages, half of which are given to late 18th- and early 19th-century prints. The text contains many fresh comments (some arguments for dates may surprise specialists), but because much of it is devoted to a detailed exposition of the cultural and social background, it is perhaps more suited to intermediate students than to novices. The other general survey, less penetrating than any of the books already mentioned, but nevertheless of some use as an introduction because of its inclusiveness, is H. Batterson Boger, The Traditional Arts of Japan (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), whose many short chapters include discussions not only of the major arts but also of gardens, fans, dolls, costumes, and armor.

Reference Works. The first three titles mentioned above - Mason's History of Japanese Art, The Dictionary of Art, and the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan - are probably the best English-language sources for quick reference about all aspects of Japanese art. (Specialized works, such as dictionaries of Buddhist terms, or of inro artists, are mentioned later, in the appropriate sections.)

The Dictionary of Japanese Art Terms (Tokyo: Tokyo Bijutsu, 1990), which contains well over 4,000 terms such as chinso (portrait of a Zen master), Nihon-ga (Japanese-style painting with traditional pigments, as opposed to oil painting), and Taizokai-mandara (one of the two chief mandalas of Esoteric Buddhism), defines each term in two or three packed sentences. It is not an engaging book, but it is helpful; if in reading a book on Japanese art you come across an unfamiliar term, you almost surely will find a definition here. Much less useful is Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Art, edited by Yutaka Tazawa (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1981). Artists are listed not under the names by which they are known in the West (for example, Korin) but under their family names (Ogata Korin). Further, the coverage is unpredictable (only 40 calligraphers are included, 13 of whom are contemporary), and bibliographic references are only to works in Japanese. A more dependable unillustrated reference work with basic information about artists, sites, dates, and locations of artworks from the 6th century to the recent past is the Chronological Table of Japanese Art, edited by Shigehisa Yamasaki (Tokyo: Geishinsa, 1981).

Although it is not a general survey since it is chiefly concerned with art from the 13th through the 18th centuries, Japan: The Shaping of Daimyo Culture, 1185-1868, edited by Yoshiaki Shimizu (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1988) can be mentioned here. Illustrated with excellent photographs of major works, and equipped with detailed commentaries, it is indispensable to the study of painting, calligraphy, sculpture, arms and armor, lacquer, ceramics (especially for the tea ceremony), and textiles.

For extended discussions of relatively few objects - but covering the range of Japanese art, early and late, religious and secular - consult the following well-illustrated and highly informative catalogues of private and public collections: Miyeko Murase, Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975); Miyeko Murase, Jewel Rivers: Japanese Art from the Burke Collection (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1993) - none of the items in this second volume of the Burke collection appears in the earlier volume, since all of the objects in Jewel Rivers (from all periods, but chiefly from the Edo period) were acquired after the first catalogue was produced; John M. Rosenfield and Shujiro Shimada, Traditions of Japanese Art: Selections from the Kimiko and John Powers Collection (Cambridge, Mass.: Fogg Art Museum, 1970); A Thousand Cranes (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1987); One Thousand Years of Japanese Art, 650-1650: From the Cleveland Museum of Art (New York: Japan Society, 1981); and Yoshiko Kakudo, The Art of Japan (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 1991), in which the quality of the objects, and of the photographs, is uneven, but the book provides something of an introduction to many of the chief forms and motifs of Japanese art. The importance of the two Burke catalogues and of the Powers catalogue can hardly be overemphasized: they reproduce handsome objects and discuss them thoroughly. Also illustrating works in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is a book by Yoko Woodson and Richard T. Mellott, Exquisite Pursuits: Japanese Art in the Harry G. C. Packard Collection (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 1994). This catalogue usefully discusses, and illustrates in color, 27 objects from the late 11th century through the mid-19th (14 religious, 13 secular). Some 50 objects, ranging from prehistory through the 18th century, are illustrated in color and are discussed by Denise Patry Leidy in Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society's Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection (New York: Asia Society, 1994). Courtly Splendor: Twelve Centuries of Treasures from Japan (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1990) is an attractive catalogue of 60 top-quality objects, chiefly from the earlier periods but extending into the 19th century, each accompanied by a paragraph or two of comment. Lawrence Smith, Victor Harris, and Timothy Clark, Japanese Art: Masterpieces in the British Museum (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) includes 230 objects, from prehistoric ceramics to contemporary prints, with useful comments. It reflects British interest in its attention to swords and armor (almost always omitted from general American books), and it alone includes money, clocks, and 19th-century secular sculpture, but the quality of the objects and of the reproductions is uneven and the text is very brief. Sherman E. Lee, Michael R. Cunningham, and James T. Ulak, Reflections of Reality in Japanese Art (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1983) is an important catalogue with much information about major works of art from many centuries, but it is limited to paintings and sculptures that the organizers of the exhibition considered to be realistic in one way or another. Other useful catalogues of general collections, valuable chiefly for the illustrations because the texts are very brief, are Asiatic Art in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982) and The Freer Gallery of Art: Japan (Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd., n.d.).

