Chinese Scholarly Imagery in Edo Period Paintings at the Indianapolis Museum of Art

By Patricia J. Graham

Painting Party By Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-89), 1881 Hanging scroll, ink and colour on paper Height 148.9 cm, width 81.9 cm 2000.40

Beginning in the sixth century, educated and cultured Japanese looked to China as the embodiment of civilized values. From the sixth to the late sixteenth century, frequent contact with China took place via official diplomatic and religious missions, and the private excursions of merchants and Buddhist monks. These travellers introduced to Japan various aspects of Chinese culture, including its written language, calendar system and a complex assortment of religious, superstitious and intellectual beliefs.

Along with ideas came material culture þ religious artefacts, paintings and other luxury goods þ much of it adorned with potent, symbolic imagery associated with these beliefs. The imported products stimulated Japanese artists to adopt Chinese subjects, styles and techniques, gradually leading to the intertwining of Chinese and native cultural values and aesthetic sensibilities. Members of Japan's elite social classes þ the aristocrats and high-ranking samurai as well as members of the Buddhist clergy comprised the patrons for these imported Chinese arts and Japanese arts in Chinese styles. Only these groups had the time to devote to mastering the difficult task of reading and writing in Chinese, had cultivated an appreciation for the values associated with Chinese civilization, and possessed the wealth required for collecting fine Chinese arts and Japanese works inspired by them.

Three Monkeys: Hear, See, Speak No Evil By Mori Sosetsu (act. c. 1818-30) Hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk Height 34.3 cm, width 53.3 cm 2000.60

From the late mediaeval era in the sixteenth century, the growth of towns and cities and the development of a mercantile economy led to fundamental changes within Japanese society. These intensified during Japan's Kinsei (early modern) era, which roughly coincided with the political period known as Edo or Tokugawa (1615-1867). In the early seventeenth century, the shoguns of the Tokugawa family initiated various policies aimed at demonstrating their political might. In an effort to control international relations and subjugate their citizens, they forbade Japanese to travel overseas, limited and confined international trade to the port of Nagasaki in Kyushu, and severely restricted the movements of the few foreign nationals allowed to enter the Japanese archipelago. This embargo lasted until the Americans forced Japan to open the port of Yokohama in 1859. The shoguns also mandated the study of Chinese Confucianism, first among their vassals and later among the populace at large, as another means of validating and maintaining their authority. They looked to Confucianism as a model for constructing a rigid, hierarchical social structure that emphasized loyalty to family and ruler and adherence to a moral code of conduct. Although Confucianism had long been known in Japan, its study now became more universal. Very rapidly, students' curiosity led them to explore other aspects of Chinese intellectual traditions, including Chinese literati ideals, which encompassed both respect for the Confucian moral code and the Daoist esteem for eccentricity and individuality.

During the Edo period, economic changes and rising education levels in the general population led to a society in which large numbers of newly affluent consumers from diverse social groups became patrons of a thriving market for art. Appreciation of Chinese luxury goods was no longer restricted to or marked its possessors as members of the upper classes. At the beginning of the Edo period, a vast amount of Chinese art already existed in Japan, in the possession of Buddhist temples and private collectors. Edo period artists made use of these materials as models for their own work. They were also stimulated by impressive quantities of newly made Chinese artefacts and by paintings and illustrated texts that flowed into Japan despite the government limitations on trade, as well as by the small number of Chinese artists living in their country, primarily in the restricted environs of the Chinese community in Nagasaki. Many of these new sources for Chinese art reflected various aspects of Chinese literati culture, knowledge of which comprised a shared heritage among Japan's citizens in the Edo period.

