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Is it correct to apply the terms “classicism” and “classical revival” to early Edo art? My own position has changed since 1998, when I coorganized the symposium on which this volume is based. The routine employment—and apparent acceptance—of such terms by most scholars of Japanese art and literature notwithstanding, applying a system of Western aesthetic principles to the study of Japanese culture is inherently problematic and using these terms in relation to Japanese art may be seen as ideologically corrupt. Melanie Trede rightly suggests in Chapter 1 that colonialist and nationalist agendas have forever tainted the term “classicism.” In modifying my position, however, I do not mean to reject altogether the project of investigating seventeenth-century uses of the past. There are many indications, for example, that the early to mid-seventeenth century was a time when patrons of the arts were especially willing, even eager, to embrace literary works and artistic styles associated with the ancient imperial court. I believe that these patrons, along with contemporary writers and artists, viewed certain ancient works and styles as classics in the limited sense of “serving as the established model or standard” or “having lasting significance or worth; enduring.”1 Kamakura-period poetry anthologies like the One Hundred Poems, One Poem Each (Hyakunin isshu; ca. 1230), discussed by Joshua Mostow in Chapter 5 of this volume, and other works written by members of the Heian court, such as Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari; tenth century) and The Tale of Genji (ca. 1000), were seen in the seventeenth century as sources to be mined for inspiration—at least in part because they embodied the authority of the C h a p t e r F o u r L a u r a W. A l l e n Japanese Exemplars for a New Age: Genji Paintings from the Seventeenth-Century Tosa School past, specifically that of the ancient imperial court. While seventeenth-century views of the past were certainly not monolithic, there is a cohesive quality to the presentation of court-based themes suggestive of a conscious revival. Whether or not one agrees today with the designation of Genji or Ise as objects worthy of veneration, there are abundant signs that writers, artists, and patrons of the early to mid-seventeenth century invested such court-based texts with a special importance. My interest is not in arguing about canon building, however, or in building one of my own, but in investigating the forces motivating seventeenth-century artists to take up and reformulate these ancient themes and styles. Specifically, this essay explores the network of social and economic concerns underlying the presence and formal presentation of The Tale of Genji theme in seventeenth-century art and design.2 Although pictures of The Tale of Genji (known as Genji-e) were created throughout the medieval period, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries witnessed a dramatic rise in their production (Plates 4–7). Demand for Genji-e seems to have risen concurrently with the dissemination of the text to a new, wider readership—made possible through the rapid development of block-printing technology. With the spread of printed texts relating to Genji, a host of Genji-e albums, handscrolls, hanging scrolls, and screens poured forth from studios attached to every major school. Yet paintings and screens adorned with pictures from the novel were only one part of a larger “iconic circuit” of Genji-e, which included works in many other media. Craig Clunas, writing about Ming-dynasty (1368–1644) pictorial art, defines iconic circuit as “an economy of representations in which images of a certain kind circulated between different media in which pictures were involved.”3 In the case of seventeenthcentury Japan, we find not only paintings but also lacquer tables and receptacles , fans, painted shells and playing cards, cloth- and paper-covered boxes among the objects decorated with motifs from Genji. Scholarship on Genji-e has advanced greatly during the last twenty years through the efforts of such eminent art historians as Akiyama Terukazu, Miyeko Murase, and Taguchi Eiichi. Akiyama’s early insights into the narrative structure of the twelfth-century Genji handscrolls, first published almost forty years ago, are still unsurpassed today. In her 1983 book, Murase analyzed later Genji paintings through the lens of iconography, comparing painted images from the seventeenth century with a sixteenth-century painting manual. In the late 1980s, Taguchi coauthored The Sumptuous World of Genji-e: The Tale of Genji, a...

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