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But again, I want to dive into the composition, the words that are inscribed
onto this painting in order to be able to appreciate and
understand what was in Kazan's mind and
the strategies that he employed in order to represent this
woman whom we know from the inscription that he knew very, very well personally.
I've translated an excerpt from the text itself.
Before the words that we see here,
Kazan has described his relationship to this woman.
We don't know her name, she's a geisha in Edo perhaps in Yanagibashi or
one of the other areas that had a lot of geisha houses.
We can't really pin down her sort of social identity, but
we know that she worked as a geisha.
And that Watanabe Kazan in the years that he spent in Edo engaged with her.
He was committed to their relationship.
She was a geisha, so he visited her house as a guest.
And he paid the owners of the house, and so forth, and she had remittances for men.
In other words, she was paid in order to spend time with him.
But, they developed a very particular, strong relationship with each other.
He really appreciates her, cherishes her.
Not just the way that she looks or comports herself,
but for her vivacity, her spirit.
And the way that she's very,
very constantly sort of honestly sort of engaging with him.
So he describes his strong feelings for
this woman within the text that he's written onto her portrait.
He goes on as follows:
"Each of the following men painted what he loved and
each in turn was stimulated by the images to give them as presents to his friends."
Here Kazan is quoting older ancient
Chinese literati painters from different dynasties which
each of whom really, really, enjoyed painting a certain kind of thing.
So he collects all of these.
He's collected several painters here who have really,
really strong feelings towards particular sorts of subject matters.
Wen Yuke, for example, "groves of bamboo,
Zheng Sixiao his orchids Hua Guang plum blossoms.
None of us, though, really like or dislike in exactly the same way.
Wang Yan hated springs, Ouyang Xiu detested cicadas,
Mei Shan loathed the chessboard.
Even if they wanted to, how could they all cherish the same things?
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essentially individualistic.
And no artist really liking everything that everybody else does.
So there's a great deal of choice,
a great deal of preference, or rejection of different things that
artists or cultivated, cultured men share with each other.
And he confesses to us here in this phrase, in this passage here,
that he really likes lotuses a lot.
Lotuses of course blossom in the early summer, and they blossom especially
in Edo in ponds that are all over the city, especially in the morning
when it's hot and the temperature begins to go up right after dawn.
You'll see, you'll have descriptions of lotuses,
lotus pods sort of all popping and blossoming up all at once.
And cultivated men and women who've been out all night, hanging around, talking,
playing, drinking sake wine, getting together to see at the end of the night,
right at dawn, lotuses blossoming.
And that was one sort of social pastime that cultivated men and women,
one way that they spent time with each other in Edo.
Anyway, Watanabe Kazan really likes lotuses and as he's drinking or
talking with his friends, even when he's falling asleep he likes to have
a lotus in full blossom somewhere near him in his room so
that he can smell it as he's falling off to sleep.
"Hence what we say, that which our emotional instincts
center upon are what prompt us to display our truest thoughts."
In other words, artists, cultivated men and women,
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need to be honest,
and need to be understanding what prompts them,
what really feeds their emotional instincts in order to display,
in other words, to express something, to write something, to paint something.
Again here, like his predecessors,
who we saw in module number one, writers, artists, very,
very concerned with getting down, documenting one's truest thoughts.
In other words, not taking on the identity of someone hundreds of years ago or
trying to be more or less than one actually is in society.
What's important, what's essential,
is to be able to display in one's own words or painting one's truest thought.
"No man or woman born into this world without the capacity to feel a desire to
eat, drink, and mingle sexually with men or women can properly be labeled, 'human.'
For this reason, what I have come to love, follows the universal way of the world."
He uses the Japanese term, tenka no kōdō.
"My instincts are at one with the Masters Wen and Zheng.
For this reason, I have drawn my beloved geisha in order to present to Kensai
(who will either share my tastes or not)."
We know here from the last sentence that this portrait with the prose written
on it was meant as a present to someone else, a gift.
It was to be given to a young painter, whom he was training to be a very,
very important painter named Hirai Kensai.
When I first read this passage, I remember seeing this
painting at the museum that owns it.
And reading the sort of kanbun Chinese verse and
wondering how it would feel, why he would want to
present a portrait of, basically his girlfriend, to one of his students?
That seemed to me to be, well extremely something
that living in the modern day, we really can't really empathize with.
It says, something that I really couldn't figure out.
First of all, like the instinct, what his sort of drive was here.
But as you read over and over, and then think about, as I'm going to explain in
a couple of minutes, what's behind these words, the historical context here,
we have a sense of what he wanted to convey to Kensai here.
He makes a very strong statement, declaration, of what it means to be human:
what it means to be human basically is to follow one's human instincts,
the instinct to eat, to drink, to partner,
to be sexually expressive or closely
bonded with someone else.
[LAUGH] All of these are desires, which according to Confucian dogma
perhaps need to be, or sensed or
thought to be, something which needs to be suppressed or controlled.
Here, Kazan proposes that we become closer and
more true and honest to these desires, because these are what make us human,
and what allow us to form and combine and
conjoin as a society, or as a family or as a domain.
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"My companion, having removed the jewel combs and golden hairpins from her hair,
appears unmade up, in a thin gauze robe, like a fresh lotus blossom after the rain.
Painted in jest and inscribed by Kazan, Tenth Day, Sixth Month 1838."
The last paragraph here refers to what's going on in Edo.
There are a number of edicts published in the year by the bakufu,
the city magistrate in Edo which forbid conspicuous consumption,
luxury items and so forth, like the gold hairpins and
the jewel combs that he mentions right here.
During this time, his companion,
this geisha has forsaken all of these luxurious items and dresses very,
very simply, doesn't put on any makeup, and he presents her
in this, at the time politically correct, safe sort of mode,
but also as we know from his writing,
tries to convey the sense of her simplicity and
the fact that she's like a fresh blossom right after the rain.
And the most beautiful aspect of her, the most true instinct
that she holds can be portrayed by
showing her not all dressed up in her sort of regalia to go out and work as a geisha,
but right after a bath when she's the most personal, private, and perhaps vulnerable.
That moment in her life,
he's chosen to portray and to give,
Robert CampbellEmeritus Professor, The University of Tokyo
