O Gishi ronko (review)

The graceful art of Wang Xizhi (ca. 303-ca. 361) has been accepted as the foremost example of Chinese calligraphic style for more than thirteen hundred years. Since his output was codified in the Tang dynasty (618-907), not only has Wang been deemed—in China, Japan, and Korea—as the Sage ( shusheng) of Calligraphers, but the classical tradition of calligraphy (the "model-book" school of calligraphy, or tiexue) was based and centered on his elegant art. From the Tang onward, the Asian scholastic tradition has produced endless catalogues of Wang's calligraphic canon and discussions of his art.

Modern scholarship on Wang Xizhi in East Asia and the West has also been fruitful. In Japan, the distinguished scholar Nakata Yûjirô published two monumental works on Wang, ¹and the leading calligrapher Uno Sesson compiled a comprehensive collection of Wang's calligraphy. ²In China, scholars in Wang's home province of Shandong have published his genealogy and a collection of essays on that region's native cultural champion. Scholars outside Shandong such as Wang Yuchi and Liu Tao have conducted additional in-depth research over the last two decades. While Wang Yuchi has been systemically studying Wang Xizhi's letters (many of these have survived because of their calligraphic value), ³Liu Tao's approach incorporates much historical scholarship, especially by those who study the political and cultural history of the Eastern Jin (317-420). ⁴

A recently published edited volume titled Lanting lunji(Collected essays on the Lanting xu) devotes all of its 539 pages to the discussion of a single masterpiece by Wang Xizhi: the Lanting xu(Preface to the Orchid Pavilion), done by Wang in honor of a famous scholarly gathering. ⁵In the West, Wang Xizhi has also been a perennial topic of scholarly endeavor. Lothar Ledderose's classic study of the impact of the formation of his canon on Wang's reputation links the establishment of the classical tradition of Chinese calligraphy, of which Wang's canon was made the foundation, to the interpretation of Wang's art by the Song dynasty literatus Mi Fu (1051-1107), and Ledderose tells how this interpretation shaped the perception of the Wang canon by later generations. ⁶Stephen Goldberg's study of early Tang court calligraphy, ⁷Amy McNair's study of Yan Zhenqing (709-785), other essays published by McNair on Song calligraphy, and Peter Sturman's book on Mi Fu ⁸all deal in varying degrees with the subject of Wang Xizhi.

In an important recent publication on calligraphy there is an essay, by Robert Harrist, Jr., on Wang Xizhi and the culture of Chinese calligraphy that represents an attempt to carry the research on Wang into the realm of cultural studies. ⁹In my own book on Fu Shan (1607-1684 or 1685) (which deals with the formation of the stele school of calligraphy, a calligraphic paradigm that in the Qing dynasty competed with the model-book school), how Wang Xizhi was received, parodied, and challenged in the seventeenth century is an important issue. ¹⁰A complete list of the publications on Wang Xizhi would be too long to be included in this short review. Unquestionably, Wang remains an unavoidable subject in any serious study of the art of Chinese calligraphy.

Within this rich tradition of scholarship, Qi Xiaochun's new book A Study of Wang Xizhistands out as a new landmark in the field. Because the treatment of Chinese calligraphy as a modern academic discipline is still a relatively young endeavor, much remains to be done in the way of foundational studies. For this reason, Qi's book continues to treat many of the fundamental issues surrounding Wang Xizhi. Qi was trained in Kyoto, and his work, well ensconced in the Kyoto tradition of sinology, is characterized by meticulous textual examination and solid historical analysis.

The five chapters of Qi's book can be divided into two major divisions. The first (chapters 1 and 2) contains a textual...