Only a few of the Shinto shrines but all the Buddhist temples contained sculptures, and many of these have escaped the periodic destructions of the buildings which have housed them. This was luckily true even though the Heian sculptor preferred wood to the earlier techniques of working with metal, clay, and lacquer. Sculpture after 800 remained religious, continuing to portray Buddhas and their attendants. However, whereas in Nara times these figures had often been naturalistic, sculptors in the ninth and tenth centuries stressed the inherently divine or nonhuman aspect of the deities, for example by giving the statue more than the usual number of heads and arms, and equipping it with the recognized emblems of such virtues as wisdom, power, and purity.
The Shingon sect was most active in commissioning works and training artists, not for art’s sake, but for a definite religious purpose. Informing all Shingon sculpture was the idea of the cosmic Buddha, and a desire to show his manifold powers. The sculptures were thought of as physical extensions of the Buddha into this world of space and time, by means of which the believer could literally come into physical contact with him. Great care was given to the posture of the statue, which had to be correct according to Shingon ritual. This concern with ritual and religious power often seems to mar the statues as works of art, but the best of them are impressive in a somber, arresting way.
Severity gave way after 900 to more colorful and fanciful treatment. Statues were often brilliantly painted, and attention was paid to detail or amusing facial expressions. In many cases this led to elegance and a certain sumptuous “sweetness” superseding reverence. However, the interior of the Golden Hall at the Chusonji, with its array of small carvings, shows the Fujiwara love of luxurious refinement without detracting from its devotional effect. The same may be said of the Byodoin’s small angels and heavenly musicians, fixed to the walls around a large seated figure of the Amida bodhisattva. Although the Amida in particular anticipates religious trends of the period after 1185, both angels and main figure are Heian pieces, and are major triumphs of the sculptor’s art.
Painting
The temples provided workshops for artists as well as sculptors. Shingon also dominated the field of religious painting, which conformed to Chinese styles, usually being done on silk in rich, glowing colors. Shingon’s idea that Truth (i. e., the cosmic Buddha) included the unpleasant as well as the agreeable sides of life give its pictures a dramatic energy lacking in the works of the other sects. The intricate designs and beautiful coloring of the Shingon mandalas make them works of art, even though they were not intended to be pictures, but diagrams of cosmic unity: painting was a far better medium than sculpture for expressing this idea.
A very important development in the last century of the Heian period was the rise of Yamato-e, or Japanese-style painting. In contrast to the curved lines and soft colors of the religious style associated with China, Yamato-e artists favored angular lines and more brilliant decoration. Traditional paintings were designed for display on the walls of temples, but the Yamato-e took the form of long scrolls which were to be looked at and put away. Often the scrolls had written stories or explanations to supplement the pictures. The viewer-reader held the unopened portion of the scroll in his right hand, using his left to unroll it and then reroll as he went along. Thus the pictures were not static representations to be taken in at a glance, but dynamic revelations of theif subjects. The idea of scroll-paintings had come from China, where they were chiefly used for panoramic views of landscapes and cities. In Japan they depicted popular legends, scenes from novels, notable political events, and aspects of Buddhist teaching.
One of the three scrolls on “Legends of Mount Shigi Temple,” for instance, tells how a hermit sent his begging bowl flying down from his hut on the mountain to a rich man’s house. When the rich man refused to fill the bowl, it flew back to the hermit followed by all the miser’s sheaves of rice. Another Heian scroll is of scenes from the Tale ofGenji and is imbued with a mood of elegant wistfulness. Painted in the twelfth century, the Genji scroll is thought to be a nostalgic tribute by the decaying courtier class to the days of its glory. Equally famous are the scrolls of frolicking animals. Done in ink, the most amusing sections are satirical, with animals behaving like people. These scrolls were all painted in the twelfth century, before the end of the Heian period. Many others date from subsequent centuries.
In general, the scrolls led painting from the exclusive devotional concerns of the older styles of art to a growing awareness of the pictorial possibilities and challenges of the everyday world and life as it was actually lived, even by commoners. In them, art was free to develop as art, rather than remaining a technique for religious edification. They also had obvious links with the semipopular literature of the late Heian period. This literature was far from being just another reflection of the court and its concerns, although it was collected and appreciated by courtiers. The Konjaku Monogatari (Tales of Long Ago), for instance, consists of folklore drawn not only from Japan but also from China and India. The book’s general inspiration lay in the Buddhism that still joined the three countries’ cultures, and it has an appropriately evangelical edge. However, as finally assembled and polished in Heian Japan, its contents owe at least as much to the sparkle of lay and at times plebeian wit as they do to the glow of monkish piety.
Music
As in so many other spheres of activity, the Heian era saw new native developments in music as well as the perpetuation of imported and traditional musical styles. The court orchestra continued to play the gagaku music of its Korean and Chinese counterparts, which had been introduced in the Nara period. However, specifically Buddhist methods of composition grew in importance, while Shinto preserved its musical tradition. Individual courtiers lost face if they were not reasonably skilled on such instruments as the flute or lute (a prototype guitar). A distinctively Japanese instrument also came into fashion among the upper classes, the koto, a kind of flat harp. Meanwhile, outside the capital, wandering minstrels equipped with lutes began to entertain the people with long, ballad-like recitations of heroes’ exploits.
'There may be a parallel between this and what was said of the KokinshU poet’s attitude toward nature on p. 84.
PART III
Medieval Japan
CHAPTER NINE
World History
