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Studies of Japanese Art by Period
Tokugawa or Edo (1615-1868)
Most of the titles listed under Momoyama period are relevant here as well.
For a short, readable, well-illustrated introduction stressing art within
its social context, see Christine Guth, Art of Edo Japan: The Artist and the City,
1615-1868 (New York: Abrams, 1996). Guth focuses on the artists of Kyoto, Edo,
Osaka, and Nagasaki, but she also touches on topics that (given the title) one might
not expect, e.g., the sculpture of the itinerant monk Enku, the paintings and calligraphies
of the Zen monk Hakuin, and even a page (with two illustrations) on the weaving and
dyeing of cotton, and a page (with one illustration) on Otsue (folk painting from
Otsu, a village on the shores of Lake Biwa). William Watson, ed., The Great
Japan Exhibition: Art of the Edo Period, 1600-1868 (London: Royal Academy
of Arts, 1981), an illustrated catalogue of a large, comprehensive exhibition of
Edo art, includes useful introductory essays as well as brief comments on some 400
objects ranging from paintings to textiles, armor, and netsuke. Another handsome
catalogue, though with a more limited range because it emphasizes the military and
the flamboyant tastes of the Tokugawa shoguns, is The Tokugawa Collection: The
Japan of the Shoguns (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1989). This catalogue
includes valuable essays on such topics as patronage, textiles, lacquer, and the
tea ceremony, and it is therefore more useful than an earlier catalogue of a very
similar exhibition, The Shogun Age Exhibition (Tokyo: Shogun Age Committee,
1983). On patronage, see also an article by Elizabeth Lillehoj, "Flowers of
the Capitol: Imperial Sponsorship of Art in Seventeenth Century Kyoto," Orientations
(September 1996): 57-69. Also of interest, though chiefly to persons studying portraiture,
is Jared Lubarsky, Noble Heritage (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1992), a catalogue of some 30 objects, mostly portraits of the Hosokawa family,
with brief comments. The wide-ranging collection of Edo art owned by John and Kimiko
Powers is scheduled for publication in a volume called Extraordinary Persons
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Art Museums, 1998); the text is by John M.
Rosenfield with Fumiko Cranston, edited by Naomi Noble Richard. The book illustrates
231 objects, chiefly paintings but also some lacquers, ceramics, and sculptures,
arranged into seven categories: Government Artists (Kano and Tosa), Rinpa Artists,
Religious Expressionists (zenga, and the sculptor Enku), Kyoto Professionals
(Maruyama-Shijo School), Western-Influenced Artists, Literati Artists (variously
called scholar-amateurs, nanga, and bunjinga painters); Floating World
(paintings only).
More specialized items: Christine Guth, Asobi: Play in the Arts of Japan
(Katonah, N.Y.: Katonah Museum of Art, 1992), an exhibition catalogue, illustrates
32 objects, chiefly Edo, and includes a helpful text with essays on "The Play
of Man and God," "The Play of Word and Image," and "The Play
of Form and Technique." For a good discussion of one example of one motif -
a rakuchu rakugai (view in and around Kyoto) screen in the Burke collection
- see Matthew McKelway in Orientations (February 1997): 48-57.
Timon Screech, The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) is concerned with the introduction
of Western technology - especially lenses and mirrors - and their influence
on ways of seeing, not in science but in popular culture. The book is concerned with
what can reasonably be called minor art, but it offers an exceptionally stimulating
discussion. Like Guth's Art of Edo Japan, it shows the influence of the New
Art History, i.e., the concern for seeing art within its social context (think of
the writings on Western art of, say, Svetlana Alpers, Michael Baxandall, and T. J.
Clark - to go no further than A, B, and C) rather than traditional concerns with
iconographic meaning and authenticity.
