Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting PDF
Preview Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting
Page i Flowering in the Shadows Page ii Page iii Flowering in the Shadows Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting Edited by Marsha Weidner Page iv Publication of this book has been supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency. © 1990 University of Hawaii Press All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America 90 91 92 93 94 95 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Flowering in the shadows: Women in the history of Chinese and Japanese painting/edited by Marsha Weidner. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0824811496 (alk. paper) 1. Painting, Chinese. 2. Women painters—China. 3. Painting. Japanese. 4. Women painters—Japan. I. Weidner, Marsha Smith. ND1040.F58 1990 759.951'082—dc20 9011001 CIP University of Hawaii Press books are printed on acidfree paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Page v CONTENTS Foreword vii by Richard Barnhart Preface xi Divisions of Chinese and Japanese History xv Introduction: Images and Realities 1 Marsha Weidner Part I China 1. Didactic Art for Women: The Ladies' Classic of Filial Piety 27 Julia K. Murray 2. Princess Sengge Ragi: Collector of Painting and Calligraphy 55 Shen C. Y. Fu, Translated and Adapted by Marsha Weidner 3. Women Painters in Traditional China 81 Ellen Johnston Laing 4. The Painting of Liu Yin 103 James Cahill 5. The Conventional Success of Ch'en Shu 123 Marsha Weidner Part II Japan 6. Women Painters at the Heian Court 159 Akiyama Terukazu, Translated and Adapted by Maribeth Graybill 7. Chinese Maiden, Silla Monk: Zenmyo * and Her ThirteenthCentury Japanese 185 Audience Karen L. Brock Page vi 8. Women Artists in Traditional Japan 219 Patricia Fister 9. The Three Women of Gion 241 Stephen Addiss 10. The Life and Art of Cho * Koran* 265 Patricia Fister Contributors 295 Index 297 Plates Follow Page 80 Page vii FOREWORD It is common to read the histories of the arts of China and Japan without encountering mention of women. I myself have been teaching East Asian art history for over twenty years, and have usually done so without ever discussing a single female artist. If questioned by my students, I might provide a name or two, usually that of Kuan Taosheng (1262–1319), the wife of Chao Mengfu, the foremost painter and calligrapher of the early Yüan period. Basically, art historians have regarded the art of China and Japan as a patriarchal tradition, allowing for the occasional wife or concubine to appear briefly, but attending to the essential male identity of the East Asian cultural tradition. That this long practice is false and unacceptable is evident. As this volume demonstrates, not only were there many women active as artists in both China and Japan throughout history, there were women in both traditions whose stature and influence should be regarded as central to the long vitality of East Asian art. Moreover, no evaluation or understanding of the artistic, cultural, and philosophical traditions of China and Japan is really possible without comprehension of the feminine components that have shaped and influenced the whole. Several examples should be cited repeatedly until we are all familiar with them. To begin with, it could be argued quite reasonably that the distinguished heritage of classical calligraphy in China emanates from a woman, Madam Wei, or Wei Shuo (272–349), who was the teacher of Wang Hsichih (307–365), the ''Prince of Calligraphers." That the Chinese were subsequently troubled by this relationship is clear from the loss of Madam Wei's own calligraphy during the same period in which Wang Hsichih's was slowly elevated to the rank of cultural icon. Surely the intimate, sensuous, and infinitely graceful art of Wang Hsichih cannot be fully understood without consideration of the influence of his teacher. Even if history has obscured her life and art, Madam Wei's relationship to Wang Hsichih must make clear the extent to which we should understand the aesthetic of that particular classical tradition of Chinese calligraphy to be the embodiment of aristocratic women's practice of elegant and intimate letter writing. Later men, undoubtedly, understood this, and subsequent repeated efforts to establish other styles of calligraphy as rivals to the canon of Wang Hsichih, in one way or another, indicate the perceived need for a more assertive, masculine mode of writing. Since the inevitable trend of this patriarchal tradition has been Page viii to obliterate the origins of such essential contributions as that of Madam Wei, it is necessary now to seize upon every evidence of them. In Japan, subsequently, the form of calligraphy practiced by women was generally the phonetic Japanese system of hiragana, distinct from the use of Chinese characters, which was considered a male dominion. In their graceful exploration of the calligraphic possibilities of hiragana, Japanese women extended into a new realm of nuance and formal elegance the legacy of Madam Wei. If women are central to the classical traditions of calligraphy in China and Japan, they are not less fundamental to other essential aspects of the arts. Ink bamboo has been regarded as the equivalent in East Asian art of the human figure in the arts of the West, and the later history of Chinese painting in particular is often concerned with the painting of ink bamboo. The subject and techniques of ink bamboo, moreover, lie at the very origins of literati painting. What is all the more striking, therefore, is the probability that ink bamboo was first painted by a woman of Szechuan named Lady Li (act 923–934). Tracing in ink the shadows of bamboo cast by the moon upon her window, she created the form that would preoccupy Chinese and Japanese painters for centuries. Both the secluded intimacy of her life and the refined elegance of the art she invented bear close resemblance to the legacy of Madam Wei, and we might therefore regard the tradition of ink bamboo as an essentially feminine aesthetic, like the other, the origins of which are again all but lost. Two books that shaped the cultures of Japan and China are embodiments of the feminine ideal. Lady Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji is arguably the most influential single work of Japanese literature and the inspiration for a tradition of painting that was not only called ''women's painting" in Japan, but was also in all probability partially created by women and practiced by them as amateurs. What debt yamatoe itself, "painting in the Japanese manner," as opposed to the masculine karae, or "Chinese painting," therefore owes to women has been only partially acknowledged. In China the endlessly inspiring and mysterious classical text of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching, can only be understood as the most profound exploration of the feminine philosophy of living ever produced in Asia. That this philosophy remains at the heart of East Asian thought and art as the necessary counterpole to Confucian activism is confirmation of its role in the fundamental meanings of the yinyang duality that is in essence the interaction of the male and the female throughout history. In our histories of the art of Asia, unfortunately, the female is forgotten. The articles in this volume begin to redress the imbalance. We must regret that it has taken so long for them to appear and much more is still to come, but we see here a welcome point of departure. As in all areas of recent feminist studies of history, once the subject is seen, it will not fade away again. The studies collected here illuminate a great deal that has long been in the shadows, so much Page ix that we might well wonder how it was that those shadows clung so darkly to the women now revealed to us. We might also wonder—become actively curious, I would hope—about how many more women will yet appear. How deeply rooted will we ultimately discover their presence to have been in the great tradition of Asian history we think so familiar? As has begun to happen in other spheres of historical study, we may be led to a reconsideration of other fundamental matters as well. Great masters and masterpieces may begin to seem like rather hollow and selfproclaiming manifestos of a stubborn patriarchy if we are unable to assess them fully and truly within the complex realities of human lives and interactions. Without understanding of the contributions of women to the histories of art in China and Japan, we dehumanize that history. One by one, the studies that follow return to life the women whose lives and contributions to art we have forgotten. Reading them, we know the damage we have done and will become attentive to the prevention of its continuation. Even now, we will discover, light can be cast into long secluded and conveniently forgotten chambers. RICHARD BARNHART YALE UNIVERSITY
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