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Surveys of Japanese Art by Medium
Painting
For a good survey of all painting, secular and religious, see an old book,
Terukazu Akiyama's Japanese Painting (Lausanne: Skira, 1961). For a fairly
brief but lucid introduction to various schools of Buddhist painting (Esoteric,
Pure Land, Zen), see John M. Rosenfield and Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, Journey
of the Three Jewels (New York: Asia Society, 1979). Also on Buddhist paintings
(and prints) is Stephen Little, Visions of the Dharma (Honolulu: Honolulu
Academy of Arts, 1991), a catalogue of 40 works; the commentaries are useful, but
on the whole the works are less than first rate. On mandalas, see a highly
readable book that deals with top-quality works: Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, Japanese
Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i
Press, 1998), examines paintings from the 8th to the 17th century in the Esoteric,
Pure Land, and kami-worshipping (Shinto) traditions. Several Japanese mandalas are
also discussed in Denise Patry Leidy and Robert A. F. Thurman, Mandala: The Architecture
of Enlightenment (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1997). For a study of another
kind of Buddhist painting, illustrated sutras, chiefly of the 12th and 13th
centuries, see Pratapaditya Pal and Julia Meech-Pekarik, Buddhist Book Illumination
(New York: Ravi Kumar, 1988). Illustrated religious and secular texts (chiefly
handscrolls and albums) from the 12th to early 19th century are discussed in Miyeko
Murase, Tales of Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Many of
the works in this book are not of high artistic quality, but the commentary is detailed.
Another catalogue in which the commentary is perhaps more valuable than the illustrations
is John M. Rosenfield, Song of the Brush (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1979),
which is concerned with three schools of ink painting represented in a single
private collection: Chinese-style painting (suibokuga) of the Muromachi and
Momoyama periods, Zen ink painting (zenga) of the Tokugawa period, and literati
painting (nanga) of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Screen (byobu) paintings of the highest quality (chiefly of the Edo
or Tokugawa period) are surveyed by Elise Grilli in The Art of the Japanese Screen
(New York: Weatherhill, 1970). Fifty-seven screens (15th to early 19th century) from
the Idemitsu Museum are illustrated and discussed in Taizo Kuroda, Melinda Takeuchi,
and Uzu Yamane, Worlds Seen and Imagined: Japanese Screens from the Idemitsu Museum
of Arts (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1995). Twenty-four screens (17th-19th
centuries) from the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Ashmolean Museum are discussed
by Oliver Impey, The Art of the Japanese Folding Screen (New York: Weatherhill,
1997). On handscrolls, see below under Kamakura period.
Photography
For a good collection of 514 photographs from the mid-19th to mid-20th century,
with an informative introduction, see Japan Photographers Association, A Century
of Japanese Photography (New York: Pantheon, 1980).
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