Carolyn Wheelwright, ed., Word in Flower: The Visualization of Classical Literature
in Seventeenth Century Japan (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery,
1989) is the catalogue (six essays, 50 objects) of an exhibition concerned with the
early Tokugawa use of late Heian material. From the Suntory Museum of Art - Autumn
Grasses and Water: Motifs in Japanese Art (New York: Japan Society, 1983) illustrates
50 objects (chiefly screens, textiles, and lacquer from the Momoyama and Edo periods)
and includes four essays on "The Japanese Aesthetic." Also limited - in
this case chiefly to Tosa paintings of The Tale of Genji - are a small catalogue,
a book, and an essay: Yoshiaki Shimizu and Susan E. Nelson, Genji: The World of
a Prince (Bloomington: Indiana University Art Museum, 1982); Miyeko Murase, Iconography
of the Tale of Genji (New York: Weatherhill, 1984); and Julia Meech-Pekarik,
"The Artist's View of Ukifune," in Ukifune, edited by Andrew Pekarik
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). For a summary of a Tosa treatise on
the theory of painting, see Makoto Ueda, Literary and Art Theories of Japan
(Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1967). For further information
about the Tosa school, see John M. Rosenfield, "Japanese Studio Practice: The
Tosa Family and the Imperial Painting Office in the Seventeenth Century," in
The Artist's Workshop, edited by Peter Lukehart (Washington, D.C.: National
Gallery of Art, 1993), pp. 79-102.
Miyeko Murase, Masterpieces of Japanese Screen Painting: The American Collections
(New York: Braziller, 1990), an oversize book with color illustrations of 37 screens,
includes a useful introduction and brief comments on each screen, but the screens
as a group do not approach the quality of those in Elise Grilli, The Art of the
Japanese Screen (New York: Weatherhill, 1970), which illustrates and discusses
some major Rimpa or Rinpa ("Korin school") screens. There is, however,
no first-rate book on the Rinpa school. Howard A. Link et al., Exquisite Visions:
Rimpa Paintings from Japan (Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1980) has a useful
text, but the illustrated works in this exhibition catalogue are not of consistently
high quality and most of the Rinpa masterpieces are missing. A necessary complement,
then, is Hiroshi Mizuo, Edo Painting: Sotatsu and Korin, translated by John
M. Shields (New York: Weatherhill, 1972), which includes illustrations of major works
not only by Sotatsu and Korin but also by Koetsu and Kenzan (who is represented in
part by some works of doubtful authenticity).
On literati painting (also called nanga and bunjinga), see James
Cahill, Scholar Painters of Japan (New York: Asia Society, 1972); Yoshiho
Yonezawa and Chu Yoshizawa, Japanese Painting in the Literati Style, translated
by Betty Iverson Monroe (New York: Weatherhill, 1974); Calvin L. French, The Poet-Painters:
Buson and His Followers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum, 1974); Stephen
Addiss et al., Japanese Quest for a New Vision (Lawrence, Kans.: Spencer Museum
of Art, 1986); and Stephen Addiss, Zenga and Nanga: Selections from the Kurt and
Millie Gitter Collection (New Orleans: New Orleans Museum of Art, 1976). Joan
Stanley-Baker, The Transmission of Chinese Idealized Painting to Japan: Notes
on the Early Phase, 1661-1799 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Japanese Studies,
1992), studies the ways the Japanese selected and assimilated certain Chinese brush
techniques and compositions from paintings in the Muromachi shogunal collections.
The emphasis is on the Chinese works, but there are also useful short discussions
of Japanese painters. Two monographs and three books are devoted to individual literati
painters, though all five works also illuminate other figures: James Cahill, Yosa
Buson and Chinese Painting (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1982);
James Cahill, Sakaki Hyakusen and Early Nanga Painting (Berkeley: Institute
for East Asian Studies, 1983); Stephen Addiss, Tall Mountains and Flowing Waters:
The Arts of Uragami Gyokudo (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1987); Stephen
Addiss, The World of Kameda Bosai (New Orleans: New Orleans Museum of Art/University
Press of Kansas, 1984); and Melinda Takeuchi, Taiga's True Views: The Language
of Landscape Painting in Eighteenth-Century Japan (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1992). Yet another literatus, Ishikawa Jozan, known especially for his calligraphy
and for his residence (now a Zen temple), is studied in Thomas Rimer et al., Shisendo:
Hall of the Poetry Immortals (New York: Weatherhill, 1991), a volume that includes
Stephen Addiss's valuable discussion of calligraphy.
