Facing Images

Facing Images

Medieval Japanese Art and the Problem of Modernity

The Pennsylvania State University Press Kristopher W. Kersey

University Park, Pennsylvania

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of CAA.

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the The Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies.

Some of the themes in chapter three were adumbrated in a short essay: “The Mediation of Death and the Temporality of the Scroll (Japan, c. 1200 CE),” in Continuous Page: Scrolls and Scrolling from Papyrus to Hypertext, edited by Jack Hartnell (London: Courtauld Books Online, 2020), 123–39.

An earlier version of chapter six appeared as “In Defiance of Collage: Assembling Modernity ca. 1112 CE,” Archives of Asian Art 68, no. 1 (April 2018): 1–32.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kersey, Kristopher W., author.

Title: Facing images : medieval Japanese art and the problem of modernity / Kristopher W. Kersey.

Other titles: Refiguring modernism.

Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2024] | Series: Refiguring modernism | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary: “Traces the turbulent discourse about the emergence of Japanese art history as a modern field, and presents a new paradigm for discussing the place of non-Western and nonmodern art in global modernity”—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024012614 | ISBN 9780271097169 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Art, Japanese—Heian period, 794-1185—Influence. | Art, Japanese—History.

Classification: LCC N7353.3 .K47 2024 | DDC 709.52—dc23/eng/20240423

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024012614

Copyright © 2024 Kristopher W. Kersey

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003

The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses.

It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

To my teachers

Illustrations

1.Exhibition view of the large hall during the sixth Secession exhibition in Vienna, January 1900/ 2

2.Flyer for the exhibition Marcel Duchamp and Japanese Art, held at the Tokyo National Museum, October 2–December 9, 2018/ 18

3.György Klösz, Wiener Photographen-Association, interior of the Japanese exhibition at the Vienna World’s Fair, 1873/ 30

4.Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Sisi (Elisabeth) visiting the garden of the Japanese exhibition at the Vienna World’s Fair, 1873/ 31

5.G. Delton, Exposition Universelle 1900—Parc du Trocadéro—Section de l’Empire du Japon—Pavillon Central, ca. 1900/ 32

6.Opening pages from Fukuzawa Yukichi, Conditions of the West (Seiyō jijō) (Kyoto: Hayashi Yoshibē, 1868); Opening pages from Fukuzawa Yukichi, Conditions of the West (Tokyo: Keiō gijuku daigaku shuppankyoku, 1870–72)/ 38

7.Page from News from the Isle of Japan (Newe Zeyttung auß der Insel Japonien) (Augsburg: Manger, 1586)/ 43

8.Bernard Gotfryd, Steve Jobs with the Apple Macintosh personal computer, 1984/ 50

9.Diagram of the interface from James Thomson, “Notes and Queries—On Gases, Liquids, Fluids,” in Collected Papers in Physics and Engineering by James Thomson, D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S., ed. Sir Joseph Larmor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 65/ 57

10.Dust jacket with chart prepared by Alfred H. Barr Jr., of the exhibition catalogue Cubism and Abstract Art, by Alfred H. Barr Jr., 1936/ 63

11.“‘Torpedo’ Diagram of Ideal Permanent Collection,” page 3a from the second draft of the report, “The Permanent Collection,” November 1933/ 64

12.The handprint of the retired emperor GoShirakawa in red pigment on Mongaku yonjūgo kajō kishōmon (Mongaku’s forty-five vows), dated Genryaku 2 (1185)/ 76

13.Golden Light Sutra (Konkōmyōkyō), vol. 4, from the Eyeless Sutras, ca. 1192/ 80

14.Detail of the Principle Transcendence Sutra (Rishukyō), from the Eyeless Sutras, late twelfth century/ 80

15.Detail of a courtier at a veranda reading documents and seated before a stationery box, from the Golden Light Sutra, vol. 2, from the Eyeless Sutras, ca. 1192/ 81

16.Tawaraya Sōtatsu with calligraphy by Hon’ami Kōetsu, poem card from the New Collected Poems, Ancient and Modern (Shinkokinshū) with design of pine on a beach, 1606/ 84

17.A two-page spread from a series of fan-shaped codices bearing a transcription of the Lotus Sutra (Senmen Hokekyō), mid-twelfth century/ 85

18.Fragment of the Golden Light Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras in the Getsudai album of calligraphy exemplars (Tekagami Getsudai), Kamakura period (1185–1333)/ 87

19.End of the third volume of the Golden Light Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras; Detail of colophon/ 89

20.Colophon, endpaper, and final sheet of the Principle Transcendence Sutra (Rishukyō), from the Eyeless Sutras, late twelfth century/ 90

21.Inscription at the end of the Principle Transcendence Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras, late twelfth century; Original inscription; Magnified detail with the prevailing interpretation of the first line overlaid; Later retranscription/ 91

22.Jeweled pagoda mandala, painting 1, illustrating the first two chapters of the Golden Light Sutra, twelfth century/ 96

23.A juxtaposition of the opening and closing lines of Golden Light Sutra, vols. 2, 3, and 4, from the Eyeless Sutras/ 99

24.The large character is an example of bosatsu (菩薩) from the Principle Transcendence Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras; Examples from the Golden Light Sutra, vols. 2, 3, and 4, from the Eyeless Sutras/ 99

25.Detail of the face of Kaoru, “Takekawa I” scene of the Genji scrolls, early twelfth century/ 101

26.Details of the numerical annotations in the Golden Light Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras/ 102

27.Illustrated book of “Ukifune,” a chapter of the Tale of Genji, Kamakura period (1185–1333)/ 103

28.Examples of faces with full physiognomy in the Golden Light Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras/ 104

29.The third volume of the Golden Light Sutra along with a study copy/ 106

30.Details of the deity boy and two monsters from the Eyeless Sutras/ 107

31.Detail of the cloaked figure from the Eyeless Sutras/ 107

32.Details of the reverse sides of the of the Eyeless Sutras scrolls/ 109

33.Detail of the Golden Light Sutra, vol. 3, from the Eyeless Sutras/ 110

34.Detail of the Golden Light Sutra, end of vol. 4, from the Eyeless Sutras/ 110

35.Detail of the Golden Light Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras/ 111

36.Details of the calligraphy alignments in the Eyeless Sutras/ 112

37.Detail of a man wearing a hat with a closed fan to his chin from Golden Light Sutra, vol. 4, from the Eyeless Sutras/ 113

38.Details of facial and calligraphic intersections in the Eyeless Sutras/ 113

39.Scene of a man and a woman viewing a painting, from the Eyeless Sutras; seen from the reverse of the scroll/ 114

40.Two examples of the inpainting of additional layers of robes in the Eyeless Sutras/ 114

41.Detail from the Golden Light Sutra, vol. 2, from the Eyeless Sutras/ 117

42.Illuminated scroll of the Hoke-kyō Sutra, chapter 28 of the Lotus Sutra with each character on a lotus (Ichiji rendai hokekyō), twelfth century/ 118

43.Frontispiece to the “Bodhisattva Medicine King” chapter of the Taira Family Sutras (Heike nōkyō), ca. 1164/ 120

44.Attributed to Dharma Prince Shukaku (Shukaku Hosshinnō), detail of the Sutra on Transforming Women into Buddhas (Bussetsu tennyo jōbutsu kyō), twelfth century/ 121

45.Detail of the epistolary sutra from the chapter on the lifespan of the Buddha from the Lotus Sutra, thirteenth century/ 122

46.Two-page spread from a codex of the Sutra of Visualizing the Bodhisattva Fugen, mid-twelfth century/ 123

47.Detail from the Golden Light Sutra, vol. 3, from the Eyeless Sutras/ 125

48.Attributed to Fujiwara no Nobuzane, Portrait of the Poet Minamoto no Kintada (detail), Kamakura period (1186–1334)/ 126

49.Map of Asia, in Gottfried Hensel, Synopsis vniversae philologiae, in qua: Miranda vnitas et harmonia lingvarvm totivs orbis terrarvm occvlta, e literarvm, syllabarvm, vocvmqve natvra & recessibvs, eruitur . . . mappisqve geographico-polyglottis (Nuremburg: in commissis apvd heredes Homannianos, 1741)/ 128

50.The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi), ca. 1160–90/ 132

51.Details of the two painted figures in The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi), ca. 1160–90/ 133

52.The constituent elements of the The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi) scroll, ca. 1160–90/ 136–37

53.Screenshot of an “Ajikan meditation set” on the popular online store Rakuten, 2013/ 138

54.Details of the two cartouches on The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi), ca. 1160–90/ 142

55.Detail of the face of the Kūkai-labeled figure, from The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi), ca. 1160–90/ 143

56.Pendant architectural ornament (keman) of the Siddhaṃ A on a lotus pedestal with clouds, thirteenth century/ 146

57.Aji mandala, Nanbokuchō period (fourteenth century)/ 148

58.The Bija A, representing Vairocana (Dainichi), late fourteenth to early fifteenth century/ 149

59.Detail of a human-hair embroidery of the Siddhaṃ seed syllable for the Bodhisattva Seishi (S. Mahāsthāmaprāpta), Amida triad in the form of sacred Sanskrit seed syllables, thirteenth century/ 149

60.Diagram of the fetus as the grapheme A, from the Black Box of Syllable “A” (Aji kurobako)/ 156

61.Kōshō, statue of the Venerable Kūya, before 1207/ 158

62.Attributed to the workshop of Unkei, standing statue of Asaṅga (J. Mujaku), ca. 1212/ 160

63.Frontispiece to Sugita Genpaku et al., New Book on Human Dissection (Kaitai shinsho), 1774/ 164

64.Pendant feretory and seed-syllable reliquary, before 1387/ 165

65.Two anatomical diagrams of the torso from the Ton’ishō, manuscript undated/ 172

66.Simulated internal organs inscribed with Siddhaṃ graphemes, deposited inside the Seiryōji Śākyamuni icon, before 986 CE/ 176

67.Photograph of Kuno Takeshi taking radiographic images of a seated Buddha statue/ 177

68.Attributed to Unkei, seated Mahāvairocana, ca. 1193; Radiograph/ 178

69.Digital visualization of the interior of the seated Mahāvairocana (fig. 68)/ 179

70.Bronze mirror mounted to a wood placard with metal fittings and inscribed with ink, found inside a standing icon of the Bodhisattva Bhaiṣajya-rāja (Yakuō bosatsu), 1202/ 180

71.Incised mirror and lotus-shaped pedestal, found inside a standing icon of the Thousand-Armed Kannon (Senju Kannon), 1216–29/ 181

72.Details of pendant feretory and seed-syllable reliquary (fig. 64): Diamond World Mandala on the back of the central panel; Womb World Mandala on the back wall/ 184

73.Inscription inserted behind in the relic chamber of the pendant feretory and seed-syllable reliquary (fig. 64) (pre-restoration photograph)/ 185

74.Mandala of the Supreme Uṣṇīṣa Buddhas, thirteenth century/ 186

75.Zenshun, Shunshō, Zenjitsu, and Gyōshun, portrait sculpture of Eison, 1280; Inserted objects, wood, ink on paper/ 188

76.Six-panel folding screen with specimens of various sutra scrolls from the eighth to thirteenth centuries/ 192

77.Open spread with color plate in Herta Wescher, Collage, trans. Robert E. Wolf (1968; New York: Abrams, 1971), 8–9/ 197

78.Georges Braque, Fruit Dish and Glass, 1912; Attributed to Fujiwara no Sadanobu, an exemplary sheet from the Ishiyama Excerpts, page from the Tsurayuki Collection II, ca. 1112/ 198

79.Spread from the first publication of Stéphane Mallarmé, “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard” (A dice roll never stops chance), Cosmopolis 6 (May 1897): 424–25/ 199

80.Attributed to Fujiwara no Sadanobu, an exemplary sheet from the Ishiyama Excerpts, page from the Tsurayuki Collection II, ca. 1112/ 202

81.An integral page of karakami paper from the Ishiyama Excerpts (page 123 of the Ise Collection), ca. 1112/ 205

82.Fragment of a manuscript of Ise-shū from the Ishiyama Excerpts (page 18 of the Ise Collection), ca. 1112/ 206

83.Detail from a page in the Ishiyama Excerpts (Ise Collection), ca. 1112/ 207

84.Diagram of “butterfly-style” binding, from Kōjirō Ikegami, Japanese Bookbinding/ 208

85.Left screen of two folding screens mounted with poems from the anthology New Collected Poems, Ancient and Modern (Shinkokinshū), inscribed by Hon’ami Kōetsu, ca. 1624–37/ 219

86.Jinjō shōgaku shintei gajō dai rokunen danseiyō (Standard elementary sketchbook, newly prescribed, for sixth-grade boys) (Tokyo: Monbushō, 1910), diagram 12 / 220

87.“Japanese House in the Museum Garden. Taken from roof of Fifty-Fourth Street, looking S.E. showing crane of construction job at fifth avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street. 4–27–56,” publicity photograph released in connection with the exhibition Japanese Exhibition House, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/ 224

88.“Shin-ichi-Yuize who sang and played the Koto, at the Junior Council Evening Program, May 26, 1955, in connection with Japanese House in the Museum Garden,” publicity photograph released in connection with the exhibition Japanese Exhibition House, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/ 224

89.Tame’ie recension of the Anachronic Poetry Contest (Jidai fudō uta-awase emaki), early fourteenth century, with Fujiwara Ietaka and Ono no Komachi/ 233

Table

1.Shūki-Misaie ceremonies of the Insei period listed in the Dai nihon shiryō and Shiryō sōran databases/ 98

Acknowledgments

This book was written against the background of a global pandemic. I found myself working, often in long periods of solitude, on a book concerning interfaces, faciality, screens, and mediation, in a context where suddenly all social, intellectual, and professional engagement took place via screen interfaces. Thus it only seems right to begin by acknowledging this historical moment, of which the manuscript doubtless bears traces.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to work with Ellie Goodman, Maddie Caso, and Annika Fisher at Pennsylvania State University Press. Their faith in the project, detailed care, and intellectual engagement have made publishing a joy. I owe much to the two anonymous readers, as well, whose rigorous and thoughtful comments resulted in many improvements. I also thank Jonathan P. Eburne, editor of Refiguring Modernism, for including this book within the series.

I accomplished much of the work for this book since joining the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. The collegiality, support, and intellectual engagement of my colleagues and students have made this a truly wonderful intellectual home. Thanks are also due to my colleagues at the University of Richmond, where I taught previously, for the stimulating, convivial, and welcoming environment they provided to a freshly minted PhD.

Of significant benefit to the manuscript was the opportunity to host a junior faculty manuscript workshop at UCLA. I am deeply grateful to the participants—William Bodiford, Beate Fricke, Thomas Lamarre, Melissa McCormick, and Fabio Rambelli—for their time and intellectual generosity; I am likewise in debt to my colleague Lothar von Falkenhausen for moderating the two days of Zoom discussions.

A similarly transformative period in the history of this book were the six months spent at the University of Bern (Switzerland) as part of the European Research Council (ERC) project “Global Horizons in Pre-Modern Art,” headed by Beate Fricke. Not only did the research group provide a spectacular intellectual environment, but I was able to design a two-week travel seminar through Japan with the research group, an experience that was invaluable to shaping my thinking on how Japanese art history, as a field, might speak to a wider audience. I thank its participants: Beate Fricke, Sarah Guérin, Aaron Hyman, Zumrad Ilyasova, Stephanie Lenk, Meekyung MacMurdie, Michelle McCoy, and Sasqia Quené.

The University of California, Berkeley, provided a stellar environment for a former student of comparative literature to learn his newly chosen discipline. I could not have hoped for a more rigorous, supportive, and intellectually dynamic doctoral advisor than Gregory P. A. Levine. I also would like to thank Patricia Berger, Whitney M. Davis, and H. Mack Horton for their years of critiques, encouragement, and model guidance.

This book would not have been possible without the tireless support of Sano Midori of Gakushūin University, who interceded on my behalf and often traveled with me to examine many of the rare, treasured, and often-inaccessible fragments of the Eyeless scrolls. Likewise, I thank Shimao Arata and Arakawa Masaaki, as well as the entire art history seminar of Gakushūin, for welcoming me into their intellectual milieu during my time in Tokyo. Beyond Gakushūin, I benefited from exchanges with professors Itō Daisuke, Takagishi Akira, and Yamamoto Satomi. I am grateful, too, to Michael Jamentz for engaging conversations and feedback concerning the many mysteries of our shared passion, the Eyeless scrolls. I also would like to thank the members of the informal Ajikan reading group at Berkeley, especially Benedetta Lomi and Matthew McMullen. The translations here benefited much from our close readings together; all errors that remain are solely my own.

Numerous audiences at various locations provided constructive feedback; they include, in chronological order: Harvard University, UC Berkeley, Kyōritsu Women’s University (Tokyo), Gakushūin University (Tokyo), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (Munich), the Courtauld Institute of Art (London), University of Richmond, University of Edinburgh, Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art (Paris), The Ohio State University, University of Virginia, Japan Information & Culture Center (Washington, DC), Kyushu University (Fukuoka), College Art Association, UCLA, Yale University, and the Technische Universität (Munich).

Enabling this research was the generous support of several fellowships, including the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art, the Paul J. Alexander Memorial Fellowship at UC Berkeley, an Anne van Biema Fellowship at the Freer and Sackler Galleries (National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution), two Arts & Sciences Summer Research Fellowships and one Faculty Research Grant from the University of Richmond, two faculty grants from the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies at UCLA, and the aforementioned postdoctoral fellowship from the ERC.

Needless to say, this project has necessitated consulting many rare and obscure sources, access to which required the expertise of many skilled librarians. I thank, in particular, Tomoko Kobayashi, Bruce Williams, Hisayuki Ishimatsu, Deborah Rudolph, Toshie Marra, Reiko Yoshimura, and especially Tomoko Bialock at UCLA. I would also like to thank the staff of the Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress, the Research and Information Center of the Tokyo National Museum, the librarians of the Getty Research Institute, the Library of the Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties, and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.

The rich program of illustrations—some of which have never appeared in print before—was made possible by the generosity and cooperation of numerous persons and institutions. I especially wish to thank Mutō Haruta for permission to inspect and photograph volume 2 of the Eyeless; I also thank Kunigō Hideaki of the Tokyo National Museum for cutting his New Year holiday short in order to show me Mr. Mutō’s volume. Credit is also due to my research assistant Heeyeun Kang, who expertly aided in securing image permissions and preparing the bibliography.

Numerous teachers, mentors, colleagues, and cohort-mates have supported me along the way: Ryūichi Abé, Claire Akiko-Brisset, Elena Calvillo, Frank Feltens, Aglaya Glebova, Edward Kamens, Camille Mathieu, Halle O’Neal, Rachel Saunders, James Ulak, Michelle C. Wang, Ann Yonemura, Yukio Lippit, Andrés Zervigón, and my oldest intellectual interlocutor and friend Michelle H. Wang. Last, I would like to thank my parents, Nancy and Tom, my brother Bryan, and all my friends—especially Adam, Jack, and Mark—for their support throughout the writing period.

Abbreviations

Anthology

Nishi Honganji Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets (Nishi-Honganji-bon Sanjūrokunin kashū)

C.

Chinese

Eyeless

Eyeless Sutras (Menashikyō), the popular name for a series of manuscript fragments

F.

French

Golden

Golden Light Sutra (Konkōmyōkyō)

J.

Japanese

Lotus

Lotus Sutra (Hokekyō)

NKBT

Nihon koten bungaku taikei

ÖNB

Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna

Principle

Principle Transcendence Sutra (Rishukyō)

S.

Sanskrit

Significance

The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi)

SNKBZ

Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū

T.

Taishō Tripiṭaka number

Vows

Mongaku’s Forty-Five Vows (Mongaku yonjūgo kajō kishōmon)

The mainstream has never run clean, perhaps never can. Part of mainstream education involves learning to ignore this absolutely, with a sanctioned ignorance.

—Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Introduction

In the first month of the twentieth century, doors opened in Vienna on a massive retrospective exhibition of Japanese art. More than seven hundred historical objects from the private collection of Adolf and Frieda Fischer filled three rooms of the iconic Secession Building.¹ A photograph included in the exhibition catalogue reveals an odd, tightly spaced mise-en-scène: a large seated Buddhist icon, flanking topiaries, an array of framed woodblock prints, and a folding screen—splayed and hung high, looming over the gallery like an ersatz canvas (fig. 1). In light of the building’s famous epigraph, Der Zeit ihre Kunst; Der Kunst ihre Freiheit (To the era its art; to the art, its freedom), something seems, at first, amiss. Yet if one takes a more nuanced approach to understanding the relationship of art to history, or of modernity to time, the dissonance resolves. Premodern Japanese art was an integral part of the art of the era—and the absence of context, implying an absence of history, was a bizarre type of freedom.

As the Viennese scholar Aloïs Riegl (1858–1905) cautioned as early as 1903, the Secession epigraph was indeed misleading since it failed to account for the continued relevance of “premodern” art within the modern.² In a foreword to the catalogue, Fischer explains how the Secession had initially approached him asking for a comprehensive exhibition on the history of Japanese woodblock printing; from this idea, however, the larger show grew, which displayed instead “all the branches” of the arts that “in the Far East have been brought to such high perfection.”³ Scrapped, to some contemporary critics’ dismay, was the troublesome history bit.⁴ Given the inexhaustible zeal for Japanese art in fin de siècle Europe, the occurrence of the exhibition itself is not surprising. In fact, the organizers registered reservation that the recent mania for things Japanese (Japanismus) risked making the exhibition passé. Yet they persisted undeterred since it was in “the primordial culture of the East, in the art of the Japanese,” that contemporary artists might find a way out of the nineteenth century.⁵ Thus a revolutionary group of artists, in the first days of the new century, filled their “white cube” gallery with objects spanning more than a millennium of Japanese history, all for the sake of the advancement of modern (European) art.⁶ While paradoxical, this approach was far from an anomaly since the exhibition was exemplary of the way in which premodern Japanese art entered modern art history. The consequences of this aporia are, in part, the subject of this book.

Fig.1 Exhibition view of the large hall during the sixth Secession exhibition in Vienna, January 1900. ÖNB/Wien 214.992-E (6. Secessionsausstellung).

Needless to say, other non-Western and nonmodern archives shared similar fates. Yet I will argue that Japanese art history is distinctly well positioned as an archive from which to critique the Eurocentric master narrative of art history. East Asia, of course, possessed its own highly developed discourse on art history long before the proliferation of the early modern discipline. But I am less interested in precedence than prolepsis. In the case of Japan, it is the singular intensity, timing, and duration of Japan’s interface with North Atlantic modernity that proves most critical. For instance, Japan was the first nation outside Euro-America to appropriate the Euro-American episteme to a degree that would make its art recognizable as such. Thereafter, Japan’s status as “subaltern imperialists” revealed the inadequacy of the Eurocentric West/rest binary while highlighting the need to avoid treating Eurocentrism, imperialism, and modernity as if they were coterminous phenomena.⁷ Premodern Japanese art has now operated as a part of modernity for more than a century, hence complicating the teleology that once prevailed in modern art history. Last is the prominent role Japanese artifacts and agents played in the construction of our contemporary mediascape itself. These factors together make the field of Japanese art history an important counter-discourse to the Eurocentric biases that the discipline has long struggled to shed. Hence the ultimate task of this book is to demonstrate the power of Japanese “premodern” and “non-Western” objects to decolonize modern art history.

Marked Terms

Two terms in particular, non-Western and premodern, bracket the vast majority of the human archive from contemporary critical relevance.⁸ The thesis offered here, however, is that Japanese art has long transgressed these reductive temporal and chronological frameworks. Accordingly, this book’s focus is neither premodern nor modern; it is instead written with the belief that one can be faithful to the dignity and difference of a given historical context and simultaneously aware of the enduring presence of radically distant artifacts. Motivating this approach is the conviction that scholarship progresses through retrospection, that the premodern archive reveals dormant epistemologies of vision that remain not only historically but also critically germane. In the chapters that follow, I aim to construct a discourse that simultaneously does justice to the historical context and alterity of nonmodern artifacts while also acknowledging their enduring agency and presence.

Most of the artifacts at the core of the book date to Japan’s long twelfth century, a period characterized as the late Heian (794–1192) or, alternatively, the Insei era. In the structure of Japanese art history, this is a particularly sensitive era, customarily cast as a halcyon, classical epoch wherein an autochthonous aesthetic first emerged. To this day, Heian objects are treated as emblematic of a definitively Japanese sensibility, one that might be contrasted with any number of foreign imports or encounters thereafter. The era came to its end with the internecine Genpei War (1180–85), which saw the imperial family cede political power to the first of a series of military governments that would rule until the Meiji restoration in 1868. Anachronism notwithstanding, the history of the twelfth century is often tinged with an elegiac nostalgia for an ideal premartial order. Moreover, this mythos of a classical past would play a key role in nativist and nationalistic discourse in early modern and modern Japan—so much so that one cannot tell the history of the twentieth century without the twelfth since the two are, as Thomas Lamarre puts it, “mutually contingent.”⁹ Hence the critical importance of twelfth-century artifacts.

The argument here begins by interrogating the problem of chronology and temporality in Japanese art history in order to reveal the odd place of premodern Japanese art within the discipline at present. It turns thereafter to the term interface as both a historiographical paradigm and a means by which to understand the connections between past and present mediascapes (namely, the various media that were available or prevalent at any historical juncture and that made up the horizon of possibility for depiction, notation, and representation).¹⁰ In my use of the term interface, each historical and present encounter with an artifact represents an interfacing relationship; to understand an artifact is to excavate the aspects and layers of its various subjective interfaces. As such, I am not interested in exploring the singular, incipient meaning of an artifact so much as its openness and contingency. An advantage of this framework is that it allows one to focus more rigorously on the ways in which visual artifacts transit contexts without treating images as if they are texts to be translated. Interface theory is, thus, especially apt for describing the flow of images constative of visuality, especially in the context of “global modernity.” At the material level, moreover, interface foregrounds the fact that it is not pictures and photographs but screens that have now become the primary means by which visual material—text included—are mediated.

With this framework in place, the book then undertakes a suite of analyses of three seemingly anomalous or problematic manuscripts: the Eyeless Sutras (Menashikyō), The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi), and the Nishi-Honganji recension of the Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets (Nishi-Honganji-bon Sanjūrokuninkashū). Part of the challenge of these manuscripts is that they all engage purportedly modern themes and processes, such as montage, collage, metanarrative, superimposition, assemblage, fragmentation, and semiotic theory. As a consequence, they have long resisted prevailing art-historical taxonomies and methodologies. Such recalcitrance, I argue, is precisely what lends them their critical import.

At stake, as well, is a more rigorous understanding of the period beliefs concerning the embodiment of vision. The key artifacts in that regard relate to a contemplative ritual known as Ajikan, which has one imagine writing and manipulating a grapheme within one’s embodied heart-mind (the organ, in East Asian antomy, that contained the mental faculties). This discussion of embodied visuality (and embodied text) naturally leads to the larger themes of bodily interiority, physiology, and anatomy. Hence the challenge thereafter is to scrutinize the visceral materiality of vision itself through a look at prosthetic representations of the heart-mind. Whereas scholars like Michael Camille have provided trenchant insight into the competing theories of vision in medieval Europe, Japanese art history is still wanting in this regard.¹¹ In contrast to Euro-American art history, which often foregrounds the legacies of ancient optics, the physiology of seeing, and the epistemology of vision, such concerns have not been mainstream issues in Japanese art history.¹² One contributing factor is that theories of vision, such as one finds in the Yogācāra tradition, were both more complex and less readily diagrammable. Beyond physiology, as Beate Fricke argues, art historians of the nonmodern still need a “prehistory of aesthetics” and a more historicized understanding of materiality’s role therein.¹³ In an attempt to remedy this situation, chapters 4 and 5 will address the aesthetic and physiological frameworks of vision. Thereafter, the book will come full circle through an extended test case concerning the multiple origins of montage—the sequencing and assemblage of disparate images—in modernity. Between the chapters, small interludes will provide glimpses into provocative bridging concepts.

In terms of method, no single approach prevails. Classical critical theory, image science, anthropology, media theory, orthodox iconography, semiotics, and even paleographic connoisseurship all have a role to play. The engagement with transdisciplinarity becomes, in some respects, a method itself, as I am interested in bringing disparate fields of knowledge to bear on one another. My use of theory, however, is not in opposition to contextualism. Instead, it is only through a more rigorous accounting of the presuppositions and methodological habits of the modern discipline that one is able to approach more closely the context of the original moment. Rather than project theory onto these objects, the goal is to let the original context—to the extent to which this chimera is ever attainable—push back against the primacy of the modern frame. Likewise, I am interested throughout in highlighting instances where Japanese nonmodern objects resist theory, provide exception, counter false universalisms, and disrupt the policed borders within which certain critical tropes are often confined. Accordingly, if the following chapters oscillate between present theoretical concerns and premodern contexts, it is only in order to afford these non-Western and nonmodern artifacts their contemporary critical purchase.

As my choice of vocabulary will reveal, my understanding of vision is partially informed by what German-language scholarship terms Bildwissenschaft (lit. image science) and what Anglophone scholars alternatively term visual anthropology or image theory. A key assertion therein is that the discipline of art history must find a way to account for the interpenetration, interaction, and interdependence of one’s visual experience of a pictorial artifact (a picture) and the somatically mediated images such artifacts engender.¹⁴ According to this sort of image anthropology, the human body is itself a living medium, and no image exists without a material body to mediate it.¹⁵ A limiting factor in this field of scholarship, however, is its deeply Eurocentric episteme. As one of its most prominent proponents, Hans Belting, once put it: “The question of what an image is remains a rather narrow inquiry so long as it does not explore the notion of images in cultures other than our own.”¹⁶ Hence an ancillary motivation for the present study: to reveal the essential role that nonmodern and non-Western works must play if one hopes to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of what images are, mean, and do.

Along a similar vein, recent decades have seen the purview of art history expand to include all the artifacts of all cultures or—even more broadly—to include all species of images, from petroglyphs to radiographs. Indeed, I prefer the term artifact throughout since it evokes all material traces of human making, not only those circumscribed by the fraught concept of “art,” a word that, despite its gravitas and aura, more often excludes or impedes inquiry into the non-Western and premodern. Among the impulses fueling this diversification are decolonizing imperatives for more global histories, the economic ramifications of digital reproduction, the decentering of the Western canon, and the brute redistribution of capital. Yet the place of extra-Western artifacts within mainstream art history remains, at best, unquiet. For despite the good intentions of humanistic deimperialization, such disciplinary inclusivity sometimes risks the wholesale projection of a modern North Atlantic framework onto networks of objects and agents where such conceptions may obscure more than they illuminate. Artifactual diversity must entail epistemological diversity. This is especially problematic in the context of artifacts because, unlike foreign languages, they can readily be seen, even if what one sees and how one sees have little to do with the historical intent, context, or reception of the object. Hence, in broadening the canon, one risks having the artifact but not the means to see it—or, to reframe the metaphor from the Other’s perspective, a seat at the table but not the right to speak.

To that end, in the chapters that follow, I reconstruct modes of seeing, species of images, and frameworks of mediation that resist the familiar ways in which we approach such objects. It is an attempt to rethink not only the ways in which historians approach nonmodern, non-Western material but also the importance of nonmodern, non-Western notions of vision as productive sites of critique for the future of the discipline. Likewise, where consonance arises in unexpected places, the exclusivity and primacy of the European exemplar is called into question. Whereas comparative work is sometimes maligned as surface level, lacking the depth of engagement that one finds in a context-specific history of art, I would argue just the opposite is true. It is only through decentering Eurocentric modernity that any contemporary theory might hope to advance.¹⁷ Thus I work in two directions: I attend both to historical context and contemporary theoretical importance, thus allowing premodern artifacts to critique a discipline whose theoretical work is often hemmed in by its application to a myopic corpus.

Japanese Art in Modernity

All art is potentially contemporary, yet in a past life, the most fundamental of art history’s aims was to assign every artifact a spatiotemporal point according to a European and teleological understanding of formal change.¹⁸ The framework privileged innovation, genius, origin, and creation, leaving little space for reuse, spoliation, appropriation, or any other subsequent processes whereby artifacts interface with living viewers. Yet as scholars in the lineages of Aloïs Riegl or Aby Warburg delight in noting, problems soon arise. Take, for instance, the simple fact that objects move. They sometimes spend the vast majority of their active lives—the time span during which they are seen, affect viewers, and exert agency on contemporary artifact production—in locations far removed from their reconstructed contexts. Even more basic is the sheer fact that objects survive, to use Warburg’s preferred English term.¹⁹ This situation, as Georges Didi-Huberman aptly puts it, “complexifies history.”²⁰ By this logic, the subset of the artifactual archive that is actively living within a given visual culture is prima facie contemporary, regardless of how the living supplement, frame, or distance it with taxonomies, labels, and scholarship.²¹ In fact, it is only through deeply ingrained disciplinary habits (what Didi-Huberman calls “euchronic bias”) that we learn to bracket past things so instinctively from the present, to disregard their particular power to continue to exert agency.²² Hence extant artifacts have a heterochronic historical stance, split as they are between their present and past lives.²³

While this might all seem straightforward enough, when one turns to artifacts from outside the European tradition, the complexity increases. For instance, to the Euro-American eye in the late nineteenth century, all Japanese art was contemporary in the sense that it was freshly available for appropriation and replication. That is not to say that modern eyes were not interested in understanding the history of Japanese art—some certainly were—but in the context of Orientalism, novelty (and chauvinism) trumped history. Not only was history sometimes denied, but contemporaneity was as well (once modernity went from a chronological to a spatial concept).²⁴ Japanese artifacts hence became enmeshed in two competing historiographical paradigms, the domestic and the Euro-American. In some respects, this situation continues to this day; there is discord between the image of Japanese art within Japan and the image of Japanese art abroad.

A similar divide exists between Japanese modern art and what might be called Japanese art in modernity. Modern Japanese art is art made during the modern period, no matter how contested. These works, however, are but a part of the larger category of Japanese art in modernity, a designation that would include the vast archive of preexisting objects in circulation, on view, and in print. Prominent examples of the latter category include tea bowls, Buddhist icons, early modern lacquerware, and medieval ink paintings—objects that have exerted a powerful influence on the image of Japanese art in modernity. The two categories, moreover, were deeply intertwined since the premodern archive served as a crucial reference point for the creation of Japanese modern art.²⁵ A firebrand might argue that in some twentieth-century contexts, Japanese art in modernity played a more prominent role than Japanese modern art. To this day, a significant portion of the Japanese art that seems modern/contemporary on the global stage was made centuries earlier. There is, thus, a tension between the competing contemporaneity of nonmodern objects and objects made in modernity. Whereas modern Japanese artists sought to achieve contemporaneity with their Euro-American peers, nonmodern objects were not subjected to such disenfranchising politics in the same way.²⁶ I would even argue that much premodern Japanese art actually transited modernity itself, surviving in the twenty-first century as a part of a seemingly timeless image of contemporary Japanese art.

Such timelessness loops back to Vienna. As the example of the Secession exhibition reveals, even at the turn of the twentieth century, Japanese art was framed as both the antediluvian archive of artisanal immediacy and the guiding light of the future. In the postwar era, this stance would find an analogue in the “always already modern” trope, whereby elements of contemporary practice (such as aleatory aesthetics, action painting, assemblage, abstraction, minimalism, time-based media, or performance art) would all seem to have been already present in premodern Japan.²⁷ Like clockwork, come the advent of postmodernism, different aspects of Japanese art (reuse, mitate, détourenement, and the admixture of old and new) would allow for Japanese art to evince postmodernity avant la letter, as well.²⁸ Differing contemporary aesthetic investments thus privileged differing moments in the archive. Art nouveau prized Rinpa; abstract expressionism prized the calligraphy of Zen monastics (bokuseki); minimalism saw itself prefigured in wabi-cha tea culture; anime sometimes claimed lineage from emaki. And so the fantastical and problematic cycle continues to this day.

This is not, however, reducible to the familiar problem of modern cultural appropriation. At a temporal level, something more complex is happening. For instance, the archival investments of the contemporary art worlds of Japan and Euro-America are radically distinct in that one finds far less of a focus on the modern/contemporary in Japan. For someone accustomed to the presentism of much of the Euro-American art world, the magnitude of this contrast can be difficult to fathom. One clear way to measure this, as Satō Dōshin demonstrates, is by exhibition attendance.²⁹ For example, one of the most highly attended exhibitions in the world is the annual exhibition of the eighth-century Shōsōin Treasury. Each autumn, vast crowds journey to the city of Nara to see just a few dozen objects: musical instruments, glassware, metalwork, rugs, screens, inventories, raw materials, even tax documents. The extraordinary Shōsōin exhibition notwithstanding, other premodern exhibitions in Japan garner similar crowds. According to Satō’s accounting, of the top twenty best-attended exhibitions in Japan between 1945 and 1990, six were of European art, six were of premodern Japanese art, three were of ancient Egyptian art, and only five were of modern Japanese art.³⁰

The prominence of premodern Japanese art has only increased in the ensuing decades. For instance, in the first half of 2019, only a single exhibition of contemporary art—a blockbuster group show—ranked in the top ten of the best-attended domestic shows. It had fewer than half as many attendees as an exhibition on the ninth-century sculptures of the Tōji monastic complex.³¹ On the international stage, the contrast becomes even more pronounced. Some six times between 2008 and 2020, the best-attended exhibition in the world has been a special exhibition on premodern Japanese art in Japan.³² For Satō, the lack of foreign interest in modern Japanese art is indicative of a “serious gulf” that “calls into question the success of the ‘modernization’ of modern Japanese art.”³³ Yet Satō’s exclusive focus on modern Japanese art overlooks the foreign and domestic prevalence of premodern Japanese art in modernity. To borrow his phrasing, it would seem that premodern Japanese art modernized more successfully than much modern Japanese art. As these statistics indicate, the prominence and dual temporal stance of premodern Japanese art in modernity is not a historiographical fluke of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries; it is an integral aspect of its existence. Far from an exception, the Secession exhibition might even be cast as prescient for it seems to prefigure, in many ways, the enduring contemporaneity of premodern Japanese art.

Nonmodernity

In the context of Japan, the rhetoric of modernization is customarily keyed to the Meiji era (1868–1912): the young Meiji emperor is enthroned, the isolationist government deposed, and so the lightning modernization begins. As Alexandra Munroe noted some three decades ago, this delusive schism is especially pronounced in the field of art history.³⁴ The divide between premodern art and modern art is sometimes treated as a singular watershed, with the present elided with the modern. Yet from a twenty-first-century perspective, modernity is itself historical, thus it is far more accurate to conceive of modern Japan as an intervening era that present scholars of earlier art must excavate, in a Foucauldian sense.

Moreover, the common narrative of Japan’s nineteenth-century emergence into modernity from isolation—the modernization paradigm—obscures the much earlier presence of Japan in the European imaginary. The paradigm further presupposes a one-way transfer of knowledge, yet just as Japan was in the process of appropriating Euro-American technologies and conceptual frameworks of art, Euro-Americans were reciprocally fascinated with attempting to appropriate Japanese visual culture. For instance, from an art-historical perspective, the Secession show was modernizing art via premodern Japan, just as Japan was modernizing art by looking at European works. Rarely, however, is the role of Japan described in such terms since the Euro-American appropriation of Japanese visuality is too often immured in the Francocentric framework of Japonisme, a term that belies the geographical expanse, magnitude, and duration of the interface of Japanese visual and material culture with various other modernities. Thus the following two chapters will present an alternative to the frameworks of modernization and Japonisme.

The idiosyncratic phrase North Atlantic modernity also deserves some explanation. Its purpose is to resist the myth of “the West,” a dangerous monolith that enervates critical research.³⁵ For instance, nineteenth-century Japan was not in a binary relationship with a “modern West” but triangulated with the United States and only a small handful of European nations, each with its own dialect of modernity.³⁶ (North) Atlantic modernity also has the advantage of foregrounding the liminal space of the Atlantic across which enslaved bodies, immigrants, commodities, diseases, and ideologies transited.³⁷ In the case of Japan, the key European players were limited to the Low Countries, France, the United Kingdom, and, to a lesser extent, the German states, Italy, and Russia. When one considers the role played by Russia, and especially the prominence of the United States in modern Japanese history, “the West” is just as much a Pacific entity. Moreover, the existence of the Japanese Empire itself alerts one to the error of treating modernity, technology, and colonization as if they were exclusively European phenomena.³⁸ To decolonize the history of art, one needs to resist reifying “the West” as a monolithic term.

It is for similar reasons that I will avoid the term modernization in the context of art history, when modernization, westernization, Americanization, and industrialization seem best considered as overlapping but distinct processes. Whereas some, such as Paul Ricoeur, see technology as progressing on a unidirectional and globalizing telos, visual culture lacks such linearity; visuality, unlike technology, operates according to recursive, anachronic, and polytemporal mechanisms.³⁹ Images are mercurial, fluid, and fugitive. These reservations motivate my decision to employ the term nonmodern rather than premodern art; the term has the further advantage of escaping the teleological error of thinking that the value of the premodern is only as a prelude.⁴⁰ It further stresses that modernity is not an end point so much as an interlude, one increasingly removed from the present. Nonmodernity is thus an attempt to decenter and decolonize the discourse on modernity itself.

The larger notion scrutinized here is the tendency to treat global modernity as if it were merely an advanced stage of the imperialist proliferation of modernity’s North Atlantic idiolect, when it is instead a phenomenon that arose through the interface of diverse temporal and artifactual worlds. Within this more inclusive and diverse historical narrative, Japan played a key role since the interface with Japanese artifacts ruptured the doxa of North Atlantic modernity and destabilized the specious universalism of its art history. One might even proffer that it was the interface with Japan’s art that first cleaved open the possibility of a modern non-Western art history that might be seen as an equal. As such, the Japan interface played a role in paving the way for the contemporary recognition of multiple modernities. As we will see in chapter 2, moreover, Japan’s interface with North Atlantic modernity presented a model for other industrializing European nations. Most concrete of all, perhaps, is the fact that Japan eventually came to develop, manufacture, and popularize the very technological apparatuses (namely, cameras, computers, screens, and so on) that would give rise to something resembling a global interface. Hence the need in the following chapters to reframe Japan’s artistic relationship to North Atlantic modernity writ large.

Facing Images

As this book’s title reveals, faces play a prominent role in this study. At the most immediate level, Facing Images evokes the binary format of the codex—a fundamental structure of art history that is intimately tied to juxtaposed lantern slides and the formalism of Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945). One must bear in mind that Wölfflin’s purportedly objective polarities intersected with a strong desire to demonstrate national stylistic essences (hence the alterity at the core of traditional art-historical methodologies). Along those same lines, Facing Images speaks to the way in which two different ways of seeing—two different historical ways of understanding vision—might interface: two different images of what art is, how it operates, and how it transits its agents.

Yet the metaphor cannot help but run much deeper, as faces have long been a topic of a rich art-historical and theoretical literature, from the ethics of Martin Buber (1878–1965) and Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) to the deterritorializing visagéité of Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) and Félix Guattari (1930–1992).⁴¹ Here again, faciality and alterity are ineluctably bound; and as the most sensitive locus of subjectivity, the literature is vast.⁴² Arguably no discipline other than art history accords such extreme primacy to this “cynosure of all images.”⁴³ Faciality figures prominently in scholarship on twelfth-century Japan, in particular, since it was during this era that verisimilar physiognomic delineation, so-called likeness images (nise-e), emerged. This novelty destabilized the prevailing conventions for facial depiction and challenged the primacy of the calligraphic trace as a bearer of identity. Faces figured as never before.

In Euro-American scholarship, it is possible to draw various etymological and conceptual links between faces and sur/faces.⁴⁴ Regardless of how much one wishes to make of this, such etymological arguments are often limited to certain linguistic spheres. Quite ironically, these originally European theoretical concerns are perhaps better suited to the Japanese language than European ones.⁴⁵ Etymological analysis is complicated in the Japanese context since phonetic and inscriptive etymologies operate somewhat independently. A variety of characters might be used to write the same word, just as the same character might signify a variety of separate words. In the twelfth century, the germane character would be 面, used from at least the early Heian period to signify the human countenance, the front of the head, the surface of an object, a complexion, or even an attitude.⁴⁶ Throughout the Insei period, when pronounced omo, it had a semantic field that encompassed the human countenance, a scene or spectacle, a surface, an outer appearance, or even a trace. During the same era, when pronounced omote, it brought with it a stronger link to human physiognomy as well as the metaphorical sense of honor (saving face). When pronounced tsura, the term evoked yet another semantic field, signifying the bottom half of the human face, the profile, or the aspectivity of an object. By the early thirteenth century, the character might be pronounced as men to signify a mask or even to describe a face-to-face encounter. Most arresting of all is the term omokage, a binome that combines the aforementioned 面 with 影, the latter character signifying a wide array of meanings such as shadow, silhouette, figure, image, form, or a visual phenomenon that was not before one’s eyes. Its secondary meaning was, once again, the human face. By the thirteenth century, it would take on a broader valence to evoke illusions as well. It is easy to get carried away with such philological exercises, especially in the digital age, when the digital humanities has made short order of what used to take years of philological toil. Moreover, as with all etymological approaches, there is a degree of legerdemain as one wonders how seriously these graphical or phonetic connections were ever taken. Be that as it may, it seems clear that the strong degree of semantic overlap between faces, surfaces, images, and pages is a characteristic of period discourse on visuality worth more than passing reflection. This is my title’s most far-reaching meaning.

A final way in which this book engages the theme of the face is through the concept of interface itself. Whereas the term might at first sound suspiciously contemporary, I employ it as a way to foreground the embodied and interactive nature of vision. As a variety of scholars have argued, objects possess their own gaze and “stare back” at their viewers.⁴⁷ Interface also highlights the mirrorlike “facingness” of the screen-centered mediascape itself.⁴⁸ The term likewise operates as a historiographical metaphor to describe the encounter of two visualities, serving, in that regard, as an alternative to the frameworks of appropriation and translation. Whereas one cannot translate a visuality the way one can a language, one can interface with it. Moreover, the link between alterity and faciality allows one to speak of the meeting of two fields of discourse or visualities as a dialogic relationship. Hence this metaphor will be important in describing the interface theory of modernity for which the second chapter advocates.

Beyond Binaries

This book is written in a language and situated in an episteme that diverge sharply from those of the artifacts at its core. As such, I would like to caution against certain present analytic binaries—some emic, most etic—that risk obscuring the historical reality of nonmodern Japanese artifacts. This is a complex question since the period itself embraced binary paradigms so wholeheartedly. As Lamarre puts it: “Doubles—in agonist pairs—fairly overwhelm the Heian court.”⁴⁹ This makes scholarship on premodern Japan especially vulnerable to structuralist and post-structuralist frameworks since these etic analytic modes have preexisting emic categories that appear to lend them salience.

The first is the paradigm of text and image, a binary that operates as a mainstay of analysis in Japanese art history due to the prominence of the written word. Scholars of East Asian art (myself included) often evoke this binary in order to make clear how tightly interwoven writing and pictures are. Yet this heuristic can be misleading. Whereas I embrace image wholeheartedly, I am wary of text since its use is often linked to the (post-)structuralist enterprise that attempted to transform visual experience into a “language of art.”⁵⁰ To pursue that angle is especially dangerous for art historians since it capitulates to modern European logocentrism and anxieties of the visual that are absent in the archive.⁵¹ Moreover, even when dealing with inscribed artifacts, such as manuscripts, it predisposes one to disattend to the materiality and figurality of the written word, as these are only “secondary signals” or cosmetic supplements to the more important hermeneutic meaning.⁵² Such “desensualization of language” in favor of linguistic analysis risks misconstruing the ontology of the written word.⁵³ It is akin to treating a stage play as if it were only important for the script or to studying the history of music with only scores. Counterintuitively, this ahistorical embrace of notational abstractions is orthodox. In literary studies, for instance, a schism persists between philological textualists and the paleographical materialists.⁵⁴ As such, this book responds to the call to restore figurality to Heian manuscripts, to escape the “anti-figural modernizing impulse,” and to foreground the agency of materiality, indexicality, and ornament.⁵⁵

The textualist paradigm is enmeshed in the printed, alphabetic, and digital world of the past century, which is quite different from the inscribed, figural, material, and holographic world of twelfth-century manuscripts. This contrast is especially sharp in the history of Japan, since manuscript and print survived side by side until the twentieth century. Even in Japanese printed texts before the twentieth century, the writing was no different than the image, both being brush traces carved into the very same cherrywood blocks.⁵⁶ In that regard, the inutility of moveable type in Japan was a tremendous boon since it saved Japan from succumbing to the word/image illusion that arose in early modern Europe. Then again, even in the Euro-American case, this distinction was never terribly cogent.⁵⁷ Following the pictorial and material turns of the past half century, few would now dispute that the material embodiment of a word is intrinsic to its meaning. Hence once one abandons the text/image binary, the written word is revealed to be but a specialized genre of mark making: all written texts are images, but not all images are texts. When analyzing medieval manuscripts, it is therefore essential to differentiate between the abstract “text” and the material “text artifact,” the former being a linguistic sequence, irrespective of its material notation (if any), while the latter is the actual material form that a text has taken.⁵⁸

A second presumption scrutinized here is the concept that writing and pictures must be somehow discrete, that each demands its own spatiality, and that the presence of the two in the same figural space should be taken as remarkable.⁵⁹ As Jean-François Lyotard averred in his monumental study Discourse, Figure, the “space of text” and the “space of the figure,” seem divided—at least in European thought—by an “ontological rift.”⁶⁰ Yet this way of thinking likewise stems from a Eurocentric notion of “text and image” that is foreign to East Asia.⁶¹ For example, roughly speaking, with prominent exceptions, one often assumes that inscriptive marks are on a surface, whereas depictive marks are behind the surface. One writes on paper but sees into a painted canvas. Like text/image, this surface/depth binary has been a conceptual mainstay of modern art history, widely presumed to be a universal feature of all mark-making traditions. Thus to have writing on an image seems somehow amiss—it must be an accident, a palimpsest, or an error. Indeed, writing on any patterned surface whatsoever will seem problematic so long as one assumes that the easy extraction of “text” from the “text artifact” is the effective measure of writing. Yet, as chapter 3 demonstrates, nothing could be further from the case in medieval Japanese manuscript culture, where the most highly esteemed contexts of inscription would seem to almost demand an ornamented surround into which one might manifest the lines of the calligraphic complement. Rarely was the “paperscape,” as Lamarre terms it, a “neutral” surface; instead, the manuscript interface was an arena in which one encounters “microaesthetic intersections” between the “layers of expression.”⁶² When twelfth-century agents did use print, it was not for the “text” but for the creation of elaborately ornamented textile-like grounds that would serve as trellises for inscription. Reading and writing were thus stratigraphic processes that took advantage of all three spatial dimensions of the page. Thus I argue that the layering common to Japanese manuscripts is evidence of a sophisticated engagement with what one might term stratigraphic aesthetics.

One of the greatest ironies of text and image debates is that they are a moot point in the twenty-first century. Just as humanistic scholarship began to embrace the visual, material, and physical nature of manuscript culture, writing “transcended humanity itself,” becoming coded text communicated via programming languages.⁶³ Now one is in the curious situation where the visual figuration of inscriptive and depictive marks on a graphical user interface—the heralded dominance of the digital imagescape—is actually subtended by a metalanguage of textual notation.⁶⁴ In the twenty-first century, many images are indeed texts, but not at all as the post-structuralists imagined. Likewise, Japanese scholars write in a language that has a more nuanced and ramified vocabulary for the phenomena of inscription and depiction, hence the obsession with this binary can sometimes seem a peculiarity of Euro-American scholarship.

Space permits only passing reference to the numerous other binaries at play. Most prominent would be the emic Wa-Kan dialectic, a topical and later stylistic polarity that characterizes cultural forms according to a reductive domestic/foreign spectrum. A binary conception of gender also frequently appears, in reference to both bodies and scripts.⁶⁵ There is also the modern notion of a secular/sacred binary.⁶⁶ Yet the secular was not a neatly partitioned field of experience, nor was “religion” a meaningful concept in the modern sense. Even within Buddhism (not to mention Shintō, Onmyōdō, Shugendō, and so forth), twelfth-century subjects partook of a variety of sects and schools with contrasting visualities and competing approaches to soteriology, phenomenology, and even ontology.

The final binary concerns vision itself. Historians of the nonmodern often speak of recovering a sense of how those living in a given historical moment saw differently, their “way of seeing,” “period eye,” “scopic regime,” or, more commonly, their “visuality.”⁶⁷ While I will attempt to be as faithful to the visuality of this period as possible, it is worth noting that this is, to some extent, an impossibility in the case of twelfth-century Japan since there is no singular visuality to recover. Visual experiences, systems of perspective, pictorial styles, and visual forms were simply too diverse for anyone to speak of a singular way of seeing. Such diversity suggests that the medieval Japanese agents who produced these artifacts were in possession of a visual literacy that was far more multifarious and fluent than the photographically inculcated contemporary eye. In fact, the diversity of visualities operative throughout Japanese art history seems to be one of the most powerful sites of resistance against the totalizing habits of stylistic progression.

The reader of Facing Images is about to undertake an unusual journey: from Vienna in 1900, back to twelfth-century Japan, and ending in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) following the occupation of Japan. Yet this particular itinerary is a function of my belief that before one can understand the relationship of twelfth-century Japanese artifacts to the present discipline of art history, it is first necessary to reveal how much the discipline owes to Japanese visualities, media, and technologies of vision. Thus this book is about neither “modern art” nor “historical art” so much as the need to remove these blinkered concepts altogether. In other words, one must decolonize the narrative of Japanese art history’s place in Euro-American modernity before one can attempt to write any history of Japanese art that will engage more than a highly specialist audience. Ultimately, Facing Images is guided by three interlinked goals: to dissolve the firewall between the nonmodern and the modern, to explore the visceral aspects of vision in medieval Japan, and to demonstrate how non-Western and nonmodern work is of critical relevance to the future of the discipline.

Fig. 2 Flyer for the exhibition Marcel Duchamp and Japanese Art, held at the Tokyo National Museum, October 2–December 9, 2018.

Interlude

Contra Coincidence

In the fall of 2018, the Tokyo National Museum advertised an upcoming exhibition with a flyer bearing a provocative question: “What do a commode and a vase have in common?” Juxtaposed beneath the query were Fountain, the canonical “found object” of the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), and a bamboo vase attributed to the Japanese tea master Sen no Rikyū (1522–1591) (fig. 2). The two were labeled with Rodchenko-inspired triangles of text: “Duchamp” for the urinal but only “Japan” for the vase. Had the museum paired woodblock prints and Impressionist paintings, or ink traces by Zen monks and postwar action painters, the conceptual framework would have been straightforward. Yet the exhibition Marcel Duchamp and Japanese Art did not address influence or appropriation so much as prefiguration. The two works were united via a transhistorical interest in inserting a humble everyday object into a space of aesthetic appreciation, be it the European avant-garde art world or the social milieu of tea (Chanoyu) in Japan. At work here was the “always already modern” trope—a surprisingly common framework in popular writing on Japanese art. Specialists of Japanese art are often dismayed at its appearance, as it precludes any need to see seemingly modern objects according to their nonmodern terms. Many modernists likewise eschew the trope since it disattends to the historicity of North Atlantic modernity.

Regardless of the stance one takes, the question remains: what is the historian to do when similar forms, similar practices, or similar images arise in radically disconnected contexts? As a variety of loosely affiliated approaches—afterlives, heterochrony, anachrony, hauntologies, rhizomes, and so forth—seek to advance art history beyond the teleological Zeitgeist that still subtends much writing, unexpected juxtapositions have become increasingly common. Likewise, the concomitant diversification of the canon has seen far more points of reference brought into art history’s visual repertoire, further fueling such juxtapositions. In this context, Japanese art has an important critical role to play. Since the nineteenth century, provocative homologies and chronological disarray have been prominent features of how Japanese artifacts operate within art history.

One variety of this problem goes by the ungainly name of pseudomorphosis, an inherently biased term that made its way into art history via Erwin Panofsky, the father of orthodox iconology.¹ He borrowed the term from Oswald Spenger (1880–1936), who had lifted it, in turn, from the geological sciences. Yet unlike Panofsky, I am less interested in the meaning of such homologies than the ways in which these parallels challenge false narratives of innovation, singularity, and exclusivity. Accordingly, I credit this concept not to Panofsky but to Riegl, who extensively explored as early as 1903 how artworks from the deep past sometimes accord with the contemporary.² As he rightly stressed, the fit is never perfect; there is always a tension—and it is precisely this tension that the following chapter will highlight.

Tradition and modernity are not “opposed” (except semiotically), nor are they in “conflict.”

—Johannes Fabian

Chapter 1

Antinomies

Transiting Modernity in Japanese Art History

It is by now a commonplace in the study of historical art to instruct one’s readers to “bracket”—to acknowledge and set aside—any number of modern visual habits or biases. The further the temporal or cultural divide, so the logic goes, the more there is to bracket. In a study such as this, centered on nonmodern Japanese artifacts and written for a global audience, there is much difference and, one would imagine, much to set aside. Be that as it may, such a well-intentioned desire to be contextually and historically sensitive to the particularities of the archive, not wanting to project one’s own worldview onto it, can backfire. Given the presentist bias of art history, scholarship on nonmodern material risks wholesale bracketing from any relevance to the purported theoretical and historical main lines.¹ As such, if one holds Western modernity to be the main line from which the global modern developed, then all nonmodern, non-Western materials will be doubly marked as doubly irrelevant, with their histories written more or less for their own sakes. Rather than begin with the painstaking deconstruction of “our” conceptual apparatus—a careful imperialist calibration to allow the uptake of the Other’s visuality—I would like to move in the opposite direction: deconstruct the brackets themselves.

The most freighted concept in this regard is modernity—a term often abused in scholarly writing, in the most egregious cases as a shorthand for “us”—seeming to refer to some sort of core subjectivity that one must relinquish in order to return to a lesser, nonmodern worldview. Even seemingly objective temporal uses of the term are notoriously imprecise, partly because modernity was an unrealized historical project and not a universalizable era. By the end of the twentieth century, the term had been so thoroughly deconstructed that it had lost most of its traction as a critical, much less a chronological, term. One had little option but to qualify it, make it conditional—Western, Euro-American, late capitalist, multiple, local, alternative, liquid, parallel, shadow, dialectic, early, high, or, as Arjun Appadurai puts it, “at large.”² Egregiously, modernity and the West are treated as if synonymous, with a temporal quality made into a spatial one.³ Yet for all this work to keep the term alive, the greatest irony is that no twenty-first-century persons are among its subjects. Not only have we long since moved beyond the modern but also beyond its short-lived interregnum of postmodernity, arriving as we have in an unnamed period that seems to be coalescing around the recidivistic framework of the global modern. We need not pursue tiresome periodization. The incisive point is that the cardinal problem with the premodern/modern divide in art-historical scholarship is that we keep treating this binary as if its terms were meaningful, as if there were actually something at stake. To ask one’s readers to bracket modern habits of viewing is to ask them to set aside something they do not possess.⁴

The next move would be to instruct one’s readers to bracket the visual culture and artifacts of Japan as stemming from a world divorced from North Atlantic modernity. Whether or not one accepts that Japan was in possession of its own modernity before Western modernity (a polemic to which we will return), Japan nevertheless played a central role in the emergence of modernity as a global phenomenon. As a variety of scholars have made abundantly clear—most prominent among them Karatani Kōjin (b. 1941)—the dominant paradigm of Japan’s opening to modernization at the hands of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century is a red herring, one that triggers a slew of problematic entailments.⁵ These two issues—modernity and modernization—structure and perpetuate the unquiet place of Japanese artifacts within art history. A more accurate understanding of the relationship of Japanese artifacts to modernity is required in order to establish the critical value of the nonmodern objects at the core of this book. Such is the task of this chapter. I will begin by extending Karatani’s critique of the modernization trope in explicitly artifactual and visual terms. The result is that “Japan” is not only an archive (and discursive construct) onto which mainstream art history has long projected its fantasies of alterity but also a constitutive element, an active agent in the creation of “art” and art history in their current forms.

Prisoners of Meiji

A conspicuous inflection point in histories of modern Japan is the opening of the archipelago to commercial trade with the industrialized nations of the North Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century. Such histories begin with the spectacle of Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s “black ships,” whose the gunboat diplomacy precipitated a decade and a half of foreign pressure and internal unrest. The tumult culminated in the collapse of the shogunal government and the designation of the emperor as head of state. The reign of Mutsuhito (1852–1912)—styled as Emperor Meiji—was witness to Japan’s lightning industrialization. In its most problematic form, this narrative casts the United States—still a somewhat provincial and slave-owning state at the time—as a heroic bearer of civilization, bringing a backward archipelago into modernity. Such narratives often end with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, when a North Atlantic nation-state was defeated from without for the first time since the myth of the modern West had taken hold. By this account, modernity is intrinsically a Euro-American phenomenon—war, its cardinal metric.

The opening trope relies upon the misbelief that Japan had been a hermetically sealed society suddenly forced into Euro-American networks of capital flow.⁶ More careful scholarship, however, reveals this notion to be reductive. Factually, Japan had been in constant contact with the outside world. Even during the so-called locked-country period (1633–1853), official trade continued, albeit in a highly controlled way, via Dutch, Chinese, and Ryūkyūan ships as well as through robust networks of piracy. Contrary to expectations and contra the racist stereotypes of primitivism, when Perry sailed into Uraga Bay in 1853, Japan was arguably more informed, in some respects, about the United States than the United States was about Japan.⁷ Likewise, and more crucial for this study, the sixteenth-century abortive Christianization and centuries of Dutch trade thereafter had allowed Japanese visual culture to appropriate and experiment with European ways of seeing on a far more sophisticated level than Euro-Americans had with Japanese visuality.⁸ Oil painting, single-point perspective, orthographic perspective, copperplate etching, trompe l’oeil, cameos, natural-historical images, anatomical images, chiaroscuro, typological images, Christian icons, anamorphisms, even stereoscopic machines and magic lanterns were far from novel.⁹

Be that as it may, we remain “conceptual prisoners of Meiji,” as Carol Gluck puts it, “trapped by the teleology, polarities, and epistemologies produced in the late nineteenth century.”¹⁰ This is especially true in art history, where 1868 is sometimes treated as a firewall: the end of one history of art and the beginning of another.¹¹ The myth of “Meiji modernization” constrains one from seeing that, if writing from the present, the history of global modernity may even go deeper in Japan than it does in Euro-America, since Japan had entertained Euro-American visuality long before Euro-America appropriated Japanese visual culture. One might venture that Euro-America was a latecomer to global modernity, in this regard, impeded as it was by a desire to possess rather than to perform the visualities of encounter.

Multiplex Modernity

The Eurocentrism of much twentieth-century art history is tied to the belief that modernity is European in origin. By this framework, modernity spread to other parts of the world through seemingly unprecedented global contact, lending these exploitatively networked regions alternative, “hybrid,” or delayed modernities that were intrinsically lacking in the authority of the European main line.¹² This framework, notes Harry D. Harootunian, intersects with European temporal chauvinism: “Temporality was always measured from one, base timeline since, as it was believed, true time was kept by the modern West. What this has meant is that so-called global late developers like Japan, and indeed any colonized society, exist in a temporality different from the modern, in a suspended state of growth that still lacks full maturity and thus timeliness.”¹³ Even earlier, Naoki Sakai had similarly observed how the nonmodern/non-West paradigm operates “as a discursive scheme according to which a historical predicate is translated into a geopolitical one and vice versa.”¹⁴ This “discursive apparatus,” he argued, “excludes the possibility of simultaneous coexistence.” These scholars, however, were prefigured by the anthropologist Johannes Fabian, who claimed that a fundamental mechanism of scholarly oppression, across a variety of disciplines, is the “denial of coevalness,” a phenomenon he defined (in italics, no less) as the “persistent and systematic tendency to place the referent(s) of anthropology in a Time other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse.”¹⁵ Fabian’s solution was to arrive at a shared intersubjective time through an active process of communication.¹⁶

In the ensuing decades, numerous scholars would elaborate or independently originate similar frameworks of chronological plurality.¹⁷ One proposed solution was the multiple modernity paradigm, a framework meant to stand in contradistinction to the disenfranchising alternative modernity paradigm that was once used to describe other extra-European modernities as if they were derivations.¹⁸ Such scholarship treats modernity more like a Wittgensteinian “family resemblance” or a set of symptoms rather than as a centrifugal propagation.¹⁹ Regardless of the framework one espouses, abandoning the chronological primacy and exclusivity of Euro-America’s relationship to modernity requires some effort, for it runs up against the inertia of Eurocentric privilege. Yet until one makes this cognitive shift, asserts Marilyn Ivy, any understanding of Japan (or its art) remains locked in a framework of marginalization.²⁰ Echoing Fabian, “co-eval” is Ivy’s key term, yet rather than his “intersubjective time,” she demands the recognition of the coexistence and coincidence of Japanese modernity as a field of discourse that needs no interface to lend it significance.²¹

Such chronological thought impacts art history, in particular, due to the “the power inherent in objects to exceed the parameters of their chronological circumstances.”²² Theorists in the lineage of Warburg, for instance, have long argued for “synchronicity of the non-synchronous, the simultaneity of the non-contemporaneous.”²³ As Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood demonstrate, “Cultural anachronism made it possible for Europeans to deny the synchronicity of the other people they shared the world with, and so to refuse to engage with them in political terms.”²⁴ Or, as Fabian pithily puts it, “Geopolitics has its ideological foundations in chronopolitics.”²⁵ Such chronological discrimination and segregation—a framework that has origins going back half a millennium—is ballast for the myth of an unassailable European monopoly on modernity.²⁶ As such, even the word modernization becomes inherently obstructionist. The single term has the power to bracket Japanese modernity, its artifacts, and the art history of its artifacts from ever having any core critical relevance to the contemporary. Hence it would seem that Marxist historians, anthropologists, and art historians—while drawing on separate intellectual lineages—have all arrived at similar conclusions. The issue becomes even more complex for art historians since objects often travel far beyond their original contexts, crossing geographical, cultural, and “temporal interfaces.”²⁷ The solution, however, is not necessarily to “translate time” into the lingua franca of the modern West.²⁸ The goal, rather, is to learn the foreign languages.

More recent scholarship has taken a different approach. In his magisterial attempt to retell the history of the nineteenth century in global terms, Jurgen Osterhammel shifts the metaphorical framework, describing modernity as “a single symbolic language with local dialects.”²⁹ The metaphor is appealing. Osterhammel singles out the American and Japanese dialects to open up space for a sort of triangulation, one where the two emergent twentieth-century imperial powers are in dialogue with each other as well as with Western Europe. Hence the global importance of the multiple modernity paradigm is to sever the illusion that Euro-American modernity was a single phenomenon, when it, too, was simply a family of various coeval discursive fields. Indeed, the fallacy of the Eurocentric modernization framework can be deconstructed on both sides of the assumed binary. This also allows us to escape what Robert Young terms the “narcissism of the West,” according to which the non-West is seen as “‘homogenously different’ in symmetrical contrast with the center of the putative West.”³⁰ By this formulation, when Commodore Perry arrived in Japan, it was a global full circle in that one dialect of modernity, based on European models, was now attempting to speak with the dialect of modernity that had developed on the other end of Eurasia. It was a joining of two forms of modernity, each technologically and industrially disadvantaged in relationship to certain European nation-states.

Some might concede coevality yet still wish to hold to the notion that modernity arose in Europe exclusively. Data refute this. Regardless of the metric one chooses—population growth, urbanization, agricultural efficiency, so-called standard of well-being, literacy, print culture, public health, cosmopolitan visual culture, speed of fashion trends, literary irony, or even self-aware subjectivity—it is often possible to make the case that Japan, and especially its unrivaled metropole of Edo—was just as, if not more, “modern” than the Euro-American empires that sent vessels to its shores.³¹ Some wish to lean upon industrialization and its connections to modularity, but the historical record refutes this link most clearly of all since modularity was a foundational principle of East Asian material culture.³² Others might wish to lean upon science, yet, as Bruno Latour had long demonstrated, even in the European context, there is no “great divide” between prescientific and scientific epistemologies; it is a matter of amassing and evaluating older techniques of inscription—a topic to which we will return.³³ Thus I rather find myself in agreement with Stuart Hall’s assertion that “modernity” is an inherently biased (“loaded”) term, one that masks a variety of phenomena that have multiple origins and that move at various speeds, with “no absolute beginning or predetermined goal.”³⁴ The empire of North Atlantic capital brought many things to Japan, but modernity was not one of them.

The paradigm also obscures the sophistication of Japanese discourse on the subject. “One of the most important implications of the term ‘multiple modernities,’” underscores Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, “is that modernity and westernization are not identical.”³⁵ This point also figures in the writings of the postwar scholar Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910–1977), who saw in the Russo-Japanese War not proof of Japan’s modernity but instead the “first time . . . modernization was not necessarily identical to westernization.”³⁶ As Tetsuo Najita notes, moreover, it was neither the West nor modernity but technology that was the “powerful Other” of late nineteenth-century Japan.³⁷ This ethos was famously propagated in the nineteenth century under the banner of “Japanese Spirit with Western Learning” (wakon yōsai). Therein was a desire to disaggregate the technology from the culture, to adopt the tools without letting those tools alter the user’s subjectivity.

Rarely, however, was the distinction maintained. For example, long after the Russo-Japanese War, the tight association of “the West” with technology created a crisis for right-wing intellectuals. Prominent in this regard is the infamous “Overcoming Modernity” symposium, convened in Tokyo in July 1942. Held only months after the American entry into the Pacific War, it saw eminent humanists gather to debate how Japan might shed the modernity it had been forced to adopt. The logic seemed to be that should Japan prevail in the Pacific War, it would have an opportunity to free itself of its dependence on foreign industrial imports and somehow disentangle itself from the Western baggage of modern technology, which had been a necessary evil.³⁸ In the words of the participant Kamei Katsuichirō (1907–1966), “While the war we are fighting is outwardly the destruction of British and American power, it is inwardly the basic cure for the spiritual disease brought by modern civilization.”³⁹

Takeuchi was the first to shed light on the critical importance of the “Overcoming Modernity” conference to Japanese intellectual history.⁴⁰ He sees Japanese modernity as a response to (and hence derivative of) European modernity; thus he seeks to give more agency to Japanese modernity as a constituent element.⁴¹ Despite his perpetuation of essentialized binaries, he nevertheless keenly acknowledges that North Atlantic modernity needed Japan, too: “Without Oriental resistance Europe would be unable to realize itself.”⁴² Or, as Richard Calichman puts it, discussing Nishitani Keiji (1900–1990), “The wish for an exclusively Japanese or Eastern identity emerges as a reactionary response to the desire for an exclusively Western identity.”⁴³

Hence from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, we see a transition: the binary of Europe-as-empire contra an undifferentiated “rest” has given way to a new dominant binary of East versus West. The two mythical poles were mutually reinforcing. Some, such as Eisenstadt, would even venture that Japanese modernity is not just one modernity among many but the prime global exception, the only truly coeval modernity.⁴⁴ By such logic, modern Japan is the sole state able to fill the role as a “modern Other” for North Atlantic modernity. Well into the twenty-first century, such binary thought haunts scholarship on Japan. Evocations of the West continue to operate as a dog whistle for long-dead myths of European exceptionalism; and just as Takeuchi believed, “the West” demands the reification of an East. The power of this binary, in other words, both prefigured and survived the modernity debates to which it was once so closely linked.

Within nineteenth-century Japan, the modernization paradigm operated under the banner of bunmei kaika, often problematically translated as “Civilization and Enlightenment.”⁴⁵ By thinking of this former term as a verb rather than a noun, one more readily grasps its more pernicious aspects. The rhetoric of modernization often differs little from the distasteful colonialist discourse of spreading civilization.⁴⁶ This exact conflation appears in the writings of one of the most prominent progressive voices of the period, that of the theorist and statesman Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901). In his An Outline Theory of Civilization (Bunmei no gairyaku) of 1875, the key term is not so much modernity as civilization.⁴⁷ He argues, just as Takeuchi would in the postwar era, that any nation, within or without the North Atlantic, can outdo the North Atlantic at its own game. For European intellectuals, too, civilization and modernity similarly bordered on synonymy. The same was true for the most prominent figure of pan-Asianism and Japanese art history, Okakura Kakuzō (1863–1913), for whom it was “civilizations” that were at stake, not nations.⁴⁸

The nineteenth century was not the first time Japan had been in a fraught dialectic with a more powerful and technologically advanced society. More than a millennium before, Japan had appropriated technologies, including statecraft and religion, en masse from the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) in the context of establishing its capital at Nara. Nineteenth-century intellectuals paraded out this analogy to downplay the uniqueness of modernity.⁴⁹ For instance, when the Japanese ambassador Muragaki Awaji-no-kami (1812–1888) traveled to Washington, DC, in 1860, he likened his trip to that of his ancestors going to the East Asian mainland.⁵⁰ It was a politic, if stretched, analogy, yet as Lamarre notes, “If modernity arrived twice in Japan—first in ancient times, then in the late nineteenth century—then a gap opens between the West and modernity.”⁵¹ “Western” civilization, so the argument went, was little more than the newest Other.

Behind such thinking was a powerful conceptual structure—a “nationalist semiotics”—known as the Wa-Kan dichotomy or dialectic, where Wa is the domestic term and Kan stands for the foreign or “constitutive Other.”⁵² One might frame the Wa-Kan dialectic as an example of what Appadurai calls “culturalism”—that is, “the conscious mobilization of cultural difference in the service of a larger national or transnational politics.”⁵³ This “transhistorical homology” thus operated like a domestic engine of deconstruction, flawed in its basis but effective in its relativizing result. Crucially, it is the ubiquity of such binary thinking, claims Atsuko Sakaki, and not necessarily its accuracy that makes the binary important.⁵⁴ This is nowhere truer than in art history, where the ahistorical dialectic has become a millennial feature of stylistic discourse.⁵⁵ Already in one of the earliest European texts on Japanese art, one finds the assertion that Japanese art is torn between China and the self.⁵⁶

As world histories often underscore, modern Japan was one of the few societies to escape European colonization. Yet as Yoshioka Hiroshi argues, in Foucauldian terms, one must not overlook self-colonization at the conceptual level.⁵⁷ At the same time, Tokyo was an imperial metropole in its own right, overseeing the colonization and exploitation of the minorities of the Ainu and Ryūkyūans to the north and south, directing the annexation of Taiwan and Korea, and eventually orchestrating the vast expansion of the empire in the Fifteen-Year War. As Japan “played the role of the colonizer and the colonized at the same time,” modern Japan evinces a structure of Orientalism with a binary of alterity within the notion of empire itself.⁵⁸ Thus, the conceptualizations of the premodern, tradition, and national identity are so tightly linked that it is impossible to treat nonmodern artifacts as if they are not a constitutive part of Japanese modernity.⁵⁹ Accordingly, my goal is not to eschew modernity altogether so much as to advocate for greater rigor in the term’s use. Otherwise, both premodern Japan and modernism itself are misconstrued for the sake of theoretical ease and rhetorical cachet.

Speed, Strata, and Standing

The goal in the nineteenth century was to achieve parity and standing, recognition in militaristic, technological, legal, racial, and—most elusively—subjective terms. I introduce the term standing for several reasons; first, because it brings with it a legal and postural valence and, second, because it is perhaps not necessarily equality but the right to difference itself that was at stake.⁶⁰ In fact, parity and standing might be seen as intertwined aims, with the former enabling the latter. Parity and standing were attained in different spheres at different rates and by different means. For instance, the 1853-to-1905 span is remarkable for the speed with which Japan achieved technomilitary parity. In fact, such precipitousness spawned a form of “techno-Orientalism” in Euro-American discourse that was used to turn technological prowess into a liability.⁶¹

Artistic standing, however, arguably came much sooner. For want of a clearer barometer, one might begin such an arc with Japan’s participation in the Vienna World’s Fair of 1873, the first such international exhibition in which the Meiji government took part (fig. 3).⁶² It did so, moreover, as it would in later fairs, to widespread acclaim, creating a Japanese pavilion that included a garden replete with several buildings to complement the interior exhibitions.⁶³ A contemporaneous popular image shows the commotion surrounding the Hapsburg empress Sisi (Elisabeth) crossing the garden’s small bridge (fig. 4); so successful was the landscape architecture that the entire garden was purchased, with help from Christopher Dresser, by a British trading firm after the exhibition’s close.⁶⁴ Included among the interior exhibits were photographs of Hokkaidō—a northern region being “explored” and exploited—as well as photographs of temples and their artifacts. Hence, as Kinoshita Naoyuki argues, even at its earliest phase, Japan’s participation was Janus-faced, with simultaneous displays of both deep history and a prospective future.⁶⁵ A quarter of a century later, in the third Paris International Exposition of 1878, Japanese art was included in the Trocadéro’s Historical Exposition of Ancient Art and Ethnography of Peoples Outside Europe, an unsuccessful attempt to bring a retrospective history of European art and the art of the non-West together under the same literal roof of alterity.⁶⁶ By the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, however, Japan was accorded the dignity of presenting under the rubric of “fine art.”⁶⁷ Evidence suggests, moreover, that the American organizers were even willing—at least at first—to allow the Japanese to categorize their artworks however they liked.⁶⁸ Crucially, on the same occasion, the Americans decided to organize a “retrospective exhibition” that brought “noncontemporary” work into play. By Ellen P. Conant’s account, this provided the impetus for Japan’s own landmark exposition of Japanese historical art at the 1900 Paris Exposition.⁶⁹

The Paris Exposition—with its astounding array of now-canonical works—has taken on somewhat legendary status: on view were 164 paintings, twenty-five wooden sculptures, 163 objects of metalwork, 130 lacquers, 273 pieces of porcelain, and thirty-six antique textiles.⁷⁰ The commandeered artifacts were selected following a massive survey of more than two hundred thousand potential patrimonial artifacts, carried out under the aegis of the Imperial Household Ministry from 1888 to 1897.⁷¹ As Inaga Shigemi argues, the start of this vast undertaking actually predated the official use of the term “art history” (bijutsushi) in Japanese.⁷²

Fig. 3 György Klösz, Wiener Photographen-Association, interior of the Japanese exhibition at the Vienna World’s Fair, 1873. Albumen print. ÖNB/Wien Pk4608, 285 (Galerien Weltausstellung 1873).

The unrivaled and perhaps undue weight accorded the Paris Exposition stems in part from its catalogue, Histoire de l’art du Japon, the magisterial “first” history of Japanese art.⁷³ Despite a fraught genesis, the deluxe tome succeeded at shifting the image of Japanese art in the Orientalist imaginary.⁷⁴ The Histoire reified, verified, and instantiated the wedded notions that Japan had fine art and that this fine art was embedded in a subtending history that paralleled (and rivaled) that of Europe.⁷⁵ Thus its publication—first in French and only later in Japanese and English—marks a clear candidate for the moment when artistic standing, in historiographical terms, was attained. If so, it had taken only two generations of scholars, artists, and historians to find a way to appropriate both European artistic technologies as well as the historiographical discourse that would envelop these artifacts. Such historiographical discourse was essential since it allowed Japan to demonstrate that it was not only in possession of an equal command of the fine arts as a technology but also an equally illustrious history of their independent development. While this might seem like a hallmark victory for the subaltern, the Histoire also reflected imperialist and essentialist ideologies that framed Japanese art—in a “megalomaniacal vision”—as the apotheosis of the null category of the East.⁷⁶ Its altered title in Japanese (translatable as Manuscript of an Abridged History of the Art of Imperial Japan) reflected a patently imperialist framework.⁷⁷

Fig. 4 Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Sisi (Elisabeth) visiting the garden of the Japanese exhibition at the Vienna World’s Fair, 1873. Xylograph after a drawing by Franz Kollarz. ÖNB/Wien 237.159-B (Weltausstellung 1873).

The 1900 Paris Exposition opened on the heels of the Vienna Secession exhibition with which this book began. Whereas Vienna presented Japanese art history in the context of a modernist exhibition space, the Paris exhibition took place within a performatively nonmodern building with seemingly “traditional” Buddhist temple architecture—albeit sourced and constructed in France (fig. 5). Hence even if the Paris exhibition was a political and epistemological coup, the building underscored Orientalist fantasies that Japanese art belonged to the space of Other: the exposition brought the viewers to Japan rather than Japanese art to Paris. In that regard, it seems that the Vienna exhibition—and not the celebrated Paris show—was a closer prefiguration of the subsequent role of Japanese art in the twentieth century.

There is an important distinction, however, between the notion of standing in historiographical and practical terms. For example, at the same 1900 Paris Exposition, the preeminent Japanese oil painter Kuroda Seiki (1866–1924) received an award for his nude allegorical triptych Wisdom, Impression, Sentiment, a work executed in the prevailing prestige medium of oil on canvas (a mode known in Japan as yōga, or “Western pictures”).⁷⁸ It was not contested that a Japanese painter could produce fine art so long as it reflected European visuality, techniques, and materiality. It would be quite another thing, however, for an object produced outside of Europe and without any reference to European visuality or pictorial techniques to be accorded equal recognition. The former challenge was primarily technological; the latter, historiographical.

Fig. 5 G. Delton, Exposition Universelle 1900—Parc du Trocadéro—Section de l’Empire du Japon—Pavillon Central, ca. 1900. Postcard published by Paul Seuss in Dresden. Special Collections, Copley Library, University of San Diego.

Whereas the attainment of artistic standing is often treated as a footnote, Karatani demonstrates the folly of this approach, stressing that art academies and national museums arose simultaneously alongside the Japanese constitution (1889) and parliament (1890).⁷⁹ Yet even within this context, he argues, the arts were actually the field of cultural production best able to resist the wholesale adoption of European epistemological taxonomies.⁸⁰ Japan certainly did appropriate European technologies, institutions, and discourses of art, but it is the right to difference that seems particularly significant.

Promiscuous Images

Regardless of whether one accepts Karatani’s larger argument, his point remains valid: art and language have different relationships to modernity in Japan. Artifacts and images cross cultural and linguistic borders far more readily than discourse.⁸¹ One might liken the emergence of a global visuality to the creation of a linguistic pidgin, where a reduced and simplified form of commonality erases any more nuanced meaning, for even in the naivest of circumstances, one perceives something.⁸² As with discourse, artifacts also have their gatekeepers, tastemakers, and other hermeneutic police, yet the immediacy of one’s ability to see visual media—even if what one sees is unintended or erroneous in nature—allows visual and material artifacts to operate differently than language. Such faux transparency fuels the perennial dismissal of art history itself, as many prefer to hew to the illusion of universal visuality. By the same token, this is what makes the visual arts both so powerful and so dangerous. One risks semantic volatility for the sake of transmissibility.

As Appadurai asserts, different aspects of modernity travel at different speeds.⁸³ The quickness of artifacts in early modernity helps to explain why material and visual histories do not always map readily onto the historiography of more language-based archives. Art history, literary history, political history, and so forth need not track. Even within art history itself, this represents perhaps the greatest methodological schism: those who embrace (fast) formalist universalism versus those who insist upon (slow) historical contextualism.⁸⁴ Moreover, images are not just mercurial but “promiscuous” in that “their capacity to serve so many functions . . . calls their knowledge bearing (epistemological) and moral status into question.”⁸⁵

Hence when Okakura, the most influential figure in the creation of modern art-historical discourse in Japan, states, “That which best represents the spirit of our country is the fine arts,” his rationale is not a stalwart neo-Hegelian faith in the marriage of national spirit and the newborn concept of the fine arts; instead, it was his understanding that art, as an aspect of visual and material culture, has the capacity to give the foreign beholder the illusion of unmediated perception.⁸⁶ This is why things and images—not languages—were so essential to constructing the image of Japan abroad. In Karatani’s words (echoing Oscar Wilde), “As an aestheticized object, ‘Japan’ was above all formed by the fine arts.”⁸⁷ Indeed, when one considers the linguistic chasm, the number of languages that constituted “the West” and the paucity of capable translators, the primacy of the visual makes perfect sense. The very strength of visual and material culture lies in its clandestine transposability, the way in which it escapes the hermeneutic frames of translation. Even where rigorous engagement with the actual Japan and the Japanese language might disabuse one of his or her fantasies or change the way in which such images and objects were seen, the desire to perpetuate this myth—one often motivated by a cocktail of racism, insouciance, and fetishism—disincentivized serious inquiry. Needless to say, the Orientalist gaze does not want translation since that would result in the destruction of the chauvinist presumption of universal perception.

Yet even if “the universalizing tendencies of modernity have always called upon the service of the translator to spread its gospel elsewhere,” such translation may not necessarily have been linguistic.⁸⁸ For instance, there remains an important distinction between linguistic translation and the way that images and artifacts operate. One can read a translation without the slightest understanding of the qualia of the original. Conversely, with objects, one can have all the qualia and none of the meaning. It is, after all, the instability and immanence of artifacts—visual and plastic—that makes them so powerful.⁸⁹ Moreover, as the following chapter will elaborate, the interface of two visualities results in the partial naturalization of the Other’s vision, as images and artifacts constitute their own discourse, one that changes the way other artifacts are seen. Andreas Huyssen argues along these lines when he states that in order to understand the global “geographies of modernism,” one must embrace “translation in its broadest linguistic and historical sense” to include not just language but also “habit, nonverbal forms of expression, thought patterns, historically determined disciplinary formations, and the like.”⁹⁰ No matter how catholic one’s definition, however, I would argue that linguistic metaphors still mislead. Likening images and artifacts to texts precludes rigorous engagement with the very aspects of visuality and materiality that make them so powerful.

If artifacts dominated the interface outside Japan, nineteenth-century domestic debates nevertheless focused on language, a medium that was undergoing dramatic, self-reflexive transformation.⁹¹ The defining linguistic phenomenon was genbun’itchi, the process whereby written Japanese was made to accord artificially with the “standard” form of the language.⁹² This prerogative was motivated by the biases and assumptions of Euro-American linguists, who presumed a degree of necessary unity between the spoken and the written word. This desire to unify the auditory and figural aspects of the Japanese language was, according to Sakai, symptomatic of a pernicious “cultural nationalism” that sought to essentialize and hypostasize both the Japanese and the Western poles of identity.⁹³ Hence the foreign dictum to make writing reflect speech became dually imperious, fueling a nationalism of the vernacular. Such phonocentrism was further iconoclastic in that it elided the rich figurality of written Japanese (kuzushiji, alternative scripts, and calligraphy) for the impoverishment of type.

The fetish for linguistic purity is all the more bizarre given that Japanese, like English, incorporates elements from several traditions—a feature clearly visible in its writing system and praised by some prewar intellectuals.⁹⁴ It is thus telling that those at the “Overcoming Modernity” conference of 1942 were so fixated on language; they saw language, the classics, and the imperial system as the bedrock of Japanese identity while almost completely ignoring visual materials.⁹⁵ Upon reflection, they had little choice. For the reasons given above, visuality was far too fast, transgressive, unfettered, and mercurial to police in this manner. For instance, if one turns to the propagandistic visual culture of Japanese fascism (such as the photomagazines Furonto, Nippon, or Shashin Shūhō), one finds an imagescape thoroughly enmeshed in North Atlantic visual culture.⁹⁶ Even if the fine arts continued to operate somewhat independently, Japanese popular visuality had achieved such a degree of commensurability that any rhetoric of visual “purity” would have been inconceivable. Images move and visuality adjusts at different rates and through different processes than words. Images are not texts, and vision is not a language.

Beyond the “Birth” of Art History

In tandem with such technological and historiographical transformations were terminological ones. Before the case could be made that Japan had fine arts, the concept had to be constructed.⁹⁷ This process was the subject of the revolutionary research of scholars such as Kitazawa Noriaki and Satō Dōshin, who painstakingly scrutinized the linguistic permutations necessary to translate the basic terms of art discourse (namely painting, sculpture, crafts, and so on).⁹⁸ A landmark moment in this narrative is 1872, when the term for “fine arts,” bijutsu, was coined in the context of preparation for the Vienna exhibition.⁹⁹ Ironically, the term did not come from German but from the English-language guidelines issued by the Austrian organizers.¹⁰⁰

Twenty-first-century scholars continue to grapple with the consequences of recognizing that the taxonomies and vocabularies of art history—so often treated as universals—are recent constructs. Nevertheless, it would be an error to conflate concept and neologism. Abroad, Japanese art objects had already been categorized as such; and the national fine-arts museum in Tokyo predated the “fine arts.” As Chelsea Foxwell notes, moreover, the contemporary commentator Fukuda Takanori felt compelled to caution not long after the neologism’s emergence that one should not take the lexical birth of “fine art” to mean that there was not a long history of art in Japan.¹⁰¹ Nor did the existence of the new word mean that there was a unified understanding of what it signified.¹⁰² The year 1872 was neither a watershed nor a firewall.

The “birth of art history” in Japan likewise intersects with the modernization paradigm in that it suggests that the imported concept was somehow stable, when, in reality, Euro-American art history was a new and contested enterprise. According to Wood, from 1850 to 1869, only six scholars received their habilitation (the highest university degree) in art history at German universities; a number that would climb to forty-four between 1890 and 1909.¹⁰³ By his analysis, during the later decades of the Meiji period, art history in Europe grew at three times the pace of other humanistic disciplines, a fact that highlights art history’s centrality to the development of the modern humanities.¹⁰⁴ The new discipline’s methodological stance was far from uniform. There was a rift between those interested in the materiality and visuality of all phenomena and those invested in the connoisseurship, the stylistic succession, and eventually the iconography of the “fine arts” proper.¹⁰⁵ Thus the “birth of Japanese art history” is part and parcel of the “birth of art history” writ large. Presuming a delay or an adaptation (like modernization or translation) precludes one from seeing the role played by Japan, its artifacts, and its scholars in the very creation of the concept.

