the hum of bees

.さすが花ちるにみれんはなかりけり
sasuga hana chiru ni miren wa nakari keri


when cherry blossoms
scatter...
no regrets

Issa begins the haiku with the word sasuga: "truly" or "as one might have expected." Here, the first meaning seems to fit. He proposes that, "truly," the cherry blossoms fall to death without regret.

This undated haiku resembles one that Issa wrote in 1821:

miren naku chiru mo sakura wa sakura kana

without regret
they fall and scatter...
cherry blossoms

In a related haiku (1809), he urges the blossoms to trust in Amida Buddha's
saving grace:


tada tanome hana wa hara-hara ano tôri

simply trust!
cherry blossoms flitting
down

"Blossoms" (hana) can denote cherry blossoms
in the shorthand of haiku.1

my yoshino cherry tree outside my bedroom window goes so quickly from blossoms to leaves. when it's newly fully flowered it fills so with bees that the sound of them comes in through my bedroom window, and fills the garden. and as quickly gone, on to other pollen, other trees.

a movie i just saw a bit of, cherry blossoms, says that the cherry blossom festivals, gathered in groups under the landscapes of yoshino cherry trees, are the perfect reminder to all of us of impermanence.

at 60,
it's something one has learned a bit of;
i wonder how much i will have learned
when i am 80.

a happy interdependence day to us all

  Stars, still pond —
all night the white geese cry out
in your hand.

Coming, my eyes open.
How suddenly black
the tree trunks look in the rain.

Night quiets, cools.
Even now,
two boats on a single mooring,
we rise and fall on one breath, going on.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Because Tokugawa-period Japanese tended to regard the overall body shapes of men and women as nearly the same, the only significant physical marker of difference were the organs themselves.

By the 1660s, the first mass- produced woodblock prints began to appear, often in the form of pages illustrating of handbooks on .... We should bear in mind that these illustrated manuals were perfectly legitimate books in their day.

As has been pointed out, "these spring painting must be regarded in the light of seventeenth-century Japanese life and mores. --was considered a very natural function, and ways of increasing enjoyment of this function were felt to be more commendable than censurable."

Unlike the case in Europe, Japanese artists did not celebrate the figure in their work in any medium until the late Meiji period. Japanese popular art of the eighteenth century, detailed polychrome prints of famous beautiful women -- usually courtesans -- were much in demand. These prints emphasized the subtle, often elaborate facial features, gestures, long hair, and richly decorated clothing of these women to convey a sense of  beauty and power.

Its beak caught firmly
in the clam's shell
The snipe cannot fly away
On an autumn eveningUNKNOWN JAPANESE POET

"Few peoples," says Lane, "have ever pursued the cult of artistic spring painting as assiduously as the Japanese." (Images from the Floating World)

Tokugawa-period woodblock prints are generally called ukiyo-e 浮世絵, meaning "images of the floating world." Many people incorrectly think that the term ukiyo-e means spring painting images, probably because so many ukiyo-e were spring painting. But ukiyo-e encompass landscape scenes and a wide variety of non-spring painting themes.

Spring painting woodblock prints were most commonly known as spring painting春画, meaning "spring pictures." The word "spring" often means "youthful beauty" or "youthful vigor" in Japanese usage then or now. The sale of services, for example, is baishun 売春, "selling spring," which has a different emotive sense than the English term "prostitution." Similarly, the word "color" (iro 色 by itself, -shoku -色 in many compound words) often means spring painting or spring painting. (more)

learning to print

tadamasa hayashi came to paris to assist and translate in the setting up of the paris universal exhibition of 1878.




at the time that he came, wood- block prints were quite devalued in japan, so he quickly realized that he could fill his cases with them, and sell them as art,
at art prices, in france.

thus were many people in paris introduced to japanese prints, and began collecting them.




one of these was henri riviere.







he not only bought from hayashi, but they became close friends, and hayashi became a patron for riviere.





the friendship included instruction of a sort as to printmaking methods, but it also included the recognition that riviere had,

without knowing it, revived ancient japanese printmaking methods for his own work.







when, after a close friendship of fifteen years, hayashi returned to japan, and died soon thereafter, riviere gave up printmaking.





yes, many others, as we've discussed, embraced what japan had to teach.












but to my eyes, henri riviere was japonisme's mikado.





