East Meets West: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Okakura Kakuzō

East Meets West: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Okakura Kakuzo

December 10, 1992 to April 18, 1993 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Boston, Massahusetts

Exploring Treasures in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum V:

East Meets West: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Okokura Kakuzo

Victoria Weston Guest Curator

December 10, 1992 to April 18, 1993 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Boston Massachusetts

Contents Essay East Meets West: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Okakura Kakuzo p.3

Catalogue of the Paintings in the Exhibition p.41

This catalogue accompanies the special exhibition entitled Mrs. Gardner and Japan: A Bostonian Explores an Asian Culture held at the Gardner Museum December 10, 1992 to April 18, 1993. This exhibition was made possible in part with support from the G. Peabody and Rose Gardner Charitable Trust, BOT Financial Corporation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Copyright 1992 by the Trustees of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 2 Palace Road Boston, Massachusetts 02115

EAST MEETS WEST: MRS. GARDNER AND OKAKURA KAKUZO

In 1903, Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) opened her museum on the Fenway to share with the public her remarkable collection of art.1 While the Gardner Museum is justly famed for its superb European holdings, it should also be known for its many important works of East Asian art. Mrs. Gardner lived at a time when Bostonians became deeply interested in Asian art and culture. She traveled in Asia, collected avidly, and developed one of the richest, most intriguing friendships of her life with Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913), whom she first met in 1904. 2 One of Japan's foremost art critics and educators, Okakura was much like Mrs. Gardner: both were independent of spirit and absorbed by literature, music, and art. Okakura became a conduit through which Mrs. Gardner experienced Japan; for Okakura, she was the kind of Westerner to whom he could impart his vision of the deeper motives of Asian civilization.

Surprisingly, Mrs. Gardner's collecting of Japanese art had ceased by the time she met Okakura. She had begun with a pair of folding screens, a richly colored depiction of spring and autumn flowers, bought in Tokyo in 1883 during her tour around the world; but she seems to have acquired no other large-format works until 1901, when in rapid fashion she built most of her collection of Asian sculpture and decorative arts. When Okakura arrived in the United States in 1904, Mrs. Gardner's museum was already open and most of its Asian collections installed. But, far from losing interest in Japanese art, Mrs. Gardner turned instead to Okakura as a living embodiment of Japanese culture. Okakura did not become a regular advisor to her in purchasing as Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) did; Okakura breathed life and meaning into the works she already possessed.

The current special exhibition in the Gardner Museum is designed to give visitors the opportunity to view the best of Mrs. Gardner's Japanese paintings as well as to bring together some of the emblems of her friendship with Okakura Kakuzo. Okakura first joined the social world of Mrs. Gardner in 1904, and he remained a member through his years of intermittent residence in Boston until his death in 1913. As a companion to Mrs. Gardner, Okakura was that most fascinating of foreigners, fluent in English yet fully the product of an alien culture. He arrived in the United States just as the Russo-Japanese War began and American interest in Japan was swelling. Okakura dressed in traditional

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clothes, was capable of discourse and wit on a variety of topics, and was deeply knowledgeable about subjects Boston's elite cherished. Over the years, Okakura became friends with many prominent Bostonians, and when he died, Mrs. Gardner honored him by becoming the keeper of Okakura's American effects.

Mrs. Gardner had purchased large-format Japanese paintings primarily to decorate her palatial museum. She acquired folding screens, paintings on wooden architectural panels, and fusuma paintings (rice-paper covered sliding doors used to divide interior spaces). Some she placed on the second and third floors in passageways that serve as interludes between the Tapestry and the Dutch Rooms, and the Chapel and Gothic Room. Others she placed in the Chinese Room, the first gallery of the second floor that is now the Early Italian Room. In the Chinese Room, visitors were able to view the large folding screens from some distance and to comprehend the overall surface design of gold and colors. In the relatively small spaces of the second and third floor passageways, however, the effect was and is much different. These screens cannot be apprehended as whole compositions, and, as they are hung in two rows reaching to the ceiling, the uppermost screens are barely visible. This arrangement has made it difficult to appreciate the screens as works of art and contributed to their being overlooked by serious scholars.

The current exhibition is the first time that visitors have had the opportunity to see some of these paintings up close, particularly the marvelous Tale of Genji screens. The decorative Chrysanthemums fusuma paintings are reunited as a continuous composition and in their proper order for the first time since having been hung in their passageway. The Three Vinegar Tasters is clearly visible with good lighting and visual access, and the Rice Cultivation screens, a tour de force of ink painting, returns to view after decades of use in non-gallery space. In addition, the Two Dragons Contending for the Moon by Yokoyama Taikan (1868-1958), one of Okakura's premiere students and one of Japan's most famous modern painters, appears in this exhibition. All of these works are discussed in the catalogue portion of this publication.

This essay explores the development of the friendship between Mrs. Gardner and Okakura, as well as the implications for her Museum and her collecting activities. Okakura's role in that friendship is an illuminating one, for it forms part of the greater task he had set himself of educating Americans about

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Okakura-Kakuzo with friends (top row) A. Piatt Andrew, Isabella Stewart Gardner; (bottom row) Caroline Sinkler and Henry Davis Sleeper at Andrew's house, Red Roof, Gloucester, M~ssachusetts, October 6, 1910.

the evils of Westernizing Asia. In his lectures and books produced for Western audiences, Okakura's writing is strident in warning and passionate in its message. Mrs. Gardner became an aid to him in this mission, organizing public and private social events with Okakura, and served as a patron to Japanese artists working with Okakura, lending them her prestige, and lodging them on her Brookline estate. After she ceased collecting Asian art prodigiously,3 she did not turn away from the subject; Okakura's friendship redirected her energies to a social level.

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Mrs. Gardner's Early Contact with Japan

Mrs. Gardner first became acquainted with East Asia through a series of lectures given by Professor Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925) of Salem, Massachusetts. Morse was a man of many interests who had gone to Japan in 1877 in connection with his work in zoology. He spent 1877 to 1880 at the Tokyo Imperial University, organizing a department of zoology, and even today, he is revered in Japan as the father of archaeology because of his discovery of the Omori shell mounds. Morse went to study brachiopods but became engrossed in collecting an encyclopedic sampling of Japanese ceramics. His collecting activities took him all over Japan, making him one of America's leading experts on Japan in this early period of contact. Morse gave a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in 1880-81 that inspired Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926) and the astronomer Percival Lowell (1855-1916) to travel to Japan.4 In February and March of 1882, Morse lectured at Mrs. Gardner's house.s At these lectures she caught the travel bug, and in May of 1883, she and her husband, John L. Gardner (1838-1898), set off on a tour of the world that began in Japan.

Mrs. Gardner constructed a travel scrapbook that gives a nearly daily summary of their itinerary, which she illustrated with commercial photographs, pressed leaves, and paper cut-outs. She noted their landfall on June 18 in Yokohama, the city designated to receive foreigners. The very next day the Gardners began visiting nearby Tokyo. She and her husband spent June and July in eastern Japan, visiting Tokyo repeatedly, as well as Nikko, Kamakura, and Kanazawa. In mid-August, they moved on to Kooe, Osaka, Kyoto, Uji, Nara, and they departed Japan from Nagasaki on September 2, bound for Shanghai.6 Dr. William Sturgis Bige1ow was a resident of Tokyo when the Gardners arrived in Yokohama, and he seems to have taken it upon himself to look after them during their stay in the area. Bigelow, who was teaching at the Imperial University thanks to Morse, was associated with another of Morse's proteges there, Ernest F. Fenollosa (1853-1908). Although a teacher of philosophy and political economy, Fenollosa quickly became devoted to traditional Japanese painting, which led to a career in government art policy. Official Japan had been set on modernization; Western-style oil painting was encouraged and sources of traditional patronage, Buddhist temples and the old feudal ruling class, lost most

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of it pr rogatives. To halt this dangerous trend, Fenollosa with Bigelow organized art associations and patronized artists working in traditional modes, their projects assisted by one of Fenollosa's university students, Okakura Kakuzo.

They traveled the country acquiring enormously important works of antique art that eventually became the core of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts's Asian collection.

Sturgis Bigelow's knowledge of Japanese culture made him an excellent guide for the Gardners' exploration of Japan. Mrs. Gardner described Bigelow's guardianship in a letter dated June 30: Sturgis Bigelow (my [our] doctor's son) never seems to have us off his mind for one moment and is constantly turning up for tiffin or dinner, or else telegraphing to us that we must go up to Tokio for this or that or the other, and consequently we have tiffined or dined in every conceivable place and style .... Bigelow wears the Japanese garment always when in his house, and shoes are such an unheard-of thing on the pretty mats that I kick mine off on every occasion. We dined with Bigelow yesterday ... .7 In her travel scrapbook, she noted two days with Bigelow, shopping on June 26 ("shopped all day and dined with WSB'') and July 9 ("went to Shintomidza Theatre [kabuki] with WSB. Spent the entire day and had tiffin there."). Percival Lowell was in Tokyo too; on June 22, Mrs. Gardner wrote that "P.L. gave us a Japanese dinner at Tea House." Mrs. Gardner seems to have had no difficulty adapting to Japanese food.

In another letter, upon their return to Tokyo from a side trip to Nikko, Mrs. Gardner warmly mentions meeting with Ernest Fenollosa.8 At Nikko, the site of the famous mortuary shrines dedicated to the first and third Tokugawa shoguns, Fenollosa and his family had a summer home that became an obligatory stop on the itineraries of Boston visitors to Japan. Bigelow was a frequent visitor there and he must have introduced the Gardners to Fenollosa.

Given Dr. Bigelow's enthusiastic collecting, it is tempting to speculate that Mrs. Gardner purchased her first folding screens, Spring and Autumn, in his company, but the receipt says only that they were bought July 30 from the Tokyo Kinshodo and sent to Yokohama. Mrs. Gardner does not note in her scrapbook being with Bigelow then, and the uneven quality of the screens-the right screen

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is much superior to the left-suggests that she may have bought them on her own.9 For Mrs. Gardner Japan was an exotic destination, and the photographs she bought of sumo wrestlers, jinrikisha (rickshaw) men, women preparing and wearing traditional dress, and cottage industries, illustrate her fascination. She tended to paste appropriate photographs for the day's activities: "curio shops" on the day of her shopping with Bigelow, actor portraits on the day of kabuki, and so forth. In her continued travels through Asia, her appreciation of native cultures grew, no doubt, from the glamor of exotica, but evident also is genuine appreciation. That she should choose to develop her collection of Asian art and that she could later fall into such sympathy with Okakura's projects demonstrates how positive and lasting was her first impression of Japan.

Japan remained a part of the Gardners' lives upon their return to the United States. The Gardners' summer residence in Brookline, Green Hill, was given a Japanese garden featuring iris and stone lanterns, and their principal residence in Back Bay contained bits of Japanese decorative art. There were also the occasional visitors who shared with them the experience of travel in Japan.

The Fenollosas entered the Gardners' social world following their return to Boston in 1890.10 After a brilliant career in Japan as an educator and art administrator, Fenollosa became the Museum of Fine Arts's curator of Asiatic Art. Sturgis Bigelow, who returned to the United States in 1889, and Percival Lowell, a close neighbor in Brookline, were also part of their circle of friends.11 Both of these gentlemen had mastered enough Japanese to write in romanized Japanese when composing their responses to Mrs. Gardner's guest book.12 One continuing connection to Japan was Mrs. Gardner's second cousin, Francis Gardner Curtis (1878-1915). Curtis became one of the few foreigners to exhibit in the semiannual competitive exhibitions of the Japan Art Institute in Tokyo, showing there in 1899, 1901, and 1902.13 It is not clear how Curtis came to exhibit with this group, but he would have had plenty of intermediaries through which to meet Okakura, its director. The Japan Art Institute (Nihon Bijutsu-in), founded in 1899, was an outgrowth of projects begun by Okakura Kakuzo and Ernest Fenollosa and it was dedicated to the modernization of Japanese art.