Taking a longer view, the history of the “fine arts” as a politicized cultural metric predates the art-historical use of the term. Take, for instance, the commencement address by John Trumbull (1750–1831) to the Yale University graduating class of 1770 on the “uses and advantages of the fine arts.” In his valediction, Trumbull employs the concept so widely that it seems to stand for a vast array cultural practices that serve as the definitive barometer of what he calls a nation’s “glory.”¹⁰⁶ This holds true “in every land, in every age,” according to a telos of efflorescence, whereby a society “cultivates” the fine arts for glory’s sake.¹⁰⁷ When Trumbull suggested to the young graduates that “America hath a fair prospect in a few centuries of ruling both in arts and arms,” it is easy to hear echoes of Meiji discourse.¹⁰⁸ Indeed, more than a century later, a Japanese bureaucrat would make the exact same point that the fine arts were the barometer of the “rise and fall” of nations.¹⁰⁹ Clearly, in many cases, the rhetoric of the “fine arts” was not really about art at all.

The “fine arts” was not a stable modern concept imported from a unitary West; it was rather a contested amalgam of technologies, rhetoric, and subjective recognition that was contentious by design, even within North Atlantic modernity. Nor did the term’s translation mean that the works produced under that rubric accorded with the European definition.¹¹⁰ Likewise, Japan (like China) was in possession of its own art-historical discourse before the nineteenth century. Thus I hesitate to treat 1872 as a meaningful divide since the lexical history does not accord with the deep archival reality of how the fine arts operated as a both a discourse and a weaponized metric.

Racism by Proxy

For those who wished to keep the fine arts the preserve of European culture, Japanese art presented a serious problem. One need only point to the racist backlash with which Japanese art was met. For instance, only three years after Japan’s participation in the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair, the influential American critic and collector James Jackson Jarves (1818–1888) authored his ironically titled tome A Glimpse at the Art of Japan, wherein he makes the oppressive potential of the fine arts painfully clear: “Indeed, painting, sculpture, and architecture, in their supreme significance,—the fine arts, with the human soul and form as their fundamental motives, and human excellence or spiritual loveliness as their distinctive aims in expression,—are not found in the aesthetic constitution of the Japanese.”¹¹¹ Across the Atlantic two years later, the French critic Paul Dalloz (1829–1887) would conclude similarly that “the human soul does not reside here” in reference to Japanese art.¹¹² Soon after, Edmond Duranty would famously liken Japonisme to a disease enervating European art.¹¹³

Jarves’s Glimpse at the Art of Japan speaks to several aporia and anxieties. After excluding the Japanese from the subjective capacity for fine art, he immediately hedges, saying that any differences were “justified”; indeed, “Japanese art is a fitting and pleasurable supplement to the European.”¹¹⁴ Granted, such supplemental art was “unscientific” and “unambitious,” but it was nevertheless “truthful” in its decorativeness and “aesthetic coquetries.” At this point, his logic takes on a clearly gendered angle, where the relationship of Japanese art to European art is cast as analogous to the oppressive relationship of women to men in Jarves’s time. As with the East/West binary, Japanese art is the complement or antipode—equal but only as the marked term.

Jarves’s text, on the whole, is difficult to square. It oscillates between sympathetic cosmopolitanism and galling racism, effectively patronizing the same culture that he credits with a salvific potential for contemporary art.¹¹⁵ It was in this final aspect that his rhetoric was most sly, as he christens the nonsense category of the “finer arts,” an absurdity that allows him to admit limited superiority in certain aesthetic modes and artifactual skills while still denying equal subjectivity. Jarves’s recalcitrance stands as a clear reminder of the stakes of the “fine arts” in this context. To admit the presence of fine art outside of Euro-America was tantamount to admitting racial and subjective equality. Commentators were keen to belittle, insult, and bracket Japanese art out of fear that it might challenge the perceived superiority of their own aesthetic sensitivities—and, by extension, modern subjectivity.

Note, however, that neither modernity nor civilization were at stake for Jarves. Race was his preferred differential. Parsing his words, one sees that “the West” comprised a plurality of races that were now in opposition to a Japanese race, which was seen as still in its Hegelian infancy. One must underscore the prominence of such racist discourse in the history of Japanese art. In fact, the rise and fall of race as a pseudo-scientific category, the period spanning roughly from 1860 to 1945, is nearly perfectly contemporaneous with the “opening,” subsequent industrialization, and defeat of Japan in the Pacific War.¹¹⁶ Such discourse was adopted in Japan, as well. Even Fukuzawa’s highly influential text Conditions of the West (Seiyō jijō), a guide to North Atlantic civilizations published from 1866 to 1870, opened with physiognomic emblems of the races of the world (fig. 6).¹¹⁷ The opening sequence itself is telling: the title page is a map of Europe (not North America), followed by a two-page spread of racialized physiognomic types and then a single full-page image of a steamship—the technology that would permit such contact. A few years later, a second edition followed with new frontispieces: a map centered on the North Atlantic framed by a train, a stone bridge, a hot-air balloon, a city, and a steamship, followed by five vignettes with further caricatured racialized types (with the European now a man rather than a woman), all buttressed by the iconography of scholarship and science: a globe, a telescope, a book, a scroll, and a compass. An education of the West began with race.

Japan’s place as the first non–North Atlantic industrialized power was a challenge to the myriad systems of racialized oppression by which white supremacy was supported on a global scale. For instance, Gerald Horne demonstrates how “trans-Pacific racism” and “Afro-Asian solidarity” are powerful lenses through which to understand the relationship of Japan and the United States, from Commodore Perry to Jim Crow.¹¹⁸ For instance, one finds an embrace of the Japanese Empire in the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois; then again, racism was simultaneously a tool of the Japanese Empire in its own colonial enterprise.¹¹⁹ Indeed, the case of the Japanese Empire is especially illuminating concerning the intersections of race and power in the twentieth century. As Seung-mi Han aptly puts it, “Said’s Orientalism can also occur among Oriental countries.”¹²⁰ Such nested and imbricated racism made Japan both oppressor and oppressed, so that the same nation that proposed the defeated antiracism clause for the League of Nations in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference would fully embrace racialized discourse in its colonialist expansion, only then to become a site of reprieve for African Americans escaping the white supremacist context of their own country.¹²¹ By foregrounding Japan and African Americans in this narrative, one better resists totalizing Eurocentric frameworks that would cast empire, capital, and colonialism as somehow intrinsically centered on Europe, when there is a parallel, intersectional, and less dichotomous lineage that might center instead on the transpacific relationship of Japan and the United States.

Fig. 6 Opening pages from Fukuzawa Yukichi, Conditions of the West (Seiyō jijō) (Kyoto: Hayashi Yoshibē, 1868); Opening pages from Fukuzawa Yukichi, Conditions of the West (Tokyo: Keiō gijuku daigaku shuppankyoku, 1870–72). National Diet Library Digital Collections, Tokyo.

Art history figures here inasmuch as Japan’s achievement of artistic standing contributed to the defeat of racially motivated attempts to exclude non-white bodies from modern subjectivity. As Jarves well knew, the fine arts were a powerful barometer of humanity; by his logic, it was impossible for the Japanese to be in possession of the fine arts since they lacked the capacity in their racialized “aesthetic constitution.” Only two years after Jarves, Okakura also cast art as a racially, geographically, and institutionally determined phenomenon, a gambit he ventured in order to argue that it was impossible for the Japanese to adopt Western fine-arts practice wholesale.¹²² Race was likewise the preferred differential in the early history of Japanese art written by the German anatomist Hans Paul Bernhard Gierke (1847–1886), who had taught at Tokyo Imperial University from 1876 to 1881. His “history of art” was preoccupied with the racial origins of the Japanese, their purportedly limited faculty of imagination (Phantasie), and their astounding emulative capacities—a insulting trope that would persist into the late twentieth century.¹²³ Gierke, to be fair, was no Jarves. On the contrary, he praises Japanese aesthetic sensitivity (at all social classes) and predicts that Japan would soon rival Europe in artistic contexts.¹²⁴

An additional strategy used by period Euro-American writers in order to compliment but contain Japanese art was to liken the Japanese to the ancient Greeks. The comparison seems absurd, but the trope enjoyed great currency in its day.¹²⁵ Okakura and the American Ernest Fenollosa had both likened Nara to Greece, while Kuki Ryūichi saw Nara as Athens and Kyoto as Rome.¹²⁶ Concerning this odd analogy, Inaga writes: “On the one hand, it was flattering to the Japanese to see Nara and Kyoto enjoy the dignifying comparison to [the] European classical canon. On the other hand, Westerners could find intellectual pleasure in understanding Oriental art by referring to their own aesthetic canon, believed to be universal.”¹²⁷ The comparison was motivated by a sort of neo-Hegelian, protoethnographic atavism according to which the Japanese represented a living analogue to antiquity; Euro-Americans wanted to believe that life and art were still immediately wedded in Japan, such that modern Euro-Americans might somehow study this living antiquity to their own artistic advantage.¹²⁸ The absurdity was not lost on all; note the contemporaneous artist Yorozu Tetsugorō’s understandable resignation: “It is impossible for us to live and feel as did the ancient Greeks.”¹²⁹ The historiographical conceit inserted Japan into the mythos of the West, making it part of the Western artistic tradition, but arrested at an earlier stage. The trope thus “cathected” Japan, in Christopher Reed’s words, “as both the origin of and an alternative to home.”¹³⁰

Some, such as the groundbreaking aesthetic philosopher Ōnishi Yoshinori, saw Greco-Japonisme in a positive light, as a means to collapse difference rather than to bracket Japanese art off from modernity.¹³¹ For other period commentators, Greco-Japonisme was targeted as a slight against France rather than Japan: the wholesale French appropriation of Japanese art was no different than the French appropriation of European antiquity, with the modern French accused of only “imitating, assimilating, and perfecting elements borrowed from other nations.”¹³² Be that as it may, I rather see here the politics of coevality, for one could admit a degree of equality so long as one was able to deny contemporaneity.

It is clear that early art history often served as a thinly veiled proxy for racist discourse. Even within European art history, race and art were tightly wedded. “Every painter paints with his blood,” argues Wölfflin in his Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Principles of art history; 1915), “the most widely read art-historical book of the twentieth century,” which appeared in Japanese translation in 1936.¹³³ Even earlier, Émile Gallé (1846–1904) had likened Japonisme to a “blood transfusion.”¹³⁴ In a review of one of the earliest European histories of Japanese painting, Karl Madsen’s Japansk Malerkunst (Japanese painting; 1886), the Danish art historian Julius Lange (1838–1896) compared stylistic emulation to miscegenation: “A strong mutual blending of blood, an assimilation, is occurring in our time between East Asia’s art and Europe’s. These assimilation processes are among the preeminent phenomena in art history. . . . What is best does not come from an amalgamation, but . . . by a resistance to such mixture.”¹³⁵ Any history of European modern art, much less Japanese art, must account for the ways in which art was used as a proxy for such racist and racializing discourse.

Universalism and Nonmodernity

The art history of modern Japan often foregrounds the development of the dual and overlapping painting modes of Western-style painting (yōga) and Japanese-style painting (Nihonga).¹³⁶ Despite their domestic prominence, however, such works were less successful on the international stage.¹³⁷ Naturally, Western-style oil paintings interfaced more readily with the art worlds of Euro-America, yet “the great irony of Japanese Western-style painting,” argues Alicia Volk, “is that at the very moment when European academic styles were adopted as the mainstay of the academy in Tokyo, their authority was crumbling in Paris.”¹³⁸ It would only be in the early twentieth century, Volk claims, with the rise of the avant-garde focus on subjectivity, that Japanese artists could escape the modernizing paradigms of mimicry and national performativity in favor of a transnational subjective universalism.¹³⁹ While not contesting this, I would like to suggest that even before the advent of the avant-garde, the art history of nonmodern Japanese art laid the groundwork for a parallel type of universalism.

For instance, there are several ways to frame Japan’s escape from nineteenth-century frameworks of aesthetic subjugation. The one put forward above is to treat the fine arts as a sort of technology that Japan had to appropriate. Evidence supports this. Both drawing and printing were official departments within the Banshō Shirabesho, an institute founded in 1855 for the study and appropriation of Euro-American technology and learning.¹⁴⁰ The institute was divided into foreign-language and technology divisions, with Euro-American painting in the latter.¹⁴¹ The first state art academy in Japan (founded in 1876) was likewise a “technical” school administered by the Ministry of Industry.¹⁴² Nevertheless, even if a Japanese work were technically identical to a European one, it could still be denied equal standing by questioning the subjectivity behind its production (as was Jarves’s racist logic). On the other hand, if equal subjectivity were respected and the existence of a separate lineage of art recognized, then even if technically quite distinct, the work might be recognized as contemporary. In that regard, one of Japan’s greatest contributions to the notion of a universal, global concept of “art” was that a non-Western nation could be in possession of an artistic tradition, artistic technologies, and aesthetic sensibilities that are distinct from the European fine arts in concept and praxis.

Outside of the narrow field of the fine arts, however, things were far less contentious. Even Jarves asserts that the universal aesthetic power of Japanese material and visual culture lay in craft, ornament, and design—traditions that were in many ways seen as superior to those practiced in North Atlantic modernity. The ability to bracket such productions from the “fine arts” made it possible for Euro-Americans to admire them without feeling threatened. Hence the modern prominence in Japanese art history of a vast array material that would otherwise lay outside the fine arts (such as religious implements, lacquerware, metalwork, print culture, books, scrolls, tea vessels, textiles, food, and interior design). Equity, in other words, did not mean identity. Hence the visual turn and the renewed interest in material culture in the late twentieth century did not impact Japanese art history as much as Euro-American art history, since these objects had long been foregrounded. Artistic modernity emerged in parallel with a sophisticated series of historiographical maneuvers that allowed for what might be called “aesthetic standing”—a recognition that the artistic traditions of the Other are equally art even if these artifacts differ in taste, materiality, and technique.

The attainment of intersubjective universality in artistic terms owed as much to historiography as praxis. As Volk demonstrates, nineteenth-century European artists’ engagement with nonmodern Japanese art made it possible for early twentieth-century Japanese artists to recognize “the universal legitimacy of their native artistic heritage and, by extension, of their own rightful place within the emerging global tradition of modernism.”¹⁴³ This is not to mention the crucial role nonmodern art played as an archive for modern Japanese artists themselves.¹⁴⁴ In other words, one cannot bracket the nonmodern from the modern in Japanese art history since Japan’s ability to secure its equal recognition as a modern nation was so intimately tied to the manipulation of its nonmodern archive. The contemporary nature of Japan’s nonmodern art in modernity never faded. Even in the twenty-first century, nonmodern artifacts remain a key part of Japan’s contemporary artistic identity.

Archaeology of Exception

A final notion deserving of scrutiny is the purported modernity of treating Japan as exceptional. Such rhetoric is symptomatic of the chronopolitics of the modernization paradigm since Japan was the first non-Western nation to attain equal industrial standing, equal imperial ambitions, and equal modern recognition; it had thus “closed the gap” in chronological terms.¹⁴⁵ Yet this trope may have less to do with modernity than it seems, for it grafted itself onto a long-established European habit of casting the Japanese as both antipodal and exceptional.

One finds such rhetoric in the earliest analysis of Japanese culture written by a European with significant firsthand experience of Japan, Striking Contrasts in the Customs of Europe and Japan, a treatise published in 1585 and attributed to Luís Froís (1532–1597), a Portuguese Jesuit who had arrived in Japan more than two decades earlier.¹⁴⁶ Striking Contrasts lives up to its title. Prefiguring the Orientalist structuralism of Roland Barthes some four centuries later, Froís’s treatise is composed almost entirely of oppositional binaries, making it a patently clear example of “stereotypical dualism.”¹⁴⁷ In refreshing contrast to Barthes, however, Froís does not speak in terms of “the West” and “the East” since the nonsense binary had not yet been constructed.¹⁴⁸

Even more surprising than the existence of such early European discourse were its claims. In the eyes of the “father visitor” of the Jesuit mission in Japan, Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606), the Japanese were “all white, courteous and highly civilized, so much so that they surpass all the other known races of the world.”¹⁴⁹ The contrast with the rigidly racialized vision of the nineteenth century is remarkable. Francis Xavier himself, in a galling proclamation, deemed the Japanese the “the best who have yet been discovered.”¹⁵⁰ The Japan-based Jesuit Diogo de Mesquita (1553–1614) argued the religious efforts of the Japanese for the faith exceeded those of European nations; he even wrote that the Japanese brothers deserved ordination more than he ever had.¹⁵¹ The Jesuits would eventually permit Japanese ordination, making the Otherness of the Japanese no longer a barrier to serving as a conduit of a Eurocentric notion of divinity.¹⁵² Thus, in sharp contrast to the “spiritual” deficiency Jarves would aver some four centuries later, the terms of encounter were quite different earlier in the archive.

In a well-known historical episode, Valignano orchestrated a European tour—an “embassy” to the courts of Pope Gregory XIII and King Phillip II of Spain—for four exemplary, well-born (and hence well-connected) Japanese Christian teenage boys who left Japan in 1582 for an eight-year round-trip journey.¹⁵³ The spectacle consumed Europe. At least ninety publications appeared in various European languages between the years 1585 and 1593; forty-eight in the year 1585 alone (fig. 7).¹⁵⁴ The encounter is further fascinating since it occurred before the development of rigid physiognomic and chroma-based racial taxonomies for classifying Others. “The Japanese visitors tested the representational system of Europeans,” argues Bronwen Wilson, “because they fell between existing categories of identity.”¹⁵⁵

Fig. 7 Page from News from the Isle of Japan (Newe Zeyttung auß der Insel Japonien) (Augsburg: Manger, 1586). Broadside print, ink and pigment on paper, 31.4 × 38.1 cm. Photograph courtesy of the Main Library, Kyoto University.

This first-wave Japonisme was mirrored by a contemporaneous Lusimania in Japan, as the “Iberian irruption” led to the adoption of Iberian material culture—especially fashion—among Japanese elites: puffy trousers, rosaries, red wigs, prosthetic facial hair, red velvet, domed caps, and so forth.¹⁵⁶ It was a phenomenon that Ronald P. Toby terms “performing Portugal,” as the Japanese likewise struggled to make conceptual space for these new “trans-Kara” Others who arrived from beyond the limits of the previous framework of alterity.¹⁵⁷

Soon after this voyage, successive shogunal authorities would pursue a decades-long process to extirpate the religion in order to resist or, at least, delay interface with the emergent Eurocentric networks of capital. From the perspective of Europe, however, I would argue that it was the faux embassy, and not Japonisme, that marks the first “Japan boom.” It was through the political theatre of the Jesuits, and not the Russo-Japanese War, that Japan attained, for the first time in its history, an unusual degree of equity from the perspective of Europe—albeit in a highly circumscribed context.¹⁵⁸

In the seventeenth century, the history of Japanese exceptionalism bifurcates into domestic and foreign variants. As Toby argues, the expulsion of the Iberians led to a process whereby these most “radical others” were replaced by “alter others” (for example, those on the Korean peninsula, the Asian continent, or the Ryūkyūan archipelago).¹⁵⁹ The seventeenth century would also see the dawn in Japan of the rhetoric of kokutai—a notion of the national body politic—as well as the long-lived nativist scholarly discourse known as “National Learning” (Kokugaku).¹⁶⁰ The latter began as an aggressive form of aesthetic and etymological classicism that sought to recover a primordial unity of voice/word/world by eliminating Chinese elements in the Japanese language, yet it would later morph into an autoethnographic nativism that sought to distill the essence of the Japanese.¹⁶¹ The language-centric enterprise of Kokugaku prefigured and fueled the discourse on race that would come to the fore in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It survives to the present, moreover, in the popular genre known as nihonjinron.¹⁶² A common trope in such discourse is the claim that the special characteristics of Japanese culture (including its art) are owing to Japan’s unique climate and environment. Sakai traces this geodeterminist exceptionalism to Watsuji Testsurō’s Climate and Culture (Fūdo; serialized 1928–34), yet the notion that climate and art should be intrinsically linked has origins at least as far back as Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893) and Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768).¹⁶³ Hence art history was, one might argue, especially predisposed to play into such nativist rhetoric.

As for the foreign version of Japanese exceptionalism, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would see the rise in the European episteme of an Orientalism discourse constructed in order to compartmentalize and disparage the vast array of cultures lying east of Europe. This, too, had deep, even antique, origins. Yet in this context, as scholars such as Gayatri Spivak and Edward Said note, Japan again remained exceptional, ironically never quite fitting into the “Orient” construct.¹⁶⁴ This, argues Reed, was what allowed the second nineteenth-century boom of interest in Japan (second-wave Orientalism) to have such surprising novelty and power.¹⁶⁵ Doubtless, the sixteenth-century designation of Japan as the antipodal Other, the most extremely different and yet the most singularly similar, prefigured its nineteenth-century place in the Euro-American imaginary, well before the fine arts, the East, the discipline of art history, or even the category of modernity had come fully into being.

Postmodern to Postbubble

In order to bring this discussion to the present, it is necessary to move, in keeping with Karatani, away from the modern and through to the postmodern. Scholars remain divided, however, in how exactly to nuance modern Japan’s relationship to postmodernity’s emergence. Some might agree with J. Victor Koschmann that the transition to postmodernity brought the differences of Japanese modernity into high contrast: continuity but with greater difference.¹⁶⁶ A more radical view, such as that of Maruyama Masao (1914–1996), would be that the transition to the postmodern highlighted how Japan was never modern at all, at least in the Euro-American sense.¹⁶⁷ Taking yet another approach, John Clark sees postmodernity as a fundamental aspect of any peripheral modernity since it has no choice but to “quote” from modernity.¹⁶⁸ Still others break with the transitional framework altogether, proffering a recursive back-to-the-future historical structure. For instance, Masao Miyoshi (1928–2009) ventures, in caricature, that “the description of postmodernism began to fit the Japanese conditions remarkably well, as if the term were coined specifically for Japanese society. . . . [I]t is clearly not a periodic term: these same traits seem to have been around much too long—under different economic and political circumstances.”¹⁶⁹

Here we see the postmodern expressed as situated beyond the end of history, as if European historical thought had to decouple the notions of development and time before it could find space for Japan. Otabe Tanehisa echoes such sentiments: “Although postmodernism was adopted in Japan as the latest Western thought, it was, on the other hand, accepted as something compatible with premodern Japanese aspects.”¹⁷⁰ Karatani, too, perceives the danger of treating postmodernity as if it were somehow external to Japan. Instead, he argues that the postmodern dominance of “parody, pastiche, and collage” in Japan of the 1980s should be seen as a “rehabilitation of the nineteenth century.” He advocates for a more anachronic and transcendent approach: “What stubbornly resisted the ‘modernization’ of Japanese thought and literature in the twentieth century was not simply a premodern sensibility but a mode of thought which in some senses had already transcended the modern.”¹⁷¹

Karatani’s provocative formulation suggests that it was in Japan where first arose what might be called a “transcendental modernity,” a mode of contemporary engagement with polyvalent and diverse discourses, artifacts, and temporalities. It is a subversive yet somehow redemptive claim, as if Karatani is suggesting that the epistemic violence of Japanese modernity’s encounter with its North Atlantic counterpart precipitated the creation of a modernity that was resistant to the latter—one that persisted, grew, and flourished while waiting more than a century for North Atlantic modernity to arrive at a similar form. One might even intensify his claim and argue that the very possibility of global, nonmodern simultaneity first emerged in Japan.¹⁷² If G. W. F. Hegel held history to flow from East to West, here we have come full circle, with the beast of teleological thought biting its own tail.¹⁷³

Yet it was not only the temporal authority of “Western modernity” that Japan transcended but also its subtending geographical principle. In the words of Sakai, “The emergence of the . . . postmodern . . . testifies not so much to transition from one period to another as to the shift or transformation of our discourse as a result of which the supposed indisputability of the historico-geopolitical pairing (premodern and modern) has become untenable.”¹⁷⁴ Such tension between modernity and geography is an old trope in Japanese studies; it is a core concept in the celebrated “Theory of Leaving Asia” (Datsu-A Ron, 1885), which argues that Japan must “leave Asia” and join Euro-America.¹⁷⁵ Following the Pacific War, Takeuchi describes the arrested success of this effort: “Japan is the most Oriental of the nations in the Orient. In another sense, of course, Japan is the least Oriental of these nations.”¹⁷⁶ Japan is the most Asian, the farthest East, and yet simultaneously neither Western nor Eastern. It was placeless, itself a cardinal symptom of the postmodern condition.

The discourse on postmodernity in Japan arose in the context of a seemingly infinite economic expansion, yet no sooner had postmodernist discourse taken form than the bubble burst. The moment customarily marks the transition from the “postwar” Shōwa to the “postbubble” Heisei eras, yet such periodization obscures the importance of the 1980s as a pivotal inflection point in the history of Japan on the global stage. For the first time, in the heat of the bubble, it became ludicrous to speak of the relationship of Japan to the West as a relationship in which a non-Western nation was emulating a more advanced West. In fact, the relationship had begun to run the opposite direction, with Japan cast as the possessor of technologies of communication, infrastructure, managerial systems, economic models, and even visual culture that were light-years ahead.¹⁷⁷ Such thinking likewise played into the postwar (and contemporary) preoccupation with Japanese “spirituality,” which more often than not was shorthand for an ersatz form of Americanized Zen Buddhism.¹⁷⁸ This was a pendulum shift in the history of global modernity, the moment in which a nation from outside the North Atlantic achieved not equity, parity, or even standing but, instead, inversion.¹⁷⁹ From a Marxist standpoint, there is the irony that Japan’s unbelievable economic ascendency was subtended by a “bubble”; it was a market error that contributed to the deflation of Western exceptionalism on many levels, the aesthetic included. This happened, moreover, not at the level of high culture, as had been the case at the turn of the twentieth century, but at the level of more popular media at the turn of the twenty-first.¹⁸⁰ This is significant for if something like a “global visual culture” is to be taken seriously, then it is at the level of the mediascape and not the fine arts that one must look.¹⁸¹

Then again, such an inversion is complicated, as Karatani notes, by the uncomfortable fact that this is similar to the structure that nationalistic scholars presaged at the notorious 1942 “Overcoming Modernity” conference.¹⁸² Even in his famous postwar “Asia as Method” essay, Takeuchi concludes similarly: “The Orient must change the West in order to further elevate those universal values that the West itself produced.”¹⁸³ As Calichman puts it, “Europe . . . creates something that is inherently capable of transcending Europe,” a trope that stems from the French poet Paul Valéry (1871–1945).¹⁸⁴ But exactly what is this unnamable “something?” The most likely answer is technology, the word that lies at the core of Ricoeur’s early philosophy of globalization.¹⁸⁵ Indeed, in postwar and late-twentieth-century Japan, technology was tightly tied to both culture and the “national spirit.”¹⁸⁶ By foregrounding technology and visuality over text-based discourse, the agency of Japan in twentieth-century art is seen in a far different light.¹⁸⁷

Transmodernity

In terms of method, this study thus asks for recognition of one’s positionality within what Harootunian (seemingly echoing Ernst Bloch) termed the “noncontemporaneous contemporary,” the “historical present” apparent only after modernity’s eclipse.¹⁸⁸ Such an approach “offers the prospect to unspool or unwind a present filled with the mixed and entangled times of history and memory, showing itself, above all else, as a sort of noncontemporaneity or temporal discordance.”¹⁸⁹ Regardless of whether one follows his Marxist belief that capital itself creates dissonant polytemporalities and uneven historical stances, one cannot deny that every art object is divorced from the present by varying thicknesses of chronological depth. Each artifact has myriad aspects, frames, and contexts all layered upon one another. This does not give an artifact a unitary biography or a “life” so much as a constellation of identities. As Didi-Huberman argues, “The history of images is a history of objects that are temporally impure, complex, overdetermined . . . a history of polychronistic, heterochronistic, or anachronistic objects.”¹⁹⁰ Hence it is not only art’s ties to subjectivity but its perdurance that makes the archive so crucial. As such, the complex chronologies and temporalities inherent in the study of artifacts makes art history seem like the academic field most equipped—in both methodological and archival terms—to grapple with the possibility of telling the type of deimperialized, decolonized and dissonant history for which Harootunian advocates.¹⁹¹

The greatest barrier to this endeavor is the long-standing adherence to models that reinforce the notion that Japan was a latecomer to modernity, that modernization was coextensive with the adoption of North Atlantic cultural forms, and that “Western modernity” existed as a monolithic discourse. Global modernity is a stage that has not and never will arrive.¹⁹² Instead, I suggest we look to the “deep histories and local contingencies” and see Japanese modernity as multiplex, prefigured by preexisting elements and in dialogue with various other modernities.¹⁹³

That is not to say, however, that the present and the past share a common nonmodern ground, for scholarship on nonmodern art will have no choice but to transit the epistemic field of modernity. In that regard, the notion of transmodernity might serve as a useful analytic.¹⁹⁴ For like transiting celestial bodies, nonmodern artifacts must be seen against the bright and often obscuring ground of modernist discourse with its totalizing gravity.¹⁹⁵ The term also highlights not only the way in which “premodern” objects have physically transited or survived modernity itself but also the way in which nonmodern and modern objects move between modernities, temporalities, cultures, and discursive spaces. The transmodern is thus decentering and deuniversalizing, allowing for both anachronistic and cross-cultural analyses.

My ultimate thesis here is that nonmodern Japanese artifacts play a more prominent role in the global history of art than is commonly recognized. Even in modernity itself, the discourse of Japanese art was often dominated by nonmodern artifacts. Well into the twenty-first century, moreover, nonmodern objects continue to be treated as if contemporary, both in Japan and abroad. While this may have once been seen as an Orientalist error, a naive way of treating the entire archive as contemporary only because it was new to foreign eyes, the “noncontemporaneous contemporary” now actually seems to be the more rigorous form of engagement. It is perhaps in Japanese art history where the present “mainstream” interest in anachronism, in premodern/modern juxtaposition, and in cross-cultural comparison finds some of its earliest figurations.

Fig. 8 Bernard Gotfryd, Steve Jobs with the Apple Macintosh personal computer, 1984. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

Interlude

Media Archaeology

In a legendary press conference held on the afternoon of January 24, 1984, Steve Jobs invited the audience to watch what the first Mac computer could do (fig. 8). To the notes of the Chariots of Fire theme song, the first program to appear was MacPaint, opened to a file titled “Woodcut.” This file was the work of the graphic designer Susan Kare, who had executed the image based on a digital scan by Bill Atkinson of a Japanese print in Jobs’s personal collection: Woman Combing Her Hair by Hashiguchi Goyō (1880–1921).¹ “Woodcut” framed the new graphical interface as an outgrowth of centuries of development in print culture. By choosing a Japanese image, Apple likened its technology to the innovations of European art in the late nineteenth century, a context wherein the graphic arts of Japan had played an outsize role. The Mac’s graphical user interface was multiplanar, a feature it shared with both cell animation and Japanese ukiyo-e production.² Yet unlike Andō Hiroshige (1797–1858) or Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), Goyō was very much a modern artist. He was working in the context of a revival of Japanese woodblock printing known as shinhanga, a genre that itself was motivated, to no small degree, by more than half a century of zealous foreign consumption of ukiyo-e. Goyō, in turn, was looking to artists working more than a century before, such as Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806).

This episode bridges my first and second chapters since it demonstrates the importance of media theory to the history of art, a vein of scholarship that scrutinizes the power of mediation itself. The late twentieth century saw a sea change in the mediascape by which images (including art) and texts (including scholarship) are produced and consumed. This new mediascape, with its renewed investments in collapsing the text/image binary, in restoring interactivity, and in severing context has changed the way in which art history proceeds. These transformations, moreover, have made certain moments in unexpected places in the human archive—such as medieval Japan—suddenly more germane to the present mediascape than one might realize. In order to bring these transformations to bear on art-historical scholarship, the following chapter will explore the critical usefulness of the term interface as both a theoretical and historiographical paradigm for the future of art history.

It was not what was seen that was new, but the forms of seeing themselves.

—M. M. Bakhtin and P. N. Medvedev

Chapter 2

Interface

Between Visuality and Alterity

Archaeology of Media

All scholarship reflects its mediascape. This truism helps to help explain the predominance—to paint in the broadest of strokes—of planar surfaces in art history. The discipline developed alongside print capitalism, photography, and now screens, all of which were symptoms of the “hegemony of the visual” or the “scopic regime” that defined post-Enlightenment scholarship.¹ These familiar adages become tinged with a degree of nostalgia, however, when one considers that the turn of the past century was witness to a paradigm shift in the way in which images are conceived, consumed, and studied. This occurred initially under the banners of computers and hypertext—words that already sound somewhat outdated—before arriving at what is now simply called the digital. The purported dematerialization of the image returned scholarly attention to both the brute materiality of artifacts as well as their remediations.² Materiality has not been lost, of course, so much as transformed. Material-image unions are now distributed in time and space, manifested on demand by a vast array of apparatuses that generate, mediate, and manipulate such images. The navigation of these apparatuses has become second nature. Screens, interfaces, digitized texts, scrolling, and virtual reality have quickly developed into the primary metaphors for understanding visual and textual culture.³ More than any other humanistic field, art history has seen its purview vastly expanded and its mediascape radically transformed.

Transformations in the mediascape likewise alter the way in which past media, artifacts, and even discourses are understood. The central concern of the emergent strain of scholarship known as media archaeology is this very relationship between the extinct and extant mediascapes.⁴ Less a discipline than a “bundle of closely related approaches,” media archaeology weds Foucauldian archaeology with an array of theories drawn from critics such as Walter Benjamin, art historians such as Aby Warburg, and media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler. One might differentiate the approach from the eclipsed mode of “visual culture” by the former’s focus on the apparatus rather than the image. It is further differentiated from media studies by its interest in deep time (the premodern) and the global, non-Western archive.⁵

For an art historian of nonmodern, non-Western art, the appeal is readily apparent. Granted, media is no less difficult to define than art. “What media could or might be,” writes Siegfried Zielinski, “was defined so often in the course of the 1990s that it is no longer clear what this word, used as a concept, actually describes.”⁶ Yet the term’s capaciousness is beneficial since it provides a far more practicable shorthand than the circumlocution of “visual and material culture.” One aim of media archaeology is to provide an “alternative approach to the supremacy of media-historical narratives,” to tell the history of media such that it is not a developmental succession of advances; otherwise, one excludes all that does not directly lead to the present while treating historical media as merely impoverished or simplified versions of the modern.⁷ Technological determinism, teleology, presentism, and Eurocentrism all go hand in hand.

But my aim in this chapter is neither to perform a proper archaeology of Japanese media nor to simply adapt these theories to the Japanese context. Instead, I would like to propose a new theoretical framework for the study of art history that weds media archaeology, media theory, image theory, and image anthropology in order to allow scholars to discuss more rigorously the ways in which pictorial artifacts move between contexts, viewers, cultures, and histories. Central to this endeavor is a cardinal trope within media theory: the interface. The term holds promise for art-historical research for several reasons. At the most fundamental level, it unites the processes of viewing with the processes of mental and physical interaction. That is, it links visuality with performativity. The term also holds promise as a framework for discussing the movement of visual and plastic artifacts as they travel between cultural and temporal contexts. For example, in place of modernization theory, one might speak of the interface between North Atlantic and Japanese modernities, as objects, agents, and discourse moved between the two worlds, with varying degrees of permeability and legibility. Hence adumbrated here is an interface model of global modernity, one that would allow scholars to better navigate the conceptual firewall that divides the artifacts of the nonmodern and non-Western from current humanistic, theoretical, and media discourses. Such an interface model of global modernity would ask us to focus on the contact points, the objects, the translators, and the media that constitute and negotiate the interface between visual worlds. It is a history not only of how artifacts, styles, or motifs move or flow—appropriation and influence—but of how visualities themselves meet. Such an approach would thus foreground the visual in ways that are sometimes wanting in more text-based frameworks. Moreover, it is a history in which Japan would figure centrally since it was through analysis of the history of Japanese art that art historians began to see a paradigm that would allow for the establishment of a more epistemically diverse discourse of art history, with attention given to the Other’s ways of seeing and not only absconding with the Other’s things.

The metaphorical shift might seem cosmetic, but one must not underestimate the power of metaphor to structure historiography.⁸ Interface is a more critically engaged alternative to the repertory of metaphors that currently prevail in art history. By way of a cursory inventory, one might sort them into the following categories: biography (birth, incipient, flourish, decadence, social life of things), liquidity (influence, cross-current, mainstream), wave dynamics (surge, crest, fall), horticulture (transplantation, rhizome, graft, cross-fertilization), genetics (hybridity, derivativeness, family resemblance), or linguistics (idioms, pidgins, heteroglossia, vernacular).⁹ Used frequently in an inconsistent yet productive bricolage, these metaphors all bring entailments as to the way in which artifacts are grounded to their point of origin, the telos of change, and the engine of history itself. Yet none evoke the fundamental alterity at the core of artifactual experience, the fact that one faces a manufactured object or marked surface. By contrast, interface foregrounds encounter, either the encounter of a person with a machine or the more literal understanding of the term as a meeting of two faces. In this regard, it seems interface—a word with a chronology that runs precisely parallel to the rise of Japanese art history—is perhaps polysemous enough to encompass several of the most important aspects of the ways in which diverse non-Western visualities have figured in the construction of twenty-first-century vision.

Art and Interface

Despite its contemporary ring, the term interface is far from new. Once a rather technical designation, it became commonplace in the late twentieth century in the context of the human/computer interface, a concept Lev Manovich defined as “the ways in which the user interacts with a computer.”¹⁰ Others went further, casting interface as “a dynamic space of relations” or as “a kind of translator, mediating between the two parties, making one sensible to the other.”¹¹ According to this latter framework, there are two active agents (human and object), with interface defined as the “mediating environment that makes the experience, ‘a critical zone that constitutes a user experience.’”¹² By the turn of the last century, however, human/computer interface was no longer the primary definition: “As distribution of all forms of culture becomes computer-based,” concedes Manovich, “we are increasingly ‘interfacing’ to predominantly cultural data—texts, photographs, films, music, virtual environments. In short, we are no longer interfacing to a computer but to culture encoded in digital form.”¹³ This realization led him to proffer the concept of a “cultural interface,” a new universal language that was to take its place alongside cinema and the printed word as one of three fundamental modalities for the transmission and uptake of cultural phenomena.¹⁴ Some two decades later, it seems that interface has now subsumed the other two pillars, as the term has grown to encompass almost any mediated experience.

The vast proliferation of the term interface in the twenty-first century—in both concrete and discursive uses—makes its precise definition all the more challenging. In a 2014 study, Branden Hookway offers a variety of definitions, from the rather narrow—“a form of relating to technology”—to a conceptualization that would encompass all regulated systems of interaction.¹⁵ Johanna Drucker, meanwhile, defines the term in more humanistic terms, framing the graphical interface within the discourse of critical theory in order to highlight its iterative function, the way in which it “functions as the site of understanding” as an “enunciative system” or as a “mediating, transacting, productive space” that produces knowledge rather than represents it.¹⁶

To an art historian, however, these definitions begin to sound remarkably like the phenomenon of artifactual perception in art history, whereby a unified system of visuality encounters an entity (like the artifact or pictorial surface) such that a “form of relation” (like the image) manifests.¹⁷ In fact, for several decades, media theory and art history have been working in parallel on strikingly similar phenomena. I propose that foregrounding the term interface, rather than hewing to the customary art-historical vocabulary, allows one to respect “comparative ontologies,” to see the operation of images and artifacts outside of the usual art-historical conceptual frameworks.¹⁸

Although the prevailing understanding of interface has its origins in twentieth-century cockpit simulators, the term is actually much older.¹⁹ The British scientist James Thomson (1822–1892) coined it in 1869 to designate the liminal “dividing surface” between two fluids in the context of his research into fluid dynamics (fig. 9).²⁰ A more developed definition appears in the writings of Thomson’s nephew, James Thomson Bottomley (1845–1926), who in his Hydrostatics of 1882 provided the following gloss: “The term interface denotes a face of separation, plane or curved, between two contiguous portions of the same substance.”²¹

Fig. 9 Diagram of the interface from James Thomson, “Notes and Queries—On Gases, Liquids, Fluids,” in Collected Papers in Physics and Engineering by James Thomson, D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S., ed. Sir Joseph Larmor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 65.

The term’s etymology is compelling in that it simultaneously suggests the meeting of two faces or surfaces (lit. inter + faces) as well as the space between them.²² Whereas one might be inclined to see interface as a dialogical relationship between two differences, Bottomley’s phrasing introduces a third agent by lending faciality to the encounter itself. As Hookway puts it, the interface is thus “defined according to its betweenness, its amongness, and its duration-within.”²³ One is reminded of the architect Isozaki Arata’s famed concept of ma (lit. interval)—a type of Bakhtinian chronotope or “space-time” that was said to be a defining feature of the Japanese episteme.²⁴ Either way, there is an inherent tension in the term, depending on whether one stresses the surfaces or the interval, the nodes or the network, the “between faces” or “a facing between.”²⁵ Definitions aside, the term’s origins are perfectly contemporaneous with the development of modern art history. In fact, interface predates iconology.

Faciality

The interplay between face and surface is a common trope in media theory. Take, for instance, Drucker, who asserts that the “face of the screen, its very facingness, is a dramatic embodiment of subject positionality.”²⁶ In medieval Japan, however, these two concepts were not necessarily so clearly distinguished. Whereas contemporary Japanese distinguishes between the face (ganmen) and the surface (hyōmen), the semantic fields bleed into each other once one interrogates the history of the second character in each binome (-men or omote). By the mid-Heian period, face and surface were designated by this same word (omote) and at least as far back as the thirteenth century, the same term was explicitly used to describe the contents of documents, meaning the faciality of the manuscript page is more than a superficial point.²⁷ Omote also designates the front in contradistinction to the ura or backside; this binary also figures prominently in Japanese discourse in a variety of senses such as surface/depth, public/private, apparent/hidden, performative/sincere. Hence if one takes a longer historical view and moves outside European languages, the semantic field of surface becomes even more complex and overdetermined.

Within East Asia, such media faciality extends beyond manuscripts to other pictorial media, chief among them standing or folding screens.²⁸ As Wu Hung prominently reveals, these standing surfaces served numerous functions: to prevent surreptitious glances, to steer the gaze, and to establish symbolic relationships.²⁹ Yet when positioned behind a sitter, they even operated as prosthetic technologies to amplify faciality.³⁰ As such, my use of the term interface in the context of premodern Japanese manuscript culture is not meant to project a contemporary lens onto the historical work; rather, the point is to stress that the faciality of pictorial surfaces was a significant feature of the medieval Japanese mediascape. This makes medieval Japanese manuscript culture more germane to present theoretical concerns than one might realize.

Once one broaches the issue of faciality, alterity is a necessary entailment.³¹ Although Thomson did not pursue such metaphorical extensions, alterity nevertheless haunts his text. For instance, when he speaks of the need to separate “the region of flow with important energy of motion from the region which may be regarded as statical, or as devoid of important energy of motion,” it is difficult not to see how such images and metaphors might be problematically extended to describe his moment, with the colonized regions deemed “static” and lacking the purported dynamism of the mainline flow of North Atlantic modernity.³²

Whereas late nineteenth and early twentieth-century art historians may not have employed the term interface as an art-historical metaphor, their writings nevertheless abound with metaphors drawn from fluid dynamics.³³ Take, for instance, the following by the politician and diplomat Nitobe Inazō (1862–1933), writing in English on the eve of the Pacific War:

Japan is more than herself. She is Asia and Europe in one. As two ocean currents, the one flowing from the north and the other from the south, wash and meet at her shores, and furnish her with wealth of sea products, so do two cultural streams, the occidental and the oriental, run in her solo, now uniting and now separating but always enriching its contents with their several tributes. Her past shows that Japan is the place where exotic culture finds easy lodgment, and her present promise that in the future she will play still more the rôle of a mediator between the conflicting cultures of the East and West. So to be is her mission in universal history and her contribution to mankind.³⁴

This passage appears on first page of his “Two Exotic Currents in Japanese Civilization,” the opening chapter to Western Influences in Modern Japan, a volume he edited near the end of his life. One hears clear echoes here of Okakura, who had proffered at the turn of the twentieth century that Asia represented a unified, metaphysical East in opposition to a materialist West.³⁵ Although patently misconceived, the logic was politic. It capitalized on the dialectical habits of European philosophy by reifying a bad-faith East/West binary in dire need of a synthesis, one that, as Nitobe passionately elucidates—by choosing his currents deliberately—only Japan might provide.³⁶

This was possible due to an enduring historiographical paradigm in Japan that casts the continental cultures to Japan’s west as “the East” (tōyō), a mythical lineage of cultural precedents that found their teleological end in Japan, which is both part of the East and removed from it.³⁷ Modern Japan thereby had “two parents,” China and the West, and could thus trace its origins in two directions.³⁸ One might imagine a sort of dual translatio imperii, whereby Eastern history was moving eastward and Western history westward, both culminating in Japan.³⁹ Japan was thus cast in the exact role of the interface, as the agent that both divides and mediates the encounter.

Such synthetic rhetoric was prevalent in early twentieth-century Euro-America, as well.⁴⁰ “This modern cultural divide,” argues Volk, “was premised upon the assumed coexistence of two mutually independent, though at first glance contradictory, conditions: universality and alterity.”⁴¹ Such complementarity dissolved difference by enforcing polar opposition. The East is always simply a ruse, a foil of North Atlantic modernity as its fantasy Other, the embodiment of the element of alterity with which it wishes to interface. Moreover, note how much of humanity is excluded from this purportedly “universal” East/West dialectic. It is a meretriciously simple framework designed to disguise all the more contentious and turbulent interfaces of both Japanese and North Atlantic modernities.

Far less commonly noted is the presence of Japan, also couched in fluid dynamic metaphors, in contemporaneous art-historical writing on European art. Take, for instance, the influential Vienna School scholar Franz Wickhoff (1853–1909). In his landmark 1895 analysis of the birth of narrative painting in the early Christian Vienna Genesis manuscript, the unlikely figure of Japan appears at several key moments. According to Wickhoff, humanity was in possession of only two histories of art—one Western, via Egypt and Greece; the other “East Asiatic.” He senses, moreover, that it is Japan that is bringing the two histories into concert: “The highest expression of this East-Asiatic style, as we have it in Japanese painting, began in the present day to tell on European art, thus bringing into one the two streams of influence, from Europe and from Eastern Asia, the beginnings of which were separated by an interval of two thousand years.”⁴² It is a curious assertion to make in a text that otherwise hews close to a medieval Christian manuscript. To parse his metaphors, Japanese and European art history are not only compatible but of the same liquid substance, one that, despite two millennia of separation, had the alluvial capacity to recombine as one. Crucially, Japanese art is posited as an equal, rival tradition, not a curiosity.

Later, in a surprising aside, Wickhoff finds it necessary to hedge when praising the “utmost refinement of . . . colour-sense” in European art by positing Japanese painters as Europe’s only rival in this capacity.⁴³ Yet again, when referencing the tenth-century Joshua Scroll, he makes the unexpected observation that “the execution [of the painting], reminds us, like so many other tendencies of Roman Imperial art, of the Japanese; it is like an enlarged mirror reflection of the diminutive works of these great artists.”⁴⁴ Contemporary brows furrow at the comparison, but it is telling that as early as the 1890s, Japanese art was already so familiar to Wickhoff (and presumably his interlocutors and readership) that he might allude to it rather casually in order to elucidate a point about European medieval works. Wickhoff even notes that “the growth of modern painting during the last thirty years cannot be understood without taking Japanese influence into account. The ‘Plein Air’ method and ‘Impressionism’ owe as much to the traditions of Eastern Asia as to fresh invention.”⁴⁵

Wickhoff saw how Europe’s exposure to Japanese art was changing the way in which Europe understood its own historical art.⁴⁶ Three years later, Wickhoff would rehash some of these points in his essay “On the Historical Unity of the Entire Development of Art,” wherein he shifts to an aggressively Hellenocentric model, resolving his anxieties surrounding Japanese art by noting that Japanese art must draw from a Greek source; Europe was, in Matthew Rampley’s words, “merely returning to its own roots, via a detour through China and Japan.”⁴⁷ Hence here we see again the chronopolitics of the previous chapter.

From Wickhoff’s perspective in Vienna, it was not so much Japan but the European fascination with Japan that was bringing the “two streams” together again. He conflates appropriation and synthesis, giving all agency to Europeans. In actuality, however, the place where the two streams met most turbulently was not in Europe but in Japan itself. In this confluence, moreover, if Japan is to represent the apogee of the East, its Western complement is not only Europe but the likewise then-provincial United States. The two Pacific nations each saw themselves as somehow exceptional, and each aspired to overcome their subaltern status in relationship to an offshore “source” culture.⁴⁸ Karatani suggests the need to juxtapose the two “island countries” of Japan in the Far East and the United States in the Far West since both reciprocally cast themselves as “museums” of their respective geographical poles.⁴⁹

The Many Surfaces of Modern Japan

The historiographical tendency to privilege Japan’s encounter with Euro-America (party fueled by the premodern/modern binary) overshadows the turbulence along Japan’s many other interfaces.⁵⁰ Within the Japanese Empire, colonial subjects were introduced to many modern artifacts, power structures, commodities, and discourses via Japan, hence such “Western” concepts and discourses were doubly marked.⁵¹ Even earlier, when the Joseon dynasty of Korea sent emissaries to Japan in 1881 to study modernity, it was the Japanese iteration they studied.⁵² Japanese scholars were also active at linguistic interfaces, translating and adapting the Euro-American episteme into Chinese characters, the pseudo–lingua franca of East Asia—including, of course, the terms of art history.⁵³ Far outside Japan’s empire, moreover, Japanese modernity served as an important model for other nations seeking to construct a modern nation outside the colonial networks of the European major powers.⁵⁴ An East/West binary is reductive to the point of absurdity.

At present, while “mainstream” art history is still struggling to account more cogently for historical forms of artifice and vision foreign to it, these efforts have long been fundamental to Japanese art history, itself a field of discourse that had no choice but to find ways to accommodate both the forms of seeing in the mainstream canon as well as those found in the Japanese historical archive. As Satō famously demonstrates, the epistemic violence of Japan’s encounter with Euro-America resulted in a ramified and fine-grained conceptual vocabulary for discussing visual artifacts.⁵⁵ Japanese art history, as a discourse, not only maintains commensurability with the prevailing conceptual frameworks of art history but also preserves its own (inevitably altered) forms of discourse and terminology. For example, the single English term image has a variety of possible Japanese translations (ga, zu, e, zō, miei, omokage, and so forth), all of which remain active and critically meaningful.

Japonisme as Interface

Whereas Japanese art is often treated as if it were but one of many marginalized non-Western subfields, it was only through a sustained and systematic process of “sanctioned ignorance” (to borrow Spivak’s term) that Euro-American modernity managed to expunge the magnitude and scale of its debts to Japan.⁵⁶ To achieve this illusion, one quarantines the “influence” of Japan within the narrow bounds of a “craze” known as Japonisme, a minor element within the grand and noble arc of modern art—or, at best, a quick appropriative detour before returning to mainline narratives of heroic development.⁵⁷ Note the biased vocabulary: Japonisme is a fever or a craze versus Euro-American art movements. The aims of such marginalization are transparent: to disenfranchise the subaltern tradition and defend against challenges to the creative originality of North Atlantic moderns.

One sees this clearly in Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s famous diagram from the cover of Cubism and Abstract Art, wherein Japanese art figures as the most distant influence possible, with prints alone impacting just fauvism and synthetism directly (fig. 10). Gallingly, neo-Impressionism, abstract expressionism, de Stijl, Dada, modern architecture, cubism, and even Van Gogh are divorced from any direct interface with Japanese art. Consider as well Barr’s earlier teleological torpedo, where nonmodern non-Western art had no place in the ordnance of modernity itself (fig. 11); yet curiously “non-European prototypes and sources” were half of the propulsion system driving its progress. In fact, this is perhaps the most accurate aspect of the torpedo, in that nonmodern art—Japanese included—was a timeless (outside the teleological area of the diagram) and constant aspect of modern art.⁵⁸ By this diagram, nonmodern and non-Western art were both the interface and the very engine of modern Euro-American art.

Although Japonisme is often treated as a local manifestation of the larger historical narratives of Orientalism and primitivism, the phenomenon far exceeds this.⁵⁹ Granted, covert and overt appropriation were defining features of North Atlantic modernity across all of its interfaces, but the interface with Japan was, in magnitude and substance, distinct. As Osterhammel argues, Japonisme represented something new in the history art: “Art from outside Europe was no longer used for decoration or costumes; . . . [it] gave answers to problems with which artists in the forefront of European modernism were then wresting; they observed its independent achievement and realized the close affinities with their own efforts.”⁶⁰ Weisberg asserts similarly, “None had the all-encompassing impact that Japonisme had on Western art and culture and none lasted as long.”⁶¹ Nor is Japonisme limited to the fine arts; its influence was felt in music, theater, industrial design, and literature. Even outside the arts, as Reed demonstrates, the interface with Japan “upended Victorian self-confidence through challenges to fundamental Western ideas about the nature of representation, truth, and civilization itself.”⁶²

The problem is partly archival. The artifactual vehicles of artistic Japonisme are categorized within genres often overlooked in the history of art: metalwork, lacquer, fans, illustrated books, porcelain, and textiles. To juxtapose a Vincent van Gogh canvas and a Hiroshige print gives a false sense of direct transmission when multiple remediations were often involved. Moreover, alongside Japanese historical and modern artifacts, one must not forget the vast quantity of export art. This is not to mention the myriad artifacts made outside Japan that were emulative of a Japonesque style.⁶³ Yet even when the artifacts in question were Japanese—perhaps an illustrated book or single xylographic print—the fantastical and historical images were often consumed abroad as if they were contemporary ethnographic documents.⁶⁴

Fig. 10 Dust jacket with chart prepared by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., of the exhibition catalogue, Cubism and Abstract Art, by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., 1936. Offset, printed in color; 25.7 × 19.7 cm. The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York.

Fig. 11 “‘Torpedo’ Diagram of Ideal Permanent Collection,” page 3a from the second draft of the report, “The Permanent Collection,” November 1933. Hand-drawn pencil diagram on typed page, 29.2 × 20.3 cm. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Papers, II.C.16. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York.

Another part of the problem is chronology since the interface with Japanese art is not coextensive with the historical time frame of Japonisme. Not only was the nineteenth-century engagement with Japan prefigured by several centuries of exchange, but even the chronology of Japonisme proper is far too narrow.⁶⁵ By the time Phillipe Burty coined the term in 1872 (the exact same year “art” [bijutsu] was coined in Japan), images of Japan had circulated in the popular press in France for some four decades.⁶⁶ As early as 1837, one might visit the Japanese Museum (Japansch Museum), a state-owned museum in Leiden dedicated entirely to Japanese arts.⁶⁷ Moreover, long after Japonisme’s purported end in the late nineteenth century, the phenomenon persisted as a perennial and traveling mode of engagement, as various global centers at various times found themselves enthralled with objects that seemed Japanese.⁶⁸ As Harri Kalha asks: “Where did Japonisme end—or did it ever?”⁶⁹ Indeed, the appropriation of Japanese visuality has been a constant feature of global visual culture from the advent of modernity until well after its end.

The seemingly constant foreign engagement with Japanese nonmodern visuality put modern (and even contemporary) Japanese artists in an insidious double bind, according to which “avant-garde, anti-traditionalist artworks in Japan appeared as mere mimicry in the West, where conversely, art that returned to Japanese traditionalism instead was considered innovative.”⁷⁰ This is, for Karatani, the “fundamental contradiction” of Japanese modern art.⁷¹ One hears therein echoes of Ricoeur’s query: “How to become modern and to return to sources; how to revive an old, dormant civilization and take part in universal civilization.”⁷² Yet in the colonialists’ racist eyes, Ricoeur’s paradox was not meant to be solved since it was positionality—one’s race, class, and geographical location—that partially determined the modernity of a given form, not the form itself. At many periods in the past century and a half, Japanese artists have been forced to suffer the indignity of seeing the trace of their own artistic tradition within the discourse on Euro-American modernity from which they were often excluded.

Yet the situation was not always so pessimistic. Volk argues that for early twentieth-century Japanese artists, “European Japonisme was proof that, after many centuries, in the modern period the arts of the East and the West had at long last begun to converge.”⁷³ Even within this narrative, however, it is the modern treatment of nonmodern Japanese art that substantiates the Eastern current of art that might converge. Or, as Volk puts it, it was “through the lens of European modernism” that Japanese and North Atlantic artists turned to the premodern Japanese archive.⁷⁴ Euro-American agents remained in charge.

To treat Japonisme as if it were coextensive with the role of Japanese art in modernity is misguided since the “influence” of Japanese prints on the Impressionists is a red herring that distracts from the fact that the interface with Japanese art has been a continuous, subtending, and inveterate feature of North Atlantic visuality for nearly two centuries. As Barr’s torpedo correctly demonstrates—unintentionally, one imagines—the place of Japanese art in modernity simply could not be articulated since it was too omnipresent, pervasive, and complex to fit within his reductive teleological paradigm.

Visuality, Subjectivity, and Intersectionality

One of the most consequential aspects of the history of Japanese art in modernity is the way in which those outside Japan came to see according to Japanese visuality. Beyond the familiar elements of palette, flatness, perspective, and style is the problem of aesthetics in a far deeper sense of the word: aesthesis, a way of seeing the world itself.⁷⁵ Take the example of Claude Monet (1840–1926). Not only had he constructed his own Japonesque simulacrum at Giverny, but when visiting Norway in 1895, he remarked that he felt as if he were seeing Japan.⁷⁶ He saw the Norse village of Sandvikan as a Japanese village and Mount Kolsås as Mount Fuji.⁷⁷ Van Gogh likewise saw Arles as Japan and explicitly spoke of learning to see the world “with an eye more Japanese.”⁷⁸ Likewise, “if you desire to see a Japanese effect,” quipped Wilde, do not travel to Japan but “stay at home and steep yourself in the work of certain Japanese artists.”⁷⁹ Once one’s eyes had “absorbed the spirit of their style, and caught the imaginative manner of vision,” Wilde suggested one simply walk around to see the “Japanese effect” wherever one looked. These examples were not isolated occurrences. Figures as varied as Marcel Proust, James McNeill Whistler, and Roger Fry all spoke of the way in which Japanese visual culture provided a method to adjust one’s perceptual apparatus.⁸⁰

The familiar tropes of decorativeness and formal influence mask Japanese art’s far more profound impacts. For instance, Reed demonstrates how the European interest in Japan extended beyond visuality to subjectivity since “Japan” created a discursive space of alterity for the construction of queer identities.⁸¹ He thus expands upon Kalha’s observation that “Japonisme—just like gender, with which it symbolically overlapped—was a form of active ‘queering,’ not just passive imitation.”⁸² This escape was condoned because Japan represented a coeval cultural sphere, one with a commensurate rather than a subaltern relationship to Europe—it was a mirror, shadow, or a “radical elsewhere.”⁸³

The illusion that Japonisme was only relevant in the context of French modern painting circumscribes the phenomenon as somehow intrinsically Parisian, when Paris was far from the only significant interface.⁸⁴ Despite its French name, Japonisme’s origins lie just as much in New England, Britain, and the Netherlands as in France.⁸⁵ Moreover, recent research has revealed that the Nordics, Central Europe, and Southern Europe were all sites of intense, long-standing, and profound engagement with Japanese art.⁸⁶ Yet as Toshio Watanabe argues, even Europe is too narrow; scholarship needs to move outside the realm of “the taste of affluent white Euro-American people” to address Japonisme’s more geographically and socially diverse aspects.⁸⁷

The legacy of such Francocentrism is clearly visible in the historiography of Japanese art. For instance, scholars often herald Louis Gonse’s L’art japonais of 1883 as the origin of Japanese art history in European languages. Seldom cited, however, are the Englishman William Anderson’s texts of 1886, the Dane Karl Madsen’s Japansk Malerkunst of 1885, or the German Hans Paul Bernhard Gierke’s “Japanische Malerei” of 1883.⁸⁸

Yet it is not only the geographical expanse of Japanese art’s interface that needs reevaluation but also the depth of its impact. For instance, in the newly independent countries of Norway and Finland, as well as in the various nations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Japanese art provided an important model for the creation of a modern artistic identity.⁸⁹ As Nils Ohlson notes, Japan demonstrated an example of a modern nation that had found a way to reconcile “tradition” and “modernity,” to maintain the union of art and craft, and to assert a modernity that was in opposition to the British and French idiolects.⁹⁰ The long-standing “parallelism” between Nordic and Japanese design—so often treated as an amusing coincidence—arguably traces its origins to this very interface.⁹¹ Likewise, Japanesque or Orientalist elements in Central and Eastern European art can be traced back to a similar juncture.⁹² For Central and Eastern Europe, argues Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik, “both the rediscovered East and the newly discovered Japan provided a model to identify and construct not only a national style but also a modern nation.”⁹³ Japanese art history thus represented a paradigm of how an industrializing nation peripheral to the handful of major nineteenth-century major powers might fashion an alternative national identity.⁹⁴ It was thus, in part, a sort of emulative nationalism—not only aesthetics and exoticism—that fueled the modern interest in Japan. Again, here was Japanese art “modernizing” the art and visuality of purportedly Western nations.

As these examples underscore, the West was no monolith.⁹⁵ Heterochrony applied within Europe just as well. Many Western nations soon lagged behind Japan in terms of “modernization.” For the countries of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, especially, there is an additional complication since they identified less as Western and more as a bridge or a border zone between East and West.⁹⁶ The Austro-Hungarian Empire was but one year older than the Meiji government; it was the last European power to negotiate treaties with Japan, only finalizing the agreement in 1872.⁹⁷ When the Japanese exhibition opened at the World’s Fair in Vienna the following year, the audience and venue were perhaps less invested in East/West binaries than were later writers such as Okakura.

As these brief examples indicate, Japonisme masks an interface that was far more pervasive and consequential than is commonly acknowledged. In some instances, it was intersectionality, and not primitivism, Orientalism, or exoticism that explains the ongoing prevalence of Japanese art in the creation of global modernity. Rather than partition out discrete moments of artistic engagement (for example, Impressionism, postimpressionism, art nouveau, the Vienna Secession, minimalism, abstract expressionism, performance art, and others), it makes far more historiographical sense to treat these visual expressions as a series of phenomena articulated along a constant interface. The formalist borrowings of a generation of French painters are but a footnote in the history of the enormous role Japan played in shaping the imagescapes, subjectivities, and national identities of global modernity. Japonisme does not equate with Japanese art in modernity. The latter has long been subsumed under the former, which has been of disservice to our understanding of both.

Cryptomnesia

In each episode of appropriation from Japan, as soon as one was far enough removed from the source, origins were forgotten.⁹⁸ By the early twentieth century, writes Kalha, “contemporaries were hardly even aware of ‘Japan’ anymore—it had become an organic part of the modern aesthetic.”⁹⁹ In this regard, the artist, curator, and educator Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) provides a particularly illuminating case. Dow was the author of the most influential modern manual of draftsmanship, Composition (1899), which went through some twenty editions before World War II.¹⁰⁰ Dow’s pedagogy was explicit in its aim to synthesize the European perspectival habits with Japanese principles of pictorial composition. In fact, “synthesis” was the central word on the book’s frontispiece.¹⁰¹ Page by page, Dow’s book taught one how to appropriate (what he understood to be) Japanese mark making and compositional principles, chief among them Fenollosa’s trumpeted Japanese notion of nōtan (tonality).¹⁰² Anticipating André Malraux’s imaginary museum by more than half a century, the text taught its students to find commonality through provocative juxtapositions.¹⁰³ Composition was the culmination of nearly a decade of Dow’s dedication to studying Japanese art—collecting it, making emulative works, carving his own woodblock prints, teaching courses, and publishing on the advantages of Japanese art for American modernism.¹⁰⁴ Far from a dilettante, he was in 1897 appointed curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the most important collection of Japanese art outside Japan.¹⁰⁵

Dow’s influence on arts and crafts, painting, and even modern photography in the United States is remarkable.¹⁰⁶ Following Composition, which became a bible for art education, his influence in the worlds of art history and art education would only increase.¹⁰⁷ In Composition, Dow was forthright in his desire to insert aspects of Japanese visuality into the fundamental basis of modern pictoriality, and he succeeded. Subject to theme, palette to line, format to composition—the impact of Japanese art on North Atlantic modernity thereafter was a victim of its own prevalence, becoming so common as to be unrecognizably Japanese. In the words of Joseph Masheck, “Probably no other book has influenced more people, especially Americans, to think in a modern way about art.”¹⁰⁸

Taking a longer view, however, it seems clear that Composition merely accelerated a process long underway. For instance, it was only when a young Dow—having returned from his French academy training—first saw Hokusai prints that he realized just how deeply appropriative painters such as Whistler had been.¹⁰⁹ To appropriate an object or motif was one thing; to appropriate visuality on such a massive scale is quite another. Needless to say, the interface between Japanese and North Atlantic visualities is more circular and complex than convergence, synthesis, or even influence suggests. Hence the origins of the circuitous logic by which one might retroactively see Hiroshige’s prints as “cinematic.”¹¹⁰

Far more trumpeted than Dow in the history of modern art education is the role of the Bauhaus (1919–33). Eurocentric historiography often frames the Bauhaus as the wellspring of modern design pedagogy, from which it spread to the rest of global modernity, including Japan. More recent scholarship, however, has revealed the debt that the Bauhaus and especially Johannes Itten (1888–1967) owed to Japanese nonmodern art and material culture.¹¹¹ Particularly striking is experience of Yamawaki Michiko (1910–2000), who studied at the Bauhaus Dessau from 1930 to 1932; her impression of the Bauhaus was that it seemed consonant with the world of tea practice (Chanoyu), a homology so powerful she would author a monograph on the theme.¹¹² As we will discover in chapter 6, the point is not that the Bauhaus was derivative of Japanese aesthetics or that it was heir to Japonisme, but that many of the hallmark features of North Atlantic modern art (to include styles, design, and tastes) were not as modern, innovative, or exclusively European as they are sometimes made out to be. The final aspect of Japonisme deserving scrutiny is its chronological focus on relatively recent works: woodblock prints, lacquers, ceramics, export art, and so on. Such a focus on early modern artifacts masks the role of more antique works. For instance, note the two exhibitions foregrounded in the previous chapter: the retrospective exhibition at the 1900 Paris Exposition and the nearly simultaneous sixth exhibition of the Vienna Secession, with which I began this book. The former has long overshadowed the latter, yet from the perspective of the present, the Vienna exhibition seems somewhat more germane. It featured nearly seven hundred Japanese items—including prints, Buddhist icons, crafts, and paintings—all displayed in Joseph Maria Olbrich’s temple to modern art.¹¹³ This was not a “contest of nations” context, nor were etic distinctions made between craft and “fine arts.” Moreover, the purpose of the event was not to promote Japanese industry nor to advocate for artistic standing (at least from a governmental perspective). This was a group of Europeans exhibiting a historical survey of Japanese art because they themselves wished to advance the recognition of Japanese art as a historical, parallel, and equal aesthetic lineage.

Regarding this exhibition, the Working Committee of the Secession wrote: “For the various efforts of modern art we need the bridge that leads to understanding. May our exhibition be seen in this light.”¹¹⁴ Such rhetoric supports the apostate notion, obliquely espoused by Wickhoff, that Japan was partly enabling European artistic modernity’s very emergence. It was not contemporary work but the long history of Japanese art that served as the sought-after bridge. By presenting these works within the unimpeachably modern frame of the Secession Building and as an integral iteration of the Secession’s serialized exhibitions, it was clear that the Japanese artworks were being seen as modern—or, at least, as historical and modern at once. I would even argue that throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Japan’s most powerful contemporary art had sometimes been made many centuries before. Whenever a tea bowl is exhibited as minimalist, a Zen calligraphic brushwork likened to action painting, or a Buddhist sculpture chosen to adorn a brutalist room, we see these same temporal folds in action.

The results of this process were double-edged. For instance, Volk highlights the disheartening process whereby North Atlantic Japonisme was internalized by Japanese artists via “reverse Japonisme,” according to which “the native Self, conceived in opposition to the Western Other, becomes at the same time Other to itself.”¹¹⁵ In a similar vein, nineteenth-century export art (as with the export art of earlier centuries) resembled foreign-made japonaiserie such that authenticity itself became a fraught notion.¹¹⁶ Rather than an idealistic nineteenth-century synthesis, one encounters alienation and disenfranchisement since Japan was so rarely given credit for the vast magnitude of modern Euro-American art’s appropriation.¹¹⁷ Despite the prominence of this process in the visual and textual archives, the prevailing history of Euro-American modern art largely ignores such appropriation. The frameworks of primitivism and the avant-garde enforce chronological exclusion while the reductive rhetoric of European centers and colonial peripheries enforces the geographical divide. The agency of Japan is thereby completely expunged from the narrative of modern art, relegated instead to the narrow moment of Japonisme, when Japan was instead a subtending, coextensive, and determining element of North Atlantic modernity itself.

Image as Interface

Beyond historiography, the next aspect of interface to consider is more familiar: its use to describe one’s embodied relationship to an object or apparatus. As noted above, the way in which media theorists discuss interface often sounds remarkably similar to the way in which art historians discuss viewing artifacts. This parallel is all the more acute given that the twenty-first century has seen the dawn of what Manovich prophesied as the “society of the screen,” a world in which one seems to be interfacing ceaselessly with image-bearing surfaces.¹¹⁸ Strictly speaking, however, such “images” are but ephemeral performances of code, literally woven with imperceptible speed into fine-grained grids of light.¹¹⁹ Yet as Nigel Thrift cautions, one should not let the trumpeted novelty of the “screenic sensorium”—this new “carapace” of “informational surfaces”—blind one from rigorously scrutinizing the present mediascape’s relationship to its historical analogues.¹²⁰

Indeed, early media theorists were quick to note the parallel between computer interfaces and medieval manuscripts. The celebrated medievalist Camille, for instance, argues that “the biggest difference between these past pages and the future screens is the present reduction of reading signs to the purely ocular level.”¹²¹ Screens divorced the objects from their materiality in favor of “an idealist incorporeal aesthetic” that traced its lineage to “the hegemony of the visual in late-twentieth-century culture.”¹²² On the one hand, such opticality came as a boon since it countered Euro-American logocentrism and foregrounded text’s visual aspects.¹²³ But such visuality risks overshadowing materiality and the role of the other senses. Hence Camille ultimately found himself arguing against the term interface in the context of manuscript studies since, in contrast to the literal fleshiness of a European parchment page, the screen interface “suggests a disembodied looking at the icon, the mystic’s stare into the face of God.”¹²⁴

More than twenty years later, the situation has changed dramatically. A crucial feature of many contemporary interfaces, such as the familiar touchscreen, is tactility—one has a sense of “haptic engagement” or “telepresence,” even if it is only the cold glass interface that one actually feels.¹²⁵ While the interactivity of these images is sometimes taken to be new, such novelty is likewise illusory since interactivity has long been a feature of most media, modernity notwithstanding.¹²⁶ Note Manovich’s language in cautioning against this myopic fallacy: “When we use the concept of ‘interactive media’ exclusively in relation to computer-based media, there is the danger that we will interpret ‘interaction’ literally, equating it with physical interaction between a user and a media object (pressing a button, choosing a link, moving the body), at the expense of psychological interaction. The psychological processes of filling in, hypothesis formation, recall, and identification, which are required for us to comprehend any text or image at all, are mistakenly identified in an objectively existing structure of interactive links.”¹²⁷ Statements such as this give art historians pause because they sound strangely familiar, almost as if one might substitute the word artifact for interface while still maintaining argumentative clarity. Art historians have long underscored what Ernst Gombrich famously termed “the beholder’s share,” the psychological processes that happen outside the optical visual field, the constructive developments in the beholder’s mind that allow one both to see and to see into a visual artifact.

Such media theory approaches accord closely with the recent art-historical current known as image science, the anthropology of images, or Bildwissenschaft.¹²⁸ This vein of scholarship cleaves the image from the artifact in order to stress that the image is an embodied phenomenon, material only at the neural level and not a stable physical artifact to be found in ink or on a screen. For instance, drawing on the work of Latour, Manovich proposed the term “image-instruments” to denote the ways in which visual artifacts function “as instruments of control and power, power being defined as the ability to mobilize and manipulate resources across space and time.”¹²⁹ Not long after, Belting argued that we should recast all pictorial phenomena as dispositifs—in a Foucauldian sense—as tools that make possible the construction of an image.¹³⁰ At the same moment, anthropologists, such as Alfred Gell, noted the ways in which all artifacts, illusionistic or not, have the similarly instrumental capacity to transmit elaborately embedded networks of agency, hence according a degree of power to the artifact similar to that accorded the interface by media theorists.¹³¹ All told, a variety of scholarly fields are simultaneously interested in analyzing visual phenomena as interactive circuits.

The intersection of art history and media theory loops back to the problem of translation. By moving an image interface (or image instrument) from one culture to another or from one temporal moment to another—without any of its hermeneutic framing—the image interface works differently than it did before. As Drucker argues, the image interface involves the entire perceptual and cognitive relay (what she terms an “eunciative system”), a “mediating, transacting, productive space” that produces knowledge (and subjectivity) rather than represents it.¹³² Accordingly, “humanistic approaches to interface need to recuperate the theoretical formulation of subjectivity as a part of the enunciated apparatus, of positions spoken, articulated, created by the structuring and desiring machines of representations.”¹³³ Any interface theory will therefore require an art history, a way of dealing with the recursivity or interactivity of the phenomenal image. Discourse about artifacts can certainly be translated from one language to another, but learning to see differently is a process that operates by different means. Translation of the metadata alone does not suffice.¹³⁴

One must also be mindful of the interface’s various prefigurations. “In my view,” writes Manovich, “the language of cultural interfaces is largely made up from elements of other, already familiar cultural forms.”¹³⁵ As a case in point, the historian Stephen Monteiro traces a direct line from premodern technologies of weaving, such as needlecraft and the handloom, to the intimacy of the touchscreen device, the processes behind image stitching, and the electronic mechanisms by which images themselves are now generated on screen-based media.¹³⁶ Media archaeologists would even go further, eschewing computers altogether in favor of unrecognized interfaces from far deeper in the historical archive.¹³⁷

Whereas Manovich believes the “human-computer interface” stemmed from and supplanted the two older media of cinema and the printed word, in the case of Japanese history, this chronology and this trinity need adjustment.¹³⁸ As the following chapters illustrate, aspects of the cinematic are found deep within the Japanese archive, especially given the pervasive presence of horizontal scroll–based technologies. Similarly, the history of print in Japan departs from that of the European tradition, with the printed word figuring as early as the eighth century. As such, it would seem that in the Japanese case, the interface traditions are wedded far more closely and far earlier. Interface, in other words, might even have greater critical relevance in the Japanese archive than the Euro-American one. It is, in a sense, a more neutral and less Eurocentric term than illustrated manuscript, painting, or even art.

Drucker, however, takes a different approach by foregrounding the particularly graphic nature of twenty-first-century knowledge. Given that graphic images now dominate all forms of discourse to an unprecedented degree, she advocates for the study of what she terms graphesis—“the study of the visual production of knowledge”—as a crucial humanistic endeavor.¹³⁹ This approach explicitly underscores the present mediascape’s links to the humanities and premodernity. “From a humanist perspective,” she argues, “our understanding of digital interface should build on critical study of the subject in literary, media, and visual studies.”¹⁴⁰ The interface is thus “an ecology, a border zone between cultural systems and human subjects.”¹⁴¹

For a historian of Japanese art, graphesis has a particular resonance given that the primary interface through which North Atlantic modernity came into contact with Japanese visual culture was graphic: ukiyo-e xylography, daguerreotypes, hand-colored albumen prints, lithographs, postcards, folding fans, and printed books. Japan’s coupling to the graphic arts arguably never faded thereafter. Indeed, graphesis and graphism have remained core themes in modern Japanese artistic practice and criticism.¹⁴² This long-lived and duly problematic association with graphical media has further contributed to the perennial trope that Japanese art is somehow flat, a feature that would only come to be strengthened by the proliferation, at the turn of the twenty-first century, of manga, anime, video-game graphics, and the planar nature of screens themselves.¹⁴³ The trope extends to the contemporary, with the obvious example being Superflat, a school that explicitly aims, according to its inaugural manifesto, to reappropriate these very stereotypes.¹⁴⁴ Thus, quite ironically, the trope once used to deride Japanese art now seems to have become a sign of Japan’s position at the forefront of contemporary visuality. Regardless, if graphesis is to be taken as a central rubric for the future of humanistic research, then its intersections with the long history of Japanese pictorial, inscriptive, and architectural cultures will doubtless be profound.

Industries of the Interface

The final aspect to consider in this narrative is Japan’s prominent role in constructing the machines and apparatuses by which the graphical user interface itself proliferated. The Heisei era (1989–2019) saw Japan’s postwar identity as an economic powerhouse supplanted by the image of Japan as a digital powerhouse, situated at the forefront of computerized, screen-based, interfaced, and robotic technologies.¹⁴⁵ From Nintendo to the immersive installations of TeamLab, its soft power partly rests on the fantasy of a world of images remediated through technologically advanced, immersive, and often screen-based surfaces. A watershed moment in this arc would be the year 1962, when Japanese firms overtook the rest of the world to produce the largest quantity of cameras, the premier technology used to produce the photographic, telephotographic, and eventually digital images that would come to dominate the postmodern and postbubble eras.

This aspect of Japan’s role in global modernity is both the most materially obvious and the least commonly acknowledged. If one turns away from a discussion of the visuality of global modernity and looks instead at the apparatuses that have mediated it—cameras, televisions, Walkman players, camcorders, microprocessors, desktops, laptops, Nintendo, Sega, Atari, LCD displays, cellphones, smartphones, robots, and so on—one finds Japanese inventors, designers, corporations, and users at the forefront of the global proliferation of a wide constellation of interface technologies. Watanabe has even suggested that the years from the 1960s to the present might be termed the era of “Hi-tech Japonisme.”¹⁴⁶ Yet just as with Japan’s nineteenth-century impact on North Atlantic modern art, most scholarship on the contemporary imagescape seems indifferent to just how much the present mediascape owes to Japan, in both its graphical form and technological emergence. The situation serves as a reminder that those who invent, construct, and distribute the means of production are not necessarily those in control of their deployment nor do they always figure in the history of their use.

In sum, I pursue the term interface in this study since I believe it holds promise as a framework that allows for a more global history of art, one less freighted by the problematic entailments of many presently used analytic terms. Its advantages are several. Most fundamental, the core metaphor of faciality foregrounds the notion of encounter, embedded agency, and alterity—elements that are crucial to ethical histories of art. Likewise, its polyvalence as both an object and a relationship helps to circumvent the confusion one encounters in art history when the image-bearing surface is mistaken for the perceivable image. At a metaphorical level, it meshes well with the inveterate tendency to speak of knowledge in liquid terms, as discourses that flow into and against one another. Moreover, in contrast to linguistic metaphors, interface allows one to conceive of the relationship between two visualities far more accurately and with more dimensionality since artifacts and visualities travel across cultural interfaces in ways that exceed linguistic translation. An interface theory of modernity would thus require greater attention to the precise materiality of the flows and exchanges taking place rather than reducing modernity to a discourse to be mimicked or translated. At a more fundamental level, it seems clear that interface theory and art history need each other since each framework seems to complement missing elements in the other. Thus my use of the term interface in the medieval contexts of the following chapters is in no way anachronistic. Instead, it decenters familiar Eurocentric categories of analysis (like sculptures or paintings) while foregrounding the enduring relevance of nonmodern works to the present. Accordingly, the book now will pivot to a suite of four chapters, each devoted to one aspect of interface: faciality, visuality, physiology, and assemblage. I will argue that it is necessary to telescope between the present and the medieval, the original and the afterlives, the concete context and the abstract theory. Only then might one arrive at a rigorous understanding of an artifact’s many interfaces with time, alterity, and materiality.

Fig. 12 The handprint of the retired emperor GoShirakawa in red pigment on Mongaku’s Forty-Five Vows, dated Genryaku 2 (1185). Jingoji, Kyoto.

Interlude

Trace Versus Face

On the nineteenth day of the first month of 1185, the retired emperor GoShirakawa (1127–1192) added an encomium to the end of a document known as Mongaku’s Forty-Five Vows (Mongaku yonjūgo kajō kishōmon) (fig. 12). The manuscript concerned the renewal of the Buddhist religious complex Jingoji, a project sponsored by the emperor and headed by the monk Mongaku (Endō Moritō, 1139–1203). The Vows listed forty-five principles the community agreed to uphold. It is treasured today as a rare holographic example of the emperor’s hand. Even more remarkable was the retired emperor’s decision to leave his crimson palm prints—what he calls his te’in (lit. hand seals)—at the beginning and end of the document. In so doing, he bestowed the Vows with his hand in two ways: via the performative and discursive trace of his brush as well as by the biometric and physical trace of his hand. The document thus bears two forms of indexicality, two forms of writing, and two forms of trace.¹

As Heather Blair argues, trace-ism—defined as the profound belief in the importance of the indexical mark in soteriological, calligraphic, and political contexts—was a crucial aspect of the Heian episteme.² Changes in the current mediascape, moreover, have made the power of the indexical trace all the more poignant since the digital world has brought the “materiality, functionality and structurality of writing and writing culture” once again to the fore.³ Intervening between the present investment in digital graphism and the medieval investment in trace-ism are several centuries wherein physiognomic mimesis became the prime emblem of identity. To this day, one’s identity is often verified by the pairing of index and icon: autographic signature and physiognomic photograph.⁴

In the Japanese archive, the origins of this familiar pairing are arguably located in the twelfth century. Only decades before impressing his hands upon the Vows, GoShirakawa was introduced to nise-e (likeness images), a verisimilar style of stippled, miniaturist brushwork that purported to capture the optical presence of a given person (or animal). In fact, it was on the occasion of this very same temple’s renewal that almost life-size nise-e portraits were made of the key figures involved, GoShirakawa included. Hence it was in his own lifetime that the rhetoric of physiognomic likeness came to compete with what had before been a more indexical economy of presence.

Trace and face—to the extent to which one might distinguish them—would remain in contest as dual bearers of identity thereafter. This would be especially true in memorial contexts, where one often finds the greatest investment in verisimilitude. In an effort to scrutinize the tensions between trace/face, presence/absence, and icon/index, the following chapter will take as its subject the Eyeless Sutras, a set of scrolls that are believed to have been made in memoriam of GoShirakawa himself.

To write history means giving dates their physiognomy.

—Walter Benjamin

A List of Things That Fare Poorly in Paintings: Dianthus, Calamus, Prunus, and those men and women tales describe as having lovely faces.

—Sei Shōnagon

Since all semiotics are mixed and strata come in at least twos, it should come as no surprise that a very special mechanism is stated at their intersection.

—Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Chapter 3

Stratigraphy

Facing the Eyeless Sutras

The objects at the core of this chapter are among the most enigmatic in the history of Japanese art: the so-called Eyeless Sutras. The moniker refers to a group of fragmentary manuscripts believed to have once constituted a five-volume set of illustrated Buddhist sutras (figs. 13–14). Because these objects were made by piecing sheets of paper side by side to form long horizontal scrolls, the visual and material impact of viewing them is difficult to convey in paginated media. The staid and regular sutra transcription runs continuously parallel with an expansive montage of monochromatic paintings of courtly scenes. This colorless world is populated by nearly four hundred persons, the vast majority of whom lack even the slightest suggestion of physiognomy (fig. 15), hence the scrolls’ curious modern name.¹ To view the scrolls, the reader-viewer has to telescope their gaze in and out repeatedly as the eye struggles to reconcile the ghostly paintings and the heavy veil of script.

These artifacts are believed to be memorial sutras (tsuizenkyō) completed for the postmortem karmic benefit of the emperor GoShirakawa, a sovereign with a legendary (if circumspect) zeal for sponsoring pictorial scrolls.² Yet despite the Eyeless’s important ritual ties to the famous emperor and their modern status as an official National Treasure, much about the scrolls remains unknown. Why would the memorial sutras for a fervent patron of pictorial scrolls be on humble paper, roughly montaged and reservedly ornamented? Why go to the trouble of bringing all the drawings to the exact same state of completion, to transcribe the text, and to dedicate the scrolls yet not to finish the faces? Most contentious of all: how does one approach a stratigraphic interface that is uniformly pictorial and inscriptive at once?

Fig. 13 Golden Light Sutra (Konkōmyōkyō), vol. 4, from the Eyeless Sutras, ca. 1192. Ink on paper ornamented with silver, silver leaf, gold leaf, mica, gofun powder, and dyes, height: approx. 25 cm. Tokyo National Museum. Source: ColBase (https://colbase.nich.go.jp).

Fig. 14 Detail of the Principle Transcendence Sutra (Rishukyō) on paper with monochromatic drawings (hakubyō-e ryōshi), National Treasure, from the Eyeless Sutras, late twelfth century. Paper with monochromatic drawings (hakubyō-e ryōshi). Ink, gold paint, mica, gold and silver leaf on paper. Daitōkyū Memorial Library, Tokyo.

Fig. 15 Detail of a courtier at a veranda reading documents and seated before a stationery box, from the Golden Light Sutra, vol. 2, from the Eyeless Sutras, ca. 1192. Ink, gold paint, mica, gold and silver leaf on paper. Itsuō Art Museum, Osaka. Photo: author.

This chapter will proceed in two directions. First, I challenge the prevailing interpretation of these works with recourse to the relatively orthodox methods of close reading, forensic analysis, and paleography. Most scholars assume the Eyeless to be a repurposed palimpsest of unfinished drawings, yet if one foregrounds the ritual context rather than modern aesthetics, this may not be the case. Likewise, once situated within the larger manuscript culture of the period, the recalcitrance and oddity of these artifacts are revealed to be a function of modern habits of viewing. Disarray, montage, fragmentation, overlay, and dissonance are cardinal features of twelfth-century manuscript aesthetics. Seen in this light, the Eyeless is an not unfinished project but an apt memorial for the emperor since it evinces a sophisticated relationship with ornamentation, allegory, calligraphy, layered vision, and physiognomy.

In considering the facelessness of the Eyeless, it is noteworthy that, as mentioned above, GoShirakawa’s life saw the emergence of a new painting mode that employed stippled, exacting brushwork to capture the countenance of a person (or the body of an animal). This genre was known as likeness images (nise-e), and GoShirakawa was an avid proponent of this new physiognomic mode. However, one must not conflate such physiognomic interest with realism. Optical mimesis (like realism or naturalism) is a well-known obsession of Eurocentric art history, one that risks overvaluing nonmodern techniques of resemblance.³ Be that as it may, the mid- to late twelfth century is nevertheless a pivotal historical moment in the history of Japanese art since the face of the manuscript page and the physiognomy of living persons were being brought into alignment. The trace of the countenance joined the calligraphic trace as two transmissible forms of identity. The physiognomy of the hand and the physiognomy of the face were in dialogue and tension, both competing for presence in the Heian mediascape.

Some might claim that faces were insignificant in Heian Japan, especially since visual access to one’s face might be controlled through elaborate arrangements of fans, screens, standing curtains, and sliding doors. Yet a visual economy of access does not imply a lack of interest. The Pillowbook (ca. 1000), for example, revels in describing, with characteristic snark, the sway of both handsome and unbecoming faces. Every reader of the Tale of Genji will likewise remember the opening chapter, where the Korean physiognomist reads the young Genji’s face. Facelessness, too, was explicitly documented as a disturbing phenomenon. For instance, the penultimate chapter of the Tale of Genji speaks of an eyeless and noseless female demon, described as horrific due to her lack of physiognomy.⁴ This all makes the facelessness of the Eyeless all the more arresting.

Part of the power of the face is that it deterritorializes the body since it “removes the head from the stratum of the organism . . . and connects it to other strata, such as significance and subjectification.”⁵ Deleuze and Guattari’s stratigraphic metaphor is particularly apt in this case, where the facelessness of the Eyeless indeed sends the viewer out of the pictorial stratum to look for answers and connections in other layers. The relationship between faces and layers, physiognomy and stratigraphy, will be a central theme in this chapter.

My use of the term physiognomy, however, is distinct from the term’s modern contours. As is well known, the term has an ignoble modern history, as the combination of anthropometrics, composite photography, racism, and criminology made it into a pseudo-science for sorting humanity into ethical, racial, and criminological categories.⁶ One discerns the legacy of such racist discourse in the writings of latter-day Orientalists, such as Barthes, who mused offensively in his landmark study Empire of Signs (1970) about the nature of Japanese faces: expressionless, flat, white except for the eyes, a surface for writing, with “porcelain” eyelids.⁷ Even Deleuze and Guattari continued this Eurocentric rhetoric in defining the face as a white surface for black inscription.⁸ The medieval Japanese concept of faciality, however, was more nuanced. Within the Eyeless images alone, there are at least three faces at play: the physiognomy of the person, the physiognomy of the hand, and the physiognomy of the page. The question is: how do these three interact to convey presence?

The other key term—stratigraphy—here refers to the depth of the interface, the physical and virtual layering of marks. Such stratigraphic layering of calligraphic inscription and figural depiction is a hallmark of Japanese aesthetics across a variety of media.⁹ The most iconic examples of such copresence are the works of Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–1615) and Tawaraya Sōtatsu (ca. 1570–ca. 1640), where calligraphic lines are enmeshed in layers of printed and painted figures (fig. 16). In a seventeenth-century poem card from the Shinkokinshū (New Collected Poems, Ancient and Modern; ca. 1205), one can see Kōetsu inscribing a poem in oscillating heavy and light skeins of calligraphy that are arranged in a free cascade, which dances between the gold and now-oxidized silver landscape of waves lapping at a shore, pines in the distance, and oversize, abstract clouds. The poem reads: “Even as I gaze, the thought of it is lonely. High in the heavens the moon-capital lies still in the sky of its dawning.”¹⁰ As is characteristic of poem-picture overlays, there is no direct correspondence, but rather, a third text emerges through the stratigraphy. As I will argue, Kōetsu and Sōtatsu’s celebrated early modern works are but an especially canonical episode in a millennial tradition of interlaced figurality. For instance, a particularly apt twelfth-century example is a ten-volume recension of the Lotus Sutra (Hokekyō) transcribed onto fan-shaped codices replete with polychrome genre scenes beneath the text (fig. 17). These artifacts have long fascinated art historians, especially since some of the scenes appear to have been printed from wooden blocks. Yet for our purposes, the important point is that this was an extensive and intentional overlay, ten volumes of stratigraphic vision with the sutra’s words over seemingly unrelated genre scenes—painted (or sometimes printed) according to the demands of the peculiar fan format—and thus a layering that was in no way accidental, palimpsestic, reworked, or problematic.

