The Akita Ranga School and the Cultural Context in Edo Japan by Imahashi Riko (review)

Imahashi Riko explores paintings by the Akita Ranga school—or more accurately, a single work by Odano Naotake (1749–80)—in her new volume. The painting, entitled Shinobazu Pond (Shinobazu no ike-zu), has exceptional qualities including its large size, fusion of disparate elements, and mesmerizing clarity. In the eighteenth century, the neighborhood of Shinobazu Pond in Ueno flourished as a center of scholarship and was acclaimed for its lotus-filled pond. Strangely, however, Naotake’s pond is lotus-free. Other peculiarities appear in Naotake’s painting, such as an off-balance placement of a pot of peonies in the right foreground and a haunting lucidity in the rendering of the plant’s blossoms. The painting is somehow “imbued with a dreamlike tranquility,” as Imahashi states (p. 24). Imahashi reconstructs the layered depths of Shinobazu Pond, as she places it in the milieu of educated eighteenth-century Edoites.

Imahashi’s book is a much-appreciated addition to the limited scholarship in English on Akita Ranga. Literally “Dutch painting of Akita,” Akita Ranga is identified as a type of “Western-style painting” (yōfūga) and is associated with the expansion of “Dutch learning” (rangaku) or Western medical and scientific knowledge. The man credited with inaugurating Akita Ranga, Satake Shozan (Yoshiatsu; 1748–85), was an Akita daimyō who had been raised in Edo. He immersed himself in natural history studies, as did a number of educated scions of the warrior elite. Shozan took under his wing an Akita retainer, the relatively low-ranking but artistically promising Odano Naotake. With Shozan’s support, Naotake perfected his talents at Western-style illustration. During a brief golden era, lasting only six or seven years, Naotake painted in Edo. That ended when Naotake died under house arrest at the age of 32. He had been incarcerated due to his affiliation with the renowned scholar of Dutch studies, Hiraga Gennai (1727–80), who had killed a man in an outburst of rage. Imahashi relates scholars’ supposition that Naotake succumbed to a physical ailment, possibly tuberculosis (p. 59). When Naotake died, his family was ordered to relinquish his art-works. The list of items handed over to authorities shows no reference to a painting of Shinobazu Pond.

In fact, Shinobazu Pond receives little attention in extant records on Naotake. The painting was only brought to public attention in 1948, when it was rediscovered in Yamagata. Today in the Akita Museum of Modern Art, it is widely appreciated and has been designated an Important Cultural Property. In her first chapter, Imahashi reviews the modern historiography of Akita Ranga. She clarifies the pivotal role of an Akita Nihonga artist and scholar, Hirafuku Hyakusui (1877–1933), who brought Akita Ranga to light. Hirafuku—like Naotake over a century earlier—moved from Akita to Tokyo in his mid-twenties and grappled with integrating features of Western style in a way that did not “fundamentally violate the conventions of East Asian (Japanese) painting” (p. 15).

Naotake and fellow Akita Ranga practitioners were committed to sketching from life, examining how organisms function, and in various ways studying nature. They also drew from imported copperplate engravings and other Western illustrations. Akita Ranga techniques included three-dimensional effects of lighting such as cast shadows and strong tonal contrasts, known as chiaroscuro. The artists added miniscule details as if to magnify the smallest elements of foreground objects and to provide contrast with distant forms, which appear indistinct and pale. Using aerial and linear perspective, they created an impression of deep space in their landscapes. The illusionism of Akita Ranga owes in part to artists’ use of viewing devices and other European mechanisms that caused a sensation among Edo urbanites. Naotake participated in the craze, achieving renown for his sets of perspective pictures (uki-e) and eyeglass pictures (megane-e), viewed with an “optique” apparatus and enjoyed as amusement.

Akita Ranga maintained strong...