Curtis's contact with the Art Institute seems not to have been casual; his exhibited paintings are in a style then current at the Institute.

8

9

Although Mrs. Gardner had acquired Japanese objects on her world tour, her interest in collecting Asian art was not rekindled until 1901, when she began gathering material for her museum at Fenway Court. When they toured the world in 1883, she and her husband had not yet become focused art collectors. But, in 1888 they purchased a Madonna and Child, attributed to Zurbaran, and in 1892 they bought their famous Vermeer and made the transition to serious collecting.14 In 1894 Bernard Berenson became one of Mrs. Gardner's advisors and actively sought works for her to acquire. By 1896, Mrs. Gardner came to realize that she had amassed such a collection that she had to take some appropriate measures for their care and display. Rather than give her magnificent collection to a public institution, she chose instead to create her own museum.

Widowed in 1898, Mrs. Gardner designed an ambitious Venetian-style palace accented with antique architectural details collected from all over the world. It was in the context of this design that Mrs. Gardner began to build dramatically her collection of Asian art. Her sources in Boston were two major dealers in Japanese and Chinese art, Matsuki Bunkio and the Yamanaka Company. Mrs. Gardner attended sales at both galleries, going to Matsuki in March of 1901, February of 1902, and November of 1903, and Yamanaka in November of 1902. Of the fourteen large-format paintings she owned, all but four came from these two dealers.15 The impression that emerges is that Mrs. Gardner bought screens to enhance the environment of her Museum rather than to acquire any one given work.

When Fenway Court opened in 1903, its decorative program was essentially realized. Mrs. Gardner remained a serious collector, but her energies were directed to areas other than Japan. Instead, a different kind of process was begun, when in 1904 one of Japan's foremost art critics and crusaders, Okakura Kakuzo, was invited to Fenway Court. Okakura counseled not acquisition but appreciation, introducing her to ideas that invest art with meaning.

Okakura Kakuzoin Japan

From his earliest days in the Art Department of the Ministry of Education, Okakura Kakuzo had a rnission.1 6 Oka.Kura was one of a few critics who saw his

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country's wholesal adoption of Western culture as a needless price to pay for modernization. Forcibly opened to Western trade in 1853 after centuries of seclusion, Japan had embarked upon an intense program of Westernization during the 1870s and early 1880s to acquire the technology to protect its sovereignty. Concomitantly, many Japanese had adopted the emblems of Western culture as well, favoring Western dress, painting, food, and so forth as means for promoting modernization and winning the respect of Western nations.

Okakura understood that new technology would safeguard Japan, but that demolishing its traditional culture would only undermine Japanese pride. No Western nation rejected its traditional culture to win the approval of its neighbors, and neither should Japan.

Okakura had many ideas about how government should foster the growth of Japanese art, but was unable to implement them immediately. His first policy victory was in 1884, when, aided by Ernest Fenollosa, he was able to persuade the government to reinstate traditional Japanese materials and methods in primary school art classes. In Japan's eagerness to adopt the technology of the West, it had gone so far as to have Western-style drawing taught in its schools and to employ slates instead of brushes and paper in practicing writing. For Okakura, Western technology had its practical uses, but he was horrified that school children were being alienated from their own cultural inheritance.

In the same year, Okakura aided Fenollosa, his advisor while a student at

the Tokyo Imperial University, in the formation of a private society for the support of traditional art. This was the Painting Appreciation Society (Kangakai), and it was soon dedicated to two purposes: exhibiting antique paintings for the benefit of painters and public alike, and supporting working painters. Fenollosa drew upon his collection and Sturgis Bigelow's to organize these exhibitions, through which he sought to demonstrate the characteristics of specific schools of paintings. In support of the exhibitions Fenollosa gave lectures on these subjects. The Painting Appreciation Society also held regular competitive exhibitions at which Bigelow and Fenollosa offered prize money as another means for supporting their impoverished painter-friends. Behind all of this was Okakura, who served to manage the regular functions of the society.

During the mid-1880s, sentiment in Japan began to change, and a renewed pride in Japan's history and culture grew. Okakura had his chance, together with

11

Fenollosa, to serve this cause in an official capacity when in September of 1886 they were sent abroad as part of a commission to study Western methods of art administration. They were commissioned to study Western art education, administration, the organization of art associations, museums and their education programs, methods of art reproduction, museum architecture, and the development and criticism of Western art. They traveled in Europe and America until October of the following year. When they returned, they won mandates for the establishment of Japan's first museum and an art school. The art school was not Japan's first, for the government had earlier supported a school to teach Western-style painting and drawing as part of its efforts to acquire Western technological skills. The new school, called the Tokyo Art School (Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko), however, was to be dedicated to promoting Japan's native artistic heritage. It opened in February of 1889; the Imperial Museum opened three months later. Okakura was appointed a museum curator and soon became the headmaster of the Tokyo Art School.

Okakura described the four paths of development open to Japanese painting in a speech he gave in 1896: pure adherence to the forms and rules of Western art; pure adherence to the forms and rules of traditional Japanese art; eclecticism; and a fourth path that he advocated, "natural development" (shizen hattatsu). This, he explained, "is the fundamental path of art. .. based on an alignment with the past, developed in concert with the conditions of the present. ..there ought not to be a division between East and West. ..If we develop a spirit based on the insight of true feelings, we will apprehend the unique qualities of art. " 17 Okakura drew an important distinction between eclecticism, which he saw as a purely market-driven, and "natural development," the correct path because it would be an honest reflection of the creator's mind and heart.

And that creation would be modern because it would be the product of a new world, one in which Japanese art and culture interacted with Western art and culture. These were the principles Okakura sought to apply when he became headmaster at the Tokyo Art School.

At the Tokyo Art School, Okakura was most interested in painting, but he instituted comprehensive programs in sculpture, the applied arts, and basic design skills as well, and planned an architecture program. Okakura's programs were designed to address not only the technical training of his students, but also

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I w r it b cau it wa th ch I rul ; I didn't think about it l king trang . If y u w r hy, y u'd n v r b ab l tow ar it nth tr t for all th tar . kakura wor it with a kind f crown on hi h ad, and r d a hr ,andwa d li ht d.18

1 tud nt w r taught a wide rang of Chin and Japan tyl that pann d centuri , not just the exampl s of th immediat pa t. 19 Initially th re wa no cour e in Western painting, but W stern techniqu uch a p r p ctiv w re part of the curriculum. To upport th technical in truction, fir t F noll a and lat r kakura taught clas es in art hi tory in a W t rn mann r, by ch ol and p riod. kakura v n taught a n semester course in th hi t ry f W t rn painting that r v al a r markable understanding of the topic.20 In th painting pr gram, Art ch

Underlying the technical instructi n wa

kakura' b li fin individual

creativity, a We tern concept. Japane e painting had, like Japanese society, relied upon a group definition of elf and purpo e. A Japanese painter would seek to find his individual tyle within th param ter of th chool of painting he studied.21 At the Art Scho l, tud nt had to a imitate a much more di er mass of information than th ir tudio c unt rpart . In addition, Art ch students were educated in Chine e and Japane e hi tory and lit rature to op n their minds and increase their thematic choice . Thi proce s required strength of character in addition to technical facility; in failure, the results were undigested eclecticism, but in success, the painter schooled here were the period's great innovators and later the leaders of Tokyo's modernist movement.

The Tokyo Art School was a tremendous uccess, but for Okakura, it was a triumph to be savored briefly. Complex political machinations re ulted in Okakura's fall from power. A smear campaign was launched, and newspapers published an editorial accusing Okakura of having a demented and immoral character; in the end, he was compelled to resign both his museum and art school

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positions. 22 The newspapers had a field day when in response, thirty-three teachers, including nearly the entire painting faculty, resigned from the Art School in solidarity with Okakura. They filed a statement with the press, heaping embarrassment upon the Ministry of Education, the overseers of the Art School. After much cajoling and a few well-placed threats from prominent art patrons, only seventeen actually left the school with Okakura. But this group went on to form another art institution designed to fill a space in Okakura's original program for a national art education system. This was the Japan Art Institute (Nihon Bijutsu-in), an institution designed to be a place for graduates of the Tokyo Art School to continue work and study.

Dedicated to the modernization of traditional painting, the Japan Art Institute offered no classes, and there was no formal hierarchy beyond that needed for administrative purpo es. Painters were not expected to follow a ingle path to modernization; each was to find his own way. The results were then publicly exhibited in semiannual competitive exhibitions. There had been public exhibition in Japan for everal decades by this point, but the Institute re olutionized the concept when Okakura devised Japan's first traveling exhibitions. The In titute al o publi hed a small monthly journal, in which Okakura and oth r publi hed critical es ay , other ubmitted technical reports concerning all media, and the editor elected new works by Institute members for reproduction.

Through the public exhibition and through the paintings reproduced in the journal, the Institute n came to be known as a hotbed of unorthodoxy. eral of th y ung r paint r d eloped a new style called moraai ("hazy" style), which critic quickly condemned a We tern painting with Japanese material . The originat r of moraai were Yokoyama Taikan (1868-1958) and Hishida Shunso (1 74 -1911), tw painters particularly devoted to Okakura.

They develop d a method for applying color with a type of wide-head brush (hake) rarely u ed in Japan. The brush allowed for extremely subtle gradations of color for an unprecedented complexity in shaded colors. With the hake brush Taikan and Shun o blended colors to create form, substance, and atmosphere unlike anything achi ved through traditional ink line drawing. They further shocked critics by covering the entire picture surface with colors as in an oil painting, leaving no empty areas of silk or paper. Taikan's and Shunso's themes

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till traditi nal, g n rally land cap hin

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drawn from Japan

and

kakura's instructions: they had found a

way t m d rniz traditional painting by incorporating what " ympath tic 1 m nt "from West rn painting.

kakura had called

Th In titute shows w re popular for the first couple years of merotai, but aft r that attendance declined. Critics were generally hostile, and sales were poor. The Institute was established upon a communal basis, so that the proceeds of sales of art works went to the Institute, which then supplied its members a stipend. The result was that most members shared a common level of poverty.

Okakura, who was not adept at political machinations was even less interested in managing the Institute's finances . The Institute had opened in 1899 amid fanfare and high hopes; by 1901 it was in dire financial straits. Okakura took the opportunity to further his own character development-he left for a year-long visit to India.

Okakura's International Mission It was in India that Okakura's vision began to encompass international

issues. He encountered an international community of thinkers who sought an end to Western imperialism and the cultural Westernization of Asia. His frame of reference began to include basic assumptions current in the late nineteenth century about the essential nature of Eastern and Western culture. During the first decades of contact with Asia, European philosophers and politicians had tended to see the expansion of their culture and technology as part of the inevitable march of progress. The lethargy and decadence of the East would be rectified by the West's superior technology and moral fiber. In the late nineteenth century, though, there was a counter-response that included thinkers from both the East and the West, who saw the East and the West as halves of a single whole. In this model, the West was the superior partner in technological and practical matters, but the East was the world's repository of religious and moral teachings.

