Capitalscapes

Chapter Three: The Sanjō Screens

chapter฀three The Sanj† Screens T he oldest existing rakuch≥ rakugai zu was painted sometime in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, roughly a generation after the painting Sanj†nishi Sanetaka describes in 1506. This pair of screens, now kept in the National Museum of Japanese History, is variously called Rekihaku Version A (Rekihaku k†-hon) or the Sanj† or Machida screens, after its current and previous owners (see plates 2a–b).1 This book calls the pair the Sanj† screens after their earliest known owners and because of the likelihood that they belonged to the Sanj† family before the twentieth century. The fact that the screens are anonymous, undated, and undocumented presents numerous challenges to a discussion of them. As the presumably earliest extant example of the rakuch≥ rakugai genre, they present the fundamental characteristics and issues of the genre in its nascent stage. We will find that the Sanj† screens, painted when the Ashikaga shogunate confronted a deep political crisis, project a perfected image of the capital city through a visual network of alliances and associations that implicitly support an ideology of stable Ashikaga rule. Despite their significance as the earliest extant rakuch≥ rakugai zu, the Sanj† screens have escaped the probing inquiry that has shed light on the later Uesugi screens, and research on them has not significantly progressed. Only a few scholars have contributed to our understanding of the Sanj† screens, so every few years, when the work is exhibited, the same information is repeated without revision. Horiguchi Sutemi, writing on samurai residential architecture in 1943, arrived at a date of 1521 to 1525 for the Sanj† screens’ production, based on the painting’s internal evidence. In the early 1960s, Takeda Tsuneo slightly adjusted Horiguchi’s dating to between 1525 and 1531 and determined that the screens were painted by an artist “in the circle of Kano Motonobu ,” although some scholars have persisted in considering the work a product of the still nebulously understood Tosa “school.”2 Ishida Hisatoyo, tapping a completely different vein, brought to light the strong link between early rakuch≥ rakugai zu such as the Sanj† screens and shokunin uta-awase (a genre of pictures of poetry contests between members of the various professions).3 For Takeda the Sanj† screens represent the earliest stage in his developmental model of keibutsuga (pictures of famous views) to f≥zokuga (genre paintings). Ishida, on the other hand, looks at them internally, focusing on the plethora of human activities that texture their city views. Seta Katsuya and Namiki Seishi have added to an understanding of the mood or character of the Sanj† screens, but neither they nor their predecessors have delved beneath the painting’s surface to problematize the painting’s production circumstances or overall message.4 It is time to take a fresh look at the Sanj† screens that reconsiders them from a diversity of perspectives, including iconography, style, and date. Because Horiguchi’s conclusions have formed the foundations for subsequent assumptions reached about the screens, a reconsideration of their date, both internal (what point in time the screens represent) and external (when they were made) Sanj† Screens 47 is our first task. Written evidence for architectural monuments might prove it impossible to determine the sort of fixed internal date that Horiguchi and his successors have relied on. Stylistic analysis will help to form an idea of when the painting was made by attributing it to a particular artist. The end of this chapter will add to our understanding of the screens’ internal date and at the same time construct a hypothesis about who might have had the painting made, for whom, why, and in whose interests. We will begin with an overview of the screens’ formal properties and composition and then proceed to detailed analyses of their date, style, and iconographic program. Composition The Sanj† rakuch≥ rakugai zu screens are executed in ink, colors , and gold wash on paper. Damage over time has dulled the painting’s colors and browned the paper, resulting in a largely subdued tonality in an already limited palette range of vermilion (shu), azurite (gunj†), red ochre (taisha), malachite or copper green (rokush†), white (gofun), and possibly indigo blue (ai). The screens differ from all other extant versions of the genre in their incorporation of amorphous swaths of mist in gold wash instead of hard-edged scalloped clouds in gold leaf. Less reflective than gold leaf, the gold wash mist and clouds shimmer faintly, only...