Japanese Design - Patricia Graham

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aesthetic of iki, first noted in writings of the second half of the eighteenth century, described the taste preferences of the most sophisticated men and women participants (clients, geisha, and Kabuki actors) of the thriving entertainment quarters, called the Ukiyo or “Floating World,” of Japan’s urban centers, particularly Edo (Tokyo), Osaka, and Kyoto (see also Plate 3-6). It celebrated the dynamic sense of coquetry that defined their amorous but strained interrelationships, and captured the boldness and joie de vivre attitude with which they lived under the specter of a politically repressive military regime. This sensibility was manifested visually in their tasteful, finely made clothing, refined accoutrements, and the elegantly appointed banquet halls and tea rooms they frequented,

      Iki was one of the aesthetic words briefly mentioned by Elizabeth Gordon in her shibui issue of House Beautiful, which she described as “stylish, à la mode, smart…, [the Japanese] equivalent of France’s chic.”30 It has more recently been translated as “urbane, plucky stylishness.”31

      Although Gordon regarded shibui as the highest category of refined beauty, not all critics agree. Widespread Japanese intellectual interest in promoting iki as an aesthetic that represented the essential spirit of the Japanese people had arisen in the early twentieth century, initially through the writings of philosopher Kuki Shūzō (1888–1941), whose father, Kuki Ryūichi, a high-ranking Meiji government official in charge of cultural institutions, had served as mentor to Okakura Kakuzō (see page 136). Kuki Shūzō’s mother, a former geisha who eventually divorced his father, had carried on a romantic relationship with Okakura, and this enabled her son to develop a close spiritual bond with him that influenced the trajectory of his philosophical inquiries. Kuki Shūzō wrote his seminal work, The Structure of Iki (Iki no kōzō), while living in Paris in 1926 and published it in Japan in 1930. It is no coincidence that the European intellectual climate in which he immersed himself in Paris influenced his choice of emphasis and the manner in which he discussed this aesthetic, as did his exposure there to ukiyoe prints, which celebrated the Edo period pleasure quarter sophisticates who were his mother’s social forebears. Kuki Shūzō especially admired the prints of Kitagawa Utamaro (1753?–1806), which he described as embodying a “high-class feminine taste that revealed a ‘heroic affinity’ with modernity.”33 As Westernized modernization was quickly and drastically altering daily life and cultural attitudes in Japan, Kuki sought to define an identifiably Japanese aesthetic that highlighted both his own culture’s past and its unique sense of the modern. In the beginning of the book, he introduced other words used in the Japanese language to describe taste, to tease out their subtle differences.34 Because of his scholarly prestige, interpreting the meaning of iki through the lens of Kuki has remained a topic of much discussion among writers of Japanese aesthetics to the present day, both in Japan and abroad.

      Plate 1-23 Katsukawa Shunshō (1726–1792), The Kabuki Actor Ichikawa Danjūro V in the Role of Gokuin Senuemon, 1782, from a set of five prints showing actors in roles from the play Karigane Gonin (Karigane Five Men). Polychrome woodblock print, ink and color on paper, 30.8 x 14.8 cm. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 32-143/71 A. Photo: Tiffany Matson. Kuki Shūzō commented that purely geometric designs, especially those featuring parallel lines which created patterns of vertical stripes, as seen in the kimono design of this actor, express the essence of iki.32

      Plate 1-24 Tsuke shoin (writing desk alcove) adjacent to the tokonoma of the Matsu no Ma (Pine Viewing Room) at the Sumiya banquet hall, Shimabara licensed district, Kyoto, 18th century. Kuki Shūzō observed that iki in architecture features a “dualistic opposition” in subtle juxtapositions of textures and colors, for example, in pairing wood and bamboo structural components, and in suffusing space with subdued, indirect lighting.35 The interplay of the textures and colors of the walls, windows, and post-and-beam architecture, and the subdued lighting infuse this room with an elegant tension characteristic of the aesthetic of iki.

      Plate 1-25 Shibata Zeshin (1807–1891), Inrō with design of prunus blossoming outside a latticed window. Bamboo, lacquer, porcelain, agate. The Walters Art Museum, 61.203. This elegant object, a tour de force of virtuosity, embodies the essence of iki.

      MIYABI AND FŪRYŪ

       OPULENT AND STYLISH ELEGANCE

      The flip side of the understated and restrained beauty of shibui, wabi, sabi, and iki, is a more opulent elegance associated with Japan’s élites and intellectuals. Formal aristocratic culture of the Heian period (794–1185) gave rise to the first flowering of this aesthetic in Japan, then described as miyabi, “courtly elegance,” a word that expressed the pinnacle of refinement and beauty wistfully contemplated in the expression mono no aware.

      Closely related to miyabi is fūryū (“blowing with the wind”), a word that was also first clearly articulated in the Heian period. Originally a Chinese term (fengliu), it entered the Japanese vocabulary in the eighth century when it more simply described the gracefulness and propriety of courtiers. By the Heian period, fūryū had become an aesthetic term describing things and events out of the ordinary, such as poetry competitions, unconventional displays of flowers in a garden, opulent decorative arts, lavish banquets, and spectacles associated with court and religious festivals.36

      By the late sixteenth century, multiple meanings of fūryū proliferated, depending on the context. For example, the wabi aesthetic of the chanoyu tea ceremony became described as a fūryū activity. In this sense, fūryū implied a conspicuously rusticated elegance closer to shibui. Meanwhile, influenced by the later Chinese evolution of the word among literati of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), fūryū came to be used to describe the aesthetic preferences of Japanese intellectuals and artists who abhorred the repressive policies of the Tokugawa military regime and held great admiration for Chinese literati recluses who in troubled times had secluded themselves in rustic retreats in the mountains to pursue elegant pastimes. Prominent among the pastimes of these intellectuals was participation in a more informal Chinese-style service of steeped green tea (sencha).37 Fūryū became the aesthetic term that defined the sencha tea ceremony, in contrast to wabi, which was closely identified with chanoyu.

      Plate 1-26 Section of the Lotus Sutra, Heian period, mid-12th century. Handscroll mounted as a hanging scroll, ink on paper with gold leaf ruled lines, gold leaf and silver leaf decoration, gold and silver dust, and painted decoration in margins, 24.8 x 40.6 cm. Collection of Sylvan Barnet and William Burto. The aesthetic of miyabi permeates this sumptuously decorated sacred text.

      Plate 1-27 Kemari scene from the Tale of Genji, 18th century. Six-panel folding screen, ink and color on gold leaf, 159.9 x 378.2 cm. Gift from the Clark Center for Japanese Arts & Culture to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2013.29.12. The Tale of Genji, a novel penned around the year 1000 by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting to the court, dwells on the aesthetic pastimes and romantic entanglements of courtiers. In this idealized scene from the novel, courtiers, dressed in fine Heian period style multilayered silk brocade robes have gathered in a palace courtyard to participate in a traditional New Year’s game of kickball (kemari). The robes, cherry trees, and palace veranda, reflect the spirit of fūryū.

      Contemporaneous with the Chinese-influenced meaning of fūryū, the word carried a wholly different connotation among those who frequented the pleasure districts. To them, it continued to evoke the rarified courtly taste of the distant Japanese past, fused with a sense of fashion consciousness.

      Plate 1-28 Yamamoto Baiitsu

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