This article aims to explore some of the prominent characteristics of Chinese intellectual culture that were known in Edo Japan through a look at a group of Japanese paintings inspired by Chinese themes in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It will survey Chinese imagery by Japanese artists whose contacts with Chinese sources varied from direct to remote, painters who worked for patrons ranging from samurai and aristocrats to intellectuals and the urban bourgeoisie. While to a modern audience many of these paintings may be beautiful to behold, their indebtedness to China and their association with literati traditions may not always be obvious, as these associations have become obscured by time and cultural distance. For Japan's feudal lords (daimyo) and other high-ranking samurai warriors, surrounding themselves with Chinese pictorial and other arts was a natural result of their status and wealth. They enjoyed ink paintings, such as Scholar Viewing a Lake by the eminent painter Kano Tan'yu (1602-74), which portrayed the noble life of the Chinese scholar (Fig. 1). This theme espoused honourable values samurai were taught to admire. However, unlike the samurai, whose role in society was determined by their status at birth, Chinese literati earned their designation through the rigorous study of Confucian classics, which, ideally, led to a career as a civil servant. Confucian classics taught scholars to emulate the moral behaviour of the ancients by conducting their life with integrity and respectful deportment. Confucianism stressed the importance of self-cultivation through the practice of certain morally uplifting arts, such as painting, calligraphy, music and poetry, and emphasized the obligation to use one's talents and education for public service. Literati values also embraced the theory that harmonious interaction of various unseen forces controlled the universe. The painting by Tan'yu expresses this latter concept through the image of the noble scholar contemplating the wonders of nature. It was painted mainly in varying tones of black ink, a style closely identified with his familial tradition.

Painters of the Kano family served for many generations as the official painters to the shoguns and others of the samurai class. Many Kano paintings, such as Scholar Viewing a Lake, feature images that overtly communicated respect for Chinese literati values. Some, such as Mountain Goats and the Moon by Kano Toun (1625-94), a pupil and son-in-law of Tan'yu, represented these ideas with greater subtlety (Fig. 2). At first glance, the work appears to be merely a charming, delicately coloured picture of a group of goats gazing at the moon. In actuality, the painting serves as a visual reinforcement of the shogunate's right to rule through allusion to China's ancient metaphysical treatise, Yijing (The Book of Changes). This book, which exerted a profound influence on the development of Confucian, Daoist and popular religious thought, described the harmonious workings of the universe as a fragile balance between the forces of yang, the male principle associated with the heavens, the sun and the positive, regenerative powers of the universe, and yin, the female principle identified with the moon, darkness and negativity, as these forces interacted with the five basic elements (wood, fire, earth, metal and water). The primal forces of yin and yang could be kept under control only through administration on earth by a virtuous king, whose right to rule depended upon receipt of heaven's mandate. In China, this mandate justified imperial dynastic change.

Although the Yijing had a long history of influence on pre-Edo period Japanese political institutions, its influence reached new heights in seventeenth century Japan, as Confucian scholars teaching at shogun-sponsored academies interpreted it as supportive of the legitimacy of Tokugawa rule. Paintings like this may be construed as visualizations of the yin-yang philosophy through the pun on the Chinese word for sheep or goat, yang, a homonym of the word for the male principle. Therefore, as here, images of goats came to symbolize the yang principle, which was identified with the shoguns, and the moon (a symbol of yin), visible in the upper portion of the painting, was equated with the shogun's subjects. The decorative application of colours seen here testifies to the versatility of Kano school painters.

Aristocrats, by virtue of their familial association with the emperor, held higher social positions but less political power than the samurai, who nominally ruled the nation in their stead. Generally, the nobility preferred depictions of courtly themes, extolling the literary achievements of their forebears and painted in decorative native Japanese styles. Yet, by the mid-seventeenth century, as imperial and shogunal families intermarried and the study of Confucianism permeated the educational system, scholarly Chinese subjects began to be treated also by the traditional painters for the aristocracy þ the hereditary Tosa School. Tosa Mitsuoki (1617-91), the finest Tosa School artist of his generation, painted the triptych Phoenix, Chinese Beauty and Peacock shortly before his death (Fig. 3). The auspicious and edifying subjects for these paintings are Confucian themes popular with Kano school painters, but the artist's delight in flat colourful designs, seen in the rendering of the birds' feathers and the lady's garments and throne is a hallmark of the Tosa School's stylistic tradition.