Okakura's decision to travel to India came about when he invited the renowned Swami Vivekananda (1863-1911) to a conference on Buddhism in Japan. Okakura had learned of the Swami through an American, Josephine MacLeod, who arrived in Japan early in 1901. MacLeod was one of a group of

15

people based in Boston and New York who had grown interested in Eastern philosophy and religion. She and her traveling companion, Sarah Thorp Bull (b.

1850) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, were disciples of Vivekananda. Bull had

organized a conference in Boston in 1894 designed to give Vivekananda an American forum for his ideas, and there he had met Ernest Fenollosa, among others.

Okakura expanded his vision, in part through his Boston contacts. He began to see India, China, and Japan as the three great pillars of a shared Eastern culture, one that was by nature pacific and contemplative. One thread he used to identify this unity was Buddhism, the religious creed born in India and passed to every Eastern nation. It was no doubt for this reason that Okakura's first project in this vein was an A ian Buddhist conference. Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu teacher, had de pin ights into Indian spirituality, but was also in poor health, so kakura decided to travel there.

Okakura went to India with Macleod where they were joined by Sarah Bull. Okakura oon became involved in the Indian nationalist movement, thanks to his Bengali host , the Tagore family . Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a well-known philo opher and poet, and he and Okakura, as indeed Okakura and Swami Vi ekananda, quickly di c

er d a kinship of ideas and temperament.

All ought to impart a t rn phil

phy to the West, and they gained many

adherents in th We t.

Li ing among the Tagore clan, Okakura began to write in English. He finished one b k, The Ideal of th Ea t with Special Reference to the Arts of Japan, and began another, The Awakening of Japan.23 These works illustrate the new direction Okakura' thinking wa taking, for all three were impassioned in their warning again t th harm We tern indu try and culture were doing to Asia.

Okakura's initial mi i n, th modernization of Japane e painting, was not forgotten; in fact, Th Id als of the Ea t contain a hort manifesto of the Japan Art In titute. But, in India, Okakura al o began to see himself as Japan's cultural ambassador to the We t, a role imilar to that played by his new friend, Rabindranath Tagore, for India in England.24 When Okakura returned to JapaD, he resumed his position as mentor to the painters of the Japan Art Institute where a few of his most faithful disciples

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remained. Okakura's travels convinced him that it was time for Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunso to broaden their horizons. Taikan and Shunso had been trying to raise travel funds for a journey to the West, but they acquiesced when Okakura promoted India. The spent several months in India as the guests of the Tagore family, and were profoundly impressed by Indian culture.

As it turned out, Taikan and Shunsowould soon get the chance to travel to America. Okakura decided to accept a post at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as advisor to the Asiatic department. Okakura took Rokkaku Shisui (1867-1950), an Institute lacquer artist, because he knew he would need someone to attend to the conservation of objects. But he also brought Taikan and Shunso. Taikan and Shunso would not be employed by the museum; they would support themselves holding exhibitions. Okakura insisted that all in his party were to take only traditional clothes, symbolic testament to their allegiance to Japanese culture. In addition, Taikan and Shunso packed a large quantity of silk for painting, which they got through customs by calling them exceptionally large sketchbooks.25 Okakura and Mrs. Gardner

When Okakura came to the United States in 1904, his career in Japan was essentially over. He sought a new role for himself as an advocate for East Asian culture in the West by building the Museum of Fine Arts's collection and through his books in English. The Okakura Mrs. Gardner knew was the firebrand who cherished traditional dress and manners and proclaimed that the heritage of Asiatic civilizations had to be preserved from the all-consuming industrial technology of the West.

In February of 1904, Okakura Kakuzo, Yokoyama Taikan, Hishida Shunso, and Rokkaku Shisui arrived in New York City. Okakura had friends there, the Thursby sisters, Ina and Emma, whom Okakura had hosted in Japan in 1903, and John Lafarge. 26 The Thursbys lodged Okakura in their home in the Gramercy Park section of New York. Taikan and Shunso found cheap accommodations in a hotel catering to Japanese laborers. Their arrival in New York, the circuit of social events arranged through the Thursbys, and the exotic quality of their clothes and manners led to several articles in the New York Times. This interest was sparked in part by Japan's recent victories over Russia. Taikan and Shunso immediately set about painting works for exhibition and sale, which they hoped

17

Okakura Kakuzo, ca. 1904.

18

uld fine n , th ir tc y. kc kurr and R kkaku, though, rnov d t B t n in Mar ir duti at th mu urn . k kur wa air ady kn wn in cultur d circl

a th auth r of th Th

f the a t. publi h din 1903, which b gins with its ringing a s rtion, n ." H continu d to writ in advocacy of Asian culture while in Arn rica, b ginning with th catalogue for Taikan's and ShunsO's exhibition of painting which op n din April of 1904 at th pr stigious Century Association of N w York. In that catalogu , kakura reit rated basic principles that were at the heart of th ir rnov ment: The Bijit uin [sic] is a prote t against these two movements -- the pseudocla sic and the p eudo-European. We claim that art must be national; that we shall be lost if cut away from our traditions, and, at the same time, we consider individuality to be the essence of vitality.27 More emphatically protectionist was Okakura's speech that summer at the St. Louis World's Fair where he warned of danger: "I refer to the onslaught of Western art on our national painting."28 He said that the Japanese art world consisted of only two contending camps: " ... advocates of wholesale Westernization of Japan, [to whom] Eastern civilization seems a lower development compared to the Western" and conservatives, among whom Okakura counted him elf.29 In November Okakura's The Awakening of Japan was published, its first chapter titled "The Night of Asia."

Okakura's reputation, based upon works such as the e, grew quickly.

When it came time for him to assume his museum duties, his fame preceded him to Boston. This plus a host of intermediary contacts urely brought Okakura to Mrs. Gardner's attention. Okakura and Mrs. Gardner had not met in Japan, though even in 1883 they would have been associated with many of the same people. Mrs. Gardner's nephew, Frances Gardner Curtis, had exhibited with Okakura's Japan Art Institute in 1902; Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, Sarah Bull, and others could have made Okakura known to Mrs. Gardner. It was arranged that Okakura would visit Mrs. Gardner following a letter of introduction the American artist John Lafarge wrote on March 22, 1904: ... I suppose that it is merely a question of time that he should have many introductions to you. One of his purposes in Boston is to do something for the arrangement or catalogue of the collection in the Museum. You

19

pr bably know a much about him a I do m If b r putati n. But I h uld like t add to an know! dg u ma ha f him, m tat m nt that h i th m tint lli nt critic fart, and I mi ht aim t a f r r at I r thing, that I kn w f. Hi balanc d by th p re pti n f th u ele n I think that h i n f th r f w p r uld n t mi nj ying, and h might al ob f u t f auth nticity r anything imilar .... 30 Mr .

ardner f 11 w d LaFarg ' hanging er 11 .

I tt r in which h r ad th

ugge tion and a k d

kakura xamin don

f th m, th n lat r

b

n a k d for ad ic

nth r a

ignatur , xplain d th c nt nt, and ff r d hi

pinion nit date.31 Thi wa th only tim , how ha

kakura ab ut h r

r, that

k kura

m

n a p cific w rk fart.

J J.

rl

Two pages from I abella Stewart Gardner' gue t book, 190-1.

kakura recorded a visit in Mrs. Gardner's gue t book again tw m nth lat r, on May 17, this time in the company of Rokkaku hi ui.

th r u

day wer Franci 路Gardner Curtis and the painter and coll ctor f Japan J

ph Lindon mith (1863-1950). The party wa nod nough p

ple knowledgeable about Japan to ea

20

an

that art

i ial n , cial c

traint

ith

kakura

:= 'll

.J:,

'": I

r

~

'l.I ':.{.

'":

c...

-; '":

.., ..c. c: r ,/

~

.,.

c:

'": 'll ':7

E -"' ::J r ,... c: Lc

'll

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... .... ..c. .., ~

...,

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21

and Rokkaku might hav f lt.32

kakura appears in her gue t book again July

10, and then thereafter on a monthly ba i up until his return to Japan in 1905.

Mrs.

ardn r was quickly tak n with Okakura ' charm. As early as May

f 1904, Mr . Gardn rm ntioned him in h r letter to Berenson, her principal agent for coll cting art w rk . In her fir t refer nc , she di cussed Okakura's Museum work with d light: Okakura i bu y at th Mu eum [of Fin Arts], cataloguing the Japanese thing that ha e b en huddl d th re since Fenollo a's time, and finds f rg ri and forgerie !!! And ha great contempt for Fenollosa.33 nj y d th c mpany of Okakura and his

By Augu t h had f und that h

ph r th y w r ab! t er at

part and th atm And

, n tch (D..Q.t in our manner), one th can, and through it all we become far away ic a h t II th w nderful poems and tales

fa dinn r h Id in cit db him."35 n rall

n h re tate:

r t that h had m t

ka kura i it d al n ; h

ith hi thr

kakura there, "and

r n

mb r 6, he appeared lin c mpani n , R kkaku, Taikan, and Shunso.

tra b

n much lik th

umm r' idyll he de cribed

h had f ur Japan

u

t and a gr ater variety

f thi party thank t th gue t books she kept,

kakura d cl r d that h Ii

d work on an ikebana din th " and of th Birthday," and

n Taikan paint ith chr anth mum I a w a (g in t ) " paint," and th t "I did it. " hun am ndin hi t r ad " I ." th ir

ugh iti

hr

anth mum in Japan

culture ymbolize

kn n thin f R kkaku' ikebana effort , it uggests th autumnal m d .

What huns- paint d ha n t y t b that

. Taikan wrote that he am remark ,

nr

er, it now appears

wh r Y koyama Taikan was concerned.

22

kakura's writing of him painting with chrysanthemum leaves seemed to explain the unusual ink color and texture in Taikan's guest book entry. The painting, though, was not discovered until this project, when a sketch of trees with a single bird overhead was discovered on the inside cover of the guest book itself. The sketch is signed "Taikan," and while quite abbreviated, it is drawn in a wet manner without outline that is allied with mortiai. The composition, too, is one that appears often in Taikan's work of this period. Taikan was a charming, outgoing man, easily capable of this sort of showmanship. No similar painting

by Shunso was discovered in the guest book.

The party must have been a great success, for Okakura wrote the following day to enlist Mrs. Gardner's help with Taikan and Shunsos Cambridge exhibition. Okakura hoped to enlist her to serve at one of the teas to be held during the exhibition period. His request was beguiling: If you will kindly consent I shall prepare the tea, have salt-plums, sea

weeds [sic] and everything atrocious on the occasion. Am I not terrible in asking this of you?

Okakura later asked Mrs. Gardner to recruit other prominent women to provide the same assistance. Among them were Cecilia Beaux, a member of Mrs. Gardner's social circle, Emma Thursby of New York, and Sarah Bull, who was providing the artists with studio and living space.37 The exhibition ran from November 17 to 27, and it was written up in the newspaper favored by Boston's cultured elite, The Boston Evening Transcript, though no mention was made of the unusually prominent women participating as receptionists.38 Mrs. Gardner bought no paintings there, though her cousin, Francis Gardner Curtis bought two.39 In the autumn of 1904, perhaps in early November, Okakura decided to hold a dinner party for some of his Boston friends. He was determined that the meal should consist of authentic Japanese food, but he then turned the matter over to two very unlikely cooks, Taikan and Shunso. Taikan recounted this unusual evening in his autobiography, where he named their guests as "the young woman living upstairs who was the daughter of a Norwegian parliamentarian, the assistant director of the Museum of Fine Arts, the wealthy Mrs. Gardner, known as the Queen of Boston, and two or three other people."40 The so-called "assistant director" was probably Matthew S. Prichard (1865-1936),

23

who in 1904 was giving himself that title, though in fact he was an assistant to the director.41 Okakura worked with Prichard in connection with his Museum duties, and Prichard was a frequent guest of Mrs. Gardner's.

