Landscape (detail), Hosokawa Rinkoku (1782–1842), Japan, Edo period, 1835, handscroll, ink and color on paper, Freer Gallery of Art Collection, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, The Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, F2021.4.11a–c.

WASHINGTON DC - During the Edo period (1603–1868), feudal Japan was largely closed off from the outside world. For three hundred years, a loose movement of Japanese artists, often referred to as literati, turned to neighboring China—variably a source for emulation and a source of rivalry—for inspiration. Through painting and calligraphy, they created immersive environments in which artists and viewers alike could mentally withdraw from worldly affairs. As disparate and diverse as the literati movement was, its members were united by a common language that embraced diverse notions of “China”—a place both familiar and foreign, as much imagined as it was known. Throughout a period of modernization during the Meiji era (1868–1912) and after, when all facets of life in Japan were radically changing, China’s historic role in helping shape the fabric of Japanese history and culture remained a touchstone for Japanese artists, even in the context of imperialism and war.

Imagined Neighbors presents Japanese artworks from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, given to the National Museum of Asian Art between 2018 and 2022. The Cowles Collection is arguably the largest and most comprehensive group of Japanese literati works outside of Japan. The paintings and calligraphy in this exhibition fuse reality with imagination and remain important to understanding the continuing, complex engagement of Japanese artists with China, to them both a real and an imagined place.

Red Cliff

The “Ode to the Red Cliff” (“Chibi fu”) comprises two prose poems by the Chinese poet Su Shi (1037–1101). The first ode describes a boating trip by Su Shi on the Yangtze River in 1082, during which he and his party commemorate a naval battle that occurred at the site more than eight hundred years earlier. The emotionality of the nocturnal boating trip made it a popular subject among painters in China and Japan alike. In the second ode, Su Shi comes ashore on the Red Cliff. The story’s origins and its renderings in Chinese painting made it appealing to artists in both cultures as an opportunity to showcase their own knowledge and interpretation of the theme.

Whereas Japanese painter Ike Taiga places us at eye level with Su Shi and his boating party, Chinese painter Wen Zhengming zooms out, giving us a bird’s-eye view. In Taiga’s image, Su Shi is drinking and singing, whereas in Wen Zhengming’s, Su Shi is heading to a picnic on the shore. The two painters also offer us different interpretations of the boating party. The violent water and unfazed party in Taiga’s work contrast with the stillness of the water and the determination of Su Shi, leaning toward the shore, in Wen Zhengming’s. Additionally, the black and white of the moonlit night in Taiga’s work and the sunlit scenery of Wen Zhengming’s work contrast, demonstrating how a popular theme can be interpreted in countless ways.

Red Cliff, Ike Taiga (1723–1776), Japan, Edo period, mid- to late 1760s, hanging scroll, ink and light color on silk, Freer Gallery of Art Collection, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, The Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, F2022.2.18a–d.

Boating under the Red Cliff, Wen Zhengming (1470–1559), China, Ming dynasty, 1552, ink and color on paper, Freer Gallery of Art Collection, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Purchase—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1939.1a–c.

Lu Dongbin

Lu Dongbin is one of many literati heroes. A scholar and poet of the Tang dynasty (618–907), he is said to have lived the extraordinary span of two centuries. Myth and legend go hand in hand with much of literati lore, so Lu Dongbin became a larger-than-life figure. He was also popular in Zen Buddhism, which absorbed the stories of Daoist immortals into its pantheon. Zen paintings show Lu Dongbin as a fierce tamer of dragons who carries a flask from which he can conjure the mighty beasts.

In the literati universe, Lu Dongbin was tamed, and his identity as a scholar became his primary attribute. That interpretation is closer to descriptions in Chinese literature, such as History of the Song in 1343, which reflect a more subtle, sober reading of the subject. These two paintings, one by the Japanese literati artist Hayashi Jukkō from the early nineteenth century and an anonymous Chinese work from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), capture this literati interpretation of Lu Dongbin. They also show how closely some Japanese artists followed their Chinese sources. Both artists imbue Lu Dongbin with silent determination and use the outlines of his clothes as an opportunity to demonstrate their unique and skilled brushwork.

Lu Dongbin, Hayashi Jukkō (1777–1813), Japan, Edo period, late 1770s, hanging scroll, ink and light color on paper, Freer Gallery of Art Collection, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, The Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, F2020.5.13a–f.

Standing figure of Lu Dongbin, anonymous artist, China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644), ink and color on silk, Freer Gallery of Art Collection, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1916.580.

Reclusion

Reclusion, the sometimes physical and more often mental withdrawal from worldly affairs, was a central part of literati practice. Along with lived experience, the acts of both painting and looking at paintings enabled cognitive reclusion. They offered imagined departures from mundane existence and were a preferred means to create and share idealized visions of seclusion with friends and other like-minded people. The sites of mental reclusion created through paintings were often used as spaces for artistic experimentation, sometimes resulting in highly expressive and often unconventional images. These locales could be artistic interpretations of actual sites or of environments that only existed in the painter’s mind.

Ike Taiga and Shen Zhou were two artistic giants of Japan and China, respectively. Taiga and other Japanese artists were buoyed by the creativity and new ways of expression they found in paintings from the Wu School, which arrived in Japan from China after the late seventeenth century, and to which Shen Zhou belonged. In many ways, Shen Zhou’s interpretation of reclusion amid a dreamy imaginary landscape lush with verdant plants informed artists like Taiga two centuries later. In both paintings, a scholar in a rustic hut waits for a visitor—you, the viewer—to arrive. Taiga’s inscription describes the sounds of birds and cicadas that fill the landscape, and we can almost hear the same soundscape in Shen Zhou’s earlier work.

Scholar in retirement, Ike Taiga (1723–1776), Japan, Edo period, ca. 1750s, handscroll, ink and light color on paper, Freer Gallery of Art Collection, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, The Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, F2020.5.16a–e

A spring gathering, Shen Zhou (1427–1509), China, Ming dynasty, ca. 1480, ink and color on paper, Freer Gallery of Art Collection, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Purchase—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1934.1.