Mythical phoenixes and peacocks symbolized beauty and decorum in the imaginary and real animal kingdom. Thus their presence complemented the central image of the beautiful lady, whose identity here remains unknown. However, we can speculate that the woman depicted was one of the virtuous and filial Chinese imperial consorts immortalized in such texts as the Biographies of Virtuous Women of Ancient and Recent Times (Kokon retsujo den), a Confucian treatise written by Liu Xiang in the first century BCE and widely circulated in China in illustrated printed form from the sixteenth century on. Books published in China were almost immediately imported and reprinted in Japan, sometimes translated into Japanese vernacular to assure a wider readership (not everyone could read Chinese, though most people possessed some degree of literacy in Japanese). Paintings of Chinese beauties remained a popular theme throughout the Edo period and were produced by artists from diverse geographical regions and backgrounds.

Japanese intellectuals (bunjin) who admired Chinese culture flourished throughout the Edo period, especially from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, as Confucian studies and art in Chinese styles grew ever more fashionable. Most bunjin were Confucian scholars, and often painters, who were associated with the loosely formed literati painting (bunjinga or nanga) movement. Some of these literati painters were professionals, while others were amateurs who painted for their own enjoyment. Some were samurai in the service of the shoguns, others commoners. While most painted in the literati manner because of a personal affinity for literati beliefs, some adopted literati styles simply because they were fashionable and therefore marketable.

Many Japanese literati paintings portray idealized visions of scholarly life in China, a life bunjin longed for as they endured increasingly restrictive government policies. Many of their paintings express a desire to emulate the Chinese literati custom of retreating into the countryside during periods of troubled leadership and political unrest. This ideal was rarely achieved, however, as most bunjin lived within Japan's major cities, where they derived their livelihood from teaching Confucianism or from the sale of their paintings. They learned to paint from local Japanese teachers, by studying imported Chinese materials, and from Chinese merchants and professional painters who travelled to Japan. Although Japanese literati painters are known for quasi-amateur painting styles that were indebted to the expressive spirit of Chinese literati painting, their paintings incorporated a wide assortment of brush techniques learned from these divergent sources. It was not uncommon for Japanese literati to utilize the decorative, polished brush styles associated with the Chinese professional, academic painters abhorred by Chinese literati painters. In Kyoto especially, a number of Japanese literati artists created easily identifiable personal styles. They were influenced by aspects of Confucian thought, as well as by Daoism, which promoted cultivation of a spirit of qi (J. ki; `eccentricity' or `strangeness') and encouraged artistic creativity. The most popular and successful artists were frequently admired as much for their forceful or magnetic personalities as for the originality of their art. Many of these artists, such as Ike Taiga (1723-76) (see Fig. 9) and Yosa Buson (1716-83) (see Fig. 5), were affiliated with literati painting traditions, but others worked in eclectic styles in vogue among the bourgeoisie.

Favourite Japanese literati subjects included gatherings of famous Chinese scholars, such as that illustrated in Poetry Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion, a large, colourful scroll by Nakabayashi Chikkei (1816-67) (Fig. 4). The painting depicts a celebrated drinking party hosted by the illustrious calligrapher Wang Xizhi (c. 303-c. 361) for 42 friends in honour of the spring purification festival. The event took place along the banks of a meandering stream. Servants passed out wine to the guests by floating cups downstream atop lotus leaves. As guests plucked cups from the stream, they were obliged to compose poems. The record of this event is often cited as the ultimate expression of Chinese literati values, an eloquent justification of the literati's predilection for imbibing large quantities of wine as an aid to artistic inspiration. Chikkei's detailed, meticulous painting in vivid shades of blue and green was intended to suggest an aura of antiquity, as these colours had dominated ancient Chinese landscape painting close to the time the actual event took place. His painting, though, is modelled on later, consciously archaistic Chinese sources.