Buddhist painting: Patricia J. Graham, in the first of a two-part article
in Artibus Asiae 51, no. 3/4 (1991): 275-81, concentrates on a single painting
of the Historical Buddha by Mori Sosen, but she includes useful comments on late
Tokugawa Buddhist painting. In part 2, Artibus Asiae 52, no. 1/2 (1992): 31-44,
Graham considers other Edo Buddhist paintings. The fullest account of zenga
(ink painting on Zen themes by priests of the Tokugawa period and later) is Stephen
Addiss, The Art of Zen (New York: Abrams, 1989), a substantial and well-illustrated
account of Zen painting and calligraphy from 1600 to 1925. On Zen painting and calligraphy
produced by Obaku monks, see Stephen Addiss, Obaku: Zen Painting and Calligraphy
(Lawrence, Kans.: Spencer Museum of Art, 1978). Of some value for its illustrations
rather than its text is Yasuichi Awakawa, Zen Painting, translated by John
Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1970). Also useful are the books on ink painting
and calligraphy listed above under Muromachi period.
For ink painting other than Zen works, see Shin'ichi Miyajima and Yasuhiro
Sato (this is the English order, but the title page gives the names in Japanese order,
surnames first), Japanese Ink Painting (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum
of Art, 1985), which is especially useful for its illustrations of "eccentric"
painters. One "eccentric" or "individualist" painter, Jakuchu,
is the subject of a handsome and thorough book by Money L. Hickman and Yasuhiro Sato,
The Paintings of Jakuchu (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1989). (For an
essay on one of Jakuchu's important paintings, The Vegetable Nehan - it shows
the dying Buddha as a recumbent radish - see an essay by Yoshiaki Shimizu in Flowing
Traces, edited by James H. Sanford et al. [Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992].) There are two useful books (in addition to French's The Poet-Painters)
on the connection between haiku poetry and painting: Leon M. Zolbrod, Haiku
Painting (New York: Kodansha International, 1982), and Stephen Addiss, Haiga:
Takebe Socho and the Haiku-Painting Tradition (Richmond, Va: Marsh Art Gallery,
1995). The first offers a broad introduction, with ample illustrations, to a genre
that normally combines a painting with at least one haiku poem (usually by the painter);
the second is a catalogue of an exhibition that concentrates on an 18th-century poet-painter,
but among its 52 pieces the catalogue includes some from the 17th century through
the 20th.
For a discussion of samurai culture, handsomely illustrated with paintings
by samurai, especially by Miyamoto Musashi, see Stephen Addiss and G. Cameron Hurst
III, Samurai Painters (New York: Kodansha International, 1983). For Okyo
and his followers, see Okyo and the Maruyama-Shijo School of Japanese Painting
(St. Louis: St. Louis Art Museum, 1980), a well-illustrated exhibition catalogue
with a useful introduction. See also Jack Hillier, The Uninhibited Brush: Japanese
Art in the Shijo Style (London: H. M. Moss, 1974). The painting and calligraphy
of women artists - ignored in most books - is discussed in detail by Pat Fister,
Japanese Women Artists, 1600-1900 (Lawrence, Kans.: Spencer Art Museum, 1988).
Fister examines 88 works by noblewomen, professionals, ukiyo-e artists, and
literati. On the role of Tofukumon'in (1607-1678), wife of Emperor Gomizunoo, see
Elizabeth Lillehoj in Woman's Art Journal 17 (Summer 1996): 28-34. On
Ikeno Gyokuran, the most important female artist of the period, see Margaret May
Miller, "The Many-Petaled Blossom: A Screen of Sketches by Ikeno Gyokuran,"
Bulletin of the Museums of Art and Archaeology, University of Michigan 1,
no. 1 (1978): 55-70.
