In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 The Learned Gentleman U ntil now, Iwasa Katsumochi Matabei has been generally regarded in Japan as a “man of mystery” (nazo no jinbutsu), a status similar to that of the woodblockprint designer Sharaku (¶. 1794–1795), Zen ink painter Shûbun, and scores of other Japanese artists. Categorizing an artist as a man of mystery implies that he cannot be known well enough to be understood in any meaningful way. For a biographer to concede that his subject is a man of mystery, therefore, is tantamount to an admission of defeat. Given the many men of mystery designated in Japanese art history, it may be that the task of biography itself is especially dif¤cult in this ¤eld of study. The fact that few Japanese artists kept diaries, collected their correspondence for posterity, or issued manifestoes outlining their thinking on their art would certainly support such a suggestion, but Matabei is, happily, an exception to this rule of the silent, reticent Japanese artist. Matabei presented his image of himself in his travel diary (appendix II) and in his Self-Portrait (colorplate 1) in a forthright and frank manner. On the basis of these two documents alone, much of his self-image can be reconstructed. Furthermore, enough artists and art historians have commented on Matabei down through time that his reputation in history can be precisely and accurately determined. That Matabei has come to be thought of as one of the “unknowables” of Japanese art history cannot be because nothing can be known about him, but must be because what is known is so paradoxical, so contradictory, so ambivalent. As this chapter will show, Matabei presented himself in his self-portrait and his travel 13 diary as a classically educated man, re¤ned in taste, courtly in behavior, and aspiring to the paradigmatic elegance and grace of the ancients. However, as demonstrated in the next chapter, certain copies of paintings by Matabei reveal that painters either contemporary with him or working shortly after his death saw him as a member of the lower classes, not the upper; as a popular, rather than an aristocratic artist; and as a master whose style was characterized by a ¶ashy, near-vulgar chicness, not a re¤ned and understated elegance. The history of scholarship on Matabei con¤rms his reputation as a painter of this sort, so common in the tradition of art of Ukiyo-e. More, as is made clear in chapters 3 and 4, the art of Matabei supports both the perception of him as a commoner artist and his image of himself as a courtly, classical painter, containing as much evidence that he was the former as the latter. SELF-PORTRAIT AS BIOGRAPHY An excellent way to determine Matabei’s image of himself is through his Self-Portrait, a hanging scroll, now in the collection of the Museum of Art of Atami (colorplate 1). This painting has been designated an Important Cultural Property,1 one of only four works associated with Matabei to be so honored. It is frequently published in books on this artist and in general reference works, such as the historical dictionary of Japanese names, Daijinmyôjiten. The painting is thought to be that mentioned in the Iwasa Family Lineage Record, an important source of information about Matabei, which says about him: “Matabei lived in Edo alone a long time. The old man Matabei took sick there, and realizing that he would not recover from his illness, he drew a portrait of himself and sent it back to his wife and children far off at home.”2 Much of the information in the Record is repeated in the separate, but similarly titled, Iwasa Lineage.3 The transmission and authenticity of both these texts are discussed in the section on Matabei’s biography (chapter 6), but suf¤ce it to say that they are reasonably reliable.4 Authenticity The Iwasa Family Lineage Record and the other textual sources included in appendix I make it clear that Matabei did draw a self-portrait, but is this work the painting now in the Museum of Art of Atami? That is harder to say, the issue being complicated by the fact that Taki Seiichi states in the ¤rst publication on the Atami Self-Portrait that the painter Kubota Beisen (1852–1906) copied the work when he saw it while visiting a descendant of a retainer of the Matsudaira clan in Echizen.5 Taki further notes that in the spring of 1929 a man...

Share