Fig. 16 Tawaraya Sōtatsu with calligraphy by Hon’ami Kōetsu, poem card from the New Collected Poems, Ancient and Modern (Shinkokinshū) with design of pine on a beach, 1606. Card mounted on a hanging scroll; gold, silver, and ink on paper, 20 × 17.4 cm. John L. Severance Fund 1987.60, Cleveland Museum of Art.

Fig. 17 A two-page spread from a series of fan-shaped codices bearing a transcription of the Lotus Sutra (Senmen Hokekyō), mid-twelfth century. Ink, pigments, gold, silver, gold leaf, and silver leaf on paper, height: 25.4 cm. Tokyo National Museum. Source: ColBase (https://colbase.nich.go.jp).

With the advent of digital interfaces, moreover, layers have recently become a familiar framework for structuring graphical knowledge.¹¹ Following the lead of scholars such as Lamarre, I eschew the modern categories of calligraphy and underdrawings, or word and image, in favor of the more fluid and emic framework of figurality. Likewise, I will extend Gérard Genette’s literary theory of the hypertext and hypotext into the figural realm as a means of understanding the semiotic implications of layered narrative. For instance, in his study Palimpsests, Genette used the term transtextuality to refer to the way in which a later text (a hypertext) is always in dialogue with preceding hypotext. The hypertext “grafts” itself, to use his term, onto the hypotext.¹² What distinguishes his approach from the medieval European palimpsest and Kristevan intertextuality is that he was invested in “a relationship of copresence between two texts or among several texts.”¹³ Genette’s framework treats such layering as a metaphorical, intertextual, and immaterial phenomenon, whereas Japanese manuscript culture presents a world where such stratigraphic layering was given real, physical existence.¹⁴ By embracing copresence rather than overwriting and stratigraphy instead of the palimpsest, a more emic understanding of the Eyeless emerges, one where interface rather than reuse is key.

A Loss for Words

The constituent sutras of the Eyeless are two of the most central in the Mahāyāna Buddhist canon: a four-volume transcription of the Golden Light Sutra (J. Konkōmyōkyō; S. Suvarṇa-prabhāsôttama-sūtra, T 663) and a one-volume transcription of the Principle Transcendence Sutra (J. Rishukyō; S. Adhyardhaśatikā prajñā-pāramitā, T 243).¹⁵ Provenance of the scrolls is unclear before the Pacific War. The earliest sources state that the Eyeless was in the collection of the Daigoji Temple Complex in southeastern Kyoto until the middle or end of the Meiji period (1868–1912).¹⁶ Thereafter the scrolls were fragmented on the art market. Among the intermediary owners were several industrialists, the oil painter Chōkai Seiji (1902–1972), and the connoisseur and calligrapher Ōguchi Taiji (aka Shūgyo, 1864–1920). Of the five original handscrolls, the first volume of the Golden has been lost, the third Golden scroll and the entire Principle scroll survive intact, and the second and fourth scrolls of the Golden survive in various fragments. At least two small portions have found their way into albums of exemplary calligraphic traces (tekagami) (fig. 18). At present, there are approximately two dozen fragments in seven collections, nearly all of which I have examined in person in the course of my research (see appendix A).

Reassembling fragmentary scrolls is often a complex task since pages may have been shuffled, repainted, supplemented, rearranged, or interpolated at any point.¹⁷ With the Eyeless, however, the process is relatively straightforward by virtue of the consistency of the sutras. Since the parameters of transcription are highly modular (typically seventeen characters per line), one can readily restore the original order and gauge the extent of the project. Given that roughly twenty thousand characters survive from a total of approximately thirty thousand, two thirds of the original manuscript seem to be extant. By the same logic, one estimates that the original five volumes would have spanned at least thirty-eight meters.

Part of what lends these objects their fame are the sensational circumstances attributed to their creation. The drama, gleaned entirely from the Principle scroll’s terse colophon, proceeds as follows. In the spring of 1192, GoShirakawa fell ill. Given his legendary zeal for pictorial handscrolls, one presumes a handscroll commission must have been underway. With his death, the painters suddenly stop. A grief-stricken intimate, perhaps the Lady of the Tango Court (Tango no Tsubone, aka Takashina Eishi, d. 1216?), repurposed the pages for use as a memorial sutra. The unfinished paintings became underdrawings, a columnar grid was added over the pictures, and she and others copied the Golden and Principle sutras.¹⁸ Upon their completion, the works were then donated, presumably to Daigoji Temple.¹⁹ This tidy story accounts neatly for the scrolls’ unusual nature. It links pathos to impetus in a compelling manner and accords with the legendary image of the emperor. It also renders the copresence of pictures and inscription insignificant in visual terms.

Fig. 18 Fragment of the Golden Light Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras in the Getsudai album of calligraphy exemplars (Tekagami Getsudai), Kamakura period (1185–1333). Ink on paper, with oxidation marks from metallic backing ornamentation, 25.85 × 18.7 cm. Tokyo National Museum. Image: TNM Image Archives.

This narrative has long shaped scholarship on the Eyeless. Take, for instance, the earliest extensive study, published in 1940.²⁰ In its very first line, the young art historian Shirahata Yoshi (b. 1906) bracketed the text in order to focus solely upon the drawings underneath. Their stylistic uniformity led her to conclude that the Eyeless represent an incomplete five-scroll set meant to illustrate a preexistent narrative tale.²¹ Her proposed candidate, Tale of Genji, was only natural since it has long been treated as the paradigmatic Heian narrative. To test her hypothesis, she undertook a laborious iconographical analysis in an attempt to match each Eyeless scene to a chapter from the Genji. The fit, as Shirahata admitted, was a bit forced. Nevertheless, her hypothesis continues to hold sway.

A generation later, the prolific Komatsu Shigemi (1925–2010) published a series of articles in which he proposed alternative narrative candidates.²² None of these attributions has been conclusively demonstrated, yet this paradigm—and its presuppositions—remains dominant: the paintings are incomplete; they illustrate a narrative tale; and ascertaining the identity of that tale should be the primary scholarly focus. Such thinking is symptomatic of the methodological habit of analyzing images as if they were illustrations, a method that couples pictures to source texts, hence making the pictures both chronologically and analytically secondary.²³ The irony of this logocentric method in the case of the Eyeless is that it leads scholars to disattend to the very texts written on the scrolls themselves. Hence the place to begin is by scrutinizing this origin story and deconstructing its presuppositions.

Colophons and Chronology

Most scholarship on the Eyeless rests on two highly problematic colophons: the aforementioned Principle colophon and a single one-line notation found at the end of the third volume of the Golden (fig. 19).²⁴ The latter is in a wiry cursive hand at about half the scale of the sutra text. It reads, in Sino-Japanese kanbun: “Copied on the first day of the fourth month of the third year of the Kenkyū era (1192) [glyph] 建久三年四月一日書寫之 [glyph].” The text is straightforward, but the glyph remains a mystery. Most see it as a cipher of the inscriber, written in the Siddhaṃ script.²⁵

Fig. 19 End of the third volume of the Golden Light Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras; Detail of colophon. Kyoto National Museum. Photos: author.

The longer Principle colophon, however, is peculiar in both its materiality and grammar (fig. 20). Its three lines are inscribed directly on the pictorial ground in the last two columns of the sutra at perhaps a fourth of its scale. This section of the manuscript is heavily insect-damaged so that much of the inscription has flaked away, rendering it nearly illegible. To the left of the inscription is an additional endsheet used to bind the sutra to its dowel. Curiously, pasted to this endsheet is a small slip of paper with a retranscription of the damaged colophon. The retranscription reads as follows:

The Tonsured Emperor GoShirakawa and Nun X’s painting, when not yet completed [was interrupted by] the emperor’s demise, whereupon the paper was used for copying this sutra. The calligraphy [of the sutra text] is by [former] Major Counselor Master Jōhen [and the] Sanskrit letters are by Master Jōken (aka Seigen). In the eighth month of the fourth year of the Kenkyū era, this scroll was respectfully received from the abbot [Shōken] by Shinken (aka Jinken).²⁶

後白河法皇☐禅尼之御絵未終功之処崩御仍以故紙写此経

熱筆大納言闍梨静遍梵字宰相闍梨成賢云云

Fig. 20 Colophon, endpaper, and final sheet of the Principle Transcendence Sutra (Rishukyō), on paper with monochromatic drawings (hakubyō-e ryōshi), National Treasure, from the Eyeless Sutras, late twelfth century. Ink, gold paint, mica, gold and silver leaf on paper. Daitōkyū Memorial Library, Tokyo. Images approved by and supplied by The Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (TOBUNKEN).

建久四年八月☐日

以此経奉受僧正御房了 深賢²⁷

Much debate surrounds the reading. The final two lines, concerning the donation, are unambiguous, but the first line is more problematic (fig. 21). The two premises most fundamental in past scholarship—that a nun was involved and that “old papers” were recycled—rest solely on the reading of this single line. Akiyama Terukazu’s interpretation follows the rendering into classical Japanese given by Komatsu:

These [honorific-] pictures pertain to the tonsured Retired Emperor GoShirakawa [and] the Nun [X]; they were not yet completed at his [honorific-] decease. Thus, using old paper, these sutras were copied. (Emphases added.)

後白河法皇、[ ] 禅尼の御絵、未だ功を終えざるの処， 崩ほうじ御たまう。仍て、故紙を以て、此の経を写す.²⁸

The single lacuna here is presumed to be the nun’s name, hence heightening the drama of the creation story. Moreover, the English term nun is a poor translation, as the Japanese word could designate any elderly, celibate, or widowed woman.²⁹ Then again, even the identity of this lacuna as a noun has been called into question; one early scholar was inclined to see in it the honorific auxiliary verb tamafu/tamau being used to indicate a commission.³⁰ To my eyes, given the extant radicals, one might even read the entire phrase as “GoShirakawa dhāraṇī pictures” (後白河法皇陀羅尼御絵). Indeed, if one returns to the original inscription, it is far less legible than much secondary scholarship presumes. Moreover, even if the received reading is correct, the grammar is ambiguous, supporting at least eight possible interpretations:

Fig. 21 Inscription at the end of the Principle Transcendence Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras, late twelfth century. (center) Original inscription; (right) Magnified detail with the prevailing interpretation of the first line overlaid; (left) Later retranscription. Image created by author. Object in the collection of the Daitōkyū Memorial Library.

“Paintings painted by GoShirakawa and Nun X”

“Depictions of GoShirakawa and the Nun X”

“Paintings commissioned by GoShirakawa and the Nun X”³¹

“Paintings commissioned by GoShirakawa, painted by the Nun X”³²

“Paintings commissioned by GoShirakawa depicting the Nun X”³³

“Paintings painted by GoShirakawa depicting the Nun X.”

“Paintings in the possession of GoShirakawa and the Nun X.”

“Paintings in the possession of GoShirakawa painted by the Nun X.”³⁴

The other crucial aspects of the story—the reuse of old paper, the unfinished state of the pictures, and the context of the emperor’s demise—are taken as givens. Yet if one returns to the earliest and most faithful transcriptions (from 1920 and 1926, respectively) one finds preserved several additional lacunae that cast doubt on these presuppositions. As reproduced below, the Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties would also eventually restore these lacunae in its official transcription published in 1984.

後白河法皇☐禪尼之御繪☐終功之處☐御☐☐寫此經 /

熱筆大納言闍梨静遍梵字宰相闍梨成賢也 /

建久四年八月日以此經奉受僧正御房深賢³⁵ (1920)

後白河法皇☐(紀)禪尼之御繪、☐(未)終功之處崩御、仍☐☐紙寫此經、熱筆大納言闍/梨静遍、梵字宰相闍梨成賢、/

建久四年八月日、以此經奉☐僧正御房☐☐☐(御宿房) ☐ / 深賢³⁶ (1926)

後白河法皇☐禅尼之御絵☐(未)終功之処☐崩御仍☐☐☐(以故紙)写此経 /

熱筆大納言闍梨静遍☐梵字宰相闍梨成賢☐云々/

建久四年八月☐日以此経奉受僧正御房☐       深賢³⁷ (1984)

The 1926 transcription was first published by the forerunner to the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo, the most authoritative archive for historians of Japan; thus it is significant that in this transcription, parenthetic glosses have been added for five of the lacunae.³⁸ Considering these glosses, it seems likely that by the 1920s, the reading of the inscription had already been influenced by the romantic narratives surrounding the creation of the scroll. With these lacunae restored, one loses the characters that would support “unfinished” and “deceased,” as well as the characters for “old papers.” Without these interpolations, however, the entire origin story is called into doubt. In fact, one of the earliest scholars to interpret the colophon did so in an entirely different manner, taking it to mean that the Eyeless was a pictorialized biography of a nun’s life commissioned by GoShirakawa in her memory.³⁹

Even beyond grammar, the material peculiarities of the colophon deserve scrutiny. First, the reduplication of the text is highly unusual. Second, the issue of hand is not clear. As Komatsu notes, the “excessively simple” inscription has an almost “memo-like” quality.⁴⁰ Neither the hurried hand nor the placement seems in keeping with the gravity of the occasion. Moreover, it is obvious that the colophon did not immediately follow the transcription since it includes the historical circumstances of the donation. It seems more likely that it was added as a reminder of these circumstances after institutional memory at the temple had begun to fade. Even the early modern reinscriber found it necessary to use dots to preserve lacunae.⁴¹ A additional peculiarity is the large size of the paper affixed to the endpaper.

Concerning the identity of the nun, numerous candidates have been entertained. The Empress Kenshunmon’in (aka Taira Shigeko, 1142–1176) is a natural choice.⁴² Komatsu proposed the aforementioned Takashina Eishi, pointing to evidence in the Meigetsuki, the diary of Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241), which suggests that she was GoShirakawa’s favorite near the end of his life, taking the tonsure the very day of his death.⁴³ A third candidate is GoShirakawa’s wet nurse, Kii (aka Fujiwara Chōshi, d. 1166), who also went by the sobriquet “the Nun Ki(i)” (Ki(i) Zenni). This theory, though less romantic, is supported by the fact that Kii was biologically related to three of the men mentioned in the inscription. Kii was the second wife of Shinzei (aka Fujiwara no Michinori, 1106–1159); Shōken, who is presumed to be the abbot mentioned in the last line, was Shinzei’s son. Jōgen (aka Seiken or Seigen), the inscriber of the Siddhaṃ characters, was Shinzei’s grandson. In addition, both calligraphers were disciples of Shōken, and Jinken was distantly related to Kii as well.⁴⁴ Hence prevailing scholarly opinion identifies the emperor’s wet nurse as the nun.⁴⁵ Yet Kii had died some twenty-six years earlier. If so, why would her pictures be suitable for the emperor’s memorial sutra? Had they been saved explicitly for this purpose—or even made in advance?

One will have noticed that the dates of the two colophons also differ substantially. The Principle colophon is dated to an undisclosed day in the eighth month of 1193, whereas that of the Golden is dated to the first day of the fourth month of 1192. This would mean the Principle scroll was donated a year and a half postmortem, which seems to be odd timing. Funerary rites followed a fairly regular rhythm, with memorial services held at seven-day intervals for the seven weeks of deep morning, then intermittently for at least three more years.⁴⁶ But the date recorded in the colophon—the eighth month of 1193—is not necessarily the date the sutra was transcribed, nor is it necessarily the day the colophon was added. It might be, for example, an administrative date marking receipt. In fact, the identities of the three monastics mentioned in the colophon suggest a significant time gap. Take Jinken, the colophon’s inscriber. Sawa Ryūken has suggested a birth year of 1178 based on two documents in Daigoji’s archive inscribed by one Jinken, both of which specify date and the age of the transcriber.⁴⁷ If this is the same Jinken, he would have been only fourteen years old at the time of GoShirakawa’s death. Moreover, Jinken received the abiṣeka (J. kanjō) initiation into Shōken’s Sanbōin lineage only in 1205.⁴⁸ It thus seems unlikely he would have been handling, much less signing, the emperor’s memorial sutras in 1192. It is much more plausible that Jinken wrote this inscription well after 1205, as an administrative note, not as a colophon of completion.⁴⁹ Notice also that the final characters of the earliest Principle inscription appear to be un’nun (lit. and so forth), a common phrase in medieval documents used to indicate that a given inscription is drawn from an antecedent source. On balance, it seems most likely that the Principle inscription was added later, once the parties involved were older and more renowned, when perhaps their relationship to such an object was more politic.

The temporal gap between the two colophons is a serious problem if one considers the Golden and the Principle as an Eyeless set. Also, why does the Golden colophon appear only at the end of the third volume of the four-volume manuscript? The ends of the first two volumes are lost, but at the end of the fourth and final volume, where one would expect a colophon, none is to be found.

An additional issue is the timeline of production. Was it even possible to transcribe the five volumes so quickly? The best place to look for an answer is the thorough archive of eighth-century administrative documents pertaining to the Office of Sutra Transcription (shakyōjo) at Tōdaiji. In that highly specialized context, scholars estimate an average transcription rate of approximately 3,800 to 4,000 characters per day.⁵⁰ Others suggest that by the time of GoShirakawa, even 3,200 characters per day would have been an exceptionally fast pace.⁵¹ Bear in mind, too, that even before the calligrapher(s) could begin, the drawings would need to be gathered, cut, joined, mounted, and ruled.⁵² Given that the Eyeless is approximately 32,000 characters long, its transcription, even if divided among several hands, would have been no small feat. Even more time would be required for proofreading (which the presence of interpolated characters suggests did occur), the application of gold paint, and the mounting on ornamented backing papers. GoShirakawa died on the morning of the thirteenth day of the third month, but the inscription at the end of the third scroll of the Golden is dated to the first day of the fourth month, yielding a mere seventeen days for this enterprise.

In sum, given the material, grammatical, and chronological issues of the colophons, it seems misguided to give them much weight. In fact, there is no solid evidence to support the prevailing claim that the Eyeless was created immediately following the emperor’s death at all.

Ritual and Trace

The key to understanding these objects, I argue, is to foreground their identity as Buddhist ritual implements. In other words, one should turn to the sutras themselves rather than the hypothetical lost tale inspiring the scrolls’ images since the sutra text provides more convincing grounds for linking these objects to GoShirakawa. To begin, note that the Golden and the Principle are somewhat unusual texts for memorial transcriptions. By far, the most common sutra for such purposes was the Lotus. Several famous examples of contemporaneous Lotus transcriptions by those in GoShirakawa’s immediate social circle survive, such as the Taira Family Sutras (Heike nōkyō), Jikōji Sutras (Jikōjikyō), and his mother’s resplendently ornamented Kunōji Sutras (Kunōjikyō). The Principle and the Golden, however, were intimately connected to the specific politicoreligious life of GoShirakawa, and so their use in his memorial context seems appropriate. The Principle was a central text to the esoteric lineages of Buddhism in Japan.⁵³ Doubtless, GoShirakawa was intimately familiar with it. For instance, in the semiautobiographical appendix to his celebrated compilation of popular songs, the emperor notes that he was performing the Samādhi of Principle Transcendence (Rishu zanmai), a ritual related to the sutra, when he learned of the death of Otomae (d. 1177), his instructor in the recitation of popular songs.⁵⁴ According to Gyokuyō, the diary of Kujō Kanezane (aka Fujiwara no Kanezane, 1149–1207), GoShirakawa also performed this ritual at the Ninnaji Temple Complex in 1181.⁵⁵

With the Golden, the connection is far more obvious.⁵⁶ As Ryūichi Abé, among others, argues, the Golden was the sutra most intimately tied to Buddhist statecraft in Japan.⁵⁷ It was the centerpiece of an important and famously elaborate ritual in the calendar of court ceremonial, the Misaie, a weeklong event during which the Golden was not only recited but analyzed in a prestigious exegetical lecture.⁵⁸ Parts of this ritual served to reify the person of the emperor as a cakravartin—literally, the Dharma wheel–spinning king (tenrin’ō)—a term reserved for an ideal Buddhist sovereign who rules universally by virtue of his rectitude and piety.⁵⁹ It is also one of the two sutras (along with the Lotus) that “rationalize empire and hierarchy.”⁶⁰ Needless to say, GoShirakawa would have been deeply invested in the Golden. Moreover, the “king of sutras,” as the Golden repeatedly styles itself, speaks of the innumerable powers, benefits, protections, and merits that will accrue to a just and faithful king who upholds its teachings.⁶¹ Just rulership would protect the nation from foreign enemies, cause domestic society to flourish, and properly harmonize the celestial motions.⁶² Such imperial merit, moreover, is said to extend to the intimates and family of the emperor, hence one might even see how those who had survived the emperor would have been invested in the sutra’s propagation.⁶³ By contrast, the sutra also mentions how calamities and unrest would signal the failure of the sovereign. Given the political chaos and natural disasters that punctuated the final twelve years of his life, one cannot help but wonder if GoShirakawa and the court might not have interpreted these events through the lens of the Golden.

GoShirakawa, however, was not the only one in Japan to see himself in the sutra as the cakravartin. Contemporaneous with his rule was a rival state to the north headquartered at Hiraizumi. Its sovereign, Fujiwara Hidehira, sponsored a remarkable calligrammatic transcription of the Golden that spanned some ten scrolls, with each scroll’s inscription assembled into a chysographic architectural stupa (fig. 22).⁶⁴ Mimi Yiengpruksawan, in her reading of these text artifacts, notes that Hidehira’s “personal history can be layered over the pictures like a ghost narrative,” claiming that he saw himself in the various narratives, instructions, and parables.⁶⁵ Doubtless, the same is true for GoShirakawa. The allegorical mappings may even have extended beyond kingship proper. Take, for instance, the Golden’s extended treatment of the jataka story of Mahāsattva, which focuses on the pain suffered by a king and queen who lose their princely son. Given that GoShirakawa had lived through the death of four of his own sons, the jataka likely struck a chord.

Fig. 22 Jeweled pagoda mandala, painting 1, illustrating the first two chapters of the Golden Light Sutra, twelfth century. Gold, silver, and color on indigo paper, 140.2 × 54.6 cm. Chūsonji, Hiraizumi. Photo provided by Chūsonji (rights reserved).

The exact recension of the Golden transcribed in the Eyeless scrolls also deserves consideration. This four-volume Chinese translation (T663) of the Golden was the work of Dharmakṣema (385–433 CE) of the Northern Liang dynasty (397–439 CE). It is documented in Japan in a 676 CE entry of the Nihon shoki, during the reign of Emperor Tenmu (d. 686 CE, r. 673–86 CE).⁶⁶ The Dharmakṣema version was followed by the Golden Light Sutra of the Superlative Kings (Konkōmyōsaishōōkyō, T665), a ten-volume, unabridged translation by Yijing (635–713 CE) executed in 703 CE.⁶⁷ Yijing’s longer version arrived in Japan as early as 718 CE and was thereafter distributed for use at the government-sponsored kokubunji temples.⁶⁸ When comparing the Eyeless Golden recension to the version in the modern Taishō Tripiṭaka, it appears that the Eyeless’s version is actually closest to the copy of the Dharmakṣema transcription stored in the Sutra Repository (Shōgozō) of the Shōsōin. One wonders whether this indicates a particular historicizing or classicizing interest by GoShirakawa or his affiliates to use the version that was first used to establish the Misaie rituals that were so central to his identity as a Buddhist monarch. In fact, GoShirakawa had commissioned the rebuilding of Tōdaiji, which had burned in the Genpei War.⁶⁹ Tōdaiji’s monumental bronze icon of the (Mahā-)Vairocana Buddha was emblematic of the link between Buddhism and the imperial family, hence the emperor was keen to have the temple and its icon reconstructed.⁷⁰ For the dedicatory eye-opening ceremony (the crucial rite in which one paints in the pupils of the icon), GoShirakawa performed the ritual himself, famously using the very brush and other ritual implements from the original dedication some four centuries before, which had survived intact in the Shōsōin. If GoShirakawa was interested in buttressing and restoring the power of the imperial family through instrumentalizing the archive of the Shōsōin, then perhaps this might explain the similarity to this recension.⁷¹

The ceremonial surrounding the Misaie ritual might also provide a clue as to the possible dating of these manuscripts. By the early eleventh century, there had emerged a genre of rituals termed Jun-Misaie, literally “according to the Misaie” or “Misaie-style.”⁷² Jun-Misaie represented a form of reinvention of the ritual structure of Heian that underscored continuity with the imperial authority of the past.⁷³ These rituals peaked in the early twelfth century and were most commonly sponsored by retired emperors.⁷⁴ In addition to Jun-Misaie, however, were additional para-Misaie rites termed “Memorial Misaie” (Shūki-Misaie).⁷⁵ The earliest record of such a ritual dates to 887 CE; it was a commission of Emperor Kōkō (830–887 CE, r. 884–87 CE) for the repose of the previous emperor.⁷⁶ While such rituals are relatively uncommon in the documentary record, no fewer than five pertain to Emperor GoShirakawa (see Table 1).⁷⁷ The first, conducted in 1157, during his reign and presumably at his behest, appears to have been the first in nearly a half century. It was to commemorate the death of his father, the Emperor Toba. Two decades later, another Shūki-Misaie was held for the sake of GoShirakawa’s empress, the aforementioned Kenshunmon’in. The following year, an additional Shūki-Misaie was held for her as well. In 1182, one was performed for Kenshunmon’in and GoShirakawa’s son, the Emperor Takakura (1161–1181, r. 1168–80).⁷⁸ Finally, on the twenty-fifth day of the second month of 1193, a Shūki-Misaie was held for GoShirakawa himself, this time at his personal temple, the Rengeōin. Given that memorial Misaie evoke the Golden-centered Misaie, that they took place at temples whose names refer to the Golden, and that these rituals all involve imperial personages, it seems plausible that the four-volume Golden component of the Eyeless might have been made in anticipation of GoShirakawa’s Shūki-Misaie in 1193.

Table 1. Shūki-Misaie ceremonies of the Insei period listed in the Dai nihon shiryō and Shiryō sōran databases.

Foregrounding ritual prompts the question of whether the Golden and the Principle were ever meant to comprise a set. Nothing prevents the transcriptions from having been executed for separate rituals and at separate times. One clue would be the calligraphic hand. Even as early as 1937, Ishida Mosaku noted the presence of several hands in the Eyeless.⁷⁹ Komatsu details how the same hand begins each of the Golden scrolls but then switches after only a few dozen lines.⁸⁰ Note, for instance, the change in hand between the opening and closing titles (fig. 23).⁸¹ These observations suggest that the person who made the vow might have commenced the transcription and then handed it off to others to finish.⁸²

Then again, there is nothing preventing one from imagining that the emperor himself might have been involved. In 1940, Shirahata likewise interpreted the colophon to say that the paintings were in the emperor’s own hand.⁸³ Decades earlier, the calligraphy connoisseur Ōguchi collected a fragment of the Eyeless for inclusion in his tekagami calligraphic album, which suggests that he saw the hand of the emperor in the sutra, if not the lines of the picture. The identifying cartouche (kiwamefuda) in Ōguchi’s album is perhaps purposely ambiguous; it reads, “GoShirakawa Zen Nun Underdrawings.” If Ōguchi was collecting the trace of the emperor as an imperial drawing, then this would be a remarkable exception since tekagami were assemblages of calligraphic (not pictorial) traces.

Fig. 23 A juxtaposition of the opening and closing lines of the Golden Light Sutra, vols. 2, 3, and 4, from the Eyeless Sutras. Diagram by the author.

Fig. 24 (right) The large character is an example of bosatsu (菩薩) from the Principle Transcendence Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras. (left, from top to bottom) Examples from the Golden Light Sutra, vols. 2, 3, and 4, from the Eyeless Sutras. Diagram by the author.

The calligraphy of the Principle, however, tells a different story. To test if there was a change in hand, I isolated the appearances of the word bosatsu (菩薩), which in this scroll seem uniform throughout (fig. 24). The most obvious idiosyncrasy is an usually angular version of the kozato radical (阜), which takes the shape阝in this compound. This idiosyncrasy is consistent throughout. If the Principle colophon is to be believed, this is the hand of Jōhen. When compared to the three Golden scrolls, however, nowhere does the morphology appear.⁸⁴ This fact casts doubt on the relevance of the all-important Principle colophon in the context of the Golden fascicles. Likewise, the hands at the opening of the Golden and Principle do not match, a fact that further suggests they may have been commissioned by different patrons and on different occasions.

Monochromy, Facelessness, and Completion

Calligraphy aside, what continues to unite these scrolls are their distinctive monochromy and facelessness, features that are usually cited as evidence of incompleteness.⁸⁵ Completion, in this case, presumes that these paintings were made in anticipation of the application of thick pigments in a process known as “constructed pictures” (tsukuri-e). Accordingly, the Eyeless paintings correspond to the preparatory brush traces of a master painter (sumigaki), upon whose traces various assistants would build up layers of ground mineral pigments before returning the work to the master painter to add contour lines and facial details in black ink.⁸⁶ A recent analysis of a lauded exemplar, the aforementioned Genji scrolls, provides an excellent sense of the careful impasto facial modeling and the extreme economy of line involved in such work (fig. 25).⁸⁷

Some scholars point to the presence of numerical annotations in the manuscript as evidence of incompletion, yet these rare marks seem to indicate sequence rather than pigment(fig. 26).⁸⁸ For instance, the first reads “13 of 3” (三の十三) or “10 of 3,” followed later by another reading perhaps “3 of 3” (三の三).⁸⁹ Komatsu suggested that these marks on the second Golden volume indicate that this was the third volume of the hypothesized unfinished illustrated tale.⁹⁰ He added that they were placed in discreet places where black pigment would later be applied to blot them out. Fujimoto Kōichi, however, countered that these might have been added after the paintings were done; by his logic, if these are annotations for painters, then why do we only have two such notes?⁹¹ While examining the objects in person, I was able to identify two additional inscriptions, one crossed out that seems to read “11 of 10” (十の十一) and a second reading perhaps “10 of 3” (三の十). The first of these marks appears on what is now the ninth page of the second volume of the Golden; the second on what is now the seventeenth page of the same volume. There also appear to be two similar sequential annotations on the Principle scroll. One can easily make out the character for “seven” (七) just above the margin on the eighth sheet; there is also an “eight” (八) written in a similar location on the following sheet. These are clearly not colorists’ annotations; they are more likely remnants of the sutra transcription process itself. Rather than incompletion, they suggest that the order of the pictorial montage was highly calculated.

The question of monochromy is complicated in this context since the early thirteenth century saw the rise of a genre known as “white-drawn narrative pictures” (hakubyō monogatari-e), monochromatic illustrations of narrative tales drawn in black ink on an unadorned ground.⁹² The distinctive features of this genre are dense detail, the sophisticated handling of thin parallel lines, and the prominent use of flat layers of jet-black ink for details, such as the long, trailing hair of women (fig. 27). As Fujita Tsuneo notes, the Eyeless “presents a difficult problem” to the chronology of the emergence of monochromatic narrative paintings since it satisfies the genre’s parameters too well, too early.⁹³ If only the hair were darker and the faces completed, argues Murashige Yasushi, it would certainly be included.⁹⁴ Others prefer to cast the Eyeless as an anomaly, a handscroll morphologically similar to hakubyō works but disconnected from their teleology proper. Indeed, as Nagoya Akira aptly notes, there is an important distinction between a completed drawing and an uncolored “constructed picture” (tsukuri-e).⁹⁵ Within this debate, I find myself most in agreement with Murakami Harumi, who argues that the Eyeless pictures look less like unfinished built-images and more like line drawings; she even suggests that the faces were perhaps left blank on purpose, a strong indictment of the rhetoric of incompletion.⁹⁶ The early scholar Shirahata also questioned whether these images were ever meant to be polychrome because they possess what she called a “separate type of beauty.”⁹⁷ Had color application been started and left undone, or had the pictures of the Eyeless ever modulated in the degree of their completion, then there would be little debate concerning their completeness. But as it stands, with more than two dozen meters of equally delineated monochromatic painting, all executed at the same scale, in the same mode, and to the same degree of finish, the argument for incompletion begins to seems rather questionable.

Fig. 25 Detail of the face of Kaoru, “Takekawa I” scene of the Genji scrolls, early twelfth century. Handscroll with ink, gofun powder, and mineral pigment on paper. Photo: Shirono Seiji. Courtesy of Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya.

Fig. 26 Details of the numerical annotations in the Golden Light Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras. (upper right) From vol. 2. Tokyo National Museum. Source: ColBase (https://colbase.nich.go.jp). (all others) Mutō Collection. Photo: author.

Fig. 27 Illustrated book of “Ukifune,” a chapter of the Tale of Genji, Kamakura period (1185–1333). Ink on paper codex, 23.7 × 19.0 cm. The Museum Yamato Bunkakan, Nara.

Along a similar vein, Fujimoto has argued strongly that the Eyeless drawings are not only complete but that they form a sort of missing link bridging the genres of Buddhist art and courtly painting.⁹⁸ Such iconographical drawings of deities were similarly monochromatic, and the Eyeless scrolls are sutras. Moreover, the famed iconographic drawing of Fudō myōō at Daigoji is attributed to Jinken, who is named in the colophon discussed above.⁹⁹ Given the considerable overlap in the social networks that created religious iconographic drawings and courtly narrative paintings, the suggestion is not altogether far-fetched.

None of this, however, accounts for the eponymous eyelessness. Complicating matters, one finds distributed throughout rare instances of figures with expertly rendered physiognomy (fig. 28). A tabulation of the physiognomy of the more than four hundred human figures depicted in the extant fragments reveals that about 4 percent have painted eyes. If one expands this to include even the slightest facial mark, as many as 10 percent can be said to have some facial detailing. Citing the aforementioned atelier system, some assert that the lower-class figures’ faces are completed, while the aristocrats’ faces are left blank since they would require more attention.¹⁰⁰ Yet evidence does not bear this out; more than half of the completed faces actually belong to aristocrats and monastics. Moreover, even if the scrolls were meant to be pigmented, argues Sano Midori, it seems unlikely a master painter would have simply left a face blank without giving some initial indication of the physiognomy, especially since faces are such sensitive foci of a beholder’s attention.¹⁰¹

Fig. 28 Examples of faces with full physiognomy in the Golden Light Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras. (left) Mutō Collection; (center and right) Kyoto National Museum. Photos: author.

Nor does blankness itself bespeak incompletion. Sano and Fujimoto cite a roughly contemporaneous blank-faced monochromatic figure found on the cover of the poetry booklet titled the Collected Poems of Minamoto no Shitagō (Shitagō-shū), at present in the family library of the venerable Reizei poetic lineage.¹⁰² The obverse of this codex shows the prominent blank face of a female courtier, while the reverse bears the image of two monks and a nun with faces. Taken as a whole, neither monochromy nor facelessness are sufficient grounds for judging the Eyeless incomplete. Unusual does not mean unintentional.

There is, however, a more venturesome way to approach the issue since color in premodern East Asia was a highly overdetermined concept.¹⁰³ In the twelfth century, the character used for “color” possessed both a facial valence (such as physiognomy, countenance, comportment, or a beautiful face) and an erotic valence (such as affection, eros, or attractiveness).¹⁰⁴ These associations remained strong into modernity, where a wanton might be described as one who “loves color,” male homosexual relationships might be termed “male colors,” or the inclusion of the character for “color” in a title might suggest erotic content.¹⁰⁵ Regardless, the overlap in semantic fields gives one pause since it seems possible to argue that the facelessness and colorlessness of the Eyeless are actually one and the same. By this logic, the Eyeless montages represent a world scrubbed of all color in all of its senses: chroma, physiognomy, and desire.

This reading is strengthened by the centrality of the same character in Buddhist discourse, where it was used to translate the Sanskrit term rūpam (phenomenal form).¹⁰⁶ In this sense, “color” signifies materiality itself, “that which changes and decays.”¹⁰⁷ Buddhist phenomenology would also identify this character (“color”) as signifying the object of the faculty of sight itself, thus it is a specifically visual materiality.¹⁰⁸ The two meanings of the term were tightly imbricated in the aristocratic Heian episteme. Take, for instance, the following poem by the contemporaneous poet Fujiwara no Shunzei: “Behold, the scattering of the flowers in spring, the colored leaves in autumn: now we know that color, and desire, are but empty things.”¹⁰⁹ Here Shunzei appropriates the cardinal chiasmus of the Heart Sutra (“The phenomenal is all inherently empty, all emptiness is inherently phenomenal”) in order to highlight the chromatic and erotic double entendre.¹¹⁰

Once one understands how facelessness and monochromy are linked, it becomes possible to venture that the Eyeless is meant to instrumentalize this association, wedding the vernacular and the Buddhist meanings of “color” in order to present a colorless, faceless, formless, and affectionless (and, hence, attachmentless) world. In this regard, the Eyeless would be almost like an antiportrait of the emperor’s world, a view of his life as if seen through photographic negatives but with all identities (since faces are color) and all attachment absent.¹¹¹ Monochromy thus allows one to achieve an oxymoron: giving visible form to a formless world.¹¹² To take this logic to its completion, as an antiphenomenal painting, it would thus not be subject to the same logic of decay since it would not partake in rūpam, hence the pictorial stratum would serve as a virtually immaterial space for the instantiation of the Buddhist inscription. If this chromatic reading holds, then it is possible to entertain the notion that the Eyeless is not a recycled palimpsest but rather a sophisticated commentary on the relationship of painting to Buddhism.

Chasing Stories

From the very first sentence of her 1940 article, Shirahata frames the Eyeless paintings as illustrations of a courtly tale. The presumption asks one to disattend to what is present for the sake of recreating a counterfactual object. So powerful was this methodical impulse that at least four previous scholars have worked from textless study copies made in order to “recover” the visual experience purportedly obscured by the sutra (fig. 29).¹¹³

In exploring the illustration paradigm, scholars have several methods at their disposal. Take, for example, Shirahata’s method of searching for scenic correlation with the Genji. While seemingly straightforward, a cynic might counter that, given the scale of the Genji, almost any given arrangement of courtiers might be contorted to fit a given scene.¹¹⁴ The postwar discovery of a fifteenth-century iconographic manual for the Genji complicates matters. Since many of the Genji arrangements in this manual accord with the canonical twelfth-century version, Komatsu reasons that these iconographical norms were established early on, thus casting doubt on Shirahata’s Genji hypothesis.¹¹⁵ Such scenography also risks devolving into a circulus methodicus.¹¹⁶ To be fair, Shirahata is duly aware of the limits of her method. She even suggests that the Eyeless may have included illustrations from other narrative tales.¹¹⁷

Other scholars eschew scenography and focus on the dramatis personae. According to this method, the analyst catalogues idiosyncratic characters—the divine boy (kegen dōji) or two amusing monsters—and then looks for correlation in contemporary narratives (fig. 30).¹¹⁸ But since only two thirds of the Eyeless and a partial corpus of contemporaneous literature survive, any correlation is difficult to prove. Reservations notwithstanding, Komatsu employs this method to propose three possible sources: Tale of Partings at Dawn (Ariake no wakare monogatari), the Tale of Sagoromo (Sagoromo monogatari), and the now-lost Tale of the Cloak of Invisibility (Kakuremino monogatari).¹¹⁹ The key personage was a figure wearing a straw raincloak, which by his count appears twenty-five times in some form or another in the Eyeless (fig. 31).¹²⁰ He takes this to be a “cloak of invisibility” (kakuremino), a centuries-old literary trope by GoShirakawa’s time.¹²¹ The Tale of the Cloak is curious since its fame outlived the text. The Nameless Book (Mumyōzōshi), a compilation of literary criticism dating to the cusp of the thirteenth century, describes the Tale of the Cloak as a rare old tale with “extremely few readers” whose language had aged poorly; the Nameless Book suggests the need for a modern adaptation.¹²² Hence Komatsu suggests that the Eyeless might relate to such an attempt.¹²³

Scenography aside, one might not even need to open the scrolls to determine their contents. As Melissa McCormick shows, scrolls tended to come in fairly standardized sizes, scaled to genre.¹²⁴ The median height of the extant Eyeless fragments is 26 centimeters. It is thus some 10 to 20 percent smaller than contemporaneous illustrated manuscripts.¹²⁵ By contrast, its size accords closely with contemporaneous sutra manuscripts, which tend to run between 24.9 and 26 centimeters.¹²⁶ One might protest that the Eyeless had been trimmed to this smaller size, but this does not seem to be the case. Although pictorial lines and the edges of the page are sometimes at odds, I am more often struck by pictorial lines that seem composed in relationship to the present margins and ruled columns.

Fig. 29 The third volume of the Golden Light Sutra along with a study copy. Kyoto National Museum. Photo: author.

Fig. 30 Details of the deity boy and two monsters from the Eyeless Sutras. (left) Mutō Collection; (right) Kyoto National Museum. Photos: author.

Fig. 31 Detail of the cloaked figure from the Eyeless Sutras. Mutō Collection. Photo: author.

In the end, the Eyeless is an excellent case study in methodological bias. Even if the drawings were for an unfinished narrative tale—and even if the identity of that tale were matched scene by scene—the resulting “recovered” object never existed. Granted, such a hypothetical reconstruction would produce new knowledge concerning the way in which illustrated scrolls were executed, but such a scroll never would have had an opportunity to affect visual culture thereafter. In seeking a source, one disattends to a completed, extant sutra in order to recreate a counterfactual object. The challenge, however, is not to seek what might have been but, rather, to take the Eyeless at face value.

Forensics and Alignments

A more reliable method for approaching the Eyeless is forensic—to look closely at the materiality and the stratigraphy in order to reconstruct the process of creation (fig. 32). The first to do so was Aizawa Shunyō (1896–1963), who published a cautionary article in response to the appearance on the market of spurious Eyeless fragments.¹²⁷ In keeping with the colophons, he proposed the type of stratigraphy one would need for a fragment to be authentic: paper, drawing, assemblage, mica, rule lines, ornamentation, and so forth.¹²⁸ His method deserves emulation not only for its help in ascertaining authenticity but also since it points to this book’s larger themes concerning the stratigraphy of signification, the layering of vision, and the indexing of time. To begin, consider the paper, which in this case is unusually thin and diaphanous. Yet the paper is not actually the lowest stratum since the back of the manuscript was ornamented with a dense pattern of gold and silver leaf, cut into long narrow slivers and small squares of at least four distinct gauges. In time, these metallic ornamentations oxidized, burning their shapes into the obverse of the manuscript (the two surfaces are in contact when rolled). Hence the irony here is that the lowermost stratigraphic element is responsible for the uppermost stratigraphic marks.¹²⁹

In considering the scrolls’ pictorial structure, there are two vectors at stake: the horizontal alignments (such as the paper seams) and the depth alignments between the pictorial and the inscriptive lines. To begin with the horizontal, it seems clear that what were originally very long scenes were cut into smaller pieces.¹³⁰ The splicing and sequencing, however, were highly calculated. For instance, the majority of the paper sheets are approximately thirty sutra lines in length and are trimmed so that the painting fills the paper; rarely do two scenes continue across a page divide.¹³¹ Structuring this space is an axonometric perspectival system known as “blown-off roofs” (fukinuki-yatai), which focalizes the viewer’s gaze at an elevated oblique view, with the room tilted approximately forty-five degrees. The result—common in Japanese painting—is that architectural pillars run parallel to the vertical axis of the page. This is advantageous since the architectural and textual columns are parallel (if not precisely aligned), often falling at the page seams. In other words, the columns of text and columns of architecture converge. This is strong evidence that the joining of the papers involved a process of synchronizing the pictorial architecture with the architectonics of page.

Attention to the paper joins reveals that architectural features (floorboards, balustrades, posts, beams, standing screens, and so forth), which entail strong diagonal lines, often align in such a way that the diagonal lines continue across the divide; this pseudo-continuity of architectural space is maintained even at the expense of cropping human figures (see fig. 14). The consistency of the projection helps the space to cohere across the seams, despite the jarring zig-zagging transitions. As such, the pictorial stratum reads on its own as a calculated montage of courtly scenes. The overall uniformity of virtual space further suggests that these images were either designed for the Eyeless or were highly manipulated for their new purpose.

Fig. 32 Details of the reverse sides of the of the Eyeless Sutras scrolls. (top left and below) Itsuō Museum; (top right) Mutō Collection. Photos: author.

Fig. 33 Detail of the Golden Light Sutra, vol. 3, from the Eyeless Sutras. Kyoto National Museum. Photo: author.

Fig. 34 Detail of the Golden Light Sutra, end of vol. 4, from the Eyeless Sutras. Tokyo National Museum. Source: ColBase (https://colbase.nich.go.jp).

According to Aizawa, the ruled lines would have been laid over the drawings before the transcription. Visual evidence corroborates this since the sutra inscription sometimes occludes the golden paint of the margins. Hence there must have been a moment in the process of creation when only the pictures and the ruled lines were on the page—a textless Eyeless. These ruled lines, moreover, often align with the pictorial marks in a manner that is far from arbitrary. Note the precise geometry of the ground line as it passes like a tangent just beside the handle of a vessel or the way in which the hand of the deity boy seems to pinch the rule line (figs. 30 and 33). Once such convergences are noticed, their frequency becomes surprising. Another prominent alignment comes at the very end of the fourth Golden volume, where a woman is seen physically tying a string around both the text frame and a post in the virtual world of the illustration (fig. 34). Likewise, there are numerous moments in the Eyeless when a figure’s head is positioned just above the upper golden line as if he or she is peeking outside the text, entering into the marginal space outside the sutra, and directing the attention of the beholder (see fig. 18).

Fig. 35 Detail of the Golden Light Sutra, from the Eyeless Sutras. Itsuō Art Museum, Osaka. Photo: author.

These alignments are telling. If one were adding ruled lines to a preexisting picture so that it aligned with the joins of the paper sheets, then it would be highly unlikely that there should be numerous other moments on the page when the ruled lines would accord. Yet this is the case. Note how the panels of a folding screen “fit” neatly between six golden lines (fig. 35). Throughout the Eyeless, architectural features seem to take alignment cues from the ruled golden lines with an uncanny degree of accord.

There is neither material nor performative separation between the pictures and the calligraphy. The calligraphers were responding to the drawings, borrowing their vectors and lines as a trellis around which to form the characters. An excellent example of this is the inscription of the characters 一信 in such a way that they fit perfectly with the intersecting architectural diagonal (fig. 36). Another is the way in which the word “silver” (gin 銀) incorporates a vertical drawing line so that it seems vertically split, stretched, and dependent on the extraneous, pictorial line. Such calligraphic concinnity is not limited to architectural lines. The pace and scale of the inscription are sometimes distorted—or kerned—so that the lines of the drawings and the calligraphy achieve a degree of synchronicity. To take but one example: note the way the character 大 is slightly left of center, making it trace the jawline of the figure and sit nestled on his collar (fig. 37). At other moments, the calligraphic marks act as a surrogate and semiotic physiognomy, as in the case of a courtier with the character “to seek” (tazuneru 尋) fitted into his countenance or a woman with 㢤 (C. zāi) written across her face (fig. 38). As Deleuze and Guattari note, “One never deterritorializes alone; there are always two terms . . . and each of the two terms reterritorializes each other.”¹³² In other words, the face in such instances cannot help but operate as an oscillation point between the two layers of signification.

Fig. 36 Details of the calligraphy alignments in the Eyeless Sutras. (left) From the Getsudai album of calligraphy exemplars (Tekagami Getsudai), Kamakura period (1185–1333). Tokyo National Museum. Image: TNM Image Archives. (right) Kyoto National Museum. Photo: author.

In-person examination yielded several surprising discoveries. First, the paper of the Eyeless is remarkably thin and translucent, so much so that the painting is visible from the back. For instance, when looking through the reverse side, one can clearly make out a painting within a painting: two seated figures on either side of a small, square painting of two women (fig. 39). Second, the mica wash varies considerably. This is easiest to see in the scroll in the Mutō collection, which is in the best state of preservation. Its surface demonstrates that the mica varied in thickness from a thin wash to a level that seems nearly opaque. Complicating matters, several of the Mutō and Itsuō sheets may have been flipped before the sutra transcription, thus inverting the direction of the pictorial compositions and rendering their tonality light gray rather than black.¹³³ Most surprising of all was the discovery of extensive inpainting. Its occurrence is easy to identify since the later addition of darker ink sits higher in the stratigraphy of the painting. Note the dark parallel lines of ink that a painter has added in order to make it seem as if two women were wearing additional layers of robes (fig. 40).

Inpainting also helps to explain some of the uncanny moments where lines or motifs from one sheet continue into a discontinuous scene.¹³⁴ Most important of all, it suggests that the stratigraphy of the Eyeless was intentionally calibrated. Planning the alignment of sutra and picture is relatively straightforward due to the modularity of the Chinese script. One could anticipate exactly where a given character would fall. The golden columnar structure meters the page and delimits the top and bottom margins. It is not inconceivable that these translucently thin pages (and even their pictures) were designed while overlaid upon the columnar framework, hence accounting for the compositional alignments.¹³⁵ Even if the paintings had preceded the transcription, one could overlay the thin pictorial sheet on top of a completed transcription to see where the gold lines would fall. On balance, the overwhelming coherence of the Eyeless strongly suggests the operation of uniform design principles structuring all five volumes. The result is not a palimpsest but a highly intentional stratigraphic interface.

Fig. 37 Detail of a man wearing a hat with a closed fan to his chin from the Golden Light Sutra, vol. 4, from the Eyeless Sutras. Nezu Museum, Tokyo. Photo: author.

Fig. 38 Details of facial and calligraphic intersections in the Eyeless Sutras. (left) Tokyo University of the Arts; (right) Itsuō Museum of Art. Photos: author.

Fig. 39 Scene of a man and a woman viewing a painting, from the Eyeless Sutras; seen from the reverse of the scroll. Itsuō Museum of Art. Photo: author.

Fig. 40 Two examples of the inpainting of additional layers of robes in the Eyeless Sutras. Mutō Collection. Photos: author.

Stratigraphic Seeing

I would like to shift now from a writerly to a readerly perspective. That is, instead of focusing on the manufacture, I would like to attempt to read the sutra and picture together. In doing so, the reader activates the generative potential of this artifact to create complex and heretofore unseen narratives that lie not only between text and image but also between story and history. In that regard, Genette’s theory of the palimpsest in European literature provides a useful lens. Genette conceives of literary intertextuality as a form of layering, his prime example being James Joyce’s Ulysses (the hypertext) and Homer’s Odyssey (the hypotext). In the case of the Eyeless, however, the overlay is quite literal, with both layers copresent and simultaneous. The Eyeless further complicates Genette’s metaphor since the hypertext would technically be the much older sutra, which here is inscribed after and on the pictures. Regardless, as Genette argues, the palimpsest is a reciprocal and codetermining relationship.¹³⁶ It is the shuttling between the two layers—their endless implications—that serves to magnify the significance of each. In his words, “The art of ‘making new things out of the old’ has the merit, at least, of generating more complex and more savory objects than those that are ‘made on purpose’; a new function is superimposed upon and interwoven with an older structure, and the dissonance between these two concrete elements imparts its flavor to the resulting whole.”¹³⁷ The way in which one approaches such an amalgam is by a process he describes as relational: “That relational reading (reading two or more texts in relation to each other) may be an opportunity to engage in what I shall term, with an outmoded phrase, an open structuralism.”¹³⁸ Such open structuralism allows one to see the way in which the copresence of the pictorial and calligraphic in the Eyeless (and indeed throughout medieval Japanese manuscript culture) invites the creation of what he terms “literature in the second degree,” readings that arise out of reading the two layers together. Given the ubiquity of literal layering in Heian manuscript culture, one can readily glimpse how the Japanese archive actually embraces such stratigraphic strategies to a degree that far exceeds Genette’s framework.

What would such “relational reading” look like with the Eyeless? The best place to begin is with small strings of characters. Take, for instance, the depiction of a man holding documents, over whose body is written “I/we offer” (我供養) (see fig. 15). The first character sits in the blank face, thus inserting a first-person pronoun in such a way as to make it seem as if the phrase refers to the drawing: the painted man is making an offering. Another way of framing this is as an expression of deixis, which “forces language to adhere to the spatiotemporal frame of its articulation.”¹³⁹ Consider the case of the man who has 是長者子 (“this wealthy man’s son”) written across his face elsewhere in the Eyeless. The reference is to the jataka story of Jalavāhana, the handsome son of the merchant Jaṭimdhara who resolves to pursue a medical career to alleviate the suffering in the world. Suddenly it seems as if this faceless figure is to be seen allegorically as Jalavāhana.

This type of reading makes physical, focal demands on the beholders’ eyes. In order to see the picture, the beholder must focus their field of attention more widely than one would for reading text but not take in so much of the pictorial field that the text becomes illegible. One constantly negotiates what Erving Goffman might have termed the “attend” and “disattend tracks” of visual uptake.¹⁴⁰ Accordingly, the Eyeless seems to represent a rare example of an artifact whose legibility hinges upon the “intersection and integration of close looking and close reading.”¹⁴¹ Such a strategy of reading reveals the power of the pictorial background to co-opt the referents of the characters, making them about the proximate painting. The pictorial layer, in other words, spatially appropriates the discursive context of the sutra.

The “text” produced from this type of reading—or, strictly speaking “a textualization-in-context”—presents a type of uptake that cannot be categorized as either reading or seeing. Indeed, in the Chinese context, Craig Clunas has cautioned against the error of treating “reading” (du) and “seeing” (guan) as if they have to do with a text/image binary, when, instead, to read means that the eye is on a journey, following the ductus (the path) of the brush or the dynamics of the painting, traveling within a narrow visual subfield.¹⁴² The argument holds true in Japanese contexts, as well. The Eyeless plays with this same binary of seeing and reading to deform and nuance each other in what Lamarre calls “microaesthetic intersections” between the inscriptive and the depictive.¹⁴³ One must also account for what Edward Kamens terms the “integrated aesthetics” of text artifacts in premodern Japan since words and images are ever “cross-fertilizing” as a “symbiotic” and “integrated communicative entity.”¹⁴⁴

Thus, to behold the Eyeless requires a degree of allegoresis in that each layer of the stratigraphy may be read for meanings other than the one that either purports to give. Yet such a process actually exceeds the allegory framework in that it runs three ways rather than two; triangulated are the sutra, the historical context, and the virtual narrative of the drawings.¹⁴⁵ As with Umberto Eco’s notion of openness, any number of “texts” are possible as one navigates these strata.¹⁴⁶ Indeed, texts, text artifacts, and images all work together to generate polyvalent aesthetic experiences that exceed their parts.¹⁴⁷

A further captivating aspect of the Eyeless’s stratigraphy is its seeming self-referentiality. Multiple scenes show figures, primarily women, busily cutting, collating, and transcribing texts—an illustration, perhaps, of the influential role women played in late twelfth-century manuscript culture.¹⁴⁸ If so, these drawings are thus metapictorial or metafictional, as well, since they seem to depict the entire social and workshop-like process of creating multivolume manuscripts like the Eyeless.¹⁴⁹ One particularly striking instance of self-referentiality has a man holding a brush up to the sutra characters that loom large in his virtual world. There is the illusion that he is writing the characters from within the manuscript, a situation made all the more fantastic since “word” (kotoba) is the word he is writing; it forms part of the phrase “the word of the Buddha,” which is being written at the start of a text that purports to be the word of the Buddha (fig. 41). Thus he writes the text of his own world on the surface of the interface between himself and the viewer, the past and the present.

Fig. 41 Detail from the Golden Light Sutra, vol. 2, from the Eyeless Sutras. Note the alignment of the brush with the character 言. Photo: author.

Such relational or stratigraphic strategies of reading require one to excerpt sections of sutra from their original contexts. This might seem unorthodox at first, yet contemporaneous documents reveal this strategy to have been commonplace.¹⁵⁰ Take, for instance, the genre of “monoglyph pagodas” (ichijihōtō), a genre of sutra transcription whereby each character is ensconced within its own painted (or sometimes printed) reliquary-shaped frame (fig. 42). According to the Buddhist understanding of sacred corporeality, the sutra transcriptions themselves are relics inasmuch as they are bodies of the Buddha. Inscription (as one variety of icon creation) shares in the synecdochical logic of the relic in that both the semiotic and the material matter. Other manuscripts make this clear by having each character appear pillowed on a lotus pedestal, treated as the icon it is.¹⁵¹ The particular example in this figure is especially germane to the Eyeless since it contains polychrome pictures (tsukuri-e) in the same virtual world of the sutra text.

Fig. 42 Illuminated scroll of the Hoke-kyō Sutra, chapter 28 of the Lotus Sutra with each character on a lotus (Ichiji rendai hokekyō), twelfth century. Handscroll with ink, color, and gold on paper, 26 × 322.2 cm. The Museum Yamato Bunkakan, Nara.

The semantic contents of sutras were also subject to such decontextualized reading. For instance, Fujiwara no Teika and his father, Shunzei—the two most celebrated poets of GoShirakawa’s era—each authored series of poems wherein every poem was based on one chapter of the Lotus.¹⁵² Some of these poems might even take on erotic or seemingly irreverent content—further evidence of the need to temper the modern habit of treating the secular and sacred as a meaningful binary.¹⁵³ Likewise, GoShirakawa’s lifetime was witness to the rise of a genre known as Genji kuyō, whereby Lotus transcriptions would have waka poems linking the Tale of Genji to the Lotus text inscribed on the frontispieces of the fascicles. The aim was to redeem its author, Murasaki Shikibu, for the sin of having produced such an irresistibly wonderful literary work that pulls readers from their spiritual devotions.¹⁵⁴ In one case, the Genji ipponkyō of 1166, each participant created pictorial frontispieces that paired a chapter of the Tale of Genji to a fascicle of the Lotus, hence further inviting pictorial and not just poetic allegory between the two.¹⁵⁵

This is not to mention the reading strategies employed in the most celebrated of all Heian religious manuscripts, the Taira Family Sutras of 1164, a deluxe transcription of the Lotus commissioned by GoShirakawa’s contemporary Taira no Kiyomori. The Taira Family Sutras are renowned for their sophisticated frontispieces, some of which employ a calligraphic technique known as “reed writing” (ashide).¹⁵⁶ The term refers to an inscriptive strategy whereby one deforms one’s script to the extent that the individual graphemes might serve as rebuses or figural elements within a pictorial composition (such as reeds). Ashide requires a relational reading, as one reads inscriptive and depictive lines in tandem. Moreover, whereas ashide is usually treated as a specialized inscriptive practice—a way of materializing a text—it was as much a mode of painting as writing. It speaks to the identity of pictorial and inscriptive lines as figural marks rather than as texts and images.

In her monograph on the phenomenon, Claire-Akiko Brisset frames ashide as a sophisticated form of cryptography, foregrounding the element of play—a formulation that accords well with Genette’s similar argument that “the pleasure of the hypertext is also a game.”¹⁵⁷ The locus classicus for the discussion of ashide is the frontispiece for the “Bodhisattva Medicine King” chapter of the Taira Family Sutras, where one finds ashide, rebuses, illustration, micrography, and self-referentiality used to highlight the sutra’s assertion that women may achieve rebirth in the Pure Land (fig. 43).¹⁵⁸ In this frontispiece—as well as in others—rays of gold leaf and gold paint link the main sutra text to painted depictions of sutras within the frontispiece. A circuit thus emerges between the sutra in the frontispiece and the sutra in one’s own hands. Such self-referentiality is an excellent example of diegetic transposition since it shifts the world of the sutra to the world of the frontispiece (and, by extension, to the world of the viewer).¹⁵⁹ As with the Eyeless, the “world” of the sutra, the “world” of the beholder, and the “world” of those in the picture are all stratigraphically layered upon one another.

Fig. 43 Frontispiece to the “Bodhisattva Medicine King” chapter of the Taira Family Sutras (Heike nōkyō), ca. 1164. Ink, gold, silver, and pigment on paper. Itsukushima Shrine, Hiroshima. Image courtesy of Benridō, Inc.

Germane in this regard is a manuscript known as the Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing with Ashide (Ashide shita-e Wakan rōeishū), dated to 1160, which inscribes an early eleventh-century compilation of exemplary poems over a ground filled with ashide figures that illustrate, inform, and deflect the reading of the poems through the logic of the rebus.¹⁶⁰ In Lamarre’s reading of this two-volume set of scrolls, “the art lay in the strategic production and regulation of disjunctures in various layers (figure, color, and pattern of paper, illustration, calligraphy, composition, compilation), in order to induce resonance between elements within and among registers (of expression).”¹⁶¹ It is possible to see the Eyeless as a sophisticated magnification of such stratigraphic aesthetics.

Given the presumed mortuary context of the Eyeless, some scholars have suggested a link to the genre of epistolary sutras (hogukyō, lit. old paper sutras), a genre that peaked during this time.¹⁶² In these sutras, papers bearing the autographic trace (or simply in the possession) of the deceased were gathered and prepared to serve as a surface for a memorial sutra transcription.¹⁶³ Old papers were thereby transformed into interfaces where the sutra and the deceased would meet by virtue of either indexical trace or the logic of the contact relic. In rare cases, one might actually make paper incorporating the hair of the deceased—perhaps cut when tonsured—so that one could instantiate the sutra within the detritus of the body.¹⁶⁴

Fig. 44 Attributed to Dharma Prince Shukaku (Shukaku Hosshinnō), detail of the Sutra on Transforming Women into Buddhas (Bussetsu tennyo jōbutsu kyō), twelfth century. Ink and gold on paper. Tokyo National Museum. Image: TNM Image Archives.

One extant epistolary sutra, contemporaneous with the Eyeless, bears a transcription of the apocryphal Sutra on Transforming Women into Buddhas written on the letters of an aristocratic woman (fig. 44).¹⁶⁵ On the first sheet only, the transcription is in gold, which contrasts with the black ink of the characters thereafter. In a slightly later example, the letter ground itself has been thoroughly reworked, dyed, and ornamented with gold and silver powders and cut gold leaf; the sutra text was then loosely inscribed in alternating heavy and light quatrains creating an undulating visual effect—quite literally weaving the sutra into the virtual space of the extant letters (fig. 45). Other examples, however, are less stratigraphic, with the sutra simply written on the back of the page or after the original texts had been washed off. Layering was thus not necessarily the primary point of such letter sutras, but it was, nevertheless, a prominent aesthetic strategy.¹⁶⁶ In cases where the text is preserved, however, one has the feeling of seeing someone’s private correspondence now exposed, when it was never meant to be publicly seen, much less displayed in a twenty-first-century gallery. Naturally, this violation of privacy makes these objects all the more enthralling. Indeed, reading another’s ripped-up letters was among the things the wry mid-Heian author Sei Shōnagon listed as an activity that gave her pleasure.¹⁶⁷ Moreover, similar to the Eyeless, the broken fragments of the deceased’s texts create a form of montage, one whose very syntactic disarray estranges the original contexts of the letters. Hence unlike a medieval European palimpsest—where overwriting, erasure, occlusion, salvage, and obliteration are the defining tropes—the two strata here are meant to be intentional, copresent aspects of the work.¹⁶⁸ This copresence becomes all the more poignant when the completed scrolls are coiled, as the interface between the layers becomes volute and magnified.¹⁶⁹ Such epistolary sutras thus embody well the notion of the interface: the agency of the sutra transcriber and the agency of the letter writer meet on the interface of the page, which itself becomes an interface when used as a ritual tool.¹⁷⁰

Fig. 45 Detail of the epistolary sutra from the chapter on the lifespan of the Buddha from the Lotus Sutra, thirteenth century. Ink, gold, and silver on paper. Daitōkyū Memorial Library, Tokyo.

Even more similar to the Eyeless are two contemporaneous codices bearing sutra transcriptions directly on top of courtly genre scenes: one of the Lotus and another of the Sutra of Visualizing the Bodhisattva Fugen (Kan Fugen bosatsu gyōbō kyō, T 227) (fig. 46). Note that these codices use karakami paper, which bears a mica-printed pattern of diamond lozenges, hence adding an additional figural layer. With the Lotus codex, the overlay, near monochromy, and lack of clear physiognomy has led scholars to presume that these pictures were repurposed for a memorial context.¹⁷¹ This, however, would buck the assumption that it is the calligraphic trace of the deceased that is important in such instances. As was the case with the Eyeless, close looking at the composition clearly suggests that these codices were composed with the sutra text in mind. The prevailing presumption of reuse in memoriam is more likely motivated by modern discomfort than sound evidence. Reuse, moreover, need not always be linked to mortuary contexts.¹⁷²

Perhaps the most spectacular example of such stratigraphic painting is the aforementioned and contemporaneous recension of the Lotus in fan-shaped codices (see fig. 17). Here, the polychrome tsukuri-e technique is on full display. Note also how the paintings adroitly distort the pictorial space in order to accommodate the fan shape. Doubtless, these are complete artifacts—not recycled, accidental, or palimpsestic. It seems highly likely that the designers of the Eyeless had spectacular precedents such as these in mind. Thus even if the monochromy of the Eyeless was unintentional, the intended final state may have been as polychrome stratigraphic sutras, not as an illustrated narrative tale.

Fig. 46 Two-page spread from a codex of the Sutra of Visualizing the Bodhisattva Fugen, mid-twelfth century. Important Cultural Property. Ink and pigment on mica-printed paper, 18.7 × 22.8 cm. The Gotoh Museum, Tokyo.

In the scholarship on such stratigraphic sutras, some see the black Sinitic sacred sutra as overriding the polychrome Heian secular paintings in order to achieve a sort of ritual effacement or negation.¹⁷³ Yet we know that when one did seek for the Buddhist scripture to erase or transform a preexisting manuscript, it might be washed or repulped, hence the decision to preserve copresence seems significant.¹⁷⁴ Some have taken a more theologically driven hermeneutic approach by treating the copresence as a commentary on the Buddhist doctrine of nonduality, with the everyday and the sacred revealed to be one and the same.¹⁷⁵ Regardless of whether one accepts this reading, the binary must not be conflated with the word/image binary. To do so would mean employing Buddhist philosophy to resolve a post-Enlightenment binary that has no place in medieval Japan since layered inscription and depiction only seem unusual by virtue of a modern European notion that divides and polices text and image, where legibility is an unimpeachable virtue, and where a “clean copy” somehow denotes propriety, reverence, or finish. The very notion that one writes on a page rather than in a page is symptomatic of modern European print culture.¹⁷⁶ From nearly the dawn of manuscript culture in Japan, enmeshing inscription within a figural or patterned interface was a common, if not defining, aspect of elite manuscript production.¹⁷⁷ For instance, a well-known passage in the eleventh-century tale the Eiga monogatari tells of a spectacular sutra transcription project: sutra inscriptions shared the manuscript interface with pictures drawn over patterned damask, where pictures were included “above and below” the writing, and where pictures directly illustrated the sutra contents.¹⁷⁸ Such layering was part and parcel of fūryū, a sense of sophisticated and extravagant errancy that has been called the very “keyword” of Heian aesthetics.¹⁷⁹

Thus I suggest one must understand the stratigraphy of the Eyeless (and other stratigraphic sutras) within the larger context of Heian manuscript culture, where there was a predisposition for layering, divagation, estrangement, and figural depth. Even in secular contexts, one did not read “texts” but text artifacts, which were calligraphic performances with specific material parameters. These inscriptive performances floated within vividly ornamented interfaces that provided diegetic sensation to the uptake of the writing.¹⁸⁰ One might liken such autographic brush traces to the timbre of a voice or liken the interface of the figural page to orchestral accompaniment; they are integral features that cannot be divorced from “content.”¹⁸¹ By embracing such a stratigraphic and polysensorial understanding of discourse, calligraphers and painters were able to manipulate surface tension, dissonance, and noise for aesthetic and hermeneutic effect. Stratigraphic manuscripts may bother modern eyes, but from the perspective of the twelfth century, having a clean copy of a sutra produced for GoShirakawa’s repose would have been far more disturbing.

Portrait Without a Face

So far we have addressed the historical context, the stratigraphy of vision, and ritual context, but the remaining issue concerns the eponymous eyelessness. In this case, too, a stratigraphic approach helps to solve the mystery. Take, for instance, a scene found in the third volume of the Golden. In the middle of the page sits the figure of a tonsured man, wearing monastic robes, facing to the left, and clasping a rosary (fig. 47).¹⁸² Before him, a heavy diagonal line crosses six columns of text before ending at his hands, guiding one’s eyes. This diagonal is the top bar of a standing curtain, which obscures visual access to his person for those in the virtual space. Given the likelihood that the emperor saw himself allegorically reflected in the Golden and given the presence of contemporaneous manuscripts that link the worlds of the sutra and the beholder, might not one see the tonsured figure as the dharma emperor GoShirakawa himself?

Fig. 47 Detail from the Golden Light Sutra, vol. 3, from the Eyeless Sutras. Kyoto National Museum. Photo: author.

The notion is less controversial than it may at first seem. Evidence suggests that the emperor had no qualms with seeing himself in a painting; in fact, he delighted in it. For example, in 1173, when Kenshunmon’in had the Saishōkōin built as a temple-residence, Tokiwa Mitsunaga (dates unknown) and Fujiwara no Takanobu (1142–1205) were commissioned to execute wall paintings of her and GoShirakawa on pilgrimage.¹⁸³ Takanobu would be called upon again in 1188 to paint a nearly life-size portrait of GoShirakawa (no longer extant) as part of a set of portraits donated to Jingoji Temple.¹⁸⁴ Both of these examples, moreover, employ the emergent mode of likeness painting. Thus, in his own lifetime, the emperor had verisimilar likenesses made on a small scale, for private enjoyment, as well as on a large scale, for more public purposes. Few early examples remain, but one can gain a sense of this mode from the extant imaginary “portraits” of canonical poets (fig. 48).

Fig. 48 Attributed to Fujiwara no Nobuzane, Portrait of the Poet Minamoto no Kintada (detail), Kamakura period (1186–1334). Ink and color on paper. Fujiwara no Nobuzane / Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, purchase—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1950.25.

The import of the emergence of likeness pictures deserves reflection. In contrast to the art-historical habit of seeing their development as an advance toward “realism,” this mode did not replace the two preexisting conventions for aristocratic physiognomy: the so-called hikime-kagibana (dashed-eyes, hooked-noses) mode and the dynamic expressive faces of otoko-e (masculine images). Nor was detailed physiognomic resemblance itself novel. Optically resemblant paintings of physiognomy likely first entered the archipelago with the Shingon patriarch portraits painted by Li Zhen and imported by Kūkai in 805 CE. With likeness painting, it was rather the brushwork, rhetoric, and contexts that were new. Be that as it may, by the late twelfth century, there were at least three competing physiognomic modes: the hieratic hikime-kagibana, the dynamic otoko-e face, and the emergent likeness picture. Much like style, physiognomy itself was a modal concept. One had to choose whether and how to engage the pictorial rhetoric of likeness. Hence the blank faces of the Eyeless perhaps speak to this state of irresolution.

Physiognomy, moreover, is but one means of pursuing mimesis. For instance, note that the two characters inscribed on the head of the aforementioned figure are “great king” (daiō). These are followed below with “joins his palms” (gasshō), which the figure is indeed doing. Over—or rather within—the monk’s hands are the characters “world-protecting” (gose). Thus here is the figure of a tonsured man, hands joined in prayer, framed by a text that speaks of a great ruler whose hands are joined in prayer for the salvation of the world. This alignment brings the entire enterprise full circle since the central imperative of the Golden is for the emperor to govern as an ideal Buddhist sovereign whose virtue serves to protect the state and, by extension, the “world.” As such, it is difficult not to see in the Eyeless a faceless GoShirakawa, depicted as an ordained retired monarch, physically clasping the very prerogative that underpinned his soteriological, sacerdotal, and political identities. In that regard, if one is attempting to argue for identity between the world of the sutra and the world of the emperor, then the facelessness of the interface seems strategic. It allows the diegetic world of the pictorial strata to more readily co-opt the diegetic world of the sutra.

The most recalcitrant objects sometimes have the most to teach. In this case, I would argue that much of the difficulty in understanding the Eyeless is merely a function of methodological bias. Rather than chasing a counterfactual narrative tale, I prefer to take these objects at face value as complete, efficacious, and intentional ritual implements. If one brackets the compromised colophon and engages with the artifact itself, one finds a manuscript with much to teach about the nature of medieval Japanese manuscript culture, wherein the tensions between surface and depth, figure and ground, and inscription and depiction were calculated, prized, and sought-after aesthetic experiences. Reading the Eyeless in this manner, one finds a semantically superabundant interface that supports sophisticated strategies of allegoresis and stratigraphic navigation. The monochrome facelessness of the manuscript is advantageous in that it eases the transposition between the stratigraphic layers. Furthermore, if one considers the overlapping semantic fields of color, lust, form, and phenomena—all of which were rendered by the same character—then the Eyeless constitutes a sort of antipicture, a montage of the emperor’s world evacuated of all identity, phenomena, and attachment. Introducing analytics sometimes seen as proper to modernity (like interface, stratigraphy, and literary theory) actually opens up space for a more carefully contextual and historical reading of these works. Much remains unknown and indeed unknowable. Yet if these are the ultimate handscrolls associated with GoShirakawa, I can imagine no more sophisticated tribute.

Fig. 49 Map of Asia, in Gottfried Hensel, Synopsis vniversae philologiae, in qua: Miranda vnitas et harmonia lingvarvm totivs orbis terrarvm occvlta, e literarvm, syllabarvm, vocvmqve natvra & recessibvs, eruitur . . . mappisqve geographico-polyglottis (Nuremburg: in commissis apvd heredes Homannianos, 1741). A. E. Nordenskiöld Collection, National Library of Finland, Helsinki.

Interlude

Scriptural Geography

In 1741, the Jesuit scholar Gottfried Hensel (1687–1765) published astounding images of the world as part of his Synopsis Vniversae Philologiae. The book’s topic was comparative linguistics, a subject that entailed an awareness of the world’s myriad scripts. To best convey such manifold diversity, Hensel produced a series of maps that displayed the surface of the earth with the script of a given region inscribed onto its surface (fig. 49). It was a clever form of data visualization, simultaneously an atlas of écriture, a scriptural geography, and a careful physiognomic study of the world’s languages.

Hensel’s framework was straightforward for most languages, but Japanese presented a problem. To this day, several scripts are used in conjunction: the so-called Chinese characters (kanji), the rectilinear katakana phonetic script, and the likewise phonetic but curvilinear hiragana script. None of these appears in Hensel’s map. Instead, he blankets the archipelago with an inscrutable attempt to render an Indic script known as Siddhaṃ (J. Shittan or bonji, the latter meaning “script of Brahmā”), which had been imported to Japan in the early ninth century along with Vajrayāna Buddhist thought. The terse Latin passage on Japanese within the Synopsis Vniversae Philologiae explicitly mentions the sacerdotal context of the “bontziis” script, thus leaving little doubt as to its identity.¹ While Hensel’s map may fail to give an accurate sense of Japanese writing, his decision was nevertheless appropriate. The Jesuit graphologist had somehow managed to isolate the precise form of inscription that was most freighted with semiotic and salvific potential.

Siddhaṃ existed in Japan only as a recondite script used in esoteric Buddhist contexts. In fact, we see this script in the Principle scroll of the Eyeless Sutras, where it is written in giant calligraphic strokes (see figs. 14 and 20). The Principle colophon even took the trouble to name the calligrapher in recognition that Siddhaṃ required specialized training. Yet even if Siddhaṃ was not used to write the Japanese language, its graphemes retained their power as iconic figural forms—script without inscription. In the context of mantra, the phonetic aspects of Siddhaṃ were especially prized; they might also operate as iconotexts, as germinal figures (shuji) that encapsulate a deity in monosyllabic and monographic form. Siddhaṃ will feature prominently in the following chapter since its first grapheme—an A—is the centerpiece of a contemplative ritual (still practiced today) whereby one visualizes the inscription of this A within the physiological heart-mind. Whereas the previous chapter addressed the stratigraphic depth of the interface—the manuscript as a liminal space between virtual, ritual, allegorical, and historical worlds—the following chapter will extend this framework into the interior of the corporeal body itself.

What distinguishes a man from a word?

—C. S. Peirce

Chapter 4

Anti-Aesthetics

Materiality and Visuality in The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi)

How was vision understood at the end of the Heian period? And how might those period beliefs about vision change the way in which one pursues art-historical research? In an effort to answer these intractable questions, this chapter contextualizes a single handscroll according to the conceptual, physiological, and semiotic frameworks of its moment (figs. 50–51). This manuscript—now known as The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi)—takes as its subject a contemplative practice tied to the semiotic philosophy of the polymath Kūkai (774–835 CE), who expounded in his treatise On the Meaning of Sound, Letter, and Reality (Shōji jissō gi) a means of defeating semiosis for soteriological ends.¹ Yet the term “letter” in the title is somewhat misleading since the word so translated (mon or monji) has a far wider semantic field.² Letter, script, mark, glyph, image—indeed, all sensorial percepts—might be included therein.³ Although one cannot take Kūkai’s treatise as a blanket theory of medieval vision in Japan, it nevertheless provides a glimpse into one long-lived and well-documented lineage of thought.

Whereas scholars have often foregrounded the explicitly textual nature of Kūkai’s semiotics, this chapter argues for a more material, performative, and aesthetic approach. As scholars such as Fabio Rambelli and Cynthea J. Bogel underscore, Kūkai makes it clear that “signs can never be separated from their material, somatic, and visual foundation.”⁴ Moreover, when Kūkai speaks of writing, he has in mind a figural, embodied, and material phenomenon, one quite distinct from the modern text/image divide. Seen in this light, On the Meaning of Sound, Letter, and Reality becomes just as much a philosophy of aesthetics as semiotics. This is significant for art historians since it suggests that Kūkai’s writings provide a lens through which to view the period understanding of vision.⁵ Likewise, given that the point of his treatise was to defeat the illusion of meaning, one might technically frame his conceptualization of vision as a form of anti-aesthetics, a way of defeating the illusion of visual perception. Hence this chapter will read the Significance manuscript, with its famously confounding images, as a pictorial manifestation of Kūkai’s thought in action.

Fig. 50 The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi), ca. 1160–90. Important Cultural Property. Ink, pigment, gold and silver leaf, and powders on dyed papers, total: approx. 26 × 700 cm. Collection of the Fujita Museum of Art, Osaka. Photo: author.

A Significant Manuscript

As the manuscript’s title suggests, The Significance of the Character “A” concerns the semiotic and pragmatic horizons of an esoteric Buddhist contemplative tradition known as Ajikan (Contemplating the character A).⁶ The central characteristic of this family of practices is that one is asked to “draw” (kaku) the A—the first grapheme of Sanskrit in the Siddhaṃ script—on or within one’s embodied heart-mind (kokoro).⁷ In so doing, “soteriology merges with physiology,” argues Rambelli, “as the practitioners modify their body/mind in visualization to embody enlightenment.”⁸ Concise and straightforward, the practice is central to Shingon, the lineage of Buddhism of which Kūkai is patriarch. Indeed, “without the mastery of the letter A meditation,” asserts Abé, “no Shingon ritual is practicable.”⁹ In order to understand this practice, there are thus two issues at stake: the conceptualization of vision and the physiology of vision. The following chapter will take up the latter visceral question of the materiality of vision; the task here is to address the nature of vision itself.

Fig. 51 Details of the two painted figures in The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi), ca. 1160–90. (above) Scroll opened to the courtier. (below) The two figures seen in sequence. Important Cultural Property. Collection of the Fujita Museum of Art, Osaka. Photos: author.

As with the Eyeless, the Significance is canonical but poorly understood. Largely a calligraphic manuscript, it is most famous for two uncanny depictions of the human form that appear midway through the scroll (fig. 51). Divorced from all contextual space, the two figures float in the same sumptuously adorned world as the textual inscription. Startlingly, the figures’ chests are exposed to reveal an A written on or within their bodies.¹⁰ Each A rests on an azurite-green lotus platform, and each lotus-A pair is enclosed, in turn, by a delicate circle of cut silver leaf. Eight additional silver filaments—rays of light—radiate from each dark, ink-inscribed A, cross the two bodies in four pairs, and extend out into the golden surround. Although the Significance was known to scholars since the late Edo period, few have studied the manuscript extensively.¹¹ Much remains uncertain: the two pictures do not correspond neatly to the accompanying texts; unknown are the historical circumstances of the manuscript’s creation; and there exists no other example of this particular iconography.¹² Even determining the exact spatial, physical, and physiological relationship of the inscribed As and the depicted bodies presents a challenge. As I will argue, these paintings in the Significance point to historical agents grappling with the possibility of using pictures to make visuality itself visible.

Given that the Significance figures appear in the context of a manuscript scroll, scholars almost invariably take them to be illustrations, but the iconography departs conspicuously from even the most concrete descriptive language. Further complicating matters is the presence of two captions that label these pictures, somewhat dubiously, as Kūkai himself and his interlocutor and patron, the Emperor Saga (786–842 CE). Most disregard these cartouches, as they are almost certainly modern additions. In fact, most scholarship takes the “Kūkai” figure to be a nun. Given the prominent agency of devout aristocratic women—as patrons, calligraphers, and practitioners—in twelfth-century Japan, that would make perfect sense.¹³ Yet the evidence for this gender attribution is not entirely solid.

In this study, however, I return focus to the text of the manuscript itself—as well as to the Ajikan practice that it addresses—in an attempt to recover a more rigorously historicized understanding of both what is depicted and how it is to be seen. My hypothesis here is that the Significance pictures make visually manifest a way of seeing—and a way of understanding seeing itself—that does not distinguish between text and image, body and language, secular and sacred. Seen in this way, the Significance pictures are deeply perspicuous in that they depict the body’s relationship to the Heian mediascape in a manner that is pedagogically efficacious and bracingly verisimilar. Where one might see the pictorial irresolution of these paintings as problematic, such tension is perhaps symptomatic of deep instrumentality: the ability to make visually manifest the fluidity of text, image, and body. In sum, it would be misguided to continue to characterize this iconography as an ersatz hybrid of religious and secular art, when it may very well represent a cornerstone achievement in the history of anthropomorphic representation in Japan.

Materiality of the Interface

In its present condition, the seven-meter scroll spans sixteen sheets of paper, each approximately forty-five centimeters long and twenty-six centimeters high.¹⁴ Very much in keeping with luxury manuscripts of its era, the paper ornamentation is lavish, with cut gold and silver leaf (kirihaku), gold and silver powders, and metallic stencil-cut botanical forms arranged in varying densities and patterns on the paper ground, which ranges in color from ecru to deep mauve in carefully controlled gradations.¹⁵ The columns of text are executed in a clear hand, uniformly spaced, and with little modulation in line weight. While anonymous, the calligraphy has been attributed on stylistic grounds to the celebrated hands of Jakuren (1139?–1202) or even Fujiwara no Teika.¹⁶

Depending on how once parses the scroll, the Significance comprises three to five fragmentary texts (fig. 52).¹⁷ Following an abstract frontispiece painting is the eponymous first text, “The Significance of the Character A,” which fits squarely on a single sheet.¹⁸ The “Efficacy of the Character A” (Aji no kunō) follows, running an additional eighty-six lines (for a translation of both, see appendix B). Thereafter, on the same sheet, is a short inscription, “As stated in the epistles of Tōbō Hokkyō” (Tōbō Hokkyō on-shōsoku iwaku), after which follow these two curious lines: “Just as I lifted my brush, a tear fell—alas, had I made a mistake?”¹⁹ This enigmatic question leads directly to the two paintings, each on a dedicated sheet. They are followed by the sixty-six-line “Mantra to Purify the Three Activities” (Jō sangyō shingon; the three activities being mental, verbal, and physical), which transitions midsentence to an untitled text that runs another seventy-four lines to the scroll’s end. Scholars have given this fragmentary fifth text the provisional title “The Lotus Sutra and Nenbutsu” (Hokekyō to nenbutsu).²⁰ One must bear in mind, however, that the manuscript’s present form may be quite far from the original since an indeterminate amount of the scroll is missing.²¹

The twentieth century has seen the dating of this manuscript drift consistently earlier, from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-twelfth century.²² Stylistic comparison with more firmly dated artifacts suggests it was created in the last half of the twelfth century.²³ Taking a philological approach, Matsubara Shigemi suggests that a portion of the second text, the “Efficacy,” was likely based on Envisioning the Character “A” (Ajikan) by the Shingon priest Kakuban (aka Kōkyō Daishi, 1095–1143), who popularized the Ajikan practice, authoring no fewer than ten texts on the topic.²⁴ This establishes the terminus post quem at the mid-twelfth century. More recently, a group of historical linguists at Hiroshima University have attempted to date this manuscript through analysis of the grammar, vocabulary, phonetic annotations, syntax, and calligraphy.²⁵ Each component yielded slightly different results, but they argue the grammar reflects mid-Heian wabun grammar and Insei-period kanbun kundoku grammar.²⁶ Moreover, the style of the kana characters used for the kundoku suggests these annotations were added not long after the main text was transcribed.²⁷ All in all, one might conservatively date the manuscript to the window between 1160 and 1190, thus making it coterminous with the life of GoShirakawa and the Eyeless Sutras.²⁸

Fig. 52 The constituent elements of the The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi) scroll, ca. 1160–90. Key: 1. “Definition of the Character A”; 2. “Practicalities of the Character A”; 3. Epistle by Tōbō Hokkyō; 4. Pictures; 5. “Mantra to Purify the Three Actions”; 6. Unidentified fragmentary text on Pure Land and nenbutsu. Diagram by author.

Corroborating this dating is a manuscript recently discovered in the collection of the Ninnaji Temple Complex in Kyoto.²⁹ The sixteenth through the twentieth pages of the Ninnaji manuscript accord neatly to the Significance’s “Definition” and “Efficacy” texts. Moreover, a colophon by one Shingen (1419–1504) attests it to be a 1414 (Ōei 21.6.1) copy made by Nakamori (or Chūsei) Hōin (1386–1456), whose own colophon, in turn, attests it to be a copy of an original by Yūgen (1120–1145/1217), thus suggesting that the first two texts of the Significance are not idiosyncratic.³⁰ Yūgen studied under Kakuban—who was perhaps a relative—and was head scholar at the Daidenbōin on Mount Kōya.³¹ Yet the Ninnaji version of the “Efficacy” is nineteen lines longer than the Significance version.³²

A is for Aji

The opening texts of the Significance concern the proper praxis and this-worldly merits of Ajikan, a family of esoteric Buddhist visualization practices with a particularly long and complex history. Extant texts number more than one hundred; iconography and performance vary; and the diplomatic issues of transmission, circulation, filiation, and so forth remain uncertain.³³ Historically, the practice appears to have had two peaks in popularity: in the twelfth century and in the early Edo period.³⁴ In fact, recent decades may constitute a third peak, as public Ajikan sessions are advertised online and in print, new popular books have appeared on the topic, and icons are readily purchasable online for home practice (fig. 53).

The textual sources for Ajikan are multiple; most prominent are the Mahāvairocana Sutra (Dainichikyō, S. Vairocanâbhisaṃbodhi Sūtra, T 848.18), the Treatise on the Bodhicitta (Bodaishinron, T 1665.32.572–75), as well as Yixing’s later Commentary (Dainichikyōsho, T 1796.39).³⁵ The earliest text on Ajikan authored in the archipelago, however, is held to be the Record of Oral Instruction on Ajikan (Ajikan yūjin kuketsu), purportedly an oral transmission from Kūkai transcribed by his disciple Jichi’e (aka Jitsu’e, 786–847 CE).³⁶ Kūkai is further credited with first importing the Siddhaṃ script itself in 806 CE.³⁷

Central to the practice is the privileged nature of this script, which was the subject of Kūkai’s essay The Siddhaṃ Mother-Letters with a Commentary (Bonji shittan jibo narabi ni shakugi, T 2701.84), which he presented to Emperor Saga in 814 CE.³⁸ The text begins with a long mythohistorical preface, which asserts that, although the script is Indian, held to be the creation of Brahmā, it “was constructed out of truth itself.”³⁹ In opposition to Chinese, the preface avers, Siddhaṃ represented a language that was “eternal” and thus free from phonetic drift; accordingly, Siddhaṃ alone could preserve the full sonic, semantic, and figural significance of a given word.⁴⁰ The Siddhaṃ Mother-Letters with a Commentary proceeds thereafter to define each character one by one, starting with the A:

A.—[Sound:] /ā/ (upper tone). [Meaning:] nothing, not, un-.

The A is at the foundation of all truth. It is the sound of first opening the mouth. All sounds made at the first opening of the mouth contain the A. Without the A sound, there could be no discourse. Thus it is the matrix of all sound, and the foundation of all characters. In addition, it is the principle of the originally unarisen. Buddhist and non-Buddhist teachings are all born from this character.⁴¹

The metaphorical entailments and semiotic circuitry here are brilliantly calculated. They derive from characteristics of Sanskrit phonetics and grammar, according to which the A served as both an alpha privative (namely, the negative prefix “a-”) while simultaneously being the sine qua non of all speech, including “silent” breath itself.⁴² The argument goes beyond linguistics since even the subtle friction of breathing counts as a form of speech—one that only serves to signify its own insignificance. Note that Kūkai’s cosmological theories hold that all matter is in a state of reverberation and that this sonority is the “voice,” thus the “speech,” and thus the “language” of reality. As air is one of the five elements, speech partakes of its materiality.⁴³

Fig. 53 Screenshot of an “Ajikan meditation set” on the popular online store Rakuten, 2013.