Many of the literati who attended Wang's party were elderly gentlemen, respected for the wisdom that comes with age. Such figures were often featured by Chinese and Japanese literati painters as paragons of virtue. Like that of Chikkei's Poetry Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion, the subject of Yosa Buson's One Hundred Old Men (Fig. 5) was designed to inform viewers of the value of engaging in the erudite literati activities pictured. Buson painted this lively rendition in 1783, the year he died. Here we see venerable old men with long white beards accompanied by youthful attendants. Several are painting before an assembled coterie of friends, some read books, others drink wine or simply mill about conversing with friends. Included in the scene are auspicious symbols of longevity: a tortoise, a crane and an ancient, stalwart pine. Such paintings were considered appropriate as gifts for elderly gentlemen on their birthdays, expressive of wishes for long, happy lives.

Not only did Japanese literati admire their Chinese counterparts, but they also attempted to emulate their lifestyles by participating in literati activities themselves. Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-89), an artist trained in both the academic Kano and popular ukiyo-e school styles rather than in literati painting, nevertheless has accurately portrayed the atmosphere of a literati gathering in his Painting Party of 1881 (Fig. 6). Although painted in the early Meiji era (1868-1912) after the end of the shoguns' rule, paintings like this reflect the continued popularity of these gatherings among literati whose lives bridged the two eras. Such gatherings had begun in the late eighteenth century; beginning in the 1820s, they became great money-making ventures for artists, especially in the city of Edo (now Tokyo), where Kyosai resided. Artists adept at painting in Chinese styles became celebrities because of their knowledge of China, and would sometimes attend painting parties (shogakai) at which guests paid for the privilege of watching these painters perform. Such a group of fans seems to be peeking out from behind a landscape scroll in the upper central portion of the painting. The two scrolls in the centre of the painting depict quintessential literati themes þ distant mountain scenery and plants that carried symbolic associations for the literati (here, plum blossoms, emblematic of their pure spirit). Kyosai's little landscape captures the essential points of landscape painting in the literati manner, both in its composition, which juxtaposes water and land elements, and in its reliance on light, feathery brushstrokes in the definition of form.

The literati style of landscape painting was well known in Japan through numerous imported works, but Japanese artists also learned to emulate it directly through instruction by Chinese merchant-painters who had come to Japan. By the seventeenth century, the literati style in China had spread beyond the world of the scholars themselves, so that even merchants learned it as part of their formal education and subsequently practised it as an avocation. One such skilled practitioner was the merchant Yi Fujiu (J. I Fukyu; 1698-after 1747), who made frequent visits to Nagasaki between 1720 and 1747. He exerted immense influence in Japan on literati painters, disproportionate to his status and reputation as a painter in China. Among those inspired by Yi's models was the samurai-painter Noro Kaiseki (1747-1828). His triptych Landscapes after Yi Fujiu bears close similarity to Yi Fujiu's representative painting style, although its light application of colour conveys a more decorative ambience than Yi's more monochromatic originals (Fig. 7). As seen here, the Yi Fujiu style is characterized by the depiction in sparse, bland brushwork of the quiet beauty of China's monumental mountains. Although Kaiseki was too young to have met the Chinese master in person, he would have had ample opportunity to learn about the artist's painting style through illustrated wood-block books reproducing Yi's paintings.

Sometimes the Chinese landscape paintings used as models for Japanese literati works were based on distinctive brush techniques originally created by venerable literati painters in China. Perhaps the most emulated style was invented by the great eleventh century Chinese scholar Mi Fei (1051-1107), an amateur artist adept at painting's sister art of calligraphy. His characteristic technique is evident in Landscape after Mi Fei by the literati painter Okada Hanko (1782-1846), a native of Osaka (Fig. 8). Horizontal, oval dabs of ink known as `Mi dots' are applied in overlapping layers to create forms without lines. Hanko's painting imposes a Japanese sensibility on this Mi style: Chinese painters would not have brushed the style on a decorative gold background or filled the composition with symmetrically repeating mound-shaped mountains.

