Art in Japan>Asian Art 100B.C.E.-1930>Ino Tadataka and Old Maps of Japan/Fusuma Paintings of Jukoin

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Ino Tadataka and Old Maps of Japan/Fusuma Paintings of Jukoin

by John McGee

Kano Eitoku, Birds and Flowers, Momoyama Period, 16th century, ink on
paper on fusuma sliding doors, two out of sixteen panels, each 175.5x142.5cm,
National Treasure, Jukoin Temple (Photos courtesy Tokyo National Museum)

A pair of excellent shows at the Tokyo National Museum (TNM) Heiseikan chronicles historic changes in landscape depiction—one a scientific record measured in feet, the other journeys in the eye. 

For Japanese living in pre-shinkansen days, surveyor Ino Tadataka (1745-1818) and his team really got around. They spent 17 years walking and measuring the entire perimeter of Japan, resulting in Dai Nihon Enkai Yochi Zenzu (Maps of the Japanese Coastal Areas), some of the country's first accurate maps. 

Many Ino maps have been lost in fires over the years, so the TNM was ecstatic to discover a complete set of his small-scale (1/432,000) maps in their collection in 2002. Even at this size, the country spans several meters. 

Ino and his team focused on Japan's ragged coastline, but they also took a few narrow roads to the interior, supplementing plan views (from above) with profiles (from the side) of wavy green mountain ranges. The greatest details emerge on the incomplete sets of medium- (1/216,000) and large-scale (1/36,000) maps, primarily of Hokkaido and Kyushu. Red lines trace the surveyors' routes as they passed castles and post towns. They also recorded some famous views, e.g. Kyushu's fuming Mt. Aso volcano, in bird's-eye perspective.

Ino Tadataka, Medium Scale Maps of
the Japanese Coastal Areas: Kanto
(detail), 19th century, colors on paper,
294.3x162.8cm 

In 2001, the only nearly complete copy of Ino's large-scale map was discovered in the US Library of Congress. The TNM has reproduced it on the floor of the museum lobby, allowing visitors to walk the Tokaido road from Edo to Kyoto in just 17 steps. 

Vintage European maps and a 300-year-old Japanese globe underscore how wacky the country's outline appeared before Ino's efforts established its familiar crenellated banana shape. 

More than 200 years before Ino's traipsings, Kano Eitoku (1543-1590) and his father, Kano Shoei (1519-1592), created a self-contained world in ink on the fusuma (sliding doors) of the abbot's quarters in Jukoin, a small sub-temple of Daitokuji in Kyoto. 

For this once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of Jukoin's National Treasures, all 46 of the Kano's 175cm doors were removed and installed at the TNM in the same configuration as that of the temple. This reproduces the multi-wall panoramas of the paintings. Rivers, rocks and trees wrap around corners, surrounding viewers in a series of virtual landscapes on classical Chinese and Japanese themes. 

Shibukawa Harumi, World Globe, 1695,
color on papier-mâché, 30.2cm diameter

It also simulates the effect of walking from room to room within the still-active temple. The restrained Muromachi style of Kano Shoei's atmospheric views of Xiao and Xiang—landscapes of mountaintop temples, fishing boats and haze—lead into three rooms that son Eitoku painted. Eitoku's incredible control and range comes through in the delicate cranes and powerful pines of a virtuoso three-walled "birds and flowers" painting and a stunning eight-panel corner piece of rocks and scholars on the "four accomplishments" theme. Eitoku's energetic brushstrokes, probably painted while he was in his mid-20s, are seen as the birth of the Momoyama style. 

Also on view are 12 Jukoin fusuma by other artists, Kano paintings from National Museum collections, contemporary Nihonga fusuma paintings made for a Jukoin subsidiary in Shizuoka Prefecture by Hiroshi Senju, and, as Jukoin is the site of tea master Sen no Rikyu's grave, letters from him and a few tea ceremony items.

These exhibitions were held Oct-Dec 2003 at Tokyo National Museum, Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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