Kūkai’s treatise is perspicuous in that it includes the subsemiotic and pragmatic aspects of the A.⁴⁴ In Saussurean terms, it speaks not only to langue but to parole since the A materially and sonically underpins all spoken language (note how this crucial feature is lost in inscriptive texts). Kūkai’s graphicosyllabary might be described as an extended metasemantic and metapragmatic text since it discusses both what the A means (metasemantic) and how it is instrumental to ritual practice (metapragmatic).⁴⁵ One sees in his definition of the A the making visible of a symbolic form with the power to refer not only to all phenomena but also to the foundation of the signifying process itself.⁴⁶ In effect, Kūkai casts Siddhaṃ—and especially the A—as the script of a veritable “pure language,” one very much in keeping with Benjamin’s fantasy.⁴⁷ The script is further wedded to the logic of dhāraṇī and mantra in that it signifies the entire discursive potential of language without even being read.⁴⁸ The glyphs are also mapped onto a species of signs known as “seed-syllables” (shuji; S. bīja) so that the monosyllabic Sanskrit syllables are believed to denote, encapsulate, and embody a given deity or concept.⁴⁹ In sum, this single A represents the most potent figure imaginable. Moreover, it is important to note that all A icons are not depictions but are the A, similar to the way in which sutra text is the body of the Buddha. In the Significance scroll, sign and signifier collapse since the A in the manuscript is the A in our world, too.

One might be tempted to draw an analogy with the Aleph in Western Eurasian religions, but the comparison is ill-advised.⁵⁰ The Aleph’s evocation of creation or becoming would be anathema to Kūkai’s formulation of the A as the “original unarisen” and the negation of semiosis itself. In another word of caution, despite the fact that the Siddhaṃ script is termed bonji—literally “Sanskrit script” or “Brahmā letters”—in Japanese this does not necessarily mean that the scribes or monks who used it were proficient in the Sanskrit language.⁵¹ Rather, this script was used “alegibly” or “nonhermeneutically” in Japan; it was less textual than figural: an iconic or pragmatic mark rather than a grapheme.⁵² As such, ritual texts are varied in their approach to transcribing the A. The Significance employs the Sino-Japanese character 阿, which is the most common approach, but other texts use the Japanese phonetic script katakana or take typographical pains to preserve the Siddhaṃ grapheme. Nevertheless, any transliteration runs counter to the purported exceptionality of the script.

The terse “Definition” text that begins the Significance does not go into the same detail as the Siddhaṃ Mother-Letters with a Commentary. Instead, with paratactic rhetoric, it lists the following “definitions” of the A: it is the principle of the Buddhas, the form of the awakened mind, the dharma-body of the Tathāgata, the form of the originally unborn and undying (J. honpushōfumetsu), and the body of the Dharma Realm of Dainichi Nyorai of the Womb World. In other words, the Significance opens with a quick doctrinal précis. It outlines these complex metasemantic concerns in short order, making way for the following text, the metapragmatic “Efficacy,” which discusses how exactly to put the A to use. As I argue, the key to understanding the two paintings is attending to both the semantic and pragmatic horizons of the A.

Against Illustration

Given the multivalent nature of the A, the As embedded within the bodies of the Significance figures may be read on several levels. Whereas most assume the Significance pictures illustrate the “Efficacy,” descriptive language is in short supply. The majority of the text is dedicated to praising the pragmatic benefits of Ajikan, not describing how it is to be performed or seen.⁵³ For example, the entire description of how to perform Ajikan is encapsulated in the first three lines: “When one is to study this character for the first time, if the mind is not yet mature [skilled], begin with a picture: draw a lotus flower, and inside of a moon disk, draw the character A; then contemplate it” (11–14). The text then moves immediately to describe what will occur once one is skilled at the practice: “When one becomes adept at such contemplation, the light of this character will scatter out from within the chest to the four directions; it will permeate all the Buddha-fields in the ten directions. From head to toe, this light will encircle and envelop the body of the practitioner” (lines 15–20). The prevailing consensus is that these pictures are illustrations of these lines. For instance, Naitō Sakae treats these as historical documents, claiming that the pictures not only demonstrate practitioners engaged in Ajikan but also serve as evidence that the practice was widespread in “secular” society since we see both a courtier and a nun.⁵⁴ Narihara Yuki suggests these pictures “were painted in order to demonstrate visually two people in the state of fully comprehending the A character”—the implication being that these pictures illustrate what Eric Matthew Greene has termed “meditative attainment.”⁵⁵ Similarly, Komatsu proposes that they are an astute and sophisticated couple (man and woman) of exemplary piety, depicted just at the moment when the practice achieves its fruition; he goes so far as to term this the narrative “climax” of the scroll.⁵⁶ In the same vein, Narihara reproduces a photograph of monks seated before A icons, implying that the Significance pictures document the practice in a similar manner.⁵⁷

As with the Eyeless, the tendency to see the pictures as illustrations is motivated by the handscroll format, which is strongly linked to narrative. Yet the Significance pictures depart from the “Efficacy” in conspicuous ways. First, whereas the honorifics used in the language of the “Efficacy” suggest a specific aristocratic reader, never does the manuscript mention observing a person doing the practice, much less a pair.⁵⁸ Second, despite all iconographical leeway, if one were to illustrate the “Efficacy,” then certainly the most crucial details of all—the lotus-disk-character complex—should match the textual description. This, however, is not the case. The “Efficacy” instructs one to draw the lotus first and then to draw the A inside a moon disk (sitting on top of the lotus); but the pictures each have both the lotus and the A located within the silver outline of the moon disk. The distinction is jarring since there are two iconographical lineages of Ajikan. The iconography of the Significance identifies it as belonging to the Kongō-kai lineage, whereas the text describes the icon of the Taizō lineage.⁵⁹ The pictures depart from other explicit descriptors as well. For instance, the “Efficacy” describes the A as radiantly gold, yet it is black in the paintings. Furthermore, the explicitly “golden” light radiating from their bodies is represented by cut silver leaf—an incongruity made all the more conspicuous given the heavy use of gold leaf throughout the manuscript. More practically, as Narihara notes, the figures’ legs are not in the correct posture for meditation.⁶⁰ Last, if the purpose of the pictures is to depict two seated practitioners, then why should they be depicted in isolation, bereft of any spatial bearings—and, most immediately, why are their chests bared? Far from being illustrations, these paintings seem to have been composed with separate imperatives in mind.

Gender and Soteriology

Scholarship on the Significance has primarily focused on the first tonsured figure. Most presume this figure to be a nun and the second a male courtier. These attributions, however, contradict the cartouches. These minuscule red inscriptions on slivers of gold paper were likely added no earlier than the late nineteenth century (fig. 54).⁶¹ The first, over the shoulder of the tonsured figure, reads: “A portrait of Kōbō Daishi [aka Kūkai], robes at court” (Kōbō daishi kyūchū onzo miei 弘法大師宮中御衣御影); the second: “A portrait of the Kōnin emperor [Emperor Saga]” (Kōnin kōtei miei 弘仁皇帝御影).⁶² The pairing is not surprising. Kūkai and Emperor Saga were contemporaries and interlocutors. They also represent two of the “Three Brushes” (sanpitsu), a grouping of eminent early-Heian calligraphers.⁶³ Moreover, the emperor’s patronage was essential for the success of Kūkai’s Shingon lineage.

The earliest document to attribute gender to these paintings is the 1795 compendium Collected Antique Pictures (Koga ruiju), which reproduces the two pictures separately: the figure inscribed Emperor Saga is included in the handscroll that inventories exemplary pictures of men, while the Kūkai figure appears in a similar scroll of women. In the 1901 revised and expanded reprinting of Thoughts on Antique Paintings (Zōho kōko gafū) by Kurokawa Mayori (1829–1906), the pair of figures is again identified as man and woman.⁶⁴ Curiously, however, the first scholarly treatment of the scrolls, published in Kokka in 1928, followed the cartouches. Thus perhaps they were added in the early decades of the twentieth century. By 1960, however, Suzuki Keizō again saw the two as a man and woman.⁶⁵ In 1968, Yanagisawa Taka likewise refers to the Kūkai figure as a tonsured nun and describes the cartouches as “nothing more than an erroneous explanation, appended later.”⁶⁶ Confidence in this assessment has since increased. In 1984, Komatsu called it “unreasonable” to think that the figure on the right might be Kūkai.⁶⁷ Matsubara followed suit, saying that it is “clearly a tonsured woman.”⁶⁸ The celebrated scholar Naitō likewise concurs.⁶⁹

The puzzle, however, is that nuns typically cut their hair to shoulder length and wore textile head covers.⁷⁰ Examples of women taking a full “masculine” tonsure are rare. Nevertheless, Katsuura Noriko believes this to be a pictorial example of a fully tonsured nun but admittedly only finds two cases documenting this practice; moreover, they date from two centuries earlier: Fujiwara no Senshi (962–1002 CE) and Fujiwara no Seishi (972–1025 CE), who took the full tonsure in extremis.⁷¹ Granted, Ajikan practice was indeed a deathbed ritual at the time of the Significance’s creation, yet the Significance figures seem neither advanced in years nor ill.⁷²

Narihara dedicates a 2002 article to scrutinizing what she terms the “unbalance” (anbaransu) of the masculine tonsure and female robes.⁷³ Narihara proposes the contrast is meant to demonstrate a connection to Buddhahood attainment (jōbutsu) and rebirth (ōjō) by means of a process in which a woman is instantaneously transformed into a man at the moment of death (tennyo jōdan) in order to circumvent the misogynist notion that only men might achieve Buddhahood.⁷⁴ Her logic is that the Significance figure has chosen the “masculine” tonsure to effect this change.⁷⁵ The scriptural locus classicus for soteriological gender transition is the “Devadatta” chapter of the Lotus, where the Dragon King’s daughter, with lightning speed, is transformed into a man and attains awakening as a Buddha. Yet as Abé demonstrates, this single scene is perhaps overly freighted; moreover, the Shingon goal of attaining Buddhahood in this very body (sokushin jōbutsu) was never limited to men.⁷⁶

Fig. 54 Details of the two cartouches on The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi), ca. 1160–90. Important Cultural Property. Collection of the Fujita Museum of Art, Osaka. Photos: author.

Fig. 55 Detail of the face of the Kūkai-labeled figure, from The Significance of the Character “A” (Ajigi), ca. 1160–90. Important Cultural Property. Collection of the Fujita Museum of Art, Osaka. Photo: author.

Another way to approach the question is audience. Matsubara suggests “the existence of aristocratic women behind the creation of this manuscript” due to “writing that mixes kana and kanji, especially the depiction of a nun, and an awareness of women here and there in the texts.”⁷⁷ Narihara concurs and hypothesizes that the manuscript was created for a tonsured woman since a female beholder would identify with the image of a nun.⁷⁸ She likewise asserts that these pictures take illustrated tales (monogatari-e) as their source, which she sees as evidence of an aristocratic female audience.⁷⁹ I would be wary, however, of treating narrative tales as inherently feminine.⁸⁰ Moreover, the only aspect of these scrolls that connects them to illustrated tales is perhaps the hikime-kagibana convention.⁸¹ The artist here is particularly adept at compositionally manipulating this idiom; note the way in which the contour lines of the robes meet the right eye of each figure. In fact, the Significance pictures are large (perhaps the largest) examples of such physiognomy in handscroll format.⁸² The clear hand, mixture of kanji and kana characters, and phonetic glosses also suggest a female readership to some.⁸³ Yet perhaps the closest analogue to the Significance’s calligraphy are the Hell Scrolls (Jigoku sōshi), which are also “Jakuren-style” and wakan konkōbun but not said to be directed to women.

One clear distinction between the two is the heavy makeup worn by the figure labeled Saga.⁸⁴ Courtiers of both genders would have worn maquillage that entailed drawing thick black eyebrows up high on their foreheads. In fact, an early history of Japanese cosmetics reproduced an image of the Ajigi’s Saga figure to illustrate how eyebrows were drawn.⁸⁵ Another distinguishing feature is clothing. The textiles here are expertly reproduced in exacting detail; the painter even captured the complicated visual effect of the layered sumptuous silk robes.⁸⁶ While the clothing of the Saga figure accords with the expression of a masculine gender, the situation is more ambiguous with the tonsured figure.⁸⁷ The outermost robe is unmistakably a surplice (kesa), which seems to be worn over large, voluminous pants, an inner layering robe, and a top robe. Some term this top robe an “outer robe” (uwagi), but others more precisely designate it an uchiki, a garment most commonly worn by aristocratic women but also by men.⁸⁸ Whereas the mass of fabric extending to the right is in keeping with the iconography of seated female aristocrats, the features that would clearly indicate an uchiki (such as shorter squared sleeves and a belt) are obscured. The clothing also departs from what one would expect from a monk, namely an unadorned robe of plain silk (soken) with a peaked collar (sōgōeri). This figure’s robes are clearly collarless and pattered with ornamental roundels.⁸⁹ Then again, the cartouche perhaps anticipates that the Kūkai attribution is untenable, thus it details that he is wearing “robes at court.” Bear in mind these are twelfth-century reimaginings of historical figures from three centuries earlier, so there is plenty of room for sartorial slippage.

Another way to approach the issue of gender is to return to the “Efficacy” text, which states that the hearts of men face upward, while the hearts of women face downward (lines 31–37). If this is a person who was assigned a female sex at birth but who has undergone a male tonsure to effect a gender affirmation, then the picture would seem to suggest that a physiological transformation had taken place within the viscera of the body, thus shifting the direction of the heart-mind. By that reading, to call this figure a nun would no longer be in keeping with the gender identity of the figure. Alternatively, if one takes this to be a transgender figure, then the heart-mind would not have needed inversion at all since the heart-mind’s direction would have affirmed the male gender all along, regardless of the assigned gender.⁹⁰

Regardless of how one identifies the two figures—be it Saga and Kūkai, husband and wife, mother and son, male and female, or male and male—one must resist reading into the pairing itself since any number of additional pages (including paintings) may be missing.⁹¹ Nor can one read into the sequence since the first Kokka article describes the scroll in an entirely different order, with the courtier first, followed by the text sheets, and ending with the tonsured figure.⁹² While the cartouches do document one modern interpretation, they are ultimately of little use in understanding the paintings; and the gendered reading of these paintings is far from conclusive.

Stratigraphy and Anatomy

Very little scholarly attention has been given to what is arguably the paintings’ most striking aspect: the uncertain relationship of the lotus-disk-character complexes to the sitters’ exposed bodies (fig. 55). In surveying previous accounts, one discovers vastly diverging theories. The Kokka article has the figures “holding the A characters at their chests,” while Suzuki has the figures “opening their chests and showing the A.”⁹³ Narihara has the “A characters inserted into their chests,” whereas Komastu sees the A as “displayed on the skin.”⁹⁴ In a later article, Narihara has the Saga figure opening his robe to show the character to us, while Naitō has them “cradling” the icon “within their chests.”⁹⁵ The most recent exhibition catalogue has each figure “cradling a moon disk within an exposed chest,” while another describes the scene as “the envisioning of the A painted symbolically.”⁹⁶ Samuel C. Morse defines them as “located exactly in the center of their chests,” while Dietrich Seckel characterizes the A of the Saga figure as located “inside an aureole on his chest, in the place of his heart, and thus in the center of his very being.”⁹⁷

Given the wild variation of these descriptions, it is worth reflecting on this ambiguity. The relationship is indeed unclear, and this indeterminacy no doubt contributes to the arresting nature of these images. For instance, the robes of the courtier’s outer garment (hō) are opened in an impossible way.⁹⁸ Gravity and the stiffness of the fabric do not sufficiently account for the drape, which neatly frames the moon disk. Likewise, the tonsured figure’s robes suggest that the moon disk is materially present, abutting the robes and holding them apart.⁹⁹ But the apparent presence of these circular or spherical forms suggests a further possibility—that the moon disks and A characters are not visual manifestations but physical objects. The caption in Katsuura’s publication suggests as much: “Fully tonsured nun wearing the Sanskrit letter A, the ultimate meaning of Buddhism.”¹⁰⁰ This is an interesting hypothesis, but one wonders how this wearable A might attach to the body. It seems to suggest the existence of pectoral pendants, yet the only extant examples of such objects are architectural (keman) and far too large to be bodily adornments (fig. 56). What might at first look like a string around the neck of the figure is much more likely the border of the inner robe.

Fig. 56 Pendant architectural ornament (keman) of the Siddhaṃ A on a lotus pedestal with clouds, thirteenth century. Painted cow leather within a metal frame, approx. 31 × 33 cm. Tokyo National Museum. Source: ColBase (https://colbase.nich.go.jp).

Icons notwithstanding, the bared chests of the figures are themselves striking. Presumably, the pictures were so designed in order to have the gaze of the viewer penetrate the body’s interior space unobstructed. Yet this seems unnecessary. According to the “Efficacy,” the light emitted by the A would be so radiant that the chest would not need to be bare for it to be visible. Then again, this presumes the painting is made for an external viewer to view the light seen by the practitioner. Moreover, while the moon disk is meant to be luminous, the disks in these paintings seem rather muted, identical in hue to the flesh. This suggest perhaps that the embodied nature of the icon is being highlighted. If so, the A characters are in the moon disks within the body—and not on the manuscript page.

Yet the pictures seem to resist this interpretation. For instance, note that the lotus-disk-character complex does not share the same perspectival rubric as the bodies. Each figure faces slightly to the right, with their bodies turned forty-five degrees from the plane of the paper. By contrast, the A character complex is painted flush with the manuscript’s paper surface, not in line with the sitters’ coronal plane. If one conceives of the silver circle as denoting a sphere, then that sphere rotates on the coronal plane like a ball in a socket, so that the A faces outward—a jarring incongruity, once noticed.

This pivot effect is partly a function of the planarity of the A grapheme. To write in Siddhaṃ, one can use a brush—just as one would with the three Japanese scripts—but the preferred tool was a wooden stylus known as a bokuhitsu.¹⁰¹ The bokuhitsu has an angled tip that allows the calligrapher to modulate the thickness of the line through rotation rather than pressure. Moreover, the bokuhitsu allows for sharp diagonals and permits a variety of forms impossible with a brush. This alternative kinetic rubric becomes particularly apparent in texts that juxtapose Siddhaṃ and brush characters. A prime example would be the Principle sutra discussed in the previous chapter (see fig. 14). In fact, a small bokuhitsu was perhaps used in the transcription of the As within the bodies of the Significance figures.

The calligraphic demands of inscribing the A extend to the contemplative practice. Recall that in the “Efficacy,” the practitioner is not told to visualize (kan) the syllable but to draw or write it (kaku).¹⁰² One might interpret this literally, in that one needs to draw a priming icon, or one might interpret it virtually, in that one is meant to envision such a drawing or draw it with one’s breath. In the latter case, the “mind’s eye” is of less concern than the mind’s hand and breath. Even if one begins without gazing at a painted icon—a topic to which the next chapter turns—the envisioned grapheme is calligraphic and figural rather than typographic, planar, and printed. Thus the relatively simple notion of a visualized grapheme becomes complicated in the context of a culture so attentive to the figural and material dimensions of the written word.

A fourteenth-century mandala of an A icon in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum helps to clarify this point (fig. 57). Note that this example combines the aforementioned Kongōkai and Taizō formats, with the A atop a lotus pedestal that is enclosed within a spherical moon disk. This disk, in turn, sits atop another lotus supported by a vajra on top of a foundational lotus. Unlike the Significance examples, however, the A grapheme has been “written” in gold leaf, a material whose luster is in keeping with textual descriptions of the character’s radiance. But this A effaces any notion of process or trace since the character is reduced to an iconic chrysograph, one that bears no evidence of the ductus of the stylus or brush. The brilliantly planar A is thus in tension with the richly modeled lotuses and the translucent sphere of the carefully shaded moon disk.

This distinction should not be reduced to a difference in material—ink versus gold. Consider a roughly contemporaneous and iconographically similar example (fig. 58). Here again, the A is written in gold, yet the paint has been modeled so that the individual strokes of the A are voluminous and cylindrical, as if squirted out of a tube of paint. A lighter shade of gold applied to the edges of the strokes helps to reinforce this illusion. The effect is most evident at bottom right, where the final section of the last stroke is foreshortened; it comes toward the picture plane, trails to a point, and droops under its own weight. The A is thus given materiality, gravity, and three-dimensionality. Furthermore, even in A icons made of embroidered thread and human hair, the needlework preserves the illusion of the ductus of the brush and the volume of the icon (fig. 59).¹⁰³ A thirteenth-century icon in the Metropolitan Museum of Art evinces this well, as one can readily see how human hair was embroidered in emulation of the calligraphic effects of a bokuhitsu stylus. By contrast, both the Tokyo National Museum icon and the Significance examples present the A as if it were a flat textual figure, one written on the page and situated on our side of the picture plane. Hence the planar and surface-level As in the Significance are in tension with the virtual space implied by the highly volumetric bodies that surround them.

Fig. 57 Aji mandala, Nanbokuchō period (fourteenth century). Ink, pigment, and gold on silk, 85.4 × 39.3 cm. Tokyo National Museum. Source: ColBase (https://colbase.nich.go.jp).

Fig. 58 | left The Bija A, representing Vairocana (Dainichi), late fourteenth to early fifteenth century. Hanging scroll, with ink, pigment, and gold on silk, 120.7 × 42.4 cm. National Museum of Asian Art, gift of Charles Lang Freer, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Fig. 59 | above Detail of a human-hair embroidery of the Siddhaṃ seed syllable for the Bodhisattva Seishi (S. Mahāsthāmaprāpta), Amida triad in the form of sacred Sanskrit seed syllables, thirteenth century. Hanging scroll with silk embroidery, gold-wrapped thread, and human hair, 165.7 × 55.9 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art; gift of Harry G. C. Packard; and purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975.

Holography and Aesthetics

I will argue that the Significance pictures are constructed in such a way that the irresolution in their bodies is an instrumental, pictorial embodiment of Kūkai’s anti-aesthetic thought.¹⁰⁴ Let us briefly reprise the core of Kūkai’s philosophy in this regard. Drawing upon his analysis of the Siddhaṃ script, Kūkai totalized the purview of this semiotic short circuit to include not only linguistic signs but also the percepts of all six senses (the familiar five, plus proprioception or cognition). His argument is structured as an extended exegesis on the following poem in his treatise On the Meaning of Sound, Letter, and Reality:

The five great elements all have vibration (五大皆有響).

The tenfold world possesses speech (十界具言語).

The six sense objects are all letters (六塵悉文字).

Dharmakāya is reality itself (法身是實相).¹⁰⁵

The pansensorial nature of his argument is established in the third line, which asserts that all phenomena, regardless of the sensory channel, are “letters” (monji).¹⁰⁶ Accordingly, all phenomenal existence—that is, all aesthesis (the whole perceptual inner/outer recursion)—is a process of perceiving letters. As is clear, the English term letter does not register the multisensorial nature of Kūkai’s argument. Moreover, it gives one the impression that Kūkai sees the world as an alphabetic, codified, typographical text, when Kūkai was far from a post-structuralist. In fact, what is most interesting about his treatise is the way it resists such modern and European textualism in favor of a more sophisticated engagement with the material plenitude, figurality, and agency of writing.¹⁰⁷

The key terms here are monji or mon, which Rambelli demonstrates to have been vastly overdetermined in Kūkai’s writings, with semantic fields encompassing almost all visual and sonic perception.¹⁰⁸ For example, in On the Meaning of Sound, Letter, Reality, Kūkai writes as follows:

All the percepts of sight, expressing themselves in color, shape, and movement, arise from the working of the [sensory organ of] the eye [J. gan; S. cakṣus], and become the objects of the eye. [Simultaneously,] they arise from the working of sight-consciousness [J. ganshiki; S. Cakṣur-vijñāya], become the objects of mind-consciousness, and interact with mind-consciousness. This [process] is called “differentiation” All things differentiated are character (monji), marks of individualized patterns. Each differentiated percept manifests its own pattern (mon), and each differentiated pattern gives rise to names. They [percepts] are nothing but letters. Color, shape, movement are, therefore, the three categories of the letters of sight.¹⁰⁹

According to the overarching phenomenological context (specifically Yogācāra philosophy), one does not perceive a preexisting world, but one’s mind creates the perceived world via “the hypostasis of the meaning of the words” one already has within.¹¹⁰ “Being is antedated by language,” argues Abé, “for it is language’s ability to articulate that generates discrete objects.”¹¹¹ It is akin to a strict Whorfianism, such that one’s internal semiotic storehouse structures the capacity for perception. The recursion, however, is exciting for art historians since it asserts the role of visuality. Marks exist, but they only become perceptible “images” once the mind has processed them according to the prescriptive perceptual apparatus within the mind. Contemporary image theory and Yogācāra phenomenology are far from commensurate, but they do share in common this notion of perceptual recursivity.

Yet figures do not exist in isolation; they exist in a ground or surround, a context that likewise lends meaning. To understand this aspect, it is necessary to zoom out slightly. Kūkai’s semiotics presupposes a framework known as hosshin seppō, whereby the universe is coextensive with a cosmic sermon being preached by the Buddha Mahāvairocana (Dainichi).¹¹² Mahāvairocana preaches it in his highest, most transcendent state: his so-called Dharma-body or dharmakāya. The sermon he preaches, in turn, is also part of his dharmakāya. Hence all semiosis takes place within this permeable universe of discourse.¹¹³ As Abé characterizes it, “To live one’s everyday life is none other than reading the world as the ultimate scripture of the Dharmakāya’s preaching of Dharma (hosshin seppō); the practitioner’s every action forms the ritual process testifying the nonduality of the practitioner and the Dharmakāya.”¹¹⁴ Pamela D. Winfield takes this metaphor even further. In her words, “To read Dainichi’s cosmic code of intertextual, intericonic signs correctly is to be enlightened.”¹¹⁵ Accordingly, the A, the painting, the body, the calligraphy, and so forth are all commensurate traces of the dharmakāya that participate in one’s construction of the immersive phenomenal illusion of one’s world.

In order to embrace the nontextual nature of Kūkai’s monji, Abé coins the phrase “letters of optical objects.”¹¹⁶ This subtle shift is useful since it moves toward a more figural understanding of writing. Written words themselves are included here but only as a specialized species of images. As Winfield argues, for Kūkai, “words are pictorial forms,” hence her caution that one must bear in mind that Kūkai was a celebrated calligrapher, as well.¹¹⁷ Rambelli, in turn, is even more catholic, describing monji as “articulations” or “meaningful forms characterized as analogic and isomorphic representations of reality, condensations of the many orders in which the esoteric cosmos is divided.”¹¹⁸ However one frames it, one cannot reduce the universe to a text in the modern sense of the term.

The challenge is thus to arrive at an analytic vocabulary that is less beholden to the post-structuralist vocabulary, one that would give greater recognition to the “visuality” of Buddhist “ways of seeing.”¹¹⁹ One candidate might be marks since this term allows one to avoid distinguishing between inscription and depiction. As brush arts, painting and writing are neither rhetorically nor conceptually as distinct in Japanese as in English.¹²⁰ Another alternative might be images, given their recursivity and conceptual capaciousness since one can speak of images via multiple sensory channels. For instance, if, as Kūkai argues, “each stroke of a character contains all things in the universe,” then it is easy to conceive of each stroke as a mark or an image but illogical to see a single stroke as a letter, much less a text.¹²¹ Likewise, note Abé’s characterization: “The world is made of texts and only of texts—not of their representational function but of their materiality.”¹²² As he suggests, these texts are actually text artifacts—inscriptions—with material and sensorial plenitude and specificity. As Kūkai explicitly notes, his treatise is meant to apply to all the senses, not just vision. Thus it seems Kūkai’s pan-inscriptive framework is a philosophy of aesthetics (in the sense of aesthesis) just as much as it is a philosophy of textual semiotics.

The case for turning away from textual metaphors is strengthened by other passages in Kūkai’s writing. For instance, Kūkai likens one’s susceptibility to the reality-illusion of phenomenological existence to that of a painter who faints at the sight of a demon he has painted: “Like this painter, sentient beings paint the threefold world . . . then bury themselves therein.”¹²³ Be that as it may, as Winfield notes, painting itself is not the problem since Kūkai likens the awakened person’s orthodox mode of perception to a form of painting, as well.¹²⁴ Kūkai enumerates a list of things that might count as tokens of his letter type; included among them were the inscribed A syllables, brocade patterns, painted images, and even “various kinds of sentient and nonsentient beings.”¹²⁵ Whereas it seems difficult to conceive of these as letters, the term images suggests itself far more seamlessly as a translation.

As twentieth-century semioticians were keenly aware, in order to adapt semiotics to vision, a basic question concerns how to identify semiotic units within a visual field.¹²⁶ Kūkai’s framework circumvents this quandary since both the figure and the ground are made into images.¹²⁷ In contrast to Jacques Derrida’s parergon and “sans of the pure cut,” a metaphor whereby the world is carved into units, the border of which and the space between which are imperceptible, Kūkai accepts the negative space between signs as their own signs.¹²⁸ This universe-as-manuscript hence precludes the possibility of a palimpsest since there is only the manuscript within which one perceives; any occlusions, layers, partial views, or gaps are all incorporated as signs of the singular cosmic sutra.¹²⁹ Note that this implies the universe is a manuscript to be seen and not a text within a manuscript to be read.¹³⁰ It thus seems most accurate to characterize Kūkai’s ontology of hosshin seppō as an immersive manuscript interface rather than an immaterial code or world-text since the latter term risks obscuring the material and aesthetic dimensions of this thought. As Abé notes, “[For Kūkai], signs are never separated from their material foundations—air, paper, ink, stone, and so forth—which in turn have imprinted in their materiality the somaticity of labor—vocalization, scribing, chiseling. Before they even become representations, signs are already material and somatic.”¹³¹ Rambelli likewise emphasizes, “What mattered was the materiality of the texts themselves.”¹³²

To that end, previous scholars’ use of the metaphor of the holograph seems especially apt.¹³³ Kūkai’s aesthetics are holographic in both senses of the word: the marks (no matter the sensorial channel) are in the hand of their author, Mahāvairocana, and the sensorium is entirely (holo) composed of such figural marks (graph). By taking Kūkai’s manuscript metaphors seriously, this would mean that the recension Mahāvairocana produces is in his own hand; the world bears the trace of his style (or, on a sonic level, as a sermon, the timbre of his voice). Were this cosmic sutra a world-text rather than a world-manuscript, then it would be transmissible: other copies of the text might exist, in other hands and in other voices. That may very well be the case, yet the point here is that our world is only Mahāvairocana’s recension.

To know that one’s world is subtended and generated by figural marks is a very different thing from seeing one’s world as a text in the contemporary sense. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, this is an especially crucial distinction to make in the context of twelfth-century Japan, where calligraphic strategies, such as reed writing (ashide), were deployed in order to depict the world as inscription or as if the world had the form of inscription. Often-cited though these figural wordplays may be, it is crucial here to note that they are categorically distinct from the type of commensurability one finds in Kūkai’s thought. That is, Kūkai is not suggesting that aesthesis is a process of hermeneutically decoding the cryptography of the world. One does not read the text of the world since to do so would mean to train one’s perception to follow a discrete syntactical path along lines of code in order to decipher a time-based meaning. One does not read the world; one contemplates or inspects it (kan).¹³⁴ Just as the English write/draw distinction misconstrues the practice of the brush arts in East Asia, so, too, does the read/view distinction misconstrue the nature of perception.¹³⁵ As Abé notes, “The knowledge of reading letters remains hidden from readers’ awareness.”¹³⁶ One is certainly aware when reading a piece of writing that one is reading, yet I would argue one sees in a far less self-aware and more immediate manner.

Concerning the multisensorial nature of the A, a text by Chidō, a late thirteenth-century Shingon monk, is illuminating: “This syllable ‘A’ consists of color, shape, sound, and meaning. Sometimes one can practice by focusing one’s mind on its color and shape. Sometimes one can practice by vocalizing its sound. When one wishes quietude, one can practice by continuous contemplation of its meaning. Because it offers several forms of practice, one’s mastery of the highest principle occurs in no time.”¹³⁷ The A is a chromic, formal, sonic, and semantic phenomenon—yet it need not be all of these at once for the practitioner. To call it text or language is to foreground inappropriately only one of its aspects. Accordingly, I would argue that perception in the context of Kūkai’s thought is not akin to analyzing a typeset scholarly edition, nor is it similar to recognizing programming code. Instead, one has access only to the idiosyncratic, autographic recension that is one’s world. Moreover, the linear semiotic uptake of a sutra text was arguably a minority practice compared to the various pragmatic and performative uses of sutras as material things.¹³⁸ Even when read, the notion of reading in East Asia is a concept that far exceeds the linear and discursive implications of the English term.¹³⁹ Hence I would suggest one must extend these considerations to hosshin seppō itself in order to see the perception of the world-manuscript as exceeding the parameters of textuality.

Anti-Aesthetics

What would it mean, then, to see the Significance pictures according to this framework of holography? Recall that most scholars see the embedded As as illustrations of visualizations—embodied pictures of visions. This would make the A the element pictorially and virtually most recessed: an A, inside a moon disk, within a body, within a pictorial world, within a manuscript. The body is a container into which the gaze is permitted.¹⁴⁰ Such nesting, however, arguably runs counter to Kūkai’s thought since the Significance pictures are no more virtual than our own world—the holographic world composed of the dharmakāya. For just as “a sūtra for reading is thus always a sūtra within the sūtra, the world-text,” a picture for viewing is already a picture within the world picture.¹⁴¹ Accordingly, Kūkai’s thought suggests perhaps that all layers of virtuality—the illusoriness of depiction and the illusoriness of phenomenal existence—collapse, one upon another, due to the semantic and pictorial transparency of the marks of the page and the marks of the beholder’s world. Kūkai’s aesthetics presents a radical critique of the prime art-historical trope of dividing the real from the virtual. By his framework, the modern European fascination with increasing degrees of spatial illusion and naturalism is rendered altogether meaningless. Everything is equally marks. If reality itself is an illusory surface, then the truest paintings would be those that break its hold, not those that copy its optical form. Moreover, all pictorial culture would be stratigraphic like the Eyeless, illusions layered on top of illusions.

That does not mean, however, that artists were unable to make expedient use of the illusion of pictorial space. For instance, by the pictorial logic of the painting, the As are located within the painted bodies. Like double negatives, they are illusions inside illusions. Yet these paintings fail to resolve since the As are clearly written on the surface of the page, divorced from the virtual world of the robust figures, hence defeating the illusion. I assert this tension is instrumental. For instance, the As on the page serve a similar role for the picture as the mantra does for language since the As break the virtuality of the image. If one attends to the written A, it makes the virtual sitter look like mere marks on a page. Yet if one disattends to the A, pictorial depth suddenly reemerges. In this way, the A operates in a manner similar to that of a reversible picture (for example, the famous duck/rabbit illusion) since it allows one to oscillate between surface marks and virtual illusion. Moreover, from a doctrinal perspective, the A is the only visible form that is not in some way illusory since it signifies its own semantic emptiness and is its own referent. This collapse, or short circuit, is due to the particular status of the A as a self-representational mark. In Nelson Goodman’s terms, the A—in its pictorial reading—exemplifies itself in that it is a depiction of a written character that materially shares in its referent; it is an A just as much as it depicts one.¹⁴² The lotus-disk-character complexes thus short-circuit depiction in the same manner that the linguistic position of the A at the center of all words short-circuits linguistic semiosis.¹⁴³ In that regard, they achieve what Rambelli hypothesizes as the aim of “sūtra art”: “to get rid of semiosis altogether.”¹⁴⁴

To approach this from another angle, the Significance depicts its sitters as marks within the dharmakāya. For instance, as Abé highlights, one goal of Kūkai’s theory of semiogenesis is that practitioners will realize that they, too, are not separate from Vairocana’s holographic universe.¹⁴⁵ Accordingly, it seems the painting effectively makes the depicted bodies into two tokens of Kūkai’s perceptual letter type—two isolated marks within the holographic world. Bereft of all pictorial or spatial context, the human figures are more easily isolatable as units. Then again, one must remember that “Kūkai is proposing to read the world-text not of the letters themselves, but of their interstices.”¹⁴⁶ In this regard, the A icons inside their bodies may have a role to play since they break the illusion that bodily interiority is somehow exempted. The two bodies are thus pinned and sandwiched between two marks of the dharmakāya: the A within their bodies and the blank “background.” By this reading, the Significance paintings negate pictorial illusion while revealing the body itself to be but a mark within the world-manuscript.

Semiotic Écorché

Ajikan was not the only context in which the A figured in medieval Japan. For instance, the A played a role in the period understanding of embryology, a field that used the iconography of the A as a means to link fetal development, soteriological advancement, and the larger East Asian epistemological structure of correlative cosmology (fig. 60).¹⁴⁷ As Lucia Dolce demonstrates, by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, embryogenesis had become a sophisticated model for the conceptualization of the practitioner’s transformation into a Buddha.¹⁴⁸ It was none other than Kakuban, the exegete responsible for the late Heian propagation of Ajikan, who first linked fetal development to ritual practice.¹⁴⁹ Gestation was conceived as the result of the joining of two internal As (male and female); in addition, at least one text represents the human embryo itself as a body contorted into the form of an A.¹⁵⁰ Hence the notion of the A and its relationship to the human body goes far beyond the contemplative practice of Ajikan. As Dolce reveals, it was essential for linking the body to the cosmos, for conceptualizing sexual union, and for understanding the genesis of human life.

Fig. 60 Diagram of the fetus as the grapheme A, from the Black Box of Syllable “A” (Aji kurobako). Ink on paper. Hase Archives of Shuchiin University, Kyoto.

During this same period, in complementary contrast, the Ajikan ritual was also seen as especially propitious for use at the time of death.¹⁵¹ As Jacqueline I. Stone argues, its appeal as a deathbed practice stemmed both from its relative ease and its direct metaphorical engagement with the issue of liminality.¹⁵² Just as the A condenses the Shingon episteme into a single character, the moment of death condenses all of life into a liminal instant in which one’s rightmindfulness inflects rebirth.¹⁵³ To give a sense of the ubiquity of the A in such contexts, Stone cites the reclusive Kamo no Chōmei’s famous essay, the Hōjōki, wherein he speaks of the horrendous aftermath of the Yōwa famine of 1181, on which occasion the monk Ryūgyō (1135–1206) and his associates are said to have inscribed As on more than 42,000 corpses in the streets of the capital.¹⁵⁴ Given the dating of the Significance manuscript, it is entirely possible that the viewers (if not the makers) of the this scroll had seen these very corpses. Moreover, within less than a decade, the capital was witness to a tornado (1180), earthquakes (1185), and a fire (1177), not to mention the internecine Genpei War of 1180 to 1185.¹⁵⁵ Death was very much a part of the late Heian imaginary.

Another aspect of Ajikan practice to consider is its syncretism with Pure Land nenbutsu, the practice of chanting “Namu Amida Butsu” (an invocation of one’s trust in the Amitābha Buddha). Kakuban again played a prominent role in such syncretic esoteric nenbutsu (himitsu nenbutsu).¹⁵⁶ Indeed, the final text of the Significance manuscript concerns this very connection. Doubtless, the most famous depiction of nenbutsu is the roughly contemporaneous (ca. 1233) statue by Kōshō of the tenth-century preacher Kūya at the Rokuharamitsuji (fig. 61). As Kūya chants, each mora of the six-mora nenbutsu (Na-mu-a-mi-da-butsu) emerges from his mouth in iconic form. These small icons floating from Kūya’s mouth help to clarify just how figural and material the concept of writing was in the medieval episteme.

Such syncretism with nenbutsu practice was motivated in part by the correlation of the A of Ajikan with the initial mora of the Amida Buddha’s name. This had been established by the monk Jippan (d. 1144), who equated envisioning the A with envisioning Amida.¹⁵⁷ As James H. Sanford argues, Kakuban took this logic further, arguing that the A, Vairocana, and Amida were all equivalent.¹⁵⁸ Kakuban thus promoted Ajikan for attaining rebirth in Amitābha’s “western direction.”¹⁵⁹ Echoing Kūkai, Kakuban further taught that the A corresponds not only to a sound but to the breath itself. Hence Kakuban was pivotal in promoting the idea that breath is a constant reification of the A and a constant incantation of Amida’s name.¹⁶⁰ Thus there is an additional synecdochical logic at work such that the A “transcends practice,” as Stone argues, with the nenbutsu becoming a constant feature of one’s life.¹⁶¹

One hears echoes of such rhetoric in the Significance scroll itself, when the “Efficacy” likewise mentions that the A one contemplates is actually always already present within one’s heart-mind. This suggests that the figures depicted in the Significance are not in a state of “visualization” but are instead simply being and breathing. Their rightmindfulness is depicted via a form of semiotic écorché, whereby the semiotic activity of the mind itself is given visual form. It is a form of representation that breaks the opacity of the body in order to counter the illusion that visceral interiority is somehow exempted from semiogenesis. Thus the Significance paintings pair mimesis and soteriology to portray the human body as embodying the emptiness of significance itself. Rather than dissect for the sake of empirical specificity, the Significance pictures expose the interiors of two distinct bodies in order to reveal their core selfsameness, as both sitters are tokens of the same A-letter type and hence identical and commensurate with the dharmakāya. One might thus extend Greene’s productive “somatic soteriology” outside the realm of healing to encompass Buddhist discourse on anatomical structure, a sort of dharma anatomy.¹⁶²

Fig. 61 Kōshō, statue of the Venerable Kūya, before 1207. Wood, height: 117 cm. Rokuharamitsuji, Kyoto. Photo provided by Rokuharamitsuji.

Numerous uncertainties remain concerning the Significance scroll, but my goal here has been to shift discussion away from illustration in order to scrutinize the intersection of soteriology, physiology, and aesthetics. Long treated as anomalous, the Significance paintings, I argue, are among the most perspicuous of all medieval depictions of the human body in Japan, for they engage the problem of mimesis at a far deeper level than contemporaneous discourse of physiognomic resemblance.¹⁶³ Like an “ontological X-ray,” the Significance shows a truth of human existence that was invisible to the naked eye.¹⁶⁴ Twelfth-century agents were able to make use of the technology of the manuscript interface to depict bodily and visual interiority in a manner that prefigures and even exceeds contemporary medical imagery.

Fig. 62 Attributed to the workshop of Unkei, standing statue of Asaṅga (J. Mujaku), ca. 1212. National Treasure. Joined-wood sculpture of katsura wood with pigments and crystal eyes, height: 194.7 cm. Northern Round Hall, Kōfukuji, Nara.

Interlude

Jeweled Eyes

The renewed focus on facial mimesis in twelfth-century pictorial art was concomitant with transformations in sculptural practice. Whereas this book focuses chiefly on planar surfaces, a quick detour into sculpture reveals the need for scholarship to better account for the embodied nature of viewing three-dimensional objects. In the work of the renowned Kei school of sculptors, for example, one sees an intense interest in anatomical mimesis from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. Such lifelikeness won these sculptures praise from early art historians since these works seemed consonant with the sculptures of the antique Mediterranean—then understood to be the bedrock of art history. Yet any purported similarity masked profound differences at the level of ontology, facture, materiality, and especially interiority. For instance, the Heian period saw the ascendance of a new mode of sculptural practice wherein numerous individually carved pieces of wood were assembled into bodily wholes. Within such sculptural bodies were sometimes deposited a rich variety of artifacts. The meaning of such caches remains contested: perhaps they were meant to “enliven” the statue (notwithstanding the fact that all consecrated icons are living presences, not representational vessels in need of anima); perhaps there was a desire to build a bond with the icon (although awareness of the deposits soon faded from living memory); or—as Robert Sharf argues—perhaps it was simply what one did.¹ Yet as I explore in the following chapter, I find myself most in agreement with Bernard Faure, who frames such deposits as a “strategy of presence” used to extended the framework of mimesis into the unseen bodily interior.²

Nevertheless, the binary between the invisible bodily interior and the perceptible bodily form is less stark than it seems. Mediating between the two was the practice—new in the twelfth-century—of fitting some sculptures with elaborate prostheses known as “jeweled eyes” (gyokugan).³ To form such an eye, rock crystal was polished into a convex shape—spherical in the case of a human, but sometimes dramatically oblong for a deity. Painted paper was then added to the back, with a bright white sclera, an iris of varying colors, and an often-dilated black pupil. Two long wooden nails, like extraocular muscles, then anchored the eye to the head. The earliest extant example, the seated triad of the Amida Buddha at Chōgakuji, dates to 1151, just four years before GoShirakawa took the throne. The mimetic effect is far more striking, however, in the case of human representations, such as Unkei’s sculpture of Asaṅga of circa 1212 (fig. 62).

Rather than reflect light, jeweled eyes refract it via a translucent material, hence suggesting the presence of wet, living eyes within the orbits of the skull—interfaces mediating between exterior and interior. This alters the epistemology of the sculpture; an enlivened eye is the defining feature of a mask rather than a sculpture.⁴ While jeweled eyes are often praised as an advance in mimetic naturalism, I would argue that they actually attenuate the lifelikeness of the sculpted wood. While admittedly heterodox, the quickness of the prosthetic eye gives greater interiority to the sculptural body, suggesting the existence of an internal presence beyond what the viewer’s eye can see.⁵

Jeweled eyes and hollow bodies lead one to ask fundamental questions that are rarely considered in the context of medieval Japan: What was the relationship of vision to anatomy? How was vision believed to operate at a physiological level? And where within the body did images reside? For just as the surface of the page must be considered to have depth, so, too, must the historical subjects who viewed them.

How can one know one’s own mind? Even if one sought it out through color, through shape, through matter (rūpa), sensations (vedanā), perceptions (saṃjñā), formations (saṃskāra), or consciousness (vijñāna), through me and mine, or through subject and object, it would never be graspable.

云何自知心。謂或顯色或形色。若色受想行識。若我若我所若能執若所執中永不可得.

—Kūkai (translation by Takagi Shingen and Thomas Eijō Dreitlein)

Chapter 5

Viscera

Anatomy, Prosthesis, and the Physiology of Vision

This chapter moves beyond the manuscript interface to interrogate vision’s anatomical, material, and soteriological contexts. What are the physiological horizons of “visualization”? How did vision intersect with viscera? And what might artifacts reveal about the period understanding of bodily interiority? Such questions haunt art history, in particular, since they point to the vernacular notion of the “mental image,” an internal form of picturing that bridges visuality and visual artifacts.¹ While mental imagery remains inaccessible to empirical analysis, its physiological location is less contested. Since the late twentieth century, the popular image of thought comes from renderings made via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which divide the brain into an array of cubes in Euclidian space wherein the activity of the brain is notated by a rainbow of colors. One can thus see the physiology of thought but not its phenomenology—extent but not experience. As the previous chapter demonstrates, however, the paintings of the Significance scroll were able to demonstrate both by manipulating the manuscript interface to give visual access into the heart-minds of two seated figures. We thus became anatomical and psychological voyeurs, looking in on the embodied sites and sights of the painted figures’ minds.

Fig. 63 Frontispiece to Sugita Genpaku et al., New Book on Human Dissection (Kaitai shinsho), 1774. University of California, Los Angeles, Library Special Collections.

The notion of bodily interiority immediately brings anatomy to mind, yet the two discourses are far from coextensive. Histories of anatomy in Japan often foreground the translation of European anatomic knowledge by figures such as Sugita Genpaku (1733–1817) and his famous New Book of Dissection (Kaitai shinsho) of 1774 (fig. 63). The book’s text was a translation of the Dutch Ontleedkundige Tafelen (Amsterdam, 1734), which was itself a translation of the German Anatomischen Tabellen (Danzig, 1722) of Johann Adam Kulmus (1689–1745). As Genpaku recounts, he was motivated to undertake his translation after observing the dissection of an executed fifty-year-old woman in 1771. Note, however, that the person performing this dissection was a ninety-year-old untouchable who had been doing such dissections (fuwake, lit. viscera partitioning) throughout his life; it was he who cut the body, identified the viscera, and taught his knowledge of “the internal scene” (naikei) to Genpaku.² Hence a window opens into a lost history of anatomical expertise among the outcasts that is too often overshadowed by the translations of the elite. But I am less interested in anatomy in a medical sense than a soteriological one. That is to say, I am after what might be called dharma anatomy, a way of rendering and visualizing the body so that it is accurate according to Buddhist ritual practice, not necessarily empirical observation.

Beliefs about bodily interiority are crucial for art history since they impact the material decisions made when designing bodily simulacra and representations. For instance, one might assume that the quest for “realism” motivates anatomical study because close observation of the human body would enable more naturalistic artifacts. Yet, in the case of dharma anatomy, the relationship sometimes runs the other way. For instance, the manipulation of bodily interiority in sculptural and artifactual form served as a means by which to understand unobservable aspects of human interiority. While the human bodily interior was closed to physical observation, the sculptural interior of the iconic body was a site where one might engage issues of visceral interiority by proxy. Moreover, during the period of this study, as mentioned above, statues were chiefly constructed according to the joined-block construction technique (yosegi-zukuri), a procedure that resulted in internal cavities wherein sometimes were placed a vast array of deposited artifacts (zōnai nōnyūhin). The nature of such deposits is far from uniform, but among them are some artifacts that seem to operate as prostheses on an anatomical and physiological level.

Fig. 64 Pendant feretory and seed-syllable reliquary, before 1387. Wood, lacquer, mineral pigments, bronze, crystal, stone, gold leaf, metallic paint and rock crystal, height: 30.3 cm. Nara National Museum. Photo: Nara National Museum and National Institutes for Cultural Heritage.

Once deposited, however, sculptural interiors were imperceptible. Yet the latter half of this chapter will introduce a feretory or portable shrine that seems explicitly designed to circumvent this problem (fig. 64). This so-called neck-pendant feretory hung before its wearer’s chest to manifest the iconography of the contemplative practice of Ajikan. It would seem that it thus operated as a prosthetic and performative ritual tool—akin to what Rambelli terms a “Dharma device”—one carefully calibrated to manifest the wearer’s bodily interior, with the heart-mind filled with the image of the iconic A.³ As such, it is a dispositif or a tool that reified the mediation of the image in the body in order to make doctrinal truth about the nature of the human mind interpersonally apparent.⁴ The prosthesis thereby collapses the illusory division between the internal, embodied image and the reified, material one. It also counters a large array of modern art-historical externalities, such as surface/depth, text/image, icon/body, presence/absence, and vision/visualization. In terms of argumentative structure, I will begin by revisiting current debates concerning the nature of “visualization” in Japanese Buddhist contexts. Thereafter, an analysis of the physiology of vision itself provides the foundation for an extended treatment of the feretory. This chapter thus brings this arc of the book to a close: from the interface of the manuscript in chapter 3 to the interface of perception in chapter 4, to the visceral interface of the mind-body itself in the pages that follow. Cumulatively, these chapters build upon one another to investigate the material, virtual, and perceptual horizons of the interface.

Picturing Visualization

As we saw in the previous chapter, the Significance scroll instructed its viewers to construct an image inside the heart-mind, an organ that was understood to be located inside the thoracic cavity. Such “visualization” sounds like a relatively straightforward affair. Yet if one scratches the surface of this vernacular commonplace, a series of intractable questions emerge. For instance, where exactly is this visualized image? Does it have virtual or real materiality? What is its spatiality? Does it manifest whole, or must one build it? Even more paradoxically, how is it that one’s visualization has perspective and aspectivity—from where does one view one’s own mind?

Despite the prevalence of visualization in historical and contemporary Buddhisms, the exact nature of this phenomenon remains a contentious issue.⁵ The most trenchant critique has come from Sharf, who convincingly argues against the modern vernacular notion that visually informed rituals are meant to be seen as “psychological projections or ‘inner visualization’ of an alternative universe.”⁶ Be that as it may, one cannot deny that “forms of seeing,” as Paul Copp phrases it, are invested with “great soteriological potency” in the context of Japanese esoteric Buddhism.⁷ Various scholars have answered Sharf’s call for more rigor, ultimately arriving at what one scholar calls a détente between Buddhologists and art historians.⁸

In an effort to further this debate, I would like to approach the issue from the perspective of materiality and anatomy since this would seem to be the necessary link between external pictures and visualized images. First, one must clarify the terms of analysis. As Sharf reveals, the constellation of terms most often translated as “visualize” typically involve the character kan (C. guan; kuwan in classical Japanese).⁹ Yet one must bear in mind that in discussing kan, one is not translating a word so much as a logograph with multiple phonetic and semantic referents.¹⁰ At the most vernacular level, this logograph may be read as mi(ru) (to see). The pronunciation shifts to kan, however, when used in the Sino-Japanese verb kan-su and in dozens of other Sinoxenic binomes. The term can also be used as a noun to designate both the object of sight—the vision—as well as the ritual practice itself.¹¹ For instance, in the Significance scroll, kan appears twelve times (excluding proper nouns). Twice it is used to refer to Ajikan practice, yet most often it is used as a verb. Consider the section where practitioners are instructed to picture the A within the body: “When one is to contemplate [kuwansemu] this character for the first time, if the mind is not yet mature, begin with a picture: draw a lotus flower, and inside of a moon disk, draw the character A; then one should contemplate it [kuwansuheshi].” This passage is revealing for several reasons. First, does kan pertain to mental images or external pictures? Here there is no terminological difference made between interior contemplation and exterior seeing.¹² Moreover, does one begin with a painted icon or does one close one’s eyes and “visualize” the lotus-disk-character icon drawing upon discourse or memory—or is it both? Note also that this lotus-disk-character complex is meant to be created “in/on/via” an “image/picture” (we ni). This suggests the practitioner is meant to create a physical pictorial icon that can then be used to prime the mind. This is in keeping with the instructions for this practice found in the Commentary on the Mahāvairocana Sutra.¹³ It is also in agreement with the Ajikan instructions of Seizon (1012–1074), who stated that the practitioner is to use an external icon only at first.¹⁴ Such priming icons are common in modern practice, but not all medieval texts necessitated them. Kakuban is ambiguous on the matter.¹⁵ Myōe (1173–1223), however, makes no mention of a material icon at all, instructing the practitioner to begin with the icon in the mind.¹⁶

For art historians, this distinction is crucial since it hinges on the divide between pictures and images, with visuality mediating between. Yet as Bogel observes, the verb kan is used regardless of whether the object of perception is material or immaterial, a situation that leads her to embrace the “fluidity or transparency between the material and eidetic forms.”¹⁷ Alan Sponberg even suggests that erasing this distinction is the very point of contemplative practice.¹⁸ In this regard, Seizon’s Principles of the A-Syllable Visualization (Ajikan hossoku) is telling: “Open your eyes and observe the painting, then close your eyes and visualize it within the mind. Visualize in this way, with eyes open and then closed, a few times.”¹⁹ Here Seizon seems to evoke a similar belief in the transparency of vision, the commensurability of the eidetic and the material. His instructions are interesting precisely because one does not construct or draw the icon in the mind, but rather one develops the ability to hold an image in sight, instantly, as with an afterimage.²⁰ This species of contemplation thus seems far more akin to mirroring than envisioning.

Part of the problem is that Yogācāra theory and esoteric Buddhism run counter to art-historical theory in that they direct one to turn the mind into a spotless mirror that reflects rather than perceives. To do so is tantamount to obtaining the cognitive state of a Buddha. In fact, the jeweled-eyed face in the previous interlude was that of the fourth-century monk Asaṅga, who expounded on the virtues of such “mirror cognition” (S. ādarśa-jñāna, J. Daienkyōchi) in his Compendium of the Great Vehicle (S. Mahāyāna-saṃgraha-śāstra, J. Shōdaijōron, T 1592–1594) (see fig. 62). As Bogel aptly notes, awakening might even be equated to a form of unmediated perception.²¹ By this logic, a Buddha, by definition, would not have visuality. Either that, or the awakened mind perceives according to awakened visuality, a way of seeing that perceives the letters (or images) of the world as empty.²² Then again, while this may be the nature of awakened visuality, it would not be that of most practitioners. Buddhist icons thus cannot escape art history so easily.

A further issue to consider is the relationship of temporality to vision. One must not fall prey to the inveterate European bias—most famously expressed by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781)—that language is temporal but vision instantaneous. As both image theory and cognitive science teach, vision is the result of time-bound, cognitive picturing processes.²³ Along these lines, as Bogel notes, “the construction of the Buddha’s image is through a bodily and mental process that cannot be likened to ‘visualizing,’ but instead is like the process of sculpting or painting.”²⁴ The processual nature of vision further intersects with materiality since the icon built in the mind is nevertheless tied to virtual materials. Images partake of materiality, even if eidetic. Thus the distinction between the external and the eidetic icon is not necessarily material. For instance, in the context of Ajikan, the moon disk within the heart-mind is both the locus and the substrate of the A. Such imagery complicates the notion of acheiropoieta since they are made by human agency yet without the trace of human hands. In that regard, perhaps the verb to picture, with its temporal valence, seems a promising translation for kan.²⁵

Kan also operates as a performative verb. For instance, the Significance scroll’s “Efficacy” text tells the reader four times that kan is something he or she “should do” (suheshi), suggesting an active rather than a passive stance (closer to envision rather than see, for example); in other instances, the verb is used to mark specific visual states within a sequence, thus making it quite clear that kan is an active process of manipulation. Indeed, Winfield treats the Ajikan as exemplary of Kūkai’s active contemplative stance, in contrast to Dōgen’s more passive mode.²⁶ In a similar vein, the “Efficacy” suggests an additional usage of kan, one that directs attention to a particular detail within a larger visual field. For example, the adept is told to kan the lotus bud before animating the bud and effecting its efflorescence.²⁷ Such kinetic “mutations,” as Sharf notes, are an important feature of Ajikan practice.²⁸

Note also that once one builds the icon internally, it is then manipulated in ways (such as the blooming of the lotus bud) that depart from the external priming icon with which one first began. Painted artifacts actually do little to help one achieve the types of images required in the later stages of the practice. Hence mirroring is an inadequate framework. Moreover, expansion-and-contraction techniques that exceed pictorial mediation would become a standard feature of Ajikan meditation rituals in the medieval period.²⁹ Thus the visualized image is not just an internalized picture since the “visualized” component would sometimes be so immersive that it would be impossible to picture. As Greene argues, Buddhist visionary experiences also exceed the prescriptive language of their texts.³⁰

One must also consider the spatial and physiological dimensions of vision. For instance, the “Efficacy” states, “When one has become adept at such beholding [kan], the light from the character will scatter out from the chest to the four directions.” Thus the character one is now beholding (kan) is located inside the body, as its light must radiate out from the embodied iconic grapheme through the chest and into the visible world. This seems straightforward enough, but as anyone who practices Ajikan immediately realizes, it is difficult to imagine seeing an image inside one’s own body. From what viewpoint does one gaze? In order to see an image upright and within the chest, it is necessary to imagine viewing one’s own body from a point of view that does not correlate to the eyes’ anatomical position. This type of vision is not “out of body” so much as disconnected from the physiological eyes—anocular vision, as it were. Likewise, by siting the image within the thoracic cavity, vision is disconnected from the vernacular eye-as-lens and skull-as-camera-obscura metaphors that are the modern legacy of Western Eurasian optics.

Not all visualization, however, is embodied. For instance, the “Efficacy” later makes mention of a sort of respiratory kan, where one inhales and exhales while visualizing the lotus-disk-character complex as if it were “five inches above the nose,” thus taking the purportedly internal image and reifying it in what one might call “breathspace.”³¹ This phenomenon completely violates the reductive conceptual rubric of art history since the visualization is now both a picture and an image—a “mental image” existing external to the body for embodied perception. The heart-mind is now a projector rather than a screen. The situation becomes even more complicated when one considers that some visualization rituals ask one to bring an image to mind or before oneself, while others ask one to replace one’s entire sensory sphere (kyōgai), in effect resituating oneself in a new space.³² Indeed, in analyzing such imagery, it becomes clear that there is a complex circuitry that violates internal/external or even this-worldly/otherworldly contexts; as Sponberg notes, that is often the very point.

Perhaps the greatest potential for art historians to contribute to such debates is by extending the frame of reference outside of the artificially circumscribed genre of Buddhist art. For instance, in his study of Ming painting, Clunas interrogates precisely the same term (pronounced guan in Chinese).³³ He underscores the term’s performative aspects while crucially noting that guan and the practice of visualization actually predate Buddhist visuality. It thus seems likely that just as guan inflected the way in which paintings were viewed in elite Ming circles, kan inflected the way in which other pictures were seen in Japan.³⁴ Needless to say, the boundary between “secular” and “sacred” visuality—to the extent to which this heuristic is tenable—must be understood as porous.

The best English translation of kan remains a matter of debate. The most favorable candidate, contemplation, is advantageous in many regards, yet it is nevertheless freighted with Christian allusions.³⁵ The word risks evoking a Christian typology of vision that traces its roots back to the three-tiered hierarchy found in the De genesi ad litteram of Saint Augustine (354–430 CE): corporeal vision (seeing with the organ of the eye), spiritual vision (“interior” visions, such as dreams), and intellectual vision (a form of true vision that “is not visual in the normal sense of the word but concerns divine knowledge”).³⁶ Rather than contemplation, a more apt comparison is likely the medieval European discourse surrounding speculation, which Jeffrey Hamburger reveals to be just as unexamined and polyvalent as kan. When he writes, “The whole point of the process defined as speculation is to connect inner and outer, the empirical and suprasensible, within a single unified system,” it is striking how apposite the sentence would be with a paradigmatic substitution of kan.³⁷ A less explicitly European candidate might be gaze, but that word still evokes an adept’s ability to see the external divine, whereas in the case of Ajikan, the object of visualization is, in part, one’s own internal heart-mind.³⁸

The Burgeoning of Vision

My interests, however, are more physiological than philological.³⁹ As opposed to the art history of medieval Europe, where the intersection of optics and physiology is a well-established field of discourse, rarely do such concerns figure in East Asian art history. Yet, as Clunas asserts, “the perceived lack of a ‘scientific’ discourse of optics should not be read as a lack of a discourse of visuality, which may be much more widely diffused.”⁴⁰ In that regard, Ajikan provides a useful case study. Consider the following moment in the “Efficacy” when the discourse moves from praxis to exegesis: “Why is it that one studies eight petals—no more, no less? In general, the shape of everyone’s mind is like that of a lotus flower that has not yet opened. From the sinews that divide it into eight parts, it faces upwards in men, downwards in women.” The passage asserts the morphological similarity of a closed lotus blossom to the human heart and locates the envisioned image within this bodily organ.⁴¹ At first, the likening of the heart to a lotus may seem unexpected, but if one imagines the aorta as the stem and the sinewy ventricles as closed petals, the isometry is clear.

This begs the question of how well known the shape of the human heart would have been in the Heian period. The period literature on medicine was extensive. An inventory at the end of the ninth century lists some 166 Chinese and Indian medical texts.⁴² The earliest extant medical text written in Japan, however, is the Teachings of the Heart of Medicine (Ishinpō) of Tanba Yasunori (912–995 CE), a thirty-volume compendium of continental knowledge that survives in later copies.⁴³ While the Heart of Medicine does address illnesses of the kokoro, one does not find an illustration of the heart itself. Moreover, as the Tanba family of physicians treated the Heart of Medicine as a guarded secret transmission, it should not be taken to represent common knowledge.⁴⁴

Whereas the first legally sanctioned dissection in Japan would not be carried out until 1754, medieval people were not unaware of the body’s inner architecture.⁴⁵ For instance, the foundational Gleanings of a Simple Physician (Ton’ishō) of Kajiwara Shōzen (1266–1337) reproduced images from the Ōkihan gozōzu (C. Ou Xifan wu zang tu), a Northern Song–dynasty source based upon knowledge gained from fifty-seven post-execution dissections conducted in 1045 (fig. 65).⁴⁶ Shōzen likewise cites the rare record of other post-execution dissection images, the Huanzhong tu of 1113.⁴⁷ Although the Gleanings of a Simple Physician dates to a century later than the Significance scrolls, its sources predate the Significance, hence empirical knowledge concerning the interior of the human body was possibly in limited circulation as early as the eleventh century in Japan. When compared to modern anatomical diagrams, these early works certainly seem rudimentary, yet they are quite precise when it comes to the position and morphology of the five organs.⁴⁸

Yet one must not conflate the modern cardiac organ and the medieval kokoro, for the latter denotes a far wider semantic field, one that encompasses cardiac, cognitive, and soteriological senses of the word. Unlike English, the divide is not between the emotive chest-bound heart and the rational skull-bound mind; instead, the heart-mind is at once the emotional, cognitive, and visceral organ.⁴⁹ Hence Rambelli’s translation of the kokoro as a “heart/mind complex.”⁵⁰ Indeed, one glimpses a sense of this complexity in the Gleanings of a Simple Physician, when Shōzen presciently reasoned with recourse to the Flower Garland Sutra that there were psychosomatic illnesses caused by the kokoro and that one had to treat the kokoro to heal the patient.⁵¹ Although Shōzen lived a century after the creation of the Significance, it is noteworthy that a practitioner of medicine should make this point since it would seem that Shōzen acknowledged the interdependence of the two aspects of the kokoro. According to East Asian anatomy, moreover, the viscera were divided into two categories: five “storage organs” (zō) and six “entrail organs” (fu).⁵² Within this schema, the heart-mind belonged to the former category; it functioned as a depository, in sharp contrast to the modern, mechanistic understanding of the heart as the tireless engine of blood circulation. One must therefore resist the urge to simply relocate the contemporary brain/mind complex in a different organ of the body.⁵³

Fig. 65 Two anatomical diagrams of the torso from the Ton’ishō, manuscript undated. Ink on paper, codex, height: approx. 25.9 cm. Photograph courtesy of the Main Library, Kyoto University.

The dual nature of the kokoro is particularly relevant in Japanese esoteric Buddhist discourse, where a tenuous division was maintained (and simultaneously negated) between the cardiac organ (S. hṛdaya) and the mental states it was thought to contain or enable (S. citta).⁵⁴ In an attempt to determine the relationship between these two aspects of the kokoro, Yamasaki Taikō cites two passages in the aforementioned (purportedly ninth-century) Record of Oral Instruction on Ajikan (Ajikan yūjin kukeketsu):

The A is the seed of the moon disk; the moon disk is the light of the A. The moon disk and the character (A) are exactly one. . . . The eight-petaled lotus flower is identical to the hṛdaya heart; the citta heart abides in this eight-petaled lotus. Because these two hearts cannot ever be separated, one should kan the moon disk above the lotus flower. The moon disk is the citta heart. The shape of the citta heart is like that of the moon disk. The round shape of the moon disk is like crystal (etc.). Again, the seed of the lotus flower is the A. Thus one should kan the A in the moon disk.⁵⁵

In his reading of this passage, Yamasaki notes that the conceptualization of kokoro was further complicated by the fact that Ajikan was not the only discursive arena in which the mental and visceral interchange was theorized; different exegetical lineages privileged different interpretations of which heart (hṛdaya or citta) was being referenced, with citta coming to dominate in Japanese Buddhist discourse.⁵⁶ Yamasaki’s research suggests that Shingon exegetes were likewise interested in disaggregating the mental from the cardiac, even though the two aspects pertained to the same organ.

The function of this heart-qua-organ, however, was not necessarily to think. As the Record of Oral Instruction on Ajikan excerpt demonstrates, it was thought that the mind abides in the organ but does not arise as a consequence of the organ’s material functioning. It is a locus and not a faculty. As the epigraph to this chapter reveals, Kūkai was insistent that the mental kokoro—the citta—was immaterial. In fact, he reiterates this point in On the Meaning of Sound, Letter, Reality: “The mind is not green, yellow, red, white, pink, violet, or clear like a crystal. It is neither bright nor dark. . . . The mind is neither long nor short, neither round nor square. . . . The mind is neither male nor female.”⁵⁷ Such thorough negation of the extension and materiality of the heart presents several challenges to this two-heart schema. For instance, if the mind is immaterial, what is its relationship to the heart organ? Why should it need a specific site within the body at all? Moreover, if immaterial, then how is it to be represented? Rambelli proposes to resolve this contradiction by calling the cardiac kokoro the “physical site where enlightenment takes place” and has the mental states “rooted in” the organ.⁵⁸ He describes this process as follows: “Shingon soteriology is the result of a number of operations on the body (heart)-language (mantra)-mind (mandala) complex of the practitioner. To attain enlightenment, one has to transform one’s mind. To transform one’s mind, one has to act upon one’s heart, the material basis of the mind. The easiest way to do this is to visualize representations of the enlightened heart/mind such as the lotus and the moon. These images are considered representations of the bodhicitta; in visualization, the mind becomes the visualized image—the bodhicitta, Dainichi, the entire Dharma realm.”⁵⁹ There is, perhaps, more to the lotus metaphor than one may at first realize, for the blossoming of the heart is at least as much a physiological transformation as it is a mental one. According to the “Efficacy,” the cardiac organ would cleave itself open. Rambelli puts it as follows: “In this practice [Ajikan visualization], soteriology merges with physiology as the practitioners modify their body/mind in visualization to embody enlightenment.”⁶⁰ Such discourse is thus closer to the arena of body modification than empirical anatomy. One is not visualizing within the heart-mind so much as manipulating the heart-mind to make space for visualization.

With the “Efficacy,” much rests upon how one would interpret the phrase “in visualization.” Is it visualization that opens the heart (in a manner akin to biofeedback), or is it merely that one “imagines” the heart opening “in visualization?” Note, too, that the heart is the very locus of the thought that would presage its own opening. Once so opened, in its inflorescent state, the heart would cease to be morphologically recognizable as such.⁶¹ It would take on a separate shape, becoming metaphorically the pedestal or basis for visualization but not necessarily its substrate. That is, the visualization itself is depicted as if it takes place on the opened lotus-heart, within the spherical space opened up by its blossoming.⁶² The moon disk or sphere would then be embodied but not necessarily corporeal. Thus the lotus-disk-A complex might be seen as a skillfully rendered melding of the both the eidetic and the physiological aspects of the heart-mind. The body may be a mark within the world-manuscript, as we saw in the previous chapter, yet it also has the potential to transform itself into a living interface.

Granted, practitioners of Ajikan comprehended the practice at varying levels. For some, it was akin to a form of nenbutsu practice; for others, it was a deathbed practice; and for still others, it was a relatively straightforward practice for internalizing and interfacing (nyūga ganyū) with Mahāvairocana. Even the semiotic role of the A as an alpha privative, which so fascinates contemporary readers, was likely lost on many.⁶³ What remains illuminating, however, is that the ritual entailed a certain understanding of the physiological and anatomical horizons of the heart-mind, hence Ajikan represents a discourse on anatomy, even if that was far from its primary purpose.⁶⁴ This thus seems like an excellent case of what Greene terms “‘somatic soteriology,’ the idea that the path to Buddhist awakening implicates the transformation of not just the mind but also the body.”⁶⁵

Prosthetic Hearts

Thus far the discussion of the lotus-disk-A complex has centered on pictorial representations. But the most sophisticated exploration of this psychophysiological iconography is arguably found in three-dimensional objects. Take, for instance, the case of sculptural Buddhist icons. In discussing the iconography of awakened bodies, one often turns to the “Thirty-Two Marks of a Great Man” (J. daijōbusō, S. mahā-puruṣa-lakṣaṇa), a set of physiological indicators that an awakened or spiritually eminent being was thought to manifest.⁶⁶ While not all of these are visual, all are perceptible. The heart-mind, however, is not among them. If the heart of a Buddha had indeed burgeoned, this would not be observable.⁶⁷ It is, in a sense, a type of invisible iconography. But just because it was invisible does not mean that it was not a part of one’s physiological understanding of the deity body.

As mentioned above, by the late twelfth century, the dominant form of sculptural practice had shifted from single-block carving (ichiboku-zukuri) to joined-wood construction (yosegi-zukuri), a far more complex technique whereby numerous smaller pieces were assembled to form sophisticated icons that were no longer maximally limited by grain, scale, and procurement difficulties. This complex sculptural procedure lent itself to the creation of hollow central cavities wherein patrons, carvers, and religious communities might ensconce various objects. Among such “deposited objects” (nōnyūhin) are a vast array of artifacts, such as sutras, paintings, dedicatory texts, teeth, hair, human remains, printed images, miniature icons, textiles, and mirrors. Studies of such objects did not appear until the 1930s, and only in the late twentieth century did they receive attention in European-language scholarship.⁶⁸ The motivation behind this practice is a contentious issue. For Faure, such deposits are part of a rhetoric of realism, a way of imparting the deity body with both interior mimesis and Benjaminian aura.⁶⁹ Others, however, have cautioned against reading too much into a relatively specialized practice, the purpose and awareness of which are poorly documented.⁷⁰

Such contestations notwithstanding, I nevertheless find Faure’s evocation of visceral mimesis compelling. Moreover, the practice of iconic deposits was so prevalent in the late twelfth century that it seems a natural place to look for insight into the period understanding of bodily interiority. The first step would be to counter the habit of thinking that bodily interiority and dissection must go hand in hand. For instance, rather than dissecting a body into its pieces, the manufacturers of iconic bodies ran the process in reverse. Instead of having human anatomy inform the creation of the anthropomorphic icon (granted, the icon represents a Buddhomorphic human figure), it may have been through the manipulation of surrogate iconic bodies that human anatomy was partially explored. At the very least, iconic corporeality and human anatomy were in dialogue. This is what I mean by dharma anatomy, a way of understanding bodily interiority that is informed by soteriology, ritual, and iconic construction rather than analytic empiricism.

The most famous example is the statue of Śākyamuni at Seiryōji in Kyoto, a cherrywood sculpture dated to 985 CE and imported from Song China by the monk Chōnen (938–1016 CE).⁷¹ It is, according to legend, the original icon of the Buddha, supernaturally constructed by a team of thirty-two sculptors led by one of the Buddha’s ten chief disciples, Maudgalyāyana (J. Mokkenren); the sculptors were transported to heaven to copy the Buddha’s image for King Udayana (a legendary contemporary of Śākyamuni).⁷² While undergoing repair in 1954, a panel on the back of the torso revealed a rich cache of artifacts, including sutras, printed images, a bronze mirror, and Song-dynasty coins.⁷³ Of these inserted objects, the one that has garnered the most attention is a detailed, labeled, and color-coded model of the human organs—the aforementioned five storage organs and six entrails—fashioned in silk (fig. 66). The precise rationale for the insertion of these prosthetic organs remains unclear, but their presence nevertheless lends credence to the hypothesis that the interior of Buddhist iconic bodies can be an important source of information concerning the period understanding of the human viscera—or, to borrow Faure’s framework, that the notion of mimesis extended into the invisible aspects of the deity body.⁷⁴

Fig. 66 Simulated internal organs inscribed with Siddhaṃ graphemes, deposited inside the Seiryōji Śākyamuni icon, before 986 CE. Silk, thread, and ink. Seiryōji, Kyoto.

Fig. 67 Photograph of Kuno Takeshi taking radiographic images of a seated Buddha statue. From Kuno Takeshi, Butsuzō (Tokyo: Gakuseisha, 1961), frontispiece.

The analysis of such inserted objects is only possible when the icon is opened or deconstructed (such as during conservation). In the 1940s, however, the pioneering art historian Kuno Takeshi (1920–2007) began using a portable radiograph machine to take the art-historical gaze into the interior of the iconic body (fig. 67).⁷⁵ Such analyses continue to the present, with art historians profiting from technological advances in noninvasive imaging techniques, such as laparoscopy and computerized tomography (CT) scans. Hence, even in modernity, the human and the iconic body are imaged by similar means; likewise, there is an overlap between artifactual conservation and living medicine.

Several sculptures contemporaneous to the manuscripts studied in this book have been subjected to extensive advanced imaging. Take, for instance, a seated sculpture of Mahāvairocana (Dainichi nyorai) attributed to Unkei (d. 1223) (fig. 68). One can see in the radiograph that various items have been deposited in the statue. More recently, boroscopic and CT scan images have allowed for a better sense of the artifacts inside: a small gorintō reliquary, a lotus-moon-orb complex held together with wire, and a long, gorintō-shaped rectangular prism of wood that bears inscriptions in both Chinese characters and the Siddhaṃ script mentioned in chapters 3 and 4 (fig. 69).⁷⁶

As Morse argues, the deposits within this statue seem to accord closely with the paintings of the seated figures in the Significance scroll.⁷⁷ Indeed, the positioning of these items is striking since they precisely align with anatomical features. For instance, the long rectangular base of the wooden prism is centrally positioned and extends upward from the seat of the icon through the body and into its head. As such, it physiologically resembles a spine. The elongated rectangular base only changes to a circle exactly when it reaches the head, and the teardrop-shaped finial (the ether element) sits precisely in the space between the eyes. Likewise, the reliquary and the lotus-moon-orb complex are found just at the center of the chest. The lotus-moon-orb apparatus is placed slightly tilted and off-center, precisely mirroring the physiological location of the cardiac organ, which is itself off-center and tilted. A similar sculpture by Unkei of the same deity in the collection of Kōtokuji reveals an analogous series of interior adornments, with a much larger lotus-crystal heart-mind arranged at the cardiac location within the chest.⁷⁸ Hence, in contrast to the Seiryōji statue, these items appear to have been deposited within the body with attention to their visceral syntax—an understanding of the interior of the body that privileged the location of the organs over their disembodied morphology.

Organs are one thing, but to speak of a prosthetic mind is quite another. Nevertheless, it would seem that some inserted objects were designed to serve this very purpose. Illuminating in this regard are two sculptures at Kōfukuji in Nara, which were constructed following the martial arson of Taira Shigehira (1157–1185) in 1180. While undergoing modern conservation, both sculptures had their inserted objects extracted and documented. The first statue is a colossal (approximately twice life-size) standing figure of the Bodhisattva Bhaiṣajya-rāja (J. Yakuō bosatsu), one of the two attendant deities now flanking the main icon of Śākyamuni in the Central Golden Hall (Chūkondō).⁷⁹ Inside this statue was a placard to which was attached a small mirror, only 11.5 centimeters in circumference (fig. 70).⁸⁰ Above the mirror were two Siddhaṃ glyphs; below was the following inscription:

Fig. 68 (left) Attributed to Unkei, seated Mahāvairocana (J. Dainichi nyorai), ca. 1193. Important Cultural Property. Split-and-join technique (J. warihagi-zukuri) of Japanese cypress (J. hinoki; Chamaecyparis obtusa), gold leaf, pigment, and inlaid crystal eyes, height: 61.6 cm. Shinnyo-en Shinchoji Collection, Hanzōmon Museum, Tokyo. Image courtesy of Hanzōmon Museum. (right) Radiograph of the same sculpture, frontal view. Image courtesy of Tokyo National Museum. Image: TNM Image Archives.

Supreme Perfect Enlightenment (S. anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi)

1202, 8th month

20th day, at Kasuga. Hereby so attested.⁸¹

阿耨多羅 / 三藐三菩提 / 建仁貳年壬戌八月 / 廿日春日我敬白

The placard makes the iconological reading of this object quite straightforward. It provides a clear date for the construction of the statue and explicitly identifies the inserted mirror as a material and prosthetic embodiment of the cognitive state of “Supreme Perfect Awakening.” In fact, this is the exact mental state mentioned in a passage of the Mahāvairocana Sutra from which Kūkai drew when expounding his semiological theory discussed in the previous chapter.⁸²

Fig. 69 Digital visualization of the interior of the seated Mahāvairocana (fig. 68) based on the Tokyo National Museum’s CT-scanned data and the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ boroscope data.

Fig. 70 Bronze mirror mounted to a wood placard with metal fittings and inscribed with ink, found inside a standing icon of the Bodhisattva Bhais.ajya-rāja (Yakuō bosatsu), 1202. Mirror diameter: 11.5 cm. Central Golden Hall, Kōfukuji, Nara.

Fig. 71 Incised mirror and lotus-shaped pedestal, found inside a standing icon of the Thousand-Armed Kannon (Senju Kannon), 1216–29. Bronze and wood, mirror diameter: approx. 11.6 cm. Kōfukuji, Nara.

The second Kōfukuji statue is the renowned and colossal (jōroku, approximately five meters high) Thousand-Armed Kannon, which was commissioned to replace the main icon of the temple’s refectory.⁸³ Inside the statue is a small bronze mirror—approximately twelve centimeters in circumference—which fits neatly into a notch cut into a lotus-shaped pedestal that is carved of wood and was originally painted (fig. 71). This lotus-disk-mantra complex would seem to be a plastic analogue to the pictorial lotus-disk-mantra Ajikan icon seen in the Significance.

From a physiological perspective, the choice of materials here is telling since it seems to point to a divide between the heart-as-organ and the heart-as-mind. The materiality of the lotus pedestal (the kokoro-as-heart) is undifferentiated from the main body of the sculpture; the cardiac organ and bodily carapace are materially identical, as both are organic wood. By contrast, the metaphorical representation of the kokoro-as-mind, the mirror, is of a distinct material. As with the crystal moon disk, the bronze mirror (the kokoro-as-mind) is made of a rare, dense, enduring, and inorganic substance. At a technical level, the bronze mirror evokes immateriality in the sense that it reflects images rather than containing them. Materiality notwithstanding, a key feature of this particular icon’s mirror-lotus complex is the presence of the deity’s mantra incised on its surface, thus making the entire complex remarkably analogous to the lotus-disk-A complex depicted in the Significance scroll.⁸⁴

Sculpture is able to represent the relationship of the kokoro to the body in a manner that is far more literal than is possible in painting since the lotus-disk-character complex can be physically crafted and syntactically sited. Moreover, by availing themselves of different materials (wood, metal, crystal), artisans can reify the metaphorical descriptions of the immaterial aspects of the body (such as crystalline and radiant) found in sutras, whereas these distinctions are only virtual in paintings. Such literalness, however, comes at the expense of demonstrability since one cannot see these complex manipulations of the bodily interior in devotional or museum contexts. Nevertheless, these sculptures support the notion that there was an interplay between anatomical human physiology and the physiology of the deity body.⁸⁵ At the very least, the positioning and materiality of any heart-mind complex was significant in both.

Prosthesetic Insight

I would now like to pivot to an object that seems designed to make this link between the ritual and physiological body patently clear. It is a small feretory (zushi; portable reliquary shrine) currently in the collection of the Nara National Museum.⁸⁶ Designated an Important Cultural Property since 1910, the artifact bears a curious legal title: “Small Black Lacquer Shrine (Pendant Dhātu Seed-syllable Mandala)” (Kurourushi shōgan [kubikake dazu shuji mandara]) (see fig. 64).⁸⁷ “Pendant” refers to the fact that at the top of the feretory are two small rings attached to golden cords that are believed to have been used to hang the feretory from the neck, suspended before the wearer’s chest. If so, the consequences are substantial. No longer would it suffice to view the object as an altar or an icon without also accounting for its identity as a ritual implement designed for bodily wear. The closest analogues are likely early modern kubikake shibai, boxes hung from the neck that served as stages for puppet shows. As with a neck-hung theater, one might speculate that the feretory could have been used by its wearer as a form of etoki (narrated iconographical performance).⁸⁸

When the object was suspended from the neck, opening its doors would reveal the same iconography one finds in the Significance scroll to represent the heart-mind complex. It would mean that the feretory operates as a prosthesis, one that effectively performs the task of contemplative practice by revealing to an onlooker the presence of the icon within the body of the one upon whom it hangs.⁸⁹ This should give one pause since it suggests an alignment between the internal, bodily mediated image and the external, materially mediated one. This feature of the artifact makes it an especially constructive site of critique for contemporary scholarship on the anthropology of images, the instrumentality of reliquaries, and the premodern understanding of vision.

The feretory’s complex architecture and iconography require some explanation. Beginning with the closed object, one encounters a lustrous crimson surface of thickly lacquered wood. Down the center runs the joining seam between two double doors, hinged at the sides and fastened at the center by a delicate lotus-shaped latch of gilt bronze. Pivoted open, the doors become the flanking panels of a striking triptych, the center panel of which bears a representation of the familiar lotus-disk-A complex. The panel centers upon the A, which was cast as a single piece of gilt bronze. The metal grapheme was then inserted into a shallow compass-like circular dish that is sealed by a thin pane of rock crystal and backed by a polished panel of white bronze (an alloy with a high tin quotient), the silvery tone of which contrasts with the medallion’s golden hue. Two concentric gilt bronze bands ring this graphic medallion, which is inserted into the central hollow of a circular bronze mirror. Two additional gilt bronze rings encircle the mirror, which is similarly inlaid into the lacquered panel. Just under this iconic complex is a thin arc of verdigris, evocative of the green pod of an efflorescent lotus whose delicate veins are painstakingly rendered in thin lines of gold paint. Seventeen pairs of golden rays emanate out from the Aji medallion at center. Each ray is represented by an inner band of precisely sliced gold leaf counter-shaded on the exterior with subtle gradations of gold paint.

Opening the doors reveals the presence of two flanking deities known as radiant kings, each accompanied by two attendant youths. At right is the “Immovable One” (J. Fudō myōō, S. Acalanātha). At left is the “Tamer of the Tripleworld” (J. Gōzanze myōō, S. Trailokyavijaya), shown trampling a demonic form of Shiva (J. Daijizaiten, S. Mahêśvara) accompanied by a Sinicized representation of his consort, Uma. The paintings are rendered in a vibrant palette of mineral pigments, made all the more captivating by the prominent use of the kirikane technique whereby millimeter-wide slices of gold leaf are exactingly laid onto the lacquered surface. This is especially prominent in the gridded ground upon which the deities stand.

Behind the rock-crystal pane of the central textual medallion are three precious crystalline or lithic gems. Two are tucked into the crevices of the cast script, and the third rests at the medallion’s bottom, presumably having fallen from the empty niche above. These jewel-like objects are relics (J. shari, S. śarīra)—a capacious category in Buddhism that might include precious jewels, crystals, stones, contact relics, and other items in addition to bodily remains.⁹⁰ According to Buddhist notions of corporeality, moreover, both the stones and the bronze script are ontologically identical as relics, hence their colocation.

A conspicuous notch at the bottom of the central panel allows for the entire panel to be lifted and rocked out of place. Doing so reveals the presence of two facing mandalas behind the main panel: a Matrix Mandala (J. taizō mandara, S. Garbhadhātu maṇḍala) painted on the back wall of the feretory and a Diamond Realm Mandala (J. kongōkai mandara, S. Vajradhātu maṇḍala) painted on the back of the central panel (fig. 72). Collectively known as the Mandala of the Two Realms, the pairing represents Shingon Buddhism’s most fundamental iconographical program.⁹¹ The term mandala (J. mandara) encompasses a wide variety of phenomena, but it might be loosely defined as a diagrammatic array of deities distributed in space. Whereas the classic iconography of these two mandalas would call for the precise delineation of hundreds of deities, the feretory’s mandalas circumvent this demand by representing each deity with a single Siddhaṃ “seed-syllable” (shuji).⁹² As the germinal metaphor implies, seed-syllables are a synecdochally sufficient form of embodiment and presence.

The circumstances of the feretory’s creation remain unclear. The artifact previously had been in the possession of Kakuanji, a temple located only a dozen kilometers from the modern museum. A sheet of paper found depressed into the cavity behind the central A medallion bears an inscription recording the installation of forty-five shari (relic) grains on the fifth month of the fourth year of the Shitoku regnal era (1387) (fig. 73). Some assume this to be the date of the feretory’s construction, but the inscription strictly corresponds only to the moment of the relics’ insertion, hence recording a terminus ante quem.⁹³ The feretory’s architectural program and the presence of the facing mandala suggest a connection to a similar feretory in the collection of the nearby Saidaiji Temple; this object dates to the early fourteenth century and enshrines two similar mandala panels as well as two Shinto mishōtai mirrors. Given the similarity of the Kakuanji feretory to the Saidaiji one, Naitō convincingly argues that the Kakuanji feretory dates to the Kamakura period (1185–1333).⁹⁴ This argument is strengthened by the historical connection between the two temples. Kakuanji belongs to the Shingon Risshū school, a revivalist form of esoteric Japanese Buddhism founded on the teachings of the monk Eison (1201–1290), who is renowned among art historians for the spectacular cache of objects discovered within his own memorial portrait sculpture (see fig. 75).⁹⁵ From his base at Saidaiji, Eison and his charismatic disciple Ninshō (1217–1303) had been involved in the restoration of Kakuanji, which was also the temple where Ninshō first took monastic vows. On balance, the earlier dating seems well founded.

Iconographical Identity

Although the Kakuanji feretory has been registered as an Important Cultural Property for more than a century, scholarship on it has been sparse. In an exhibition catalogue in 1983, the curator Kawada Sadamu provided basic framing, categorizing the reliquary as belonging to a lineage of reliquaries constructed to resemble miniaturized versions of reliquary halls (shariden).⁹⁶ A decade later, Naitō cited the feretory’s peculiar hollow mirror in the context of a longer study of mirror icons (kyōzō) in Japan, a category of icons that, he argues, were all ultimately related to the notion of the mind-as-mirror and mind-as-moon-disk metaphors found in the Mahāvairocana Sūtra (J. Dainichikyō) from the mid-sixth to the mid-seventh centuries. Naitō held that these metaphors came to be conflated and taken literally in medieval Japan, with radiant mirrors used as icons in lieu of pictorial representations of mirrorlike radiance.⁹⁷ The object type is thus a paradigm of exemplification rather than representation. Most recently, Naitō returned to this object to suggest that the feretory’s triptych of the A flanked by Gōzanze and Fudō should be seen as a sonshō mandala, a mandala that invokes the power of the supreme uṣṇīṣa dhāraṇī (a dhāraṇī being a performative invocation and the uṣṇīṣa being a Buddha’s cranial protuberance).⁹⁸

Fig. 72 Details of the pendant feretory and seed-syllable reliquary (fig. 64): (left) Diamond World Mandala on the back of the central panel; (right) Womb World Mandala on the back wall. Mineral pigments, metallic pigments, and gold leaf on lacquered wood. Nara National Museum. Photo: Nara National Museum.

Fig. 73 Inscription inserted behind in the relic chamber of the pendant feretory and seed-syllable reliquary (fig. 64) (pre-restoration photograph). Ink on paper. Nara National Museum. Photo: Nara National Museum.

