Japanese Art term paper

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“The Fujiwara and Kamakura periods saw the full expression of the native Japanese character in sculpture. After the Kamakura period the art of religious sculpture declined rapidly. So much so that Japanese histories of sculpture generally ignore what was produced. How can one explain this decline? The return to Nara ideals, allied with greater technical skill in realistic modelling produced many great works but it seems in the end to have had a fossilizing effect. The sculptors looked back instead of forwards to a possible new enrichment of Japanese art. The desire for realism degenerated into a search by lesser craftsmen for sensational detail in which the Japanese love of exaggeration found limitless possibilities for expression. Mannerism is the word which springs immediately to the mind in considering later works of Japanese (and Chinese) sculpture. Kenneth Clark, in his recent work on 'The Nude' says "what we call mannerism has its origin in the expressive distortions of Michelangelo to which, in the female nude, must be added the elegance of Parmigiano." It is interesting to draw a parallel in Japanese art where we can substitute Unkei for Michelangelo and the anonymous carvers of the Benzaiten figures for Parmigiano.”
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“From what has been said it will be appreciated why, in a Japanese painting, so much value is attached to the strength with which the brush strokes are executed (fude no chicara), to the varying lights and shades of the sumi (BOKU SHOKU), to their play and sheen (tsuya), and to the manifestation of the artist's power according to the principle of living movement (SEI DO). In a European painting such considerations have no place. An oil painting can be rubbed out and done over time and again until the artist is satisfied. A sumi or ink painting must be executed once and for all time and without hesitation and no corrections are permissible or possible. Any brush stroke on paper or silk painted over a second time results in a smudge; the life has left it. All corrections show when the ink dries.”
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“In the first or second century B. C. a new culture, which also came from the Asiatic continent, began to spread from western Japan. It is known by the name Yayoi, since the first sample; of its pottery were found at Yayoi-chô in Tokyo. The bearers of the new civilization were the ancestors of the modern Japanese. It is clear that they were an agricultural people, who practiced the wet method of rice cultivation used in southern China. When they arrived they already knew how to cast bronze, and they soon learned also how to forge iron. Metal tools increased their production, and metal weapons gave them a military advantage over the earlier inhabitants, whom they gradually drove back northward or made subjects. Yayoi society was composed of small communities, each organized around a particular clan. As time went on, there emerged great patriarchal families more powerful than the rest. These fought among themselves until eventually the one that occupied the fertile and populous Yamato Plain, near modern Kyoto, succeeded in gaining at least nominal authority over the others. This eventually became the Japanese imperial family, but it should be observed that the concept of an emperor was a comparatively late innovation from China and not really an integral part of Yayoi culture. Yayoi pottery is technically better than that of the previous age, but less imaginative. It is plain and conventional in shape, and its surface designs are simple and linear. It appears to have been turned on the wheel by professional potters and produced in comparatively large quantities.”
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