As chefs Taikan and Shunsowere sorely limited in materials and technical knowledge. They decided that they would be able to serve only one truly Japanese dish, which was to be kamaboko, cakes of boiled fish paste. They had to improvise, though, drawing upon the tools of their trade: We really couldn't find the right fish for it. We persevered and improvised with codfish; we dissolved some gofun [crushed shell used for white pigment in painting] and mashed it very fine with flour to make it look right. American flour is very white and fine, so our cakes burned black.42 They served the cakes anyway, but were saved when the Norwegian disappeared into her own apartment to produce the real thing, only of Norwegian manufacture.

Matthew Prichard had his moment when the guests were served a kind of sushi containing a sour plum in the center (shisomaki with umeboshi). Okakura introduced this dish with bravura: "The center of this has bushido [the way of the samurai], so please savor it." Prichard gamely bit deeply into it, and hit the plum pit and the intense sourness. He managed to avoid offending anyone by choking down the whole affair, pit included. Okakura surely saw this physical reaction, but innocently asked Prichard what he thought. Prichard managed to regain his wits and replied: "You were right, there was bushido in there." Taikan did not record anything about Mrs. Gardner's responses to the food, however, she must have been amused by Okakura's handling of the peculiar dinner fare.

During Okakura's first visit to America, it is clear that the relationship he and Mrs. Gardner shared was one in which social events and companionship took precedence over art history or connoisseurship. She enjoyed with him a taste of the country and culture he represented in America. Somehow they managed to draw a fine line between these two spheres, for Okakura could call upon her to lend her prestige to his colleagues' exhibition of paintings, but she herself bought no paintings. This relatio!1ship contrasts with her sometimes strained relationship with Berenson, who was a friend but also her chief

24

purchasing agent in the field of art, even Asian. With Okakura, Mrs. Gardner was free to enjoy her friendship with him, as it bore no shadow of self-interest.

On March 8, 1905, Okakura wrote to Mrs. Gardner that he was leaving for Japan, but that he would return in October. This was the beginning of Okakura's dual residence in Japan and Boston, through which he fulfilled duties for the Museum of Fine Arts and the Japan Art Institute. Okakura's travel companions, now increased to include the metal sculptor Okabe Kakuya (1873-1918), were committed by Okakura to Mrs. Gardner's care with the words, "I leave their lives in your hands."43 Mrs. Gardner took this charge seriously, lodging Rokkaku and Okabe on her Brookline estate through the summer of 1905. She also sent a young man named Uchimura, an expert in ju-jitsu, back to Japan to a family who had given him up for dead.44 Mrs. Gardner's guest book for the summer of 1905 is filled with photographs of Rokkaku and Okabe on the grounds of Green Hill. Pictures of her two Japanese lodgers were often set among the stone lanterns and iris of her Japanese garden. Okabe and Rokkaku were housed in a secondary building on the estate, and consequently are recorded quite a few times as her guests.45 In the guest book, they listed as "events" such things as eating cheese toast, bread and cheese both being Western foods, and trying the first fruits of the seasons.

They were taken along with other guests to places such as Monument Beach ("steep land," as Okabe once put it), the symphony, and presumably about Boston.46 Rokkaku and Okabe may have had a larger role to play in an event Mrs. Gardner staged in May at Fenway Court. The event was a bazaar to aid the Sharon Sanitarium, and Mrs. Gardner drew upon her Japanese resources to create what must have been quite a spectacle. For it, she turned her Music Room into a Japanese village, a setting Joseph Lindon Smith used for a "Japanese" play of his own authorship. The bazaar was described in print soon after: All about were little pagoda-like booths with Japanese fittings and ornaments and ... on the stage was a Japanese grove with a temple at one side and a Buddhist shrine nestled in trees opposite. Japanese men and women wandered to and fro as villagers, some gazing at the booths as if seeking the most favorable chances to trade, while others were tradesman

25

I themselves, saddled with trays of all kinds of attractive novelties of Japanese handicraft.47

I

Mrs. Gardner had an extensive collection of Japanese architectural, especially temple, fittings gathered during 1901-1903, so no doubt the transformation of the Music Room was richly accomplished. Okakura seems to have aided the enterprise by mailing to her from San Francisco twenty-one lanterns, Japanese food items, and objects to be retouched by Okabe and Rokkaku for sale in the

I

I

bazaar.48

I

The article's reference to "real Japanese" may mean that both Rokkaku and Okabe did more than prepare objects; they may have been there masquerading as Japanese tradesmen. Mentioned specifically was a ju-jitsu demonstration given by Uchimura, who evidently had been teaching at Harvard.

Japanese bazaars and dances given by various civic groups were popular in Boston during the Russo-Japanese War. Mrs. Gardner's bazaar, though, was a private effort of unusual scale and with unique resources from which to draw.

I I

I

I I

I

I

I

The last time Okabe and Rokkaku listed their residence in Brookline was October 25, 1905. A guest that day was also Okakura Kakuzo, freshly returned to Boston. Okakura listed his residence as Izura, a seaside village in Ibaragi Prefecture where he had moved the Japan Art Institute. Okakura, followed by Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunso, had returned to Japan only to find the Art Institute virtually dead. Tokyo critics had been steadily growing more hostile to the Institute, and especially to morcxai painting. Okakura, supported by Taikan, Shunso, and two others, moved the Institute to Izura and a tranquil environment. There, the painters had the inspiration of the landscape, and young painters from Tokyo visited them. But Okakura's role, while symbolically important, was functionally minimal.

From October 1905, Okakura began to spend about half of his time in residence in Boston. He stayed until March 1906; returned to Boston in November 1907 and stayed until April 1908. He returned a year and a half later, in October 1910 and remained until July 1911. His final sojourn was from November 1912 until March 1913. When he was not residing in Boston, Okakura devoted considerable time assisting the ~useum of Fine Arts in securing works of Japanese and Chinese art and studying European art institutions. When away

I

I

I

I

I

I

I

j I

j

I

I 26

I

from the Museum, Okakura arranged for Institute colleagues, especially Rokkaku Shisui, or American associates, such as Francis Gardne~ Curtis and Langdon Warner (1881-1955), to supervise the Department of Asiatic Art. During these years of split residence, Okakura's friendship with Mrs. Gardner deepened. Okakura's ability to amuse and warm his friend is revealed in his letters, poems, and guest book entries. His remarkable facility with English and his vivid images make his literary efforts a pleasure to read;his famous Book of Tea, published in May 1906, attest to this in the public sphere.49 For Mrs. Gardner, Okakura often mixed English and Japanese in his guest book entries, adding visual interest to the page in the way his traditional clothing enlivened her gatherings. These entries often included seasonal poetic sentiments written in both languages. One summer entry read: Will the snow of the next year remember my footsteps among the summer grass?SO Okakura employed the quintessentially Japanese appreciation for ephemeral seasonal pleasures by reinterpreting for her her familiar surroundings. She enjoyed the fact that Okakura and his Japanese companions called her estate Aoyama, Japanese for Green HiU.51 Another of Okakura's entries was a short poem addressed to it: 11

11

One Pathway On the Green Hill Where the incense Of the Ancient Moss Invites me.

Scattering jays On the crimson tree Where the after-glow Of the craning autumn Calls me52 While it was no doubt flattering to have her home praised in the guest book, Mrs. Gardner was also being urged to see her home in its seasonal glory, its scents, sounds, and sights.

27

Okakura gave Mrs. Gardner a variety of gifts redolent with the history of East Asian culture. When Okakura performed a candlelight tea ceremony for Mrs. Gardner and other guests in January 1905, he surely explained the cultural and aesthetic values of the ritual and the individual objects.53 In September 1905 after his first return to Japan, he sent her a complete set of tea ceremony utensils including an iron kettle for boiling water. Unlike a Western tea service where one pattern of decoration would govern the whole set, this and any Japanese tea set was a study in the many styles of ceramics produced for domestic use.

Another time Okakura sought "red jade" for Mrs. Gardner in China.54 Mrs. Gardner was known for her collection of precious stones, and no doubt Okakura felt she would value something as unusual as this. Red jade proved impossible but when Mrs. Gardner became indisposed, Okakura sent an amulet, writing, "If you wear it the pain will go. "55 When away from America, Okakura wrote to Mrs. Gardner often. His poetic sensibility at times led him to flatter her in near superhuman terms. In one 1906 letter from China, Okakura appended these thought: "The red rocks of these hills are a wonder and a solace - could I bring them to you?"56 From 1910 Okakura began addressing his letters to "To the Presence/Court of Fenway, "a salutation that was amusing yet consistent with his romantic imagery. In another letter, he penned an enigmatic message suggestive of the cosmogonic forces described in Chinese natural philosophy: I am sorry the Rocks are moving slowly today. The Ocean has been spilled by mistake and they had to gather the Waters from the Unknown again.57 In much the same vein Okakura addressed longer poems to Mrs. Gardner, including "The Taoist" for her birthday in 1911: 1

She stood alone on Earth-an exile from Heaven. Of all the Immortals she was the flower.

Time receded in reverence at her approach, space bowed

28

the way to her triumph. The wind brought to her its untrammeled Grace, the air lent to her voice the balm of its own summer. Blue lightening [sic] swept in her glances, clouds unfurled in the train of her queenly tread.

Infinity asked of Wonder: "Below and above in thy wanderings amongst the stars, hast thou heard the name of this fearless Spirit, who laughs with the thunder and plays with the storm, whom fire burneth not because she is fire itself, whom water quelleth not for she is the ocean herself?"

Quoth Wonder: I know not."

2 Life asked of Change: "In form and out of forms where the Transcent [sic] dwelleth, has thou heard the name of this peerless Spirit who mocks at thy moods and scorns thy bonds, whose sadness is joy, whose shadow a sunshine, whose very loneliness a world of gladness?"

Quoth Change: "I know not."

Glory to the Nameless! sang the swaying pines in the forest.

Glory to the Nameless! echoed the billows of the sea.

On the birthday of the Presence.

1911

29

In this poem Okakura likens Mrs. Gardner to a force of nature, immune to calamity. He calls her a Taoist immortal, beings known for their freedom of spirit and reverence for nature. The following year, Okakura even gave her the appropriate costume for the part, a "Taoist robe" that he had had made in China.58 For Okakura this was a serious matter; he had had a Taoist robe made for himself in India in 1902 and he knew the value of its symbolism.

