Japanese sculpture

The sculpture of Japan started from the clay figure. A Japanese sculpture received the influence of the Silk Road culture in the fifth century, and received a strong influence of a Chinese sculpture afterwards. And, the influence of the Western world was received since the Meiji era.

Most of the Japanese sculptures derived from the idol worship in Buddhism or animistic rites of Shinto deity. In particular, sculpture among all the arts came to be most firmly centered around Buddhism. Materials traditionally used were metal—especially bronze—and, more commonly, wood, often lacquered, gilded, or brightly painted. By the end of the Tokugawa period, such traditional sculpture - except for miniaturized works - had largely disappeared because of the loss of patronage by Buddhist temples and the nobility.

History

Primitive arts

Dogu, or statuette in the late Jōmon period

Interest in primitive arts is seeing a wide ascendancy and spontaneity and seek to produce a similar artless artistry in their own works. In every instance examples of ancient primitive art have been found to possess characteristics identical to modern arts; and the ancient Japanese clay figures known as dogu (土偶) and haniwa (埴輪) are no exceptions to this rule.

No scholar has been able to determine absolutely just when human life moved over into the Japanese archipelago. It was these early inhabitants who eventually evolved the first crude Japanese native art in rough earthenware and in strange clay figures called dogu, which are probably fetishes of some religious nature. Some may have been used in fertility rites, and some in exorcism or other forms of primitive ritual.

The dogu figures are impressive in their grotesque and mysterious symbolism; and there is a crude sense of primitive force and passion in the strongly engraved lines and swirls with which the figures are decorated.

Legend , as recorded in the Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan) which is an ancient history of Japan compiled in 720, states that the haniwa was ordered at the time of an empress' death by the emperor who regretted the custom of servants and maids of the deceased following their master in death, and ordered that clay figures be molded and placed around the kofun, burial mound instead of the sacrifice of living beings. This well known story, however, is doubted for authenticity by scholars who contend that plain cylindrical clay pipes were the first haniwa forms. and that they were used in the manner of stakes to hold the earth of the burial mound in place. Later these plain cylindrical haniwa came to be decorated and to take various forms, including the shapes of houses and domestic animals as well as human beings. They have been found arranged in a circle around the mound, lending credence to the scholars theory. Howeve, the haniwa figures no doubt came to take on some sort of religious symbolism later, aside from their original very practical purpose as stakes.

Asuka and Hakuho periods

Japanese emergence from her period of native primitive arts was instigated mainly by the introduction of Buddhism from the mainland Asian continent about the middle of the sixth century. Together with the new religion, skilled artists and craftsman from China came to Japan to build its temples and sculptic idols, and to pass on artistic techniques to native craftsmen.

Earliest examples of Buddhist art may be seen in accumulated splendor at the seventh century Horyuji temple in Nara, whose buildings themselves, set in a prescribed pattern with main hall, belfy, pagodas, and other buildings enclosed within an encircling roofed collidor, retain an aura of the ancient era, together with the countless art treasures preserved within their halls.

Nara and its vicinity contain the vast majority of the nations treasures of the early period of Buddhist art, known in art history as the Asuka period. The sculpture of this period shows, as do most all subsequent sculpture, the influence of continental art. Noted Asuka sculptor Tori Busshi followed the style of North Wei sculpture and established what has come to be known as the Tori school of sculpture. Notable examples of Tori works are the Sakyamuni Triad which are the main icons of the Golden Hall of Horyuji temple and the kannon Boddhisatva of Yumedono Hall of the same temple, also known as Guze Kannon.

Some of the most important Buddhist sculptures belong to the ensuing Hakuho art period when the sculpture came to show predominantly T'ang influence. The mystic unrealistic air of the earlier Tori style came to be replaced by a soft supple pose and a near sensuous beauty more in the manner of the Maitreya with long narrow slit eyes and gentle effeminate features which in spite of their air of reverie have about them an intimate approachability. The aloofness of the earlier Asuka sculpture is softened into a more native form; and there is to be seen in them a compromise between the divine and the human ideal.

