cross purposes

Japan's aesthetic conceptions, deriving from diverse cultural traditions, have been formative in the production of unique art forms. Over the centuries, a wide range of artistic motifs developed and were refined, becoming imbued with symbolic significance. Like a pearl, they acquired many layers of meaning and a high luster. Japanese aesthetics provide a key to understanding artistic works perceivably different from those coming from Western traditions.

Within the East Asian artistic tradition, China has been the acknowledged teacher and Japan the devoted student. Nevertheless, several Japanese arts developed their own style, which can be differentiated from various Chinese arts. The monumental, symmetrically balanced, rational approach of Chinese art forms became miniaturized, irregular, and subtly suggestive in Japanese hands. Miniature rock gardens, diminutive plants (bonsai), and ikebana (flower arrangements),

in which the selected few represented a garden, were the favorite pursuits of refined aristocrats for a millennium, and they have remained a part of contemporary cultural life.

The diagonal, reflecting a natural flow, rather than the fixed triangle, became the favored structural device, whether in painting, architectural or garden design, dance steps, or musical notations. Odd numbers replace even numbers in the regularity

of a Chinese master pattern, and a pull to one side allows a motif to turn the corner of a three-dimensional object, thus giving continuity and motion that is lacking in a static frontal design. Japanese painters used the devices of the cutoff, close-up, and fade-out by the twelfth century in yamato-e, or Japanese-style, scroll painting, perhaps one

reason why modern filmmaking has been such a natural and successful art form in Japan. Suggestion is used rather than direct statement; oblique poetic hints and allusive and inconclusive melodies and thoughts have proved frustrating to the Westerner trying to penetrate the meanings of literature, music, painting, and even everyday language.

The Japanese began defining such aesthetic ideas in a

number of evocative phrases by at least the tenth or eleventh cent- ury. The courtly refinements of the aristocratic Heian period evolved into the elegant simplicity seen as the essence of good taste in the understated art that is called shibui. Two terms originating from Zen Buddhist meditative practices describe degrees of tranquility: one, the repose found in humble melancholy (wabi), the other, the serenity accompanying the enjoyment of subdued beauty (sabi). Zen thought also

contributed a penchant for combining the unexpected or startling, used to jolt one's consciousness toward the goal of enlightenment. In art, this approach was expressed in combinations of such unlikely materials as lead inlaid in lacquer and in clashing poetic imagery. Unexpectedly humorous and sometimes grotesque images and motifs also stem from the Zen koan (conundrum). Although the arts have been mainly secular since the Tokugawa period, tradi- tional aesthetics and training methods, stemming generally from religious sources, continue to underlie artistic productions. 1

(i have just copied part of a wiki entry, links and all, as part of the discussion on the diagonal structure in these prints. i haven't yet followed all the links, and goodness knows i offer nothing as definitive.)

an element always interesting to consider, but never wholly knowable, is intent. even the person who believes they know their own intent may not. so how to speak of the international flow and flux of art and ideas.

to what extent, and i'm sure it was some, was the west's fascination with japan and all things japanese a search for (the illusion of) the simpler life. the industrial revolution had made cities louder and dirtier; how attractive then the 'peaceful'

(unencumbered by the last two century's innovations) images of that eastern nation, or even the coasts and countrysides of their own.


even the japanese, meiji period on out, designed to that desire in the west, so here we have japanese art from that period, plus several, again, of the pictorialist photographers who, along with their leader stieglitz, were busy making a new branch of art.

how much of this all was 'conscious,' the grasp and re-creation of a more bucolic reality than ever may have existed? and to whom?

the wisteria at kameido

kono fuji wa
hayaku sakitari
Kameido no
fuji sakamaku wa
tōka mari nochi

these wisteria
have bloomed early...
the blossoming of
those at Kameido will be
more than ten days later

Masaoka Shiki
translator: Janine Beichman

seven years after helen hyde went to japan for the first time at the age of 31, she was quoted in january 1906 issue of harper's bazar as saying, "japan is a gem, a revelation, a new world filled with art possibilities beyond one's dreams."









hyde had already become an artist, an illustrator; growing up in san francisco and studying in paris had already given her a taste for, a delight in, the 'exotic,' the unexpected, the foreign, the unknown.





during her eleven years living in japan, hyde studied the japanese style of printmaking, studying with other westerners at first, and then with the japanese masters themselves.











this page has images of the bridge at kameido, near tokyo, as seen by several different artists. ms. hyde's is the one at the top left. if you like her work, you will find a great deal of her work online.











('moon bridge at kameido,' helen hyde, 1914; 'half moon bridge,' toshi yoshida, 1941; 'kameido bridge,' hiroshi yoshida, 1927; 'wisteria at kameido tenjin shrine,' hiroshige ando, 1856; photo, ca. 1895; 'kameido bridge,' koitsu tsuchiya, 1933.)

for really cool coverage of this beautiful place and the artists who have loved it, check out this site

this original bridge was destroyed in world war two, and has been rebuilt.