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

4 Courtly Subject Matter

4 Courtly Subject Matter J ust as there are elements in the style of Matabei that con¤rm his reputation as the founder of Ukiyo-e, so too the subject matter of his art supports his identi¤cation of himself as a re¤ned, elegant, and learned gentleman. Of course, Matabei would . have known that, as the son of the warlord Araki, he was not a member of the aristocracy, but that he thought of himself as the equal of the nobility in breeding, manner, and re¤nement—an aristocrat in taste, thought, and action, if not in blood—is strongly suggested by the subjects that he chose to paint. The subject matter of Matabei’s paintings supports his aristocratic perception of himself in being closely related to that of Sôtatsu, for this artist is known to have belonged, as Miyeko Murase states, “to the cultural elite class of citizens in Kyoto, Sôtatsu, himself . . . a quite wealthy and cultivated gentleman.”1 We shall consider the similarities between the subject matter of Sôtatsu and Matabei in a moment, but before doing so, we need a term for this larger tradition of art of these two men. Setting Terminology Narazaki referred to the tradition of art of Matabei simply as that current that includes Sôtatsu and Kôetsu. Since Sôtatsu collaborated with Kôetsu on a number of joint works of art and may have married a younger sister of Kôetsu’s wife,2 it is not uncommon to speak of a Sôtatsu-Kôetsu school. However, Matabei was not a member of this school, having neither family nor other connections to Sôtatsu, Kôetsu, and their students. For that reason, a broader term than Sôtatsu-Kôetsu school is needed in discussing the similarity between Matabei’s subject matter and that of Sôtatsu. 127 One such is “Rimpa.” This term refers to the art of Sôtatsu and Kôetsu, but also to that of Ogata Kôrin (1658–1716), Roshû Fukae (1699–1757), Watanabe Shikô (1683– 1755), Sakai Hôitsu (1761–1828), Suzuki Kiitsu (1796–1858), and many others.3 Used as the name of the broader aesthetic tradition that developed out of the Sôtatsu-Kôetsu school, Rimpa can be applied to Matabei. However, the term privileges Kôrin, being written the “rin” of Kôrin and “pa” or “school,” and having been coined before scholars discovered Sôtatsu and learned of his in¶uence on Kôrin.4 Since Kôrin not only belonged to a later generation of artists than Matabei, but also one in which the machishu were not so important, the term “Rimpa” is not completely suitable for discussing the relationship between the subject matter of Matabei and Sôtatsu, especially since so much of the connection between their art lies in the degree to which both were in¶uenced by the machishu. A better word is “Yamato-e.” Yamato-e are depictions of native themes as opposed to the Chinese ones depicted in Kanga (literally, Han art) or Kara-e (T’ang art).5 An example is the handscroll, dated circa 1119, illustrating Lady Murasaki’s novel Tale of Genji, segments of which are now in the Tokugawa Reimeikaikan, the Gotô, and other collections . Today the word “Yamato-e” immediately calls to mind such handscrolls, but the term itself does not refer only to them, for it also applies to the album leaves, fan paintings, portraits of poets, and other artworks depicting native themes that were produced in the court of the late Heian–early Kamakura period (ca. 12th–13th century).6 As we know, Sôtatsu also painted such subjects, making several illustrations of the Tale of Genji. To distinguish his revivalist work from the original twelfth–thirteenthcentury Yamato-e, Sôtatsu’s version is sometimes called sixteenth–seventeenth-century Yamato-e. This name is also used for those depictions of native themes that had developed, or were just developing, in Sôtatsu’s time, including paintings of the city of Kyoto, of then new civic events, such as the Toyokuni festival, or of important contemporary people, such as the tea master Rikyû. All these subjects were important to the machishu; thus, much of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Yamato-e overlaps with what can be called machishu painting. It is with this relationship in mind that the term is used here for the art of Matabei. Finally, Narazaki, Fujikake, Tsuji, and other...