There might, however, be another way in which to frame the object. Typically, a sonshō mandala would center on the Mahāvairocana Buddha encircled by eight additional deities known as the Eight Great Buddhas (hachidaibutsu), accompanied by Fudō and Gōzanze below in crescent- and triangle-shaped enclosures (fig. 74).⁹⁹ As Naitō notes, the absence of the Eight Great Buddhas in the feretory is conspicuous.¹⁰⁰ Granted, a twelfth-century iconographic manual, the Besson zakki, does indeed include a representation of a sonshō mandala without the eight deities—a variant the manuscript says the monk Enchin (814–891 CE) imported from China—yet no extant paintings substantiate the currency of this program in Japan. The sole extant example of the iconography is in the form of the monumental sculptures at Kongōji Temple in Osaka. Recently designated a National Treasure, the assembly dates to 1234, when two statues of the radiant kings (each more than two meters high) were installed flanking the three-meter-high statue of Mahāvairocana that had been enshrined in the temple some fifty years earlier.¹⁰¹

Fig. 74 Mandala of the Supreme Uṣṇīṣa Buddhas, thirteenth century. Hanging scroll with ink and colors on silk, decorated with thin metal strips, 133.8 × 82.3 cm. Nara National Museum. Photo: Nara National Museum.

The feretory’s iconography and materiality led me to wonder whether it might be useful to contextualize this object within Ajikan practice.¹⁰² The iconography of the central panel certainly accords: it combines an A, a circular or spherical-orb moon disk (gachirin), and an open lotus beneath. The ritual context of Ajikan would also explain the presence of the Mandala of the Two Realms behind the feretory’s central panel since, when all of the feretory’s plates are in place, behind the central bronze A are two more logo-iconic layers, each of which positions the seed-syllable for Mahāvairocana beneath the central A, making the stratigraphy of his iconic presence triple-layered.¹⁰³ Moreover, the earliest Japanese Ajikan text, the Kūkai-attributed Record of Oral Instruction on Ajikan, tells the practitioner to “arrange the throne of the two mandalas within the breast. . . . If in this way one visualizes the syllable [the A] once, it will excel the merit of reciting the eighty thousand Buddhist teachings all at once.”¹⁰⁴ Hence, if worn on the body, the feretory’s two mandala plates, inserted facing each other yet visually unavailable to the viewer, would fulfill this instruction.¹⁰⁵ The notion that the ritual body should contain facing renditions of the Mandala of the Two Realms may also have had currency with Eison, who was unusually involved in the design and construction of his own aforementioned portrait sculpture (fig. 75), within which were discovered two seed-syllable versions of the Mandala of the Two Realms not dissimilar from those found in the Kakuanji and Saidaiji feretories.¹⁰⁶

Materiality of Vision

If the feretory is meant to represent the type of heart-mind complex used in Ajikan practice, then its pendant nature would make sense. It would serve, in that capacity, as a prosthesis with the capacity to reveal the contents of the wearer’s heart-mind. In order to understand this aspect of the artifact, it is necessary to reconstruct the “historical phenomenology” of its perception: the visual experience that one would have had viewing the object hanging from the neck of another.¹⁰⁷ Seen from the front, the feretory would occupy the space of the wearer’s chest like a window to the body. In opening the doors, one would be granted visual access to the bodily interior in a manner not entirely unlike radiography. Yet the feretory exceeds this comparison since one sees through to the specific organ responsible for internal vision in a state of unchanging perception, with the somatically mediated image manifest. One can see, in one image, both the physiology and phenomenon of vision itself. It is thus possible that the feretory was designed to operate as a carefully calibrated apparatus, one engineered to achieve the effect of presenting its wearer as a living reliquary by revealing the presence of relics within the heart-mind.¹⁰⁸ The feretory would thus transform its wearer into an embodied vessel for the iconic, semiotic, and reliquary presence of the deity. As the previous chapter demonstrates, the A is said to be present at all times, hence its permanent sculptural presence seems unproblematic.

As with the objects inserted into sculptural cavities, materiality is crucial. To begin, one has the circular mirror. Its use in the feretory is literally orthodox given the pervasiveness of the mirror metaphor for wisdom and the operations of the mind within various Buddhist lineages.¹⁰⁹ The urtext of Ajikan practice is explicit in stating that the radiant A manifests and emanates light “from deep within a round mirror.”¹¹⁰ This reading of the feretory’s iconography is also supported by Naitō’s earlier argument that physical mirrors came to be used to represent the mirrorlike radiance of the moon disk in the Heian period. Naitō even cites examples of mirrors that bear A inscriptions.¹¹¹ Furthermore, in Kakuban’s Collection of Secret Essentials for Life’s End (Ichigo taiyō himitsushū), he explicitly states, “The moon of the mind shines clearly within one’s breast. . . . When the round mirror shines within the mind, its radiant wisdom illuminates all.”¹¹²

Fig. 75 Zenshun, Shunshō, Zenjitsu, and Gyōshun, portrait sculpture of Eison, 1280. (above) Sculpture with pigment, crystal and wood, height: 91 cm; (below) Inserted objects, wood, ink on paper. Collection of Saidaiji, Nara.

Such entailments continue. For instance, by casting the A in bronze, the grapheme obtains an extraordinary permanence that accords well with its doctrinal and linguistic identity as the foundational ground of all possible semiosis. The golden metal interacts with the ambient light such that the writing—now rent from all trace of ductus or hand—is made to seem a type of acheiropoietic chrysography—a word manifest in light, with radiant immanence. The reflected light, moreover, would animate the A with a glistening sheen.¹¹³ The mirror into which the cast A is set also partakes of this radiance since premodern bronze mirrors imbue their reflections with a tawny hue. For the beholder, the reflected world (unstable and changing) around the character (central and stable) is made to seem yellowish, as if suffused with the character’s golden light. This accords further with Ajikan meditation texts, as mentioned above, that state that at the fruition of the internal picturing process, golden light will radiate from the A and permeate the world.

Materiality and aspectivity—the spatial relationship of object and eye—are key to understanding how and why the feretory succeeds in making the picturing of the mind visible. In the feretory panel, the icon is emphasized by the deep opacity of the black lacquer ground, which isolates the central iconic complex, highlights its radiance, and obscures any context. It is an image that renders the material flesh as an ephemeral container for the stable, self-negating image of the A at its core. Both external “picture” and internal “image” are externally present and identical in the material, immutable, and even haptic identity of the cast A. An onlooker could thus see the visualized content within the wearer’s mind. The feretory thereby transforms the body upon which it hangs into a “living medium” (in Belting’s terms), a living mirror, a living monstrance, and a living reliquary.¹¹⁴ Through this prosthetic apparatus, it is possible for one to manifest the presence of Mahāvairocana within one’s heart-mind even if one has no visual access to this image of the self. The object performs right-mindfulness, obviating both discourse and visualization.

Ritual Vision and Visual Anthropology

In the context of contemporary scholarship into the anthropology of vision, the feretory presents a provocative case study. It seems to exemplify Belting’s notion that “the body assumes a dual existence as both medium and image.”¹¹⁵ Crucial to Belting’s framework is the intersection of ontology and phenomenology in the materiality of the image.¹¹⁶ Yet evidence suggests that the feretory may have been engineered explicitly to short-circuit this dynamic. In viewing it, the corporeally mediated image (the image-within-the-body) simultaneously appears both as an immaterial image and as a physical image mediated in metal. The feretory makes it seem as if one could reach out and touch the cold metal surface of one’s mental imagery.

If contemporary image theory represents a turn away from the inveterate logocentrism of much of art history, then what is the historian to make of a pictorial culture wherein inscriptive and depictive marks were never so neatly distinguished, where the phenomenal world was seen to be an illusory inscription, and where the sonic, material, and iconic dimensions of logos were deeply integrated?¹¹⁷ Since Ajikan centers upon an iconotext (namely, a glyph that gives figural form to the sonic aspect of the deity), it operates precisely at the intersection of semiotics and visual anthropology, a situation that gives one pause inasmuch as the latter is sometimes framed as a turn away from the former.¹¹⁸

Consider also the role of the priming or external icon. Its presence accords well with Belting’s formulation that “mental images are inscribed in external ones and vice versa,” inasmuch as the picture here is being used as the dispositif: the “support, host, and tool for the image.”¹¹⁹ Yet Ajikan practice takes this further in that one not only recalls the image but reconstructs and manipulates it. Physical inscription is made to seem like a dimensionally impoverished metaphor for the replete and robust inscription performed by the mind in perceiving the world. Granted, the relationship is initially bidirectional since the external picture is used to calibrate the internal one. Yet, as Ajikan texts are quick to note, the meditative practice allows one to merely learn to see what is always already present inside the mind. In other words, contra Belting’s formulation, the internal image here is primary, not “apparitional” or secondary to the external picture.¹²⁰ Indeed, here is an image that is neither apparitional nor semiotic—and that evokes visual figuration only to defeat it.

One might also extend the interpretive context of the feretory to include the perceptual framework discussed in the previous chapter. Remember that Kūkai treated the world as a holographic inscription of the dharmakāya, wherein all phenomena are illusory marks, images, or letters.¹²¹ In other words, according to Kūkai’s aesthetics, the world is always already a picture.¹²² This aesthetic paradigm further intersects with contemporary image theory. If, as Whitney M. Davis argues, “visuality and pictoriality are reciprocally and recursively inter-determined and interacting aspects of world-recognition,” the feretory would represent an apparatus explicitly designed to collapse these dynamics.¹²³ Davis actually anticipates the possibility of such an artifact, which would be tantamount, he argues, to an object “convert(ing) itself into pure seeing,” so that “the world is a picture.”¹²⁴ Hence Davis’s formulation seems remarkably consonant with perceptual discourse in which the feretory is enmeshed.¹²⁵ Visual anthropology and image theory have only recently theorized what has been a central premise of Shingon visuality since at least the ninth century.

Beyond visuality, however, the ultimate goal of ritual practice was to transform oneself into a Buddha through manipulation of the “Three Mysteries” (sanmitsu): one’s audiovocal, bodily, and conceptual faculties. Hence the centrality of aural mantras, gestural mudras, and visual icons in Shingon ritual practice. One is meant to become the image, which was itself an iteration of the deity with full presence (that is, not representational).¹²⁶ In contemporary art-historical terms, one mediates the image with the body, and by doing so, one becomes the image, thereby assuming its ontological status. Likewise, in wearing the feretory—with the golden bronze A, the relic stones, and the mandala plates inside the thoracic cavity—there is no difference between the practitioner and the deity, as the relics are just as much relics of oneself. One would seem to have merged, in the heart-mind, with Mahāvairocana. Moreover, this is now socially apparent to others; and it is the feretory that achieves this, not anyone’s “visualization.”

At stake in this chapter is the relationship of visuality to the physiology and materiality of the body. The contemplative practice of Ajikan provides insight into that relationship since it made the heart-mind itself a site of inscription for iconic presence. In the context of Ajikan, at least, vision was understood to involve both ocular and thoracic faculties, a situation that highlights the need to not project Eurocentric notions of optics and ophthalmology.¹²⁷ Visualization, moreover, posited a physiological transformation of the visceral material of the body, morphologically transforming the heart-mind itself. Hence optics, ophthalmology, and the metaphor of the skull as a camera obscura within which images appear are all far from the universals they are sometimes taken to be.

In the previous chapter, I argued that the Significance manuscript represented embodied vision by collapsing depth onto the surface of the page, allowing one to see how the body, the perceptual world, and the iconotext can all be understood as marks in the metaphorical world-manuscript. Here, I have argued that the Kakuanji feretory was engineered as a prosthetic apparatus that would take advantage of the materiality and spatiality of perception to make doctrinal truths about the nature of the heart-mind socially apparent. Instead of illustrating or reflecting visuality, it manifests it live, making the entire viewer-object relay visually apparent. This makes the feretory a powerful object in contemporary discussions of visual anthropology since it provides historical evidence of a visual circuit that was far more complex than the common rubrics of subject/object, person/artifact, and image/picture. From the stratigraphy of the manuscript interface to artifactual prostheses, late Heian agents made ingenious use of the technologies at their disposal to scrutinize the embodiment of vision.

Fig. 76 Six-panel folding screen with specimens of various sutra scrolls from the eighth to thirteenth centuries. Gold, silver, ink, indigo, and various dyes on paper; each panel: 137.8 × 45.7 cm. Tokyo National Museum, gift of Mr. Matsunaga Yasuzaemon. Source: ColBase (https://colbase.nich.go.jp).

Interlude

Metabolism of Images

A six-panel folding screen in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum presents a rich early modern assemblage of thirty-one excerpts cut from sutra handscrolls from the eighth to thirteenth centuries (fig. 76). Among them are two of the most famous manuscripts in Japanese history: the earliest extant printed text, the Hyakumantō darani of the reign of Empress Shōtoku (718–770 CE, r. 764–70 CE), as well as an eighth-century chrysographic transcription of the Lotus Sutra known as the Nigatsudō Burned Sutra, which bears traces from a fire in 1667. Dissected from their scroll format, these sheets were arranged to form a new work, one that eschewed the intimacy of the scroll medium in favor of the screen’s more public, planar, and vertical interface. Not only had display value trumped ritual value, but the assemblage meant that the history of sutras itself was on display.

Screens such as this call for comparison to the early modern albums known as tekagami or “mirrors of the hand.” Such albums contained dozens, if not hundreds, of manuscript excisions, sometimes collectively spanning more than a millennium of calligraphic culture. One such album, the Getsudai, was discussed in chapter 3 (see fig. 18). To modern eyes, these practices seem abhorrent since a Eurocentric preservation paradigm prizes integrality over metabolism. But tekagami were not destructive so much as constructive; they permitted display but also stylistic analysis, authentication, and provocative syntactic linkages. They were assemblages of exemplifications, surveys of the history of the hand constructed entirely of holographs (even if they were not always what they purported to be). In that sense, they display a greater investment in “originality” than one might initially imagine.

Indeed, the frameworks of fragmentation and destruction are perhaps the wrong lenses through which to view such works, especially given the prominence of the processes of selection, anthologizing, excerption, assemblage, and recombination in various arenas of Japanese cultural history. Such circulation might be likened more accurately to a metabolism of images. I embrace the metabolism metaphor since it highlights the constant ability of images to dissolve into traveling motifs, fragments, and modules. Destruction and decontextualization become productive processes. Metabolism, therefore, designates not a system of entropic ruination so much as an intergenerational series of interlinked processes of dissolution and recombination. As such, this final chapter will return to the manuscript interface to scrutinize a series of twelfth-century artifacts that strongly engage this aesthetic.

Montage can be identified as the basic element of Japanese representational culture.

—Sergei Eisenstein

Chapter 6

Montage

The Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets and the Modernity of Collage

By the mid-twentieth century, the esteem afforded cubist collage—the century’s “single most revolutionary formal innovation”—was tremendous. “By now,” declared Robert Rosenblum in 1973, “it is a commonplace of art history to say that the innovations of cubism altered the structure of Western painting to a degree unparalleled since the Renaissance.”¹ Well into the twenty-first century, however, even this daring appraisal begins to seem modest. Given the predominance of North Atlantic modernity within late capitalism, the repercussions of collage now extend well beyond the medium of painting and far outside the sphere of the West. So great is its consequence that one historian characterized collage more as “an alternative to the modern tradition” than a part of it.² Either way, as Gregory Ulmer notes, collage outlived modernity itself and came to form the epistemic foundation of postmodern artistic practice and critical discourse.³ Once this leap was made, from material to metaphor, further critical extensions and entailments came wildly: from contemporary situational aesthetics to the processes of recombination at the core of genetic engineering.⁴ Indeed, if the praxis of collage is truly this critical, then the history of its origin deserves scrutiny.⁵

Yet one is surprised to find that the first systematic attempt to do so, Herta Wescher’s Collage, published in 1968, opened with a color plate labeled as follows: “Page from the Iseshu, a manuscript book of poems. Japan, early twelfth century. Brush and ink on various pasted papers” (fig. 77).⁶ Given that Wescher went on to reiterate the prevailing narrative of how “the collage” emerged from the hallowed pictorial interchanges of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Georges Braque (1882–1963), a medieval Japanese manuscript was an unlikely place to start.⁷ The artifact to which Wescher referred, the Ise Collection (Ise-shū), was indeed a codex: a 190-page compilation of poems written in the early Heian period by the “Lady Ise” (Ise no go, ca. 877–after 938/40 CE).⁸ Yet the Ise Collection represents but one volume of an original set of thirty-nine such codices collectively known as the Nishi Honganji Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets (Nishi Honganji-bon Sanjūrokunin kashū). The Anthology itself was a massive poetic compilation undertaken in the early eleventh century by the scholar, editor, and critic Fujiwara no Kintō (966–1041 CE); Nishi Honganji is the name of the Kyoto temple that houses this particular transcription of the anthology.⁹ In point of fact, the color plate Wescher reproduced was not the Ise Collection at all but a two-page spread from a different Anthology volume.¹⁰ Regarding the color plate, Wescher hedges: “It is certain that collage, montage, and assemblages of various materials had innumerable predecessors in past centuries, but . . . the forerunners all remained on the sidelines of the major artistic development and had no influence on it. Not until the twentieth century, when creative artists took to working with it, did collage become a new and valid means of expression.”¹¹ As this text makes clear, historicist contextualism can readily verge on cultural exceptionalism. In the “cultural politics” of the past century, such summary dismissal was an effective means of marginalization.¹² The specious objectivity of chronology allowed one to bracket the great volume, not to mention the sophistication, of cubist collage’s premodern and extra-European analogues. Granted, as far as Wescher and her colleagues knew, eight centuries and some ten thousand kilometers separated the Ise Collection of medieval Japan (Kyoto, ca. 1112) from Braque’s inaugural Fruit Dish and Glass (Sorgues, autumn 1912) (fig. 78).¹³ Yet such straightforward chronology should not be taken at face value. While the Ise-shū collage may have been created in 1112, it was not until 1896 that it emerged from the storehouse of the Buddhist temple Nishi Honganji, where it had lain dormant for some three centuries, a period long enough for it and its collage-like papercraft to have been forgotten.

Any spatiotemporal bracketing is in stark contrast to the tight chronological and historiographical synchronicity of what we can call “Collage 1112” (to designate the medieval Japanese practice) and “Collage 1912” (to designate the modern European one). Note, for instance, that only months after the Anthology’s reemergence and without any apparent historical connection, the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) published his “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard” (A dice roll never stops chance), the poem often credited with instigating an awareness of the semiotic sensitivity of typographical placement—that is, the semantic consequence of the figural aspects of script—a concept that manifests itself prominently in the critical discourse on both Japanese calligraphy and Euro-American collage (fig. 79).¹⁴ The somewhat hyperbolic credit given to Mallarmé perhaps finds its origins in William Seitz’s influential The Art of Assemblage of 1961, in which he magnifies Fry’s earlier assertion that poetic juxtaposition and metaphors prefigured cubism and collage.¹⁵

Fig. 77 Open spread with color plate in Herta Wescher, Collage, trans. Robert E. Wolf (1968; New York: Abrams, 1971), 8–9. © Herta Wescher. Photo: author.

Coincidentally, the first scholarly treatment of the Anthology appeared in 1913, nearly in tandem with the experiments of Picasso and Braque in papier collé.¹⁶ The paucity of discursive exchange between these two worlds makes such synchronicity all the more striking. Thus in the early decades of the twentieth century, two small and isolated networks—one of painters in France, the other of antiquaries in Japan—were simultaneously grappling with the aesthetic practice commonly known as “collage.”¹⁷ Whereas the former historical moment has been celebrated as “the greatest ‘discovery’ of twentieth-century painting”—even likened in importance to the invention of human flight—this other strand of modern collage is relegated to the remote context of medieval Japanese codicology, paleography, and paper decoration.¹⁸

Fig. 78 The comparison roughly to scale. (left) Georges Braque, Fruit Dish and Glass, 1912. Charcoal and cut-and-pasted printed wallpaper with gouache on white laid paper; subsequently mounted on paperboard, 62.9 × 45.7 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, gift of Leonard A. Lauder, 2016, 2016.237.33. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, New York; (right) Attributed to Fujiwara no Sadanobu, an exemplary sheet from the Ishiyama Excerpts, page from the Tsurayuki Collection II, ca. 1112. Ink, collaged papers, metallic paints, vegetable dyes, gold and silver leaf, and glue, approx. 20 × 16 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, purchase—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1969.4.

Fig. 79 Spread from the first publication of Stéphane Mallarmé, “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard” (A dice roll never stops chance), Cosmopolis 6 (May 1897): 424–25.

This is not, however, the David-and-Goliath comparison it might seem to be since the two-page color plate in Wescher’s volume belies the vast scale of the medieval Japanese artifact. The three-thousand-page Anthology, with its spectacular repertoire of assembled papers, was far from an isolated occurrence of amateurish handicraft (see appendix C).¹⁹ The first publication on the Anthology discussed its reemergence in near-providential language, and the volumes’ rediscovery marks a moment in the history of modern collage that is no less “monumental” (to use Clement Greenberg’s term) than the advent of cubism.²⁰ The corpus, in other words, is adequate to the challenge.

Hence the task of this chapter is to explore the interface of the two collage practices, each proper to two contemporaneous modernities, in order to scrutinize the canonical topoi that structure the ways in which collage writ large is defined and discussed. The contexts of cubist collage and the collage of the Anthology contradict each other so neatly that one could readily construct a long Lévi-Straussian table of diametric oppositions. To give but one example: whereas cubist collage is often celebrated for innovation, in the very same historical moment, on the other end of the Eurasian continent, collage emerged as a found object—revolutionary and yet simultaneously canonical, classical, and unapologetically aristocratic. In this regard, the Anthology places pressure upon the deterministic notion that there was something exclusively modern about the historical context that subtended, precipitated, or merely coincided with the advent of twentieth-century collage.

A further goal here is to foreground a crucial instance in which art historians situated in a modernity outside of the North Atlantic found a way to impugn the innovativeness of the purported main line. As the early chapters of this book reveal, Japanese premodern artifacts and modern Euro-American art have enjoyed an intimate interface, one that is often reduced to the notion of influence or appropriation as a means to mask the scale and magnitude of Japanese artifacts’ agency. Within this framework, any harmonies, linkages, or homologies were deemed chiefly formal. With collage, however, the dynamic was different: it is one thing to note an analogous historical interest in abstraction, planarity, and a bold palette; it is quite another to claim that this paradigmatically European modernist practice had first emerged outside Europe.

Hence it was through recourse to these codices that Japanese modernity was able to circumvent any influence anxiety or the raw nerve of derivativeness. In the context of mid-twentieth-century nationalism, critics framed the Anthology as the most Japanese of all Japanese artworks, and (the argument went) if it seemed to employ modernist techniques and design elements, then so be it, for such “modernity” was always already Japanese. By this logic, if the Anthology is collage and if collage is modern, then the purported innovations of Picasso, Braque, and Henri Matisse were limited in their purview. Needless to say, the alternative history failed to take. But in the present century, as the doxa of Western modernism begins to strain, these refreshingly irreverent claims seem once again germane.

When Wescher ensconced the Anthology at the head of her monograph, she was hitching one of the most nationalistically freighted and volatile objects in the Japanese artifactual canon to one of the most epistemologically consequential artistic practices of North Atlantic modernism—and she was right to do so. Cubism is not the whole story. And if collage is indeed the most perduring and structurally transformative development of twentieth-century art, then that may have less to do with innovation than it does with collage’s material and formal relationship to aspects of human thought that were historically and culturally unbeholden to modern Europe.²¹ In fact, I would argue that instead of reality, it is temporality that is at stake in collage, as it allows one to bring multiple temporal fragments together on a common plane. In expanding the field of collage-like practices, attention shifts away from the Anthology—a specific object “unearthed” in modernity—and toward the admittedly problematic and essentialist claim that montage (collage included) is a pervasive, continuous, and inveterate feature of Japanese material culture—hence the Sergei Eisenstein epigraph that begins this chapter.

Dormancy, Regeneration, and Reverse Engineering

The story of the Anthology’s discovery is sensational. In August 1896, Ōguchi Taiji (1864–1920), a young connoisseur of calligraphy and official in Japan’s Imperial Office of Poetry (outadokoro), received an invitation to inspect the manuscripts safeguarded in the temple storehouse of Nishi Honganji in Kyoto.²² After a week of exploration, a monk directed him to a wooden box labeled “A Collaborative Inscription of the Thirty-Six” (Sanjūrokunin yoriai sho). From the label, Ōguchi would have surmised that the box contained a transcription of the Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets, but the term anthology here fails to do the work justice. It was, to be more precise, a second-order or meta anthology, comprising thirty-six previously anthologized personal poetry collections (kashū), one for each poet in the eponymous pantheon.²³ The Anthology was thus the product of two antecedent processes of assemblage, making the material collage of the papers a third-order assemblage.²⁴

Provenance was quickly determined: turning to the sixty-plus-volume Diary of the Tenbun Era (Tenbun nikki), the chronicle of Shōnyo (1516–1554), Nishi Honganji’s head abbot at the time of the manuscripts’ donation, Ōguchi consulted the entry concerning the donation. It attested that the donation had been made by Emperor GoNara (1496–1557, r. 1526–57) on the twentieth day of the first month of 1549 and that it had been accompanied by a deed of gift from a lady at court. The deed had been preserved along with the Anthology, thereby immediately confirming its identity. While the precise circumstances of the Anthology’s production remain uncertain, the artifact is thought to correspond to a luxury recension noted in two Heian-period diaries as having been given to Emperor Shirakawa (1053–1129; r. 1072–86) on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.²⁵

Scholarship on the Anthology thus began with Ōguchi, who was permitted to borrow several volumes at a time for private inspection in his home. It was there that the artist Tanaka Shinbi (1875–1975) first saw the Anthology. Mesmerized, he vowed to replicate it in its entirety—a task he completed some ten years later.²⁶ Hence was born a fortuitous and prescient methodological partnership between an antiquarian and an artist. It resulted in two parallel epistemologies: one concerned with replication, material, performance, and design; the other with codicology, calligraphy, style, and text. As was the case for Wescher’s readers, of the thirty-nine volumes, it was the Ise Collection that Tanaka saw first.²⁷

Yet Tanaka was one of few to have ever seen the Ise bound as a book. In 1929, the monk and politician Ōtani Sonyū (1886–1939), whose family held the abbacy of Nishi Honganji, decided to unbind, cut, and sell two volumes of the Anthology in an effort to raise funds for the construction of a women’s university. In consultation with the prominent businessman and collector Masuda Takashi (1848–1938), a sale was orchestrated.²⁸ Such fragmentation of premodern works was characteristic of the Japanese art world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Masuda and his peers, as Christine Guth argues, were deeply engaged with the practice of Japanese tea (Chanoyu), a milieu in which Masuda pioneered the display of such fragmented objects, hence fueling demand for antique fragments.²⁹

Fig. 80 Attributed to Fujiwara no Sadanobu, an exemplary sheet from the Ishiyama Excerpts, page from the Tsurayuki Collection II, ca. 1112. Ink, collaged papers, metallic paints, vegetable dyes, gold and silver leaf, and glue, approx. 20 × 16 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, purchase—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1969.4.

The codices selected for disassembly and sale were the aforementioned Ise Collection and the second of the two-volume Tsurayuki Collection (Tsurayuki-shū) (fig. 80). Of all the codices, these contained the greatest density of both ornamentation and painstakingly collaged papers—a lavishness that accords well with the high esteem in which those two particular poets were held at the turn of the eleventh century.³⁰ The calligraphy of each is likewise exceptional: the hand of the Tsurayuki has long been attributed to the celebrated calligrapher Fujiwara no Sadanobu (1088–after 1154), and the hand of the Ise once bore an attribution to Fujiwara no Kintō himself. These exfoliated, loose sheets from Ise and Tsurayuki II (totaling 362 folia) are collectively known as the Ishiyama Excerpts (Ishiyama-gire), Ishiyama being a toponym derived from the location of the forerunner temple to the modern Nishi Honganji.³¹ Albeit alarming from a preservationist’s perspective, were it not for the market diaspora, very few would have had the opportunity to view the exacting sophistication of the twelfth-century collaged-paper techniques.³² Yet prewar and postwar scholars saw very different things in these pages. For Wescher, “collage” was a readily available category under which to subsume the Anthology. This was not the case for Tanaka. For him, there was a more sustained period of material research and wonder, as he reverse engineered these objects.³³

Fibers, Fissures, and Seams: Materiality and Facture

The prewar main line of scholarship on the Anthology culminated in a 1944 monograph coauthored by two young scholars of a new generation: Iijima Shunkei (1906–1996) and Kyūsojin Hitaku (1909–2012).³⁴ Whereas their subject had appeared in Kyoto at the apogee of imperial power, their heavy tome, printed on compromised war-rationed paper, appeared only months before the incendiary bombing of the imperial metropole by Allied B-29 Superfortresses. (In fact, the publication was rushed following Kyūsojin’s conscription.) The authors and the artifacts survived the war, but scholarship thereafter took a dramatic turn. Form began to trump historical context, as both Japanese and Euro-American scholars were suddenly keen to juxtapose the Anthology with modernist collage. Motivations for this appropriation varied, but few postwar commentators availed themselves of Iijima and Kyūsojin’s painstaking analysis. As a result, the same historians who sought to cordon off these codices from any relevance to modern collage often misrepresented the Anthology as being more like cubist papier collé than it actually is. As a corrective, let me be explicit—in both material and epistemic terms—about the material and pragmatic parameters of the Anthology’s collage.

Consider the paper. Whereas this may seem a common feature of both traditions, paper developed along different trajectories and meant different things on each end of the Eurasian continent. In the Euro-American context, paper is often linked to early modernity, but the much earlier advent of papermaking in East Asia problematizes the material’s modern valence. As with other East Asian papermaking traditions, Japanese paper (washi) is distinguished by several material and technological characteristics (distinctive features of which are the length and strength of the bast fibers and the addition into the pulp of a mucilaginous agent) that result in particularly thin, lissome, and resilient sheets. Even as early as the eighth century—an early period in the history of Japanese writing itself—the quality of Japanese papers was already praised on the East Asian continent.³⁵ Such esteem is well founded. Were it not for the quality of the Anthology’s papers, the delicate paper-joining techniques would not have been possible, nor would the state of preservation be so stunning.

Ironically, the Anthology resurfaced when the future of its constituent materials was most imperiled. In the context of Japan’s breakneck nineteenth-century industrialization, the import of “modern paper” (industrially produced Euro-American papers) lent washi a premodern, if not antimodern, valence. In light of this situation, the influential journal Kōgei (Craft) dedicated an issue to washi in 1933. Tipped in were eighteen specimens of washi in addition to various essays, including one by the philosopher and historian Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961), who argued—not without problematic and nationalistic overtones—that he wanted to “shake the sleeping Japanese awake” so that they might appreciate the history, materiality, and artistic value of washi.³⁶ Yanagi was arguing against the truism that “paper is the barometer of civilization”—and so volume is what matters—in favor of the importance of materiality and substance.³⁷ Indeed, the materiality of the Anthology paradoxically stood in stark contrast to the proleptic modernism some would later attribute to its collage techniques.

Following Iijima, scholars generally sort the washi used in the Anthology into four categories.³⁸ Most common is “hen’s-egg paper” (torinokogami); highly prized for its durability and sheen, it is made from the bast fibers of the difficult-to-cultivate ganpi plant (Wikstoemia sikokiana).³⁹ One also finds michinokugami (also called “sandalwood paper” or danshi), a kōzo-based paper widely used at court, as well as a very small amount of recycled paper (kamiyagami).⁴⁰ Most spectacular by far, however, is karakami, a thick paper often dyed before being xylographically printed with pulverized mica (kirara) and gesso-like shell powder (gofun) to reveal scintillating patterns (fig. 81).⁴¹

The term karakami (lit. paper of the Tang [dynasty]) initially referred to a continental East Asian luxury good. Nevertheless, it would seem that the vast majority of the paper used in the Anthology was domestically produced. Iijima identified and tabulated fifty-eight separate patterns imprinted on the karakami used in the Anthology, of which thirty are certainly of domestic manufacture, nine are of uncertain provenience, and only nineteen are thought to be imports.⁴² In fact, domestic production of karakami began only in the eleventh century, just before the date of the Anthology.⁴³ Yet the great variety of paper types and karakami designs found in the Anthology is not uniformly distributed across the codices: three of the books are composed solely of torinokogami, fifteen are entirely of karakami, and only sixteen exhibit the heterogeneity of papers—the collage—for which the Anthology is renowned.⁴⁴

Fig. 81 An integral page of karakami paper from the Ishiyama Excerpts (page 123 of the Ise Collection), ca. 1112. Ink and silver over mica woodblock print on paper, 20.3 × 15.9 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift (by exchange) of Mrs. Henry W. Breyer, Sr., 1965-77-1.

Moreover, term collage itself must be qualified. Unlike cubist collage, which takes its name from its act (F. coller) or from its binding agent (F. la colle), the Japanese term tsugigami—“sequenced,” “coupled,” or “joined” papers—emphasizes the montage syntax and the visible material itself. In the context of the Anthology, the term evokes a patchwork of paper fields fused with conspicuous (and often semantically significant) seams into a relatively shallow topography. Absent is any substrate (such as backing papers, canvas, and so forth), hence slight imbrication is necessary in order to “join” the papers. In this sense, it is more accurate to think of tsugigami as a form of tessellation with very slight imbrication of all the pieces—a situation more like mosaic or quilting than papier collé.⁴⁵ In further contrast to cubist papier collé, all of the constituent elements of tsugigami are materially identical as paper, albeit within a cultural context that was particularly discerning of the quality and ornamentation of this medium.

Fig. 82 Fragment of a manuscript of Ise-shū from the Ishiyama Excerpts (page 18 of the Ise Collection), ca. 1112. Ink, collaged papers, metallic paints, vegetable dyes, and glue, 20 × 15.8 cm. The Museum Yamato Bunkakan, Nara.

Fig. 83 Detail from a page in the Ishiyama Excerpts (Ise Collection), ca. 1112. Ink, collaged papers, metallic paints, vegetable dyes, gold and silver leaf, and glue. Important Cultural Property. Yuki Museum of Art, Osaka.

Scholars distinguish between three distinct techniques of joining.⁴⁶ The first, the “slice-join” (kiri-tsugi), refers to the union of two pieces of paper cut with matching parallel straight lines. Technically the simplest method, the overlap (slightly less than two millimeters) results in a uniform band. More technically challenging is the “rip-join” (yaburi-tsugi), a term that designates paper joined so that it looks as if the seam has been randomly torn to create a rough, meandering edge. This is a calculated caprice.⁴⁷ The evocative “torn” edges were sometimes manipulated so that they served clearly figural purposes, representing clouds, shorelines, or even elaborate mountainscapes (fig. 82).⁴⁸ Moreover, it was often the printed karakami papers that were so joined, in which cases the tears accented the sharp contrasts in ornamentation. Most celebrated of all is the “stepped-join” (kasane-tsugi) technique. In this laborious process, up to six sheets of paper are fused along a single seam, with two pieces of paper bridged by several thin and imbricated papers.⁴⁹ Despite the number of layers, the effective thickness of the join remains more or less the same due to the thinness of the intermediary sheets (fig. 83). When the page is turned, however, the intermediary papers disappear, as the bottommost paper continues across the entire divide before joining the other paper field in a rip-join.

Fig. 84 Diagram of “butterfly-style” binding, from Kōjirō Ikegami, Japanese Bookbinding © 1979, 1986. Reprinted by arrangement with The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Shambhala Publications Inc., Boulder, CO, https://www.shambhala.com.

As one progresses through the codex, one encounters various sequences of collage in dynamic motion, as seams reverse, shift, and transform.⁵⁰ The layered papers used in such seams often exhibit a subtle modulation from darker to lighter hues, drawing further attention to the mortar-like field of the join. While structurally opposed to modern papier collé, such attention to seams reminds one of Greenberg’s observation regarding cubist collage that “the area adjacent to one edge of a piece of affixed material—or simply of a painted-in form—will be shaded to pry that edge away from the surface.”⁵¹ I will return to such direct comparisons below, but one might preliminarily venture that in both traditions, collage entailed, perhaps, a shift in semantic focus away from the figure and toward the liminal contours of its constitutive materials.⁵²

Following the dyeing, printing, and joining, there were further stages involved: the application of gold and silver leaf, which was cut into squares of varying sizes, sliced into long thin strips, or ripped into irregular flecks; painting in small figures, such as flying birds, botanical cuttings, and scattered leaves; and occasionally brush dyeing, marbling, and even an isolated instance of branding.⁵³

It is worth emphasizing that the collages of the Anthology were created for inclusion within bound codices. The volumes represent well-preserved specimens of the relatively rare “butterfly-style” binding (decchōsō), itself a form of joining (fig. 84). According to this technique, the paper sheets are folded in two to create four-page bifolia. Glue is then applied to the outer edge (covering approximately five millimeters) of the fold and the sheets are stacked. No thread is used, and both sides of each page remain visible. The final stage in the binding would be the application of the gauzy silk cover.⁵⁴ The resulting volumes are thus remarkably light—akin to mid-twentieth-century paperbacks but abundantly deluxe, with a gossamer texture.⁵⁵

Collage Japonaise

The sale of the Ishiyama Excerpts transformed what were initially interactive, three-dimensional codices into still, planar tableaux, a transformation that was doubtless catalytic in the pages’ conceptual reframing as collage. The exact moment of this categorical shift is difficult to determine, but signs point to the immediate postwar era. For instance, in 1954, long before her authoritative monograph, Wescher had published an important essay on the history of collage in the French journal Art d’aujourd’hui. Here, too, despite the relative economy of space, she opened with what she was already calling “collage japonaise.”⁵⁶ Her source was uncertain, but in her later monograph, she would thank “Mr. L. Alcopley of New York” for introducing her to this work, and so he must have done so sometime before 1954.⁵⁷

Alcopley was the sobriquet of Alfred L. Copley (1910–1992), a German-American physician and painter.⁵⁸ Alcopley had moved to Paris in 1952, perhaps introducing Wescher to the Anthology soon thereafter. Although less well known than other artists of the New York school, Alcopley was nevertheless prominent in postwar artistic exchanges between Japan and the United States. He was the driving force behind the production of a major exhibition of Japanese calligraphy, L’encre de Chine dans la calligraphie et l’art japonais contemporains, which had a one-week run at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo in August 1955 before commencing a four-year tour of various cities in Europe.⁵⁹ Among the works exhibited was a fragment of the Anthology from the Ise Collection.⁶⁰ Alcopley’s own introduction to the Anthology is unclear, but his interlocutors Morita Shiryū (1912–1998) and Franz Kline (1910–1962) are likely candidates. Kline’s engagement with Japan predated Alcopley’s, and with Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) he even had coauthored a short article introducing Alcopley’s work to the Japanese public.⁶¹

The earliest occasion at which one might have seen both cubist papier collé and Japanese tsugigami in person was in the final years of the Allied Occupation, when prominent retrospectives of Matisse (1951), Picasso (1951), and Braque (1952) opened in Osaka and Tokyo. Despite the late twentieth-century ascendance of the Matisse-Picasso dyad, Braque’s prominence in postwar Japan was unparalleled.⁶² This had partly to do with Braque’s seldom-acknowledged interest in Japanese Zen, which had begun in 1917/18 when he discovered the works of Eugen Herrigel (1884–1955) and D. T. Suzuki (1894–1966) while convalescing from injuries sustained during the war.⁶³ As John Richardson notes, Braque’s understanding of Zen was “imperfect,” but this affinity—substantiated or not—endeared him to Japanese audiences and critics.⁶⁴

At the time of the Braque exhibition in Japan, critics on both ends of the Eurasian continent deemed him to be the bridge or go-between (kakehashi) that linked the two pictorial modernisms. Writing on the occasion of the exhibition, the critic Kawakita Rinmei published a short essay on the history of cubism that focused not on surface and perspective—the tropes most common in European-language scholarship—but on cubism’s arrival at a Zen-like understanding of spatiotemporality. Kawakita tellingly cited a passage in Braque’s Cahiers: “Idéologies et constructions: une goutte d’eau sur ces pains de sucre et tout se dissout” (Ideologies and constructions: a single drop of water on these sugarloafs, and they melt away)—to which Kawakita retorted, “That drop of water is the type of thing that East Asians well understand.”⁶⁵ Braque’s point—that discursive constructs, however sweet and appealing, readily dissolve under a foreign gaze—was acknowledged by contemporary French critics as well. For example, that same year, the critic Francis Ponge (1899–1988) published an essay that was immediately translated into Japanese and unabashedly addressed to the “recently atomized flower of the extreme Orient.”⁶⁶ He congratulated the Japanese for their initiative in displaying the work of Braque—“Nothing is more French than Braque” (Rien n’est plus français que Braque)—the appreciation of whose work might bring together at last the most ancient civilizations of the world (pace China, Egypt, the Indus Valley, and Mesopotamia) into a new “pseudo-civilization universelle.”⁶⁷ Both critics’ appeal to cosmopolitanism was somewhat disingenuous, each trying to undercut and subsume the other.⁶⁸ Nevertheless, note the timing: the Braque show closed only months before the first public exhibition of the Anthology. If perspicacious viewers and critics still had Braque on the mind when they viewed the Anthology in the galleries of the Kyoto National Museum in 1953, then they would have been well primed to experience an uncanny sense of déjà vu. If this conceptual shift did occur in Kyoto in early spring 1953, the idea gained international currency with remarkable speed.

Surface and Reality

The author of an award-winning 2007 history of collage in North Atlantic modernity, the French-trained Japanese art historian Kōmoto Mari, introduces the Anthology only as a final figure. She calls it “Japan’s ‘papier collé,’” and the scare quotes speak volumes.⁶⁹ Her bracketing, however, is far more nuanced than many previous accounts. While admitting that the Anthology demonstrates a degree of abstraction, as well as a similar ability to disrupt flatness, Kōmoto nevertheless avers that the stakes in twelfth-century Japan were simply too low for the Anthology to hold its own with its North Atlantic analogue: “Unlike the situation with Western modern art, the makers of Japanese ‘papier collé’ did not have to grapple with hierarchical structures and overturn them (i.e., deconstructionism). In that regard, the Heian-era practices of collage are decidedly distinct from modern Western collage, which developed under the banners of rupture and opposition.”⁷⁰ Indeed, much depends on those banners, for they provide the iconological context in which modern Western collage gains critical traction, hence privileging it over other forms of assemblage. Accordingly, to locate collage outside the context of twentieth-century Europe is to impugn the canonical assumption that the material and pictorial “ruptures” of collage are illustrative of, precipitated by, or correlative with contemporaneous metaphorical ruptures in European politics and poetics. While never surrendering those banners, Kōmoto, nevertheless, begins to hedge: “Japanese courtly art (ōchō bijutsu) shares in common with medieval Western art that one cannot draw such clear distinctions between such planarity, the coexistence of écriture and image, and high and low arts (folk art is another matter).”⁷¹ This realization leads her to pose an implicit challenge to her own thesis: “I believe that by taking a more open perspective, and by comparing Western collage to a collage that developed within a different context and spirit (seishin), it will become possible to see clearly ‘the facticity of collage’ (jijitsu) that does not emerge when limited to the Western context.”⁷²

Despite the fact that it has been sixty years since Wescher introduced collage japonaise, given the hegemony of American painting in the 1960s as well as the vociferous backlash against early forays into comparative discussions of North Atlantic modern art, the type of project Kōmoto suggests could not be entertained until quite recently.⁷³ The comparison intersects not only with established avenues of inquiry into North Atlantic modernity’s cultural appropriation from the non-West (for example, Orientalism) but also with the recent research into ways in which North Atlantic modernity masked its appropriation of its own premodern past (for example, the medieval/modern trope).⁷⁴ As Nagel notes, “We are in a position now to see that encounters with medieval art mark the whole history of modernism and its aftermaths.”⁷⁵ If medieval appropriation is the Occidentalist counterpoint to Orientalism, it should alert us to the structural intersectionality of the temporal premodern and the geographical non-West.

There is much to gain in taking up Kōmoto’s challenge to interrogate the conceptual and material commensurability of tsugigami and papier collé. In comparing the two species of collage, the most readily perceptible contrast concerns facture. Grammar makes this apparent: with cubist collage, elements are inserted into or onto a preexistent ground, be it an unctuous canvas or a blank paper page. As Greenberg famously puts it, such foreign elements “invade” the canvas. In critical discourse, a real/virtual divide was grafted onto this binary in order to support the now-orthodox claim that serious collage entails the insertion of charged fragments of reality into an illusory, unreal pictorial ground. Yet as Greenberg noted early, “One wonders why those who write on collage continue to find its origin in nothing more than the cubists’ need for renewed contact with ‘reality.’”⁷⁶ The prime document seems to be the 1948 press release for the Collage exhibition at MoMA, in which the director of the exhibition, Margaret Miller, is quoted as follows: “Collage has been the means through which the artist incorporates reality in the picture without imitating it.”⁷⁷ The famed early commentator on collage Louis Aragon maintained this viewpoint in 1968 when he spoke of “l’intrusion de la réalité dans la représentation peinte” (reality’s intrusion into the painted representation).⁷⁸ The trope took on new significance once it was reframed within the apparatus of structural linguistics, where the collapse of the signifier/signified meant that, in the words of Rosalind Krauss, “reality enters the work of art with the directness of the image striking the mirror.”⁷⁹

According to the reality framework, a collage’s constituent pieces are extracted from antecedent wholes and then introduced into the collage, a term that itself focuses attention on this process of adhesion, with the binding agent hardening as an invisible stratum separating any collage element from the ground it enjoins.⁸⁰ Stratigraphy and binding define this paradigm. Japanese tsugigami, by contrast, does not grow by elemental accretion. Nothing is introduced into “the collage” since there is no backing, no canvas or paper “ground” upon which the collage is built. It is agglutinative and paratactic, with each element imbricated. The resultant “collage” inheres and is thus immanently collage throughout.

Such immanence and imbrication complicate the issues of depth and flatness, two prominent tropes in the discourse on collage in North Atlantic modernity. For instance, a single sheet of tsugigami might have a dozen or so layers, strictly speaking, but the papers collectively constitute a single surface plane (albeit slightly thicker at the seams) with a remarkably shallow depth of field. This feature seems common to both traditions, but such shallowness should not be conflated with the flatness often stressed in modernist Euro-American discourse. Krauss vividly describes cubist collage along these lines, claiming it has “completely ironed out the fabric of illusionism, rendering the object’s existence within the visual field as inexorably flat as an insect crushed between two panes of glass.”⁸¹ While compelling, it is impossible to reconcile Krauss’s evocative metaphor with the sculptural, pliable, and tactile pages of the Anthology since a plane, no matter how shallow, need neither be flat nor rigid. In stark contrast, Iijima argues that a distinguishing feature of the Anthology was the way in which it obtained real three-dimensionality.⁸² Indeed, this contrast gives one pause when one considers that the term for cubism in Japanese, Rittaiha, literally means the “three-dimensional school.”

Flatness was at issue in cubist collage since it impinged on illusion and thereby collapsed painting into pure surface. In Greenberg’s words, “The surface was now explicitly instead of implicitly indicated as a tangible but transparent plane,” between which the viewer’s perception was meant to “shuttle.”⁸³ Here again, touch complicates matters with the Anthology; the beholder continually breaks the illusion of depth whenever the paginated collages are held, pinched, and turned. These progressive inversions problematize Greenberg’s notion of shuttling since with every turn of the page, the deepest element of the verso often becomes the shallowest element of the recto. This is not to say that the familiar topoi of surface tension and depth do not figure in tsugigami—they certainly do—but these perceptual parameters are physically engaged, if not inverted, with each turn of the page.

Pagination reminds us that each volume of the Anthology was a codex—an interactive, tactile, sequential, and inscribed medium. The presence of inscription is as integral to understanding tsugigami as the vulgarity of letter type (simulated or real) is to understanding cubist collage.⁸⁴ In contrast to print, text figures in the Anthology in an intriguing conflation of allograph and autograph: the text of the inscription is indeed canonical, but each inscription still bears its calligrapher’s idiosyncratic trace. It was a brush art, done in ink on paper, proper to its medium, and not real or depicted typography on canvas. In contrast to cubist collage, the writing does not disrupt the underlying tsugigami since the papers were collaged with inscription in mind. Rather, the papers subtend and materially invite their painted, calligraphic lines; and the calligraphic lines, in turn, often suture together the paper panes.⁸⁵

The role of the calligraphers alerts us to two further contrasts. Whereas the scholarship on “Collage 1912” stresses the agency of only two actors (Picasso and Braque), the hands of more than fifty painters and twenty calligraphers have been identified in the Anthology.⁸⁶ This number is in addition to those who procured, dyed, joined, bound, and ornamented the codices, not to mention the scores of artisans involved in the making of the papers themselves. Indeed, it was perhaps only once the tsugigami was set that aristocratic labor came into play. Hence the material manufacture of collage would seem to be socially divorced from the instantiation of the anthologized anthologies it was to contain. Furthermore, the patently aristocratic and courtly milieu of the Anthology challenges the assumption that collage must somehow involve common or humble materials or that collage is essentially characterized by an admixture of high and low culture.⁸⁷ In other words, whereas with cubist collage, the burden of the “commonplace” was borne by printed papers, the analogously printed karakami of the Anthology were decidedly highbrow. As Kōmoto notes, it is the common, printed, “popular” paper that gives cubist collage its purchase on planarity; yet as “Collage 1112” demonstrates, planarity need not necessarily have any connection to the popular or commonplace.⁸⁸ The presence of calligraphy, the most esteemed visual art of twelfth-century Japan, only served to further elevate the status of the work.

The final contrast is more phenomenological than material or formal. It concerns the body’s relationship to the collage. In the context of cubist collage, this issue is often discussed in terms of a table/tableaux divide (namely, horizontal tabletop plans versus vertical hung canvases).⁸⁹ Concerning this point, Yve-Alain Bois avers, “In the collapse of the vertical and the horizontal, what Picasso is inscribing is the very possibility of the transformation of painting into writing—of the empirical and vertical space of vision, controlled by our own erect position on the ground, into the semiological and possibly horizontal space of reading.”⁹⁰ Bois here nuances a geometry initially diagrammed by Benjamin, according to which “the longitudinal cut of painting” is set in opposition to the “transversal cut of certain graphic productions.”⁹¹ In the world of the Anthology, however, the distinction figures differently, if at all: there can be no such collapse since the calligraphic line is inherently both pictorial and inscriptive at once. Complicating matters further is the frequent copresence of inscription and depiction in Japanese visual culture. Whereas handscroll paintings might seem “vertical” (in Benjamin’s terms) in that they are pictorial, they might equally qualify as “textual” in that they are advanced horizontally in the process of viewing.

This is not to say that the distinction is irrelevant. In her study of poetry inscribed on screens, Tomoko Sakomura likewise suggests that the “upright” orientation of the calligraphy “orients the viewer to look at it in a manner fundamentally different from reading calligraphy in a handscroll, book, or album.”⁹² Yet while screens are indeed vertical, their architectural and mutable folds complicate the relationship of the vertical surface to the viewer. Moreover, the wide array of other Japanese pictorial and calligraphic media further prohibits one from drawing a clean distinction between vertical and horizontal modes of uptake. In addition to single-panel standing screens (tsuitate) and sliding doors (fusuma), one must also consider clothing, cascading cloth screens (kichō), exchanged poems, shikishi, hanging scrolls (kakemono), handscrolls (emaki), codices, and much more. Within this mediascape, only painted wall panels (hekiga) approximate the fixed verticality of European tableaux. In this regard, the Anthology pages occupy an intermediary aspectual position between the vertical and horizontal. Unlike a horizontal handscroll or a vertical hanging scroll, the volumes were designed to be held and seen at a forty-five-degree angle, parallel to a downward gaze. Distance is key here as well. In contrast to the modern divide presumed in viewing a work—specifically between a standing museumgoer and a wall-hung canvas (or the torso-length divide between a hunched viewer and an unfurled handscroll)—the uptake of the Anthology page entails an unusually close, handheld proximity to the eye. Despite its modest size, the intimacy of the reading process amplifies its presence in the visual field and—crucial for this analysis—thereby enables particularly close appreciation of the concinnity of the calligraphic lines and the joined-paper seams.

Perhaps, in the end, this final contrast is no contrast at all. The trajectory Bois describes may indicate one way in which the two traditions converged in modernity, with cubist collage arriving at an understanding of the fluidity of reading and seeing that was very much a part of medieval Japanese pictorial culture. Indeed, the aim of this litany of contrasts is not to construct a facile diagram that would allow us to whittle away at the definition of collage until we arrive at the lowest common denominator. Rather, the point is to demonstrate that by admitting tsugigami as an alternative, independent moment in world history in which collage emerged, our understanding of the twentieth-century iteration is enriched. We can realize that the advent of collage in North Atlantic modernity was part of a larger epistemic shift toward fragmentation and juxtaposition (for example, structuralism and montage), and the relationship of that epistemic shift to the history of modernity was more global, multifaceted, and complex than the orthodox history of cubist collage suggests.

To end with a provocation to that effect, I would argue that Japanese tsugigami, in its cobbled immanence, accords more closely with the prevailing semiotic and post-structuralist understanding of collage than does cubism. Much like tsugigami, the process of signification depends on the reassembled and recontextualized linguistic fragment (such as the trace) that lacks ground, is attentive to the (intertextual) seam, and inheres only with other elements. Hence if one brackets social “rupture” and Zeitgeist, one might reconceive of the two varieties of collage as distant species that convergently evolved to suit similar environments, each with a similar but not identical understanding of the intersection of semiosis with the figural dimensions of écriture.

Nationalism and Recursion

Let us turn to the Anthology’s tortuous and nativistic historiography. To begin, note that Japanese collage was “discovered” twice: first, as a found object in the late nineteenth century and, second, as a concept in postwar Japan. This second discovery spurred a meteoric rise to prominence. Only a decade after the Anthology’s first exhibition, the widely popular Japanese arts magazine Geijutsu shinchō (lit. New currents in art) made it the subject of a yearlong series; each month’s issue featured a full-color, two-page spread and a one-page column by a prominent Japanese artist or architect. The twelve succinct but revealing texts suggest that the postwar artistic community saw in the Anthology a categorical challenge to the narrative of Western modernism. The most assertive statement to this effect appeared in the July issue, in which the oil painter (yōga) Matsumoto Tomitarō (1905–1995) described the Anthology as an “avant-garde art work” made eight hundred years avant la lettre.⁹³ It struck him, he went on to note, that there was a “potent East Asian abstract art . . . rooted in the soil of Japan.”⁹⁴

The following year in 1964, Shinchōsha, the publisher of Geijutsu shinchō, released a pseudo-facsimile of the Anthology, a decision that presumes a demand for reproductions of the codices—if not also this medieval/modern rhetoric. This was a “pseudo-facsimile” since it recombined selected extractions from the thirty-nine codices to scale (creating, in effect, a fourth-order anthology of poetry), such that the facsimile served as a simulacrum of a nonexistent original. This pastiche codex came in a box set accompanied by a slender volume featuring an essay by the art historian Kinoshita Tatsuya and an introduction by none other than the progenitor of Anthology scholarship, the venerable Tanaka Shinbi himself. In fact, readers could mail in a voucher in order to receive a small specimen of tsugigami designed to evoke the rich materiality and tactility that the photolithography belied.

The pairing of the father of Anthology scholarship with the young art historian made editorial sense, but the lyricism of Tanaka’s introduction clashed with Kinoshita’s more critical text. Tanaka describes the Anthology as if it were a fossilized specimen unearthed from the distant past, one brimming with self-evident aura: “Crystalized within the Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets is a world of beauty, one whose beauty and preciousness only increase each time it is seen—an immortal beauty.”⁹⁵ Kinoshita, by contrast, eschews such purple prose. Early in his essay he states, “Times and styles change. Nevertheless, the essence of Japanese art is something that is consistent in its flowing,” thereby linking the twentieth and twelfth centuries through an appeal to a national essentialist aesthetic.⁹⁶ He thereafter prophesies an impending international artistic contest (kongo no kokusai konkūru), and a head-on comparison to Western modern art is adumbrated in statements such as “In the Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets, abstract compositions are abundant, and there one can comprehend a purely Japanese abstraction; in relation to modern art movements, it would be profoundly meaningful for us to reflect on the contrasts.”⁹⁷ Eventually Kinoshita specifies the artists he has in mind: Matisse, Picasso, and Braque—the triumvirate whose works had been on display in Japan only a decade earlier. Whereas those artists certainly exercised techniques that bear resemblance to the Anthology, he boldly contends, “With the joined papers of the Anthology, in terms of the effect of the technique—and especially in terms of its sophistication—the two are not even in the same league.”⁹⁸ Both Kinoshita’s truculence and his apparent anxiety concerning the future of Japanese art (or “Japaneseness” in art) now seem dated. What remains incisive, however, is his correct recognition that the artistic practice that critics and art historians in Europe and America credited as having revolutionized North Atlantic modern art was the very same artistic practice that defined the Anthology, the work he saw as “ultimately vital, ultimately beautiful,” and, above all, ultimately Japanese.

The paramount “Japaneseness” of the Anthology has to do with the historiographical tendency to use the material culture of the Heian period as a touchstone against which to measure degrees of literary, artistic, or cultural nativeness. According to this conventional historiography, following the fall of the Tang dynasty, the archipelago had to make do with the modicum of culture it had received from the Asian continent; that culture then transformed into a more recognizably “Japanese” form, which reached its idiosyncratic apogee in the twelfth century.⁹⁹ This outdated formulation is further complicated by a mapping of the periodization of Western art history onto Japanese art such that this period becomes “classical” in relation to a purported “renaissance” of these styles in the early modern period.¹⁰⁰ This complex of fallacies—aptly termed “Heianism”—is as pervasive as it is flawed. In the words of John Rosenfield, the Anthology represents, primus inter pares, one of “Heianism’s most cherished visual resources.”¹⁰¹

Regardless of language, scholarship on these codices is indeed often rife with such nativist and ultimately tautological rhetoric. In the first publication in English on the Anthology, Isamu and Chieko Tanaka made the claim that the Anthology “should be regarded as one of the most Japanese products of the Heian era.”¹⁰² Another early commentator in English, Shinobu Ōsawa, contended that “the best of the culture, the highest of the civilization of the Heian period, the boundless liberty of the spirit of the people in the pursuit of beauty, all have been focused in these volumes and fill our hearts with admiration.”¹⁰³ Even a scholar as meticulous as Iijima wrote that the Anthology represents the culmination of centuries of Heian, courtly, and “Japanese” taste and that it was “the product of a time that saw the sharp rise of an unmistakably Japanese sensibility.”¹⁰⁴ In viewing the codices, Iijima averred, one tasted the very marrow of Heian sensibility.¹⁰⁵ Likewise, according to the most ubiquitous and provocative metaphor used to describe these codices in Japanese scholarship, they do not merely represent classical Japan but are instead “crystallizations” of the native aesthetic Zeitgeist.¹⁰⁶ The metaphor speaks volumes: unchanging, precious, pellucid, and with nearly universal visual appeal. Such Heianistic arguments are further enmeshed within the emic Japanese art-historical structure known as the Wa-Kan paradigm, discussed in chapter 1. In fact, one of the paradigm’s foundational documents, the Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing (Wa-Kan rōeishū), was anthologized by none other than Fujiwara no Kintō, the courtier-scholar who compiled the text of the Anthology. In the twentieth century, however, the Wa (Japan) stood in a very different relationship to the would-be Kan (China); the Anthology reemerged on the heels of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), and Iijima and Kyūsōojin’s authoritative monograph appeared only months before the largest military operation of the Pacific War, the devastating Ichigō Offensive, which mobilized approximately five hundred thousand Japanese troops.¹⁰⁷ History had eclipsed historiography, rendering the Wa-Kan paradigm obsolete. This is not to mention, of course, that some of the karakami paper used in the Anthology had been imported from Song-dynasty China (and the domestic papers were made in emulation of such foreign exemplars).¹⁰⁸ In sum, from both a historicist and a materialist viewpoint, the paramount “Japaneseness” of this artifact is problematic.

The final aspect of the “Collage 1112” and “Collage 1912” interface deserving of scrutiny is its object specificity, which relies on the artificial selection of two highly specific fields of pictorial production situated at opposing ends of the Eurasian landmass. As is well known, collage in North Atlantic material culture is not limited to papier collé; it readily ramifies into a rich field of practices, such as assemblage, montage, décollage, and affichisme, among others. Whereas this array may seem to support the exclusive modernity of cubist collage, just the opposite is the case, for the paper-joining of the Anthology represents but one of several such techniques practiced in premodern Japan. In the premodern archive, one finds a variety of collage-like processes: pace Greenberg, there were “pasted pictures” (haritsuke-ga), paintings on paper or silk that were then pasted into architectural supports (like wall panels); “applied pictures” (oshi-e), a term that dates to at least the mid-sixteenth century and refers to pictures with fragments of painted textiles inserted into them; or earliest of all, the use of bird feathers to “write” the inscription on a folding screen stored in the eighth-century Shōsōin treasury.¹⁰⁹

Yet of all such candidates, the closest analogues to Euro-American collage are doubtless shikishi, ornamental sheets of paper expressly designed in anticipation of poetic inscription (see fig. 16). As with papier collé and in contradistinction to the joined papers of the Anthology, these inscribed paper shikishi were often affixed to (or, in Greenberg’s terms, “invading”) a painted pictorial surface.¹¹⁰ Indeed, in an elegant recursion, many of the Ise-shū poems were composed expressly for inscription within shikishi-shaped spaces on landscape screens, if not inscribed upon shikishi that would then be affixed to the screen.¹¹¹ In other words, even the anthologized texts inscribed in the Anthology manuscript might themselves have been extracted from preexistent architectural collages.

Moreover, unlike tsugigami, the practice of pasting shikishi persisted throughout the previous millennium. As Sakomura demonstrates, the process had become so sophisticated by the sixteenth century that the parameters of shikishi arrangement on a painted surface were codified within certain calligraphic lineages.¹¹² By the seventeenth century, pasted-paper screens constituted a dazzling arena of pictorial production, one deeply engaged with issues of calligraphic reembodiment, surface/depth shuttling, flatness, and poetic performance. In this regard, note a set of folding screens bearing thirty-six shikishi inscribed by Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–1637) with poems from the thirteenth-century imperial poetry anthology New Collected Poems, Ancient and Modern (Shinkokinshū) (fig. 85). One could not imagine a more direct engagement with the purportedly modern trope of rupturing pictorial illusion and depth through surface contact. The shikishi sit in an intermediary depth: in and not on the surface, in front of the blinds but beneath the blinds’ impasto textile borders. In fact, shikishi represent such a close analogue to cubist papier collé that it is curious that the Anthology, of all Japanese artifacts, should have been freighted with the burden of evincing the premodernity of “collage” as a core feature of Japanese pictoriality.

Fig. 85 Left screen of two folding screens mounted with poems from the anthology New Collected Poems, Ancient and Modern (Shinkokinshū), inscribed by Hon’ami Kōetsu, ca. 1624–37. Two six-panel screens, ink, color, and gold on paper, each screen: 168 × 376 cm. National Museum of Asian Art, gift of Charles Lang Freer, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Prolepsis, Atavism, and Globalism

Mere months before Aragon’s La peinture au défi (1930), Eisenstein had published an essay in which he characterized montage as the “basic nerve” of Japanese culture.¹¹³ Although he had attained only a third-grade level of literacy in Japanese—about three hundred characters¹¹⁴—it was from his heuristic misunderstanding of the Japanese logographs as ideographs—collages of pictographic units—that he was able to identify the structural presence of montage in the “Japanese” script.¹¹⁵ Quickly he leaped from script to poetry, poetry to pictures, and pictures to theater, eventually encompassing all “the most varied branches of Japanese culture.”¹¹⁶

To justify this extrapolation, he availed himself of a compelling, if now bafflingly obscure, diagram found in a 1910 Japanese drawing primer designed for sixth-grade boys by the Ministry of Education (fig. 86).¹¹⁷ The diagram shows the silhouette of a tree branch overlaid with six smaller frames, the lesson being how best to select pleasing, cropped compositions from a larger whole. If one looks to the rest of the primer, one finds scant textual annotation. Other pictorial examples reproduced in its seventeen pages actually violate the compositional principle illustrated in the diagram Eisenstein cited. Be that as it may, Eisenstein saw in this diagram evidence of the “ax of the lens” at work, such that he was confident in claiming that the nondiscursive process of vision itself—at least through Japanese eyes—was “cinematographic.”¹¹⁸

Fig. 86 Jinjō shōgaku shintei gajō dai rokunen danseiyō (Standard elementary sketchbook, newly prescribed, for sixth-grade boys) (Tokyo: Monbushō, 1910), diagram 12 (digitally flattened and color-corrected). Printed codex, 16 × 24 cm. Yokohama City Library. Photo: author.

Cinema aside, Eisenstein’s script-based ethnography of Japan was far from idiosyncratic. Homay King well demonstrates how the fantastical myth of the recombinant East Asian “hieroglyph” was a prominent trope of alterity in the work of such celebrated twentieth-century intellectuals as Derrida, Barthes, Deleuze, and Guattari.¹¹⁹ Moreover, lest one attempt to dismiss this as a pet trope of postwar French critical theory, one must bear in mind that the author of the most influential text on the ideographic myth was none other than the doyen of Anglophone Japanese art history, the American Fenollosa, albeit with some heavy-handed editing by Ezra Pound (1885–1972).¹²⁰ Accordingly, it seems apparent that belief in a collage-like paradigm of recombination was one of the principal structuring frames on both sides of the Atlantic for the modern apperception (and misperception) of Japanese writing, material culture, and visuality.

Given the early articulation of the ethnographic and Orientalist idea that the Japanese have a special relationship with collage and assemblage, it seems odd that it was only after the Pacific War that collage’s cubist advent was first contested. It perhaps has to do with a shift in the two primary explanatory models then used by Euro-American scholars to account for cross-cultural, artistic, and formal homologies: atavism and prolepsis. For example, Eisenstein had identified montage in Japan without reference to (and likely without knowledge of) artifacts such as shikishi—much less, the Anthology. Yet by his logic, to call the Anthology “collage” would be to cast cubist collage as a return to a prelapsarian state of picture making, with cubist collage delimiting the moment when twentieth-century North Atlantic painting realized it had painted itself into a corner.¹²¹ Wescher, by contrast, recognized collage japonaise in the Anthology based on her deduction of a material and processual homology; these codices were thus isolated flashes of modernism avant la lettre, fossilized curiosities whose familiarity is charming but unequivocally coincidental (and insignificant, in every sense of the word). Most subsequent commentators followed suit, preferring prolepsis to atavism. But as I have shown, the chronological bracketing simply does not hold. Given the modern date of its reemergence, one must embrace anachronism or risk ahistoricism.

The postwar appearance of the Anthology in Euro-American collage discourse was contemporaneous with the publication of a landmark essay by Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996), arguably postwar Japan’s most influential painter, wherein he proposed a return to the exuberant abstraction one finds in certain excavated ceramics of the Jōmon era (ca. 10,500–300 bce).¹²² As Jonathan Reynolds argues, this current in Okamoto’s thought was partly motivated by a desire to turn away from the rather restrained, martial (samurai), and courtly (imperial) image of Japan that had been propagated and harnessed during the war.¹²³ Reynolds traces the origins of the Jōmon/modern recursion to as early as 1931, yet it was an exhibition of Jōmon art in 1951 that inspired Okamoto’s famous essay of the following year.¹²⁴ Curious though it may seem, the desire to conceive contemporary Japanese artistic currents according to prehistoric and archaeological terms has enjoyed (and indeed continues to enjoy) popular currency.¹²⁵ Unlike Okamoto’s prehistoric examples, however, the Anthology is anchored in a well-documented moment, one with clear art-historical ties to more than a millennium of Japanese art history thereafter.

In the end, it is neither materiality nor praxis but language that most meaningfully unites the two collage traditions. For instance, note that the prevailing interpretive framework for cubist collage is one that takes semiosis (more specifically, linguistic semiosis) as a structurally determining factor.¹²⁶ By that logic, is it not also possible to argue that Japanese collage was likewise motivated by its place within a cultural context that was highly aware of the recombinant fragmentariness and figurality of inscription?¹²⁷ If the logic holds, the inquiry into the historical circumstances that precipitated collage, regardless of cultural or historical context, would seem to be settled. In other words, granted that the advent of cubist collage was a highly overdetermined event, papier collé nevertheless shares with tsugigami its origin in a historical moment that was unusually aware of the recursive aesthetics of recombination, reuse, poetic appropriation, and the figural sensitivity of inscription.

To approach the issue from another angle—one that circumvents the issue of pasted paper altogether—if the telos of representational culture indeed leads to cinema (as Eisenstein suggests) and not mimetic pictorialism, then the history of collage should be reconfigured in material terms less beholden to the parameters of Euro-American painting.¹²⁸ Hence the reductive and Eurocentric frameworks of atavism and prolepsis give way to the possibility of a new history, one that would cast collage as a universal or, at least, a universally attainable horizon of artifactual production. One might protest, however, that if modern collage is not proper to North Atlantic modernity, then any other extra-European example might have worked just as well for this argument. Numerous other artifactual traditions might cite similar phenomena. In Chinese art history, one might contrast cubist collage with the slightly antecedent and contemporaneous genre of bapo (eight brokens), images that delight in creating trompe l’oeil illusions of collaged documents and images. Even within Europe, there are instances of “collage” deep in the archive.¹²⁹ Yet as I argue in the opening chapters of this book, Japanese art is privileged (or perhaps burdened) in the history of modernism in that it served as the most diametric site of alterity; it was already recognized in Euro-America as a place of non-Western modernism by 1912, making it an especially apt point of comparison. Regardless, no matter how one approaches the issue, the prevailing history of collage, for all of its perspicacity, is increasingly inadequate to the global archive. Numerous other histories of collage remain to be written. And each will strengthen the argument that “collage”—serious collage—arrived in modernity through various means, in multiple places, at multiple times, and within diverse cultures.

Montage as Method

Since its recovery, the Anthology has had the unusual burden of being both modern and antique at once, with a history just as proper to the twentieth century as to the twelfth. Yet while cubist collage continues to be framed historically as the greatest christening of a “new vision” since Leon Battista Alberti, the Anthology remains excluded due to its premodern and extra-European origins.¹³⁰ This is at odds with one of the fundamental premises of early modern European art, namely that fossilized artifacts and cultural forms, once unearthed, readily reinsert themselves within the replicatory chains of a given visual culture. Likewise, once the Anthology was recovered in 1896, its ability to invite replication and analogy meant that any modern collage-like practice (in Japan or beyond) had an alternative historical reference point at its disposal. In that regard, one might characterize the Anthology as a rival “prime object” (to evoke George Kubler’s framework) whose discovery upset the historical “shape” of modern collage.¹³¹

According to Kubler’s system, the two species of collage would not have to belong to the same series for both to qualify as solutions to the same problem. Solutions are often plural, yet “only those solutions related to one another by the bonds of tradition and influences are linked into a sequence.”¹³² When read in this manner, Kubler perhaps provides an antidote to the specter of pseudomorphosis since even in the absence of tradition and influence, two artifacts can qualify as dual prime solutions to the same core problem.

Whether one subscribes to Kubler’s framework or not, it remains certain that modern pasted-paper collage emerged along at least two parallel epistemic trajectories—one antiquarian, the other avant-garde—that collided in the postwar era. This collision precipitated a fascinating historiographical turn: the most prominent non-Western modernity was able to take advantage of certain homological and processual similarities in a shared, modern visual canon in order to graft its history onto that of North Atlantic modern art such that its own visual culture might decenter and destabilize the dominant narrative. In this regard, the Anthology served to structure a central relay between premodern and modern Japanese art since it made Japanese art modern not through practice but through the historiography of a found object.

Given that collage, appropriation, and recombination are now held to be the definitive characteristics of both postmodern criticism and contemporary artistic practice, a fuller accounting of their global origins and epistemological horizons would seem to be a pressing issue for art history. My point here is not that the collages of Braque and Picasso were not innovative. In their local context, they marked a significant break in pictorial practice. Moreover, had it not been for the sustained and rigorous scholarly attention directed at cubist collage, the larger anthropological and theoretical parameters would have remained unclear.¹³³ Nevertheless, the story of cubist innovation is vulnerable to claims of historiographical cryptomnesia on several fronts. Thus if collage truly is, as Max Ernst averred, nothing more than “two distant realities [brought] together on an apparently antipathetic plane,” then perhaps its history will need to resemble its object.¹³⁴

Fig. 87 “Japanese House in the Museum Garden. Taken from roof of Fifty-Fourth Street, looking S.E. showing crane of construction job at fifth avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street. 4–27–56.” Publicity photograph released in connection with the exhibition Japanese Exhibition House, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, June 16, 1954–October 21, 1954, and April 26, 1955–October 15, 1955. Photographic Archive, The Museum of Modern Art Archives. Photographer: Soichi Sunami. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York.

Fig. 88 “Shin-ichi-Yuize who sang and played the Koto, at the Junior Council Evening Program, May 26, 1955, in connection with Japanese House in the Museum Garden.” Publicity photograph released in connection with the exhibition Japanese Exhibition House, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, June 16, 1954–October 21, 1954, and April 26, 1955–October 15, 1955. Photographic Archive, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photograph by Barry Kramer. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York.

Interlude

Vienna Redux

In summer 1954, just two years following the end of the Allied Occupation of Japan, New York’s MoMA constructed a “Japanese Exhibition House” in its sculpture garden as part of its “House in the Garden” series (fig. 87). The “traditional Japanese building” had been selected as a subject, MoMA explained, “because classic Japanese architectural forms have long been regarded by many Western architects as being of greater relevance to contemporary problems than much of the Western tradition itself.”¹ Just as in Vienna half a century before, “traditional” Japanese art was cast as the way forward for North Atlantic modernity.

The so-called Japan House was, in the words of a press release announcing the exhibition’s second extension, “one of the most popular exhibitions ever held at the Museum of Modern Art.”² It would stay in place for two full summer seasons. Thus when patrons gathered in the sculpture garden to celebrate MoMA’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the roof of the Japan House was clearly in view; and when the blockbuster The Family of Man show was on display inside, nonmodern Japan was on display in the garden. MoMA did, however, hold two exhibitions of contemporary Japanese art during the exhibition. Predictably, they featured abstract calligraphy (the analogue to abstract expressionism) and contemporary prints (the medium most tied to Japan’s mythical role in North Atlantic modernity).

Yoshimura Junzō’s archaicized building was, in reality, a brilliantly calculated pastiche. Surrounded by a garden (a garden within a garden), it featured stones shipped all the way from Nagoya, as the museum advertised.³ To adorn its interior, the contemporary artist Higashiyama Kaii, known for his vibrant Nihonga palette, produced a series of muted monochromatic ink paintings. The anachrony even extended to programming. A publicity photograph shows the composer and koto player Yuize Shin’ichi (1923–2015) standing in the garden with all traces of modernity (save his hairstyle) expunged in favor of an immersive illusion of timelessness (fig. 88). In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum screened Kinugasa Teinosuke’s Gate of Hell (Jigokumon), the winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival and the first Japanese film shot in Eastmancolor. Set in Kyoto during the Heiji Rebellion of 1160, it vividly portrayed the colorful and exotic imagescape of “classical” Japan for Euro-American eyes. In fact, the film opens with reference to the famed twelfth-century handscroll of the Heiji Rebellion (Heiji monogatari emaki), with Kinugasa skillfully transitioning from painting to live-action sequence. The film’s protagonist was none other than Mongaku, the man to whose Vows GoShirakawa had impressed his crimson palms (see fig. 12).

If this all seems rather incongruous, then that should not be a surprise by this point. Prefiguring MoMA’s “Japan House” was a long series of immersive simulacra of Japan, built by Japan, for foreign consumption. It was a very modern tradition, one that arguably began with the 1867 Paris Exposition.⁴ Granted, 1954 was not 1867, and MoMA was far from a world’s fair, yet the logic remained unchanged. As with the Secession Building in Vienna, it is the context that is most revealing. Even following “modernization,” two world wars, and a seven-year occupation, nonmodern Japanese art nevertheless remained an essential element within the modern global contemporary. Well into the twenty-first century, the situation is arguably little changed.

Conclusion

In 1964, on the occasion of his landmark exhibition The Photographer’s Eye, John Szarkowski (1925–2007) presented a stunning historical claim. Modern photographers, he argued, see their world much like premodern East Asian viewers saw pictorial handscrolls as they were “unrolled from hand to hand, exhibiting an infinite number of croppings—of compositions—as the frame moved onwards.”¹ Szarkowski cites no source, but considering Eisenstein’s tight coupling of montage with Japan, it was likely he had Eisenstein in mind. Szarkowski’s exhibition title seemed to echo the American photographer Edward Weston (1886–1958), who a generation earlier had called for photographers to develop “camera-vision,” to learn to “see photographically.”² Yet Szarkowski was arguing for something far more complex: a sequential understanding of images, a type of vision situated somewhere between viewing a film and an East Asian scroll painting. By his logic, to see montage in twelfth-century Japan would be to bring the concept full circle. Montage is thus an aspect of visuality and praxis, independent of its temporal or geographical modernity. In that regard, Szarkowski foreshadowed the approach of my present study, which has likewise sought to underscore the prefigurations, parallels, and isometries that might challenge the barriers that keep one from bringing nonmodern, non-Western materials to bear on the history of modern and contemporary art and theory.

Then again, one might protest that the two historical moments are not as isolated as they seem. As chapter 2 demonstrated, the modern interface with Japanese art was so pervasive that many became inured to Japanese visuality without ever knowing it.³ Anticipating this critique, Szarkowski threads the needle. Photography, he argues, “prepared the ground for an appreciation of the Japanese print.”⁴ Hence it was mere historical felicitousness that North Atlantic moderns had developed photography in time to train their vision such that it might interface with Japanese prints. Moreover, “the compositional attitudes of these prints,” in turn, “owed much to habits of seeing which stemmed from the scroll tradition.”⁵ Thus Szarkowski posits the parallel emergence of two roughly identical visualities that meet in the nineteenth century, when “common habits of seeing” allowed for their tight interface. By his logic, some aspects of modern visuality existed in Japan for a millennium before modernity (and far earlier in China).

Modernity without modernity, in both senses of the phrase. The aporia, of course, is illusory and only problematic if one holds to a strictly Eurocentric and teleological understanding of the history of visuality. Once one abandons the Zeitgeist and embraces the multiple, heterochronic, and dissonant temporal investments of various strata of cultural production, suddenly it is perfectly fine that twelfth-century Japanese scrolls and codices might exhibit montage since montage is not a symptom of a specifically Western modernity. To borrow the language of biology, the Battleship Potemkin or Picasso’s collages might be thought of as the type specimens or the holotypes, the singular canonical artifacts by which the “species” of art was identified in modern critical discourse, but by no means does that make them the most indicative, exemplary, or earliest examples.⁶

In the end, it is indeed something resembling montage that emerges as the primary metaphor linking the foregoing chapters. Despite its present circumscription within the field of film studies, the concept enjoys a far wider critical purchase. In its initial nineteenth-century sense, it evoked overlaid images, only later giving way to its more familiar twentieth-century sense of assemblage and sequence.⁷ Eisenstein was wrong to treat montage as a blanket explanation for all of Japanese culture, yet the concept does point to a constellation of processes (overlay, superimposition, stratigraphy, metabolic fragmentation, concatenation, and contrastive assemblage) that are indeed prominent in Japanese art history.⁸

Of course, one does not want to project modern categories onto earlier works. This would be a clear historical error. But that protest is sometimes lodged reflexively without realizing that many seemingly uncritical categories (such as text, image, art, painting, and even Japan itself) are no less anachronistic.⁹ Whereas theory and contextualism are sometimes described as if they were opposing methodological approaches, I have attempted to demonstrate that theory is actually necessary for contextualism. It takes rigorous scrutiny of the basic premises of one’s conceptual and methodological lenses before one can hope to make sense of a remote archival context. To see modernity in premodern works is an error; yet that is very different from recognizing moments in the human archive when a person of the distant past had a similar emotion, used a similar artistic strategy, or saw something in a manner that is indeed consonant with the present viewer. In these moments, one is at a historical interface, a true encounter, where two distinct temporal situations align to form what Fabian called “intersubjective time,” a moment when one is able to acknowledge the commonality and common humanity of the distant other.¹⁰ Hence the grave danger of the modern/premodern framework and the modernization paradigm is that they risk attenuating the subjectivity and bracketing the presence of all but the most culturally and temporally proximate and similar people. The solution, however, is not to let everything be seen with present eyes, to translate all the past into the language of the present. Rather, one endeavors to understand the vast diversity of historical visualities in order to escape the intrinsic parochialism of any given present. In fact, as noted in the introduction, the absurdity of a barrier between the premodern and modern was noted as early as 1903, when Riegl stressed how any contemporary sensibility will inevitably find consonance with objects earlier in the archive; my assertion here, however, is that this same logic extends to artifacts from other cultures.

In a previous incarnation, the task of this book was simply to examine the manuscript culture of twelfth-century Japan. But that task was soon revealed to be impossible since a series of biases and misprisions stood as barriers to understanding the place of these objects in the history of art. Thus the first chapter set out to tell a longer and more complex narrative about the place of Japanese artifacts in art history. I suggest one abandon the modernization paradigm and rigorously resist the reification of the West. Modernity is neither singular nor centrifugal. For as soon as one conjures “Western modernity” as a meaningful entity, the very possibility of escaping the many antinomies of the West/rest, premodern/modern binaries is foreclosed: there is no “art” outside the European discursive construct, yet we study it as art nevertheless; art should be placed in its context, yet the present is always the dominant context for historical works; history is not linear, yet scholars embrace the rhetoric of Euro-American modern artists’ innovations, avant-gardes, and creativity. These contradictions can no longer be ignored.

In the specific context of Japanese art in the narrative of modernity, I argue it is essential to abandon the Francocentric framework of Japonisme in favor of a larger recognition of the geographical and temporal extensiveness of interface with Japanese art. At a temporal level, moreover, I caution against the error of conflating contemporarily made art with the field of contemporary art since past artifacts have played a conspicuous role in defining contemporary Japanese art from the nineteenth century to the present. In fact, nonmodern Japanese artifacts simply are contemporary art in some instances. The emergence of Japanese art history as a modern discursive field is marked intensely with such anachrony and timelessness, features that make the field of Japanese art history a conspicuous forerunner to the temporal complexities only recently acknowledged by historians.

In an effort to escape the modern/premodern binary, I advocate for interface as a key term. From its origins in the nineteenth century, it has emerged in the twenty-first as a central metaphor for characterizing the way in which graphical information is conceived and consumed. My desire to embrace this term was motivated by both the prevalence of faciality in the language of the twelfth century as well as the intersubjectivity embedded in the term. It serves to replace—often with far more nuance—the prevailing concepts of influence, encounter, translation, and hybridity with a metaphor that foregrounds interactivity, illegibility, incomprehensibility, materiality, misunderstanding, and technology. Texts are objects, but objects are not texts. I thus advocate for art historians to pursue an interface theory of modernity that would foreground the meeting of visualities, the materiality of semiosis, the circulation of artifacts, and the alterity of artifactual encounter. As I use the term, interface is both the goal and the subject of decolonial art history.

The term interface likewise has the advantage of bringing historical works into a present framework of beholding, a move that is necessary in order to underscore the contemporary relevance of objects with historical depth. In fact, this study’s foregrounding of manuscripts finds resonance in the field of media studies, which early noted the relevance of medieval manuscripts to the present mediascape. It has been some thirty years since Jay David Bolter observed how “medieval manuscripts presented a complex space of words, pictures, illustration, and ornamentation—the most complex prior to the electronic medium.”¹¹ The observation was prescient. The twenty-first century has seen the proliferation of graphical interfaces where text and image are not discrete, where one can write in or as the medium, and where “text” is no longer confused with writing.¹² As such, the linking of the present mediascape to the premodern allows scholars to shed the lingering distortions of the early modern photographic and printed imagescape that so long defined how art history was mediated and conceived. The language of the interface thus serves to return historical context (such as faciality) as well as to make these historical objects more perceptible to present eyes. Moreover, the encounter serves to change the way we see not only the past but the present mediascape, as well, thereby expanding the critical potential for a more global and decolonized methodology.

Doubtless, the most enigmatic artifacts in this study were the eerily faceless Eyeless Sutras. Rather than treat these as unfinished illustrated handscroll sketches, I focus on their ritual value instead of their display value. Accordingly, it seems possible that at least the Golden Light Sutra was made for the occasion of the emperor’s memorial Shūki-Misaie ceremony in spring 1193. At a hermeneutic level, the Eyeless provided occasion to break with modern binaries and biases in favor of a stratigraphic strategy of reading, where one finds local “third texts” in the interface of the inscriptive and depictive lines. I argue for the stratigraphy of the image, the depths of vision, and the intent of overlay. One is thus able to read in decontextualized, atomized, allegorical, transpositional, and affective ways that are quite different from modern habits of thinking of text and image as distinct conceptual and spatial entities. Such overlay and assemblage, however, should not be romanticized, since they were part and parcel of the period understanding of an elegantly ornamented manuscript interface. There is no secular image over which to inscribe the sacred, since this binary, too, is illusory; GoShirakawa may have been a tonsured dharma emperor, yet his actions were very much worldly. Moreover, the apparent disarray, noise, disjuncture, dissonance, and tension were not errors but aesthetic decisions, both at the syntactic level (the sequence of the montage) and at the stratigraphic level. In that regard, the Eyeless may be both the most distant and the most familiar of the objects in this study, since it presents a ritual and cultural context quite removed from the twenty-first century while embracing montage and overlay to a fantastical degree.

The Eyeless scrolls were created in a moment when faciality itself was a prominent issue in representational culture, which suggests that the facelessness here is intentional if not instrumental. Facelessness and monochromy, moreover, were tightly linked at a lexical level with color also signifying countenance, materiality, and eros—a semantic field that makes it possible to see this scroll as a negation of passion, identity, and even material existence itself. The Eyeless would thus be a tour de force rather than a recycled, unfinished hodgepodge. Much remains unknown, but I argue that the prevailing interpretation of these objects ought to be abandoned. Not only is the connection to GoShirakawa insufficiently substantiated, but modern biases and scholarly habits have long prevented scholars from recognizing these scrolls for what they are: complete, ritually efficacious and hermeneutically complex ornamented sutras.

The next stage in my analysis was to move out from the interface of the page to consider questions of aesthetics and visuality. The goal was to attempt to reconstruct, in as emic a way as possible, what one might see in the beguiling pictures of the manuscript known as The Significance of the Character “A.” The first step was to nuance the writings of Kūkai such that they might be understood in aesthetic rather than exclusively textual terms. The goal thereafter was to move from a text-based reading of his work to one that was manuscript-based, highlighting the cardinal difference between the brushed, stratigraphic, figural, and incarnate notions of script in Kūkai’s time versus the modular, printed, and code-based understanding of modern post-structuralist “texts.” Reframed in this way, it was possible to argue that the irresolution one finds in the Significance pictures might be understood as a pictorial demonstration of Kūkai’s aesthetic framework. It is an anti-aesthetics: a way of representing the process of vision in a way that defeats its significance.

The Significance scroll’s two arresting paintings—with writing at the core of their bodies—begs the question of the physiological dimensions of Heian visuality: not only a “way of seeing” but also the visceral and material dimensions of that process. The epistemology of vision and characterization of its physiology in this period were vastly different from the Albertian pyramid that continues to dominate the vernacular understanding of sight. By scrutinizing the materiality of several objects deposited within contemporaneous statues alongside early atlases of the body and ritual texts on the nature of envisioning, I reconstructed a notion of vision that was as thoracic as ocular. The prosthetic feretory hence provided the key case study since it seems to be a ritual tool designed to manifest (rather than represent) both bodily interiority and the capacity for cognition. This chapter thus provided foray into the current debates of visual anthropology, image theory, and materiality since the feretory seems to have been engineered to collapse any distinction between the embodied image and the material artifact. As such, it operates much like the Ajikan ritual itself, yet instead of negating the mind’s linguistic meaning-making, it negates the process of visuality. Hence the chapter demonstrates the critical value of nonmodern and non-Western objects to counter seemingly universal premises concerning the nature of historical vision. Beyond the image and the eye, one needs the viscera of vision, the full bodily engagement of the image.

The Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets brings the argument of this book full circle. These collaged codices represent a clear and well-documented example of a culturally and chronologically distant work that evinces a patently modern approach to image making. The surprising discovery in this case was that the twelfth-century collage actually accords more closely with the semiotic theories that prevail in the criticism of twentieth-century European collage than do cubist exemplars. Rather than having objects of reality inserted into a canvas ground, the Heian codices comprised pasted papers that eschewed a ground altogether in favor of pure tessellation and imbrication. Here again, the point was that collage need not be inherently modern, nor need its place in contemporary theory be so tightly tied to its European variant. The question then becomes: what are the common conditions for collage’s emergence? Kyoto in 1112 and France in 1912 were historical contexts with shared aesthetic investments in fragmentation, paper, print culture, circulation, rupture, semiotics, écriture, and stratigraphy. Anachrony in this regard acts as a counterproof, an opportunity for one to test the limits of contextual causation.

Despite the jargonish sound of anachrony and heterochrony, these concepts were likely more familiar in medieval Japan than one might imagine. Even the earliest imperial waka anthology, the Kokinshū, had anachrony built into its very title: Collected Poems, Ancient and Modern. If I am permitted one final example, consider the Anachronic Poetry Contest (Jidai fudō uta-awase), a poetic anthology attributed to Emperor GoToba (1180–1239, r. 1183–98), which assembled the best poets of the past and present, divided them into teams, and had them face off in a virtual competition. Such poetic contests were held throughout much of the Heian period, but the idea of bringing the dead into the picture—of having various periods’ best poets present for rivalry and critique—was novel. A contemporaneous scroll brought this conceit to life, with vivid likeness portraits virtually facing one another despite centuries’ remove, complete with inscriptions of their poems on our side of the interface above (fig. 89).

Fig. 89 Tame’ie recension of the Anachronic Poetry Contest (Jidai fudō uta-awase emaki), early fourteenth century. (left) Fujiwara Ietaka (1158–1237); (right) Ono no Komachi (ninth century). Handscroll with ink on paper, 28.3 × approx. 50 cm. Tokyo National Museum. Image: TNM Image Archives.