Western influences on Japanese painting are thoroughly discussed in Cal French,
Through Closed Doors: Western Influences on Japanese Art, 1639-1853
(Rochester, Mich.: Oakland University Press, 1977). (On Western influences, see also
Timon Screech, above.) French is also the author of a detailed monograph on a Western-style
painter, Shiba Kokan: Artist, Innovator, and Pioneer in the Westernization of
Japan (Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1974).
Before we turn to prints of the Floating World we should comment on publications
concerned with paintings of the Floating World. The best study is Timothy
Clark, Ukiyo-e Paintings in the British Museum (London: British Museum Press,
1992), which discusses patronage, technique, collecting, and forgeries; illustrates
200 paintings in color, along with black-and-white illustrations for the seals and
signatures; and comments briefly (a paragraph or two) on each painting. Other works
on the topic include Jack Hillier's Catalogue of the Japanese Paintings and Prints
in the Collection of Mr and Mrs Richard P. Gale, 2 vols. (London: Routledge,
1970); Jack Hillier, The Harari Collection of Japanese Paintings and Drawings,
3 vols. (London: Lund Humphries, 1970-73); Martie W. Young and Stephen J. Smith,
Japanese Painters of the Floating World (Ithaca, N.Y.: White Art Museum, 1966);
Donald Jenkins on "the primitive period," listed below; and Harold P. Stern,
Ukiyo-e Painting (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery, 1973).
Probably more has been written about Edo prints than any other form of Japanese
art; the most useful single volume seems to be Richard Lane, Images from the Floating
World: The Japanese Print (New York: Dorset, 1978). Other good places to begin
are the catalogues of two great collections, the Clarence Buckingham collection (two
volumes in print and others in preparation) and the collection of the print room
in the Rijksmuseum (five volumes): Helen C. Gunsaulus, The Clarence Buckingham
Collection of Japanese Prints, vol. 1, The Primitives (Chicago: Art Institute,
1955), and Margaret O. Gentles, The Clarence Buckingham Collection of Japanese
Prints, vol. 2, Harunobu, Koryusai, Shigemasa, Their Followers and Contemporaries
(Chicago: Art Institute, 1965); Catalogue of the Collection of Japanese Prints,
5 vols. (Amsterdam: Rijksprentenkabinet / Rijksmuseum, 1977-90). This last title,
covering the history of the genre through the mid-20th century, is notable for the
accuracy of its information, its glossary, and its indexes of artists and artists'
signatures and seals.
Muneshige Narazaki has written eight of the eleven small books in a series called
Masterworks of Ukiyo-e published by Kodansha International. This series, which includes
monographs on such major figures as Harunobu, Hiroshige, Hokusai, Kiyonaga, Sharaku,
and Utamaro, ranges from Narazaki's Masterworks of Ukiyo-e: Early Paintings
(chiefly of the late 16th and early 17th centuries) to Juzo Suzuki and Isaburo Oka's
Masterworks of Ukiyo-e: The Decadents (chiefly the second quarter of the 19th
century). Each book in this series contains about 60 color plates (often of poor
quality) and a brief text. Narazaki has also edited the splendid 12-volume series
Ukiyo-e Masterpieces in European Collections (New York: Kodansha International, 1988-90),
devoted to seven major collections (for example, three volumes for the British Museum,
two for the Musée Guimet).
