Japanese Scroll Painting

Although quite different from the Genji and Nezame type, the Shigisan Engi scroll marks another peak in the art of Japanese scroll-painting. The type is distinguished by the most accomplished use of line-drawing almost to the complete exclusion of colour. In its present form, the work comprises three scrolls from which two scenes are here reproduced. Scene of the Flying Granary shows how the full granary of a rich man of Yamazaki suddenly took to the air, crossed a river and headed for a distant mountain. The family and servants pour out of the house to see what is happening to the precious granary. The master of the house mounts his horse to set out in pursuit. People by the riverside road cry out in surprise and raise their arms; a priest with rosary in hand prays to heaven to bring the building back to earth. It would be difficult to find a parallel to this masterly depiction of the consternation of a crowd of people in the face of a supernatural happening.

The three Ban Dainagon scrolls illustrate a conspiracy planned by a courtier and high official known as Ban Dainagan (more correctly Tomo-no-Dainagon). The detail reproduced is from the Burning of the Otenmon Gate of the Imperial Palace which Ban Dainagon set on fire. Here all the dramatic qualities of Japanese scroll-painting are shown at their best. Courtiers and citizens rush towards the Imperial Palace . Each figure is an individual study in excitement, astonishment, fear and confusion. As the threatening black smoke rises to the sky, they recoil from the flames which, enveloped in smoke, shoot upwards. This masterpiece is attributed to the genius of Mitsunaga. Although this may one day be proved correct, sufficient evidence is still lacking to enable us to accept it.

In 838 the last official Japanese embassy was sent to the T'ang court, and during the next centuries there were only sporadic and individual contacts, chiefly by monks and merchants. The result of this cultural isolation was the growth in the arts of a strong national tradition during the Helan, or Fujiwara, a development which finds its noblest expression in a school of painting known as Yamato-e, or "Japanese scroll-painting," which is regarded as the very essence of the Japanese style. Later schools, such as the Tosa and the Sumiyoshi, are derived from it, and to this very day it continues to flourish among the Japanese-style painters. The salient characteristic of the Yamato-e is a strong emphasis upon narrative, and most of the paintings of this type are e-makimono, or hand scrolls, relating the history of some famous person or of some celebrated temple.

In the sixteenth century the illustrated book appeared in Japan . Illustrations were no longer the work of aristocratic court painters but the sideline of painters of Buddhist pictures. With the disappearance of poetry from literature, the scroll-painting lost its artistic foundation. The art of the scroll-painting was bound up with the fate of the nobility for whom and by whom it was produced.

Emaki or emakimono means literally ‘scroll-painting'. Even though the type of painting more commonly associated with the Far East, the tall and narrow kakemono (literally 'a thing to hang up'), is likewise a scroll-painting, the term emaki has since ancient times been reserved for the scroll of horizontal or transverse format. It is often described as a hand-scroll because it is held between the hands while being viewed and must be simultaneously unrolled by the left hand and rolled up by the right as it lies on floor or table. In that way the viewer always sees a portion of the scroll, varying in size but never exceeding the distance between his hands.