There remains one final thesis around which this book has danced but never quite put forward. Needless to say, Japanese art has certainly played a larger role in the creation of present visuality than is often realized: it was crucial in challenging the racist policing of modern subjectivity, and it was, in part, via Japanese art history that Europe relinquished its exclusive purchase on the concept and telos of art. Yet in the twenty-first century, as art historians interrogate the nature of the image, recognize various visualities, abandon teleological narratives, and grapple with the complex chronologies that artifacts bring, one cannot help but note that these tendencies all accord with long-standing tropes of Japanese art history. That is not to say, of course, that Japanese art history caused these developments, only that the way in which Japanese art objects navigated the past two centuries certainly prefigures many contemporary theoretical concerns. Thus, the more interesting, if unanswered, final question is not what role did Japan play in creating global modernity, but how might Japanese art history provide a model for the future of the discipline?

In the end, my greatest hope for this book is that it will dissolve binaries and build bridges: that those who never considered the art of Japan relevant to the disciplinary “main line” might now better understand its history; that those researching the present mediascape might now see the value in nonmodern and non-Western interfaces; and most of all, that those who feel that they must stay within the policed boundaries of a modern/premodern divide might eschew this division to face the immanent complexity of artifactual history.

Appendix A

Location and Provenance of the Eyeless Sutras

Appendix B

Translations

“The Definition of the Character A” (Ajigi 阿字義)

[Lines 1–9]

The character A is the principle—nondual and indivisible, fundamental and immaculate—of the Buddhas and all sentient beings, here in the ten spatial directions, and in the three temporal dimensions [past, present and future].

此阿字は・是十方三世の・諸佛と・一切衆生との・無二無別の・本性清淨の・理なり・

That is to say, it is the essential form of the awakened mind; that is to say, it is the dharma-body of the Tathāgata.

是則・菩提心の・躰なり・是則・法身如来なり・

This character A, being the formal essence of total phenomenal quiescence, is the originally unborn and undying (J. honpushōfumetsu).

この阿字は・一切法の・寂静の・躰にして・本不生不滅なり・

This character A here is the body of the Dharma Realm of Dainichi Nyorai of the Womb-world.

この阿字は・これ・胎蔵界の・大日如来の・法界の・身也¹

“The Efficacy of the Character A” (Aji no kunō 阿字功能)

[Lines 11–14:]

When one is to contemplate this character for the first time, if the mind is not yet skilled (lit. mature), begin with a picture: draw a lotus flower, and inside of a moon disk, draw the character A; then one should contemplate it.

もし・はしめて・この字を・観せむときに・心いまた・純熟せすは・まつゑに・蓮花を・かき・月輪の・中に・阿字を・かきて・観すへし

[Lines 15–20:]

When one becomes adept at such contemplation, the light of this character will scatter out from within the chest, into the four directions, and permeate all Buddha-fields in the ten directions. From head to foot, this light will encircle and envelop the body of the practitioner.

若人・此観を・純熟せむ・ときには・この字の・ひかり・むねの・なかより・四方に・散して・あまねく・十方の・一切佛刹に・遍せむ・このひかりは・いたゝきより・あしに・いたりて・行者の・身を・めくり・めくらむ

[Lines 21–31:]

When one studies this A character lucidly, all the numerous impurities of the six sensory organs are rendered immaculate. With the six sensory organs purified and unsullied, it follows that the mind’s nature will be unsullied, too, like crystal and the pure moon. When the wheel of the world turns, all trees and plants are ineluctably felled and sundered; in just this same way, the A-character’s disk ineluctably eradicates all hindrance of ignorance.²

この・阿字を・あきらかに・観するときには・六根の・もろ[々]の・垢・みなすへて・清淨に・なりぬ・六根純淨にして・無垢なるかゆへに・心性も・また・垢なし・なをし水精と・淨月との・ことし・世間の輪の・めくるときには・一切の草木の・くたけ・やふれすと・いふ事・なきかことく・この阿字輪も・またかくのことく・よく一切の無明の煩悩を・のそくに・くたけうせすと・いふ事なし・

[Lines 31–37:]

Why is it that one studies eight petals—no more, no less? In general, the shape of everyone’s mind is like that of a lotus flower that has not yet opened. From the sinews that divide it into eight parts, it faces upwards in men, downwards in women.

なかゆゑそ・八葉を観して・おほくもせす・ゝくなくもせぬ・おほよそ・ひとの心のかたちは・蓮花の・いまた・ひらけぬか・ことし・八分に・わかれたるすちあり³・男子は・かみにむかひ・女人は・しもにむかへり

[Lines 38–40:]

Now, contemplate this heart: it has been made to spread completely open, and the eight leaves are the four Buddhas and the four Bodhisattvas.

今此心を・観して・それを開敷せしむるなり・此八葉は・四彿・四菩薩なり

[Lines 41–46:]

There is a mind equipped with a lotus pod, the mind of the lotus samādhi. The flowering of the lotus equips one with countless teachings: the hundred and eight samādhi teachings, the five hundred dhāraṇī teachings, and so forth. In this way, of all the innumerable and boundless teachings, there is not a single one with which one is not equipped.

蘂の・具足・せるは・そのこゝろあり・蓮花三昧の・心・若・開敷するときには・無量の・法門具足す・百八三昧門・五百陀羅尼門らなり・かくのことき・無量無邊の・法門具足せすと・いふことなし・

[Lines 46–56:]

If there are those who might hope to contemplate the various Buddhas, those who might hope to make offerings to the various Buddhas, those who might hope to attain awakening (S. bodhi), those who might hope to be reborn like the myriad Bodhisattvas, those who might hope to benefit all living things, those who might seek to attain all supernatural powers (S. siddhi), those who might seek to attain all knowledge—for those who seek things such as these, there is no other means but this.

もし諸仏を・みたてまつらむと・おもはむひと・諸仏を・供養したてまつらむと・おもはむ人・菩提を・證發せむと・おもはむひと・諸々菩薩と・おなしく・うまれ・あはむと・おもはむ人・一切衆生を・利益せむと・おもはむひと・一切悉地を・えむと・おもはむひと・一切智を・えむとおもはむ人・かくのことき事を・もとめむひとは・さらに・他の術なし

[Lines 56–57:]

However, one must contemplate this A character properly.

たゝし・まさに・この阿字を・観すへし

[Lines 58–61:]

Every sentient being’s heart is like this all along. They become purified, yet due to ignorance, it remains mostly hidden to them, and so awakening is not attained.

一切衆生の・自心は・もとより・このかた・清淨なれとん・無明の・ために・おほひ・かくされて・さとる・こと・あたはさるなり

[Lines 61–68]

If the heart has been made pure, then it has become a maṇḍala. It did not arrive from someplace else. Now, this A character also does not arrive from some other place, but it is born of the heart. One practices concentration, and little by little becomes cleansed; and since the heart is pure, the A character will reveal itself therein.

若・此心を・きよめつれは・すなはち・それ曼荼羅となりぬ・餘處より・きたりたまふに・あらす・いまこの・阿字も・またほかよりきたりたまふにあらす・たゝ心より・生せるなり・定を・修して・その心・やうやく・きよくなる・心清淨なるかゆへに・阿字・なかに現す

[Lines 69–70:]

Enter the gate of the A character, and thus receive the ultimate reward. People do not do so often enough.

阿字門に・いるかゆへに・大果報をう・ひとのよく・さつくるにあらす

[Lines 71–76:]

Should the short-lived [that is, one destined to have a short life] contemplate this character thrice daily, they will receive longevity. Should one think of this A character while breathing in and out, then they will attain great longevity. It is because the bodhicitta of this A character is the teaching of uncreatedness and ceaselessness (J. honpushō).

・若・短命のひと・日々三時に・この字を・思惟せは・長壽をえむ・若いているいきの中に・此字を・おもはゝ・壽命長遠・なることをえむ・此阿字の・菩提心は・不生不滅門・なるかゆへになり

[Lines 76–78:]

If one is practicing while breathing, then they should contemplate this A character about five inches above the nose.

出入のいきに・おもはゝ・鼻のうへ・五寸はかりに・この阿字を・観すへし

[Lines 78–88:]

The lowest benefit of this contemplation is that for those who are faced with death, they will return again and receive birth. The intermediate benefit is to ascend into space and delight in the ten directions. The ultimate benefit: that would be to attain unsurpassable complete awakening. When learning this practice, you should do it continually—whether moving, standing, sitting, or reclining—and if the mind becomes distracted, then that is precisely the moment to contemplate the A character. This teaching, for those who practice it, is a matter of grave concern. At no time should one let it escape the mind.

此観の・下の功徳は・死にあたれるひと・さらにかえりて・生することをう・中の功徳は・虚空に・のほりて・十方にあそふ・大の功徳は・すなはち無上正覚にいたる・この法をならはむときには・つねに・行住座臥に・すへし・もし心中に・乱念・おほくは・かならす・この阿字を・観すへし・此法は・修行者の・ために・もとも・急切なり・つねに心に・はなつへからす

[Lines 89–94:]

This A character, it is the mother of all characters. The dharma of the Buddhas in the ten spatial directions and the three temporal dimensions is nothing if not the essential form of this character. Even for those who practice but the slightest bit, it is tantamount to evoking all of the teachings of all Tathāgatas.

・この阿字は・是・一切字の・はゝなり・十方三世の・諸仏の・諸説の・法・此字の躰に・あらすと・いふことなし・わつかにも・念するひとは・一切の如来の・法を・稱するにおなし・

[Lines 94–96:]

In addition: if envisioning this character on iron or stone, it works well, becoming golden.⁴

乃至くろかね・いしにも・この字を・観念すれは・よくうこき・こかねとなる

Appendix C

Anthology Page Counts

Notes

Introduction

1. Wiener Secession and Fischer, Katalog der VI. Ausstellung, 43. On the Fischers and this exhibition, see Croissant, “Artifacts or Art?”

2. Riegl, “Modern Cult of Monuments,” 647–48.

3. Wiener Secession and Fischer, Katalog der VI. Ausstellung, 5. On ahistoricism in this exhibition, see Croissant, “Artifacts or Art?,” 19–20.

4. Croissant, “Artifacts or Art?,” 17–23.

5. Ibid., 3.

6. On the white cube, see Johnson, “Embodied Gaze,” 30–33.

7. Sand, “Subaltern Imperialists,” 273–88.

8. Cf. “peripheral modernism” in Mitter, “Decentering Modernism,” 532.

9. Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan, 4–5.

10. Cf. Appadurai’s taxonomy of ethonoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes (Modernity at Large, 33).

11. Camille, “Before the Gaze,” 197–223. In East Asian art history, see Clunas, Pictures and Visuality.

12. Two studies that broach this topic are Bogel, With a Single Glance, and Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body. In the context of China, see Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 129–33.

13. Fricke, Fallen Idols, 266.

14. Belting, Anthropology of Images. For the distinction between pictures and images, see Davis, Visuality and Virtuality, chap. 1. For classic texts on the “image,” see Mitchell, “What Is an Image?”; Elkins, Domain of Images; Frazer, “Origin of the Term ‘Image’”; Elkins and Naef, What Is an Image?.

15. Belting, Anthropology of Images, chap. 1, and Davis, Visuality and Virtuality, 17–20.

16. Belting, Anthropology of Images, 32.

17. See Mitter, “Decentering Modernism,” and Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe.

18. For historiography and critique, see Davis, General Theory of Visual Culture.

19. Warburg actually took Nachleben from the English “survive.” See Didi-Huberman, Surviving Image, 47.

20. Ibid., 48.

21. In Japanese art history, Chino Kaori noted that few would concede that objects “continue to exert an influence in our time as well” (“Gender in Japanese Art,” 19–20).

22. On “euchronic” bias, see Didi-Huberman, “Before the Image.” See also Didi-Huberman, Surviving Image, and Didi-Huberman, “History and Image.”

23. Didi-Huberman has written extensively on this. Recently influential has been Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance. See also Moxey, Visual Time, and Karlholm and Moxey, Time in the History of Art.

24. Fabian, Time and the Other. I thank Thomas Lamarre for pointing out this hinge.

25. Foxwell, Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting, 66, 71, 177, 192–98.

26. On universal contemporaneity, see Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, chap. 1.

27. For a popular summary, see Adamson, “Getting to Noh.” The most famous example would be Okamoto Tarō’s Jōmon modernism. See Reynolds, Allegories of Time and Space, esp. chap. 2.

28. This will be taken up in the following chapter. Key sources include: Karatani, “One Spirit,” 271; Miyoshi, “Against the Narrative Grain,” 148–49; Clark, “Indices of Modernity,” 27.

29. See Satō, “Present State of Research,” 90–92.

30. Ibid., 91, 102.

31. Bijutsu techō editors, “Ferumēru, tsuyoshi,” https://bijutsutecho.com/magazine/insight/20143.

32. According to the annual exhibition reports published online by Bijutsu techō.

33. Satō, “Present State of Research,” 95.

34. Munroe, Scream Against the Sky, 20.

35. Hall, “The West and the Rest,” 141–84. See also Appiah, Lies That Bind, esp. chap. 6. For a primer, see Appiah, “There Is No Such Thing.”

36. For “dialects” of modernity, see Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, 771.

37. Atlantic modernity is more accurate, yet North Atlantic modernity has the advantage of evoking NATO, which is also often conflated with the “West.”

38. Harootunian, “Some Thoughts on Comparability,” 35. For an earlier version, see Lamarre and Kang, Impacts of Modernities.

39. Ricoeur, “Universal Civilization.” Among those who have shaped my thinking on polytemporality are Henri Focillon, Aby Warburg, Georges Didi-Huberman, Reinhart Koselleck, Johannes Fabian, Alexander Nagel, and Christopher Wood.

40. Huyssens, “Geographies of Modernism,” 189–207, and Sakai, Translation and Subjectivity, 154.

41. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, 167.

42. Gombrich, “The Mask and the Face,” 24–25.

43. Belting, Face and Mask, 7, see also 34.

44. Summers, Real Spaces, 337ff.

45. For instance, note Jean-Claude Schmitt’s analysis of the German Gesicht, Sicht, Antlitz, and Miene alongside the French mine, figure, face, and visage (“For a History of the Face,” 7–8, 11). Schmitt casts “the face as a means and surface of expression,” a formulation much in accord with this study (11). See also Fricke, Fallen Idols, 149–52, and Summers, Real Spaces, 255.

46. Nihon kokugo daijiten, s.v. “kao,” “omo,” “omote,” “tsura,” “men,” “omokage.”

47. Elkins, Object Stares Back. Note also darśan in South Asia. See Eck, Darśan. On darśan in the context of esoteric Japanese Buddhisms, see Bogel, With a Single Glance, 49, 58, 144.

48. Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 107.

49. Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan, 73, see also 7, 30–31, 106–7, 148.

50. See Goodman, Languages of Art; Bal and Bryson, “Semiotics and Art History,” 174–208; Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, chap. 4, esp. 186–88.

51. Jay, Downcast Eyes.

52. Keane, “Garb of Meaning,” 182–205; Kamens, Waka and Things; Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan. For “secondary signals,” see Genette, Palimpsests, 3. In Buddhist contexts, see Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, esp. chap. 3.

53. Sybille Krümer, quoted in Neef, Imprint and Trace, 20.

54. Kamens, Waka and Things, 206–7.

55. Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan, 20, see also 6, 182.

56. Chance and Davis, “The Handwritten and the Printed.”

57. The literature on this topic is vast; to start: Mitchell, Picture Theory; Elkins, Domain of Images; Hamburger, Script as Image.

58. For “text artifacts,” see Silverstein and Urban, Natural Histories of Discourse, 1–17.

59. Hay, “Surface and the Chinese Painter.”

60. Lyotard, Discourse, Figure, 205.

61. Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 104, 186–88.

62. Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan, 93–94, 123 (quotations excerpted from these pages).

63. Fischer, quoted in Thrift, “Beyond Mediation,” 243. Beyond Lamarre, see Rambelli, Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, and Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality.

64. Code is not immaterial. Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 34–36.

65. For gendered scripts, see Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan, 107–13, and Carpenter, “Learning the ‘Women’s Hand.’”

66. See Bogel, With a Single Glance, 55–57, 171–72. Foxwell has also critiqued this approach (“Pulled Back View,” 27).

67. Berger, Ways of Seeing; Baxandall, Painting and Experience; Jay, “Scopic Regimes of Modernity”; Davis, General Theory of Visual Culture; Davis, Vision and Visuality; Clunas, Pictures and Visuality.

Interlude: Contra Coincidence

1. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 26–27. For historiography, see Powell, Depositions, preface. The revival of pseudomorphosis in Anglophone scholarship stems from Nagel and Wood, “Interventions,” 412. See also Didi-Huberman, Surviving Image, 34.

2. Riegl, “Modern Cult of Monuments,” 622–23 passim.

Chapter 1

1. “Presentist bias” is from David Joselit’s opening comments in Joselit et al., “Roundtable,” 3. See also Hunt, “Against Presentism.”

2. For a similar list, see Huyssen, “Introduction,” 1. For the Japanese terms at stake (e.g., modan, kindai, modanizumu, seikatsu), see Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense, 13ff. For parallel modernism, see Wu, Parallel Modernism. I thank Thomas Lamarre for pointing out the time/space slippage. Appadurai, Modernity at Large.

3. Hall, “The West and the Rest,” 142.

4. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern.

5. Karatani, “One Spirit,” 259–72, and Karatani, “History as Museum.”

6. “The fantasizing of an absolute other as if the two had never met is itself a form of violence.” Liu, Tokens of Exchange, 3.

7. Duus, Japanese Discovery of America, 8, Howland, Translating the West, 8ff.

8. See the essays collected in Shirahara, Japan Envisions the West.

9. Screech, Lens Within the Heart.

10. Gluck, “‘Meiji’ for Our Time,” 11.

11. Munroe, Scream Against the Sky, 20.

12. Mitter, “Decentering Modernism.”

13. Harootunian. Overcome by Modernity, xvi.

14. Sakai, Translation and Subjectivity, 154.

15. Fabian, Time and the Other, 31. As Fabian explains, he worked independently of Edward Said and Michel Foucault yet argues similarly (xliii). In comparison, Moxey writes, “Modernity, along with artistic modernism, is a distinctly Western affair” (Visual Time, 15).

16. Fabian, Time and the Other, 31.

17. For an overview, see the introduction to Karlholm and Moxey, Time in the History of Art.

18. Harootunian describes the alternative modernity paradigm as “outrageous” (Overcome by Modernity, xvi). See also Lamarre and Kang, Impacts of Modernities, 2–6.

19. Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity, 312, and Shannon, Among the Jasmine Trees, 68.

20. Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing, 8.

21. Harootunian would summarize this goal as “contemporaneity yet the possibility of difference” (Overcome by Modernity, xvii). Both scholars’ use of the term originates in the German Gleichzeitigkeit (lit. same-timedness).

22. Moxey, “What Time,” 27.

23. Ibid.

24. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 10. Wood calls this art-historical “relativism”—the “intercontinental, ecumenical, and nonpartisan” paradigm of modern art history (History of Art History, 10–17).

25. Fabian, Time and the Other, 114.

26. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity, xvi.

27. “Temporal interfaces” is from Nagel; see Joselit et al., “Roundtable,” 7. Note also Flood, later in the same roundtable, discussing hermeneutics and illegibility.

28. “If times are to be made commensurable, by what standard are they to be translated?” Moxey and Karlholm, Time in the History of Art, 3.

29. Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, 771.

30. Robert Young, quoted in Sakai, Translation and Subjectivity, 70.

31. Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, 253, and Takeuchi and Calichman, What Is Modernity?, ix. On the “standard of living,” see Hanley, Everyday Things. For alternative criteria, see Hall et al., Modernity, 8.

32. Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things.

33. Latour, “Visualisation and Cognition,” 2.

34. Hall et al., Modernity, 13, see also 9–16. Cited and discussed in and Lamarre and Kang, Impacts of Modernities, 14.

35. Eisenstadt, “Some Observations,” 27.

36. Takeuchi and Calichman, What Is Modernity?, x.

37. Najita, “On Culture and Technology,” 12. He would seem to be echoing Ricoeur.

38. For a translation and critical introduction, see Calichman, Overcoming Modernity. For the self-contradictory nature of this logic, see 1–17. For critique, see Harootunian, “Visible Discourses / Invisible Ideology,” and Karatani, History and Repetition.

39. Kamei, quoted in Takeuchi and Calichman, What Is Modernity?, 117.

40. Takeuchi and Calichman, What Is Modernity?

41. Ibid., 53.

42. Ibid., 63.

43. See Calichman, Overcoming Modernity, 20.

44. Following Karl Jaspers, Eisenstadt argues that Japan is “the only non-Axial civilization that maintained—throughout its history up to the modern time—a history of its own” (Japanese Civilization, 14). See also Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernities.

45. “Enlightenment” has no discursive figuration in nineteenth-century Japan; it was projected back onto this period by twentieth-century historians. See Howland, Translating the West, 15–18, 31–60.

46. See also Nishimura, Meiroku zasshi, 446–50. Nishimura paints “civilization” in terms similar to translatio imperii. See also Howland, Translating the West, 38–40.

47. Fukuzawa advocated for a “universal civilization” by using this term, which had Chinese overtones. See Howland, Translating the West, 34–35, and Duus, Japanese Discovery of America, 189–90.

48. Ching, “Globalizing the Regional,” 301.

49. LaFleur, “Turning in Taishō,” 234–56.

50. Jansen, “Cultural Changes,” 34.

51. Lamarre, “Primitive Vision,” 193.

52. “Constitutive Other” is from Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi, 9. For “nationalistic semiotics,” see Rambelli, “The Empire and the Signs,” 21, 29–33. The Wa-Kan literature is extensive. See Pollack, Fracture of Meaning; Sakaki, Obsessions with the Sino-Japanese Polarity; Sakai, Translation and Subjectivity, 159ff.; Sakai, “Modernity and Its Critique,” 93–122; Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan, 29–31; Denecke, Classical World Literatures, 96, 118; and McCormick, “Purple Displaces Crimson,” 181–208.

53. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 15, 17, 139.

54. Sakai, Obsessions with the Sino-Japanese Polarity, 2.

55. Phillips, Practices of Painting, 40–43; Lippit, Painting of the Realm, 195; Chino, “Gender in Japanese Art,” 17–3; Yang, “Yamato-e.”

56. Gierke, “Japanische Malerei,” 206.

57. Yoshioka, “Samurai and Self-Colonization,” 99–112.

58. Ibid., 106.

59. Cf. Yoshioka’s “samurai discourse” (ibid., esp. 104–9).

60. Cf. Conant, who uses the term parity to refer to artistic productions in the same medium (“Japan ‘Abroad,’” 268–69). I rather follow Guth’s notion of parity in equal recognition of Japanese art in a larger historical sense (“Some Reflections,” 35).

61. Williams, Buddha in the Machine, 61.

62. Japan’s foreign exhibitions paralleled domestic ones. See Foxwell, Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting, 44ff.

63. On Japan’s participation in the world’s fairs, see Demeulenaere-Douyère, “Japan at the World’s Fairs,” 129–51.

64. Kondo, “Creativity Within a Geographical-National Framework,” 99.

65. Kinoshita, “Early Years of Japanese Photography,” 33.

66. Carey and Volait, “Framing ‘Islamic Art,’” 39, and Demeulenaere-Douyère, “Japan at the World’s Fairs,” 139.

67. Conant, “Japan ‘Abroad,’” 267. In Chicago, Japan had attempted to argue for an emic rubric; in Paris, however, it followed the “fine arts” more closely. See Inaga, “Cognitive Gaps,” 125, and Coaldrake, “Fine Arts Versus Decorative Arts,” 182–85.

68. Coaldrake, “Fine Arts Versus Decorative Arts,” 183–84.

69. Conant, “Japan ‘Abroad,’” 267, and Weisberg, “Japonisme Phenomenon,” 37.

70. Minami, “Précurseur de l’histoire,” 167.

71. Inaga, “Cognitive Gaps,” 121, and Guth, “Some Reflections,” 36–41.

72. Inaga, “Cognitive Gaps,” 120.

73. Commission impériale du Japon, Histoire de l’art du Japon. Likewise important was the Selected Relics of Japanese Art (Shinbi taikan) series published by Nippon Bukkyō Shinbi Kyōkai of Kyoto between 1899 and 1908. See Croissant, “Artifacts or Art?,” 26.

74. For more on this contested process, see Inaga, “Cognitive Gaps,” 119; Jansen, “Cultural Changes,” 48; Conant, Challenging Past and Present, 19, esp. 19n65).

75. The official editor was Fukuchi Mataichi (1862–1909), who succeeded the initial editor, Okakura. See Kinoshita, “Okakura Kakuzō,” 31–32.

76. Inaga, “Cognitive Gaps,” 121–22.

77. Kinoshita, “Okakura Kakuzō,” 31–32.

78. Takashina Eishi suggests the triptych was an allegory of imperialist pan-Asian ideology. Cited in Inaga, “Cognitive Gaps,” 121–22. This “successful” painting was marginalized domestically. See Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 32–33, 58–60.

79. Karatani, “Japan as Art Museum,” 44.

80. Karatani, Nation and Aesthetics, 65ff. Karatani attributes this to the preexisting esteem for ukiyo-e (“Japan as Art Museum,” 43, 48).

81. Foxwell, Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting, 205.

82. Wood, History of Art History, 16. Reed speaks of Japanese art as a “fulcrum to formalism” (Bachelor Japanists, 9). For more on interface crossings, see Joselit et al., “Roundtable,” 7–12.

83. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 6.

84. See Foster, Design and Crime, 83–103. I borrow “antinony” from his usage of the term.

85. Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 29.

86. Okakura, quoted and discussed in Karatani, “One Spirit,” 68.

87. Karatani, Nation and Aesthetics, 68.

88. Liu, Tokens of Exchange, 1.

89. Cf. Moxey, Visual Time, 1–2.

90. Huyssen, “Geographies of Modernism,” 204–5.

91. See Howland, Translating the West, 45–50, 61–93.

92. See de Bary’s discussion of Karatani’s views of genbun’itchi (“Karatani Kojin’s Origins,” 249–54).

93. Sakai, Translation and Subjectivity, esp. 17, 19.

94. For a pro-loan-word (but anti-Chinese) voice, see Ichikawa, “Foreign Influences,” 141–80.

95. Calichman, Overcoming Modernity, 7.

96. Weisenfeld, “Touring ‘Japan-as-Museum.’”

97. Such logocentric deconstruction is typically traced through Satō to Kitazawa, yet, as Kenneth Masaki Shima notes, there were earlier adumbrations. See Kitazawa, “From Temple of the Eye,” 228.

98. Satō, Modern Japanese Art.

99. Marra, History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics, 6. As Marra notes, it took another decade for the term to gain currency. See also Guth, “Some Reflections,” 36, and Tseng, Imperial Museums, 37–38.

100. Coaldrake, “Fine Arts Versus Decorative Arts,” 177–79.

101. Foxwell, Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting, 114. Cf. Karatani, who argues Fenollosa (who arrived in Japan in 1877) “introduced the notion of looking at Japanese art as ‘art’” (“Japan as Art Museum,” 44).

102. Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 44–45.

103. Wood, History of Art History, 45.

104. Ibid.

105. For the first, see Bredekamp, “Neglected Tradition?,” 418–28.

106. Trumbull, Essay on the Uses and Advantages.

107. Ibid., 5.

108. Ibid., 11.

109. See Foxwell, Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting, 141.

110. Conant argues painting alone was uncontested (“Japan ‘Abroad,’” 266). Yet even “painting” was a fraught category. See Foxwell, Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting, 52, 56–57.

111. Jarves, Glimpse at the Art, 22.

112. Dalloz, cited and discussed in Dandona, Nature and the Nation, 76, 90n103.

113. Duranty, “Japonisme,” 178, cited and discussed in Weisberg, “Japonisme Phenomenon,” 31.

114. Jarves, Glimpse at the Art, 22–23. Jarves’s text had been preceded, five years earlier, by a series of five short articles in Art Journal. See Weisberg and Weisberg, Japonisme, 31.

115. Cf. “Asia-as-technê,” a fantasy that would posit “Eastern aesthetics” as both the antidote to, and the perfection of, machine culture. Williams, Buddha in the Machine, 1, 13.

116. Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, 856.

117. See Duus, Japanese Discovery of America, 29–30, 185–90. As he notes, the model for the European head was George Washington.

118. On these themes in Horne’s work, see Facing the Rising Sun, and his earlier Race War!

119. For “Afro-Orientalism,” see Mullen and Watson, W. E. B. Du Bois on Asia, xiv. For a critique of Du Bois, see Onishi, Transpacific Antiracism, 1–7, 54–93.

120. Han, “Colonial Subject as Other,” 700. Han also notes the impulse of Torii Ryūzō (1870–1953) to create “Oriental ethnology” (tōyō jinshugaku/minshugaku) as an independent racialized pseudoscientific discourse (697–98). On race in imperial East Asia, see Hanscom and Washburn, Affect of Difference.

121. Onishi, Transpacific Racism, 52, 22–28, 37–41; Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, 855; Weisenfeld, “Touring ‘Japan-as-Museum,’” 747–93.

122. Okakura, cited and discussed in Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 21–22.

123. Gierke, “Japanische Malerei,” 204ff.

124. Ibid., 206, 339–40.

125. Denecke, Classical World Literatures; LaFleur, “Turning in Taishō,” 244ff.; Marra, “Coincidentia Oppositorum,” 142–52; Adams, “John La Farge’s Discovery,” 447; Trede, “Terminology and Ideology,” 23–24; Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 11–17. The critic Émile Hovelaque (1865–1936) also proclaimed Japan “the Greece of [the] Orient” (quoted and discussed in Weisberg, “Japonisme Phenomenon,” 37). See also Lambourne, Japonisme, 32–34.

126. See Inaga, “Cognitive Gaps,” 121.

127. Ibid.

128. Marra, “Coincidentia Oppositorum,” 142–52, and Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 11–13.

129. Yorozu, quoted and discussed in Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 176.

130. Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 15.

131. Marra, “Coincidentia Oppositorum,” 142.

132. Dandona, Nature and the Nation, 60.

133. Wölfflin, quoted and discussed in Foster, Design and Crime, 88. For “most widely read,” see Wood, History of Art History, 7. On racism in the context of Japonisme, see Dandona, Nature and the Nation, 59–64. Sawaki Yomokichi (1886–1930) was studying under Wölfflin while Wölfflin finished the manuscript. The translation is Wölfflin, Bijutsushi no kiso gainen.

134. Gallé, quoted and discussed in Dandona, Nature and the Nation, 62.

135. Lange, quoted in Hansen, “Norwegian Nature,” 253.

136. The border between the two is a porous “artificial dichotomy.” Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 24. Nihonga was, rather, an umbrella term. See Foxwell, Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting, 2, 9–10.

137. Foxwell argues that Nihonga was “alienated” from its audience since it was directed to a sort of imaginary audience of modern critics (Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting, 207). Likewise, preservationist anxieties may have motivated some to “segregate” Japanese-style painting from “the globally engaged practice of painting” (2).

138. Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 34. See also Bryson, “Westernizing Bodies,” 104.

139. Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, chap. 1, esp. 37.

140. For an overview of the institution, see Howland, Translating the West, 8–10. See also Weisenfeld, Mavo, 12.

141. Kinoshita, “Early Years of Japanese Photography,” 22.

142. Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 20.

143. Ibid., 39.

144. Foxwell, Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting, 66, 69–71, 177, 192–98.

145. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity, xiv; Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 10–17.

146. Froís’s original title is Tratado em que se contêm muito susinta e abreviadamente algumas contradições e diferenças de custumes entre a gente de Europa e esta província de Japão. See Froís, First European Description of Japan.

147. Hall, “The West and the Rest,” 171.

148. Reff, “Critical Introduction,” 20

149. Valignano, quoted in Wilson, World in Venice, 215.

150. Xavier, quoted in Wilson, World in Venice, 215. See also ibid., 213–16, and Lee, “Perception of the Japanese,” 345–80.

151. Cooper, Japanese Mission to Europe, 182.

152. The first Japanese priests were ordained in 1601. Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 182. Later Valignano would resist Japanese ordination. See Cooper, Japanese Mission to Europe, 185.

153. Wilson, World in Venice, 210–21. For why this should not be called an “embassy,” see Lee, “Perception of the Japanese,” 356. For the biographies, see Cooper, Japanese Mission to Europe, l84–192.

154. Nihon kokugo daijiten.

155. Wilson, World in Venice, 220.

156. See Toby, Engaging the Other, 106–41.

157. Toby argues the Iberians caused a shift from a “three nation” model (sankoku: Japan, China, and India) to a “myriad nations” (bankoku) model. For “trans-Kara,” see ibid., 75.

158. Any such equality soon vanished; one of the Hasekura embassy members was sold into slavery. See Lee, “Perception of the Japanese,” 367.

159. Toby, Engaging the Other, esp. 6, 120ff., 196.

160. McVeigh, Nationalisms of Japan, 42–44.

161. The most prominent name in Kokugaku is Norinaga Motoori (1730–1801). See Marra, Poetics of Motoori Norinaga. For more on “nativism” in this context, see Toby, Engaging the Other, 328–33, and Harootunian, “Consciousness of Archaic Form,” 68.

162. Rambelli, “The Empire and the Signs.”

163. Sakai, Translation and Subjectivity, 129. On Taine, see Dandona, Nature and the Nation, 60.

164. Hall, “The West and the Rest,” 160; Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 19, esp. 19n60. For a critique of Said, see also Toby, Engaging the Other, 198.

165. Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 10.

166. Koschmann, “Maruyama Masao,” 124–25.

167. Ibid, 125–26.

168. Clark, “Indices of Modernity,” 27.

169. Miyoshi, “Against the Narrative Grain,” 148–9.

170. Otabe, “Representations of ‘Japaneseness,’” 158.

171. Karatani, “One Spirit,” 271.

172. Miyoshi and Harootunian, introduction to Postmodernism and Japan,” xi.

173. Takeuchi and Calichman, What Is Modernity?, 33.

174. Sakai, Translation and Subjectivity, 153.

175. Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, 84.

176. Takeuchi and Calichman, What Is Modernity?, 63.

177. See Williams, Buddha in the Machine, esp. 174–98, appendices D–F.

178. Eisenstadt, Riedel, and Sachsenmaier, “Context of the Multiple Modernities Paradigm,” 8. On the modern American appropriation of Zen, see Levine, Long Strange Journey; Levine, “Two (or More) Truths, 52–63; and Williams, Buddha in the Machine, esp. 174–98.

179. Note that “inversion” (tentō) is a key theoretical term for Karatani, but here I am using this term in its vernacular sense. See de Bary, “Karatani Kōjin’s Origins,” 237–42.

180. On the “high culture” to “low culture” shift, see Ching, “Globalizing the Regional,” esp. 280, 300.

181. Ibid. Ching builds upon Hall, “The Local and the Global,” 27. On the high/low division, see also Clark, “Indices of Modernity,” 25–49. Note Kalha’s suggestion that one foreground postcard imagery in Japonisme (“‘Copies Without an Original,” 262–69).

182. Karatani, “One Spirit,” 271.

183. Takeuchi and Calichman, What Is Modernity?, 165.

184. Calichman, Overcoming Modernity, 21.

185. Ricoeur, “Universal Civilization,” 43–53.

186. Yoshioka, “Samurai and Self-Colonization,” 110, and Najita, “On Culture and Technology,” 12–13.

187. This call to escape the trap of text-based scholarship appears in Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 51, 159.

188. Harootunian, “Remembering the Historical Present,” 480. This is Harootunian’s reading of Koselleck.

189. Harootunian, Uneven Moments, 6.

190. Didi-Huberman, “Before the Image,” 42.

191. Contrast Harootunian’s interest in pastiche with Didi-Huberman’s interest in montage as polytemporal processes. See Harootunian, “Visible Discourses / Invisible Ideologies,” 304, and Didi-Huberman, “Before the Image,” 38. Cf. Walter Benjamin’s use of collage as a historiographical metaphor; see Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 33.

192. On the “persistent question” of global modernity, see Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 218–20.

193. Huyssen, “Geographies of Modernism,” 192. “Multiplex modernity” is from Clifford, “Indigenous Articulations,” 483.

194. Christian Kravagna uses “transmodern” to discuss intercultural contact within modernity. See Kravagna, Transmodern. The term also figures in postcolonial scholarship on Latin American modernities by figures such as Rosa María Rodríguez Magda and Enrique Dussel.

195. For the totalizing impulse, see Lamarre and Kang, Impacts of Modernities, 2–6.

Interlude: Media Archaeology

1. Saeki, “Secret Passion of Steve Jobs”; Pippin, “Japan”; Kare, “Japanese Woodcut on Gray”; Hayashi, “Tales of Steve Jobs.”

2. Lamarre, Anime Machine, 17–18.

Chapter 2

1. “Scopic regime” is a frequent theme in the scholarship of Martin Jay (for instance, Downcast Eyes), although he credits the film theorist Christian Metz; Jay uses “hegemony of vision,” a term tightly associated with Levin, Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. See also Fabian, Time and the Other, chap. 4, esp. 116, and Camille, “Sensations of the Page,” 37, 41–44.

2. Camille, “Sensations of the Page,” 42; Prescott, “Ways of Seeing Manuscripts,” 37–54; Miller, Materiality; Bennett, Vibrant Matter; Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality.

3. See Bruno, Surface; Hartnell, Continuous Page; Albritton, Henley, and Treharne, Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age; Thrift, “Beyond Mediation,” 231–55.

4. Huhtamo and Parikka, “Introduction,” 1–21. They identify Screech’s Lens Within the Heart as a precursor.

5. Ibid., 3; Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media.

6. Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media, 32.

7. Ernst, “Media Archaeography,” 239. See also Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media, 1–3.

8. Kersey, “Dynamism, Liquidity, and Crystallization.”

9. On botanical metaphors in Japonisme, see Dandona, Nature and the Nation, esp. 74, 77.

10. Manovich, Language of New Media, 69.

11. Respectively Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 93, and Steve Johnson, quoted in Gane and Beer, New Media, 54.

12. Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 97. See also Drucker, Graphesis, 152.

13. Manovich, Language of New Media, 69–70.

14. Ibid., 70ff.

15. Hookway, Interface, 1, 4. He states, “A theory of the interface is a theory of culture” (15).

16. Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 96, 90, 133, respectively. See also ibid., 7, 89–90, 104–6.

17. For visuality, see Davis, General Theory of Visual Culture.

18. On “comparative ontologies,” the pluriverse, and the decolonization of interface theory, see Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 127–30, 63–64, 44–45, respectively.

19. See Huhtamo, “Time Traveling,” 262n13; Hookway, Interface, chap. 3; Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 94.

20. “As if the fluid everywhere possesses an expansive tendency, so that pressure must everywhere be received by the fluid on one side of a dividing surface (or as I call it interface) from the fluid, or solid, on the other side, to prevent the fluid from expanding indefinitely, or to balance its expansive force.” Thomson, “Notes and Queries,” 327.

21. Bottomley, Hydrostatics, 13.

22. Hookway, Interface, 7–15, 59–60.

23. Ibid., 8.

24. Isozaki, Ma.

25. Hookway, Interface, 9.

26. Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 107.

27. Nihon kokugo daijiten, s.vv. おも‐て (表) and おも‐て(面).

28. Wu, Double Screen, 10.

29. Ibid., 10–12.

30. Ibid., 12.

31. My thinking on faciality is informed by Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, 167–91.

32. Thomson, quoted in Hookway, Interface, 60. Cf. Spivak’s metaphor in the epitaph of chapter 1.

33. Kersey, “Dynamism, Liquidity, and Crystallization.”

34. Nitobe, Western Influences in Modern Japan, 1.

35. Okakura, Ideals of the East.

36. On Japan’s “unique historical role” as synthesizer, see Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 155–56.

37. Tanaka, Japan’s Orient, esp. 1–28.

38. Ibid., 269–73.

39. On the India-to-Japan telos, see ibid., 13.

40. Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 153–56.

41. Ibid., 154. For an extended and rigorous treatment of these tropes, see 153ff.

42. Wickhoff, Roman Art, 55.

43. Ibid., 136.

44. Ibid., 186.

45. Wickhoff, cited and discussed in Rampley, Vienna School, 147–48.

46. Ibid., 148.

47. Ibid., 184.

48. Karatani, Nation and Aesthetics, 76. See also Rimer, “Hegel in Tokyo,” 108.

49. Karatani, “Japan as Art Museum,” 51–52.

50. Sakaki argues the Wa-Kan binary obscured non-Eurasian interfaces (Obsessions with the Sino-Japanese Polarity, 12).

51. Ibid., 47, and Fogel, Role of Japan.

52. Huh and Tikhonov, “Korean Courtiers’ Observation Mission’s Views,” 30–54.

53. Marra, “Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics,” 193–211, and Satō, Modern Japanese Art, 184–211.

54. See the section “Visuality, Subjectivity, and Intersectionality” below.

55. Satō, Modern Japanese Art, 184–211.

56. Spivak, Critique of Postcolonial Reason, 2, cited and discussed in Huyssen, “Geographies of Modernism,” 198.

57. Watanabe, “Japonisme Studies Reconsidered,” 19.

58. Timelessness intersects with nationalism: “The concept of Japanese art as a monolithic, timeless, and unchanging entity reinforces the ‘imagined communities’ of nations and the idea of national identity” (Warren, “Japonisme and Scandinavia,” 159).

59. On Japan’s place within primitivism and Orientalism, see Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 8–10 and 19ff.; Kluczewska-Wójcik, “Go East,” 77–91; Watanabe, “Japonisme Studies Reconsidered,” 19–22.

60. Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, 812.

61. Weisberg, “Japonisme Phenomenon,” 14.

62. Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 10.

63. Kalha, “‘Copies Without an Original,” 264. “Japaneseness, located in art, no longer requires Japan” (Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 2).

64. Weisberg, “Japonisme Phenomenon,” 24. On the historical horizontality of ethnography contra the verticality of art history, see Foster, “Archive Without Museums,” 104–6.

65. Kalha, “Modern Eclecticism,” 15.

66. Note German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold’s seven-volume Nippon, which was published from 1832 to 1852. Reproductions of Japanese prints were circulating in Le Magasin pittoresque in the 1830s. See Weisberg, “Japonisme Phenomenon,” 15, and Weisberg, “Connecting with Japan,” 54–57.

67. It contained the collection of the Siebold (1796–1866), who had been in residence in Japan from 1823 to 1829. See Bakker, “Beginning of the ‘Japanese Dream,’” 14, and National Museum of Japanese History, Yomigare!

68. See the first three volumes of Kreiner, Japanese Collections in European Museums.

69. Kalha, “Modern Eclecticism,” 23. See also Watanabe, “Japonisme Studies Reconsidered,” 21.

70. Karatani, Nation and Aesthetics, 67–68; See also Karatani, “Japan as Art Museum,” 45. As Karatani reminds us, such contradictions are alive and well today.

71. Karatani, Nation and Aesthetics, 67.

72. Ricoeur, Truth and History, 277.

73. Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 40–41.

74. Ibid., 38.

75. Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 1–5.

76. Weinberg, “Japonisme Phenomenon,” 27, and Halén, “Japonisme, National Identity,” 146.

77. Halén, “Japonisme, National Identity,” 146, and Hansen, “Norwegian Nature,” 153.

78. Lambourne, Japonisme, 47. See also Bakker, “Beginning of the ‘Japanese Dream,’” 38, and Lambourne, Japonisme, 51, 155.

79. Oscar Wilde, quoted in Lambourne, Japonisme, 160.

80. Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 33–34. Fry argues Whistler’s work was only well received once North Atlantic modernity had become “accustomed to the Japanese angle of vision” (Fry and Reed, Roger Fry Reader, 29).

81. Reed, Bachelor Japanists, 4.

82. Kalha, “Copies Without an Original,” 268.

83. “Radical elsewhere” is from Rambelli, “The Empire and the Signs,” 1.

84. Watanabe, “Japonisme Studies Reconsidered,” 14–22; Warren, “Japonisme and Scandinavia,” 163; Watanabe, introduction to Dénes et al., Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 14.

85. Adams, “John La Farge’s Discovery,” 19.

86. Watanabe, “Japonisme Studies Reconsidered,” 20, and Warren, “Japonisme and Scandinavia.” On Japan vis-à-vis the Nordics, see Gelfer-Jørgensen, Influences from Japan, and Weisberg, Bonsdorff, and Selkokari, Japanomania; vis-à-vis Italy, see Friborg and Zatti, Impressioni d’oriente; and vis-à-vis Central Europe, see Dénes et al., Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

87. Watanabe, introduction to Dénes et al., Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 14.

88. Anderson, Pictorial Arts of Japan; Anderson, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue; Gierke, “Japanische Malerei,” 202–19, 324–40; Madsen, Japansk Malerkunst. On Madsen, see Warren, “Japonisme and Scandinavia,” 163, and Halén, “Japonisme, National Identity,” 145.

89. Warren, “Japonisme and Scandinavia,” 159–69. Scholars have subsequently magnified Warren’s claim. See Halén, “Japonisme, National Identity,” 142–63; Ohlsen, “From Prop to Total Work,” esp. 187; Ohlsen, “Japan’s Influence,” 215–21; Bonsdorff, “From Blade of Grass,” 224–45. On Central Europe, see Farkas, “Imperial Identity,” and Kluczewska-Wójcik, “Go East,” 43–55, 77–91.

90. Ohlsen, “From Prop to Total Work,” 187. See also Farkas, “Imperial Identity,” 49, and Kluczewska-Wójcik, “Go East,” 83.

91. Halén, “Japonisme, National Identity,” 163; Bonsdorff, “From Blade of Grass,” 233; Kalha, “Modern Eclecticism,” 16.

92. See the essays in Dénes et al., Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

93. Kluczewska-Wójcik, “Go East,” 89–90.

94. Note the artist Gerhard Munthe, writing in 1897: “The artistic conceptualization of the Japanese is the most national force that has found its way into art in recent times” (quoted in Warren, “Japonisme and Scandinavia,” 159).

95. Hall, “The West and the Rest,” 145.

96. Watanabe, introduction to Dénes et al., Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 19–22. See also Kluczewska-Wójcik, “Go East,” 77–91.

97. Dénes, “Austro-Hungarian Expedition to Japan,” 35–37.

98. As a case in point, in 1909, an exhibition in Helsinki juxtaposed Japanese prints with those of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, yet this was seen as somehow provocative. See Koivunen, “Japanese Woodcuts,” 136.

99. Kalha, “Copies Without an Original,” 267.

100. Dow, Composition; Green, “Arthur Wesley Dow: His Art and His Influence,” 9–37; Moffatt, “Composition,” 38–43; Green, “Arthur Wesley Dow, Artist and Educator,” 55–86; Williams, Buddha in the Machine, 25–28.

101. Moffatt, “Composition,” 43, and Williams, Buddha and the Machine, 26.

102. On notan vis-à-vis Dow, see Green, “Arthur Wesley Dow, Artist and Educator,” esp. 58, 66, 76; Green, “Arthur Wesley Dow: His Art and His Influence,” esp. 9, 20, 22; and Moffatt, “Composition,” 39–40.

103. Moffatt, “Composition,” 39–43.

104. Green, “Arthur Wesley Dow: His Art and His Influence,” 18–34.

105. Ibid., 22.

106. Ibid., esp. 24–25; Green, “Arthur Wesley Dow, Artist and Educator,” 57, 76ff.

107. Green, “Arthur Wesley Dow: His Art and His Influence,” 24ff.

108. Joseph Masheck, quoted in Williams, Buddha and the Machine, 25.

109. Green, “Arthur Wesley Dow, Artist and Educator,” 61, and Green, “Arthur Wesley Dow: His Art and His Influence,” 20.

110. Smith, “‘He Frames a Shot!,’” 90–96.

111. Kaneko, “Johannes Itten’s Interest,” and Čapková, “Bauhaus and the Tea Ceremony.”

112. Čapková, “Bauhaus and the Tea Ceremony,” and Yamawaki, Bauhausu to Chanoyu.

113. Brandstätter, Gregori, and Metzger, Vienna 1900 Complete, 38; Forrer, Printed Image, 8; Croissant, “Artifacts or Art?”

114. Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs Secession, Ver Sacrum, quoted in Forrer, Printed Image, 8.

115. Volk, In Pursuit of Universalism, 13. Note also the recursion Kalha calls “Japanese Japonisme” (“Copies Without an Original,” 268–69).

116. Dandona, Nature and the Nation, 58–59.

117. For the alienation in Meiji, see Foxwell, Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting, 207.

118. Manovich, Language of New Media, 114; see also Bruno, Surface.

119. Manovich, Language of New Media, 100, and Monteiro, Fabric of Interface, 18.

120. Thrift, “Beyond Mediation,” 233 and 246, respectively. See also ibid., 235.

121. Camille, “Sensations of the Page,” 37.

122. Ibid., 42, 37, respectively.

123. Prescott, “Ways of Seeing Manuscripts,” 46; Bolter, Writing Space, 72; Hamburger, Script as Image.

124. Camille, “Sensations of the Page,” 46–47.

125. Paulson, Here/There, 6–8.

126. “All classical, and even moreso modern, art is ‘interactive’ in a number of ways” (Manovich, Language of New Media, 56). Note, too, Huhtamo’s critique of “interactivity” (“Time Traveling,” 258).

127. Manovich, Language of New Media, 57

128. Bildwissenschaft and the pictorial turn (or visual culture) were parallel Germanophone and Anglophone approaches to the same issue. See Moxey, Visual Time, 53–75; Davis, Visuality and Virtuality, 7, 17; Boehm and Mitchell, “Pictorial Versus Iconic Turn,” 103–21. Key texts include Boehm, Was ist ein Bild?; Mitchell, Image Science; Belting, Anthropology of Images; Bredekamp, “Neglected Tradition?,” 418–28.

129. Manovich, Language of New Media, 167–68. Manovich wishes to exclude all illusionistic artifacts, but this seems too narrow.

130. Belting, Anthropology of Images.

131. Chief among such works is Gell, Art and Agency.

132. For “enunciative system,” see Drucker, Graphesis, 177, and Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 7, 104–6, 130–34. For “mediating, transacting, productive space,” see Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 133.

133. Drucker, Graphesis, 146–47.

134. Metadata is in reference to Wood’s use of the term. See Joselit et al., “Roundtable,” 10ff.

135. Manovich, Language of New Media, 71.

136. Monteiro, Fabric of Interface, 2, 4, 18, 75.

137. Huhtamo, “Time Traveling,” 239.

138. Manovich, Language of New Media, 71–72.

139. Drucker, Graphesis, unpaginated introduction.

140. Ibid., 146–47.

141. Ibid., 148.

142. Hayashi, “Tracing the Graphic,” 94–119.

143. As Miyoshi cynically notes, “Visualization is the country’s specialty” (“Against the Narrative Grain,” 148).

144. Murakami, “Super Flat Manifesto,” and Murakami, “Theory of Super Flat Japanese Art.”

145. Ivy, “Critical Texts,” 23–24. See also Yoshioka, “Samurai and Self-Colonization,” 110.

146. Watanabe, “Japonisme Studies Reconsidered,” 21.

Interlude: Trace Versus Face

1. On handprints vis-à-vis handwriting, see Neef, Imprint and Trace, 31–46.

2. For trace-ism, see Blair, Real and Imagined, esp. chaps. 4 and 5.

3. Neef, Imprint and Trace, 21.

4. Ibid., 34.

Chapter 3

1. Tanabe credits Shirahata with the name (Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 59). Yet Shirahata says it has been so called since “long ago” (“Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 264).

2. On sutra-copying practices, see O’Neal, Word Embodied, 64, 135–64, and Lowe, Ritualized Writing.

3. Fricke, Fallen Idols, 150–52, and Loh, “Renaissance Faciality,” 341–63. On the “frailty of likeness” in Japanese portraiture, see Levine, “Switching Sites,” esp. 90–92.

4. Abe et al., Genji monogatari, SNKBZ 25(6), Tenarai, 284.

5. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, 172.

6. Gray, About Face.

7. Barthes, Empire of Signs, 100, see also 88–94, 99–102.

8. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, chap. 7.

9. The most extensive study is Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan. On the “interplay between semantic content and background motif” in Dōgen’s holographic Fukanzazengi of 1233, see Eubanks, “Performing Mind,” 173–97. On “the radical interweaving of many layers of imagery” in the Taira Family Sūtras, see Kaufman, “Nature, Courtly Imagery,” 70–74.

10. Translation by Edwin A. Cranston, in Fischer, Arts of Hon’ami Kōetsu, 165. The original (poem 392) reads: ながめつつ思ふも寂しひさかたの月の都の明け方の空 (Minemura, Shin kokin wakashū, 125).

11. Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 86–87.

12. Genette, Palimpsests, 5.

13. Ibid., 1–2 (emphasis added).

14. He proposes the “hyperartistic” but eventually abandons it (ibid., 384).

15. On the meaning of rishu, see Astley-Kristensen, Rishukyō, 27.

16. Tanaka, Koshakyō sōkan.

17. For two examples, see Brock, “Making and Remaking,” and Brock, “Case of the Missing Scroll.”

18. The term underdrawing is in need of scrutiny. See Iijima et al., Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 185ff., and Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 57.

19. This story is an amalgam of the following: Komatsu, “Menashikyō to sono shūhen,” 24–26; Shirahata, “Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 264–78; Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e no nazo,” 104.

20. Shirahata, “Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 264–78.

21. Ibid., 264.

22. Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e no nazo,” 102–6; Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake (Part II), 16–23; Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake (Part I), 11–16; Komatsu, “Menashikyō to sono shūhen,” 24–26.

23. An exception is Tanabe, who states, “It is art, not the writing, that is offered to be read” (Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 51–52).

24. N.B., Komatsu’s early work contains transcription errors in the colophon dates.

25. Shirahata cites the 1920 Koshakyō taikan as the source (“Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 268). To her credit, she appears to be the only scholar to have cautioned against this interpretation. It might also be the Siddhaṃ joṃ or jeṃ.

26. Akiyama, “Women Painters,” 167. This is the Graybill translation of the Akiyama transcription. I have inserted parenthetically the two alternative readings of the names; I thank Michael Jamentz for pointing out that Seigen and Jinken are the prevailing readings. “Master” might be better translated as ācārya.

27. For this transcription, see Komatsu, Heian jidai yamatoe no tankyū, 544.

28. This rendering had appeared in ibid., 545. “Rendering” here refers to the process of kundoku. On kundoku, see Lurie, Realms of Literacy, esp. 169–212.

29. I thank William Bodiford for pointing this out.

30. For the reference to tamafu, see Shirahata, “Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 266.

31. Komatsu notes these ambiguities. In his later work, he lists three, the third of which he finds most convincing: 1. “Pictures painted by Nun X who was close to GoShirakawa”; 2. “Images of the story of the Nun X commissioned by GoShirakawa”; 3. “Images commissioned jointly by GoShirakawa and the Nun X.” See Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e no nazo,” 104, and Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake (Part II),” 12.

32. Fujimoto, “Hakubyō-e shutsugen no isshiten,” 86.

33. For support for this theory, see Tanaka, Koshakyō sōkan, 521.

34. Nakagawa, Koshakyō taikan, 50.

35. For support for this theory, see ibid., 49.

36. Tōkyō teikoku daigaku bungakubu shiryōhensangakari, Dainihon shiryō, 5/6: 843.

37. Tokyo National Research Institute, Nihon kaiga shi nenki shiryō shūsei, 52.

38. Shirahata seems wary of the glosses’ anonymity and sway (“Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 265).

39. Tanaka, Koshakyō sōkan, 521.

40. Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake (Part I),” 14.

41. Komatsu estimates the reinscription dates to the middle of the Edo period (“Menashikyō to sono shūhen,” 25).

42. On Kenshunmon’in and portraiture, see Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi, 93, 109, 111, 157.

43. Komatsu, “Menashikyō to sono shūhen, 24.

44. For genealogical connections, see Akiyama, “Women Painters,” 159–84; Shirahata, “Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 265ff.; Fujimoto, “Hakubyō-e shutsugen no isshiten,” 85; Murakami, “‘Menashikyō’ shita-e no kentō to kōsatsu,” 204; Nakagawa, Koshakyō taikan, 50; Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 59–60.

45. Ki is an enticing candidate since she might be the same person as the elusive Lady of the Ki Court (紀局) who is mentioned in connection to the Genji scrolls (Genji monogatari emaki) completed in the mid-twelfth century. See Sano, “Menashikyō shita-e”; Shirahata, “Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 266ff.; Fujimoto, “Hakubyō-e shutsugen no isshiten,” 84; Akiyama, “Women Painters.”

46. For funerary rites (albeit a century later than GoShirakawa), see Gerhart, Material Culture of Death, chap. 2, esp. 16; see also Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 38.

47. Sawa, “Daigo no gazō Jinken ni tsuite,” 315.

48. Kokushi daijiten, s.v. “Jinken 深賢” (Takeuchi).

49. Komatsu also suspected something “memo-like” in the colophon (“Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake [Part I],” 14).

50. Farris, “Pieces in a Puzzle,” 428, and Mesheryakov, “On the Quantity of Written Data,” 189.

51. Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 48.

52. Farris, “Pieces in a Puzzle,” 427.

53. For an introduction, translation, and analysis, see Astley-Kristensen, Rishukyō.

54. For a full translation, see Kwon, “Emperor’s Songs,” 272–98; on GoShirakawa’s interest in imayō, see Kim, Songs to Make the Dust Dance. For the use of this ritual by his namesake, Emperor Shirakawa, see Blair, Real and Imagined, 198–200.

55. Kujō, Gyokuyō, 1:523 (Yōwa 1.8.14 entry).

56. On the Golden in late Heian art, see Yiengpruksawan, “Illuminating the Illuminator,” 113–20; Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi, 22–24; O’Neal, Word Embodied, 59–62. No English translation of this recension exists. English translations do exist for a Sanskrit recension; see Emmerick, Sūtra of Golden Light.

57. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 238.

58. Ibid., 344. For the changing contours of this ritual, see Sango, Halo of Golden Light, 117–20.

59. On the emperor as cakravartin, see Abé, Weaving of Mantra, esp. 14–15, 247–67, 343, 353–55. On typological hagiographies, see Foard, “Prefiguration,” 76–92.

60. Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi, 167. I might also add the Flower Garland Sūtra.

61. Emmerick, Sūtra of Golden Light, 27. “Philosophy of Divine Rule” is from Yiengpruksawan, “Illuminating the Illuminator,” 117.

62. Emmerick, Sūtra of Golden Light, 29.

63. Women are prominent actors in the Golden. Yiengpruksawan, “Illuminating the Illuminator,” 119.

64. Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi, 165–84 passim; Yiengpruksawan, “Illuminating the Illuminator”; O’Neal, Word Embodied.

65. Yiengpruksawan, “Illuminating the Illuminator,” 118.

66. Kokushi daijiten, s.v. “Konkōmyōsaishōōkyō” (Ōno). For an overview of Golden recensions, see Fujitani, “Konkōmyōkyō no seiritsu to tenkai,” 159–83. On Dharmakṣema, see Abe, “Art and Practice,” 2–4, 7.

67. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 239.

68. Abé also gives the date of 725 for circulation within Japan (ibid., 239, 116). The Dharmakṣema translation (T663) retained currency, especially in Tendai contexts.

69. Farris, Japan’s Medieval Population, 83–84; Rosenfield, Portraits of Chōgen, esp. 109–15; Masuki, “Shōsōin kara Rengeōin hōzō e,” esp. 9–12.

70. The original icon was of Vairocana from the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, yet by the time of the recasting, the identity had shifted to that of Mahāvairocana. See Ingram, “Chōgen’s Vision of Tōdaiji’s Great Buddha,” 176.

71. Masuki, “Shōsōin kara Rengeōin hōzō e,” esp. 9–12. Masuki argues that the Shōsōin acted as a powerful point of reference for classicizing impulses in the Heian and Kamakura eras.

72. Sango, Halo of Golden Light, 99–115. Abé gives the date of the first Misaie as 768 (Weaving of Mantra, 345).

73. Sango, Halo of Golden Light, 99–115.

74. Ibid., 100, 103.

75. Sango cites death memorials as deserving of Jun-Misaie status but only identifies three such instances between 909 and 1185 CE (Halo of Golden Light, 121–24).

76. This assessment is based on queries of the databases of the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo. See the Ninna (仁和) 3.9.12 entry in the Dainihon shiryō, 1:1:121.

77. The data set, the Dainihon shiryō database, is admittedly incomplete.

78. The first took place at Saishōji and the other three at Saishōkōji; the names evoke the most popular translation of the Golden known as the Golden Light Sūtra of Superlative Kings, the Konkōmyō-saishō-ōkyō (金光明最勝王経).

79. This was the opinion of the first published treatment. See Nakagawa, Koshakyō taikan, 51. Ishida early identified multiple hands, an idea later taken up by Shirahata and Komatsu (Shakyōshū, 18).

80. Komatsu gives precise lengths: “Scroll II (40 lines), Scroll III (24 lines), Scroll IV (24 lines)” (“Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake [Part I],” 13).

81. For the initial lines, note the shared use of a variant character for 明. With the final lines, note the three distinctive forms of “sutra” 経.

82. Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake (Part I),” 13–14. Tanabe suggests that the usual number of lines would have been three or six due to their numerological valences (Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 46).

83. Shirahata, “Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 266.

84. Shirahata and Tanaka were the first to suggest that the Jōhen hand seemed limited to the Principle (Shirahata, “Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 268; Tanaka, Koshakyō sōkan, 521).

85. For polychromy, see Yoshitsuji, Genji monogatari emaki, 109, and Murashige, “Hakubyō monogatarie no seiritsu,” 116.

86. For the source of this often-repeated formulation, see Akiyama, Heian jidai sezokuga, 96–99.

87. Tokugawa Art Museum and Gotoh Museum, Kokuhō Genji monogatari emaki.

88. Cf. Nakagawa, Koshakyō taikan, 50.

89. Komatsu appears to have been the first to note these inscriptions (“Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake [Part II],” 21). These annotations are found near lines 341a04 and 342b10.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid., and Fujimoto, “Hakubyō-e shutsugen no isshiten,” 87n4.

92. On the genre and its development, see Murashige, “Hakubyō monogatarie no seiritsu.” In English, see Mostow, “Female Readers,” esp. 145–46.

93. Fujita, “Kamakura-jidai emakimono,” 12.

94. Murashige, “Hakubyō monogatarie no seiritsu,” 117–18.

95. Nagoya, “Rishukyō.”

96. Murakami, “‘Menashikyō’ shita-e no kentō to kōsatsu,” 215.

97. Shirahata, “Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 276.

98. Fujimoto, “Hakubyō-e shutsugen no isshiten,” 87. Ienaga Saburō mentions the Eyeless in passing but categorizes it as an example of a “sūtra paintings without color,” thus suggesting completion (Painting in the Yamato Style, 142).

99. On Jinken as a painter, see Sawa, “Daigo no gazō Jinken ni tsuite.” The inscription upon which this attribution is based is reproduced in Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Nihon kaiga shi nenki shiryō shūsei, 63. The drawing is dated to autumn 1199 (eight month of Shōji 1).

100. For example, Fujimoto, “Hakubyō-e shutsugen no isshiten,” 83.

101. Sano, “‘Menashikyō’ shita-e.” As Gombrich famously observed, in reading faces, even the tiniest formal difference matters (“The Mask and the Face,” 24–25).

102. Sano, “‘Menashikyō’ shita-e,” and Fujimoto, “Hakubyō-e shutsugen no isshiten,” 83–84.

103. This semantic nexus in East Asia needs research. See Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 135. Technically speaking, white and black are colors. Yet there is a difference between contour (as in the Eyeless) and three-dimensional shading in black. Likewise, the paper is not “white.” Thus it is justifiable to say that the Eyeless is colorless.

104. I thank Claire-Akiko Brisset for first suggesting I pursue this route. See Kaminishi, “Zenmyō’s True Colors,” 209–21.

105. Color’s propensity to fade further motivates the metaphor. Ibid., 211–15.

106. For more on the relationship of this terminology to nonduality, see ibid., 213–15.

107. Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, s.v. “色.”

108. Ibid.

109. Kamens, Waka and Things, 197–98.

110. Ibid.

111. Cf. Lippit’s notion of “discursive negation” in Zen portraiture (“Negative Verisimilitude,” 64–95).

112. In the Heart Sūtra, Avalokiteśvara specifies that in emptiness, there are no sensory organs (eyes, ears, noses, etc.). It is tempting to argue that the Eyeless is attempting to illustrate this very notion. For a discussion of this passage, see Kaminishi, “Zenmyō’s True Colors,” 214.

113. It would seem that Shirahata, Komatsu, and Murakami used study copies. Takahashi describes acquiring photographs of such drawings. See Takahashi, “Egakareta mononoke,” 43; Murakami, “‘Menashikyō’ shita-e no kentō to kōsatsu,” 204; Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake (Part I),” 14.

114. On the problem of “generic” illustrations, see Mostow, “Female Readers,” 152–53, and Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 76.

115. Komatsu is more generous with Shirahata’s hypothesis (“Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake [Part II],” 22). On Genji iconography, see Murase, Iconography of the Tale of Genji.

116. The Latin term is from Panofsky. See Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations, esp. 41, and Davis, General Theory of Visual Culture, 256–58. Both Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer have cautioned against the dangerous circularity of hermeneutics, a problem initially raised by Friedrich Schleiermacher.

117. Given the uniformity, however, this seems unlikely. Shirahata, “Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 277.

118. Komatsu seems to have been the first to pursue this method (see following note). Nevertheless, Murakami was the first to conduct a systematic analysis of themes and personages (“‘Menashikyō’ shita-e no kentō to kōsatsu”). On the monsters, see Takahashi, “Egakareta mononoke.”

119. Komatsu, “Menashikyō to sono shūhen”; Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake (Parts I and II)”; Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e no nazo.”

120. Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake (Part I),” 15.

121. Ibid., 14ff.

122. For the Nameless Book, see Higuchi and Kuboki, Matsura no miya, 242–43. Note that Komatsu cites an earlier edition.

123. Komatsu, “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake (Part I),” 16.

124. McCormick, Tosa Mitsunobu, 229–30n7.

125. The Nezu fragment, at 24.8 centimeters high, is the outlier, but this may be the result of trimming. The height of the Itsuō fragment is unknown.

126. Compare with the following dimensions: Ban dainagon ekotoba: 30.4 centimeters; Kibi daijin nittō emaki: 32.0 centimeters; Shigisan engi: 31.7 centimeters; Chōjūgiga: 30.0 centimeters. For sutras, note the following: Heike nōkyō, 24.9–27.0 centimeters; Kunōjikyō 25.7/26.0 centimeters; Hokekyō (TNM#B-883): 23.5 centimeters; Hokekyō (TNM#B-2500): 25.0 centimeters. Moreover, illustrated narrative handscrolls (monogatari emaki) and sutras did not constitute a clear binary; between the two were illustrated manuscripts that addressed Buddhist themes, the most famous of which being the Hell Scrolls (Jigoku sōshi), which are similar in size to the Eyeless. This suggests that Buddhist-oriented picturing was carried out on sutra scale.

127. Aizawa, “Menashikyō,” 75.

128. Ibid., 73.

129. The Itsuō fragment likely reflects an early state. Additional backing papers might have been added when restored. This explains the metallic elements sandwiched between the upper and lower papers of the Kyoto National Museum fragment.

130. Shirahata was the first to discuss this (“Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 265); Murakami identifies several bifurcated fragments that she argues should be rejoined (“‘Menashikyō’ shita-e no kentō to kōsatsu,” 205–6).

131. Shirahata, “Menashikyō ni tsuite,” 265.

132. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, 174.

133. It is difficult to tell if this is inversion or a heavy mica layer, but the tonality suggests inversion.

134. Note the odd continuation of the robes across the midline paper break in fig. 14.

135. There might also have been lines or scoring underneath the golden lines.

136. Genette, Palimpsests, 294, 397–98.

137. Ibid., 398.

138. Ibid., 398–99.

139. Doane, “Indexicality,” 2.

140. On the “disattend track,” see Duranti and Goodwin, Rethinking Context, 1–42, and Goffman, Frame Analysis, 202–10.

141. Davis, General Theory of Visual Culture, 126 (emphasis original). See also ibid., 123–28, and Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan, 97.

142. Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 119.

143. Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan, 123.

144. Kamens, Waka and Things, 5–7.

145. Cf. Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 122. Tanabe maintains that the “sūtra itself” remains the “primary context,” whereas I would argue that there is no primary context.

146. I am inspired by the use of Eco in Fricke, Fallen Idols, 251–52.

147. Kamens suggests Roman Jakobson’s “intersemiotic” or Irina Rajewsky’s “intermediality” (Waka and Things, 6).

148. Sano, “Menashikyō shita-e.”

149. On “metafictionality” in sutras, see Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body, 26–27.

150. On fragmentation in sutra reading, see ibid., 48–50, 163, 166. On sutra art, see Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 107–12; O’Neal, Word Embodied, esp. 134–64; Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra.

151. McCormick, “Ichiji rendai Hoke-kyō,” 121, and Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body, 166.

152. Kamens, Waka and Things, 159–201.

153. Ibid., 197.

154. For an analysis of Genji kuyō, see Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 248–50.

155. The first-documented Genji ipponkyō was accompanied by an invocatory statement by the Tendai preacher Chōken (1126–1203). See Bushelle, “Joy of the Dharma,” 279–327, cited and discussed in McCormick, “Ichiji rendai Hoke-kyō,” 121. See also Jamentz, “Buddhist Affirmation of Poetry,” 59–60.

156. For the most exhaustive study, see Brisset, À la croisée. For an important renunciation of Komastu’s misleading reading of ashide, see Egami, Ashide-e. Lamarre borrows Deleuze’s notion of the “multisensible figure” to argue for the “synthetic potential of the Heian text” (Uncovering Heian Japan, 116–39).

157. Brisset, À la croisée; Genette, Palimpsests, 399 (emphasis original). Alternatively, O’Neal terms such writing “scripted images” (Word Embodied, 150).

158. On this frontispiece, see Meech-Pekarik, “Disguised Scripts,” 52–78; Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body, 167–72; Kaufman, “Nature, Courtly Imagery,” 70–74; Abé, “Revisiting the Dragon Princess,” 27–70. Poetry might also be written on the cover. See Kamens, Waka and Things, 159–201.

159. Genette, Palimpsests, 294–96. On adapting Genette to sutra studies, see Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 126–27.

160. Lamarre’s preferred frame for ashide is the rebus (see Uncovering Heian Japan, 25, 97, 116–39).

161. Ibid., 182.

162. Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 59. For a recent study, see O’Neal, “Inscribing Grief and Salvation,” 5–28.

163. Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 58–60, and Kornicki, Book in Japan, 87–88.

164. Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 55, and Tanabe, “Persistence of Self,” 412.

165. Blair, “Mothers of the Buddhas,” 263–93.

166. Kornicki, Book in Japan, 88.

167. Sei, Pillow Book, 210 (section 257).

168. On the distinction between the European medieval palimpsest of erasure and the Joycean “palimpsest” of copresence, see Bolter, Writing Space, 135.

169. I am reminded of the “turning” of the Genji frontispieces with the Lotus Sūtra in the Genji ipponkuyō. See Bushelle, “Joy of Dharma,” 303–4.

170. On instrumentality, see Rambelli, “Dharma Devices.”

171. Akiyama believes the Lotus booklet pages to be “casual amateur sketches” or copies of illustrated tales in the hands of women (“Women Painters,” 170–72). Tanabe, however, argues the volume is complete (Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 60–63).

172. Albeit over-cited as evidentiary, the “Picture Match” chapter of the Genji mentions the practice of collecting interesting pictures for later use. See Abe et al., Genji monogatari, SNKBZ 21(2), 383–84, and Murasaki, Tale of Genji, 354, 367.

173. Tanabe, “Persistence of Self,” 411–12.

174. Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 150.

175. Ibid., 109–10, 250. O’Neal also takes this approach, extending William LaFleur’s use of nonduality as a poetic hermeneutic to sutras (Word Embodied, 146–50).

176. Bolter, Writing Space, 144.

177. Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 57.

178. Ibid., 58. The original states, “あるは綾の文に下繪をし、經の上下に繪を書き、又經のうちのことゞもを書き現し”; in English: “Others were written over pictures superimposed on damask, or contained pictures above and below the text, or provided textual illustrations”(trans. McCullough and McCullough, 2:531.

179. On fūryū, see Harries, “Fūryū,” 137–44, and Sano, Fūryū, zōkei, monogatari, 53–137. For “keyword,” see Sano, “Ōchō no bijutsu,” 156.

180. Lippit, “Figure and Facture,” 49–80; Jackson, Textures of Mourning; Jackson, “Dying in Two Dimensions,” 150–72.

181. Drucker, Visualization and Interpretation, 40, and Lippit, “Figure and Facture,” 63.

182. For the analogous passage in translation (of a difference recension), see Emmerick, Sūtra of Golden Light, 60.

183. On Kenshunmon’in’s artistic activities and her relationship to GoShirakawa, see Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi, 93ff., 107–9, 111, 157. On this commission, see Fujiwara, “Gyōji-e/Meisho-e,” 231–42; Fujiwara “Saishōkōin & Hōkongōin.” On portraiture, see Itō, Shōzōga no jidai. See also Akiyama, Japanese Painting, 80–81, and Graybill, “Kasen-e,” 68–70.

184. Three large-scale portraits in the possession of Jingoji Temple, each designated a National Treasure, were long thought to date to the original donation; their identity now is highly contested. See Kuroda, Kokuhō jingoji sanzō, and Yonekura, Minamoto no Yoritomo zō.

Interlude: Scriptural Geography

1. I thank Heather Russo for help with the Latin.

Chapter 4

1. The customary title is the Ajigiden. See Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:103, and Komatsu, “Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:101. Gi might also be translated as “meaning” or “definition,” but I prefer “significance” since the double entendre accords with Kūkai’s use of the term. See Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 290–93.

2. Rambelli, “Semiotic Articulation,” 17–36.

3. Ibid., 24.

4. Bogel, With a Single Glance, 39. On the materiality and performativity of sūtras, see Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, chap. 3. Winfield oscillates between these two poles. She argues that for Kūkai, “words are pictorial forms; objects of vision are texts”; that Kūkai asserted the “primacy of image over text”; and yet later, that “Kūkai saw images as text” (Icons and Iconoclasm, 77, 86, and 114, respectively).

5. Bogel argues Kūkai’s semiotics constitutes a “visual theory” (With a Single Glance, 37–38).

6. For an overview of Ajikan, see Yamasaki, Shingon, 190–215; Stone, “Just Open Your Mouth,” 167–89; Payne “Ajikan,” 219–48; Payne “Shingon Ajikan,” 215–29; Payne, Language in the Buddhist Tantra, chap. 9. See also Kitao, Mikkyō meisō no kenkyū, esp. 13–15 passim; Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, 8–9, 81–88; Rambelli, Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, 159–65; O’Neal, Word Embodied, 178–79.

7. On the physiological embodiment of the mind as a surface upon which to write, see Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body, 23–24, 36. Alternatives to the term grapheme might be A-syllable, A-letter, A-character, or A-glyph.

8. Rambelli, Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, 161. For his full discussion, see 159–65.

9. Abé, “Bridging Ritual and Text,” 51/1076 (dual pagination).

10. For an overview of the history of Siddhaṃ, see Van Gulik, Siddhaṃ, and Chaudhuri, “Siddham in China and Japan,” esp. 72–97.

11. The first academic publications were Kokkasha, “Ajigiden gamaki kai,” in Kokka 455: 279–80 and Kokka 456: 309. For the first in-depth analysis, see Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:100–112. On gender and audience, see Narihara, “Ajigie no kotobagaki hensha,” 15–38, and Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi, 1–31; see also Katsuura, “Tonsure Forms for Nuns,” 109–29. On this dearth of scholarship and the rationale behind not including the Significance in the initial Nihon emaki taisei compendium, see Komatsu, “Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:101–2.

12. Narihara, “Ajigie no kotobagaki hensha,” 18. Narihara reproduces an Edo-period image, but this picture has the A inside the body of Vairocana, not an adept. See Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 6, fig. 4.

13. On the agency of women in this historical context, see Akiyama, “Women Painters,” 159–84; Ruch, Engendering Faith; Gerhart, Women, Rites, and Ritual Objects.

14. The following exposition is in debt to Matsubara, esp. “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:101.

15. For a tabulation, see ibid.

16. Early modern sources attributed the scroll to Jakuren (the Buddhist name of Fujiwara no Sadanaga), yet as Matsubara notes, the style of Jakuren-attributed works varies. He nevertheless sees similarities with Jakuren’s Ippon-kyō waka kaishi of 1180–81 (“Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:109–11). By contrast, John M. Rosenfield identifies “the rapid, spiky, graceless brush-style of Fujiwara no Shunzei and Teika” (Portraits of Chōgen, 200).

17. I follow Matsubara’s parsing and précises (“Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:105–8).

18. I translate the first text as “Definition” to differentiate it from the scroll.

19. The original text reads as follows: “かきはつるままになみたをち / てひかこともやかかれはへらむ.” Tōbō Hokkyō is the honorific title of Gyōen, the sobriquet of Minamoto no Kunisuke (978–1047). See Ueda et al., Nihon jinmei daijiten, s.v. “行円(1).” For more on such collected “epistles,” see Komatsu, “Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:105. For more on Gyōen, as well as some genealogical speculation on what later agents (namely, Eikan, aka Yōkan) may have been in possession of his letters and involved in the Significance, see Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:109.

20. Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:106.

21. Matsubara suggests a third to a half is missing (ibid., 10:105).

22. The 1928 Kokka article suggested “mid-Kamakura period” (1185–1333) (Kokkasha, “Ajigiden gamaki kai,” [1928], 280). In 1968, Yanagisawa proposed “the early Kamakura period” (“Ajigie,” 72 [entry 48]).

23. Matsubara suggested the “1170s or 1180s” (“Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:111); Komatsu insisted “1160–1180” (“Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:107).

24. As Matsubara notes, there are hundreds of esoteric texts related to the Aji. See Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:107; For an introduction to Ajikan texts, see Yamasaki, Shingon, 190–215. On Kakuban’s Ajikan, see Kitao, Mikkyō meisō no kenkyū, esp. 167–89. Kitao explains that Kakuban’s Ajikan drew from sources other than Kūkai (15). According to his count, Kakuban discusses the Aji 239 times across more than sixty-five texts; for a tabulation, see 30ff. As discussed below, Narihara has expanded the field of comparison (“Ajigie no kotobagaki hensha,” 16). On Kakuban, including his ten Ajikan texts, see Van der Veere, Study into the Thought, esp. 94–99. Kakuban’s text is reproduced in parallel registers in Kitao, “Kōgyō daishi ni okeru ajikan,” 654–56.

25. Sasaki et al., “Fujita bijutsukan-zō-bon e-kotoba,” 40–41.

26. The first four texts are in kanbun kundokugo; the last, however, is likely not from a Chinese source but was written according to wabun grammar. See ibid., 33–34.

27. Ibid., 31.

28. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to Kamakura (1185–1333).

29. Kitao, “Kōgyō daishi ni okeru ajikan,” 637–59. The text was reproduced (honyaku) and further discussed in Kitao, Mikkyō meisō no kenkyū, esp. 167–89.

30. Kitao notes that the colophon departs from the Ajikan text but is in the same hand as the Musōkanju with which it is bound (gappon); thus the colophon applies to both (Mikkyō meisō no kenkyū, 76, 82). As reproduced, the transcription has this inscription appearing on page 25, immediately following the text that correlates to the Ajigi and Aji no kūnō of the Significance (Kitao, “Kōgyō daishi ni okeru ajikan,” 658–59).

31. Ueda et al., Nihon jinmei daijiten, s.v. “Yūgen” (融源). Cf., Kitao, who gives Yūgen’s dates as “(?–1147)” (Mikkyō meisō no kenkyū, 82).

32. The Significance ends just before a sentence in the Ninnaji version where Amida Buddha is likewise equated with the A. The Ninnaji-version “Definition” follows a sixteen-page Ajikan text, but seals on the backing papers of the Significance suggest the “Definition” has always led the Significance. Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:104. For more the “Definition” and “Efficacy” combination, see Kitao, “Kōgyō daishi ni okeru ajikan,” 638.

33. Yamasaki, Shingon, 190–93, 196, and Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:107.

34. Murphy, “Sanskrit Studies,” 985–96. On Siddhaṃ in Japan, see Takubo and Kaneyama, Bonji shittan, esp. 118–45. Brief but informative is the introductory note by Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945), published in the Dai Nihon bukkyō zensho series. The essay is accompanied by a linguistic tree diagram that situates the semantic, phonological, and graphic aspects of Siddhaṃ within the history of the world’s languages. See Takakusu’s preface (“Nihon bongakushi gaikan”) to his Sittan sensho mokuroku, 173–75. See also Van Gulik, Siddham, esp. 105–39.

35. Yamasaki, Shingon, 192ff. As Yamasaki writes, “Although moon visualization apparently predates the A-syllable visualization, the two are not essentially different since Mikkyō considers the A-syllable itself to be the originally unborn light of the moon disk” (198).

36. Primacy aside, the authenticity is questionable. See Yamasaki, Shingon, 193. As Kitao notes, it likely postdates Kūkai. Furthermore, Kūkai’s text should not be treated as an ur-text; by mid-Heian, it would seem that Ajikan drew upon multiple textual and pragmatic lineages (Mikkyō meisō no kenkyū, 15–18). Cf. Stone, “Just Open Your Mouth,” 169.

37. Van Gulik, Siddham, 110; Dreitlein, “Kūkai’s Bonji Shittan,” 137; Chaudhuri, “Siddham in China and Japan,” 72. According to his hagiography, Kūkai learned Sanskrit in China under the Kashmiri monk Prajñā (734–810?), gaining proficiency in fewer than four months. See Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 118–19, and Dreitlien, “Kūkai’s Bonji Shittan,” 137. Some hagiographers suggest the Siddhaṃ script led Kūkai to devise the kana writing system, yet phonographic writing systems were in use in the archipelago earlier. See Lurie, Realms of Literacy, 208.

38. This is Takagi and Dreitlein’s translation (Kūkai, Kūkai on the Philosophy of Language, 275–305). The present précis of the graphico-syllabary is indebted to the exposition of Dreitlein’s earlier translation of this work (“Kūkai’s Bonji Shittan,” 137–47).

39. The original text reads: 此是文字者自然道理之所作也. Kūkai, Kūkai on the Philosophy, 276–79. I thank William Bodiford for this translation.

40. Ibid., 290. For “eternal,” see Dreitlein, “Kūkai’s Bonji Shittan,” 138.

41. The original text reads: “音阿上聲呼訓無也不也非也。阿字者是一切法教之本。凡最初開口之音皆有阿聲。若離阿聲則無一切言説。故爲衆聲之母。又爲衆字之根本。又一切諸法本不生義。内外諸教皆從此字而出生也” (T 2701:84.0362.a10–41). The translation has been modified and rephrased here but closely adheres to that of Dreitlein, “Kūkai’s Bonji Shittan,” 143, and Kūkai, Kūkai on the Philosophy, 292.

42. See Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 207.

43. Ibid.

44. On the sublexical and supralexical aspects, see Rambelli, “Semiotic Articulation,” esp. 22–29.

45. On metapragmatics, see Silverstein, “Shifters, Linguistic Categories,” 11–55, and Silverstein, “Metapragmatic Discourse,” 33–58.

46. On the relationship of Sanskrit linguistics to Kūkai’s ontology, see Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 278–304.

47. Benjamin, “Task of the Translator,” 69–82.

48. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 280–89. A dhāraṇī is an incantatory phrase. See ibid., 4–7, and Stone, “Just Open Your Mouth,” 168.

49. Seckel, Before and Beyond the Image, 74–80, and Payne, “Ajikan,” 222–23.

50. For the aleph, see Neef, Imprint and Trace, 9–13.

51. Cf. Payne, who argues that this ritual presupposes literacy or at least a grammarian’s understanding of language, evoking the “aesthetics of literacy” (“Ajikan,” 236). See also Chaudhuri, “Siddham in China and Japan,” 72–73.

52. See Lurie, Realms of Literacy, 169–70.

53. Cf. Komatsu, “Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:104–5.

54. Naitō, “Kyōzō no seiritsu,” 49.

55. Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 10. See also Greene, Chan Before Chan, 101.

56. Komatsu, “Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:104, 107.

57. I am wary of projecting the evidential nature of photography onto this earlier context. Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 9. A similar photograph appears in Yamasaki, Shingon, 191.

58. On the honorifics, see Narihara, “Ajigie,” 18.

59. Yamasaki, Shingon, 198–99; Van der Veere, Study into the Thought, 97–98; Kitao, Mikkyō meisō no kenkyū, 15, 35–49.

60. Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 21.

61. They were added, that is, “Meiji or thereafter.” See Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:104.

62. Komatsu, “Ajigi zuhan kaisetsu,” 10:4.

63. The absent “brush” is Tachibana no Hayanari (782–844 CE).

64. Kurokawa et al., eds., Zōho kōko gafū, 1:12. Mention of a male-female pair is in the first note, which cites the earlier Inventory of Antique Paintings (Koga mokuroku). On this text vis-à-vis the Ajigi, see Komatsu, “Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:102–3.

65. Suzuki, Shoki emakimono, 545.

66. Yanagisawa, “Ajigie,” 72.

67. Komatsu, “Ajigi zuhan kaisetsu,” 10:4.

68. Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:104.

69. Naitō, “Kyōzō no seiritsu,” 49.

70. Katsuura, “Tonsure Forms for Nuns,” 109–29.

71. Ibid., 120–22. Narihara also gives examples from the early eleventh century, and, like Katsuura, notes the two-stage tonsure process and the full tonsure’s connotation of illness and death. Narihara, “Ajigi-e,” 22–23.

72. Stone, “Just Open Your Mouth.” Van der Veere notes that Kakuban’s Ajikan was perhaps motivated by his mother’s illness and impending death. He further notes most of Kakuban’s texts on the A came at the end of his life (Van der Veere, Study into the Thought, 95, 98).

73. Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 22.

74. Ibid., esp. 13, 19. Only one fully tonsured nun can be identified in a proximate manuscript: a frontispiece from the Taira Family Sūtras. Even so, the gender is ambiguous since the attribution is made on sartorial grounds alone. On the propitious death and rebirth of women, see Obara, “Rebirth of Women,” 441–62.

75. Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 15–16.

76. Abé, “Revisiting the Dragon Princess,” 40–45.

77. Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:112n18. Matsubara refers to the aforementioned directionality of the lotus blossom and a mention of Buddhahood-in-this-body (sokushin jōbutsu) in the fourth, mantra text. See also Sasaki et al., “Fujita bijutsukan-zō-bon e-kotoba,” 33.

78. In her words, “The idiosyncratic figure of the nun reflects the particular circumstances and viewpoint of women.” Narihara, “Ajigie,” 23–25.

79. Narihara, “Ajigie,” 24.

80. I caution against the historiographical habit of gendering the Heian period and its material culture. See Yoda, Gender and National Literature, esp. 25–40, 72–76.

81. Hikime-kagibana style was a primary concern of the 1928 article. For more on hikime-kagibana, see Akiyama, Ōchō kaiga no tanjō, 136–39, and Murashige, “Hikime-kagibanakō,” 139–56.

82. This was noted as early as the first Kokka article.

83. Komatsu speculated this was made for a “juvenile woman” or later that “this handscroll was made at the behest of the emperor for appropriately aristocratic women of the inner palace, and Eikan (a.k.a. Yōkan) himself likely selected the texts” (“Ajigi zuhan kaiseitsu,” 9). He subsequently suggested the figure represents a young, tonsured woman (“Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:107). Rosenfield likewise suggested a popular audience (Portraits of Chōgen, 200). On treating kana as feminine, see Yoda, Gender and National Literature, 81–110. For a critique of this trope in the context of medieval small-format handscrolls, see McCormick, Tosa Mitsunobu, 47, 72ff.

84. Murashige, “Hikime-kagibanakō,” 148.

85. Ema, Keppatsu keshō komamono hakimono shi, 73

86. The pattern on the man’s nōshi robe suggests summer. Komatsu, “Ajigi zuhan kaisetsu,” 10:5; Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:110; Suzuki, Shoki emakimono, 535.

87. He is, however, only wearing a single under-robe (hitoe), which is only visible at the sleeve and bottom hems. For an illustration, see Izutsu, Genshoku Nihon fukushokushi, 76–77.

88. Komatsu and Matsubara use uwagi whereas Suzuki and Narihara use uchigi (Komatsu, “Ajigi zuhan kaisetsu,” 10:4; Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:110; Suzuki, Shoki emakimono, 545; Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 16). Komatsu suggest that the kesa type worn here (gojō) indicates a novice (“Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:107). While uchiki were common clothing for aristocratic women, they were not always exclusively worn by women. Nihon daihyakka zensho, s.v. “袿.” The uchiki was a highly flexible item of clothing. See Masuda, Nihon ifuku shi, 139. For documentary references to uchiki, see Akanekai, Heianchō fukushoku hyakkajiten, s.v. “うちき.”

89. Imperial princes that had become priests wore similar robes. For an illustration, see Izutsu, Genshoku Nihon fukushokushi, 110–11. The picture closest to this is found in the Kanjibon chapter of the Taira Family Sūtras, wherein a woman is dressed in a green robe with gold pants but wearing a headscarf (mōsu). If this figure were indeed Kūkai, then he should be in a black robe. See Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 12, 16.

90. Roughly contemporaneous with this scroll is the Torikaebaya monogatari, a late Heian story that revolves around the lives of two half-siblings—assigned male and female genders at birth—who experience gender dysphoria as children and so transition to their sibling’s gender. For a translation, see Willig, The Changelings. See also Pflugfelder, “Strange Fates.”

91. Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:105, 109. Narihara suggest the two figures are related; perhaps husband and wife or mother and son. See Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 17–18, and Narihara, “Ajigie,” 23. See also Komatsu, “Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:104.

92. Komatsu, “Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:101, and Matsubara, “Ajigi to sono haikei,” 10:102, 104.

93. “阿字を胸に持す” (Kokkasha. “Ajigiden gamaki kai” [1928], 309); “胸を開いて阿の梵字を現した” (Suzuki, Shoki emakimono, 545 [emphasis added]).