Among specialized studies are: Donald Jenkins, Ukiyo-e Prints and Paintings:
The Primitive Period, 1680-1745 (Chicago: Art Institute, 1971); D. B. Waterhouse,
Harunobu and His Age: The Development of Color Printing in Japan (London:
British Museum, 1964); Howard A. Link, The Theatrical Prints of the Torii Masters
(Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1977); Roger S. Keyes and Keiko Mizushima, The
Theatrical World of Osaka Prints (Boston: David R. Godine, 1973), on 18th- and
19th-century theatrical prints in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Dean J. Schwaab,
Osaka Prints (New York: Rizzoli International, 1989), for a good overview of
prints of actors, with some attention also to nontheatrical prints. Also on theatrical
subjects (kabuki actor portraits, theater scenes), see Timothy Clark, Donald Jenkins,
and Osamu Ueda, The Actor's Image: Printmakers of the Katsukawa School in the
Art Institute of Chicago (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), an abundantly
illustrated book that includes not only biographies of actors but also essays placing
the prints in their cultural context. Another volume dealing with specialized subject
matter is Lawrence Bickford, Sumo and the Woodblock Print (Tokyo: Kodansha
International, 1994), a well-illustrated volume (some 70 colored plates and 119 black-and-white
illustrations) that emphasizes material from the 18th century (Katsukawa Shunsho
and his followers), but ranges from the 17th century to the 20th. For essays on ukiyo-e
in the late 18th century, including Utamaro and Sharaku, see Donald Jenkins et al.,
The Floating World Revisited (Portland, Ore.: Portland Art Museum, 1993).
On surimono (elegant, limited-edition prints commissioned by connoisseurs),
consult any of several books on the topic by Roger S. Keyes, especially The Art
of Surimono: Privately Published Japanese Woodblock Prints in the Chester
Beatty Library, Dublin, 2 vols. (London: Sotheby's, 1985).
Andrew J. Pekarik has edited a book reproducing a collection of woodblock prints,
The Thirty-Six Immortal Women Poets (New York: Braziller, 1991), an album
of colorful illustrations by Chobunsai Eshi, a student of Utamaro. Although Pekarik's
excellent introduction and commentaries are devoted to the poems rather than the
pictures, the book is of considerable interest to anyone concerned with Japanese
prints. Joshua S. Mostow, Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and
Image (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1996) studies "one hundred
poets, one poem each," i.e., Edo-period printed versions of an anthology (created
in the Kamakura period) of poems from the 7th century to the 13th. Although the book
is chiefly concerned with Japanese poetics, it includes two chapters on the poem-picture
tradition in Japan - Mostow argues that the ways in which the poems were illustrated
tells us something about how the poems were understood at the time - with much information
about Hishikawa Moronobu. Mostow is also the author of an article focusing on two
album versions by Kano Tan'yu of the hundred poets, forthcoming in Asian Art and
Culture; Mostow here argues that one version seems designed for a male reader,
the other for a female, and he also looks at parodies by Hishikawa Moronobu.
Certain aspects of Tokugawa and Meiji prints are discussed by Sarah E. Thompson and
H. D. Harootunian in two essays in a catalogue of Tokugawa and Meiji prints, Undercurrents
in the Floating World: Censorship and Japanese Prints (New York: Asia Society
Galleries, 1991). Fifty prints (not always of great aesthetic interest) are illustrated,
about half in color. Thompson's essay is chiefly about political censorship; Harootunian's
is an anthropological examination of Edo Japan in the language of contemporary anthropology.
For a more impressive interdisciplinary volume, see Elizabeth de Sabato Swinton et
al., The Women of the Pleasure Quarter (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1996),
which contains 125 color illustrations, including four gatefolds, as well as additional
black-and-white reproductions. Swinton's book, which draws chiefly on the splendid
Bancroft collection of prints at the Worcester Art Museum, includes essays on anthropology,
linguistics, and theater. Also on images of women, chiefly in prints but also
in paintings and illustrated books, see a briefer catalogue by Elizabeth Lillehoj,
Women in the Eyes of Man: Images of Women in Japanese Art (Chicago: Field
Museum and DePaul University, 1995).
