Background: The Muromachi Period
During the Muromachi period (1333 - 1578), also known as the Ashikaga period, a profound change took place in Japanese culture. The Ashikaga clan took control of the shogunate and moved its headquarters back to Kyoto, to the Muromachi district of the city. With the return of government to the capital, the popularizing trends of the Kamakura period came to an end, and cultural expression took on a more aristocratic, elitist character. During the Muromachi Period, Zen Buddhism rose to prominence—especially among the elite Samurai class, who embraced the Zen values of personal discipline, concentration, and self development.
Impact on the Arts
The establishment of the great Zen monasteries in Kamakura and Kyoto had a major impact on the visual arts. Because of secular ventures and trading missions to China organized by Zen temples, many Chinese paintings and objects of art were imported into Japan, profoundly influencing Japanese artists working for Zen temples and the shogunate. These imports not only changed the subject matter of painting, but they also modified the use of color; the bright colors of Yamato-e yielded to the monochromes of painting in the Chinese manner of Sui-boku-ga (水) or Sumi-e (墨). This style mainly used only black ink—the same as used in East Asian calligraphy.
Sesshū Tōyō and the Haboku Style
The foremost painter of the new Sumi-e style was Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506), a Rinzai priest who traveled to China in 1468-69 and studied contemporary Ming painting. Some of his most dramatic works are in the Chinese splashed-ink (Haboku) style. Upon returning to Japan, Sesshū built himself a studio and established a large following; these painters are now referred to as the Unkoku-rin school or "School of Sesshū".
To make one of the calligraphic and highly-stylized Haboku paintings, the painter would visualize the image and then make swift broad strokes onto the paper, resulting in a splashed and abstract composition. This was all done with meditative concentration. This impressionistic style of painting was supposed to capture the true nature of the subject. The Sumi-e style was highly influenced by calligraphy, using the same tools and style as well as its Zen philosophy. To paint in this style, the practitioner had to clear his mind and apply the brush strokes without too much thinking, termed mushin (無) by the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro. The concept of mushin is central to many Japanese arts, including the art of the sword, archery, and the tea ceremony.
Haboku-Sansui, Sesshū, 1495, ink on silk,
Splashed-ink style landscape by Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506)
Sansuiga
By the end of the 14th century, monochrome landscape paintings (sansuiga) had found patronage by the ruling Ashikaga family and became the preferred genre among Zen painters, gradually evolving from their Chinese roots to a more Japanese style. An important landscape painter during this period was Tenshō Shūbun, a monk at the Kyoto temple of Shōkoku-ji who traveled to Korea and studied under Chinese painters. He returned to Japan in 1404 and settled in Kyoto, then the capital city. He became director of the court painting bureau that had been established by Ashikaga shoguns, who were influential art patrons. Shūbun's best known landscape painting, designated as a National Treasure in Japan, is Reading in a Bamboo Grove, now kept in the Tokyo National Museum.
Detail of "Reading in a Bamboo Grove", 1446, Shūbun
Tenshō Shūbun's (1414–1463) best known landscape painting.
Shigajiku
Another style which developed in the Muromachi period is Shigajiku (詩). This is usually a painting accompanied by poetry and has its roots in China, where painting and poetry were seen as inherently connected. This style grew out of literary circles; an artist would usually be given a subject to paint, and the poets would compose accompanying verses to be written above the work.
A famous example is the scroll "Catching a Catfish with a Gourd" (Hyōnen-zu 瓢), located at Taizō-in, Myōshin-ji, Kyoto. Created by the priest-painter Josetsu (c. 1386-1428), it includes 31 verses of many Zen priests inscribed above the painting. In the foreground of the painting, a man is depicted on the bank of a stream holding a small gourd and looking at a large slithery catfish. Mist fills the middle ground, and the background mountains appear to be far in the distance. The painting was commissioned by the 4th Shogun of the Muromachi Period, Ashikaga Yoshimochi (1386-1428), and was based on the nonsensical riddle: "How do you catch a catfish with a gourd?" The painting and accompanying poems capture both the playfulness and the perplexing nature of Zen buddhist Koans, which were supposed to aid the Zen practitioner in their meditation.
In the late Muromachi period, ink painting had migrated out of the Zen monasteries into the art world in general. Artists from the Kano school and the Ami school adopted the style and themes but introduced a more plastic and decorative effect that would continue into modern times.