Mrs. Gardner's gifts to Okakura ranged from the mundane, a hot water bottle, to something with the power to comfort the spirit, a white kitten.59 Okakura appreciated them all, and named the kitten "Kowun," which he translated as "Lonesome Cloud." In response to the gift, Okakura wrote to Mrs. Gardner a letter of thanks from both his and Kowun's "hand." Kowun's sensibility is marvelous! y feline: We [are] like a cloudlet in the sky, curl, unfurl, and swirl on in immense glee. We sleep beautifully. Our only lament was over some hairs singed in snuffing a candle with our taiJ.60 Okakura kept Kowun until he returned again to Japan, then left him to a friend of Mrs. Gardner's, the artist Dodge Macknight (1860-1950).61 Not all of Okakura's letters were written in the spirit of fun and flattery; some shared with Mrs. Gardner his feelings of loneliness and isolation. From Seattle he wrote just before departing for home in 1906, "Ages have passed--are you changed any? I am afraid that you have made me homesick for Boston--! am curiously lonesome .. . ."62 Okakura wrote several times of his loneliness, a condition referred to even in the name he gave his cat. Never did he reveal the range of his melancholic feelings more fully than in a letter of fatherly advice to Kowun via Mrs. Gardner: Perhaps you enjoy chasing squirrels, there is great pleasure in the quest of the unattainable. You and I know that wonder is the secret of bliss and that with reason comes the death of the beautifuJ.63 Such musings were the essential stuff of Okakura's character, romantic yet traditionally Japanese. Okakura's advice on "females" may have amused, perhaps mystified, Mrs. Gardner:

30

31

I hope that you have not made the acquaintance of the feline feminine, -treacherous things who pretend to understand you and has [sic] only claws to match their eyes.64 Okakura enjoined his cat to be brave ("the key into life"), to beware of tomcats ("they can teach only what they acquired through pain, you must learn all through the gate of gladness"), and never to feel ashamed. In words meant more to flatter Mrs. Gardner, he wrote: "Think of your high lineage and under whose protection you were brought to me." Okakura concluded with, "Kochan! Are you lonesome? Lonesome is the lot of many worthier than you or me."

In Mrs. Gardner Okakura seems to have found a sympathetic soul, a

trusted friend and confidant. The loneliness that Okakura admitted to was no doubt exacerbated by life abroad and by his alienation from the Japanese art world. In Japan Okakura still made proposals concerning art policy, but he no longer had the pr tige t persuade. In his letters to Mrs. Gardner, an older woman who had experienced hostility from the Boston elite, Okakura felt free to express feeling that he urely would not have in a Japanese context.

It was n t only

kakura who uffered each time he departed Boston for Japan. Mr . ardner, t , confe ed to feeling of loss in her letters to Berenson.

In 1908, he wrote," kakura ha gon , which I mourn daily. "65 In anticipation of hi 1911 departur he wrote," kakura goes in August back to Japan and that will be a gri f"66 and " kakura goes back to Japan tomorrow and I shall be in the dump ."67 H r appr ciati n for the magic h could create with words and imag plain; he had taught her t e h r world and herself in different term .6 Mrs. Gardner's regard for kakura may be demonstrated through the transformation he wrought upon the Chinese Room in Fenway Court-the one space devoted to an riental theme. In the original design, the room was not rigid! y Eastern, rather it was an eclectic combination of Chinese and Japanese art, Venetian chinoiserie furniture, plus other Western objects. In its dramatic setting at the top of the tairway leading up from the courtyard, there was ample space to view the screens Spring and Autumn and the Tale of Genji. In addition, Mrs. Gardner used carved ramma throughou路t the upper reaches of the walls, hung a large Chinese embroidery below the left screen of the Genji, and then filled the

32

curio cabinets, table tops, bits of wall, and so forth with Chinese and Japanese ceramics and cloisonne enamels, temple fittings, ancl architectural elements. The Western elements included the portrait by Mancini of her husband, John L. Gardner, next to which she placed a Japanese statue of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, her own portrait painted by Anders Zorn, and even a small picture of George Washington. This was the room Okakura would have known, a room bustling with gold and color and filled to the doorways.

The Chinese Room was transformed into a very different kind of space after Okakura's death. With little strength left, Okakura left the United States for the last time in March 1913, and died at his home in Akakura in September.

Okakura's last letter to Mrs. Gardner, on June 28, revealed no hint of the gravity of his illness. Rather, the letter was devoted to inquiries about mutual friends and other issues, and it was only in the postscript that he wrote, "I am still pretending to be an invalid though they must find me out very soon."69 Okakura, even though quite ill, was still writing very charming, witty letters to Mrs. Gardner, as he had done in the past. With another correspondent, the poet Priyabada Devi Banerjee (1871-1935), he was quite frank about his condition, even about impending death, and he continued to write to Banerjee well into August. But, with Mrs. Gardner, where such directness was not their method of communication, their correspondence ended once the wit ran dry.

Mrs. Gardner was stunned by Okakura's death and her feelings were manifested in her rearrangement of Fenway Court. First she used part of a case in the first floor Blue Room to display mementos of Okakura, including the telegram from Japan informing her of his death. Then she closed the Chinese Room and made it over as the Early Italian Room. The Chinese Room was not lost; rather, Mrs. Gardner created a new two-story Chinese Room between the first floor and the basement where the stage area and basement level dressing rooms of the Museum Room and been.70 This time, there were no Western objects included, only Chinese and Japanese pieces. Whereas the original Chinese Room had been gaily ornamented and furnished with the usual elements of a social room, this Chinese Room was sober, windowless, and focused upon large, generally Buddhist statues arranged on platforms. These pieces had all been in Mrs. Gardner's collection before Okakura died, but they had been dispersed throughout the Museum. Now they were placed along the east, west,

33

and south walls, with the main group along the south. Tables were then placed before them and along the walls, arranged with temple fittings. Overhead was a painted coffered ceiling from which temple banners hung. On the walls were embroideries, ramma, and three sets of Japanese folding screens. Young Pine Trees and the Tale of Genji were placed on the north wall, Flowers and Birds on the west.71 Secular ceramic and cloisonne enamel pieces were not included, but instead distributed to other rooms in the house.

Honoring the memory of Okakura must have been Mrs. Gardner's motive for transforming the Chinese Room. Originally a museum space <?pen to visitors, it became a private space cast in a temple mode. When the room was completed, she installed more Okakura memorabilia, including the tea set he had given her.72 Mrs. Gardner made up for the loss of a public Asian gallery by adding new Asian works to her collection. From 1914, she began to seek important pieces of Chinese sculpture and metalwork. When Mrs. Gardner built Fenway Court she appreciated Asian art as decorative arts, enhancing the Museum's sumptuous appeal. After years of friendship with Okakura, she became a collector of extremely fine Asian works that became an integral part of the Museum's collection.73

Chinese Room, 1961.

1

I would like to thank Dr. John M. Rosenfield, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of East Asian Art, Emeritus, at Harvard University, for his continued advice and careful editing of this catalogue. I would also like to thank Susan Sinclair, Archivist for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, for her kind and generous assistance.

2

A word about naming conventions is needed: in the catalogue all Japanese names are written in the traditional word order, family name first. In the case of artists, I abbreviate their names to the second name, which in their cases is a professional, art name, under which they pursued their professional lives. For Western names, I have tried to apply a single standard when abbreviating proper names in favor of family name alone.

The only exception is in references to Mrs. Gardner, where the conventional application of the prefix "Mrs." is so strong that "Gardner" alone sounds forced.

3Mrs. Gardner resumed collecting Asian art through Berenson after Okakura's death.

4 Robert

Rosenstone, Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 260.

5Jbid., pp. 208-213.

6They

returned to the United States in the summer of 1884. They spent two months in China, then went through Indo China, including Angkor Wat, Southeast Asia, India, Egypt, and Europe.

7 Morris

Carter, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1925), pp. 59-60.

8Carter, p. 60.

9Tue screens are both signed "Hokkyo Karin." Ogata Korin (1658--1716) was the famous master of the decorative Rinpa school. The right screen is a pleasing composition of autumn flowers and bamboo, but the left screen of pine and spring flowers is not nearly as skilled in composition or execution. lOMrs. Gardner's many guest books are marvelous sources of information that provide a detailed record of her visitors over the years. No doubt there were other visitors than those formally registered, but the guest books give a good indication of the range of Mrs. Gardner's social contacts.

The end of the Fenollosas' visits corresponds to the dissolution of their marriage and his subsequent remarriage to his Museum assistant. In 1896, Fenollosa officially resigned from the Museum and he and his ne.w wife moved to New York. Law~enc~ Chisolm, Fenollosa: The Far East and Amencan Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 118-119.

35

llBigelow visited November 7, 1895, April 30, 1896, June 12, 1898, October 16, 1898, then once again on June 28, 1916. Lowell visited on May 21, 1896 and July 6, 1910.

12Lowell wrote in his 1896 entry in English that his home was the "cosmos," he was (going to) "Heaven," but under "events" "he wrote, "tonari no kzaku." "Tonari" means next-door, but "kzaku" is a misspelling that must surely be 'kazoku" or "family."

While the Gardners were not, in fact, directly next door, they were nearby. Bigelow's June 12 1898 entry in Japanese reads: "Sonkun ni saido gomenkai itashimasu/ kotoga kyoetsu no itari ni gazarimasuru." The "Sonkun" is problematic as it should refer to a close male friend, whose name (or an abbreviated name) is "Son." Bigelow's entry roughly reads, "It is a great pleasure to see Mr. Son again."

13Nihon Bijutsu-in hyaku nen shi, vol. 2, part 1 (Tokyo: Otsuka Kogeisha, 1989), pp. 528, 578, 748. Frances Gardner Curtis exhibited Winter Scene, Fuji, and Night Landscape under Moon in 1899; Spring Sea and Winter Morning in 1900; and Evening Colors and Dawn in 1902.

14Tuis was Vermeer's The Concert. Louise Hall Tharp, Mrs. Jack: A Biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner (Boston: Little Brown, 1965), pp. 138, 166.

150f the four remaining, one is her first Japanese screen bought as a travel memento in Japan in 1883, one she purchased from a close friend in 1911, though he had acquired it from a 1902 Yamanaka sale, and two have unknown provenances.

16He was assigned to the Art Department in 1884. Biographical sources for Okakura include: Miyagawa Torao, Okakura Tenshin (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppansha, 1956); Horioka Yasuko, Okakura Tenshin kangae (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1982); and my dissertation, "Modernization in Japanese-Style Painting: Yokoyama Taikan (1868-1958) and the Mor5tai Style" (University of Michigan, 1991).

170kakura Kakuzo, "Kangakai ni oite bungakushi Okakura Kakuzo-shi enzetsu."

Dai Nihon bijutsu Shinpo. no. 50 (December 1887), p. L 18 Yokoyama Taikan, Taikan Jiden (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1981), p. 26. l9Izosaki Yasuhiko, et al., Tokyo Bijutsu Gakk\OCo.-) no rekishi (Tokyo: Nihon Bunkyo Shuppan, 1977), pp. 51-53.

20Student

notes from Okakura's art history classes, including the course in Western painting, reveal that he did a heroic job of condensing the material into an easily intelligible flow. He did not discuss the most current trends in Western painting, but stopped with French academic painting. Okakura Kakuzo, Okak:ura Tenshin zenshu, vol.

5 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1980-1).

21 There were of course exceptions, and some of these went on to form their own schools of painting.

22Urasaki Eisaku, Nihon kindai bijutsu hatten shi (Tokyo: Thyo bijutsu, 1974), pp. 347-348; Izosaki, et al., pp. 104-106.

36

23 Okakura Kakuzo, The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to Japan, ~ntrod. by Sister Nivedita (Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, Co., 1970, 1903); rest m Okakura Kakuzo: Collected English Writings, Sunao Nakamura, et al., eds., 3 vols.

(Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1984).

24Stephen N. Hay, Asian Ideals of East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan.

China. and India (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 12-51.

25Taikan, p. 66.