For works on major late Edo artists, see B. W. Robinson, Kuniyoshi: The
Warrior-Prints (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982); Sebastian Izzard,
Kunisada's World (New York: Japan Society, 1993), with essays by J. Thomas
Rimer and John T. Carpenter as well as commentaries by Izzard on 100 works; and Timothy
Clark, Demon of Painting: The Art of Kawanabe Kyosai (London: British Museum
Press, 1993), a study of his paintings, drawings, and woodblock prints.
On erotic art, chiefly prints (shunga), see Tom and Mary Anne Evans,
Shunga: The Art of Love in Japan (London: Paddington Press, 1975) for
a relatively brief introduction. A series that we have not seen, by Yoshikazu Hayashi
and Richard Lane, Ukiyo-e Shunga, is said to include 19 volumes thus far.
According to an annnouncement, each volume has 12 large color plates, with a text
in Japanese and a commentary in English. The sequence of volumes is puzzling, i.e.,
volumes 1, 7, and 13 are devoted to Hokusai, volumes 15 and 18 to Utamaro. For a
collection of scholarly papers on sex and art, including erotic prints, see Sumie
Jones, ed., Imaging / Reading Eros: Proceeding for the Conference, Sexuality and
Edo Culture, 1750-1850 (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1996).
Hokusai and Hiroshige: Richard Lane's large book, Hokusai (London:
Barrie and Jenkins, 1989), offers a fairly thorough introduction to the range of
Hokusai's works, but the color plates are inaccurate. A more specialized work, Hokusai:
One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji (New York: Braziller, 1988), contains a valuable
commentary by Henry D. Smith II. Gian Carlo Calza, Hokusai Paintings: Selected
Essays (Venice: International Hokusai Research Centre, 1994) contains 16 essays
by major scholars on a variety of topics. Matthi Forrer, who has written at least
three well-respected books on Hokusai, is also the author of Hiroshige: Prints
and Drawings (New York: Prestel, 1997), which includes essays by Suzuki Juzo
and Henry D. Smith II. Another useful book is Hiroshige's One Hundred Views of
Edo (New York: Braziller, 1986), notable for its handsome illustrations and its
introductory essays by Henry D. Smith II and Amy Poster. Also handsome and informative
is Hiroshige: Birds and Flowers (New York: Braziller, 1988), with an introduction
by Cynthea J. Bogel and commentaries by Israel Goldman.
For a study of woodblock prints bound in book form, see Jack Hillier's abundantly
illustrated The Art of the Japanese Book, 2 vols. (London: Sotheby's, 1987).
Hillier includes not only ukiyo-e artists but also (in volume 2) Shijo, Nanga,
and Rinpa revival artists.
For bibliography concerning prints, see William Green, Japanese Woodblock
Prints: A Bibliography of Writings from 1822-1992 Entirely or Partly in English
Text (Leiden: Ukiyo-e Books, 1993), which lists more than 6,000 publications.
On ceramics: For porcelain before it was made for European taste, see Oliver
Impey, The Early Porcelain Kilns of Japan: Arita in the First Half of the Seventeenth
Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). Impey argues that much Old Kutani was
in fact produced in Arita - a position now widely held - and he also argues the more
controversial point that during this period the Japanese initiated certain techniques
and patterns that the Chinese later borrowed. Richard L. Wilson, The Art of Ogata
Kenzan (New York: Weatherhill, 1991) is an admirable study not only of Kenzan
but also of ceramic production in the first half of the 18th century and the continuation
of Kenzan's tradition. Also useful on ceramics is Masahiko Kawahara, The Ceramic
Art of Ogata Kenzan, translated and adapted by Richard L. Wilson (New York: Kodansha
International, 1985), and Masahiko Sato, Kyoto Ceramics, translated and adapted
by Anne Ono Towle and Usher P. Coolidge (New York: Weatherhill, 1973). For brief
discussions of some chief types of ceramics, see the oversize single volumes that
Kodansha International publishes in its series Famous Ceramics of Japan. Each
volume, devoted to one or two types of ware, contains about 40 pages, of which half
are devoted to excellent color reproductions. The 12 volumes issued thus far are:
Nabeshima, Agano and Takatori, Folk Kilns (two volumes), Kakiemon, Imari,
Tokoname, Oribe, Karatsu, Kiseto and Setoguro, Hagi, and Shino. For a
well-illustrated and full discussion of Karatsu, with special emphasis on the materials
and technical processes, see Johanna Becker, Karatsu Ware (New York: Kodansha
International, 1986). On export ware and early European imitations of
Asian ceramics, see The Burghley Porcelains (New York: Japan Society, 1986).