Cultural background: Readers who seek major documents from the periods, along with helpful modern commentaries, should turn to Sources of the Japanese Tradition, 2 vols., compiled by Ryusaku Tsunoda et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958). This excellent collection of important religious, political, and social documents provides indispensable background material, especially for Buddhist art.

For a summary of images of women in Japanese art, see Sanna Saks Deutsch and Howard A. Link, The Feminine Image (Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1985). Women painters and patrons are discussed in essays by Terukazu Akiyama, Karen L. Brock, Pat Fister, and Stephen Addiss in Marsha Weidner, ed., Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1990). On women painters and calligraphers in the Edo and Meiji periods, see titles by Pat Fister and Elizabeth Lillehoj listed under Tokugawa or Edo period.

Note: The following works, like The Dictionary of Art and the Kodansha Encyclopedia, encompass several or, in some cases, all periods of Japanese art. They will not be listed again in the more specialized parts of this bibliography, but they are often as informative as the more specialized works.

On history, from prehistory to 1867, see the six-volume (still in process) Cambridge History of Japan, edited by John W. Hall et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988-), and the three-volume work by Sir George Sansom, A History of Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958-63). For a concise one-volume history, see John Whitney Hall, Japan from Prehistory to Modern Times (New York: Dell, 1970). Another one-volume history, especially useful because it includes more than 400 illustrations, is Louis Frédéric, Japan: Art and Civilization (New York: Abrams, 1969). Martin Collcutt, Marius Jansen, and Isao Kumakura, Cultural Atlas of Japan (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1988) is a packed social, cultural, and political history; the text is excellent but the color reproductions are highly inaccurate.

For a readable discussion of the history and the buildings of Kyoto, see Gouverneur Mosher, Kyoto: A Contemplative Guide (Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1964).

On Buddhist art, especially for iconography and symbolism, see Dale Saunders, Mudra (Princeton: Pantheon, 1960), and Louis Frédéric, Buddhism, translated by Nissim Marshall (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1995). For discussions of Buddhist art on the continent as well as in Japan, see David L. Snellgrove et al., The Image of the Buddha (New York: Kodansha International, 1978); Pratapaditya Pal et al., Light of Asia: Buddha Sakyamuni in Asian Art (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984), an important catalogue of an art exhibition concerning the Historical Buddha; and, especially, a fairly short but highly informative book by Dietrich Seckel, The Art of Buddhism, translated by Ann E. Keep (New York: Crown, 1964).

There are several important catalogues of exhibitions of Buddhist art. The most recent is Michael Cunningham et al., Buddhist Treasures from Nara (to be published later in 1998), a volume containing essays by John M. Rosenfield and Mimi Yiengpruksawan, and illustrating 87 objects (about a third paintings, another third ritual objects, and the remainder calligraphies, sculptures, and archaeological objects), each of which is fully discussed by Cunningham. A catalogue on a smaller scale, but still impressive for its informative essays (which place the objects in their ritual context), as well as for its description of objects and for the quality of the objects themselves, is Anne Nishimura Morse and Samuel Crowell Morse, Object as Insight: Japanese Buddhist Art and Ritual (Katonah, N.Y.: Katonah Museum of Art, 1995). This catalogue includes 64 works (paintings, sculptures, textiles, calligraphies, ritual implements, temple adornments, all illustrated, most in color), with substantial comments on each. Yutaka Mino et al., The Great Eastern Temple: Treasures of Japanese Buddhist Art from Todai-ji (Chicago: Art Institute, 1986) provides an excellent overview of a state monastery; the special strength of the illustrated material is the sculpture of the 12th century. Not an exhibition catalogue but relevant here is Roger Goepper's Aizen-Myoo, the Esoteric King of Lust: An Iconographic Study (Ascona: Artibus Asiae, 1993). This important book studies the forms of one Buddhist deity (paintings and sculptures), discusses the spread of his cult, and describes in detail the cult's rituals.

Certain volumes on Buddhism, though not concerned with art, nevertheless are useful for students of Buddhist art. E. Dale Saunders, Buddhism in Japan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964) offers a useful introduction to the topic, and for a somewhat more detailed treatment, see Daigan and Alicia Matsunaga, Foundation of Japanese Buddhism, 2 vols. (Los Angeles: Buddhist Books International, 1974-76). Definitions of Buddhist terms (admittedly from a Nichiren school point of view), ranging from a few sentences to several pages, are given in A Dictionary of Buddhist Terms and Concepts (Tokyo: Nichiren Shoshu International Center, 1983).

On Shinto art, see (for sculpture) the book by Christine Guth Kanda listed below under Sculpture, and for Shinto art in general, books by Haruki Kageyama and Susan C. Tyler, listed below under Kamakura period.

Mythology and folklore: Juliet Piggott, Japanese Mythology, rev. ed. (New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1983) summarizes creation myths and Buddhist, Shinto, and Taoist legends, illustrating them with reproductions of sculpture, paintings, and prints. Motifs from folklore, illustrated chiefly from woodblock prints, are discussed in Stephen Addiss et al., Japanese Ghosts and Demons (New York: Braziller, 1985). Also mainly devoted to folklore, but including some Buddhist material, is a much older but still useful encyclopedic volume, illustrated largely with netsuke: Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art (1908; reprint, Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1967).

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