While Japanese literati painters sometimes modelled their styles on the old Chinese masters, they also invented compositions of their own, in the literati spirit. Representative of this practice is a pair of scrolls entitled River Village and Fishing Pleasure by the eccentric Kyoto literati painter Ike Taiga (Fig. 9). An important attribute of literati painting in both China and Japan is the calligraphic wielding of the brush so as to reveal the personality of the artist. In these paintings, Taiga's character and personal style are seen in the scratchy, rhythmic layering of strokes used to define the flowing water and the reeds along the shore, the gentle rounded forms of the fishermen in boats, as well as in the deceptively simple compositions, which lyrically draw the viewer into a romanticized vision of rural life. These images represent a more personal and intimate interpretation of the hallowed theme of a scholar admiring the grandeur of nature than that seen in Kano Tan'yu's Scholar Viewing a Lake.

Also characteristic of the expressive potential of literati brushwork is Bamboo and Rocks by Yamamoto Baiitsu (1783-1856), a native of Nagoya who was living in Kyoto at the time he painted this picture (Fig. 10). This classic literati subject is emblematic of the ideals of the scholar-gentleman. Bamboo, which bends in the wind but rarely breaks, and which remains green all winter, is likened to the literati, who exhibit resilience to adversity and perseverance in times of hardship. Baiitsu's personal style is revealed in the sharp, rhythmic strokes of the bamboo leaves and the subtle variations of ink tones that give three-dimensionality to the rocks and make the bamboo appear to fade in and out of the mist. Although Baiitsu adhered to literati ideals in his personal life, he was among the most commercially successful of all literati artists. He worked at a time when Chinese art styles were the height of fashion among well-educated and rich urban residents. His paintings captured the spirit of Chinese styles, but also made those styles elegant in a way that appealed to a broader Japanese audience. In addition to his paintings of plants with literati connotations, Baiitsu painted literati-style landscapes, as well as the more decorative bird-and-flower subjects for which he received the most popular acclaim.

Colourful paintings of plants and animals were sometimes produced by Chinese literati artists, but they were also among the chief subjects of China's professional artists, whose fame rested on their detailed, meticulous renditions of these themes. Beginning in the seventeenth century, these Chinese pictures had begun to incorporate new painting techniques that revealed their knowledge of Western scientific methods for analysing the observable world (e.g., through a microscope and the camera obscura). Japanese artists had been introduced to Western realistic painting techniques by way of China, through imported Chinese artworks and the teachings of Chinese painters in residence in Nagasaki, and also directly from imported European materials. Japanese followers of this hybrid Chinese-Western style are now described as `Nagasaki School' artists. Those who devoted themselves to the mastery of Western art styles and techniques were generally intellectuals interested in Western sciences, part of the movement called Rangaku (`Dutch studies'). While the novel Western methods for creating three-dimensional effects with shading (chiaroscuro) and perspective were utilized by both Nagasaki and Rangaku artists, the Nagasaki style, which fused the more familiar Chinese painterly traditions with exotic Western techniques, especially captured the fancy of the Japanese public in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It was inspired by both the quest for knowledge fundamental to Western scientific inquiry and the high regard Confucianism placed on the `investigation of things'.

So Shiseki (1715-86) was one of many Nagasaki School painters. He learned the techniques of this school when he travelled from his home in Edo to Nagasaki to study painting in the 1750s. After returning to Edo, his circle of friends and patrons included important Rangaku scholars and other intellectuals and artists. His Rooster and Hen under Bamboo effectively synthesizes the gentle calligraphic brushwork of the Chinese literati tradition, as seen in the rocks and grasses, with a more polished and meticulous rendering of the fowl, derived from professional Chinese painting traditions that incorporated Western scientific observation and spatial effects (Fig. 11). So Shiseki was not a literati painter, but his paintings and the work of others who specialized in the Nagasaki style did exert influences on artists like Yamamoto Baiitsu, who more closely adhered to literati ideals. Yet as we shall see, this style was equally influential among Japanese artists who were less overtly inspired by Chinese styles and who painted for the urban bourgeoisie.