Export ware is also discussed briefly but interestingly by Oliver Impey in Barbara
Brennan Ford and Oliver R. Impey, Japanese Art from the Gerry Collection (New
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989).
On sculpture by the itinerant monk Enku, see two well-illustrated articles
by Donald F. McCallum in Oriental Art 20, no. 2 (Summer 1974): 174-91, and
20, no. 4 (Winter 1974): 400-13; for some 80 reproductions of Enku's work, see Kazuaki
Tanahashi, Enku (Boulder: Shambhala, 1982).
For inro, netsuke, incense containers, writing boxes, and other
small objects, see Andrew J. Pekarik, Japanese Lacquer, 1600-1900 (New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980). For a discussion of the history, manufacture,
materials, techniques, and decoration of inro (small medicine kits) in the
Victoria and Albert collection, see Julia Hutt, Japanese Inro (New York and
Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1997). Also worth consulting: Raymond Bushell, The Inro Handbook
(New York: Weatherhill, 1979). Many auction catalogues have been devoted to inro;
a good example is Inro from the Collection of the Late Charles A. Greenfield
(New York: Sotheby's, 1998). A reference book on the topic, with biographical information
organized alphabetically by romanized forms of the artists' names, is E. A. Wrangham,
The Index of Inro Artists, edited by Joe Earle (Northumberland: Harehope Publications,
1995). On ojime (the carved beads used to tighten the double cord attached
to an inro or to a pouch suspended from a kimono sash), see a handsome large-format
book by Robert O. Kinsey, Ojime (New York: Abrams, 1991). Kinsey is highly
informative about the materials - lacquer, horn, ivory, and so forth - and the subjects
- zodiac animals, insects, deities, and the like.
Lacquer: See Barbara Teri Okada, Symbol and Substance in Japanese Lacquer:
Lacquer Boxes from the Collection of Elaine Ehrenkrantz (New York: Weatherhill,
1994), which illustrates about 60 boxes (for writing implements, tea ceremony utensils,
toilet articles, etc.), chiefly from the Edo period. See also Shadows and Reflections:
Japanese Lacquer Art from the Collection of Edmund Lewis at the Honolulu Academy
of Arts (Honolulu: Honolulu Academy, 1996), which illustrates 58 objects (writing
boxes, inro, netsuke, pipe cases), chiefly from the 18th century.
Architecture: On some of the best-known buildings, see Naomi Okawa, Edo
Architecture: Katsura and Nikko, translated by Alan Woodhull and Akito Miyamoto
(New York: Weatherhill, 1975); Michio Fujioka, Kyoto Country Retreats, translated
by Bruce Coats (New York: Kodansha International, 1983); Walter Gropius et al., Katsura
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960); Teiji Ito et al., Katsura (Tokyo:
Shinkenchiku-sha, 1983); and especially Akira Naito and Takeshi Nishikawa, Katsura:
A Princely Retreat, translated by Charles S. Terry (New York: Kodansha International,
1977). Reminder: William H. Coaldrake, Architecture and Authority in Japan
(London and New York: Routledge, 1996), discussed earlier as a basic book on architecture,
is especially concerned with Edo buildings.
Textiles: For a well-illustrated discussion of the garment that preceded the
modern kimono, see Dale Gluckman and Sharon Takeda, When Art Became Fashion: Kosode
in Edo Period Japan (New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1992).
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