The Last Tosa: Iwasa Katsumochi Matabei, Bridge to Ukiyo-e

Prologue

Prologue W ho was the enigmatic Iwasa Katsumochi Matabei (1578–1650)?1 Some, including him, say he was an aristocratic Kyoto painter. Others aver that he was a lowly commoner artist from Edo (now Tokyo). An inscription on a painting by Yosa Buson (1716–1783) rhapsodizes: The falling cherry blossoms in the capital are like the peeling white paint in Tosa Mitsunobu’s pictures. I met Ukiyo Matabei amidst Omuro’s blossoming cherries.2 Since Matabei was called “Ukiyo” and also proclaimed himself to be “last of the line of Tosa Mitsunobu,” most likely he is the ¤gure prancing among the cherry blossoms, wine gourd at his feet and disheveled kimono baring his shoulder (¤g. 1). True to his nickname “Ukiyo,” Matabei, as portrayed by Buson, epitomizes the devil-may-care attitude now popularly identi¤ed with the Floating World (ukiyo), the milieu of lowlifes and high livers, the courtesans, actors, playboys, rich merchants, and panderers of Edo depicted in the woodblock prints called Ukiyo-e (literally, Floating World art). As to the courtly Matabei, we have a ¤rst-person document of a man who saw himself decidedly not as others saw him. He wrote the following in his travel diary of 1637: my friend, who was truly a man of the capital, composed this poem: If I have not the means to make him stay on, I can but await news of the traveler returning to Kyoto. 1 I listened thinking it a dream. This, then, is what they call poetry. Long ago when I was young and strong, I lived for quite a while in the capital. Moreover, at that time I went to the residence of kampaku zendaijôdaijin Lord Akizane. At times we played at making poetry; at other times there was the music of the string or wind; and again, at still other times, we drank and ate and watched various dances and listened [to music]. Forgotten by the world, sadly I passed the years in a countri¤ed area. For more than twenty years, I was down in a place called Echizen. Mixing with the lower classes and forgetting the capital, I became an old man bent with my years. . . . . . . I am old and unskilled at making verse, but how could I not return his poem? . . . We part. Wait through the years of regret until he returns to become again a man of the capital.3 Matabei identi¤es himself as among the aristocratic cultural elite of Kyoto in the poetry that he composes, in the acquaintance of chief advisor to the emperor Akizane that he claims, and in his identi¤cation of himself as a “man of the capital” (miyako bito), Kyoto long having been the homeland of the court arts. Clearly, Matabei would not have agreed with Buson’s depiction of him as a carefree denizen of the libertine Floating World. Which then was he—the founder of the comFigure 1 Yosa Buson, Portrait of Matabei. Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, 106.3 x 23.3 cm. Itsuo Art Museum, Osaka. 2 p r o l o g u e moners’ art of Ukiyo-e or the ultrare¤ned court painter of the travel diary? It is my view that Matabei can be seen as both a commoner artist and a court painter. This con¤rms, on the one hand, Matabei’s involvement with the beginnings of Ukiyo-e —a perception of him that is the dominant one today, as well it should be, given his role in the development of art in Edo as one of the ¤rst of the great Kyoto painters to move to that city in which Ukiyo-e was born. On the other hand, we may return the traveler to his self-averred position as a man of the capital, for if Matabei’s move out of the world of Kyoto court painting into that of Edo commoner art was real, it may well have been unintentional. But, whoever he was, Matabei’s journey from Kyoto court painting to Edo commoner is important in revealing how closely linked these two so seemingly different traditions of art were in seventeenth-century Japan. Certainly they were not unbridgeable. Indeed, Matabei bridged them both, successfully and truly mixing aristocratic and commoner culture in his person and his art. Why Study Matabei? There are many reasons to study Matabei, but for me the ¤rst and foremost was...