Perspectives on "Scenes of the Capital"

Among the folding-screen paintings of cityscapes produced in great numbers in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Japan, many featured a bird's-eye perspective on the central districts and outskirts of Kyoto. Some sixty of these paired screens known as rakuchū rakugai zu ("scenes of the capital") are extant. Of these, several dating from the sixteenth and early seventeenth century are appreciated not only for their artistic appeal, but as historical sources that provide an invaluable visual record of the landscape of Kyoto at the time they were made. For this reason they have attracted much attention from those specializing in the history of politics, economics, society, architecture, customs, performing arts, and literature. No other works of Japanese painting have been studied as extensively by specialists in fields other than art history. And while utilizing the rakuchū rakugai zu as sources for research in their own fields, some of these specialists outside the field of art history have also advanced new interpretations about the content of particular works and their position in the genre. Historians and art historians have collaborated in studying the screens, but they have engaged in fierce debate as well. Matthew McKelway's Capitalscapes now opens up the fascinating subject of the Kyoto screens to those who are not necessarily familiar with the Japanese literature on the topic.

Capitalscapes consists of seven chapters, an epilogue, and three appendixes. Chapters 1 and 2 provide basic information about the screens and outline the history of painting leading up to the appearance of the genre. Of the many surviving examples of rakuchū rakugai zu, only four date to the genre's formative stage in the sixteenth century (one exists only as a copy). Chapter 3 is devoted to the examination of the oldest of this group, the Sanjō screens, held by the National Museum of Japanese History in Sakura (and thus also known as Rekihaku Kōhon —Rekihaku Version A). Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the Uesugi screens, painted by Kano Eitoku (1543-1590), in the collection of the Yonezawa City Uesugi Museum . Following this examination of these two notable examples of the rakuchū rakugai zu genre, important both artistically and historically, in chapter 6 the author takes up screens that are considered variations of the genre, including ones depicting Oda Nobunaga's Azuchi castle , Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Jurakutei (Jurakudai) , and Nagoya castle in Hizen (Kyushu). Chapter 7 considers rakuchū rakugai zu made after the establishment of the Tokugawa bakufu, and the epilogue discusses the genre as it evolved in depictions of the city of Edo.

The literature on the rakuchū rakugai zu resulting from the research of specialists in many fields is massive. McKelway has nevertheless thoroughly digested it and has described accurately the history of the genre and of particular related examples. Appendix 1 provides the original texts (in Italian as well as Japanese) of sources cited in the main study, and the bibliography includes many primary sources. As this indicates, the author draws not only on articles and books by modern researchers but also makes extensive and precise use of sources of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the United States, there is by now a considerable accumulation of scholarship on Japanese history, literature, and intellectual history, and in those fields familiarity of this sort with primary sources may be nothing unusual. It is a pleasure, though, to see this sort of approach to research being employed as a matter of course in the field of Japanese art history. Further, the book is no mere summary of previous scholarship, but presents throughout the author's own views and findings. As surveys of the history of the rakuchū rakugai zu and related works there are the studies produced by Takeda Tsuneo and Tsuji Nobuo some decades ago,¹ but no substantive overview of the subject incorporating research done since then exists in Japanese. McKelway's work should inspire much interest among those concerned with Japanese history and art history and...