Capitalscapes

Chapter Five: Populating the Screens

chapter฀five Populating the Screens mong the thousands of figures that fill the Kyoto screens, some stand out as different from all the others, even if not at first glance. Although they occupy no more space than any others, the particular ways in which the artists of the screens depict them, from their faces and clothing to their placement within the compositions, have occasionally captured modern viewers’ notice. Depending on how they are interpreted, they potentially emerge as specific individuals within the hundreds of anonymous, generalized representatives of the professions and social strata of the sixteenth-century capital. Behind their particularity in turn lies the possibility for understanding the screens as representing express biases. As we have seen with the representation of the built environment and the selection and omission of places and structures, we might approach the representation of specific figures as participating in a greater project to encode these paintings. Patterns of representation in late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth -century genre paintings reveal the occasional inclusion of historical personages, as the screen paintings of Toyotomi Hideyoshi ’s cherry-blossom-viewing outings demonstrate. And yet, the inclusion of specifically identifiable people as a visual device in rakuch≥ rakugai zu has remained unexplored outside the case of the Uesugi screens. To fully understand the visual language of figural depiction in the Kyoto screens we must take a flexible approach that includes along with rakuch≥ rakugai zu other paintings outside the primary scope of this study. When compared, a group of works reveals representational motives that may lead to conclusions about how these pictures might have been seen, and by whom. Most of the people depicted in the Kyoto screens and fan paintings, however, are rendered not as individuals but rather as anonymous figure types. With few exceptions the identities of these people are determined by markers of their social position, such as their dress or the type of work they pursue, whether they are monks chanting sutras or beggars receiving alms. Those figures who fall beneath the ranks of warrior society exist within a world whose bias the paintings make perfectly clear: male members of samurai society far outnumber any other element of the Kyoto screens’ social fabric.1 As the human machinery that drove forward the capital’s agricultural, spiritual, and ceremonial time, however, the ruled in the Kyoto screens provide a foundation for the stable image of the capital that the Kyoto screens’ producers sought to convey. After addressing the question of specificity in the depiction of certain elite figures in the Kyoto screens, I will examine the portrayal of the populace to discover how it, too, operates within a specific representational program. Representing the Specific in the Uesugi Screens: A Cockfight Before we consider what meanings or messages portrayals of speci fic individuals might contain, it is worth posing the following A 144  questions concerning these figures: Where are they found within the screens’ overall compositions? How does their representation distinguish them from others? How does their representation relate to depictions of figures in other Kyoto screens and related paintings? Let us look again at the cockfight in the Uesugi screens. A group of nineteen men and a youth appear assembled before the mansion labeled “Buei” to watch a cockfight (see plate 28). An activity traditionally associated with the third month, the seasonality of the event is underscored by the blossoming red and white plum trees that ornament the scene and help frame it above. The artist shows us little of the mansion beyond the basic situation of its main structures and garden. The compound functions instead as a backdrop for the cockfight. Horses with red saddle covers frame the scene on the right and left, while the assembled figures all train their eyes on the tense encounter between two roosters in the center. A single boy stands immediately behind the birds, and stands in full, frontal view, facing the viewer. Placed immediately below the Imperial Palace in the right screen, this scene occupies a prominent position within the composition, falling just below eye level for a viewer seated before the painting. This placement works in concert with the choreography of the figures to capture the viewer’s gaze and alert the viewer to the special nature of the scene. As the physical setting for the cockfight, the Buei may hold a special significance for the Uesugi screens as a whole, as some...