Tosa Mitsuoki

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Daruma Pilgrims Gallery

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Tosa Mitsuoki 土佐光起


Self-portrait, 1679

Painter
November 21, 1617 – November 14, 1691


"Do not fill up the whole picture with lines;
also apply colors with a light touch.
Some perfection in design is desirable.
You should not fill in more than one third of the background.
Just as you would if you were writing poetry,
take care to hold something back.
The viewer, too, must bring something into it.
If one includes some empty space along with an image,
then the mind will fill it in."


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Tosa Mitsuoki was the successor of the Tosa school after his father, Tosa Mitsunori (1583–1638).
Mitsuoki brought the Tosa school to Kyoto after around 50 years in Sakai. When the school was settled in Sakai, Mitsunori painted for townsmen. The school was not as prolific as it once was when Mitsunobu, who painted many fine scrolls (1434–1525) ran the school. Mitsuoki moved out of Sakai with his father, in 1634 and into the city of Kyoto. There, he hoped to revive the Tosa school to gain status back into the Kyoto court.
Around the time of 1654 he gained a position as court painter(edokoro azukari) that had for many years traditionally been held by the Tosa family, but was in possession of the Kano school since the Muromachi period (1338–1573).


Reclaim to fame
In 1654, Mitsuoki restored fortunes back to the family school when he earned the title of the edokoro azukari, which means “head of the court painting bureau”. Now the Tosa school was back into the highlight of the court. The school prospered throughout the Edo period, during the years of 1600 to 1868. Mitsuoki can be considered as the last groundbreaking painter of the Tosa school. He was succeeded by a long line of painters, starting with his son, Mitsunari (1646–1710).

Many of the successors used the same techniques and syle of painting as Mitsuoki, which slowly over the years of the duration of the Edo period, the works became repetitive. The lack of innovation produced many scrolls that could be seen as done by Mitsuoki himself. Another school in effect around the same time called the Kano school, flourished just as the successors of the Tosa school.

Mitsuoki was known for reintroducing the Yamato-e style. Yamato-e (大和絵) is a style of ancient Japanese painting inspired by paintings in the Tang dynasty.

His Works
Kitano Tenjin engi emaki - a picture scroll depicting the chronicle of the Kitano Shrine)
Itsukushima Matsushima zu-byōbu - Picture Screens of Itsukushima and Matsushima
Kiku jun zu - A Quail and Chrysanthemums
Quail and Millet Screen
Ono no Komachi – Ink and color on silk, hanging scroll
Quail and Poem

The Tosa School
The Tosa school, in its own history, expressly stated that the school founded in the ninth century owed nothing to the influence of China. But the style of the Tosa school looks like it is was greatly influenced by Chinese painting. Apart from religious subjects, it occupied a special position in art specializing in the taste of the Court of Kyoto. Quails and Peacocks, cherry tree branches in flower, cocks and hens,
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"Haiku shows us what we knew all the time,
but did not know we knew;
it shows us that we are poets
in so far as we live at all."

RH Blyth

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A comment from Chen-ou Liu, Canada:

The idea explored in the quote is similar to that of Chinese painting method, "leaving blank” (liu bai in Chinese), with which artists may leave the background blank to enhance the impact in order to emphasize a particular subject.

This method is also widely applied to writing to explore the "silence" between the words/lines."

In his famous poem, Silence Is a Looking Bird, E. E. Cummings skillfully employed this technique to dive into the poetic realm -- silence ("some empty space along with an image") -- worthy of further exploration and even transgression of the boundaries of imagination.

Silence Is a Looking Bird


silence
.is
a
looking

bird:the

turn
ing;edge, of
life

(inquiry before snow



The following is an excerpt from my short essay on this poem, one that is relevant to our discussion:

The last line, “(inquiry before snow,” is left out a closing parenthesis and followed by a huge blank, loudly announcing a white downpour, a visual snow that covers the rest of the page. This literary device is similar to a Chinese painting method, "leaving blank” (liu bai in Chinese), with which artists may leave the background blank to enhance the impact in order to emphasize a particular subject. Silence is made visible on the page by the surrounding blank space. If silence is the unspoken by definition, through the reader’s imagination, silence can be experienced visually on the page. To some extent, this poem is not only textual but also visual, and Cummings skilfully enables the reader to decipher the mute hieroglyphs of the page and to turn them into speech. Silence is a looking bird, which can realize its potentiality of singing beautiful songs through imagination.

Chen-ou



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Two Daruma Dolls from Tosa, Shikoku



Daruma Pilgrims in Japan


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