Although urban commoners (chonin), a group that consisted primarily of merchants and artisans, could never rise above their birth status, they could achieve a sort of parity with the social elite þ samurai, intellectuals and aristocrats þ by showing their understanding of China's philosophical, literary and pictorial art traditions. As their wealth increased, merchants were able to purchase art in the Chinese taste. Display of these artworks became an entry point into fashionable society, as it revealed a certain level of education and sophistication that had in earlier times been restricted to the upper classes of Japanese society. Chinese subjects in paintings by artists working for wealthy merchants were rendered in styles different from those in conservative samurai taste or a more overtly literati mode. In general, these paintings for the bourgeoisie seamlessly synthesized Chinese, Western, Kano and other Japanese brush styles with new techniques for applying ink washes to create subtle three-dimensional effects.

The artist most responsible for developing and popularizing this style was Maruyama Okyo (1733-95) of Kyoto. Okyo championed the study of painting as a scientific inquiry, defining forms with proper proportions, naturalistic texture and three-dimensional effects. His triptych Tiger, Jurojin and Dragon incorporates these effects into his interpretation of oft-reproduced Chinese subjects (Fig. 12). Okyo defined Jurojin with more conservative Chinese-style brushwork like that found in Chinese Beauty, but used it to create an increased sense of the corporeal solidity of the body. In contrast, he abandoned the use of outline altogether in the dragon and tiger, choosing instead to convey the physical presence of the animals through subtle gradations of ink washes and finely applied brushstrokes. Okyo's patrons enjoyed both his novel brushwork and the auspicious connotations of the themes. Jurojin is one of Japan's Seven Lucky Gods, appropriated from Chinese Daoist cosmological belief, where he was worshipped as the god of longevity. Dragons and tigers were often paired in Chinese and Japanese art and were representative of complementary or opposing cosmological forces, such as spiritual power and physical strength, yang and yin, or heaven and earth.

Artists patronized by the urban bourgeoisie also capitalized on this vogue for Chinese culture by featuring Chinese literati subjects in their paintings. Thus, the theme of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup illustrated in Figure 13 was sometimes painted by non-literati artists. The eight immortals were illustrious drunkards, celebrated in a famous poem by the Chinese Tang dynasty poet Du Fu (J. Toho; 712-70). The painting illustrates eight tipsy scholars enjoying themselves at an informal gathering, some so inebriated that they have to be supported by their youthful attendants. One man seems about to compose a poem on a blank piece of paper, while several others admire a painting of Hotei, one of the Seven Lucky Gods. The painter of this version of the theme is Yokoyama Kazan (1784-1837), a Kyoto artist who studied both Chinese and Japanese styles. His painting is similar in spirit to Yosa Buson's One Hundred Old Men, but his brush techniques are different. Buson emphasized the craggy, eccentric character of his subjects with dynamic brushwork punctuated by occasional flashes of vivid colours. In contrast, the gently undulating outlines and light ink washes which define the figures in Kazan's picture help convey a feeling of languid intoxication. This refinement of literati brushwork is characteristic of artists who adopted literati subjects but not the brush styles in an effort to please patrons who preferred a more polished appearance. Another example of an appropriation of a literati subject is the pair of screens Enjoying the Waterside by Kishi Gantai (1782-1865) (Fig. 14). The subject is identical to that found in literati painting þ eremitic scholars drinking Chinese-style steeped tea (J. sencha) atop a small hill and gazing at a wide expanse of water from the comfortable environs of a rustic retreat. The lyrical atmosphere imparted by soft hues of lightly coloured ink washes and the shaded contours of the rocky terrain are the only hints that this is not a literati painting, but a product of a slightly different artistic tradition. Urban dwellers in Edo Japan appreciated such idyllic views of country life because, even then, Japan was a crowded, urbanized nation.