(don't miss the wonderful photogravure site; the hiroshige site that has a permanant place in the sidebar; and the comprehensive henri riviere site.)

pattern! color! design!

another element the west gleaned from japan we've discussed with regard to clothing, but now let's discuss it with regards to art: pattern! color! design! now you couldn't get enough.

yes, it's true, matisse was inspired by morocco, but permission had been given, or perhaps rules had been made:


"busy" had been thor- oughly re- defined; all-over color and pattern were now not only allowed --
they were practi- cally requ- ired!




of course this was all a measure of freedom, of change, of exploration.



it was embraced by painters, children's book illustrators, graphic designers, printmakers: the past, from japan, represented the future for the west.




the use of pattern and print appeared on cloth (graphically and in reality), of course, but suddenly as well were found wallpapers, and tilework, and rugs, and upholstery....

it was a way of flattening an area and enlivening it at the same time. speaking of the textiles featured in

woodcuts, siegfried wichmann, in japonisme, said, 'european artists at the end of the nineteenth century recognized their abstract potential,

ornamental vigour, and new colour combi- nations.' walter crane spoke of woodblock prints being art more about pattern than about anything else.

from hiroshige commest all things

the more i study the visual arts of this period the more i am astonished i am at the breadth of influence of hiroshige (whose work was, perhaps, the first stuff available).






the latest thing i've found, here, are some of dulac's illustrations for hawthorn's tanglewood tales. (though i'll admit that i think i could eventually find them all if every hiroshige print were online.)









we saw czeschka's inspired interpretation of hiroshige's eagle, and now we see dulac's bow as well.









we also saw czeschka's modelling of a boat after hiroshige's method of portraying them, and here we have dulac's too.

•

aha! i have identified one of the images in the background of one of the pere tanguy portraits. i will assume that van gogh did with these what he did with the others -- he traced the prints themselves, then made a grid and transferred them this way. just below that is the same kiesai eisen image we saw here.




and of course, hiroshige did the original.














just as a side note: i guess that another way to do it is the way miro did with his friend ricart: he pasted it on! (have yet to identify that one, though.)

(p.s. doesn't that 'eye' on this boat resemble the one on dulac's boat?)

the flowering of japan in van gogh's heart

For two centuries, Japan discouraged trade with the rest of the world. In the 1850s, however, the country finally bowed to outside pressure and opened its ports to foreign vessels and Western commercial interests. Japanese prints, lacquerware, and porcelains flooded into Europe, creating a craze for furniture and crafts of Japanese design.

European artists were eager to abandon the staid conventions of academic art, and they freely imitated the bold, pure color, assertive outlines, and cropped compositions of Japanese prints. Japanese art created an indelible impression on Van Gogh.

He, like many of his colleagues, avidly collected woodblock prints: "We like Japanese painting, we are influenced by it-all Impressionists have that in common."1










The nineteenth-century woodblock print by Keisai Eisen depicting a high-ranking courtesan (oiran) was reproduced in reverse on the cover of Paris Illustré, in a special edition entitled "Le Japon" (May 1886).








When Van Gogh saw the magazine, he made a tracing of the cover incorporating a grid that he later transferred in enlarged form to canvas. 2

[this is the same method he used when making the other above copies]







and this is van gogh's friend whom he called pere tanguy. he was an art supply dealer.
i would love to find the originals for all of the prints shown behind him (in both versions), as well as in the few additional prints in which he featured them, but so far no luck.




(previous coverage here)