Representative sculptures of this period are the beautiful Sho Kannon of Yakushiji temple, and the Yumatagae Kannon of Horyuji, both showing the fullness of rounded flesh within the conventionalized folds of the garments, reflectiong in their artistry features of the Gupta art are transmitted to Japanese through Tang.

Heian period

With the moving of the imperial capital from Nara to Kyoto in 794, the cultural spirit of the new era achieved freedom from the predominantly Buddhist influence that had molded the Nara culture, and a more freely creative spirit made itself apparent in various aspects. The Heian people also threw great parties in honor of the sculpture gods.

Modern arts

Introduction of the Western techniques

The stimulus of Western art forms returned sculpture to the Japanese art scene and introduced the plaster cast, outdoor heroic sculpture, and the school of Paris concept of sculpture as an "art form." Such ideas adapted in Japan during the late 19th century, together with the return of state patronage, rejuvenated sculpture. After World War II, sculptors turned away from the figurative French school of Rodin and Maillol toward aggressive modern and avant-garde forms and materials, sometimes on an enormous scale. A profusion of materials and techniques characterized these new experimental sculptures, which also absorbed the ideas of international "op" (optical illusion) and "pop" (popular motif) art. A number of innovative artists were both sculptors and painters or printmakers, their new theories cutting across material boundaries.

1970s onwards

In the 1970s, the ideas of contextual placement of natural objects of stone, wood, bamboo, and paper into relationships with people and their environment were embodied in the mono-ha school. The mono-ha artists emphasized materiality as the most important aspect of art and brought to an end the antiformalism that had dominated the avant-garde in the preceding two decades. This focus on the relationships between objects and people was ubiquitous throughout the arts world and led to a rising appreciation of "Japanese" qualities in the environment and a return to native artistic principles and forms. Among these precepts were a reverence for nature and various Buddhist concepts, which were brought into play by architects to treat time and space problems. Western ideology was carefully reexamined, and much was rejected as artists turned to their own environment--both inward and outward--for sustenance and inspiration. From the late 1970s through the late 1980s, artists began to create a vital new art, which was both contemporary and Asian in sources and expression but still very much a part of the international scene. These artists focused on projecting their own individualism and national styles rather than on adapting or synthesizing Western ideas exclusively.

Outdoor sculpture, which came to the fore with the advent of the Hakone Open-Air Museum in 1969, was widely used in the 1980s. Cities supported enormous outdoor sculptures for parks and plazas, and major architects planned for sculpture in their buildings and urban layouts. Outdoor museums and exhibitions burgeoned, stressing the natural placement of sculpture in the environment. Because hard sculpture stone is not native to Japan, most outdoor pieces were created from stainless steel, plastic, or aluminum for "tension and compression" machine constructions of mirror-surfaced steel or for elegant, polished-aluminum, ultramodern shapes. The strong influence of modern high technology on the artists resulted in experimentation with kinetic, tensile forms, such as flexible arcs and "info-environmental" sculptures using lights. Video components and video art developed rapidly from the late 1970s throughout the 1980s. The new Japanese experimental sculptors could be understood as working with Buddhist ideas of permeability and regeneration in structuring their forms, in contrast to the general Western conception of sculpture as something with finite and permanent contours.

In the 1980s, wood and natural materials were used prominently by many sculptors, who now began to place their works in inner courtyards and enclosed spaces. Also, a Japanese feeling for rhythmic motion, captured in recurring forms as a "systematic gestural motion," was used by both long-established artists like Kiyomizu Kyubei and Nagasawa Hidetoshi and the younger generation led by Toya Shigeo.

References

Japan

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Approarch to Japanese culture, Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, The Japan Times

External links

The art of Japan: Sculpture including history
Japanese sculptures — photographs