26 Richard McCandless Gipson, The Life of Emma Thursby 0841-1931) (New York: The New York Historical Society, 1940), p. 378. Emma Thursby, a famous opera singer at the tum of the century, traveled to Japan with Sarah Bull in the spring of 1903, soon to be joined by Ina (1855-?). Sarah Bull's husband, Ole Bull, was a famous violinist who had played often with Emma. They spent five months in Japan.

270kakura Kakuzo, "The Century Association Exhibition of Paintings by Members of the Nippon-Bijutsuin," (April 1904), p. 6.

28 0kakura Kakuzo, "Modem Problems in Painting," Collected English Writings. vol. 2, (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1984), p. 76.

29 Ibid., p. 62.

30Letter from John LaFarge to Isabella Stewart Gardner, March 22, 1904, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

310kakura Kakuzo, Collected English Writings. vol. 3, pp. 39-40, no date given but probably following immediately after his visit.

32In the guest book, Rokkaku confessed in Japanese that he didn't know what to say, perhaps demonstrating his unease with the situation. Okakura, though, was fine; he wrote he was (Going to) "dream" (Events) "nothing," a typically enigmatic answer.

33Rollin Van N. Hadley, ed. The Letters of Bernard Berenson and Isabella Stewart Gardner 1887-1924 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987), p. 335. (May 12 [1904]).

34Ibid., p. 342. (August 2,[1904]).

35Ibid., p. 344. (August 13,1904).

36There was some difficulty arranging this party, for the date Mrs. Gardner originally proposed was already promised to her cousin, Francis Gardner Curtis for a day of fishing, and Okakura was an avid fisherman. Okakura declined, writing, "I am extremely sorry that we could not come to you next Sunday and I am sure the boys [Taikan, Shunso, and probably Rokkaku] share with me this feeling--But Curtis is obdurate--The tide is the best, the fish the best, and the boat a paragon--Positively it is to be the last fishing of the year. I am sorry." (October 21, 1904). Okakura Kakuzo, Collected English Writings, vol. 3, p. 53.

37

37Tue names of the women enlisted were all printed on the invitations sent out for the exhibition.

38"Tue Fine Arts," The Boston Evening Transcript, November 18, 1904.

39Francis Gardner Curtis bought Waves in Moonlight and Water Buffalo and Waterfall, both now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

40'faikan, pp. 74-76 for this story.

41According to Maureen Mieton, Museum of Fine Arts Archivist.

42Taikan,, p. 75.

43Qkakura Kakuzo, Collected English Writings. vol. 3, p. 59.

44Jbid., pp. 69-70. Uchimura evidently gave both Mrs. Gardner lessons in ju-jitsu (guest book June 9, 1905). In the letter cited here between Mrs. Gardner and Okakura, newly returned to the United States, Okakura thanks Mrs. Gardner for her charity, writing, "I am thinking of the mother of Uchimura and how grateful she will be to you when she knows that she owes the return of her son to you after so many years, - a son whom she believed dead!"

45Qkabe and Rokkaku referred to their lodgings as the "hanare yashiki" (detached villa).

46"Shiti ," the phonetic spelling of "city."

47Town Topics, as quoted in Tharp's Mrs. Jack, p. 254.

48 0kakura Kakuzo, Collected English Writings, vol. 3, pp. 58-59 (March 8, 1905).

49Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 265-325.

SOGuest book, July 25, 1911, reprinted in Collected English Writings, vol. 3, p.

12.

51 Hadley, p. 342. Letter to Berenson dated August 2 ,presumably 1904.

52Guest book, October 24, 1910, reprinted in Collected English Writings. vol. 3,

p. 5.

53"1 am still full of the sentiment and flower of the great Tea Ceremony, the "Chano-yu" .... wrote Mrs. Gardner to Berenson, January 22, 1905, Hadley, p. 360.

54 0kakura Kakuzo, Collected English Writings, vol. 3, pp. 152-153 (May 30, 1912).

55Jbid... p. 126 (n.d .... [1911]).

38

56Ibid., p. 82 (January 16, 1907).

57 Ibid., p. 125 (January 7, 1911).

58Jbid., pp. 152-153 (May 30, 1912).

59 Ibid., pp. 102-103; 121(January13, 1909; November 22, 1910).

60Ibid.' pp. 102-103.

61Carter, p. 235.

620kakura Kaku zo, Collected English Writings., vol. 3, p. 71 (March 18, 1906).

63Jbid. , pp. 139-140 (November 22, 1910).

64Ibid.

65Hadley, p. 421 (May 28, 1908).

66fbid., p. 490 (June 26, 1911 ).

67Tuid., p. 491 (August 5, 1911).

68 Mrs. Gardner is said to have confided to Mary Berenson that Okakura had made her a better person: " ... she said it was true, and perhaps she would have gone to her grave with her hard heart and selfish character if it had not been for a Japanese mystic named Okakura... He was the first person, she said, who showed her how hateful she was, and from him she learnt her first lesson of seeking to love instead of to be loved." This need to be taken with a grain of salt, but it probably reflects some of Mrs. Gardner's true regard for Okakura as a guide in living life correctly. Barbara Strachey and Jayne Samuels, ed. Mary Berenson: A Self-Portrait from Her Letters and Diaries (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1983), p. 194. (January 10, 1914).

69Qkakura Kakuzo, Collected English Writings, vol. 3, pp ..,207-208 (June 28, 1913).

70The Chinese Room was disassembled in 1970, when the spaces were converted into a first-floor Textiles conservation lab (now the space occupied by the cafe) and basement level guards' room. Most of the contents of the room, excluding objects explicitly connected to Okakura, were sold at auction.

71Tuere is limited documentation for determining which screens first went into the second Chinese Room. The Museum catalogue indicates that these screens were in the Chinese Room in 1927, three years after Mrs. Gardner's death. In 1934, Morris Carter, the first director of the Museum, had Pine Trees and Flowers and Birds moved to the second floor passageway between the Dutch Room and the Tapestry Room, and Genji moved to the third floor passageway between the Gothic Room and the Long Gallery Chapel. They were replaced by the Spring and Autumn and the Rice Cultivation in

39

1934, both of which were still there when photographs of the room were taken in 1961.

Both Rice Cultivation and Spring and Autumn had been in the second floor passageway.

72Tue case included a small pagoda containing plum blossoms gathered at Okakura's grave, a copy of Nihon Bijutsu, the Japan Art Institute journal, eulogies by Institute members, a cup and bowl used by Okakura in Boston, and his lacquer lunch box that had been a gift to Denman Ross.

73 Denman Ross and Bernard Berenson helped her to acquire important Chinese works including the Shang dynasty Ku, the Eastern Wei dynasty Votice Stele, and the Han dynasty pair of Bronze Bears.

40

TA OGU OF PAINTINGS IN TH EXHIBITION

h'" 11

ti n.

rk

f

Jp

d h r n.

r pr

nt

nly a p rti n

p, intin ; a m r c mp! t Ii ting may b

d

arti t

f th military r t

f th

f th Kan

im

fficial

thr u h ut th

fir t

nth c ntury had drawn up nm d I

fift

JI d in c mp

r it , and th and

ild d

Th

urfac

Kan-

ch

ardn r b

fall

- cal

pain.tin

pain.tin

n n ichi at u, 路up ar bu]

Th Tale of Genji i p rhap th

m

fam u

nth-c ntury n

r count th

lif and I

adventur

th

fifty-t f

n r I ti

ly

ardn r

fr m th

f tw I

urti r Prine

, and

t

pans1

nji, th

mb dim nt

t1

I

rld' fir t p i w int

f c urt !if . h 1

an anci nt cultur . In hapin

nji, Mura aki er at d a fa cinating tal

ical th

f c urt hip and fail d I

daily ev nt , and court c r m nial , b Ii f , and up r titi n .

41

k

hikibu (d. ?l 15), wa a

th hi h

chapt r , Th

lou ly

in th

nji (Genji monogatcui ). t f th ficti nal

mpr

Id f ii

pain.tin

irtu in th imp rial c urt. It er at r, Mura aki

novel, and a mar

b

un ' n bu hit u " [ 1r t m nth, 1 77,

I cti n

i

at th Mat uki and

ith

t imp rtant Japan

um . Th

In it ma

bright

acquir f r al in Am rica .

I b

lady-in-w aiting t

mp! yin

uld ha

n pa ' r

male

f rmat

f th ir p tr n , th T kugawa

an purcha in

n 1 01 and 1 0 , Kan

f r d al r

nc mpa

iti n f r lar

d until th

Yam naka al

ung and tic

.

rnm nt. Wh

Mu

um'

f und in th

ch

Yu n p ri d ink pain.tin , but th ir w rk cam t

a

ardn r Mu

C rien.tal and Islami Art.l r d n b

di

f th

f

'2 Q)

l?

42

•

43

Th

ardner er

ritual and dail pa tim

n ' tw l e cen s emphasize the tranquil passage of court . The fir t ere n b gins with twelve-year-old Genji's

c ming fag c r m n ( hapt r 1, "Paul wnia Court" ). B low that is a young nji with hi friend di cu ing th id al attribut Br

m Tre ").

tat th t p i

h

nji p

kin

for a woman (Chapter 2, "The

through a brushwood fence, where

f hi !if , Mura aki (Chapter 5, "Lavender"). nji and hi friend, Th no Chuj o (the

thi i a c urt c n , wh r a fa th r

f Ka hi a i), danc

E cur i n"). Acr

mperor (Chapter 7, "An Autumn

pl ndidl b f r th

much f th l ft t p i an utd

r cene in which the palanquin

R ku( Lad , a f rm r l f nji, i pu h d a ide t make room for nji' fficial I (Chapt r 9, " art in "). The la t cene is a New Y ar' d , and rit , Mura aki, and a daught r, the Akashi nt a m chanical bird n a branch to ing them pr inc f th

th fir t

n

n

\.V

ar ( ha pt r 2 , "Th Fir t Warbl r") .

p

Th f th

cu t") .

nji' ladi

m n (Chapter 3, "Shell

n t

in

ng r to one of

lrt , I

' amu

; th

m nt , including trapping f ur pan l al ng the top

n"). Acr t r

nji' rank i

o high,

lat r that a f rmer lo e

n

t ( ha pt r 14, "Channel

wa

urt n bl

").

