THE CENTRAL ROOM OF THE JUKOIN

AT DAITOKUJI TEMPLE

By Michael Gribbins

History of Japanese Art, Spring of 2005

Located at the Zen Buddhist Temple of Daitokuji in Kyoto, Japan, the Jukoin is a smaller subtemple that contains a number of important pieces of artwork. Within the central room of the abbot’s quarters is the set of 16 fusuma panels done by the artist Kano Eitoku. A member of the famous Kano School of Art started by his grandfather Kano Motonobu, Eitoku was a skilled artisan who by his early twenties was being commissioned by the daimyos of Japan. Asked to design the interior of the Jukoin by Miyoshi Yoshitsugu, steward of the Hosokawa family, Eitoku was assigned to the most important part, the central room which opened to a garden. The highlight of the decoration was the set of 16 fusuma, or sliding panels, entitled Landscape with Flowers and Birds, which depicted the changing of the seasons. The panels took up three sections of the wall, West, North, and East, leaving the South side open to the garden outside the Jukoin. The style used in the panels was quite different from past versions of fusuma paintings because Eitoku decided to dispense with the common vertical motifs such as thick tree trunks in the corners of the room that emphasized the columns. Instead, he used a gnarled plum tree and two bending pine trees, the two types placed diagonally apart from each other showing opposite seasons. Another important aspect of the design was the spacing of the motifs. Each season has its own marker in the cycle of the seasons and the open space was the transition time. In these open areas; Eitoku dispersed smaller motifs of animals and nature with minimal amounts of gold dust in open areas to aid in the aesthetic which matched the rest of the room. The overall compositional cycle of the room start at the south-east corner of the room with the gnarled plum which represents spring and incorporated in the vitality of the brush stokes. Summer comes next as depicted by a stream being cut in two by a rock formation located in the north-east corner. Moving along the viewer sees the two pine trees in the north-western corner which represent winter. The first tree is on the north wall and is accompanied by a crane looking to the sky. The nest pine is on the west wall; also with a crane which looks instead to the earth. This continues the cycle to the south where to geese are shown calling to another in the sky finishing the piece with the season of autumn. The entire artwork is done in ink and gold dust on paper with very deliberate and vigorous brush strokes to emphasize the foreground, leaving barely any artwork in the background. For more information about this piece in Kano Eitoku's career click here.