Painters as Envoys: Korean Inspiration in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Nanga (review)

Book Reviews161 23rd Year of the Wanli Era] (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo, 1967). 3.Hawley does mention this in passing on p. 247. 4.Gari Ledyard also makes this point. See Gari Ledyard, "Confucianism and War: The Korean Security Crisis of 1598," Journal ofKorean Studies 6 (1988-89), 81-119. 5.See L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976). Painters as Envoys: Korean Inspiration in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Nanga by Burglind Jungmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. 272 pp. 100 b/w illustrations. $60.00 (cloth) Professor Burglind Jungmann's new book, Painters as Envoys: Korean Inspiration in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Nanga, is a timely and important work on Korean art history in general and Korean landscape painting in particular. It is the first book-length study in Western scholarship of landscape paintings in the Chosön dynasty. By examining how diplomatic contact between Korea and Japan during the eighteenth century helped to shape a new Japanese landscape painting style, the author discusses possible Korean influences on the development of nanga, or Japanese literati painting. This book also sheds new light on the Southern School ofpainting with respect to its cross-cultural transmission in East Asia. Students ofChinese, Korean, and Japanese art histories will all find this book of interest. Divided into three parts with an introduction and conclusion, Painters as Envoys provides an in-depth discussion of the historical background of Korean embassies to Japan and the origin of the Southern School (chapters 1 and 2); the early relationship between Chosön painters and nanga pioneers (chapters 3 and 4); and Korean influence on the paintings of Ike Taiga, the most influential nanga painter (chapters 4, 5, and 6). It uses a variety of sources, including literature, official history, travel notes, personal letters, and the paintings themselves. To examine the influence of Chosön paintings on the formation ofJapanese nanga, the author pays special attention to leading Japanese literati painters, including Gion Nankai, Sasaki Hyakusen, Yanagisawa Kien, and Ike Taiga. There is a long tradition of Korean painting, and Korean works can be clearly distinguished from the paintings ofChina and Japan. However, many Korean artworks were destroyed by wars and natural disasters, and among those transmitted to the present, it is often difficult to understand the distinc- 162The Journal ofKorean Studies tive characteristics ofKorean painting. Many Korean scholars have become interested in this field recently, but many areas remain unexplored. Research on the exchange of paintings with China and Japan has also been insufficient , despite the subject's significance. It is important to understand that Korean painting is an integral part of an indigenous cultural process, but we must also expand our purview to include all of East Asian art. Such an effort would enable us to recognize the unique features of Korean art and locate it more accurately in world art history. In this sense, we should pay close attention to Jungmann's book, which covers the influence of Korean paintings on Japan. When East Asian relations are involved, researchers must be particularly sensitive to nationalistic interpretations. This is true even in the field of art history. When Korean arts are discussed in the context of the Korea-China relationship, Korean scholars usually focus on how, under the influence of China, Korea developed and maintained its distinctive characteristics and sometimes reached a level that excelled that of China. In considering the Korea-Japan relationship, however, and despite Korea's huge impact on Japanese art, this influence has been largely unknown or deliberately ignored. Jungmann's book is free from these entanglements. It addresses the KoreaJapan relationship from the position of a third party, and explains it in the language of a third country. The author received her doctoral degree at Heidelberg University, where she studied the influence ofthe Chinese Zhe School on the landscapes ofthe Chosön dynasty. She has also conducted research in Korea and Japan for many years. By analyzing in detail the rise ofa Japanese landscape style from the diplomatic exchange between Korea and Japan in the eighteenth century, Painters as Envoys offers a new understanding ofthe Southern School painting...