page_title: Buddhist art in Japan
section_title: Muromachi period (1333–1573)
hierarchical_section_title: Buddhist art in Japan / Muromachi period (1333–1573)
context_page_description: Buddhism played an important role in the development of Japanese art between the 6th and the 16th centuries. Buddhist art and Buddhist religious thought came to Japan from China through Korea. Buddhist art was encouraged by Crown Prince Shōtoku in the Suiko period in the sixth century, and by Emperor Shōmu in the Nara period in the eighth century. In the early Heian period, Buddhist art and architecture greatly influenced the traditional Shinto arts, and Buddhist painting became fashionable among wealthy Japanese. The Kamakura period saw a flowering of Japanese Buddhist sculpture, whose origins are in the works of Heian period sculptor Jōchō.
  The Amida sect of Buddhism provided the basis for many popular artworks. Buddhist art became popular among the masses via scroll paintings, paintings used in worship and paintings of Buddhas, saint's lives, hells and other religious themes. Under the Zen sect of Buddhism, portraiture of priests such as Bodhidharma became popular as well as scroll calligraphy and sumi-e brush painting.
context_section_description: During the Muromachi period, also called the Ashikaga period, a profound change took place in Japanese culture. The Ashikaga clan took control of the shogunate and moved its headquarters back to Kyoto, to the Muromachi district of the city. With the return of government to the capital, the popularizing trends of the Kamakura period came to an end, and cultural expression took on a more aristocratic, elitist character. During the Muromachi Period, Zen Buddhism rose to prominence especially among the elite Samurai class, who embraced the Zen values of personal discipline, concentration and self-development. 
  The development of the great Zen monasteries in Kamakura and Kyoto had a major impact on the visual arts. Because of secular ventures and trading missions to China organized by Zen temples, many Chinese paintings and objects of art were imported into Japan and profoundly influenced Japanese artists working for Zen temples and the shogunate. Not only did these imports change the subject matter of painting, but they also modified the use of color; the bright colors of Yamato-e yielded to the monochromes of painting in the Chinese manner of Sui-boku-ga (水墨画) or sumi-e (墨絵), this style mainly used only black ink — the same as used in East Asian calligraphy.
  The foremost painter of the new Sumi-e style was Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506), a Rinzai priest who traveled to China in 1468–69 and studied contemporary Ming painting. Some of his most dramatic works are in the Chinese splashed-ink (Haboku) style. Upon returning to Japan, Sesshū built himself a studio and established a large following, painters that are now referred to as the Unkoku-rin school or "School of Sesshū". To make one of the calligraphic and highly stylized Haboku paintings, the painter would visualize the image and then made swift broad strokes into the paper resulting in a splashed and abstract composition, all done with meditative concentration. This impressionistic style of painting was supposed to capture the true nature of the subject. The Sumi-e style was highly influenced by calligraphy, using the same tools and style as well as its zen philosophy. To paint in this style the practitioner had to clear his mind and apply the brush strokes without too much thinking, termed mushin (無心, "no mind state") by the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro. The concept of mushin is central to many Japanese arts including the art of the sword, archery and the tea ceremony.
  By the end of the 14th century, monochrome landscape paintings (sansuiga) had found patronage by the ruling Ashikaga family and was the preferred genre among Zen painters, gradually evolving from its Chinese roots to a more Japanese style. Another important painter in this period is Tenshō Shūbun, a monk at the Kyoto temple of Shōkoku-ji who traveled to Korea and studied under Chinese painters. He returned to Japan in 1404 and settled in Kyoto, then the capital city. He became director of the court painting bureau, established by Ashikaga shoguns, who were influential art patrons. Shūbun's most well-known landscape painting, designated as a National Treasure in Japan, is Reading in a Bamboo Grove, now kept in the Tokyo National Museum.
  Another style which developed in the Muromachi period is Shigajiku (詩画軸). This is usually a painting accompanied by poetry and has its roots in China, where painting and poetry were seen as inherently connected. This style grew out of literary circles, an artist would usually be given a subject to paint and the poets would write accompanying verses to be written above the work. A famous example is the scroll "Catching a Catfish with a Gourd" (Hyōnen-zu 瓢鮎図) located at Taizō-in, Myōshin-ji, Kyoto. Created by the priest-painter Josetsu (c. 1386 – c. 1428), it includes 31 verses of many Zen priests inscribed above the painting. 
   In the foreground of the painting a man is depicted on the bank of a stream holding a small gourd and looking at a large slithery catfish. Mist fills the middle ground, and the background, mountains appear to be far in the distance. The painting was c
caption: Hyōnen-zu (瓢鮎図), ink on paper, 111.5 × 75.8 cm, Myōshin-ji temple, Taizō-in, Kyoto.
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