Gantai and Kazan had both learned painting in Kyoto from Gantai's father, Kishi Ganku (1749-1838). Ganku was the founder of the Kishi School, which competed with Okyo and his followers for painting commissions. Ganku's broad training had encompassed most of the prevailing art trends of the time, including Kano, literati and Nagasaki painting traditions; in short, a variation on the eclectic painting manner that Okyo had perfected. Gantai's Cherry-apple Tree and Peacocks on Rock is much influenced by his father's dynamic yet decorative style (Fig. 15). In contrast to Tosa Mitsuoki's peacock, which stands formally posed, alone in space, Gantai's birds are shown in their natural environment, twisting and turning in space, with plumage so meticulously defined that the feathers appear real. This type of painting, a dramatic amalgamation of Chinese and Japanese painting traditions, drew high praise from art patrons, who admired the birds for their allusion to the Chinese ideal of elegant beauty and for the technical skill with which they were rendered.

Another group of artists influenced by Okyo's emphasis on rational naturalism was the Mori School, active in Osaka. This school's most acclaimed artist was Mori Sosen (1747-1821), grandfather of Mori Sosetsu (act. c. 1818-30), who painted Three Monkeys: Hear, See, Speak No Evil (Fig. 16). Sosen is regarded as Japan's pre-eminent painter of monkeys, whose representations uncannily capture the soul as well as the actual appearance of the animal. Sosen painted his monkeys from life, with fur meticulously defined in numerous small brushstrokes. Sosetsu here demonstrates a mastery of his grandfather's technique.

On one level, Sosetsu's monkeys may simply be considered carefully painted character studies, but on another, they can be viewed as symbolic images of a deity. Some of the mystical associations Japanese imparted to monkeys were of native derivation. Others, such as the `three monkey' theme, originated in China, where moral codes stressed the use of three senses þ hearing, seeing and speaking þ to study the observable world. Eventually, monkeys came to be identified with this precept, which later became fused with beliefs about the Daoist monkey deity Koshin. Later still in Japan, Koshin worship became intertwined with that of the Shinto guardian of the roads, Shomen Kongo (or Sarutahiko). This deity was nicknamed `Koshin' after the day of the monkey (koshin) in Japan's Daoist-derived Chinese calendar system. That day was considered an inauspicious point between two temporal cycles, a time when three worms believed to inhabit the body travelled to heaven to report on their host's misdeeds. On the night of koshin, festivities to the Daoist deity Koshin took place in both China and Japan. As people believed the worms could only report these transgressions while their hosts slept, it became customary to stay awake all night as a preventative measure.

The monkey was considered a manifestation of Shomen Kongo/Koshin, and images of the three wise monkeys, who knew to mind their own business, came to represent the deity's power over these worms, as monkeys, like the worms, were widely believed to be mediators between humankind and gods. The popular image of these monkeys covering their ears, eyes and mouths expressed people's wishes for the worms to be unable to hear, speak or see evil actions. Commoners of the Edo period also interpreted the theme more broadly as a metaphor for the need to keep silent about their dissatisfaction with the shogunate. Paintings like this reveal how completely Chinese intellectual and cosmological concepts had become assimilated into popular Japanese culture.

Edo period Japan is widely considered to be the birthplace of many of the modern-day cultural and artistic traditions that have come to define Japan's national identity. A great number, especially those with roots in the urban culture of the merchants, are generally considered erroneously to be entirely dependent upon native rather than Chinese cultural values. With the weakening of the Chinese empire in the nineteenth century and China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95, the Japanese came to regard themselves as China's superior and successor. Official ideology in the Meiji era decreed Japan to be the great preserver of East Asian (primarily Chinese) learning and cultural traditions, which continued to be esteemed alongside the Western traditions with which the nation was then enamoured. This belief became a critical component in the definition of Japan's modern national identity. Thus, understanding the extent to which Chinese ideals permeated various facets of Edo period culture, including its painting traditions, helps clarify Japan's subsequent attitudes towards China.