94. “梵字の「阿」を胸の部分に入れた” (Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 1); “肌に表した” (Komatsu, “Kyōten emaki no tanjō,” 7:104 [emphasis added]).

95. “胸の部分の阿字を見せる” (Narihara, “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi,” 3); “阿字が現れた月輪を胸中に抱いた” (Naitō, “Kyōzō no seiritsu,” 49 [emphasis added]).

96. “ あらわにした胸に月輪を抱き” (Tokyo National Museum, Wayō no sho, entry 70 by Okimatsu Kenjirō); “阿字の観想を象徴的に描いた” (Nara National Museum, Tokubetsuten jōsei to bukkyō, entry 53 by Nakajima Hiroshi).

97. Morse, “Revealing the Unseen,” 36, and Seckel, Before and Beyond the Image, 76–77.

98. To some, it may appear as a speech bubble, but this would be anachronistic.

99. I thank Christian Luczanits for his comments concerning this moment in the painting.

100. Katsuura, “Tonsure Forms,” 111 (emphasis added).

101. On bokuhitsu, see Van Gulik, Siddhaṃ, 55–71.

102. Other Ajikan texts give slightly different instructions. For instance, Narihara has reproduced the “Efficacy” in parallel with the Collected Writings of Kūkai (Kōbōdaishi zenshū), a recension of Kakuban’s Ajikan in the Eizan Library (Eizan bunko), and a text titled Ajikan by Jien (1155–1225). Of these, the Zenshū version omits these lines and begins on what is line 5 of the “Efficacy.” The Eizan text states, “You should draw the A character and visualize it” (画阿字可観之; emphasis added), and the orthography of draw (kaku) suggests a picture rather than a textual character. The Jien version, in kana, is ambiguous. (N.B., line 66 of the “Efficacy” text is erroneously omitted in Narihara’s reproduction). For Narihara’s discussion, see “Ajigie,” 16–17.

103. On hair in icons, see ten Grotenhuis, “Collapsing the Distinction,” 876–92.

104. On the performativity of irresolution, see O’Neal, Word Embodied, 228–31.

105. See Kūkai, Kūkai on the Philosophy, 92–93. For an alternative translation, see Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 278 and 281 (emphasis original). See Winfield’s discussion of this passage in Icons and Iconoclasm, 72–74.

106. Cf. one of the most commonly cited passages of Kūkai’s text, in which he likens the world to a vast manuscript. Winfield and Abé both cite the Collection of Verses Expounding Spiritual Essences (Henjō hakki seireishū or shōryōshū), but their translations vary significantly. Abé cites “Yama ni asonde sen o shitou no shi.” Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 288, and Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, 74–77, esp. 75,

107. See also Bogel, With a Single Glance, esp. chaps. 6–9; Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, esp. chaps. 2 and 3; Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 125–26. Materiality is richly explored throughout Rambelli’s works.

108. Rambelli, “Semiotic Articulation,” 17–36.

109. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 279 (emphasis original). For a discussion of this passage, see also Payne, Language in the Buddhist Tantra, 86.

110. The quotation is from Rambelli, “Semiotic Articulation,” 27.

111. See also Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 279. Later he describes this as follows, “Voice has first to be writing before it ceases to be a meaningless cry and becomes speech. Only after writing, and then speech, does there arise reality, the object of signs that produce meaning” (282 [emphasis added]).

112. Rambelli, “Semiotic Articulation,” 20–22; Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 213–19; Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, 74–77; Payne, Language in the Buddhist Tantra, 78–79.

113. Rambelli, “Semiotic Articulation,” 20–21.

114. Abé, “Bridging Ritual and Text,” 1083/44 (dual pagination).

115. Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, esp. 72.

116. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 280. Cf. Winfield, who uses a variety of terms, including “visual alphabet,” “alphabet of optical form,” “image-letters,” “idea-graphic shapes,” and “pattern-letters.” (Icons and Iconoclasm).

117. Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, 77–81. In the same sentence, she argues “objects of vision are texts,” yet I diverge from this latter conclusion.

118. Rambelli, “Semiotic Articulation,” 23.

119. Cf. Bogel’s “visuality,” and “visual theory” (With a Single Glance, esp. 57–60, 37–38. Bogel notes the way in which Buddhist vocabulary came to influence the aesthetic vocabulary of Heian “secular” visual culture (180). My use of aesthetics here seems to be closer to her notion of “ways of seeing” (215).

120. Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, 71.

121. Cited and discussed in Rambelli, “Texts, Talismans, Jewels,” 72. See also his discussion of the importance of materiality to Kūkai’s semiotics: Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 118.

122. Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 112.

123. Cited and discussed in Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 297. The passage appears a second time (339) in Abé’s text, with slight variation. Cf. Bogel’s treatment of this passage vis-à-vis verisimilitude (With a Single Glance, 177). See also Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, 69.

124. Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, 69.

125. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 289. Takagi and Dreitlein give the following translation: “Paintings of various sentient and insentient beings are also the letters of form. Silk brocade, embroidered cloth, patterned cloth, silk gauze, and so on are also the letters of form.” (Kūkai, Kūkai and the Philosophy, 114).

126. For the classic treatment, see Bal and Bryson, “Semiotics and Art History,” 174–208, esp. 194.

127. “The Dharmakāya can then be located nowhere but in the text, both in the letters and between the text’s letters, where the letters manifest themselves as the traces of difference.” Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 283 (emphasis original).

128. Derrida, Truth in Painting, 83–118.

129. The metaphor of the universe-as-manuscript (or as a series of three manuscripts) first arose in South Asia. Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 116–19; Gómez, “Whole Universe as a Sūtra,” 107–12. Cf. John Chrysotom or Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, where one finds Creation metaphorically likened to a legible book. Fricke, Fallen Idols, 166.

130. On the notion of what “reading” means for sūtras, see Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 88–107.

131. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 297.

132. Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 118.

133. Rambelli, “Text, Talismans, and Jewels,” 73. Whereas Rambelli stresses the term’s autographic valence, Winfield suggests a reading closer to the photographic hologram. See Winfield, Icon and Iconoclasm, 23.

134. On the importance of this distinction in East Asian visuality, see Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, chap. 4.

135. Ibid.

136. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 295.

137. Bodiford, trans., “Chidō’s Dreams of Buddhism,” 242–43. Curiously, Chidō does not use the verb kan but yasunjiru. For the original, see Miyasaka, Kana hōgushū, NKBT 83:216.

138. Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, chap. 3; Eubanks, “Circumambulatory Reading,” 1–24; Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body, chap. 4.

139. Kornicki, Book in Japan, 251–58; on the prevalence of “non-hermeneutic” forms of reading in Japanese Buddhism, see Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, chap. 3.

140. See Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body, 36, 54–61, 102, 108, 112, 116, 122, 125, 138, 180. Cf. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 303. See also Rambelli, “Materiality, Labor, and Signification,” 10.

141. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 302.

142. See Goodman, Languages of Art, 53. Alternatively, this might be what Rambelli terms an “ostensive sign” (Buddhist Materiality, 123).

143. I thank David Lubin for highlighting this parallelism.

144. Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 112.

145. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 303.

146. Ibid., 286.

147. Dolce, “Embryonic Generation,” 270–77.

148. Ibid, 253–310.

149. Ibid., 277.

150. Ibid., 280–93. See Kitao, “Hase bunko zō,” 258–93.

151. Stone, “Just Open Your Mouth.”

152. Ibid., 177. Stone writes it was Kakuban’s contemporary Jichihan (1089–1144) who first used Ajikan in a mortuary context (168, 172–74, 176).

153. Ibid., 177. On “deathbed visions,” see Greene, Chan Before Chan, 147–55.

154. Stone, “Just Open Your Mouth,” 184.

155. Hare, “Reading,” 188.

156. Sanford, “Breath of Life,” 69–80.

157. Ibid., 74. N.B., Sanford transliterates the name as Jitsuhan.

158. Ibid., 74–76.

159. For this passage in Kakuban’s Ajikan, see Payne, Language in the Buddhist Tantra, 138.

160. Sanford, “Breath of Life,” 76–78. As he notes, Kakuban interpreted the Namu of Namu Amida Butsu as kimyō (lit., “return to life”), which mapped onto the ōjō (rebirth) trope of Pure Land.

161. This would not be prescriptively documented until the mid-thirteenth century, but the logic certainly held earlier. Stone, “Just Open Your Mouth,” 181–82.

162. Greene, Secrets of Buddhist Meditation, chap. 3.

163. Cf. Fricke’s discussion of spiritual mimesis in Christian contexts. Fricke, Fallen Idols, 183.

164. The phrase is taken from LaFleur, “Hungry Ghosts,” 278.

Interlude: Jeweled Eyes

1. Morse, “Revealing the Unseen,” 32–38, and Sharf, review of Secrets of the Sacred, by Helmut Brinker, 166–67.

2. Faure, “Buddhist Icon,” 779–80, 785–86.

3. Rambelli, “Dharma Devices,” 67–69; Faure, “Buddhist Icon,” 780; Morse, “Revealing the Unseen,” 27–28.

4. Belting, Face and Mask, 6–7. This would make a Japanese sculpture with crystal eyes a “living mask” or “bodily facsimile,” a phenomenon he identifies only in contemporary work (170–71). Cf. Fricke, Fallen Idols, 183.

5. The term prosthesis inevitably evokes the modern notion of glass eyes, yet only in 1885 would Takahashi Koshun (1854–1938) first engineer ceramic and glass eye prostheses in Japan for human use. Mishima, History of Ophthalmology, 255.

Chapter 5

1. Winfield uses the apt phrase “thought forms” (Icons and Iconoclasm, 16).

2. Sugita, Dawn, 29–38. For the original, see Sugita, “Rangaku Kotohajime,” 1:14.

3. Rambelli, “Dharma Devices.”

4. For dispositif, see Belting, Anthropology of Images.

5. Copp, “Visualization and Contemplation,” 141–45, and Greene, Secrets of Buddhist Meditation.

6. Sharf, “Visualization and Mandala,” 196 (see also 163). For a response to Sharf’s critique, see Gardiner, “Metaphor and Maṇḍala,” 43–55.

7. Copp, “Visualization and Contemplation,” 142.

8. For this historiography, see Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, chap. 1. Bogel has extensively explored “mind imagery” in Japanese esoteric Buddhist culture (With a Single Glance, esp. chaps. 6, 8, 9).

9. Sharf, “Visualization and Mandala,” 196; see also 163. For an extended discussion of kan, see Bogel, With a Single Glance, 191–96. For a discussion of visualization at Mogao Cave 254, see Abe, “Art and Practice,” 5–9. Alan Sponberg discusses a similar translation issue regarding “meditation,” which is “at once too vague and too specific” (“Meditation in Fa-hsiang Buddhism,” 16–20, 36). For a recent rigorous and compelling discussion of these lexical issues in a Chinese Buddhist context, see Greene, Secrets of Buddhist Meditation, 13–17, 26–34, 58–61; Greene, Chan Before Chan, 79–81; Greene, “Meditation, Repentance,” 139–98.

10. Shirakawa, Jitsū, s.v. “kan.” See also Copp, “Visualization and Contemplation,” 141–42, and Sharf, “Visualization and Mandala,” 163, 196.

11. Kan as a noun can also signify a “way of seeing” irrespective of object. See Sponberg, “Meditation in Fa-hsiang Buddhism,” 34.

12. Cf. the case with Chinese xiang and guan. Greene, Secrets of Buddhist Meditation, 31.

13. For more on this passage, see Bogel, With a Single Glance, 215.

14. See his Principles of the A-Syllable Visualization (Ajikan hōsoku), translated and cited in Yamasaki, Shingon, 211.

15. Kakuban, translated and quoted in Yamasaki, Shingon, 203.

16. Ibid. Akin to the use of xiang in Chinese Buddhism. Greene, Secrets of Buddhist Meditation, 31.

17. Bogel, With a Single Glance, 198, see also 190.

18. “The apparent distinction between ‘visualizing’ and actually ‘seeing’ . . . probably becomes meaningless as one’s skill in the technique is perfected.” Sponberg, “Meditation in Fa-hsiang Buddhism,” 27. For a discussion, see Bogel, With a Single Glance, 194–95.

19. Yamasaki, Shingon, 210–11.

20. I thank Patricia Berger for alerting me this. The locus classiscus is the case of Queen Vaidehī. See Bogel, With a Single Glance, 193–94. See also Greene, Chan Before Chan, 69.

21. Bogel, With a Single Glance, 59.

22. For the possibility of a split between contemplative and optical visuality, see ibid., 216.

23. Davis, General Theory of Visual Culture, esp. chaps. 1, 6, and 8.

24. Bogel, With a Single Glance, 205 (emphasis original).

25. On “picturing,” see DeLue, “Picturing,” 26.

26. Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, 8–9.

27. See appendix B, line 31.

28. “Morphing images” such as the lotus-disk syllable are the exception. See Sharf, “Visualization and Mandala,” 163–66. On such techniques, see Yamasaki, Shingon, 154–59.

29. Yamasaki, Shingon, 157–58. Bogel states, “After Kūkai’s time, the expansion and contraction elements of the rite were associated with the Diamond World lineage, not with the Womb lineage derived from the Mahāvairocana Sūtra” (With a Single Glance, 200n61). We will return to this division below.

30. Greene, Chan Before Chan, 60–63.

31. The Edo-period priest Zōei likewise instructs one to view the lotus-disk-character complex alternately in the heart and in front of the eyes. Payne, “Shingon Ajikan,” 219. I credit an anonymous reviewer for the fascinating notion of “breath space,” which is actually a provocative way to describe the whole virtual world of the Significance pictures.

32. Abe cites the reverse vectors of visualization in the Sea Sutra and Maitreya Visualization Sutra; in the former, one visualizes Śakyāmuni’s presence in the context of the practitioner, whereas in the latter one visualizes oneself in the context of Maitreya (“Art and Practice,” 8).

33. Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 116–29.

34. Ibid., 117–20. Bogel, too, has argued against an artificial secular/Buddhist divide (With a Single Glance, 55–57).

35. Leclercq, “Contemplation Revisited,” 285–88.

36. Hamburger, “Speculations on Speculation,” 368–69. For the citations here, see Hahn, “Visuality,” 45.

37. Hamburger, “Speculations on Speculation,” 358–59.

38. Morgan, Sacred Gaze.

39. Bogel notes the need for more ophthalmological and physiological research in Buddhism (With a Single Glance, 145).

40. Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 130.

41. Rambelli notes that “Indian and Chinese physicians” held the cardiac organ to be morphologically similar to a lotus bud; the number eight, however, seems to have been based upon readings of the Commentary on the Dainichikyō (Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, 159–60). The much later Ajikan yōketsu by Ekō (1666–1734) likens the shape of the heart to the negative space formed by the joining of the hands in a mudra used during the visualization ritual; as two digits were excluded from this shape, the hollow was eightfold. See Yamasaki, “Ajikan ni okeru hōkai teiin,” 35.

42. Mishima, History of Ophthalmology, 53–59.

43. Triplett, Buddhism and Medicine, 83–86.

44. The other family of court physicians, the Wake, likewise kept its knowledge guarded. Goble, Confluences of Medicine, 25–27.

45. Otsuka, “Chinese Traditional Medicine,” 331.

46. Sakai, Jintaikan no rekishi, 234–35; Goble, “Kajiwara Shōzen,” 234; Mishima, History of Ophthalmology, 75–77.

47. Mishima, History of Ophthalmology, 75–77.

48. Sakai, Jintaikan no rekishi, 235.

49. Moreover, not all living beings have hearts; “sentient beings” extends beyond animals. See appendix B, line 58; and Yamasaki, “Ajikan ni okeru hōkai teiin,” 34.

50. Rambelli, Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, 159.

51. See Goble, Confluences of Medicine, 62.

52. Tanba et al., Essentials of Medicine, 1:16–17.

53. Rambelli, Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, 159. The literature on the embodied mind is vast. For an accessible précis, see Johnson, “Mind Incarnate,” 46–54. See also Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh.

54. Rambelli, Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, 159.

55. The original text reads as follows: “阿字は月輪の種子、月輪は阿字の光なり。月輪と阿字と全く一なり。 . . . 八葉の蓮華とは [Siddhaṃ: hṛdaya] 心是れなり。[Siddhaṃ: citta] 心は此の蓮華に住す。此の二心は暫時も離れざるが故に、蓮華の上に月輪を観すべし。月輪とは [citta]心なり。[citta]心の形は実に月輪の形の如し。月輪の形の円形なることは水精多珠等の如し。又蓮華の種子は阿字なり。故に月輪の中に阿字を観すべし.” Cited in Yamasaki, “Ajikan ni okeru hōkai teiin,” 31–32. The translation here is mine.

56. He cites commentary on the Lotus Sūtra and the Heart Sūtra. The lineage from the Bodaishinron privileged the citta “mind” reading, whereas the lineage of the Dainichikyō privileged the hṛdaya “heart” reading. See ibid., 32–33.

57. Kūkai, Kūkai on the Philosophy of Language, 106–9. The translators, Takagi and Dreitlein, note that Kūkai is citing the Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi Sūtra.

58. Rambelli, Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, 159–60.

59. Ibid., 162.

60. Ibid., 161.

61. Textual sources bear this out. Yamasaki notes two passages in the Secret Treasury (Hizōki) where Kūkai avers that the two hearts are indistinguishable and that “the heart of the unawakened is like a closed lotus, but the heart of the saint resembles one fully opened” (“Ajikan ni okeru hōkai teiin,” 34).

62. Cf. Mircea Eliade’s notion of projection onto an “inner screen,” discussed in Greene, “Meditation, Repentance,” 145.

63. Payne, Language in the Buddhist Tantra, 139.

64. On medical knowledge vis-à-vis Buddhist visualization in a Chinese context, see Greene, Secrets of Buddhist Meditation, 64–73.

65. Greene, Secrets of Buddhist Meditation, 44, see also 69–73.

66. For an accessible introduction, see Lopez, “Buddha,” 13–36.

67. Nevertheless, as Eric Greene notes, there is a way in which one can conceive of the “visualization” of the internal organs as a form of empirical observation—seeing a real, material thing-in-this-world—even if that object of vision is visually inaccessible (“Meditation, Revelation” 163).

68. Brinker, Secrets of the Sacred, and Brinker, “Anointing with Eyes,” 151–69. The bibliography in Japanese is extensive. For foundational studies, see the introductory essays in Monbushō and Bunkachō, Jūyō bunkazai bekkan: Zōnai nōnyūhin, and Kurata, Zōnai nōnyūhin. For recent studies in English, see Wu, “Wooden Statues as Living Bodies”; Morse, “Revealing the Unseen”; Chan, “Revealing the Miraculous.”

69. Faure, “Buddhist Icon and Modern Gaze,” 780, 799–802.

70. Sharf, review of Secrets of the Sacred, by Brinker, 166–67. Sharf cautions against the Eurocentric “animation” rubric.

71. For an introduction to the “Seiryōji Shaka,” see Brinker, Secrets of the Sacred, 14–16; Tanabe, “Persistence of Self,” 413–16.

72. Sharf, “Introduction,” 14–15, and Brinker, Secrets of the Sacred, 16–23.

73. See Brinker, Secrets of the Sacred, 33–43, and Nara National Museum, Sacred Ningbo, 280–81, items 23–24.

74. Faure, “Buddhist Icon and Modern Gaze,” 780.

75. On Kuno, see Aoki, Butsuzō no shirarezaru nakami.

76. Morse, “Revealing the Unseen,” 32–38. Brinker argues gorintō were especially propitious in memorial contexts since their rich elemental and numerological metaphors allowed them to “represent the Buddha-body in its essential nature” (“Body, Relic and Image,” 57–58).

77. Morse, “Revealing the Unseen,” 36–37.

78. Ibid., 37–38.

79. Originally made for the Western Golden Hall, they were moved to the Central Golden Hall in 1819. See the temple’s online catalogue:https://www.kohfukuji.com/property/b-0055/

80. Monbushō and Bunkachō, Jūyō bunkazai bekkan: Zōnai nōnyūhin, 2:92.

81. See ibid.

82. The passage reads as follows: “Lord of Mysteries, what is bodhi? It means to know one’s mind as it really is. Lord of Mysteries, this is anuttarā samyaksaṃbodhi [unsurpassed, perfect, and full awakening], and there is not the slightest part of it that can be apprehended. Why? [Because] bodhi has the characteristic of empty space, and there is no one to comprehend it, nor is there any understanding of it. Why? Because bodhi has no [differentiating] characteristics.” See Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi Sūtra, 5. The original is as follows: “祕密主云何菩提。謂如實知自心。祕密主是阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。乃至彼法。少分無有可得。何以故。虚空相是菩提無知解者。亦無開曉。何以故。菩提無相故.” T 848:18.1.c1–5.

83. Monbushō and Bunkachō, Jūyō bunkazai bekkan: Zōnai nō’nyūhin, vol. 2, colorplate 5 (entry by Washizuka Hiromitsu), n.p.

84. Evidence suggests this lotus-disk-mantra complex was originally positioned in the center of the icon’s chest. Washizuka Hiromitsu traces this iconographic type to the seated Amida statue at the Byōdōin in Uji (ibid.).

85. Starved and ill bodies might have informed the appearance of hungry ghosts. See LaFleur, “Hungry Ghosts,” 271–303.

86. Zushi typically refers to an icon that is inside of a miniaturized architectural structure with flanking doors. See Chan, “Concept of Zushi,” 17–37.

87. 黒漆小龕 (首掛駄都種子曼荼羅).

88. I thank Bodiford for this suggestion. For more on etoki, see Kaminishi, Explaining Pictures.

89. On prostheses, see Rambelli, “Dharma Devices,” esp. 68–69.

90. On Buddhist relics, see Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes; Strong, Relics of the Buddha, 8–20, 117; Faure, Visions of Power, 158–73, 204; and Sharf, “Buddha’s Finger Bones,” 38–59.

91. On the Mandala of the Two Realms, see ten Grotenhuis, Japanese Mandalas, 33–95, and Sharf, “Visualization and Mandala,” 151–97. As Sharf argues, the two never comprised a system in China, even if they later would in Japan (“Introduction,” 40).

92. Sharf, “Visualization and Mandala,” 186–7.

93. The earliest mention seems to be a frontispiece explanation (kuchi-e kaisetsu) by Naitō, “Kuchi-e kaisetsu” (1995). It is repeated in the catalogue of a recent exhibition. See Nara National Museum, Ninshō, entry 28 by Naitō Sakae.

94. Naitō, “Kuchi-e kaisetsu”; Nara National Museum, Ninshō, entry 28.

95. On the Risshū lineage, see Pinte, “Shingon Risshū,” 845–53. On Eison’s portrait, see Groner, “Icons and Relics,” 114–50.

96. Hollows on the bottom led Kawada to propose a docking base for enshrinement (Busshari no shōgon, 296–9, 337). Note Faure’s notion of the body as a “corporeal tomb” or stupa (Visions of Power, 209–11). For a discussion of body-as-vessel metaphors, see Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body, esp. 23, 54, 56–59, 138.

97. Naitō, “Kyōzō no seiritsu,” 43–61.

98. Naitō, “Kuchi-e kaisetsu”; Nara National Museum, Busshari to hōju, entry 87 by Naitō; Nara National Museum, Ninshō, entry 28. On sonshō mandala, see ten Grotenhuis, Japanese Mandalas, 101–3.

99. Naitō, Shari shōgon bijutsu no kenkyū, 220, and Nakano, “Myōe shōnin to kagami,” 13–15.

100. Naitō, “Kuchi-e kaisetsu;” and Naitō, Shari shōgon bijutsu no kenkyū, 220. He wishes to categorize the feretory as the principal icon (honzon) used in the nyohōsonshōhō ritual, which was popular from the late Heian to Kamakura periods in the Ono lineage of Shingon Buddhism.

101. A painting does exist at the same temple, but it is presumed to have been modeled on the sculptures later. See Tokyo National Museum, Treasures from Ninnaji Temple and Omuro, 100.

102. It is surprising Naitō does not suggest this; he had situated the feretory with the Ajikan tradition in his earlier work (“Kyōzō no seiritsu,” 49–52). Yet as Nakano notes, the Ajikan tradition was syncretic, making it plausible the feretory could have been both a sonshō mandala and an Ajikan icon (“Myōe shōnin to kagami,” 24–30).

103. The dedicatory papers behind the central disk bear seed-syllable inscriptions that further accord with the iconography of Mahāvairocana in the Diamond World Mandala, hence a four-layered presence. See Nara National Museum, Ninshō, entry 28.

104. Yamasaki, Shingon, 201.

105. On visual “efficacy,” see Bogel, With a Single Glance, 57.

106. Brinker, Secrets of the Sacred, 45–50, and Groner, “Icons and Relics,” 142–50.

107. Davis, Visuality and Virtuality, 5.

108. On “living images” and “living icons,” see Sharf and Sharf, Living Images. See also Groner’s attestation that Eison’s “living statue” was designed as a material embodiment of his spirit (“Icons and Relics,” 142–50).

109. Wayman, “Mirror-like Knowledge,” 353–63, and Wayman, “Mirror as a Pan-Buddhist Metaphor-Simile,” 251–69.

110. Yamasaki, Shingon, 199.

111. Naitō, “Kyōzō no seiritsu,” 52.

112. Naitō Sakae, quoted in Yamasaki, Shingon, 214. The title is Stone’s translation.

113. Sheen’s capacity for animation is from Fricke, who argues that the glistening aspect of gold unites representation and presence (Fallen Idols, 177–80).

114. Belting, Anthropology of Images, esp. 1, 5, 11.

115. Ibid., 22.

116. Ibid., 32.

117. Wood, review of Bild-Anthropologie, by Hans Belting, 373, and Gaiger, “Idea of a Universal Bildwissenschaft,” 212. Also relevant are the “Protestant” methodological biases in Buddhist studies. See Sharf, “Introduction,” 46; Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, chap. 1; Greene, Chan Before Chan, 9, 15; Greene, Secrets of Buddhist Meditation, 45.

118. Wood, “Image and Thing,” 136.

119. Belting, Anthropology of Images, 5.

120. For this use of “apparitional” see Wood, review of Bild-Anthropologie, by Hans Belting, 372.

121. Kūkai, Kūkai on the Philosophy, 93, 104–15, see also Takagi’s introduction, esp. 21; Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 275–304, esp. 279; Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm, 71–77; and, for the most thorough treatment, Bogel, With a Single Glance, 37–38, 57–60, esp. 146–48, 189–205. For a comparative European example, see Hamburger, “The Visual and the Visionary,” 161–82.

122. Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 280.

123. Davis, General Theory of Visual Culture, 233.

124. Ibid., 231 (emphasis original).

125. This argument appears in Kūkai’s On the Meaning of Sound, Letters, and Reality. See Kūkai, Kūkai on the Philosophy, 79–125, esp. 92–3. For an alternative translation, see Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 278 and 281. On Kakuban’s thoughts on visualization, see Abé, “Bridging Ritual and Text,” 60–61.

126. This process is the main theme of Bogel’s study. It stems from Kūkai’s statement: “One look and one becomes a Buddha.” Bogel suggests awakening is tantamount to unmediated perception (With a Single Glance, 59).

127. In fact, Yogācāra Buddhist thought actually posits a sequential series of “eyes” that the practitioner attains as they move toward the ultimate goal of the Buddha Eye. Triplett, Buddhism and Medicine, 71–73, and Bogel, With a Single Glance, 144.

Chapter 6

1. Rosenblum, “Picasso and the Typography,” 49. See also Ulmer, “Object of Post-Criticism,” 84.

2. Poggi, In Defiance of Painting, 257.

3. This is the primary thesis of Ulmer, “Object of Post-Criticism.”

4. Bosseur, Collage, 213–14. As he aptly notes, it seems we must either limit “collage” to its first moments or throw it open to the whole field. Bosseur explicitly lists the Anthology (the “Ishiyama manuscript”) as a “precursor.”

5. For recent attempts, see Elliott, “Collage over the Centuries,” 9–23, and Gowrley, “Collage Before Modernism,” 25–33. On collage in Europe, see Möbius, Montage und Collage.

6. The work originally appeared in German. See Wescher, Collage, 8–9, 401.

7. The two competing “firsts” are Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning (1912) and Braque’s Fruit Dish and Glass (1912).

8. The dates are according to Mostow, At the House of Gathered Leaves, 146.

9. On Kintō’s anthologizing activities, see Tahara, Sanjūrokuninshū.

10. The color plate reproduces a two-page spread from the Collected Poems of [Ōnakatomi no] Yoshinobu (Yoshinobu-shū). The same plate had been the frontispiece to a 1953 Japanese exhibition catalogue, Wescher’s likely source. Kondō Tomie suggests the “modern and abstract” composition of this particular spread made it especially appealing (Ōchō tsugigami, 174).

11. Wescher, Collage, 19. A more recent history begins similarly: Waldman, Collage, Assemblage, and the Found Object, 8. Likewise, Florian Rodari states: “Rarely, though, do these pleasing, clever, mobile images take us outside the framework of the applied or decorative arts, of family entertainments and quaint dilettantism; and they never call the art of painting into question” (Collage, 31). Other histories include Bosseur, Collage; Monnin, Collage; Wolfram, History of Collage.

12. “The best way to deal with your rival in the cultural sphere is to place him or her outside the category of rivalry altogether.” Powers, “Cultural Politics,” 317.

13. For a critical reassessment of the origin story, see Umland, “Braque’s Faux Bois,” 97–105.

14. Claims that Mallarmé was instrumental in the development of cubist collage are numerous. See Seitz, Art of Assemblage, 13–14, and Poggi, In Defiance of Painting, 141–53. Some doubt Apollinaire and Picasso knew Mallarmé’s poetry; see Rubin et al., Picasso and Braque, 289–92. On Mallarmé in the context of Japonisme, see Zachmann, “Postcards from Japan,” 76–89.

15. Seitz, Art of Assemblage, 13.

16. The first articles appeared in Shoen 2, no. 6 (1913). These texts, by the calligraphers and poetry scholars Ban Masaomi (1855–1931) and Ōguchi Taiji (1864–1920), were dated to 1899 and 1908, respectively. The first major exhibitions of the Anthology seem to have occurred April 15–30, 1953, at the Kyoto National Museum and October 15–29, 1959, at the Nezu Museum, Tokyo. Kyūsojin, Nishi Honganji-bon Sanjūrokuninshū seisei, 54. The literature on the advent of cubist collage is extensive. Recent, terse, and incisive interventions appear in Braun and Rabinow, Cubism.

17. The concept that all phenomena are recombinatory is overdetermined. As regards “collage,” see Bosseur, Collage, 7–9. Bosseur argues that the likeness of material collage and textual citation was recognized from at least as early as Louis Aragon (1930).

18. Robert Motherwell (1944), cited in Seitz, Abstract Expressionist Painting, 51, and for the reference to flight, see Picasso, cited in Calas, Transfigurations, 195.

19. Note early modern European aristocratic photocollages. Siegel, Playing with Pictures.

20. Ōguchi, “Honganji-bon Sanjūrokunin,” 11. “Monumental is, in fact, the one word I choose to describe Cubism’s pre-eminent quality” (Greenberg, “Pasted-Paper Revolution,” 60–61).

21. Deitch, “Culture of Collage,” 24–77.

22. Ōguchi is better known by his sobriquet Shūgyo. See Ōguchi, “Honganji-bon Sanjūrokunin,” 9–12. I have also consulted the retelling of these events in Tanaka, Sanjūrokuninshū, 102–3.

23. Confusingly, the codices number thirty-nine; the Ki no Tsurayuki Collection (Tsurayuki-shū), the Hitomaro Collection (Hitomaro-shū), and the Yoshinobu Collection (Yoshinobu-shū) each spanned two volumes.

24. On anthologizing vis-à-vis paper assemblage, see Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan, 96.

25. The sources are the Denreki of Fujiwara no Tadazane (1078–1162) and the Chūyūki of Fujiwara no Munetada (1062–1141). See the essay by Kyūsojin in the Kyoto National Museum’s exhibition catalogue Sanjūrokuninkashū to Kunōjikyō, 2–3..

26. Tanaka’s reduplicative activities were hardly limited to the Anthology. For a brief introduction, see Guth, Art, Tea, and Industry, 141, 185–88; Iijima et al., Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 16–19; Tanaka, Sanjūrokuninshū.

27. Tanaka, Sanjūrokuninshū, 101.

28. On the sale, see Takeda, “Tanaka Shinbi-ō kikigaki,” 12–13, and Iijima et al., Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 24. On the contemporaneous art market, see Guth, Art, Tea, and Industry, 131–43.

29. Guth, Art, Tea, and Industry, esp. chaps. 2–5.

30. They were two of a triumvirate (with Ōshikōchi no Mitsune) responsible for the efflorescence of screen poetry in the early Heian period. Sorensen, Optical Allusions, chap. 2.

31. Where possible, two-sided pages were split, separating verso from recto. Iijima et al., Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 24.

32. As Kondō notes, the patrimonial designation only served to limit the possibility of direct experience; they are meant to be held, paged through, and viewed close to the face (Ōchō tsugigami, ii–iii).

33. I thank Erling Sjovold for this turn of phrase.

34. In 1966, Kyūsojin published a corrected and edited version. In 1975, Iijima did the same with two new collaborators.

35. Verschuer, Across the Perilous Sea, 68.

36. Yanagi, “Sashi-e shōkai fu kōtei zukai,” 14. See also Kume, Washi bunka shi, 215–16.

37. Kume, Washi bunka shi, 216.

38. Ibid., 117–18. The following description is indebted to Iijima’s analysis (Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 141–93). See also Egami, “Impact of Sung Art,” 137–40.

39. Barrett, Japanese Papermaking, 24. The specific cultivar of ganpi used in the Anthology is unknown. The term torinokogami dates only to the fourteenth century; he and other scholars assume the term accords with what was previously known as atsuyō (lit. thick-style [paper]). Kume, Washi-tsukuri no rekishi to gihō, 127.

40. Kōzo or “paper mulberry” (Broussonetia papyrifera, Broussonetia kazinoki, Broussonetia kaempferi). Barrett, Japanese Papermaking, 22–23. Paper was made throughout premodern Japan, but the Imperial Institute of Papermaking (Kamiyain, established 806–9 CE) was the center of papermaking within the capital. By the end of the Heian period, the institute was producing recycled paper. Kume, Washi bunka kenkyū jiten, s.v. “Kamiyain.”

41. Kume, Washi bunka kenkyū jiten, s.v. “karakami”; Kume, Washi bunka shi, 86–90.

42. See Iijima et al., Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, especially the pullout tabulation between pages 170 and 171. On domestic and imported karakami, see ibid., 150–51, and Egami, “Impact of Sung Art,” 137ff. The chief difference is the double-sidedness of Japanese karakami, which is crucial for the codex format (as opposed to the scroll).

43. Egami, “Impact of Sung Art,” 135–36, and Kume, Washi bunka shi, 88. It seems the quality of Japanese karakami perhaps soon exceeded its prototype. An early thirteenth-century Chinese treatise, the Baoqing siming zhi 寶慶四明志, describes papers imported from Japan that sound very much like Japanese karakami and notes that the art is “unmatched by the Chinese” (Verschuer, Across the Perilous Sea, 68).

44. Iijima et al., Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 118.

45. The mosaic metaphor is borrowed from Rodari, Collage, 23.

46. For a well-illustrated description of these techniques, see the contribution of Ōyanagi Hisae in Kondō, Ōchō tsugigami, esp. 129–56. See also Toda, Japanese Scroll Painting, 35–38.

47. Cf. Wind’s statement: “What could be more ‘capricious’ than a Cubist collage at its best?” (Art and Anarchy, 46n78).

48. Iijima cites the crest lines of a mountainscape scene in the Ise and reproduces an excellent detail of this effect as deployed in the depiction of a shoreline in the same volume. See Iijima et al., Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 180, 182.

49. This is well illustrated in ibid., 178–79.

50. Iijima was the first to note the progressive, narrative nature of “reading” the codices. My analysis draws on his six-part typology of the “beauty” of reading that involves color, line, composition, three-dimensionality, materiality, and the tear. See ibid., 177–84. On narrative vis-à-vis twentieth-century collage, see Bosseur, Collage, 93–103.

51. Greenberg, “Collage,” 77.

52. On the importance of edges, see Etgar, “On Edge,” 35–50.

53. On the distribution of these surface elements, see Takebe, “Heimen no kōgei,” 16–19.

54. The volumes were likely inscribed once bound. Iijima et al., Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 132.

55. Iijima argues hand-feel (hada-ae, lit. skin-meeting) was a key feature. Ibid., 180.

56. Wescher, “Introduction,” 3.

57. Wescher, Collage, 7. She cites Kyoto National Museum, Sanjūrokuninkashū to Kunōjikyō. The catalogue’s author was Iijima’s erstwhile collaborator Kyuūsojin.

58. For a biography, see Coppel, “Painter Alcopley,” 3–14.

59. The exhibition is noted in Seuphor, “Calligraphie japonaises,” 13. The catalogue also credits “Seuphol” [sic] for his work in bringing about the exhibition (Encre de Chine, “Note du Redacteur”).

60. Encre de Chine, entry J22.23. At least one of the exhibited works was a facsimile made by Tanaka, but the Ise was presumably original.

61. “Arukopurē ni tsuite,” 11, reproduced and discussed in Silberberg, One Man—Two Visions, 158.

62. N.B., according to the catalogue for the Picasso exhibition, Paburo Pikaso: 1951, no collage works were included. The contemporary critic Kawakita Rinmei notes how the Matisse and Picasso shows sparked “mountains of discourse,” but it was the Braque exhibition that was most keenly anticipated (“Burakku to Tōyō,” 3).

63. Richardson, Braque, 24.

64. Kawakita, “Burakku to Tōyō,” 3.

65. Georges Braque, quoted in Jordan, Art Criticism of Francis Ponge, 123; Kawakita, “Burakku to Tōyō,” 6.

66. Ponge, “Burakku no geijutsu” (in Japanese), 4, and Ponge, “Braque-Japon” (in French), 1.

67. Ponge, “Braque-Japon,” 2 and 4.

68. As Belting puts it, “The dialogue between cultures [represents] an occasion for suppressing one another in understanding the ‘other’” (“Marco Polo,” 193).

69. For “Japan’s ‘papiers collés’” (Nihon no “papie kore”), see Kōmoto, Ère de la scission, 541. Hoffman has also termed the Anthology “papier collé” (“Collage in the Twentieth Century,” 5). Likewise, Rodari writes that the “earliest extant examples of pasted papers belong to the art of Japanese calligraphy” (Collage, 23).

70. Kōmoto, Ère de la scission, 540–41.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid., 542. The word jijitsu might also be rendered as “truth,” “actuality,” or “reality,” each of which readily intersects with topoi of cubist collage criticism.

73. For the most commonly disparaged example, see Rubin, “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art. See also Malraux, Voix du silence, and Rowland, Art in East and West. For a recent reassessment, see parts I and II of Hay, “Primitivism Reconsidered.”

74. On the non-West vis-à-vis assemblage, see Kelly, “Anthropology of Assemblage,” 24–30. On the medieval/modern relay, see Brilliant and Kinney, Reuse Value.

75. Nagel, Medieval Modern, 8.

76. Greenberg, “Pasted-Paper Revolution,” 47.

77. Margaret Miller, quoted in Seitz, Art of Assemblage, 6.

78. Louis Aragon, quoted in Monnin, Collage, 21.

79. Krauss, “Motivation of the Sign,” 273.

80. By contrast, as Max Ernst notes, in rhyme, “While feathers may make plumage, it is not glue that makes a collage” (Si ce sont les plumes qui font le plumage ce n’est pas la colle qui fait le collage). (Dictionnaire abrégé du surréealisme, s.v. “collage,” cited in Rovati, “Oneiric Montages,” 116. Rodari argues that in Arcimboldo, there is a “collage without glue” (Collage, 21). Yet the idea is older. Note Aragon, writing in 1930: “Je veux parler de ce qu’on appelle pour simplifier le collage, bien que l’emploi de la colle ne soit qu’une des charactéristiques de cette opération, et meme pas une charactéristique essentielle” (Peinture au défi, 10).

81. Krauss, “Motivation of the Sign,” 262; cf. the similarly vitreous metaphor (273).

82. Iijima et al., Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 180.

83. Greenberg, “Pasted-Paper Revolution,” 48 (emphasis original).

84. On type, see Rosenblum, “Picasso and the Typography.”

85. There are exceptions. Some calligraphers in the Anthology wrote poetic lines within the bounds of individual elements to make it seem as if the texts had been collaged together.

86. Egami, “Impact of Sung Art,” 139. Iijima gives a similar estimate (Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū).

87. Thomas E. Crow characterized collage as the “the final outcome of Cubism’s interleaving of high and low” (Modern Art in the Common Culture, 33).

88. “In looking at this example of Japan’s Heian-era collage, it seems that T. J. Clark’s thesis that planarity is a ‘value that arises inevitably from a different territory than art’ is a bit one-sided. For Clark, this ‘other territory’ is the ‘popular’ art of the artisan’s craftsmanship; that is, the ‘modernity’ represented by posters, signage, fashion publishing, and so forth.” Kōmoto, Ère de la scission, 542.

89. The trope pertains to a complex of issues surrounding the angle of viewing (horizontal, looking ahead; or vertical, looking down) and the attendant oppositions of writing/painting, seeing/reading, and arranging/composing. See Krauss and Poggi, cited in Bois, “Semiology of Cubism,” 186n60–61. For a more extended discussion of the metaphor of the table as a “table à jouer,” see Poggi, In Defiance of Painting, 86ff.

90. Bois, “Semiology of Cubism,” 186–87, 187n63.

91. Yve-Alain Bois, quoted and discussed in Krauss, “Horizontality,” 94.

92. Sakomura, Poetry as Image, 39.

93. Matsumoto, “Chūshō e no sasoi,” 68.

94. Ibid.

95. See the third page of Tanaka’s unpaginated preface in Kinoshita and Tanaka, Sanjūrokunin kashū.

96. See ibid, 29. The conceit echoes loudly the first line of the Hōjōki, a classic text written just after the Heian period by Kamo no Chōmei: “The flow of the running river does not stop, and yet, it is not the water it once was.” (Kanda et al., Hōjōki, 15; translation by author).

97. Kinoshita and Tanaka, Sanjūrokunin kashū, 29–30.

98. Ibid., 38–39.

99. The most influential appearance of this framework in Anglophone scholarship is Soper, “Rise of Yamato-E.” Contra isolation, see Verschuer, Across the Perilous Sea, and Egami, “Impact of Sung Art,” 146.

100. For a critique of neoclassicism in this context, see Trede, “Terminology and Ideology.”

101. Rosenfield, “Nihonga and Its Resistance,” 181.

102. Tanaka and Tanaka, “Sanjurokunin-kashu,” 95/5 (dual pagination; emphasis added).

103. Ōsawa, “Nishi Honganji Volumes,” 8.

104. Iijima et al., Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 14.

105. The term here translated as “marrow” is seizui. Ibid., 177.

106. On the crystallization metaphor in this context and art history, see Kersey, “Dynamism, Liquidity, and Crystallization,” 304–9.

107. Hara, “Ichigō Offensive,” 392, esp. 398–402.

108. Iijima noted this contradiction but suggested that it was not a lack of contact but the contact itself that instigated a competitive desire to replicate and adapt the karakami designs (Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū, 148ff.).

109. Cf. the use of butterfly wings in the “assemblages d’empreintes” of Jean Dubuffet. Dubuffet’s terminology, “assemblage,” would come to serve as the umbrella term for the landmark exhibition The Art of Assemblage at MoMA in 1961. See Seitz, Art of Assemblage, 93, 150n5.

110. On shikishi and early screen painting, see Sorensen, Optical Allusions, esp. 33–39.

111. Sorensen, Optical Allusions, 31–39, 123–40; for a translation of a later account of Ise’s skill in screen poetry composition, see 257–61.

112. Sakomura, Poetry as Image, 24–41.

113. Eisenstein, “Cinematographic Principle,” 44. For a discussion, see Charney, Empty Moments, 128–40.

114. Seton, Sergei M. Eisenstein, 37.

115. As Yve-Alain Bois notes, “Art historians would do well to abandon their contempt for Eisenstein’s readings . . . they provide, more often than not, extraordinary insights” (introduction to Eisenstein, “Montage and Architecture,” 112).

116. Eisenstein, “Cinematographic Principle,” 44.

117. Jinjō shōgaku shintei gajō dai rokunen danseiyō, diagram 12.

118. Eisenstein, “Cinematographic Principle,” 41. As Bois notes, this was part and parcel of the dematerialization of the montage into image without medium. Bois, introduction to Eisenstein, “Montage and Architecture,” 113. Then again, the logic may work the other way: Eisenstein’s interest in Japanese pictorial culture might have caused cinematic perspective to emulate Japanese compositions. See Smith, “‘He Frames a Shot!,’” 90–96. Zachmann discusses at length a photograph of Mallarmé dated 1893, described by the poet as an “amusant photographie d’une perspective toute japonaise” (“Postcards from Japan,” 77). Zachmann’s analysis reveals the complex political dimensions of the European appropriation and evocation of compositional and pictorial modes that were designed to be read as “japonaise.”

119. King, Lost in Translation, 33–43.

120. For a critical introduction, see Saussy, “Fenollosa Compounded.”

121. Seitz argued that the surface trap was partly motivated by the nineteenth-century fascination with Japanese prints and that Manet’s fascination with the Japanese print contributed to the “emphasis on the relativity of elements” seen in collage (Abstract Expressionist Painting, 161).

122. Reynolds, Allegories of Time and Space, chap. 2. See also Hayashi, “Tracing the Graphic,” 104. Hayashi cites the architect Bruno Taut (1880–1938) in discussing the “characterization of Japanese culture by the modernist intellectuals as ‘modernist avant la lettre.’”

123. Reynolds, Allegories of Time and Space, 55.

124. Ibid., 62–63.

125. Ibid., 78–85.

126. See Krauss, “Motivation of the Sign.” Calas similarly called Braque “Wittgensteinian avant la lettre” (Transfigurations, 195).

127. On kundoku, alegible writing, and the ideographic myth, see Lurie, Realms of Literacy. For caution against conflations with Derridean philosophy, see Abé, Weaving of Mantra, 280, 515n9, 516n13, 516n16, 517n24.

128. Bois, introduction to Eisenstein, “Montage and Architecture,” 112.

129. Möbius traces its origins to Plato and classical rhetoric (Montage und Collage, 15).

130. Rodari, Collage, 11.

131. Kubler, Shape of Time, 39ff. On “prime objects” vis-à-vis replication, appropriation, and homology in contemporary art, see Anker, “Prime Objects and Body Doubles,” 99–104. It remains uncertain whether the Anthology was the first of its type, but as Kubler notes, “The history of art in this sense resembles a broken but much repaired chain . . . to connect the occasional jeweled links surviving as physical evidences of the invisible original sequence of prime objects” (Shape of Time, 40).

132. Kubler, Shape of Time, 33.

133. On non-Western art, artistic assemblage, and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s formulation of bricolage, see Kelly, “Anthropology of Assemblage.”

134. Max Ernst, quoted and discussed in Charney, Empty Moments, 128.

Interlude: Vienna Redux

1. Museum of Modern Art, “Press Release No. 5,” January 19, 1954.

2. Museum of Modern Art, “Press Release No. 87,” October 8, 1954.

3. Museum of Modern Art, “Press Release No. 61,” June 17, 1954.

4. Demeulenaere-Douyère, “Japan at the World’s Fairs,” 133–38.

Conclusion

1. Szarkowski, Photographer’s Eye, 9.

2. Weston, “Seeing Photographically,” 3200–3206.

3. Smith, “’He Frames a Shot!’” As Ohlsen argues, photography was primary to print as the way in which Europeans encountered Japan; moreover, aspects of Japanese print culture shaped European photographic visuality (“Japan’s Influence,” 215–16).

4. Szarkowski, Photographer’s Eye, 9.

5. Ibid.

6. On type specimens and holotypes, see Daston, “Type Specimens.”

7. Etgar, “On Edge,” 40–43, and Elliot, “Collage over the Centuries,” 18–19.

8. Lamarre first noted this crucial aspect of overlay (Uncovering Heian Japan, esp. 44, 48, 63, 129, 171–72).

9. Didi-Huberman, “History and Image,” 128.

10. Fabian, Time and the Other, 30.

11. Bolter, Writing Space, 72, quoted and discussed in Camille, “Sensations of the Page,” 44.

12. Bolter, Writing Space, 72; see also Drucker, Graphesis.

Appendix B

The Japanese text here is from Sasaki Isamu et al., “Fujita bijutsukan-zō-bon e-kotoba.” As noted in the acknowledgments, these translations were begun in the context of the informal Ajikan reading group at the University of California, Berkeley, and have benefited greatly from feedback from members of that group. I thank Matthew McMullen for his detailed comments on the final draft. All errors that remain are my own.

1. Note the orthographic change from 躰 (used twice above) to 身 in the final line. The former suggests a more abstract understanding of “form” versus the more explicitly somatic connotations of the latter. Thus I have translated the former paraphrastically as “essential form” or “formal essence” and the latter more literally as “body.” An alternative translation of this eight-line text appears in Dine, “Sanskrit Beyond Text,” 67. See also Abé’s translation of Kakuban’s similar Ajikangi: “From Kūkai to Kakuban,” 392–96.

2. These last two sentences are unclear. I thank Benedetta Lomi and Matthew McMullen for their suggestions. Cf. Kitao’s transcription of this passage in the Ninnaji version (in parallel with the Kōgyō Daishi zenshū version); see Kitao, “Kōgyō daishi ni okeru Ajikan,” 654–55.

3. The transliteration here departs from Sasaki et al., “Fujita bijutsukan-zō-bon e-kotoba.” Whereas they transcribe the text as ari (あり), I prefer yori (より). This reading is based on cross-referencing the Ninnaji version. The Ninnaji version, while in kanbun, is annotated yori (ヨリ) here. The hentaigana glyphs are morphologically similar, thus it is easy to see how Sasaki and his colleagues would have read the yo as a. The distinction, however, is crucial since it links the two clauses and suggests the heart is the subject of the directional distinction made thereafter.

4. This line is unclear. It would seem to imply alchemy, that the iron or stone is agitated and turned to gold, but it might also be that the A character changes to gold.

Bibliography

Abe, Akio, et al. Genji monogatari. SNKBZ 21. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1994.

———. Genji monogatari. SNKBZ 25. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1998.

Abé, Ryūichi. “Bridging Ritual and Text: Kakuban’s Writing on Meditative Practice.” In Kōgyō Daishi Kakuban kenkyū: Kōgyō daishi happyaku-gojūnen go-onki kinen ronshū, edited by Kōgyō Daishi kenkyū ronshū henshū iinkai, 1063–84. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1992.

———. “From Kūkai to Kakuban: A Study of Shingon Buddhist Dharma Transmission.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1991.

———. “Revisiting the Dragon Princess: Her Role in Medieval Engi Stories and Their Implications in Reading the Lotus Sūtra.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 42, no. 1 (2015): 27–70.

———. The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Abe, Stanley K. “Art and Practice in a Fifth-Century Chinese Buddhist Cave Temple.” Ars Orientalis 20 (1990): 1–31.

Adams, Henry. “John La Farge’s Discovery of Japanese Art: A New Perspective on the Origins of Japonisme.” Art Bulletin 67, no. 3 (September 1985): 449–85.

Adamson, Glenn. “Getting to Noh: Myths of Japanese Minimalism.” Hyperallergic, May 31, 2020.

Aizawa, Shunyō. “Menashikyō.” Chawan 125 (June 1941): 71–75.

Akanekai, ed. Heianchō fukushoku hyakkajiten. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1975.

Akiyama, Terukazu. Heian jidai sezokuga no kenkyū. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunken, 1964.

———. Japanese Painting. Translated by James Emmons. London: Macmillan, 1977.

———. Ōchō kaiga no tanjō: “Genji monogatari emaki” o megutte. Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1968.

———. “Women Painters at the Heian Court.” Translated and adapted by Maribeth Graybill. In Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, edited by Marsha Smith Weidner, 159–84. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1990.

Albritton, Benjamin, Georgia Henley, and Elaine Treharne, eds. Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age. London: Routledge, 2020.

Anderson, William. Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of a Collection of Japanese and Chinese Paintings in the British Museum. London: Longmans, 1886.

———. The Pictorial Arts of Japan. London: Lowe, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1886.

Anker, Suzanne. “Prime Objects and Body Doubles.” Art Journal 68, no. 4 (2009): 99–104.

Aoki, Atsushi, ed. Butsuzō no shirarezaru nakami. Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 2013.

Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. New York: Liveright, 2018.

———. “There Is No Such Thing as Western Civilization.” Guardian, November 9, 2016.

Aragon, Louis. La peinture au défi. Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1930.

Astley, Ian. Esoteric Buddhism in Japan. Copenhagen: The Seminar for Buddhist Studies, 1994

Astley-Kristensen, Ian, trans. The Rishukyō: The Sino-Japanese Tantric Prajñāpāramitā in 150 Verses: Amoghavajra’s Version. Tring: Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1991.

Bakker, Nienke. “The Beginning of the ‘Japanese Dream’: Van Gogh’s Acquaintance with Japan.” In Van Gogh and Japan, edited by Louis van Tilborgh, Nienke Bakker, Cornelian Homburg, Tsukasa Kōdera, and Chris Uhlenbeck, 13–38. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 2018.

Bal, Mieke, and Norman Bryson. “Semiotics and Art History.” Art Bulletin 73, no. 2 (June 1991): 174–208.

Barrett, Timothy. Japanese Papermaking: Traditions, Tools, and Techniques. New York: Weatherhill, 1983.

Barthes, Roland. Empire of Signs. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Macmillan, 1982.

Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972.

Belting, Hans. An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

———. Face and Mask: A Double History. Translated by Thomas S. Hansen and Abby J. Hansen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

———. “Marco Polo and Other Cultures.” In Art History After Modernism, translated by Caroline Saltzwedel, Mitch Cohen, and Kenneth J. Northcott, 192–200. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge: Belknap, 1999.

———. “Task of the Translator.” In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, 69–82. New York: Schocken, 1969.

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin, 1972.

Bijutsu techō editors. “Ferumēru, tsuyoshi: Nisen-jūkūnen kamihanki tenrankai nyūjyōsha sū toppu ten.” Bijutsu techō, July 11, 2019. https://bijutsutecho.com/magazine/insight/20143.

Blair, Heather. “Mothers of the Buddhas: The Sutra on Transforming Women into Buddhas (Bussetsu Tennyo Jōbutsu Kyō).” Monumenta Nipponica 71, no. 2 (2016): 263–93.

———. Real and Imagined: The Peak of Gold in Heian Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015.

Bodiford, William, trans. “Chidō’s Dreams of Buddhism.” In Religions of Japan in Practice, edited by George J. Tanabe Jr., 235–45. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Boehm, Gottfried, ed. Was ist ein Bild? Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1994.

Boehm, Gottfried, and W. J. T. Mitchell. “Pictorial Versus Iconic Turn: Two Letters.” Culture, Theory and Critique 50, nos. 2–3 (2009): 103–21.

Bogel, Cynthea J. With a Single Glance: Buddhist Icon and Early Mikkyō Vision. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009.

Bois, Yve-Alain. Introduction to Eisenstein, “Montage and Architecture,” 110–15.

———. “The Semiology of Cubism.” In “Picasso and Braque: A Symposium,” organized by William Rubin, moderated by Kirk Varnedoe, proceedings edited by Lynn Zelevansky, 169–208. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1992.

Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Bonsdorff, Anna-Maria von. “From Blade of Grass to Sacred Wilderness: Changing the Concept of Nature.” Weisberg, Bonsdorff, and Selkokari, Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 224–45.

Bosseur, Jean-Yves. Le collage, d’un art à l’autre. Paris: Minerve, 2010.

Bottomley, James Thomson. Hydrostatics; or, Theoretical Mechanics, Part II. London: William Collins, Sons, 1882.

Brandstätter, Christian, Daniela Gregori, and Rainer Metzger. Vienna 1900 Complete. Translated by David Henry Wilson. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2018.

Braun, Emily, and Rebecca Rabinow, eds. Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014.

Bredekamp, Horst. “A Neglected Tradition? Art History as Bildwissenschaft.” Critical Inquiry 29 (Spring 2003): 418–28.

Brilliant, Richard, and Dale Kinney, eds. Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture, from Constantine to Sherrie Levine. Burlington: Ashgate, 2011.

Brinker, Helmut. “Anointing with Eyes, Raiment and Relic: Insights from the Cologne Jizō.” Impressions 34 (2013): 150–69.

———. “Body, Relic and Image in Zen Buddhist Portraiture.” In Portraiture: International Symposium on Art Historical Studies 6, edited by Society for International Exchange of Art Historical Studies, 46–61. Kyoto: Society for International Exchange of Art Historical Studies, 1987.

———. Secrets of the Sacred: Empowering Buddhist Images in Clear, in Code, and in Cache. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.

Brisset, Claire-Akiko. À la croisée du texte et de l’image: Paysages cryptiques et poèmes cachés (ashide) dans le Japon classique et médiéval. Paris: Collège de France, l’Institut des hautes études japonaises, 2009.

Brock, Karen L. “The Case of the Missing Scroll: A History and Reconstruction of ‘Tales of Gishō and Gangyō.’” Archives of Asian Art 41 (1988): 6–31.

———. “The Making and Remaking of ‘Miraculous Origins of Mt. Shigi.’” Archives of Asian Art 45 (1992): 42–71.

Bruno, Giuliana. Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Bryson, Norman. “Westernizing Bodies: Women, Art, and Power in Meiji Yōga.” In Mostow et al., Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, 89–118.

Bushelle, Ethan David. “The Joy of the Dharma: Esoteric Buddhism and the Early Medieval Transformation of Japanese Literature.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2015.

Calas, Nicolas. Transfigurations: Art Critical Essays on the Modern Period. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985.

Calichman, Richard, ed. Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987.

Camille, Michael. “Before the Gaze: The Internal Senses and Late Medieval Practices of Seeing.” In Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, edited by Robert S. Nelson, 197–223. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

———. “Sensations of the Page: Imaging Technologies and Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts.” In The Iconic Page in Manuscript, Prints and Digital Culture, edited by George Bornstein and Theresa Lynn Tinkle, 33–53. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.

Čapková, Helena. “The Bauhaus and the Tea Ceremony.” Bauhaus Imaginista, August 23, 2018. http://www.bauhaus-imaginista.org/articles/1605/the-bauhaus-and-the-tea-ceremony/en.

Carey, Moya, and Mercedes Volait. “Framing ‘Islamic Art’ for Aesthetic Interiors: Revisiting the 1878 Paris Exhibition.” International Journal of Islamic Architecture 9, no. 1 (March 2020): 31–59.

Carpenter, John T. “Learning the ‘Women’s Hand’ in Heian Japan: Kana Calligraphy and the Tale of Genji.” In Carpenter et al., Tale of Genji 27–41.

Carpenter, John T., and Melissa McCormick. The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated. With Monika Bincsik and Kyoko Kinoshita. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Chan, Chun Wa. “The Concept of Zushi: On Enshrinement and Mobility of Buddhist Art in Japan.” Japanese Religions 43, nos. 1–2 (2018): 17–37.

Chan Yen-Yi. “Revealing the Miraculous: Objects Placed Inside the Statue of the Kōfukuji Nan’endō Fukūkenjaku Kannon.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 49, no. 1 (2022): 45–88.

Chance, Linda H., and Julie Nelson Davis. “The Handwritten and the Printed: Issues of Format and Medium in Japanese Premodern Books.” Manuscript Studies 1 (Spring 2016): 1–27.

Charney, Leo. Empty Moments: Cinema, Modernity, and Drift. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.

Chaudhuri, Saroj Kumar. “Siddham in China and Japan.” Sino-Planotic Papers 88 (December 1998): 1–124.

Ching, Leo. “Globalizing the Regional, Regionalizing the Global: Mass Culture and Asianism in the Age of Late Capital.” In Globalization, edited by Arjun Appadurai, 233–57. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.

Chino, Kaori. “Gender in Japanese Art.” In Mostow et al., Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, 17–34.

Clark, John. “Indices of Modernity: Changes in Popular Reprographic Representation.” In Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s, edited by Elise K. Tipton and John Clark, 25–49. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000.

Clifford, James. “Indigenous Articulations.” Contemporary Pacific 13 (Fall 2001): 468–90.

Clunas, Craig. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. London: Reaktion, 1997.

Coaldrake, Kimi. “Fine Arts Versus Decorative Arts: The Categorization of Japanese Arts at the International Expositions in Vienna (1873), Paris (1878) and Chicago (1893).” Japan Forum, 25, no. 2 (2013): 174–90.

Commission impériale du Japon. Histoire de l’art du Japon. Paris: M. de Brunhof, 1900.

Conant, Ellen P., ed. Challenging Past and Present: The Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i, 2006.

———. “Japan ‘Abroad’ at the Chicago International Exposition, 1893.” In Conant, Challenging Past and Present, 254–80.

Cooper, Michael. The Japanese Mission to Europe, 1582–1590: The Journey of Four Samurai Boys Through Portugal, Spain and Italy. Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005.

Copp, Paul. “Visualization and Contemplation.” In Esoteric Buddhism and Tantras in East Asia, edited by Charles Orzech, Richard Payne, and Henrik Sørensen, 141–45. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Coppel, Georges. “Painter Alcopley.” In Silberberg, One Man—Two Visions, 3–14.

Croissant, Doris. “Artifacts or Art? Envisioning East Asian Culture in Imperial Germany.” In Splendid Impressions: Japanese Secular Painting, 1400–1900, in the Museum of East Asian Art Cologne, edited by Doris Croissant, 17–31. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Crow, Thomas E. Modern Art in the Common Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Dandona, Jessica M. Nature and the Nation in Fin-de-Siècle France: The Art of Emile Gallé and the Ecole de Nancy. London: Routledge, 2017.

Daston, Lorraine. “Type Specimens and Scientific Memory,” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 1 (Autumn 2004): 153–182.

Davis, Whitney M. A General Theory of Visual Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

———. Visuality and Virtuality: Images and Pictures from Prehistory to Perspective. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

De Bary, Brett. “Karatani Kojin’s Origins of Japanese Literature.” In Miyoshi and Harootunian, Postmodernism and Japan, 235–58.

Deitch, Jeffrey. “The Culture of Collage.” In Monument to Now: The Dakis Joannou Collection, edited by Jeffrey Deitch, 24–77. Athens: DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, 2004.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

DeLue, Rachael Z. “Picturing: An Introduction.” In Picturing, edited by Rachael Z. DeLue, 10–40. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2016.

Demeulenaere-Douyère, Christiane. “Japan at the World’s Fairs: A Reflection.” Journal of Japonisme 5 (2020): 129–51.

Denecke, Wiebke. Classical World Literatures: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Comparisons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2014.

Dénes, Mirjam. “An Austro-Hungarian Expedition to Japan.” In Dénes et al., Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 27–41.

Dénes, Mirjam, Györgyi Fajcsák, Piotr Spławski, and Toshio Watanabe, eds. Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Budapest: Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asian Arts, 2020.

Derrida, Jacques. The Truth in Painting. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Ian McLeod. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme. Paris: Galerie Beaux-Arts, 1938.

Didi-Huberman, Georges. “Before the Image, Before Time: The Sovereignty of Anachronism.” Translated by Peter Mason. In Compelling Visuality: The Work of Art In and Out of History, edited by Claire Farago and Robert Zwijnenberg, 31–44. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

———. “History and Image: Has the ‘Epistemological Transformation’ Taken Place.” In The Art Historian: National Traditions and Institutional Practices, edited by Michael Zimmermann, 128–43. Williamstown: Clark Art Institute, 2003.

———. The Surviving Image: Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms; Aby Warburg’s History of Art. Translated by Harvey Mendelsohn. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2017.

Digital Dictionary of Buddhism. Edited by Charles Muller. www.buddhism-dict.net.

Dine, Susan. “Sanskrit Beyond Text: The Use of Bonji (Siddhaṃ) in Mandala and Other Imagery in Ancient and Medieval Japan.” MA thesis, University of Washington, 2012.

Doane, Mary Ann. “Indexicality: Trace and Sign: Introduction.” Difference 18, no. 1 (November 2007): 1–6.

Dolce, Lucia. “The Embryonic Generation of the Perfect Body: Ritual Embryology from Japanese Tantric Sources.” In Transforming the Void: Embryological Discourse and Reproductive Imagery in East Asian Religions, edited by Anna Andreeva and Dominic Steavu, 253–310. Leiden: Brill, 2016.

Dow, Arthur W. Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. 1899; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Dreitlein, Thomas Eijō. “Kūkai’s Bonji Shittan jimo narabi ni shakugi.” In Esoteric Buddhist Studies: Identity and Diversity; Proceedings of the International Conference on Esoteric Buddhist Studies, Koyasan University, 5 Sept.–8 Sept. 2006, 137–48. Kōyasan: Koyasan University, 2008.

Drucker, Johanna. Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.

———. Visualization and Interpretation: Humanistic Approaches to Display. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2020.

Duranti, Alessandro, and Charles Goodwin. Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Duranty, Edmond. “Japonisme.” La vie moderne, June 26, 1879, 178–80.

Duus, Peter. The Japanese Discovery of America: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1997.

Eck, Diana L. Darśan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. Chambersburg: Anima, 1981.

Egami, Yasushi. Ashide-e to sono shūhen, Nihon no bijutsu 478. Tokyo: Shibundō, 2006.

———. “The Impact of Sung Art Seen in the Nishi-Honganji Manuscript of Anthology of Thirty-Six Poets.” In International Symposium on the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property: Interregional Influences in East Asian Art History, 135–48. Tokyo: Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties, 1982.

Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah. Japanese Civilization: A Comparative View. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

———, ed. Multiple Modernities. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002.

———. “Some Observations on Multiple Modernities.” In Sachsenmaier, Riedel, and Eisenstadt, Reflections on Multiple Modernities, 27–41.

Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., Jens Riedel, and Dominic Sachsenmaier. “The Context of the Multiple Modernitites Paradigm.” In Sachsenmaier, Riedel, and Eisenstadt, Reflections on Multiple Modernities, 1–23.

Eisenstein, Sergei. “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram.” In Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, edited and translated by Jay Leyda, 28–44. 1949; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977.

———. “Montage and Architecture.” Assemblage 10 (December 1989): 111–31.

Elkins, James. The Domain of Images. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.

———. The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Elkins, James, and Maja Naef, eds. What Is an Image? University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011.

Elliott, Patrick. “Collage over the Centuries.” In Elliott, Cut and Paste, 9–23.

———, ed. Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2009.

Ema, Tsutomo. Keppatsu keshō komamono hakimono shi. Tokyo: Yūzankakusha, 1929.

Emmerick, R. E. The Sūtra of Golden Light: Being a Translation of the Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2016.

Ernst, Wolfgang. “Media Archaeography: Method and Machine Versus History and Narrative of Media.” In Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, edited by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, 55–74. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Etgar, Yuval. “On Edge: Exploring Collage Tactics and Terminology.” In Elliott, Cut and Paste, 33–50.

Eubanks, Charlotte D. “Circumambulatory Reading: Revolving Sutra Libraries and Buddhist Scrolls.” Book History 13 (2010): 1–24.

———. Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

———. “Performing Mind, Writing Meditation: Dōgen’s Fukanzazengi as Zen Calligraphy.” Ars Orientalis 46 (2016): 173–97.

Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. 1983; New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Farkas, Mária Ildikó. “Imperial Identity and National Identities as Impacted by Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.” In Dénes et al., Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 43–55.

Farris, William Wayne. Japan’s Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, and Warfare in a Transformative Age. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006.

———. “Pieces in a Puzzle: Changing Approaches to the Shōsōin Documents.” Monumenta Nipponica 62 (December 2007): 397–435.

Faure, Bernard. “The Buddhist Icon and Modern Gaze.” Critical Inquiry 24, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 768–813.

———. Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Fischer, Felice. The Arts of Hon’ami Kōetsu: Japanese Renaissance Master. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000.

Foard, James H. “Prefiguration and Narrative in Medieval Hagiography: The Ippen Hijiri-e.” In Flowing Traces: Buddhism in the Literary and Visual Arts of Japan, edited by James H. Sanford, William R. LaFleur, and Masatoshi Nagatomi, 76–92. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Fogel, Joshua A. The Role of Japan in Modern Chinese Art. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013.

Forrer, Matthi. The Printed Image: The Flowering of Japan’s Woodblock Printing Culture. Translated and edited by Michael Scuffil. Cologne: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, 2018.

Foster, Hal. “The Archive Without Museums.” October 77 (Summer 1996): 97–119.

———. Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes). London: Verso, 2002.

Foxwell, Chelsea. Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting: Kano Hōgai and the Search for Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

———. “The Pulled Back View: The Illustrated Life of Ippen and the Visibility of Karma in Medieval Japan.” Archives of Asian Art 65, nos. 1–2 (2015): 25–56.

Frazer, Ray. “The Origin of the Term ‘Image.’” English Literary History 27, no. 2 (June 1960): 149–61.

Friborg, Flemming, and Paola Zatti. Impressioni d’oriente: Arte e Collezionismo tra Europa e Giappone. Milan: 24 ore cultura, 2019.

Fricke, Beate. Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conques and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art. Translated by Andrew Griebeler. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015.

Froís, Luís. The First European Description of Japan, 1585: A Critical English-Language Edition of Striking Contrasts in the Customs of Europe and Japan. Translated and edited by Richard K. Danforth, Robin D. Gill, and Daniel T. Reff, with a critical introduction by Daniel T. Reff. London: Routledge, 2014.

Fry, Roger, and Christopher Reed, eds. A Roger Fry Reader. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Fujimoto, Kōichi. “Hakubyō-e shutsugen no isshiten: Menashikyō no okugaki no kaishaku ni tsuite.” Nihon rekishi 414 (November 1982): 82–89.

Fujita, Tsuneo. “Kamakura-jidai emakimono no tsumaranasa (Part II).” Atomi gakuen joshi daigaku kiyō 10 (1977): 11–18.

Fujitani, Atsuo. “Konkōmyōkyō no seiritsu to tenkai.” Nihon bukkyō gakkai nenpō 77 (2012): 159–83.

Fujiwara, Shigeo. “Gyōji-e/Meisho-e toshite no Saishōkōin gosho shōji-e: Hōkongōin to no kakawari.” Bijutsushi 146 (March 1999): 231–42.

———. “Saishōkōin & Hōkongōin, yōshi.” Abstract on Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo webpage. Accessed April 15, 2013. http://www.hi.u-tokyo.ac.jp/personal/fujiwara/saisyokoin.yoshi.html.

Gaiger, Jason. “The Idea of a Universal Bildwissenschaft.” Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 51 (2014): 208–29.

Gane, Nicholas, and David Beer. New Media: The Key Concepts. London: Bloomsbury, 2008.

Gardiner, David. “Metaphor and Maṇḍala in Shingon Buddhist Theology.” Sophia 47 (April 2008): 43–55.

Gelfer-Jørgensen, Mirjam. Influences from Japan in Danish Art and Design, 1870–2010. Copenhagen: Danish Architectural Press, 2013.

Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Translated by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Gerhart, Karen. The Material Culture of Death in Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009.

———, ed. Women, Rites, and Ritual Objects in Premodern Japan. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Gierke, Hans Paul Bernhard. “Japanische Malerei.” Illustrierte Deutsche Monatshefte 54 (May 1883): 202–19, 324–40.

Gluck, Carol. “‘Meiji’ for Our Time.” In Hardacre and Kern, New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, 11–28.

Goble, Andrew Edmund. Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan: Buddhist Healing, Chinese Knowledge, Islamic Formulas, and Wounds of War. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011.

———. “Kajiwara Shōzen (1265–1337) and the Medical Silk Road: Chinese and Arabic Influences on Medieval Japanese Medicine.” In Tools of Culture: Japan’s Cultural, Intellectual, Medical, and Technological Contacts in East Asia, 1000s–1500s, edited by Andrew Edmund Goble, Kenneth R. Robinson, and Haruko Wakabayashi, 231–57. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 2009.

Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

Gombrich, E. H. “The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Physiognomic Likeness in Life and Art.” In Art, Perception, and Reality, edited by E. H. Gombrich, Julian E. Hochberg, and Max Black, 1–46. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972.

Gómez, Luis O. “The Whole Universe as a Sūtra.” In Buddhism in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr., 107–12. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Gonse, Louis. L’art Japonais. Paris: Quantin, 1883.

Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976.

Gowrley, Freya. “Collage Before Modernism.” In Elliott, Cut and Paste, 9–33.

Gray, Richard T. About Face: German Physiognomic Thought from Lavater to Auschwitz. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004.

Graybill, Maribeth. “Kasen-e: An Investigation into the Origins of the Tradition of Poet Pictures in Japan.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1983.

Green, Nancy E. “Arthur Wesley Dow, Artist and Educator.” In Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts and Crafts, edited by Nancy E. Green and Jessie Poesch, 55–86. New York: Abrams, 2000.

———. “Arthur Wesley Dow: His Art and His Influence.” In Arthur Wesley Dow, 1857–1922: His Art and His Influence, edited by Nancy E. Green, 9–37. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 1999.

Greenberg, Clement. “Collage.” In Art and Culture: Critical Essays, 70–83. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961.

———. “The Pasted-Paper Revolution.” Art News 57, no. 5 (1958): 46–49, 60–61. Reprinted in The Collected Essays and Criticism: Clement Greenberg, edited by John O’Brian, 4:61–66. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Greenberg, Clement, and Diane Waldman. Collage: The Pasted-Paper Revolution. London: Crane Kalman Gallery, 1999.

Greene, Eric Matthew. Chan Before Chan: Meditation, Repentance, and Visionary Experience in Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021.

———. “Meditation, Repentance, and Visionary Experience in Early Medieval Chinese Buddhism.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2012.

———. The Secrets of Buddhist Meditation: Visionary Meditation Texts from Early Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021.

Groner, Paul. “Icons and Relics in Eison’s Religious Activities.” In Sharf and Sharf, Living Images, 114–50.

Guth, Christine M. E. Art, Tea, and Industry: Masuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

———. “Some Reflections on the Formation of the Meiji Artistic Canon.” In Hardacre and Kern, New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, 35–41.

Gyatso, Janet. “Letter Magic: A Peircean Perspective on the Semiotics of Rdo Grub-chen’s Dhāraṇī Memory.” In In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, edited by Janet Gyatso, 173–214. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Hahn, Cynthia. “Visuality.” In A Companion to Medieval Art, edited by Conrad Rudolph, 45–64. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.

Halén, Widar. “Japonisme, National Identity and a New Aesthetic Idiom.” In Weisberg, Bonsdorff, and Selkokari, Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 142–63.

Hall, Stuart. “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity.” In Culture, Globalization, and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, edited by Anthony D. King, 19–40. Binghamton: Department of Art and Art History, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1991.

———. “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power.” In Essential Essays, vol. 2, Identity and Diaspora, edited by David Morley, 141–84. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

Hall, Stuart, David Held, Don Hubert, and Kenneth Thompson, eds. Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies. Malden: Blackwell, 1996.

Hamburger, Jeffrey. Script as Image. Paris: Peeters, 2014.

———. “Speculations on Speculation: Vision and Perception in the Theory and Practice of Mystical Devotions.” In Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang: Neu erschlossene Texte, neue methodische Ansätze, neue theoretische Konzepte, edited by Walter Hung and Wolfram Schneider-Lastin, 353–408. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000.

———. “The Visual and the Visionary: The Changing Role of the Image in Late Medieval Monastic Devotions.” Viator 20 (1989): 161–82.

Han, Seung-Mi. “Colonial Subject as Other: An Analysis of Late Meiji Travelogues on Korea.” Hardacre and Kern, New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, 688–701.

Hanley, Susan B. Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Hanscom, Christopher P., and Dennis C. Washburn, eds. The Affect of Difference: Representations of Race in East Asian Empire. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016.

Hansen, Vibeke Waallann. “Norwegian Nature in a Japanese Costume: Japonisme in Thorolf Holmboe’s and Theodore Kittelsen’s Art.” In Weisberg, Bonsdorff, and Selkokari, Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 246–53.

Hara, Takeshi. “The Ichigō Offensive.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark Peattie, Edward Drea, and Hans van de Ven, 392–402. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.

Hardacre, Helen, and Adam Lewis Kern, eds. New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan. Leiden: Brill, 1997.

Harootunian, Harry D. “The Consciousness of Archaic Form in the New Realism of Kokugaku.” In Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period, 1600–1868: Methods and Metaphors, edited by Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner, 63–104. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

———. Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

———. “Remembering the Historical Present.” Critical Inquiry 33, no. 3 (Spring 2007): 471–94.

———. “Some Thoughts on Comparability and the Space-Time Problem.” Boundary 2 32, no. 2 (2005): 23–52.

———. Uneven Moments: Reflection on Japan’s Modern History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

———. “Visible Discourses / Invisible Ideology.” In Miyoshi and Harootunian, Postmodernism and Japan, 63–92.

Harries, Philip. “Fūryū, a Concept of Elegance in Pre-Modern Literature.” In Europe Interprets Japan, edited by Gordon Daniels, 137–44. Tenterden: Paul Norbury, 1984.

Hartnell, Jack, ed. The Continuous Page: Scrolls and Scrolling from Papyrus to Hypertext. London: Courtauld Books Online, 2020.

Hay, John. “Surface and the Chinese Painter: The Discovery of Surface.” Archives of Asian Art 38 (1985): 95–123.

Hay, Jonathan. “Primitivism Reconsidered (Part I): A Question of Attitude.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 67/68 (2016/17): 61–77.

———. “Primitivism Reconsidered (Part II): Picasso and the Krumen.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 69/70 (2018): 227–50.

Hayashi, Michio. “Tracing the Graphic in Postwar Japanese Art.” In Tokyo, 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde, edited by Doryun Chong, 94–119. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012.

Hayashi, Nobuyuki. “The Tales of Steve Jobs and Japan #04: Woodcut by Goyo Hashiguchi on the Face of Original Mac.” Nobi.com, March 3, 2014. http://nobi.com/en/entry-1216.html.

Higuchi, Yoshimaro, and Kuboki Tetsuo, eds. Matsura no miya monogatari & Mumyō zōshi. SNKBZ 40. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1999.

Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo (Tōkyō daigaku shiryō hensan-jo). Dainihon shiryō and Shiryō sōran databases. https://wwwap.hi.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ships.

Hoffman, Katherine. “Collage in the Twentieth Century: An Overview.” In Collage: Critical Views, 1–37. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989.

Holly, Michael Ann. Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Hookway, Branden. Interface. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014.

Horne, Gerald. Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan, and the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity. New York: New York University Press, 2018.

———. Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire. New York: New York University Press, 2004.

Howland, Douglas R. Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002.

Hsia, Ronnie Po-chia. The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Huh, Donghyun, and Vladimir Tikhonov. “The Korean Courtiers’ Observation Mission’s Views on Meiji Japan and Projects of Modern State Building.” Korean Studies 29 (2005): 30–54.

Huhtamo, Erkki. “Time Traveling in the Gallery.” In Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, edited by Mary Anne Moser and Douglas MacLeod, 233–68. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.

Huhtamo, Erkki, and Jussi Parikka. “Introduction: An Archaeology of Media Archaeology.” In Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, 1–21. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Hunt, Lynn. “Against Presentism.” Perspectives on History, May 1, 2002. https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/may-2002/against-presentism.

Huyssen, Andreas. “Geographies of Modernism in a Globalizing World.” New German Critique 100 (Winter 2007): 189–207.

———. “Introduction: Modernism After Postmodernism.” New German Critique 99 (Fall 2006): 1–5.

Ichikawa, Sanki. “Foreign Influences in the Japanese Language.” In Western Influences in Modern Japan: A Series of Papers on Cultural Relations, edited by Inazō Nitobe, 141–80. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931.

Ienaga, Saburō. Painting in the Yamato Style, trans. John M. Shields. New York: Weatherhill, 1973.

Iijima, Shunkei, et al. Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū no kenkyū. Tokyo: Shogei bunka shinsha, 1975.

Iijima, Shunkei, and Kyūsojin Hitaku. Kokuhō Nishi Honganji Sanjūrokuninshū. Tokyo: Echigoya shobō, 1944.

Inaga, Shigemi. “Cognitive Gaps in the Recognition of Masters and Masterpieces in the Formative Years of Japanese Art History, 1880–1900: Historiography in Conflict.” In Marra, Japanese Hermeneutics, 115–26.

Ingram, Evan S. “Chōgen’s Vision of Tōdaiji’s Great Buddha as Both Mahāvairocana and Amitābha.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 46, no. 2 (2019): 173–92.

Ishida, Mosaku. Shakyōshū. Nihon meihitsu zenshū 10. 2nd ed. Tokyo: Yūzankanku, 1937.

Isozaki, Arata. Ma: Space-Time in Japan. New York: Cooper-Hewitt Museum, 1979.

Itō, Daisuke. Shōzōga no jidai: Chūsei keiseiki ni okeru kaiga no shisōteki shinsō. Nagoya: Nagoya daigaku shuppankai, 2011.

Ivy, Marilyn. “Critical Texts, Mass Artifacts: The Consumption of Knowledge in Postmodern Japan.” In Miyoshi and Harootunian, Postmodernism and Japan, 21–46.

———. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Izutsu, Gafū. Genshoku Nihon fukushokushi. Kyoto: Kōrinsha shuppan, 1989.

Jackson, Reginald. “Dying in Two Dimensions: Genji Emaki and the Wages of Depth Perception.” Mechademia 7 (2012): 150–72.

———. Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and the Tale of Genji Scrolls. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018.

Jamentz, Michael E. “The Buddhist Affirmation of Poetry and Locating a Thirteenth-Century Fugen kōshiki in Liturgical Literature.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 43, no. 1 (2016): 55–88.

Jansen, Marius B. “Cultural Changes in Nineteenth-Century Japan.” In Conant, Challenging Past and Present, 31–55.

Jarves, James Jackson. A Glimpse at the Art of Japan. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1876.

Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

———. “Scopic Regimes of Modernity.” In Vision and Visuality, edited by Hal Foster, 3–23. Seattle: Bay, 1988.

Jinjō shōgaku shintei gajō dai rokunen danseiyō. Tokyo: Monbushō, 1910.

Johnson, Julie M. “The Embodied Gaze: Contemporary Art and the Museum Culture of Vienna.” In Blueprints for No-Man’s Land: Connections in Contemporary Austrian Culture, edited by Janet Stewart and Simon Ward, 29–56. Bern: Lang, 2005.

Johnson, Mark. “Mind Incarnate: From Dewey to Damasio.” Daedalus 135 (Summer 2006): 46–54.

Jordan, Shirley Ann. Art Criticism of Francis Ponge. London: W. S. Maney for the Modern Humanities Research Association, 1994.

Joselit, David, Barry Flood, Alexander Nagel, Alessandra Russo, Eugene Wang, Christopher Wood, and Mimi Yiengpruksawan. “Roundtable: The Global Before Globalization.” October 2010 (133): 3–19.

Kalha, Harri. “‘Copies Without an Original’: Japonisme in Popular Postcard Imagery.” In Weisberg, Bonsdorff, and Selkokari, Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 262–69.

———. “Modern Eclecticism or Aesthetic Kinship? Reflections on 20th-Century Japan Inspiration.” Scandinavian Journal of Design History 4 (1994): 15–26.

Kamens, Edward. Waka and Things, Waka as Things. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

Kaminishi, Ikumi. Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006.

———. “Zenmyō’s True Colors: Demonstrating Non-Duality of Form and Emptiness in the Kegon Scroll.” In Color in Ancient and Medieval East Asia, edited by Mary M. Dusenbury, 209–21. Lawrence: Spencer Museum of Art, 2015.

Kanda, Hideo, et al., eds. Hōjōki; Tsurezuregusa; Shōbōgenzō zuimonki; Tannishō. SNKBZ 44. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1995.

Kaneko, Yoshimasa. “Johannes Itten’s Interest in Japanese Ink Painting: Shounan Mizukoshi and Yumeji Takehisa’s Japanese Ink Painting Classes at the Itten-Schule.” Bauhaus Imaginista, October 21, 2019. http://www.bauhaus-imaginista.org/articles/6084/johannes-itten-s-interest-in-japanese-ink-painting.

Karatani, Kōjin. History and Repetition. Edited by Seiji M. Lippit. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

———. “History as Museum: Okakura Kakuzō and Ernest Fenollosa.” In Nation and Aesthetics: On Kant and Freud. Translated by Jonathan E. Able, Darwin H. Tsen, and Hiroki Yoshikuni, 65–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

———. “Japan as Art Museum: Okakura Tenshin and Fenollosa.” In Marra, History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics, 43–52.

———. Nation and Aesthetics: On Kant and Freud. Translated by Jonathan E. Abel, Darwin H. Tsen, and Hiroki Yoshikuni. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

———. “One Spirit, Two Nineteenth Centuries.” In Miyoshi and Harootunian, Postmodernism and Japan, 259–72.

———. Origins of Modern Japanese Literature. Translated by Brett de Bary. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.

Kare, Susan. “Japanese Woodcut on Gray.” Susan Kare Prints. Accessed February 23, 2021. https://kareprints.com/products/japanese-woodcut-on-gray.

Karlholm, Dan, and Keith Moxey, eds. Time in the History of Art: Temporality, Chronology and Anachrony. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Katsuura, Noriko. “Tonsure Forms for Nuns: Classification of Nuns according to Hairstyle.” In Ruch, Engendering Faith, 109–29.

Kaufman, Laura S. “Nature, Courtly Imagery, and Sacred Meaning in the Ippen Hijiri-e.” In Flowing Traces: Buddhism in the Literary and Visual Arts of Japan, edited by James H. Sanford, William R. LaFleur, and Masatoshi Nagatomi, 47–75. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Kawada, Sadamu. Busshari no shōgon. Kyoto: Dōhōsha, 1983.

Kawakita, Rinmei. “Burakku to tōyō.” Atorie (October 1952): 3–11.

Keane, Webb. “Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things.” In Miller, Materiality, 182–205.

Kelly, Julia. “The Anthropology of Assemblage.” Art Journal 67, no. 1 (2008): 24–30.

Kersey, Kristopher W. “Dynamism, Liquidity, and Crystallization in the Discourse of Japanese Art History.” In Einfluss, Strömung, Quelle: Aquatische Metaphern der Kunstgeschichte, edited by Ulrich Pfisterer and Christine Tauber, 287–310. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2018.

Kim, Yung-Hee. Songs to Make the Dust Dance: The Ryōjin Hishō of Twelfth-Century Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

King, Homay. Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

Kinoshita, Nagahiro. “Okakura Kakuzō as a Historian of Art.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 24 (December 2012): 26–38.

Kinoshita, Naoyuki. “The Early Years of Japanese Photography.” In The History of Japanese Photography, edited by Anne Wilkes Tucker, 17–18. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Kinoshita, Tatsuya, and Tanaka Shinbi. Sanjūrokunin kashū. Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1964.

Kitao, Ryūshin. “Hase bunko zō ‘A-kansaigokuhiyō (Aji kurobako)’ ni tsuite.” Shuchi’in daigaku mikkyō shiryō kenkyūjo kiyō 8 (2006): 258–93.

———. “Kōgyō daishi ni okeru ajikan (3)—shinshiryō: Ninnaji-bon ‘ajikan.’” In Kōgyō Daishi Kakuban kenkyū: Kōgyō Daishi happyaku-gojūnen goonki kinen ronshū, edited by Kōgyō Daishi kenkyū ronshū henshū iinkai, 637–59. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1992.

———. Mikkyō meisō no kenkyū: Kōgyō Daishi Kakuban no ajikan. Osaka: Tōhō shuppan, 1996.

Kitazawa, Noriaki. “From Temple of the Eye—Notes on the Reception of ‘Fine Art.’” Translated by Kenneth Masaki Shima. Review of Japanese Culture and Society 26 (December 2014): 228–41.

Kluczewska-Wójcik, Agnieszka. “Go East: Orientalism and Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.” In Dénes et al., Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 77–91.

Kohfukuji. “Hossōshū daihonzan kōfukuji.” Kōfukuji Temple. Accessed February 23, 2023. https://www.kohfukuji.com/property/b-0055.

Koivunen, Leila. “Japanese Woodcuts in Finnish Exhibitions and Collections.” In Weisberg, Bonsdorff, and Selkokari, Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 133–39.

Kokkasha. “Ajigiden gamaki kai.” Kokka 455 (1928): 279–80.

———. “Ajigiden gamaki kai.” Kokka 456 (1928): 309.

Kokushi daijiten. 15 vols. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1979–97. Accessed via JapanKnowledge Lib.

Komatsu, Shigemi. “Ajigi zuhan kaisetsu.” In Komatsu et al., Ajigi, Kegon gojūgosho emaki, Hokekyō emaki, 10:1–9.

———. Heian jidai yamatoe no tankyū: Hokekyō sasshi no kenkyū. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1986.

———. “Kyōten emaki no tanjō: Henbun & hensō ga tadotta michi.” In Komatsu et al., Ajigi, Kegon gojūgosho emaki, Hokekyō emaki, 7:98–116.

———. “Menashikyō shita-e no nazo.” Sumi 34 (January 1982): 102–6.

———. “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake no wakare monogatari (Part I).” Sansai 121 (1959): 11–16.

———. “Menashikyō shita-e to Ariake no wakare monogatari (Part II).” Sansai 122 (1960): 16–23.

———. “Menashikyō to sono shūhen.” Museum 60 (1956): 24–26.

Komatsu, Shigemi, Matsubara Shigeru, Oshita Tamiko, and Shindō Kyorai, eds. Ajigi, Kegon gojūgosho emaki, Hokekyō emaki, Zoku Nihon emaki taisei. Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1981–90.

Kōmoto, Mari. L’ère de la scission: Esthétique et histoire du collage au XXe siècle (Setsudan no jidai—20 seiki ni okeru korāju no bigaku to rekishi). Tokyo: Brücke, 2007.

Kondo, Ariyuki. “Creativity Within a Geographical-National Framework: From Modern Japanese Design to Pevsner’s Art Geography.” In Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization, edited by Kjetil Fallan and Grace Lees-Maffei, 93–107. New York: Berghahn, 2016.