, nt rtained by

arnati n "). At th t p left is

nji at hi

atchin a f rm f f

nji, att nd

tball

if ( hapt r 34, \V

c ncubin , dir ct Paintin ar

that i a

, hi

th rm

b him in a mu ic l id II ( h pt r 5, "

b tant

nl

rmat, attribut d t l

ndary, cam t

if and

H rb II").

n t rar . Within a hundred

fit c mpl

t

fficial

ubj ct f ill u tra ti on. in pi c ; it i a twelfth

uji ara Taka

hi (fl. arl

al p ri fr m Japan' pa t, i th r hi tori cal or nanc f paint r w rkin in what wa th ught of as

traditi nal Japan

p cifically, tyl

44

that had their

rigin in th' p >ri d in

I p

>If wa writt n . This tyl ' of pt intin

o as h

hara t ,n

hi

f paint r , wh

n1

and

d

wa

imp ri I c urt. It i

w rk d f r th

Id c v r d gr und , and it fin

Jin drawin

bulary. a th

th T

m

t fam u

f th Japan

n

that c mpn

d pi t d it in album , hand er II ,and er

Thr u

ti ti n, n

n

nti n d

I p d f r th

n .

iti n

c mp

d

f p cific

f charact r . Th f th

n

aint r

actuall

r adin th

h rt d

it b

f th n

I , includin

and tran f rm th m int ardn

r

th Kan . Kan

c m

uitabl

f uch circum tan

th pr duct

n th

er

h ad

p in th

K bi ich di trict f

in th i al

n in th

~

a m

n

Id .

aqu

l!l.

f natur

uch

rk mclud

- - - T - - - - - - f n in th

niv r it

and

f

a m

an

ill.

a ppr

paint rtl

I, which T un

The tw lve c n

f ink pain.tin ,

t r

th b Id r c

ati nal Mu

creens but with fl

uch a

h

Id mit u c II cti n t b

r hi pain tin

d licat ly c Toky

U)i\i ara T un n bu (1

n ,

unnl cnpital.3 Tun n bu i er

but h

ith a

tum

wh at Ii r

id d paint r

n appr priat illu trati n ,

nal t uch " and c

f man

th

f rmat . Th

and in tructi n

n f r illu trati n,

uch a th

mulat db to tak

1. It pr

p1

inf rmati n

t n

t fr qu ntly ch

m

that d enc

cri pti n

includin

c

in th

rdn r

that unmi takably r v al hi Kan- train.in . d pict d

numerically ix to a scr en. Typical

ardn r ~ er

n th

f many Kan-

picture urface wa first cov red in mall quar applied rich colors. Th method of c mp

45

ition

ch f gold,

ar balanc d n pain.tin

, th

r which th paint r

n h r , in which th

paint r

places the individual episodes over the surface of the painting in a pa tchwork manner, derives from late-sixteenth century Kano depictions of scenes in and around Kyoto (rakuchu-rakugai zu). Bands of scalloped clouds, not painted but rather shaped of worked and cut gold, are introduced to divide the large picture surface into smaller zones within which are revealed the individual scenes. These scenes are essentially self-contained moments captured from the novel, their spatial and temporal settings rendered without reference to the surrounding scenes. In the Gardner screen, the overall compositional unity is maintained through the pattern of cloud bands tretched laterally across the paintings, and through the landscape and architectural l ments that create the boundaries between contiguous elements.

The individual sc ne in Tsunenobu's Tale of Genji screens overall conform to To a interpretation of Genji painting. Tsunenobu's colors are rich, and the facial types are e sentially in the yamato-e mode. Details such as the black-and-white checked pant w rn by ome of T unenobu's courtiers derive from the Tosa school's vi ual ocabulary.s T a c n ention such a revealing only the legs of the reigning emperor, who i th rwi e hidden behind a bamboo curtain, are preserved by Tsunen bu in hi er i n of the "Paulownia Court" scene.

Yet ther ar igruficant diff rence betw en Tsunenobu's painting and Tosa school norm . In hi r ndering of the human figures, there is an element of realism unknown to To a r ndering . T unenobu' figures react to events, turn and gesture, open their m uth in p ch, puff th ir che k when blowing upon wind in trument , and ar in t d ith a d gr of individualization. The costumes are not painted a flat dee rati pattern ; th fabric concede folds and wrinkles by partially burying l m nt of patt rn in th fabric . In his rendering of elements from nature, T un nobu r li upon To a decorati e con entions for colors and hape , but ther i al a Kano flavor. In old trees, there are passages of animated ink outline, great xp d r t , and n twork of lichens and knots running along the shaded tree trunk . The hapes of the rocks are not simplified curves but billowing scallop d form that ultimately recall the "cloud-like rocks" of the eleventh-century Chin ma ter Kuo H i. Mo t clearly Kano in style are the paintings decorating the int rior pace . All of them are ink paintings of Chinese sages and Chinese land cape , of bird and old trees, dragon , bamboo, and many other themes common to the traditional Kano repertoire.

46

Alth u h n

d cum ntati n firmly

11

Mr .

ti n, ph t

er

n

nt r d

hin

rn

nt, and pr bably b l ng t th p ri d

fh r

r u pur ha ing. Th y w r hung th r along with th Spring and

m Autumn

r R

hin

n , and ar al

indicat d a having b

n di play d in th

rn in 1927. In 19 4, th y wer rn v d by th Mu

l cati n th y curr ntly ccupy, th third fl th

wh nth

raph tak n in 1904 f th fir t

urn nt that th y w r air ady pr

d

tabli h

thic R

rn. N

Japan

th r than th

er n w r di play d a pr min ntly a th Mr . ardn r w 11 appr ciat d th rn .

urn director to the nth L ng

r pa ag b tw

painting

econd all ry and

pring and Autumn n w r , ugg

ting that

The Three Vinegar Ta ter Japan d p ri d, arly 17th c ntur Two-f Id er n; ink and c I r n pap r H . 65 1/2 in.; W. 73 1/2 in. ach pan I o igna tur r al

t ry e

ntial unity

f th Vin gar Ta t r i an f th

thr

r at

Id

n that

t illu trat th

a t A ian r ti i n /p hil

phi

,

nfuciani rn,

Buddhi rn, and Ta i rn. Th thr the e er ed , gath r d ar und a m gar. In th painting, all thr

pontan share th

ach r at barr I c ntainin win

f th

ur d t

r act t th

u ly puck r, with ch p ri nc

f

uck d in and lip pur

urpn m

ur fla

r, illu tratin am wa

de pite th ir diff ring path , th

d

ut ard. th c nc pt that th

am

ntial

reality.

The Vinegar Tasters i a Kano ch ol paintin , a i th Tale of Genji, but it i stylistically derived from differ nt ourc the courtly style of painting d

. Th fin c l r

lop d by the To a ch

f th

Gfillil c

rn fr rn

l. Th Vinegar Tast rs i

drawn in a much bolder styl , with tr ng bru hw rk and larg comp

iti nal

elements. The theme wa introduc d int Japan by monk-paint r

had g ne t

h

China to tudy Buddhism and r turn d in pir d by th ink painting f th Yuan dynasties. Kano school painter frequently d pict d Chine e th rn included subjects such as this.

47

ung and , which

48

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49

I

Kano ateliers kept records of earlier works in the form of the initial drawings or copies that were made prior to the delivery of a finished painting to a client. The Gardner Vinegar Tasters is a good example of how a studio painter could turn to such compositions for inspiration. The essential elements found in the Gardner composition also appear in a painting traditionally attributed to Kano Yukinobu (1513-1575), younger brother of Motonobu (1476-1559), dominant figure in Kano painting in his day.6 The Yukinobu painting could have been the direct model or the model as interpreted through an intermediary, or else the two paintings may have shared an unknown common source.

The Gardner version is a much simplified rendering of the Yukinobu Vinegar Tasters, which was done in ink alone on a six-fold screen and paired with another Zen theme, the Four Sleepers. In the Yukinobu version, the three figures gather close to the wine vat, the Buddhist and Confucian sages behind the vat, with the Taoist sage a little to the left. The figures occupy a shallow foreground that is framed by two great pines and a rocky mountain landscape typical of Chineseinspired landscapes. Yukinobu excelled in his application of ink, developing varied textures for the wine vat and landscape elements, and animated line drawing in the description of the figures. The tableau is centered within the third and fourth panels of the screen, the rest being devoted to the landscape.

In the Gardner version, the Buddhist and Confucian sages still stand behind the vat, but they are now quite deliberately framed by a single pine tree that extends one branch as a canopy over their heads. The foreground, vividly described in ink textures as earth by Yukinobu, is here a flat plane of gold. The Taoist sage is separated from his companions, cast over to the extreme left in order to balance this truncated version of the composition. Rather than the rough mountainscape, a single large peony screens the background. The qualities of line are also much more conservative, with fewer flourishes and verve. Much of the charm of this painting is in the exaggerated handling of the facial expressions, the sages' puckered faces seemingly teaching not only that all three creeds lead ultimately to the same result, but that even the most learned sages are after all human.

Mrs. Gardner purchased The Three Vinegar Tasters in March of 1901, at a sale held by Matsuki Bunkio. The sale catalogue describes it as "Old Screen (2 fold).

Three wise men tasting wine under the pine tree. Rare screen, painted by Kano [sic]

50

Motonobu." 7 Kano Motonobu is one of the greatest names in Japanese painting and most of Matsuki's and Yamanaka's paintings were given similarly wondrous attributions that do little more than indicate an appropriate school attribution. The condition of the screens themselves suggest that Matsuki or a previous owner readied the screens for sale by liberally applying new gold to the surface of the picture. Japanese dealers of this period seem to have felt that gold screens were what American patrons desired, and the sale catalogues from this period frequently point to "costly materials." In this case, both the gold ground and gold sprinkles were applied after the completion of the painting, as they overlap motifs in many places.8

Rice Cultivation Japanese; Edo period, probably early 17th century Pair of six-fold screens; ink and light colors on paper H. 67 1 /2 in.; W. 150 in. each No signature; seal of Kano Motonobu

The planting and harvesting of rice is the theme of this pair of screens. The right screen describes the activities of spring, plowing of flooded fields with draught animals and planting seedlings. The mood is cheerful as farmfolk, clad in Chinese garments, talk and work together, attended by happy children and farm animals.

Further to the left of this screen, we see irrigation devices worked by four chatting men at a waterwheel and by two men dipping a vessel on ropes into a river. Their village is nestled within a mountain landscape indicative of China, the softly hazy skies and distant blue peaks indicating fair spring weather. Mist spreads in bands across the composition, breaking up the fields into a patchwork of small episodes.

Greens and soft earth tones dominate the scene, suggesting the fertility of the land and the productivity of the farmers .

The season changes along the right edge of the left screen. There, one field newly planted with young rice plants borders alongside a golden autumnal field ready for harvest. The white mountains and dark skies are indicators of winter, as is the bare tree to the right; winter fast approaches as the farmers gather their harvest.

This screen is neatly divided between those harvesting rice at the right, and those threshing and drying rice to the left. The group of four men at the center use

51

52

53

branches to thresh the rice stalks. The processing continues up in the next building, where one group mills the rice and others pound it to flour with great mallets.

Both screens are equally idyllic. The farmers inhabit a spectacular landscape of towering mountains, rivers, and a gushing waterfall. Scenes of farmers, either Japanese or Chinese cheerfully working, became popular in the Edo period when the military authority used Confucian ideals to stratify society. In the Edo scheme of things, the warriors occupied the top stratum, but just below them were the farmers, whose honest labor produced the food needed by all. Below them were the artisans, also productive members of society, and at the very bottom were those seen as parasitic members of society, the merchants. In reality, the merchants grew steadily more wealthy in the Edo period, while the warriors became poorer and the farmers were often driven to destitution. But warrior patrons of painting enjoyed seeing their society as it ought to work, and with images of rice cultivation, the elite could satisfy themselves that the farmers enjoyed their lot.

These rice cultivation screens are fine examples of Kano school ink painting.

The wide range of brush techniques, from the texture strokes describing the surface and mass of natural forms to the animated brush lines in the figures, are derived from Sung and Yuan Chinese paintings. The unusual rock formations are described through flat strokes as though left by a chisel, accented with softer daubing strokes and clusters of dots to indicate moss. The tall mountain setting derives from the same Chinese sources. Although the mountains rise up directly behind the village, there are also places were no barrier to infinite depth is created, just barely perceived distant rice fields.

Like The Three Vinegar Tasters, this painting, too, is indebted to a Kano Yukinobu composition. This time it is the famous hanging scrolls, once fusuma panels, of the Daisen-in, a subtemple of the Zen monastery of Daitoku-ji, Kyoto.9 Here again, the relationship is quite close, as the groups of figures from the eightpanel Yukinobu composition have been closely observed and adapted in the Gardner screens. The Gardner painter essentially borrowed all of the figures and architectural elements and re-ordered them for use in his own composition. One example comes from the harvesting screen and the four men threshing rice stalks.

