- 著者
-
綿田 稔
- 雑誌
- 美術研究 = The bijutsu kenkiu : the journal of art studies
- 巻号頁・発行日
- no.408, pp.105-112, 2013-01-18
The single-volume printed book introduced in this article is one of the items originally collected by Tanaka Sukeichi (1911–2000, doctor and local historian of Hagi city, Yamaguchi Prefecture), and now in the collection of the Hagi Museum. It seems that the Hanzawa family, descendants of a branch of the Unkoku family of painters who were in service to the Hagi clan during the Edo Period, gave this volume to Tanaka. This is thought to be the first volume of what would have originally been a set of three volumes, and it is made up entirely of painting method explanations. Various painting manuals are known from the Edo Period including Tosa Mitsuoki’s Honchô-gahô-taizen (1690), Kanô Einô’s Honchô-gashi (1693), Hayashi Moriatsu’s Gasen (1712), Nishikawa Sukenobu’s Gahô-saishikihô (1738) and Miyamoto Kunzan’s Kanga-hitori-geiko (1807). Though, there has yet to be a compilation of all these. This lacuna is a result of the focus of modern art history studies on painting history and theory, and thus nowadays even normal painting techniques have been largely forgotten. In the modern context, Nihonga techniques were given special status and standardized as the Japanese way of painting. Painting materials also changed dramatically. Not only was an understanding of pigments lost or neglected, but also that of brushes, painting papers and silks. Conversely, conditions were ripe for improvements in research on materials and methods, thanks to the great advances made in the technical field. However, scholars across various disciplines could not agree on the norms, and thus debate on this subject could not advance to a conclusion. While the On-e-kagami painting manual, printed in an inexpensive, popular edition, does not seem to contain any secret or proprietary techniques, it does seem to record general common sense methods. Even if the tome has limits, the accumulation of information and illumination of the standard procedures of the day surely would not be without merit for future studies.