Kondō, Tomie. Ōchō tsugigami. Tokyo: Mainichi shinbunsha, 1985.

Kornicki, Peter F. The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001.

Koschmann, J. Victor. “Maruyama Masao and the Incomplete Project of Modernity.” In Miyoshi and Harootunian, Postmodernism and Japan, 123–42.

Krauss, E. Rosalind. “Horizontality.” In Formless: A User’s Guide, edited by Rosalind Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois, 93–102. New York: Zone, 1997.

———. “The Motivation of the Sign.” In Picasso and Braque: A Symposium, organized by William Rubin, moderated by Kirk Varnedoe, proceedings edited by Lynn Zelevansky, 261–86. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1992.

Kravagna, Christian. Transmodern: An Art History of Contact, 1920–60. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022.

Kreiner, Josef, ed. Japanese Collections in European Museums. 5 vols. Bonn: Beir’sche, 2011–16.

Kubler, George. The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962.

Kujō, Kanezane. Gyokuyō. Vol. 1. Tokyo: Tetsugaku shoin, 1908.

Kūkai. Kūkai on the Philosophy of Language. Translated and annotated by Shingen Takagi and Thomas Eijō Dreitlein. Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2010.

Kume, Yasuo. Washi bunka kenkyū jiten. Tokyo: Hōsei daigaku shuppansha, 2012.

———. Washi bunka shi. Tokyo: Mainichi komyunikēshonzu, 1990.

———. Washi-tsukuri no rekishi to gihō. Tokyo: Iwata shoen, 2008.

Kurata, Bunsaku. Zōnai nō’nyūhin. Nihon no bijutsu 86. Tokyo: Shibundō, 1973.

Kuroda, Hideo. Kokuhō Jingoji sanzō to wa nani ka. Tokyo: Kadokawa gakugei, 2012.

Kurokawa, Mayori, Furukawa Mitsura, and Kurokawa Harumura, eds. Zōho kōko gafū. 11 vols. and one inventory. Tokyo: Yūrindō, 1901.

Kwon, Yung-Hee Kim. “The Emperor’s Songs: Go-Shirakawa and Ryōjin Hishō Kudenshū.” Monumenta Nipponica 41 (Autumn 1986): 261–98.

Kyoto National Museum, ed. Sanjūrokuninkashū to Kunōjikyō. Kyoto: Benridō, 1953.

Kyūsojin, Hitaku. Nishi Honganji-bon Sanjūrokuninshū seisei. 1966; Tokyo: Kazama shobō, 1982.

———. “Sanjūrokuninkashū,” in Kyoto National Museum, ed. Sanjūrokuninkashū to Kunōjikyō, 1–7. Kyoto: Benridō, 1953.

LaFleur, William R. “Hungry Ghosts and Hungry People: Somaticity and Relationality in Medieval Japan.” In Fragments for a History of the Human Body, edited by Michael Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi, 271–303. New York: Zone, 1989.

———. “A Turning in Taishō: Asia and Europe in the Early Writings of Watsuji Tetsurō.” In Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals in the Interwar Years, edited by J. Thomas Rimer, 234–56. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic, 1999.

Lamarre, Thomas. The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

———. “Primitive Vision: Heidegger’s Hermeneutics and Man’yōshū.” In Marra, Japanese Hermeneutics, 189–205.

———. Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.

Lamarre, Thomas, and Kang Nae-hui, eds. Impacts of Modernities. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004.

Lambourne, Lionel. Japonisme: Cultural Crossings Between Japan and the West. London: Phaidon, 2005.

Latour, Bruno. “Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together.” Knowledge and Society Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present 6 (1986): 1–40.

———. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Leclercq, Jean. “Contemplation Revisited.” Buddhist-Christian Studies 11 (1991): 285–88.

Ledderose, Lothar. Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Lee, Christina H. “The Perception of the Japanese in Early Modern Spain: Not Quite ‘The Best People Yet Discovered.’” eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies 11 (2008): 345–80.

L’encre de Chine dans la calligraphie et l’art japonais contemporains: Exposition circulaire pour l’Europe. Kyoto: Bokubi, 1955.

Levin, David Michael, ed. Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Levine, Gregory P. A. Long Strange Journey: On Modern Zen, Zen Art, and Other Predicaments. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017.

———. “Switching Sites and Identities: The Founder’s Statue at the Buddhist Temple Kōrin’in.” Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (March 2001): 72–104.

———. “Two (or More) Truths: Reconsidering Zen Art in the West.” In Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan, edited by Gregory P. A. Levine and Yukio Lippit, 52–63. New York: Japan Society, 2007.

Lippit, Yukio. “Figure and Facture in the Genji Scrolls: Text, Calligraphy, Paper, and Painting.” In Envisioning the Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production, edited by Haruo Shirane, 49–80. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

———. “Negative Verisimilitude: The Zen Portrait in Medieval Japan.” In Asian Art History in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Vishakha N. Desai, 64–95. Williamstown: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2007.

———. Painting of the Realm: The Kano House of Painters in Seventeenth-Century Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012.

Liu, Lydia H., ed. Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulation. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

Loh, Maria H. “Renaissance Faciality.” Oxford Art Journal 32, no. 3 (2009): 341–63.

Lopez, Donald S., Jr. “Buddha.” In Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr., 13–36. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Lowe, Bryan D. Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018.

Lurie, David Barnett. Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011.

Lyotard, Jean-François. Discourse, Figure. Translated by Anthony Hudek and Mary Lydon. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

Madsen, Karl Johan Vilhelm. Japansk Malerkunst. Copenhagen: P. G. Philipsen, 1885.

Malraux, André. Les voix du silence. Paris: La Nouvelle Revue Française, 1951.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

Marra, Michael F., ed. “Coincidentia Oppositorum: Ōnishi Yoshinori’s Greek Genealogies of Japan.” In Marra, Japanese Hermeneutics, 142–52.

———. “The Creation of the Vocabulary of Aesthetics in Meiji Japan.” In Since Meiji: Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868–2000, edited by Thomas Rimer, translated by Toshiko M. McCallum, 193–211. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011.

———, trans. and ed. A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001.

———, ed. Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002.

———, trans. and ed. The Poetics of Motoori Norinaga: A Hermeneutical Journey. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007.

Masuda, Yoshiko. Nihon ifuku shi. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2010.

Masuki, Ryūsuke. “Shōsōin kara Rengeōin hōzō e: Kodai tennō o meguru kaiga sekai.” In Kodai kokka to bukkyō bijutsu: Nara/Heian jidai, Tennō no bijutsushi I, edited by Masuki Ryūsuke, Sarai Mai, and Sasaki Morito. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2018.

Matsubara, Shigemi. “Ajigi to sono haikei.” In Komatsu et al., Ajigi, Kegon gojūgosho emaki, Hokekyō emaki, 10:100–112.

Matsumoto, Tomitarō. “Chūshō e no sasoi.” Geijutsu shinchō 14, no. 7 (1963): 68–73.

Matsuo, Satoshi, et al. Makura no sōshi. SNKBZ 18. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1997.

McCormick, Melissa. “Ichiji rendai Hoke-kyō, Fugen Bosatsu kanbotsuhon.” In Carpenter et al., Tale of Genji, 121.

———. “Purple Displaces Crimson: The Wakan Dialectic as Polemic.” In Around Chigusa: Tea and the Arts of Sixteenth-Century Japan, edited by Dora C. Y. Ching, Louise Allison Cort, and Andrew M. Watsky, 181–208. Princeton: P. Y and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art, 2017.

———. Tosa Mitsunobu and the Small Scroll in Medieval Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009.

McCullough, William H., and Helen Craig McCullough, trans. A Tale of Flowering Fortunes: Annals of Japanese Aristocratic Life in the Heian Period. 2 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980.

McVeigh, Brian J. Nationalisms of Japan. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

Meech-Pekarik, Julia. “Disguised Scripts and Hidden Poems in an Illustrated Heian Sūtra: Ashide and Uta-E in the Heike Nōgyō.” Archives of Asian Art 31 (1977): 52–78.

Mesheryakov, Alexander N. “On the Quantity of Written Data Produced by the ‘Ritsuryō’ State.” Japan Review 15 (January 2003): 187–99.

Miller, Daniel, ed. Materiality. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Minami, Asuka. “Un précurseur de l’histoire de l’art japonais en France: Georges de Tressan (1877–1914).” Arts Asiatiques 65 (2010): 167–80.

Minemura, Fumito, ed. Shin kokin wakashū. SNKBZ 43. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1995.

Mishima, Saiichi. The History of Ophthalmology in Japan. Oostende: Wayenborgh, 2004.

Mitchell, W. J. T. Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

———. “What Is an Image?” New Literary History 15, no. 3 (Spring 1984): 503–37.

———. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Mitsuun. Ajikan hiketsushū. Sakaidemachi: Jōkōin, 1912.

Mitter, Partha. “Decentering Modernism: Art History and Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery.” Art Bulletin 90, no. 4 (2008): 531–48.

Miyasaka, Yūshō. Kana hōgushū. Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei 83. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1964.

Miyoshi, Masao. “Against the Narrative Grain: The Japanese Novel and the ‘Postmodern’ West.” In Miyoshi and Harootunian, Postmodernism and Japan, 143–68.

Miyoshi, Masao, and Harry D. Harootunian. Introduction to Postmodernism and Japan, vii–xx.

———, eds. Postmodernism and Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 1989.

Möbius, Hanno. Montage und Collage: Literatur, bildende Künste, Film, Fotografie, Musik, Theater bis 1933. Munich: Fink, 2000.

Moffatt, Frederick C. “Composition.” In Arthur Wesley Dow, 1857–1922: His Art and His Influence, 39–43. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 1999.

Monbushō, and Bunkachō, eds., Jūyō bunkazai bekkan: Zōnai nō’nyūhin. 2 vols. and two supplements. Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1978.

Monnin, Françoise. Le collage: Art du vingtième siècle. Paris: Editions Fleurus, 1993.

Monteiro, Stephen. The Fabric of Interface: Mobile Media, Design, and Gender. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017.

Morgan, David. The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Morse, Samuel C. “Revealing the Unseen: The Master Sculptor Unkei and the Meaning of Dedicatory Objects in Kamakura-Period Sculpture.” Impressions 31 (2010): 32–38.

Mostow, Joshua S., ed. and trans. At the House of Gathered Leaves: Shorter Biographical and Autobiographical Narratives from Japanese Court Literature. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004.

———. “Female Readers and Early Heian Romances: The Hakubyō Tales of Ise Illustrated Handscroll Fragments.” Monumenta Nipponica 62 (Summer 2007): 135–77.

Mostow, Joshua S., Norman Bryson, and Maribeth Graybill, eds. Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003.

Moxey, Keith. Visual Time: The Image in History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.

———. “What Time Is It in the History of Art?” In Time in the History of Art: Temporality, Chronology and Anachrony, edited by Dan Karlholm and Keith Moxey, 26–42. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Mullen, Bill V., and Cathryn Watson. W. E. B. Du Bois on Asia: Crossing the World Color Line. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2005.

Munroe, Alexandra. Scream Against the Sky. New York: Abrams, 1994.

Murakami, Harumi. “‘Menashikyō’ shita-e no kentō to kōsatsu.” In Akiyama Terukazu hakushi koki kinen bijutsushi ronbunshū, edited by Akiyama Terukazu hakushi koki kinen bijutsushi ronbunshū kankōkai, 201–33. Kyoto: Benridō, 1991.

Murakami, Takashi. “Super Flat Manifesto.” In Superflat, 4–5. Tokyo: Madora, 2000.

———. “A Theory of Super Flat Japanese Art.” In Superflat, 8–25. Tokyo: Madora, 2000.

Murasaki, Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Translated by Dennis Washburn. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015.

Murase, Miyeko. Iconography of the Tale of Genji: Genji monogatari ekotoba. New York: Weatherhill, 1983.

Murashige, Yasushi. “Hakubyō monogatarie no seiritsu to sono tokushitsu.” In Hazuki monogatari emaki, Makura no sōshi ekotoba, Takafusa kyō tsuyakotoba emaki, Nihon emaki taisei 10, 114–19. Tokyo: Bunsei shoin, 1978.

———. “Hikime-kagibanakō: Ganbō no bishū hyōgen ni tsuite.” Waseda daigaku daigakuin bungaku kenkyūka kiyō (1999): 139–56.

Murphy, Regan. “Sanskrit Studies in Early Modern Japan.” In Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, edited by Charles D. Orzech, Henrick H. Sørensen, and Richard K. Payne, 985–96. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Nagel, Alexander. Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2012.

Nagel, Alexander, and Christopher S. Wood. Anachronic Renaissance. New York: Zone, 2010.

———. “Interventions: Toward a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism.” Art Bulletin 87, no. 3 (2005): 403–15.

Nagoya, Akira. “Rishukyō.” In Nihon no kokuhō 92:10-50. Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1998.

Naitō, Sakae. “Kuchi-e kaisetsu.” Nihon rekishi 688 (September 1995): n.p.

———. “Kyōzō no seiritsu.” Bukkyō geijutsu (Ars Buddhica) 206 (January 1993): 43–61.

———. Shari shōgon bijutsu no kenkyū. Tokyo: Seishi, 2010.

Najita, Tetsuo. “On Culture and Technology in Postwar Japan.” In Miyoshi and Harootunian, Postmodernism and Japan, 3–20.

Nakagawa, Tadayoshi. Koshakyō taikan. Tokyo: Seigei shuppan gōshi kaisha, 1920.

Nakano, Genzō. “Myōe shōnin to kagami Miroku zō.” Gakusō 4 (1982): 13–41.

Nara National Museum, ed. Busshari to hōju: Shaka o shitau kokoro. Nara: Nara National Museum, 2001.

———. Ninshō: Kyūsai ni sasageta shōgai: Seitan 800-nen kinen tokubetsuten = The Buddhist Monk Ninshō. Nara: Nara National Museum, 2016.

———. Sacred Ningbo: Gateway to 1300 Years of Japanese Buddhism. Nara: Nara National Museum, 2009.

———. Tokubetsuten jōsei to bukkyō: Inori to hohoemi. Nara: Nara National Museum, 2003.

Narihara, Yuki. “Ajigie no kotobagaki hensha to e o meguru shinchiken.” Bukkyō geijutsu 211 (1993): 15–38.

———. “Egakareta ama-sugata no imi: Ajigie no e o chūshin to shita saikōsatsu.” Gakushūin daigaku jinbunkagaku ronshū 11 (2002): 1–31.

National Museum of Japanese History, ed. Yomigare! Shīboruto no Nihon Hakubutsukan = Revisiting Siebold’s Japan Museum. Kyoto: Seigensha, 2016.

Neef, Sonja. Imprint and Trace: Handwriting in the Age of Technology. London: Reaktion, 2011.

Nihon daihyakka zensho. Vol. 3. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1985. Accessed via JapanKnowledge Lib.

Nihon kokugo daijiten. 2nd ed. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2000–2002. Accessed via JapanKnowledge Lib.

Nishimura, Shigeki. Meiroku zasshi: Journal of the Japanese Enlightenment. 1875. Translated with an introduction by William Reynolds Braisted, assisted by Adachi Yasushi and Kikuchi Yūji. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.

Nitobe, Inazō, ed. Western Influences in Modern Japan: A Series of Papers on Cultural Relations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931.

Obara, Hitoshi. “The Rebirth of Women into Paradise: Women in Fujiwara no Munetada’s Diary Chūyūki (1087–1138).” Translated and adapted by Burton Watson. In Ruch, Engendering Faith, 441–61.

Ōguchi, Shūgyo. “Honganji-bon Sanjūrokunin kashū ni tsukite (otsu).” Shoen 2, no. 6 (1913): 9–12.

Ohlsen, Nils. “From Prop to Total Work of Art: A Japanese Perspective on Nordic Interior Painting.” In Weisberg, Bonsdorff, and Selkokari, Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 172–87.

———. “Japan’s Influence on Nordic Photography, 1900–1914.” In Weisberg, Bonsdorff, and Selkokari, Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 215–21.

Okakura, Kakuzō [sic]. The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Art of Japan. London: John Murray, 1903.

O’Neal, Halle. “Inscribing Grief and Salvation: Embodiment and Medieval Reuse and Recycling in Buddhist Palimpsests.” Artibus Asiae 79, no. 1 (2019): 5–28.

———. Word Embodied: The Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas in Japanese Buddhist Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018.

Onishi, Yuichiro. Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa. New York: New York University Press, 2013.

Ōsawa, Shinobu. “The Nishi Honganji Volumes: An Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets.” Chanoyu Quarterly 2, no. 4 (1971): 3–10.

Osterhammel, Jürgen. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Patrick Camiller. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Otabe, Tanehisa. “Representations of ‘Japaneseness’ in Modern Japanese Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Critique of Comparative Reason.” In Marra, Japanese Hermeneutics, 153–62.

Otsuka, Yasuo. “Chinese Traditional Medicine in Japan.” In Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study, edited by Charles Leslie, 322–40. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.

Paburo Pikaso: 1951. Tokyo: Yomiuri shinbunsha, 1951.

Panofsky, Erwin. Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini. 1964; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992.

Paulson, Kris. Here/There: Telepresence, Touch, and Art at the Interface. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.

Payne, Richard K. “Ajikan: Ritual and Meditation in the Shingon Tradition.” In Re-Visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism, 219–48. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998.

———. Language in the Buddhist Tantra of Japan: Indic Roots of Mantra. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.

———. “The Shingon Ajikan: Diagrammatic Analysis of Ritual Syntax.” Religion 29 (July 1999): 215–29.

Peirce, C. S. “Some Consequences of the Four Incapacities.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (1868): 156.

Pflugfelder, Gregory M. “Strange Fates: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Torikaebaya Monogatari.” Monumenta Nipponica 47, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 347–68.

Phillips, Quitman E. The Practices of Painting in Japan, 1475–1500. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Pinte, Klaus. “Shingon Risshū: Esoteric Buddhism and Vinaya Orthodoxy in Japan.” In Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, edited by Charles D. Orzech, Henrick H. Sørensen, and Richard K. Payne, 845–53. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Pippin, Carly. “Japan: The Apple of Steve Jobs’ Eye.” National Museum of Asian Art Blog, June 15, 2012. https://asia-archive.si.edu/japan-the-apple-of-steve-jobs-eye.

Poggi, Christine. In Defiance of Painting: Cubism, Futurism, and the Invention of Collage. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Pollack, David. The Fracture of Meaning: Japan’s Synthesis of China from the Eighth through the Eighteenth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Ponge, Francis. “Braque-Japon.” Liberté de l’esprit 37 (January 1953): 1–4.

———. “Burakku no geijutsu.” Mizue 566 (October 1952): 4–10.

Powell, Amy Knight. Depositions: Scenes from the Late Medieval Church and the Modern Museum. New York: Zone, 2012.

Powers, Martin J. “The Cultural Politics of the Brushstroke.” Art Bulletin 95, no. 2 (2013): 312–27.

Prescott, Andrew. “Ways of Seeing Manuscripts: Exploring Parker 2.0.” In Albritton, Henley, and Treharne, Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age, 37–54.

Rambelli, Fabio. Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

———. A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics: Signs, Ontology, and Salvation in Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

———. “Dharma Devices, Non-Hermeneutical Libraries, and Robot-Monks: Prayer Machines in Japanese Buddhism.” Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 3 (Spring 2018): 57–75.

———. “The Empire and the Signs: Semiotics, Cultural Identity and Ideology in Japanese History.” Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici 83/84 (1999): 15–40.

———. “Materiality, Labor, and Signification of Sacred Objects in Japanese Buddhism.” Journal of Religion in Japan 6 (2017): 1–26.

———. “The Semiotic Articulation of Hosshin Seppō: An Interpretive Study of the Concepts of Mon and Monji in Kūkai’s Mikkyō.” In Astley, Esoteric Buddhism in Japan, 17–36.

———. “Texts, Talismans, Jewels: The Reikiki and the Performativity of Sacred Texts in Medieval Japan.” In Discourse and Ideology in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, edited by Richard K. Payne and Taigen Daniel Leighton, 52–78. London: Routledge, 2006.

Rampley, Matthew. The Vienna School of Art History: Empire and the Politics of Scholarship, 1847–1918. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2013.

Reed, Christopher. Bachelor Japanists: Japanese Aesthetics and Western Masculinities. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.

Reff, Daniel T. “Critical Introduction.” In Froís, First European Description of Japan, 1–30.

Reynolds, Jonathan. Allegories of Time and Space: Japanese Identity in Photography and Architecture. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015.

Richardson, John G. Braque. Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, 1961.

Ricoeur, Paul. Truth and History. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965.

———. “Universal Civilization and National Cultures.” In Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition, edited by Vincent B. Canizaro, 43–53. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007.

Riegl, Alois. “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin.” In Oppositions Reader: Selected Readings from a Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture, 1973–1984, edited by K. Michael Hays, 621–53. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998.

Rimer, J. Thomas. “Hegel in Tokyo: Ernest Fenollosa and His 1882 Lecture on the Truth of Art.” In Marra, Japanese Hermeneutics, 97–108.

Rodari, Florian. Collage: Pasted, Cut, and Torn Papers. Translated by Michael Taylor. Geneva: Skira; New York: Rizzoli, 1988.

Rosenblum, Robert. “Picasso and the Typography of Cubism.” In Picasso, in Retrospect, edited by Sir Roland Penrose and John Golding, 49–76. London: Paul Elek, 1973.

Rosenfield, John. “Nihonga and Its Resistance to ‘the Scorching Drought of Modern Vulgarity.’” In Births and Rebirths in Japanese Art: Essays Celebrating the Inauguration of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, edited by Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, 162–97. Leiden: Hotei, 2001.

———. Portraits of Chōgen: The Transformation of Buddhist Art in Early Medieval Japan. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Rovati, Federica. “Oneiric Montages.” In Collage/Collages from Cubism to New Dada, edited by Christina Garbagna, 116–20. Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2007.

Rowland, Benjamin. Art in East and West: An Introduction Through Comparisons. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954.

Rubin, William. “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984.

Rubin, William, Kirk Varnedoe, and Lynn Zelevansky, eds. Picasso and Braque: A Symposium. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1992.

Ruch, Barbara, ed. Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002.

Ruppert, Brian D. Jewel in the Ashes: Buddha Relics and Power in Early Medieval Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000.

Sachsenmaier, Dominic, Jens Riedel, and Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, eds. Reflections on Multiple Modernities: European, Chinese, and Other Interpretations. Leiden: Brill, 2002.

Saeki, Kentaro. “The Secret Passion of Steve Jobs.” NHK World Japan, May 10, 2020. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1074.

Sakai, Naoki. “Modernity and Its Critique: The Problem of Universalism and Particularism.” In Miyoshi and Harootunian, Postmodernism and Japan, 93–122.

———. Translation and Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Sakai, Tatsuo. Jintaikan no rekishi. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2008.

Sakaki, Atsuko. Obsessions with the Sino-Japanese Polarity in Japanese Literature. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006.

Sakomura, Tomoko. Poetry as Image: The Visual Culture of Waka in Sixteenth-Century Japan. Leiden: Brill, 2016.

Sand, Jordan. “Subaltern Imperialists: The New Historiography of the Japanese Empire.” Past and Present 225, no. 1 (November 2014): 273–88.

Sanford, James H. “Breath of Life: The Esoteric Nenbutsu.” In Astley, Esoteric Buddhism in Japan, 69–80.

Sango, Asuka. The Halo of Golden Light: Imperial Authority and Buddhist Ritual in Heian Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015.

Sano, Midori. Fūryū, zōkei, monogatari: Nihon bijutsu no kōzō to yōtai. Tokyo: Sukaidoa, 1997.

———. “Menashikyō shita-e ga monogatarumono: Jūni seiki no josei gakatachi.” In Nihon no kokuhō 92:10-51. Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1998.

———. “Ōchō no bijutsu.” In Ōchō emaki to sōshokukyō: Heian no kaiga, kōgei II, 146–159. Nihon bijutsu zenshū 8. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1990.

Sasaki, Isamu, et al. “Fujita bijutsukan-zō-bon e-kotoba ‘Ajigi’ kaisetsu, yakukoku narabi ni saku’in.” Kuntengo to kunten shiryō 109 (2002): 40–41.

Satō, Dōshin. Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State: The Politics of Beauty. Translated by Hiroshi Nara. 1999; Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2011.

———. “The Present State of Research on Modern Art History and Related Issues.” Acta Asiatica 85 (September 2003): 82–103.

Saussy, Haun. “Fenollosa Compounded: A Discrimination.” In The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition, edited by Haun Saussy, Jonathan Stalling, and Lucas Klein, 1–40. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.

Sawa, Ryūken. “Daigo no gazō Jinken ni tsuite.” Gasetsu 10 (1937): 306–21.

Schmitt, Jean-Claude. “For a History of the Face: Physiognomy, Pathognomy, Theory of Expression.” Kritische berichte 40, no. 1 (2012): 6–20.

Screech, Timon. The Lens Within the Heart: The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002.

Seckel, Dietrich. Before and Beyond the Image: Aniconic Symbolism in Buddhist Art. Translated by Andreas Leisinger. Zurich: Artibus Asiae, 2004.

Sei, Shōnagon. The Pillow Book. Translated by Meredith McKinney. London: Penguin Classics, 2006.

Seitz, William C. Abstract Expressionist Painting in America. Cambridge: Published for the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, by Harvard University Press, 1983.

———. The Art of Assemblage. New York: Museum of Modern Art, in collaboration with the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1961.

Seton, Marie. Sergei M. Eisenstein. New York: Grove, 1960.

Seuphor, Michel [Fernand Berckelaers]. “La calligraphie japonaise.” Art d’aujourd’hui 5, no. 8 (1954): 13–14ff.

Shannon, Jonathan Holt. Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2006.

Sharf, Robert H. “The Buddha’s Finger Bones at Famensi and the Art of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism.” Art Bulletin 93, no. 1 (March 2011): 38–59.

———. “Introduction: Prolegomenon to the Study of Japanese Buddhist Icons.” In Sharf and Sharf, Living Images, 1–18.

———. Review of Secrets of the Sacred: Empowering Buddhist Images in Clear, in Code and in Cache, by Helmut Brinker. Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (March 2013): 166–67.

———. “Visualization and Mandala in Shingon Buddhism.” In Sharf and Sharf, Living Images, 151–97.

Sharf, Robert H., and Elizabeth Horton Sharf, eds. Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Shirahara, Yukiko, ed. Japan Envisions the West: 16th–19th Century Japanese Art from the Kobe City Museum. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2007.

Shirahata, Yoshi. “Menashikyō ni tsuite.” Bijutsu kenkyū 9 (1940): 264–78.

Shirakawa, Shizuka. Jitsū. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1996.

Siegel, Elizabeth, ed. Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollages. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2009.

Silberberg, Alexander, ed. One Man—Two Visions: L. Alcopley—A. L. Copley, Artist and Scientist: A Retrospective, on the Occasion of an Eightieth Birthday. Oxford: Pergamon, 1993.

Silverberg, Miriam. Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Silverstein, Michael. “Metapragmatic Discourse and Metapragmatic Function.” In Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, edited by John A. Lucy, 33–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

———. “Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description.” In Meaning in Anthropology, edited by Keith Basso and Henry A. Selby, 11–55. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976.

Silverstein, Michael, and Greg Urban. Natural Histories of Discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Smith, Henry D., II. “‘He Frames a Shot!’: Cinematic Vision in Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.” Orientations 31 (March 2000): 90–96.

Soper, Alexander C. “The Rise of Yamato-E.” Art Bulletin 24, no. 4 (December 1942): 351–79.

Sorensen, Joseph T. Optical Allusions: Screens, Paintings, and Poetry in Classical Japan (ca. 800–1200). Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Sponberg, Alan. “Meditation in Fa-hsiang Buddhism.” In Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, edited by Peter N. Gregory, 15–44. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1986.

Stone, Jacqueline I. “Just Open Your Mouth and Say ‘A’: A-Syllable Practice for the Time of Death in Early Medieval Japan.” Pacific World 8 (2006): 167–89.

Strong, John S. Relics of the Buddha. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Sugita, Genpaku. Dawn of Western Science in Japan. Translated by Ryōzō Matsumoto. Tokyo: Hokuseidō, 1969.

———. “Rangaku Kotohajime.” In Bunmei genryū sōsho, 1:1–29. Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1913.

Summers, David. Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism. London: Phaidon, 2003.

Suzuki, Keizō. Shoki emakimono no fūzokushiteki kenkyū. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1960.

Szarkowski, John. The Photographer’s Eye. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2018.

Tahara, Mildred. “The Selected Poems of the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets of Fujiwara Kintō.” In Currents in Japanese Culture: Translations and Transformations, edited by Amy Vladeck Heinrich, 459–80. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Takahashi, Masaaki. “Egakareta mononoke.” Nihon rekishi 530 (July 1992): 42–45.

Takakusu, Junjirō. Preface (“Nihon bongakushi gaikan”) to Shittan sensho mokuroku. Dai Nihon bukkyō zensho 95. 1912; Tokyo: Suzuki gakujutsu zaidan, 1972.

Takebe, Naoko. “Heimen no kōgei—Nishi Honganji-bon sanjūrokuninkashū o megutte.” Ōsaka shiritsu hakubutsukan kenkyū kiyō 27 (March 1995): 15–34.

Takeda, Michitarō. “Tanaka Shinbi-ō kikigaki.” In Tanaka Shinbi, 7–107. Tokyo: Meihō kankōkai, 1985.

Takeuchi, Yoshimi, and Richard Calichman. What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Takubo, Shūyo, and Kaneyama Shōkō. Bonji shittan. Tokyo: Hirakawa, 1981.

Tanabe, Willa Jane. Paintings of the Lotus Sutra. New York: Weatherhill, 1988.

———. “The Persistence of Self as Body and Personality in Japanese Buddhist Art.” In Self as Image in Asian Theory and Practice, edited by Roger T. Ames, Thomas P. Kasulis, and Wimal Dissanayake, 406–20. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.

Tanaka, Isamu, and Chieko Tanaka. “Sanjurokunin-kashu: The ‘Collection of the Works of Thirty-Six Master Poets’ in the Nishi-Honganji, Kyoto.” In Sanjūrokunin kashū, edited by Kinoshita Tatsuya and Tanaka Shinbi, 1/100–25/175 (dual pagination). Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1964.

Tanaka, Kaidō. Koshakyō sōkan. Hōryūji: Ikaruga kokyōsha, 1942.

Tanaka, Shinbi. Sanjūrokuninshū: Nishi-Honganji-bon. Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1960.

Tanaka, Stefan. Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Tanba, Yasuyori, Emil C. H. Hsia, Ilza Veith, and Robert H. Geertsma. The Essentials of Medicine in Ancient China and Japan: Yasuyori Tamba’s Ishimpō. Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 1986.

Ten Grotenhuis, Elizabeth. “Collapsing the Distinction Between Buddha and Believer: Human Hair in Japanese Esotericizing Embroideries.” In Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, edited by Charles Orzech, Richard Payne, and Henrik Sørensen, 876–92. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

———. Japanese Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999.

Thomson, James. “Notes and Queries—On Gases, Liquids, Fluids.” In Collected Papers in Physics and Engineering by James Thomson, D. Sc., L L. D., F. R. S., edited by Sir Joseph Larmor, 327–333. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912.

Thrift, Nigel. “Beyond Mediation: Three New Material Registers and Their Consequences.” In Miller, Materiality, 231–55.

Toby, Ronald P. Engaging the Other: “Japan” and Its Alter Egos, 1550–1850. Leiden: Brill, 2019.

Toda, Kenji. Japanese Scroll Painting. 1935; New York: Greenwood, 1969.

Tokugawa Art Museum and Gotoh Museum. Kokuhō Genji monogatari emaki. Tokyo: Chūō kōron bijutsu shuppan, 2009.

Tokyo National Museum, ed,. Treasures from Ninnaji Temple and Omuro. Tokyo: Yomiuri Shimbun, 2018.

———. Wayō no sho: The Beauty of Japanese-Style Calligraphy. Tokyo: Tokyo National Museum, 2013.

Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties. Nihon kaiga shi nenki shiryō shūsei: Jū seiki–jūyon seiki. Tokyo: Chūō kōron bijutsu shuppan, 1979.

Tōkyō teikoku daigaku bungakubu shiryōhensangakari, ed. Dainihon shiryō. Vol. 5/6. Tokyo: Tōkyō teikoku daigaku bungakubu shiryōhensangakari, 1926.

Trede, Melanie. “Terminology and Ideology: Coming to Terms with ‘Classicism’ in Japanese Art-Historical Writing.” In Critical Perspectives on Classicism in Japanese Painting, 1600–1700, edited by Elizabeth Lillehoj, 25–52. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004.

Triplett, Katja. Buddhism and Medicine in Japan: A Topical Survey (500–1600 CE) of a Complex Relationship. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.

Trumbull, John. An Essay on the Uses and Advantages of the Fine Arts, Delivered at the Public Commencement, in New-Haven, September 12, 1770. New Haven: T. & S. Green, 1770.

Tseng, Alice Y. The Imperial Museums of Meiji Japan: Architecture and the Art of the Nation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.

Ueda, Masaaki, et al. Nihon jinmei daijiten. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2001.

Ulmer, Gregory L. “The Object of Post-Criticism.” In The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster, 83–110. Port Townsend: Bay, 1983.

Umland, Anne. “Braque’s Faux Bois.” In Braun and Rabinow, Cubism, 97–105.

The Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi Sūtra. Translated by Rolf W. Giebel. Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2005.

Van der Veere, Hendrik. A Study into the Thought of Kōgyō Daishi Kakuban: With a Translation of His Gorin Kuji Myō Himitsushaku. Leiden: Hotei, 2000.

Van Gulik, Robert Hans. Siddhaṃ: An Essay on the History of Sanskrit Studies in China and Japan. Nagpur: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1956.

Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs, ed. Ver Sacrum: Mittheilungen der Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs 3. Vienna: Holzhausen, 1900.

Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs Secession, ed. Katalog der VI. Ausstellung Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs Secession. With Adolf Fischer. Vienna: Holzhausen, 1900.

Verschuer, Charlotte von. Across the Perilous Sea: Japanese Trade with China and Korea from the Seventh to the Sixteenth Centuries. Ithaca: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 2006.

Volk, Alicia. In Pursuit of Universalism: Yorozu Tetsugorō and Japanese Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

Waldman, Diane. Collage, Assemblage, and the Found Object. New York: Abrams, 1992.

Warren, Erica L. “Japonisme and Scandinavia.” In The Orient Expressed: Japan’s Influence on Western Art, 1854–1918, edited by Gabriel P. Weisberg and Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, 159–69. Jackson: Mississippi Museum of Art; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.

Watanabe, Toshio. Introduction to Dénes et al., Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 13–22.

———. “Japonisme Studies Reconsidered.” Studies in Japonisme 37 (December 2017): 14–22.

Wayman, Alex. “The Mirror-Like Knowledge in Mahāyāna Buddhist Literature.” Asiatische Studien: Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Asiengesellschaft 25 (1971): 353–63.

———. “The Mirror as a Pan-Buddhist Metaphor-Simile.” History of Religions 13 (1974): 251–69.

Weisberg, Gabriel P. “Connecting with Japan: The Transmission.” In Weisberg, Bonsdorff, and Selkokari, Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 54–75.

———. “The Japonisme Phenomenon.” In Weisberg, Bonsdorff, and Selkokari, Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 14–37.

Weisberg, Gabriel P., Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, and Hanne Selkokari, eds. Japanomania in the Nordic Countries, 1875–1918. Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2016.

Weisberg, Gabriel P., and Yvonne M. L. Weisberg. Japonisme: An Annotated Bibliography. New Brunswick: Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; New York: Garland, 1990.

Weisenfeld, Gennifer S. Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905–1931. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

———. “Touring ‘Japan-as-Museum’: NIPPON and Other Japanese Imperialist Travelogues.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 8, no. 3 (Winter 2000): 747–93.

Wescher, Herta. Collage. Translated by Robert E. Wolf. 1968; New York: Abrams, 1971.

———. “Introduction.” Art d’aujourd’hui 5, no. 2/3 (1954): 3–4.

Weston, Edward. “Seeing Photographically.” The Complete Photographer 9, no. 49 (20 January 1942): 3200–3206.

Wickhoff, Franz. Roman Art: Some of Its Principles and Their Application to Early Christian Painting. Translated and edited by Mrs. S. Arthur Strong. New York: Macmillan, 1900.

Williams, R. John. The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and the Meeting of East and West. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.

Willig, Rosette F. The Changelings: A Classical Japanese Court Tale. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983.

Wilson, Bronwen. The World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.

Wind, Edgar. Art and Anarchy. London: Faber & Faber, 1963.

Winfield, Pamela D. Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kūkai and Dōgen on the Art of Enlightenment. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Wölfflin, Heinrich. Bijutsushi no kiso gainen: Kinsei bijutsu ni okeru yōshiki hatten no mondai. Translated by Moriya Kenji. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1936.

Wolfram, Eddie. History of Collage: An Anthology of Collage, Assemblage, and Event Structures. London: Studio Vista, 1975.

Wood, Christopher S. A History of Art History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.

———. “Image and Thing: A Modern Romance.” Representations 133 (Winter 2016): 130–51.

———. Review of Bild-Anthropologie: Entwürfe für eine Bildwissenschaft, by Hans Belting. Art Bulletin 86, no. 2 (June 2004): 370–73.

Wu, Chinghsin. Parallel Modernism: Koga Harue and Avant-Garde Art in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019.

Wu, Hung. The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Wu, Pei-Jung. “Wooden Statues as Living Bodies: Deciphering the Meanings of the Deposits within Two Mañjuśrī Images of the Saidaiji Order.” Artibus Asiae 74, no. 1 (2014): 75–96.

Yamasaki, Taikō. “Ajikan ni okeru hōkai teiin—hṛdaya to citta no kankei to shite no.” Mikkyō bunka 140 (December 1982): 35.

———. “Principles of the A-Syllable Visualization (Ajikan hōsoku).” Translated and cited in Yamasaki, Shingon, 211.

———. Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. Edited by Morimoto Yasuyoshi and David Kidd. Translated by Richard Peterson and Cynthia Peterson. Boston: Shambhala, 1988.

Yamawaki, Michiko. Bauhausu to Chanoyu. Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1995.

Yanagi, Sōetsu. “Sashi-e shōkai fu kōtei zukai.” Kōgei 28 (1933): 1–15.

Yanagisawa, Taka. “Ajigie.” In Emakimono, Genshoku Nihon no bijutsu 8, edited by Akiyama Terukazu, 72. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1968.

Yang, Yan. “Yamato-e: Illuminating a Concept through Historiographical Analysis.” Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 3 (2018): 39–56.

Yiengpruksawan, Mimi. Hiraizumi: Buddhist Art and Regional Politics in Twelfth-Century Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998.

———. “Illuminating the Illuminator: Notes on a Votive Transcription of the Supreme Scripture of the Golden Light (Konkōmyō saishō ōkyō).” Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici 83/84 (May/December 1999): 113–20.

Yoda, Tomiko. Gender and National Literature: Heian Texts in the Constructions of Japanese Modernity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.

Yonekura, Michio. Minamoto no Yoritomo zō: Chinmoku no shōzōga. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1995.

Yoshioka, Hiroshi. “Samurai and Self-Colonization in Japan.” In The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge, and Power, edited by Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh, 99–112. London: Zed, 1995.

Yotsutsuji, Hideki. Genji monogatari emaki to ōchōjin no biishiki. Nagoya: Tokugawa Art Museum, 1987.

Zachmann, Gayle. “Postcards from Japan: Asian Dissonance in Mallarmé, Zola, and Proust.” L’Esprit créateur 56, no. 3 (2016): 76–89.

Zielinski, Siegfried. Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.

Index

Italicized page references indicate illustrations and tables. Endnotes are referenced with “n” followed by the endnote number.

Abé, Ryūichi, 95, 134, 142, 151–53, 155, 253n72, 264n32

abstract expressionism, 8, 62, 67, 225

abstraction, 8, 13, 200, 211, 216, 221

action painting, 8, 19, 70

aesthetics

aleatory, 8

anti-aesthetics, 132, 150, 154–55, 232

autochthonous, 3–4

Eastern, 246n115

Heian, 124

holography and, 153

integrated, 116

of literacy, 259n51

manuscript, 82

microaesthetic intersections, 15, 116

pan-inscriptive framework and, 152

prehistory of, 5

recursive, 222

situational, 195

stratigraphic, 15, 120

Aizawa Shunyō, 108, 110

Ajikan (contemplating the character A)

“A” icons, 145–48, 148–49, 154–55

as deathbed ritual, 141, 156–57, 174, 262n152

feretories and, 165, 165–66, 186, 187, 266n102

forms of practice, 153–54

heart-mind complex and, 5, 133, 157, 166, 168, 172–74, 191

iconographical lineages of, 140

kinetic mutations in, 169

online purchase of meditation sets, 137, 138

popularization of, 136, 137, 156

Siddhaṃ script and, 133, 137–39

soteriology and, 131, 133, 156

syncretism with nenbutsu practice, 157, 174

textual sources for, 137

Akiyama Terukazu, 90, 252n26, 256n171

Amida Buddha, 157, 162, 258n32, 265n84

Anachronic Poetry Contest, 233, 233

anachrony, 10, 20, 25, 47–48, 221, 226, 230, 232–33

anatomy

dharma, 157, 164, 175

of heart-mind complex, 171–72, 264n41

somatic soteriology and, 157, 174

stratigraphy and, 145–48

Anderson, William, 66

anime, 8, 73

Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets, The

calligraphy and, 203, 213–14, 270n85

exhibition of (1953), 210, 267n16

fragmentation of, 201, 203

Ise Collection, 196, 201, 203, 209, 218

Ishiyama Excerpts, 198, 202, 203, 205–7, 209

materiality of, 204, 213

nationalism and, 215–19

page counts by volume, 241

page joining techniques, 207–9, 208, 217, 232

paper types in, 204–5, 205, 207, 213, 218

rediscovery and regeneration, 201, 215, 222–23

reverse engineering of, 203

three-dimensionality of, 213

Tsurayuki Collection II, 198, 202, 203

anti-aesthetics, 132, 150, 154–55, 232

Appadurai, Arjun, 22, 28, 33, 242n10

Apple Macintosh personal computer, 50, 51

appropriation

cryptomnesia and, 68–70

Greco-Japonisme and, 40

modernity and, 7, 8

North Atlantic modernity and, 62, 211

synthesis and, 60

of technology, 10, 28, 31, 32, 41

visuality and, 10, 23, 24, 65, 69

Aragon, Louis, 212, 219

art history

ahistorical dialectic in, 28

bodily interiority and, 164–65

Buddhism and, 168, 170

decolonization of, 3, 6, 10, 16, 47, 230

Euro-American, 5, 35, 41

Eurocentrism of, 3, 24, 82

interface and, 56–61, 67, 74, 230

media theory and, 52, 54, 56, 72

methodological schism in, 33

nativist rhetoric in, 44

planar surfaces in, 53

presentist bias of, 21

surface/depth binary in, 14–15

taxonomies and vocabularies of, 35

text/image binary in, 13–15

universalism and, 11, 33, 40

visuality and, 151, 167

See also Japanese art history

artistic standing, 29–32, 39, 41, 42, 69

art nouveau, 8, 67

Asaṅga (monk), 160, 162, 168

ashide (reed writing), 119–20, 153, 256n160

assemblages

contrastive, 229

metabolism and, 194

as modern process, 4

stratigraphy and, 108

tekagami, 99, 193–94

third-order, 201

See also collage; montage

atavism, 39, 221, 222

Atkinson, Bill, 51

Augustine (saint), 170

Avalokiteśvara, 255n112

avant-garde, 19, 40, 65, 70, 216, 223, 229

Barr, Alfred H., Jr.

Cubism and Abstract Art, 62, 63

“Torpedo’ Diagram of Ideal Permanent Collection,” 62, 64, 65

Barthes, Roland, 42, 83, 220

Bauhaus, 69

beholder’s share, defined, 71

Belting, Hans, 6, 72, 189–90, 269n68

Benjamin, Walter, 54, 138, 214, 248n191

biases

euchronic, 7

Eurocentric, 3

language/time, 168

methodological, 107, 127, 266n117

presentist, 21

terminological, 20, 26

Bildwissenschaft (image science), 6, 71, 251n128

Blair, Heather, 77

Bodhisattva Bhaiṣajya-rāja, 178, 180

bodily interiority, 5, 155, 164–66, 175, 187, 232

Bogel, Cynthea J., 131–32, 167–68, 257n5, 261n119, 264n29, 264n39, 267n126

Bois, Yve-Alain, 214, 215, 270n115, 271n118

Bolter, Jay David, 230

Bosseur, Jean-Yves, 267n4, 267n17

Bottomley, James Thomson: Hydrostatics, 56–57

Braque, Georges

Cahiers, 210

exhibition in Japan (1952), 209–10, 269n62

Fruit Dish and Glass, 196, 198, 267n7

innovations of, 200

papier collé and, 197

Zen Buddhism and, 210

Brinker, Helmut, 265n76

Brisset, Claire-Akiko, 119

Buber, Martin, 11

Buddhism

art history and, 168, 170

awakening (“enlightenment”) in, 133, 173, 178

Chinese, 265–66n91

esoteric, 130, 132–33, 136, 166, 168, 172

heart-mind complex in, 172–74

icons, 1, 8, 69, 168, 174, 175

Mahāyāna, 86

nonduality doctrine, 123

Pure Land, 119, 157, 262n160

rituals in, 94–95, 97–98, 98

secular/sacred binary and, 15

Vajrayāna, 129

visuality and visualization in, 136, 152, 166–70

Yogācāra, 5, 151, 168, 267n127

Zen, 8, 19, 46, 70, 210

See also Shingon Buddhism; soteriology; specific sutras and temples

Burty, Phillipe, 64

butterfly-style binding, 208, 209

Calichman, Richard, 27, 47

calligraphy

abstract, 225

of Anthology, 203, 213–14, 270n85

ashide (reed writing), 119–20, 153, 256n160

exhibition of (1955), 209

of Eyeless Sutras, 98–100, 99, 111–13, 112

in Heian period, 141

identity and, 12, 82

of The Significance of the Character “A”, 132, 134, 135, 144, 147

stratigraphy and, 83

trace-ism and, 77

of Zen monastics, 8, 70

Camille, Michael, 5, 71

Chanoyu (tea practice), 19, 69, 203

Chicago, World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), 29, 245n67

Chidō, 153–54, 262n137

China

art history in, 222

Buddhism in, 265–66n91

Golden Light Sutra translated in, 96

Japanese appropriation from, 28

visuality and visualization in, 170

See also East/West binary; Wa-Kan dialectic

Chino Kaori, 242n21

Chōken, 256n155

Chōnen (monk), 175

civilization

modernity and, 27

papermaking and, 204

translatio imperii and, 244n46

universal, 65, 244n47

Western, 23, 28

Clark, T. J., 270n88

Clunas, Craig, 116, 170

collage

collage japonaise, 209–10, 221

cubist, 195–97, 199, 205, 212–15, 218, 221–23, 267n14

as historiographical metaphor, 248n191

in North Atlantic modernity, 212, 222

papier collé, 197, 203, 207–11, 218–19, 222

postmodernity and, 45, 195

recombination paradigm, 220–22

tsugigami, 205, 207, 209, 211–16, 222

See also The Anthology of the Thirty-Six Poets

Collected Antique Pictures, 141

Conant, Ellen P., 29, 245n60, 246n110

contemplative rituals, 5, 130

contextualism, 5, 33, 196, 228

Copley, Alfred L., 209

Copp, Paul, 166

copresence, 83, 86, 88, 115, 122–23, 214

cryptomnesia, 68–70, 223

cubist collage, 195–97, 199, 205, 212–15, 218, 221–23, 267n14

Daigoji Temple Complex (Kyoto), 86, 88, 93, 103

Dalloz, Paul, 36

Davis, Whitney M., 190

decolonization, 3, 6, 10, 11, 16, 47, 230

de Kooning, Willem, 209

Deleuze, Gilles, 11, 83, 112, 220

Derrida, Jacques, 152, 220

dharma anatomy, 157, 164, 175

Dharmakṣema, 96–97, 253n68

Didi-Huberman, Georges, 7, 47, 248n191

dispositifs, 72, 166, 190

dissonance, 1, 47, 82, 115, 124, 228, 231

Dōgen, 168

Dolce, Lucia, 156

Dow, Arthur Wesley: Composition, 68

Dresser, Christopher, 29

Drucker, Johanna, 56, 57, 72, 73

Du Bois, W. E. B., 38

Dubuffet, Jean, 270n109

Duchamp, Marcel, 19

Duranty, Edmond, 36

East/West binary, 27, 37, 42, 59, 61, 67

Eco, Umberto, 116

écriture, 129, 211, 215, 232

Eight Great Buddhas, 185, 186

Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah, 26, 27, 244n44

Eisenstein, Sergei, 200, 219–22, 227, 228, 271n118

Eison (monk), 184, 187, 188

embryology, “A” iconography and, 155–56, 156

Enchin (monk), 185

Envisioning the Character “A” (Ajikan) (Kakuban), 136

epistolary sutras, 120–22, 121–22

Ernst, Max, 223, 269n80

Eurocentrism

art history and, 3, 24, 82

atavism and, 222

Bauhaus and, 69

divinity and, 42

faciality and, 83

modernization paradigm and, 25

optics and, 191

preservation paradigm and, 193

prolepsis and, 222

text/image binary and, 14

visual anthropology and, 6

exceptionalism, 27, 42–44, 46, 60, 196

Eyeless Sutras

calligraphy of, 98–100, 99, 111–13, 112

cloaked figure from, 106, 107

colophons and chronology, 88–94

colorlessness of, 104, 105, 254n103, 254n105

completeness of, 100–105, 231, 254n98

copresence and, 86, 88, 115

divine boy and two monsters from, 106, 107

facelessness of, 82–83, 100, 103–5, 116, 127, 231

forensics and alignments, 108–15, 109–14, 117

illustration paradigm and, 105–8

location and provenance, 86, 237

monochromy of, 79, 80, 100–105, 127, 231

montage and, 79, 100, 104, 109, 231

physiognomy and, 79, 81, 82–83, 103, 104, 111–12, 113

relational reading of, 115–19

reverse sides of, 108, 109, 112, 114

ritual and trace, 94–100, 98

size of, 107, 255nn125–26

stratigraphy and, 83, 86, 108, 112, 115–24, 231, 255n129

textless study copies, 105, 106

women and, 90, 92–93, 116–17, 253n63

See also Golden Light Sutra; Principle Transcendence Sutra

eyes, prosthetic, 160, 162, 263nn4–5

Fabian, Johannes, 24–25, 229, 244n15

facelessness, 82–83, 100, 103–5, 116, 127, 231

See also physiognomy

faciality

alterity and, 11–13, 58–59, 74

Eurocentrism and, 83

likeness images (nise-e), 12, 78, 82, 125–26, 125–27

screens and, 58, 82

surfaces and, 12, 57–58, 243n45

See also physiognomy

Faure, Bernard, 162, 175

females. See women

Fenollosa, Ernest, 39, 68, 220, 246n101

feretories, 165, 165–66, 181–87, 184–85, 189–91, 232, 266n100, 266n102

figurality, 13–14, 34, 83, 85, 150, 222

First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), 217

Fischer, Adolf and Frieda, 1

Flower Garland Sutra, 171

formalism, 11, 33, 67, 245n82

Foucault, Michel, 244n15

Foxwell, Chelsea, 35, 247n137

fragmentation

of Anthology, 201, 203

manuscript aesthetics and, 82

as modern process, 4

of nonmodern Japanese art, 201, 203

tekagami and, 194

Francocentrism, 10, 66, 229

Franz Joseph I (Hapsburg emperor), 31

Fricke, Beate, 5

Froís, Luís: Striking Contrasts in the Customs of Europe and Japan, 42, 247n146

Fry, Roger, 66, 197, 250n80

Fujimoto Kōichi, 100, 102, 104

Fujita Tsuneo, 101–2

Fujiwara no Hidehira, 95

Fujiwara no Kintō, 196, 203, 217

Fujiwara no Nobuzane, 126

Fujiwara no Sadanobu, 198, 202, 203

Fujiwara no Seishi, 141

Fujiwara no Senshi, 141

Fujiwara no Takanobu, 125

Fujiwara no Teika, 92–93, 118–19, 135, 258n16

Fukuda Takanori, 35

Fukuzawa Yukichi

Conditions of the West, 37, 38

An Outline Theory of Civilization, 27, 244n47

Gallé, Émile, 40

gaze

“A” icons and, 146, 147, 154

Anthology and, 214

divinity and, 170

Eyeless Sutras and, 79, 108

foreign, 210

interface and, 13

Orientalist, 33

steering, 58

See also vision

Gell, Alfred, 72

gender

binary conceptions of, 15

clothing and, 144, 260nn88–89

heart-mind complex and, 144–45

Japonisme and, 66

soteriology and, 142

transgender, 145, 260n90

See also women

Genette, Gérard, 85–86, 115, 119

Genji kuyō genre, 119, 256n155

Genpei War (1180–85), 4, 97, 157

Getsudai album, 87, 112, 193

Gierke, Hans Paul Bernhard, 39, 66

Gluck, Carol, 23

Goffman, Erving, 116

Golden Light Sutra

alignment of, 110–11, 110–11, 117

calligraphy of, 98–100, 99, 113

central imperative of, 127

colophon of, 88–89, 89, 93–94

likeness images in, 125, 125

monochromatic drawings, 80

numerical annotations, 100, 102

origin story, 86, 88, 230

physiognomy and, 79, 81, 104

rituals related to, 95, 97–98, 98

surviving scrolls and fragments, 86, 237

textless study copy, 106

translations, 95–97, 96, 253n68

women and, 253n63

Gombrich, Ernst, 71, 254n101

GoNara (Japanese emperor), 201

Gonse, Louis: L’art japonais, 66

Goodman, Nelson, 155

gorintō reliquaries, 177, 265n76

GoShirakawa (Japanese emperor)

death of, 88, 94

Eyeless Sutras and, 79, 82, 86, 88–95, 97, 125, 127, 231

Mongaku’s Forty-Five Vows and, 76, 77–78

Shūki-Misaie ceremonies for, 97, 98

GoToba (Japanese emperor), 233

Goyō (Hashiguchi): Woman Combing Her Hair, 51

graphesis, defined, 73

Greenberg, Clement, 199, 212, 213

Greene, Eric Matthew, 140, 157, 169, 174, 265n67

Guattari, Félix, 11, 83, 112, 220

Guth, Christine, 203, 245n60

Hall, Stuart, 26

Hamburger, Jeffrey, 170

Han, Seung-mi, 38, 246n120

Harootunian, Harry D., 24, 47, 244n18, 244n21, 248n191

heart-mind complex (kokoro)

Ajikan and, 5, 133, 157, 166, 168, 172–74, 191

anatomy of, 171–72, 264n41

in Buddhism, 172–74

gender and, 144–45

Mahāvairocana in, 189, 191

prosthetic, 177–78, 180–81, 180–81

prosthetic representations of, 5

soteriology and, 173

visualization and, 166, 169, 170, 173–74, 191

Heart Sutra, 105, 255n112

Hegel, G. W. F., 46

Heian period (794–1192)

calligraphy in, 141

faciality during, 12, 58, 82

Genpei War as end of, 4

grammar usage during, 136

manuscript culture in, 115, 119, 124

medical literature in, 171–72, 172

poetic contests during, 233

screen poetry during, 268n30

sculptural practice in, 161–62

secular visual culture of, 261n119

trace-ism during, 77

See also late Heian period

Heisei period (1989–2019), 46, 73–74

Hell Scrolls, 144

Helsinki exhibition (1909), 250n98

Hensel, Gottfried: Synopsis Vniversae Philologiae, 128, 129–30

Herrigel, Eugen, 210

heterochrony, 7, 20, 47, 67, 228, 232

Higashiyama Kaii, 226

Hiroshige (Andō; Utagawa), 51, 62, 69

Histoire de l’art du Japon (Commission impériale du Japon), 30–31

Historical Exposition of Ancient Art and Ethnography of Peoples Outside Europe (Paris International Exposition, 1878), 29

Hokusai (Katsushika), 51, 68

holography, 77, 153–55, 190, 194

Hookway, Branden, 56, 57, 248n15

Horikawa (Japanese emperor), 98

Horne, Gerald, 37–38

Hovelaque, Émile, 246n125

Huyssen, Andreas, 34

iconotexts, 130, 190, 191

identity

artistic, 42, 67

calligraphy and, 12, 82

gender, 145

iconographical, 184–87

Japanese, 27, 34, 73

national, 28, 67, 68, 249n58

physiognomy and, 78

queer, 66

trace-ism and, 78

Western, 27, 34

Ienaga Saburō, 254n98

Iijima Shunkei, 203, 205, 212–13, 217, 269n50, 270n108

image anthropology. See visual anthropology

image science (Bildwissenschaft), 6, 71, 251n128

image theory, 6, 54, 151, 168, 190, 232

Impressionism, 19, 60, 65, 67

Inaga Shigemi, 30, 39

ink painting, 8, 226

Insei era. See late Heian period

integrated aesthetics, 116

interface

art history and, 56–61, 67, 74, 230

cultural, 25, 56, 72, 74

definitions of, 56–57, 248n15

epistolary sutras and, 120, 122

fluid dynamics and, 56–59, 57, 249n20

global modernity and, 4, 11, 55

graphical, 15, 51, 56, 73, 230

as historiographical paradigm, 4, 59

human/computer, 56, 71, 72

image as, 70–73

Japonisme as, 61–62, 64–65, 67, 229

materiality of, 10, 74, 135–36

with North Atlantic modernity, 3, 11, 62, 73

stratigraphy and, 82, 83, 85, 115, 117

technology and, 73–75, 159

visuality and, 4, 10, 13, 33, 54, 74, 227–28

interface theory of modernity, 13, 74, 230

intersectionality, 67, 211

intersubjective time, 229

Ishida Mosaku, 98, 254n79

Isozaki Arata, 57

Itten, Johannes, 69

Ivy, Marilyn, 24–25

Jakuren, 135, 257n16

Japan

industrialization of, 23, 37, 67, 204

interface with North Atlantic modernity, 3, 11, 62, 73

Jesuits in, 42–44, 43

opening of, 22, 23, 37

papermaking in, 204, 268n40

role in global modernity, 22–24, 74

surfaces of modernity, 61

See also specific periods and emperors

Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing with Ashide, 120

Japanese art

“always already modern” trope and, 8, 19

exhibition attendance, 9

Francocentrism and, 66

imperialist ideologies and, 31

in modernity, 7–9, 65, 68, 233–34

montage in, 219–21, 220, 227–28

North Atlantic modernity and, 68, 70, 225

Orientalism and, 7, 30, 31, 67

parity in recognition of, 245n60

racist discourse and, 36–40

timelessness of, 62, 249n58

See also appropriation; modern Japanese art; nonmodern Japanese art

Japanese art history

chronology and temporality in, 4, 55

as counter-discourse to Eurocentric art history, 3

diversity of visualities in, 15–16

emergence of, 35–36, 229–30, 246n99, 246n101

interface and, 59–60

Meiji modernization myth in, 23

painting modes in, 40

“Japanese Exhibition House” (MoMA), 224, 225–26

Japanese Museum (Leiden), 64

Japanese-style painting (Nihonga), 40, 226, 247nn–248

Japonisme

first-wave, 43

Francocentric framework of, 10, 66, 229

gender and, 66

Greco-Japonisme, 39–40

Hi-tech, 74

as interface, 61–62, 64–65, 67, 229

Orientalism and, 62

postcard imagery in, 248n181

racist backlash against, 36

reverse, 70

Jarves, James Jackson

on fine arts as barometer of humanity, 39

A Glimpse at the Art of Japan, 36–37, 246n114

on universal aesthetic power of Japanese culture, 41

Jaspers, Karl, 244n44

Jesuits, 42–44, 43, 129–30

Jichi’e, 137

Jichihan, 262n152

Jikōji Sutras, 94

Jingoji Temple Complex (Kyoto), 77, 125, 257n184

Jinken, 89, 93, 103

Jippan (monk), 157

Jobs, Steve, 50, 51

Jōgen (Seiken, Seigen), 89, 93, 99, 254n84

Jōmon period (ca. 10,500–300 BCE), 221

Jun-Misaie ceremonies, 97, 254n75

Kajiwara Shōzen: Gleanings of a Simple Physician, 171, 172

Kakuban (Kōkyō Daishi)

Collection of Secret Essentials for Life’s End, 187, 189

Envisioning the Character “A” (Ajikan), 136, 258n24, 259n72

popularization of Ajikan, 156–57

Kalha, Harri, 65, 66, 68, 248n181

Kamakura period (1185–1333), 184, 258n22

Kamei Katsuichirō, 27

Kamens, Edward, 116

Kamo no Chōmei: Hōjōki, 156, 270n96

karakami paper, 122, 205, 207, 213, 218, 268nn42–43

Karatani Kōjin, 22, 32, 45, 47, 61, 65, 245n80, 246n101

Kare, Susan, 51

Katsuura Noriko, 141, 145–46

Kawada Sadamu, 184

Kawakita Rinmei, 210, 269n62

Kenshunmon’in (Japanese empress), 92, 97, 98, 125

Kii (Fujiwara no Chōshi), 93, 253n45

King, Homay, 220

Kinoshita Naoyuki, 29

Kinoshita Tatsuya, 216–17

Kinugasa Teinosuke: Gate of Hell, 226

Kitao Ryūshin, 258n24, 258n30

Kitazawa Noriaki, 35

Kittler, Friedrich, 54

Kline, Franz, 209

Kluczewska-Wójcik, Agnieszka, 67

Kōetsu Hon’ami, 83, 84, 218

Kokinshū (Collected Poems, Ancient and Modern), 233

Kōkō (Japanese emperor), 97

kokoro. See heart-mind complex

Komatsu Shigemi

on Golden scrolls, 98, 100

illustration paradigm and, 105–6, 255n118

on narrative of Eyeless Sutras, 88

on Principle colophon, 90, 92, 252n31, 253n41, 253n49

on The Significance of the Character “A”, 140, 141, 145, 260n83

Kōmoto Mari, 210–11, 213–14

Kongōji Temple (Osaka), 185–86

Koschmann, J. Victor, 45

Kōshō, 157, 158

Krauss, Rosalind, 212

Kravagna, Christian, 248n194

Kubler, George, 223, 271n131

Kujō Kanezane (Fujiwara no Kanezane), 95

Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi)

anti-aesthetics and, 132, 150, 154–55, 232

dharmakāya and, 150–51, 154–55, 157, 190, 262n127

On the Meaning of Sound, Letter, and Reality, 131, 132, 150–51, 173

proficiency in Sanskrit, 259n37

Record of Oral Instruction on Ajikan, 137, 172, 173, 186–87

Secret Treasury, 264–65n61

semiotics and, 131–32, 138, 151–55

Shingon Buddhism and, 126, 134, 141

The Siddhaṃ Mother-Letters with a Commentary, 137–39

Winfield on, 257n4

Kuki Ryūichi, 39

Kulmus, Johann Adam, 164

Kunōji Sutras, 94

Kuno Takeshi, 176, 177

Kuroda Seiki: Wisdom, Impression, Sentiment, 31–32, 245n78

Kurokawa Mayori: Thoughts on Antique Paintings, 141

Kūya, 157, 158

Kyoto National Museum, 210, 267n16

Kyūsojin Hitaku, 203, 217

lacquerware, 8, 29, 41, 62, 69, 182–83, 189

Lady of the Tango Court (Tango no Tsubone, Takashina Eishi), 88, 92–93, 245n78

Lamarre, Thomas, 4, 13–15, 28, 85, 116, 120, 256n160

Lange, Julius, 40

late Heian period

Ajikan in, 156

autochthonous aesthetic, rise of, 3–4

faciality during, 12

grammar usage during, 136

Shūki-Misaie ceremonies of, 97, 98

Torikaebaya monogatari in, 260n90

vision during, 131, 191

Latour, Bruno, 26, 71

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 168

Levinas, Emmanuel, 11

Li Zhen, 126

likeness images (nise-e), 12, 78, 82, 125–26, 125–27

locked-country period (sakoku), 23

Lotus Sutra

chrysographic transcription of, 193

codex recension of, 122, 256n171

on empire and hierarchy, 95

epistolary sutra in, 122

fan-shaped recension of, 83, 85, 85, 122–23

memorial transcriptions, 94

poetry based on chapters of, 119

soteriological gender transition in, 142

stratigraphy and, 85, 118, 122–23

women and, 256n171

Lyotard, Jean-François, 14

Madsen, Karl: Japansk Malerkunst, 40, 66

Mahāvairocana Buddha

aesthetics and, 153

dharmakāya and, 151

in heart-mind complex, 189, 191

iconography of, 266n103

interfacing with, 174

Kongōji Temple and, 186

radiography of, 177, 178–79

Tōdaiji Temple and, 97

Mahāvairocana Sutra, 137, 167, 180, 184, 264n29

Maitreya Visualization Sutra, 264n32

Mallarmé, Stéphane, 196–97, 199, 267n14, 271n118

Malraux, André, 68

Manovich, Lev, 56, 70–72, 251n129

Marcel Duchamp and Japanese Art exhibition (Tokyo National Museum, 2018), 18, 19

Marra, Michael F. (Michele), 246n99

Masheck, Joseph, 68

Masuda Takashi, 201, 203

Masuki Ryūsuke, 253n71

materiality and material culture

agency of, 14

of “A” icons, 148

of Anthology, 204, 213

of feretories, 186, 187, 189, 191, 232

Iberian, 43

of interface, 10, 74, 135–36

media archaeology and, 54

modularity as foundational principle of, 26

montage and, 200

of Principle colophon, 89

of prosthetics, 180, 181

of semiosis, 230

of texts, 13, 153

transformation of, 53–54

transposability of, 33

universal aesthetic power of, 41

of vision, 5, 104, 134, 168, 187, 189

Matisse, Henri, 200, 209, 269n62

Matsubara Shigemi, 136, 141, 142, 257n16, 258nn23–24

Matsumoto Tomitarō, 216

McCormick, Melissa, 106–7

McLuhan, Marshall, 54

media archaeology, 51–52, 54, 72

media theory, 5, 52, 54–57, 70–72

mediation, 6, 52, 166, 169

Meiji period (1868–1912), 4, 9, 23, 29, 35–36, 86

memorial sutras, 79, 88, 93–94, 97, 120, 122, 230, 254n75

Mesquita, Diogo de, 42

metabolism of images, 194

metalwork, 9, 29, 41, 62

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)

“A” icon held at, 148, 149

microaesthetic intersections, 15, 116

Miller, Margaret, 212

Minamoto no Kintada, 126

minimalism, 8, 67, 70

Miyoshi, Masao, 45, 251n143

modernity

alternative modernity paradigm, 24, 244n18

cubist collage and, 215, 218

decolonization of discourse on, 11, 16

global, 4, 11, 22–24, 46–48, 55, 67–69, 74, 234

interface theory of, 13, 74, 230

Japanese art in, 7–9, 65, 68, 233–34

Japan’s many surfaces of, 61

modernization paradigm, 10, 25–27, 35, 42, 229

multiple modernity paradigm, 24–26

nationalism and, 200

transcendental, 45–46

transmodernity, 47–48, 248n194

universalizing tendencies of, 33

Western, 21–22, 46, 48, 228, 229

See also North Atlantic modernity

modern Japanese art

contradictions of, 65

exhibition attendance, 9

nonmodern art as reference point for, 8, 41, 226

timelessness of, 62

MoMA. See Museum of Modern Art

Monet, Claude, 66

Mongaku’s Forty-Five Vows, 76, 77–78, 226

monochromy, 79, 80, 100–105, 122–23, 127, 226, 231

monoglyph pagodas (sutra transcription genre), 118, 118

montage

defined, 5

dematerialization of, 271n118

epistolary sutras and, 121

Eyeless Sutras and, 79, 100, 104, 109, 231

in Japanese art, 219–21, 220, 227–28

manuscript aesthetics and, 82

material culture and, 200

as modern process, 4

syntax related to, 205

visuality and, 227

See also collage

Monteiro, Stephen, 72

Morita Shiryū, 209

Morse, Samuel C., 145, 177

Moxey, Keith, 244n15

Munroe, Alexandra, 9

Munthe, Gerhard, 250n94

Muragaki Awaji-no-kami, 28

Murakami Harumi, 102, 255n118

Murasaki (Shikibu), 119

Murashige Yasushi, 102

Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), 68

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York)

The Art of Assemblage exhibition (1961), 270n109

Collage exhibition (1948), 212

“Japanese Exhibition House,” 224, 225–26

Mutsuhito (Emperor Meiji), 23

Myōe, 167

Nagel, Alexander, 25, 211, 243n1

Nagoya Akira, 102

Naitō Sakae, 140, 141, 145, 184–85, 187

Najita, Tetsuo, 26

Nakamori (or Chūsei) Hōin, 136

Nara National Museum, 181–82

Narihara Yuki, 140–42, 144, 145, 260n91, 261n102

narrative painting, 59, 102, 103

nationalism

Anthology and, 215–19

cultural, 34

discourse of, 4

emulative, 67

modernity and, 200

semiotics and, 28

technology and, 47

timelessness and, 249n58

National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo), 209

nativism, 4, 44, 215, 217

neo-Impressionism, 62

Nezu Museum (Tokyo), 267n16

Nigatsudō Burned Sutra, 193

Nihonga (Japanese-style painting), 40, 226, 247nn–248

Ninnaji Temple Complex (Kyoto), 95, 136

Ninshō, 184

nise-e (likeness images), 12, 78, 82, 125–26, 125–27

Nishi Honganji Temple (Kyoto), 196, 201, 203

Nishimura Shigeki, 244n46

Nishitani Keiji, 27

Nitobe, Inazō: Western Influences in Modern Japan, 58–59

noise, 124, 231

nonmodern Japanese art

contemporaneity of, 7, 9, 48

in decolonization of art history, 3

exhibition attendance, 9

fragmentation of, 201, 203

as reference point for modern art, 8, 41, 226

timelessness of, 62

universalism and, 40–42

use of term, 11

North Atlantic modernity

appropriation and, 62, 211

collage in, 212, 222

East/West binary and, 59

fine arts within, 36

fluid dynamics and, 58

historicity of, 19

Japanese art and, 68, 70, 225

Japan’s interface with, 3, 11, 62, 73

Japan’s resistance to, 27

use of term, 10, 243n37

Ōguchi Taiji, 98–99, 201

Ohlson, Nils, 67, 271n3

oil painting, 23, 31, 40, 86, 216

Okakura Kakuzō, 27, 33, 39, 59, 67

Okamoto Tarō, 221

Olbrich, Joseph Maria, 69

Ōnishi Yoshinori, 39

open structuralism, 115

Orientalism

alterity and, 28

ethnology and, 246n120

gaze and, 33

Japanese art and, 7, 30, 31, 67

Japonisme and, 62

racist discourse and, 83

second-wave, 44

techno-Orientalism, 29

ornamentation, 82, 108, 135, 203, 207, 230

Ōsawa, Shinobu, 217

Osterhammel, Jurgen, 25, 62

Otabe Tanehisa, 45

Ōtani Sonyū, 201

“Overcoming Modernity” symposium (Tokyo, 1942), 26–27, 34, 47

overlay, 82, 83, 85, 115, 122, 228, 231

See also palimpsests, stratigraphy, superimposition

Pacific War (1941–45), 26, 37, 46, 58, 86, 218, 221

palimpsest, 14, 82, 86, 105, 115, 121, 152, 256n168

See also overlay; stratigraphy; superimposition

pan-Asianism, 27, 245n78

Panofsky, Erwin, 20

papermaking, 204, 268n40

papier collé, 197, 203, 207–11, 218–19, 222

Paris

Exposition (1867), 226

Exposition (1878), 29

Exposition (1900), 29–32, 32, 69

Peace Conference (1919), 38

parity, 29, 46, 245n60

pendant (aspect of feretory), 146, 146, 165, 165, 182, 184–85, 187

Perry, Matthew C., 23, 25, 38

physiognomy

aristocratic conventions (hikime-kagibana), 126, 144, 260n81

Eyeless Sutras and, 79, 81, 82–83, 103, 104, 111–12, 113

identity and, 78

language studies and, 129

likeness paintings and, 126

of the hand, 82

surrogate, 111

The Significance of the Character “A” and, 144

use of term, 12, 83

physiology

soteriology and, 133, 159, 173

of thought, 163

of vision, 5, 134, 166, 169, 187, 232

Picasso, Pablo

collage and, 196

exhibition in Japan (1951), 209, 269n62

innovations of, 200

papier collé and, 197

Still Life with Chair Caning, 267n7

Pillowbook, 82

Ponge, Francis, 210

porcelain, 29, 62, 83

postmodernity, 8, 22, 45–46, 74, 195, 223

Pound, Ezra, 220

premodern Japanese art. See nonmodern Japanese art

presentism, 9, 21, 54

Principle Transcendence Sutra

calligraphy of, 99, 99–100

colophon of, 86, 88–93, 90–91, 130, 253n49

monochromatic drawings, 80

numerical annotations, 100

origin story, 86, 88

rituals related to, 94–95, 98, 99

women and, 90, 92–93

prolepsis, 3, 221, 222

promiscuous images, 32–34

prosthetics

eyes (including gyokugan), 160, 162, 263nn4–5

feretories, 165–66, 182, 187, 189, 191, 232

heart-mind complex, 177–78, 180–81, 180–81

organs, 175, 176

Proust, Marcel, 66

pseudomorphosis, 20, 223, 243n1

racism, 23, 33, 36–41, 65, 83, 233

radiography, 176–77, 177–79

Rambelli, Fabio, 131–33, 150–51, 153, 155, 166, 171, 173, 264n41

Rampley, Matthew, 60

realism, 82, 126, 164, 175

Reed, Christopher, 39, 44, 62, 66, 245n82

reed writing (ashide), 119–20, 153, 256n160

relational reading, 115–19

reuse, 7, 8, 86, 91, 122, 222

Reynolds, Jonathan, 221

Richardson, John, 210

Ricoeur, Paul, 10, 47, 65

Riegl, Aloïs, 1, 7, 20, 229

Rikyū (Sen no), 19

Rodari, Florian, 267n11

Rosenblum, Robert, 195

Rosenfield, John M., 217, 257–58n16, 260n83

Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), 23, 26, 44

Ryūgyō (monk), 156

Saga (Japanese emperor), 134, 137, 141

Said, Edward, 38, 44, 244n15

Sakai, Naoki, 24, 34, 44, 46

Sakaki, Atsuko, 28, 249n50

Sakomura, Tomoko, 214, 218

Sanford, James H., 157, 262n160

Sango, Asuka, 254n75

Sano Midori, 103, 104

Sanskrit, 89, 104, 133, 137–39, 146, 259n37

Satō Dōshin, 9, 35, 61

Sawaki Yomokichi, 246–47n133

Sawa Ryūken, 93

Schmitt, Jean-Claude, 243n45

screens

faciality and, 58, 82

facingness of, 13, 57

folding (byōbu), 1, 58, 111, 192, 193–94, 218–19, 219

Heian period poetry on, 218, 268n30

screenic sensorium, 70

from Shōsōin Treasury, 9, 218

standing (tsuitate), 214

touchscreens, 71, 72

scriptural geography, 128, 129–30

sculptural interiors (zōnai nōnyūhin), 161–62, 165, 174–81, 177–81

Sea Sutra, 264n32

Secession exhibition, sixth (Vienna, 1900), 1–2, 2, 8–10, 31, 69–70, 226

Seckel, Dietrich, 145

secular/sacred binary, 15

Seiryōji Śākyamuni icon, 175, 176

Sei Shōnagon, 121

Seitz, William, 197, 271n121

Seizon: Principles of the A-Syllable Visualization, 167–68

self-referentiality, 116–17, 119

semiotics

Kūkai and, 131–32, 138, 151–55

nationalism and, 28

theory of, 4, 232

vision and, 152

Sharf, Robert, 161, 166–67, 169, 265n70, 265–66n91

shikishi (poem papers), 83, 84, 214, 218–219, 221, 270n110

Shingon Buddhism

gender and, 142

heart-mind complex in, 173

Kūkai and, 126, 134, 141

ritual practice in, 191

visuality and, 190

See also Ajikan

Shinzei (Fujiwara no Michinori), 93

Shirahata Yoshi, 88, 98, 102, 106–7, 252n25, 253n38, 254n84

Shirakawa (Japanese emperor), 201

Shōken, 89, 93

Shōsōin Treasury (Nara, Japan), 9, 97, 218, 253n71

Shōtoku (Japanese empress), 193

Shōwa period (1926–89), 46

Shūki-Misaie ceremonies, 97, 98, 230

Shunzei, 105, 118–19, 258n16

Siddhaṃ script

Ajikan and, 133, 137–39

Hensel’s utilization of, 129

linguistic tree diagram and, 258n34

Principle colophon and, 89, 93, 130

seed-syllables (shuji), 130, 138, 183

tools for writing in, 147

Siebold, Philipp Franz von: Nippon, 249nn66–67

Significance of the Character “A”, The (Ajigi)

“A” icons in, 145–48, 154–55

anti-aesthetics and, 150, 154–55, 232

calligraphy of, 132, 134, 135, 144, 147

cartouches in, 134, 141, 142, 144, 145

constituent elements of, 135, 136–37

dating of, 135–36, 156, 258nn22–23

“The Definition of the Character A,” 136, 137, 139, 238, 258n18, 258n32

“The Efficacy of the Character A,” 135–36, 137, 139–40, 144, 146–47, 157, 168–73, 238–40, 261n102

epistle by Tōbō Hokkyō, 135, 137, 258n19

human figures in, 133, 134–35, 137, 140–47, 143, 157, 159

“Mantra to Purify the Three Activities,” 135, 136

materiality of interface, 135–36

stratigraphy and anatomy in, 145–48

translations of, 238–40, 272nn1–4

visualization in, 147, 167–69

women and, 134, 141–42, 144–45

See also Ajikan

Sisi (Elisabeth) (Hapsburg empress), 29, 31

Sōtatsu (Tawaraya), 83, 84

soteriology

Ajikan and, 131, 133, 156

dharma anatomy and, 164, 175

gender and, 142

GoShirakawa and, 127

heart-mind complex and, 173

physiology and, 133, 159, 173

somatic, 157, 174

trace-ism and, 77

visualization and, 166

Spenger, Oswald, 20

Spivak, Gayatri, 44, 61

Sponberg, Alan, 167, 169, 263n18

standing, artistic, 29–32, 39, 41, 42, 69

Stone, Jacqueline I., 156, 157, 262n152

stratigraphy

aesthetics and, 15, 120

anatomy and, 145–48

calligraphy and, 83

Eyeless Sutras and, 83, 86, 108, 112, 115–24, 231, 255n129

interface and, 82, 83, 85, 115, 117

Lotus Sutra and, 85, 118, 122–23

reading and, 231

use of term, 83

See also overlay, palimpsests, superimposition

subjectivity

attenuation of, 229

avant-garde and, 40

equal, 37, 41

faciality and, 11

image interface and, 72

Japonisme and, 66

modern, 22, 37, 39, 68, 233

racist policing of, 233

self-aware, 26

Sugita Genpaku: New Book of Dissection, 164, 164

superimposition, 4, 115, 228, 256n178

See also overlay; palimpsests; stratigraphy

surface/depth binary, 14–15, 58, 166

Sutra of Visualizing the Bodhisattva Fugen, 122, 123

Sutra on Transforming Women into Buddhas, 121, 121

Suzuki, D. T., 210

Suzuki Keizō, 141, 145

synchronicity, 25, 111, 196, 197

Szarkowski, John: The Photographer’s Eye, 227–28

Taine, Hippolyte, 44

Taira Family Sutras, 94, 119, 120, 260n74, 260n89

Takahashi Koshun, 263n5

Takakura (Japanese emperor), 97, 98

Takakusu Junjirō, 258n34

Takeuchi Yoshimi, 26, 27, 46, 47

Tale of Genji, 82–83, 88, 101, 101, 103, 105, 119, 253n45

Tanabe, Willa Jane, 256n145, 256n171

Tanaka, Chieko, 217

Tanaka, Isamu, 217

Tanaka Kaidō, 254n84

Tanaka Shinbi, 201, 203, 216

Tanba Yasunori: Teachings of the Heart of Medicine, 171

tea bowls, 8, 70

tea practice (Chanoyu), 19, 69, 203

technology

appropriation of, 10, 28, 31, 32, 41

culture and, 26, 47, 72

global interface and, 11

interface and, 73–75, 159

nationalism and, 47

Orientalism and, 29

of vision, 16

tekagami (albums of calligraphy specimens), 86, 87, 98–99, 112, 193–94

text/image binary, 13–15, 52, 116, 132, 166

Thomson, James, 56–58, 57, 249n20

Thousand-Armed Kannon, 180–81, 181

Thrift, Nigel, 70

Toba (Japanese emperor), 97, 98

Tōbō Hokkyō (Gyōen), 135, 137, 258n19

Toby, Ronald P., 43, 44, 247n157

Tōdaiji Temple (Nara), 97

Tokiwa Mitsunaga, 125

Tokyo National Museum

“A” icon from, 147, 148, 148

folding screen at, 192, 193

Marcel Duchamp and Japanese Art exhibition (2018), 18, 19

Torii Ryūzō, 246n120

Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 250n98

trace-ism, 77–78

transgender persons, 145, 260n90

Treatise on the Bodhicitta, 137

trompe l’oeil, 23, 222

Trumbull, John, 35–36

tsukuri-e technique, 100, 102, 118, 123

ukiyo-e, 51, 73, 245n80

Ulmer, Gregory, 195

universalism, 5, 11, 33, 40–42

universe-as-manuscript metaphor, 152, 262n129

Unkei, 160, 162, 177, 178

Utamaro (Kitagawa), 51

Vairocana Buddha, 97, 155, 157, 253n70, 257n12

Valéry, Paul, 47

Valignano, Alessandro, 42–43, 43, 247n152

van der Veere, Hendrik, 259–60n72

van Gogh, Vincent, 62, 66

Vienna

Secession exhibition, sixth (1900), 1–2, 2, 8–10, 31, 69–70, 226

World’s Fair exhibition (1873), 29, 30–31, 36, 67

vision

anocular, 169

burgeoning of, 170–74

Christian typology of, 170

embodied, 5, 13, 191

epistemology of, 5, 232

in late Heian period, 131

materiality of, 5, 104, 134, 168, 187, 189

physiology of, 5, 134, 166, 169, 187, 232

prosthetic eyes, 160, 162, 263nn4–5

ritual, 189–91

semiotics and, 152

technology of, 16

temporality and, 168

transparency of, 167

See also gaze

visual anthropology, 6, 54, 71, 189–91, 232

visuality and visual culture

adjustments, 34, 66

appropriation and, 10, 23, 24, 65, 69

art history and, 151, 167

artifactual archive within, 7

Buddhist, 152, 168, 170

copresence and, 214

cosmopolitan, 26

diversity of, 15–16

global, 46, 65

Heian secular, 261n119

interface and, 4, 10, 13, 33, 54, 74, 227–28

mechanisms of, 10

media archaeology and, 54

montage and, 227

photographic, 271n3

replicatory chains of, 223

transposability of, 33

universal aesthetic power of, 41

visualization

animation rubric of, 265n70

of “A” syllable, 154, 167, 258n35

body/mind, 133, 173

Buddhist, 136, 166–70

as empirical observation, 265n67

heart-mind complex and, 166, 169, 170, 173–74, 191

of moon, 258n35

picturing, 166–70

reverse vectors of, 264n32

in The Significance of the Character “A”, 147, 167–69

soteriology and, 166

Volk, Alicia, 40, 41, 59, 65, 70

Wa-Kan dialectic, 15, 28, 217–18, 249n50

Warburg, Aby, 7, 25, 54, 242n19

Washizuka Hiromitsu, 265n84

Watanabe, Toshio, 66, 74

Watsuji Testsurō: Climate and Culture (Fūdo), 44

Weisberg, Gabriel P., 62

Wescher, Herta, 196, 197, 199–200, 203, 209, 221, 267n10

Western-style painting (yōga), 31–32, 40, 216

Weston, Edward, 227

Whistler, James McNeill, 66, 68, 250n80

Wickhoff, Franz, 59–60, 69

Wilde, Oscar, 33, 66

Wilson, Bronwen, 43

Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 44

Winfield, Pamela D., 151, 152, 168, 257n4, 261n117

Wölfflin, Heinrich, 11, 40, 246–47n133

women

Eyeless Sutras and, 90, 92–93, 116–17, 253n63

Lotus Sutra booklet and, 256n171

The Significance of the Character “A” and, 134, 141–42, 144–45

Sutra on Transforming Women into Buddhas, 121, 121

Taira Family Sutras and, 119, 260n74, 260n89

See also gender

Wood, Christopher S., 25, 35, 243n1, 244n24

woodblock printing, 1, 19, 51, 68, 69

World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (Chicago), 29, 245n67

World’s Fair of 1873 (Vienna), 29, 30–31, 36, 67

Wu Hung, 58

Xavier, Francis, 42

Yamasaki Taikō, 172–73, 258n35, 264–65n61

Yamawaki Michiko, 69

Yanagisawa Taka, 141

Yanagi Sōetsu (Muneyoshi), 204

Yiengpruksawan, Mimi, 95

Yijing: Golden Light Sutra of the Superlative Kings, 96

Yixing: Commentary, 137

yōga (Western-style painting), 31–32, 40, 216

Yorozu Tetsugorō, 39

Yoshimura Junzō, 226

Yoshioka, Hiroshi, 28

Young, Robert, 25

Yūgen, 136

Yuize Shin’ichi, 224, 226

Zachmann, Gayle, 271n118

Zielinski, Siegfried, 54

Zōei, 264n31

(A Series Edited By)

Jonathan Eburne

Refiguring Modernism features cutting-edge interdisciplinary approaches to the study of art, literature, science, and cultural history. With an eye to the different modernisms emerging throughout the world during the twentieth century and beyond, we seek to publish scholarship that engages creatively with canonical and eccentric works alike, bringing fresh concepts and original research to bear on modernist cultural production, whether aesthetic, social, or epistemological. What does it mean to study modernism in a global context characterized at once by decolonization and nation-building; international cooperation and conflict; changing ideas about subjectivity and identity; new understandings of language, religion, poetics, and myth; and new paradigms for science, politics, and religion? What did modernism offer artists, writers, and intellectuals? How do we theorize and historicize modernism? How do we rethink its forms, its past, and its futures?

(Other Books in the Series)

David Peters Corbett, The World in Paint: Modern Art and Visuality in England, 1848–1914

Jordana Mendelson, Documenting Spain: Artists, Exhibition Culture, and the Modern Nation, 1929–1939

Barbara Larson, The Dark Side of Nature: Science, Society, and the Fantastic in the Work of Odilon Redon

Alejandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Weinberg, eds., The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere

Margaret Iversen, Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes

Marius Roux, The Substance and the Shadow

Stephen Bann, ed., The Coral Mind: Adrian Stokes’s Engagement with Architecture, Art History, Criticism, and Psychoanalysis

Aruna D’Souza, Cézanne’s Bathers: Biography and the Erotics of Paint

Charles Palermo, Fixed Ecstasy: Joan Miró in the 1920s

Abigail Gillman, Viennese Jewish Modernism: Freud, Hofmannsthal, Beer-Hofmann, and Schnitzler

Stephen Petersen, Space-Age Aesthetics: Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, and the Postwar European Avant-Garde

Stefanie Harris, Mediating Modernity: Literature and the “New” Media, 1895–1930

Michele Greet, Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy for Andean Art, 1920–1960

Paul Smith, ed., Seurat Re-viewed

David Prochaska and Jordana Mendelson, eds., Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity

David Getsy, From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art

Jessica Burstein, Cold Modernism: Literature, Fashion, Art

Adam Jolles, The Curatorial Avant-Garde: Surrealism and Exhibition Practice in France, 1925–1941

Juli Highfill, Modernism and Its Merchandise: The Spanish Avant-Garde and Material Culture, 1920–1930

Damien Keane, Ireland and the Problem of Information: Irish Writing, Radio, Late Modernist Communication

Allison Morehead, Nature’s Experiments and the Search for Symbolist Form

Laura Kalba, Color in the Age of Impressionism: Commerce, Technology, and Art

Catherine Walworth, Soviet Salvage: Imperial Debris, Revolutionary Reuse, and Russian Constructivism

Jo Applin, Catherine Spencer, and Amy Tobin, eds., London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent, and Ephemeral Networks, 1960–1980

Erik M. Bachman, Literary Obscenities: U. S. Case Law and Naturalism after Modernism

Lori Cole, Surveying the Avant-Garde: Questions on Modernism, Art, and the Americas in Transatlantic Magazines

Elizabeth Pender and Cathryn Setz, eds., Shattered Objects: Djuna Barnes’s Modernism

Sam Rose, Art and Form: From Roger Fry to Global Modernism

Diederik Oostdijk, Bells for America: The Cold War, Modernism, and the Netherlands Carillon in Arlington.

Jessica Gerschultz, Decorative Arts of the Tunisian École: Fabrications of Modernism, Gender, and Power

Anna Lovatt, Drawing Degree Zero: The Line from Minimal to Conceptual Art

Molly Warnock, Simon Hantaï and the Reserves of Painting

Octavio González, Misfit Modernism: Queer Forms of Double Exile in the Twentieth-Century Novel

Mark Antliff, Sculptors Against the State: Anarchism and the Anglo-European Avant-Garde

Elliott H. King and Abigail Susik, eds., Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance

Katie L. Price and Michael R. Taylor, eds., ’Pataphysics Unrolled

Ignacio A. Adriasola Muñoz, Fragment, Image, and Absence in 1960s Japan

Delia Solomons, Cold War in the White Cube: U.S. Exhibitions of Latin American Art, 1959–1968

Giovanni Casini, Léonce Rosenberg’s Cubism: The Galerie L’Effort Moderne in Interwar Paris

William Gallois, Qayrawān: The Amuletic City

Maureen Shanahan, Machine Modernism, Masculinity, and the Trauma of War: The Art of Fernand Léger