The individual figures and their placement are fully preserved from the Yukinobu original down to facial expression, postures, and even the placement of distinctive

54

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ink strokes. The Gardner painter did not adapt the entire scene from the Yukinobu, however, as the building before which the threshers work was drawn from a different section. The kinetic brushwork, the patchwork of rice fields, and the brush conventions all rely upon the Yukinobu example.

Although a clear testament to the Yukinobu composition, the Gardner screens are much more than a tired copy of an famous original. Some of the constituent pieces derive from the Yukinobu, but there are many more figures and scenes to meet the needs of a different format and a modified intent, while the execution is sure and energized. The Yukinobu composition is a collection of individual vignettes separated by mist and haze, but the Gardner screens enjoy a sweeping vision tightly unified over the large horizontal expanse. There are also more genre-like details: people walking and talking without any implements of work, and men in boats--all set against the spectacular landscape that embraces their village. The scholarly ideals of harmony with nature and spiritual refreshment are extended here to the farmers, in this vision that manifests the ideal Confucian order.

The rendering of that vision of nature is also the invention of the Gardner painter and it reveals the probable dating for the work. The Yukinobu paintings are made up of relatively close views with little background, but the Gardner painting is filled with towering mountains, deep distance, and layers of trees. The interest in clearly defined spatial relationships exhibited by the Gardner painting is more in keeping with the early seventeenth century than with Yukinobu's generation. Such rationalized compositions are seen in the works of Kano Koi (1569-1636), for example, and other painters of that generation.10 These screens each bear an impression from a seal in the shape of a Chinese bronze tripod vessel with characters reading "Motonobu." This is Kano Motonobu (1476-1559), the older brother of Kano Yukinobu and the painter to which the dealer Matsuki Bunkio attributed The Three Vinegar Tasters. The attribution of Rice Cultivation to Motonobu is stylistically unlikely, though there are clearly elements based upon sixteenth-century Kano conventions. The provenance of these screens is unknown, but an undated list written by Mrs. Gardner includes it as "Grey Screen Motonobu 1550-1620."11 Museum records indicate that they were positioned in the passageway of the third floor, were in the passageway on the second floor in 1934,

56

th n w r rn

d int

th

hin

R

rn. Mr .

ardn r paid th rath r larg sum

th rn r rn unt d in 1922 by a rn unt r at th Mu alu d th rn.

urn of Fin Arts,

Chry anthemum Japan ; d p ri d, arly 17th c ntury t off ur fu uma; thick col r on g ld H . 70 1/2 in; W . 5 in. ach pan l N ignatur r al

Th paint r f Chrysanthemums d light d in patt rn and rhythm thr ugh the manipulati n

f f rm up n a flat plan .

hry anth mum , land form , and

ff ct n th

wat r ar r nd r d thr ugh ju ta f w bright c lor who and imm diat . Th I a d ne in whit

ar

ibrant with rich rnalachit gr

thickly appli d that th

aturat d blu -all again t flat

Id .

urfac

f

ftly r und d ma

e ential plant

The s n ibility in thi c mp painting, which r

d , th wat r i a d

anth mum a r p titi n

ay th paint r turn rn

and leave f rward and parall I with th pictur alrno t mu ical quality a th

are p

rbank a f n

. Th d c rati

chry anth mum i hi hli ht d in th den ity and plac rn nt f th plant

harp

n , th fl w r

f call p d g Id puff , th ri

, and th chr

ari d thr u h p

rnb

i

ach rn tif i r nd r d a a tylizati n of a

natural form, th cl ud b c min a serie

m

y

urfac . 8

r th pictur

t f th fl

d ftly rnanipulatin th

urfac , th paint r achi

an

fr m ri ht t l ft.

iti n i cl arly ind bt d t th Rinpa ch

italized th anci nt yarnato-e m d

f paintin

l of

ith b Id

decorative effects. Th Rinpa cho l d I p d in th arly nth c ntur during the flowering of larg -f rmat d c rati painting. nlik th Kanworkshops, which were upported by warrior , Rinpa paint r w rk d for th court aristocracy and wealthy town folk . Styli tically, Kano paint r , e

n when painting

large decorative compositions, retained element of naturali tic repre

ntation.

Rinpa painters, though, delighted in finding the stylized form in a natural rn tif and the pattern potential in it repetition. Japane e profe ional paint r w re quick to adopt styles successfully employed by other workshops a we ha e already the Gardner .Gfil]ji screens by Kano Tsunenobu. A painting such a the

57

en in

ardn r

Chrysanthemums

58

mum~

th ugh, th, t th h

~

'~within

i1r'

th r ,, h of K, n

aint r , th

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un n bu' h rry bl m in th f th omp si ti n, it g •ntl flow an I in pa ~ h( I pt intings.

rdn 'r p, inting m ~t npa c int r , th rking ith an 1 4 . ).

Ll >f u 1 m n ma b ><

r a II

rk f th fir t g •n •r t1on f und r it f und r, Ta ara t t u (?~~~

in th K

u

f • nJi. lyrici~m, sugg ts, 2 .J.!.le

pc in ting by T wara a Mu um .12 Th • ar •al

paint

fr m in th f rm

fa

fl fl fl

mpara 1 Rinpt nm

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that v

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nth c ntury.

P• inting ..., th s am• t h r I, t ', in mithh, \1itdJpcnin1 1nting t

nlik m 1 12, thr u h h

cam back in th

''' •r n tw

with a er pp Yamanaka catal

r

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m , th

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cripti n

ith an th r

a lac u uma . th id and bamb Kan Y it ku, a r n ur

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. Man w it ku th r with fu uma , t r , imi ' h u ; ith r at car in a

palac , which th a d; inc dat , arly 17th c ntury.14 w r

59

These paintings have no real relationship to Eitoku's style, and the story is fanciful.

No doubt this yarn was spun to charm and impress potential American purchasers.

Two Dragons Contending for the Moon Yokoyama Taikan, 1904 or 1905 Painting in ink and color on silk, mounted H . 20 1/4 in.; W. 30 1/4 in. (within frame) No signature or seal

Two Dragons Contending for the Moon was not bought to decorate Fenway Court. Mrs. Gardner received this painting from Josephine MacLeod, who gave it as a memento of Okakura. She wrote to Mrs. Gardner in October 1913: But dear Mrs. Gardner: You did not answer my question, do you know this picture that Mr. Okakura painted? and do you care for it? and if so, would you like to enshrine [it] in your home? He had such a profound admiration for your genius (as he called it) of presenting your beautiful picture[s] that I am sure he would like to feel this one picture that he painted in the West was given to you.15 Both women believed this painting to be Okakura's work, and it was added to the Chinese Room collection in his honor. Unknown to Mrs. Gardner, this was her second work by Yokoyama Taikan, the first being the sketch he painted with chrysanthemum leaves in her guest book when he visited her with Okakura in 1904.

How Josephine MacLeod came to possess the painting is not clear. She along with Sarah Bull were disciples of Swami Vivekananda, and their interests extended to Japan. MacLeod's sister had purchased one of Shunso's paintings at the first of four exhibitions he and Taikan held in America, and there was a painting in the third exhibition, at the National Arts Club in New York, titled "Two Dragons Contending for the Moon." It is unlikely; though, that MacLeod purchased her Dragons under such circumstances since exhibition paintings were clearly labeled.

Dragons, too, is unsigned, which is not typical of Taikan for an exhibition work, but

60

c

0 0

~ Q)

.£

61

the painter himself later confirmed that it was his.16 Another version of this subject in Japan has a signature, and its box is inscribed with the information that it was painted in Europe.17 Two Dragons Contending for the Moon is a depiction not of dragons but of gnarled branches of old pines reaching from either side of the painting and twisting like cork crew , their ends hap d to uggest the heads of bird-like dragons.

Between the two pin i a full moon set again t a cloud-streaked sky. The glowing moon ugg t the prize th ri al dragon eek, traditionally a precious jewel. The ymbolic content of thi painting i subject to a variety of interpretations. One is that it i an all gory on the Ru

-Japane e War, with the two powers striving for

the jew l f ictor . It might al o be the truggle f East versus West, taking the idea f oppo ition fr m kakura' thought. Taikan' ays following his return from iti it t th cultural and ae thetic differences America r fl ct a gr ing betw

n Japan and th W

that Taikan

t; it c uld b that the "drag n " reflect the inner struggle

p ri nc d .

ardn r paintin Th Drag ns." Th T k

r call ii paintin ; th Th

Taikan' fir ton the theme of "Two r c mp!

c mpo ition and is stylistically

hich a t pica! f Taikan in thi period. In the tur f th pin i achi d with daubing strokes that nli ht i d crib d in r lati ly naturali tic terms. ith it r lianc n traditi nal ink dra ing and its spare

c mp iti n, a ymm trical balanc

a up n th th m . Th ink character and b an initial f th ardn r paintin i m r t pica! of traditional Japanese paintin , and thi i ultimat th dir cti n Taikan w uld ch o e to take in his

work in n ral. T g th r, th tw t n i n e i ting in th mind f a er I yalty t hi wn traditi n r c ncil int and ci iliza ti n, an a ar n much aff ct d by hi ardner and her circl

62

d cum ntation of the Japan e ma ter eeking to of Western art p ri nc with I abella Stewart

or

dward

lfn my r·nd · rin gs names and chapter titles from Lhc Gcnji monogalari. l rel y upon . 'id ·nsLi ' k ·r' tran laLion, The Ta lc of Gcnji (New Y rk: Alfred A. Knopf, J 979).

2

Miy ·ko Mura " 1 ·on gra.Qhy of the Tale of Genji (New Y rk and T kyo: WeaLhcrhill,

1983).

4

147 .

T ky

K okurit u Hakubut ukan, Kano-ha no kaiga (Tokyo: Bcnrid- , 197 ), pis. l 6,

5

A f r xampl in T a Mi un ri ' Tokugawa R imcikai F undati n, r pr du

Qmii album

, pccially hi G nji album in the d in Muras , p. 3 . (T a Mi un ri, IS 3-1638).

6

Tak da T unc , t al. d . Jinbu tsuga: kanga-kei jinbuLSuga.

4 (Toky : K-dan ha, I 77-7 J, pl . 3-94.

ih n by-bu-e ho ei v l.

9T ky K kurit.: u HakubuL ukan, pl. 7 1; Inagaki Ya uh ik , c t al. =-=='-"=--"'"" (Toky : K-dan ha, 1968), pl ·. 97, 13 1- 132.

IOF r exam pl , tw ts f land cap (Apri l 1915, pp. 275. 277) and K okka 423 (

l. I I

d in K kka 2 7

vid 12Yamane Yu zo, =s-=-=La=-==---'-=~ Shogakukan , 1969), pl. 67.

n h ku

ih n biju u zcn hu

l. 14 (T ky

13Ibid., pl. 6 1.

14"Catalogue of M agn ificenl Coll Lion f Antique arvi ng and thing Buddhi tic fr m Temples and Palaces of Japan and China." opley H all , B ton, N vember 6. 7, 8, 1902. L ot number 430. l 5LeLLer

dated October 15, 1913.

63

16Kojiro Tomita met Taikan in 1919 (museum catalogue of the collection).

17Yokoyama Taikan Kinenkan, Yokoyama Taik:an (Tokyo: Otsuka Kogeisha, 1984), pl.

6.

64