Sōtatsu

Japanese painter

• Born: Unknown
• Birthplace: Noto Province, Japan
• Died: c. 1643
• Place of death: Kanagawa, Kaga Province, Japan

In collaboration with the artist and calligrapher Honami Kōetsu, Sōtatsu founded the Rimpa school of painting. This style, characterized by the use of traditional Japanese themes, bold colors, and innovative paint and ink techniques, would influence Japanese art for nearly two hundred years.

Early Life

Sōtatsu’s (soh-taht-soo) early life is so cloaked in obscurity that art historians can scarcely agree on such elementary information as the year of his birth, his family name, or formative influences on his art. There is general agreement that he was born in Noto Province, perhaps in the early 1570’s. His father is believed to have been a wealthy merchant named Tawaraya, and Sōtatsu is often referred to as Tawaraya Sōtatsu, although his paintings were usually signed with the honorific title hokkyō or with the seals Taiseiken, Taisei, or Inen. His family name is considered to be Kitagawa or possibly Nonomura, and scholars have linked him by marriage to a distinguished line of artisans, including Ogata Dōhaku, the great-grandfather of Rimpa painters Ogata Kōrin and Ogata Kenzan. He is also believed to be related though his wife’s sister to Honami Kōetsu.

Little is known of Sōtatsu’s formal education, but his painting teacher, Kaihō Yūshō, an artist renowned for his eclectic blend of Chinese and Tosa style influences, appears to have been instrumental in directing Sōtatsu’s art toward the native themes of Zen Buddhism and classical literature favored by the imperial court, rather than the Kanō style popular with the shogunate.

Sōtatsu’s first official notice seems to have come around 1600, but it was the result of his skill as a craftsperson rather than through an original work. Probably on the recommendation of Yūshō, who visited the Itsukushima shrine in 1598, Sōtatsu was commissioned by the Taira family to restore three medieval Buddhist sutra scrolls there, finishing them in 1602. His talent for matching the highly cultivated style of the Heian period (784-1185) and his love of the Buddhist themes that predominate in much of his early work resulted in his receiving the honorific Buddhist title of hokkyō around 1621. These qualities also provided the bond that joined him to his most important collaborator, Kōetsu.

Life’s Work

Though Sōtatsu’s career spanned more than forty years, from 1600 to 1643, his decade of work with Kōetsu, from 1605 to 1615, is often considered to be his most productive period. During this time, the artist developed his mature style and pursued those themes from Japanese classical literature, music, dance, and mythology that were to have a lasting impact on succeeding generations of Rimpa painters. The collaborative aspect of their relationship is considered to have enhanced many of the aspects of their work, as Kōetsu was an acknowledged master of calligraphy as well as a fine painter. The similarity in the styles of both men and the ambiguous nature of their division of labor on many projects have long vexed art scholars in their efforts to establish the authorship of certain works.

Kōetsu had established a workshop at Takagamine, near Kyōto, that attracted artists and craftspeople in such diverse media as painting, pottery, papermaking, landscape gardening, and calligraphy. Sōtatsu undoubtedly frequented the studio but seems to have remained independent of it. He maintained his own establishment, called Tawaraya, in Kyōto, where he did a brisk business selling fans, scrolls, and decorative items. Starting about 1605, the two men began producing hand scrolls with calligraphy by Kōetsu over woodblock prints by Sōtatsu on paper manufactured by the papermaster Sōji. A fine early example of this work is the so-called deer scroll. Here the deceptively simple, cartoonlike deer charm the viewer with their sprightly gait and their sly, haughty smiles.

Far more complex and ambitious were Sōtatsu’s screen paintings. It is in these that he was able to bring his skill as a craftsperson to bear on the classical themes favored by Kyōto aesthetes to create works of startling originality. The yamato-e style of painting, characterized by the use of themes from Japanese literature and mythology, and represented by the Tosa school, had declined in popularity by the late 1500’s. A more vulgar style featuring the use of vivid color and favored by many of the feudal lords increasingly contended with a muted, Chinese inspired, approach (Kanō) favored by the Tokugawa shogunate and the samurai class. The Chinese style, pioneered by Song Dynasty painter Muqi Fachang, sought to evoke the inner feeling or spirit of the subject rather than to emphasize strictly representational aspects.

Sōtatsu’s special genius lay in reviving the particularly Japanese themes of yamato-e and combining them with decorative techniques—inkwashes, paint puddling, the use of bright colors, finely executed detail, and grandiose scale—to create art of startling boldness and subtlety. By the later years of Sōtatsu’s life, not only the artistocrats of Kyōto but also the court of the shogun at Edo, its attendant daimyo, and large numbers of wealthy merchants eagerly sought his work.

One of the keys to Sōtatsu’s skill lies in the enormously varied scope of his works. The Rimpa school is sometimes referred to as the decorative school, and the huge volume of purely decorative work done by Sōtatsu on fans, tea bowls, scrolls, and screens—some are as large as six panels—provided invaluable experience both in the execution of fine detail and in the development of innovative ways of utilizing space.

Both of these elements may be found in Sōtatsu’s illustrative works based on the Ise monogatari (ninth century; Tales of Ise, 1968) and Genji monogatari (c. 1004; The Tale of Genji, 1925-1933). In the Sekiya screen, which illustrates a favorite yamato-e theme from The Tale of Genji, the scene is fraught with anticipation and tension: Genji encounters his former lover in a closed oxcart stopped at the Sekiya gate. The facial expressions of all the participants betray their relationship to the story, but the focus of the picture is on the unseen and unrequited lover. The details on this large three-panel screen are as finely wrought as those on any of the artist’s miniature fans.

The Bugaku Dancers reveals a similar love of detail. Additionally, Sōtatsu’s simple, almost abstract approach to the use of space in the painting achieves a harmonious balance despite the lack of background. The effect on the viewer is not unlike that of being an eavesdropper on the performance.

Another hallmark of the mature Sōtatsu style is his innovative use of ink and paint, often inverting the standard techniques of both mediums. His painting The Cormorants, for example, utilizes a background of heavy ink, added like pigment. Several paintings, notably The Wind and Thunder Gods and the Sekiya and Bugaku screens, feature bold use of gold and silver pigments, reflecting his growing taste for striking color.

Perhaps Sōtatsu’s most innovative bending of technical norms was the development of the tarashikomi, or boneless method of painting. There is no inked outline of the subject. Instead, as in the screen painting The Poppies, wet colors are applied in successive layers, each before the previous one had dried. The subtle blending of all colors creates the effect of flowers emerging from a mist. A similar effect, this time using gold and silver pigment, can be found in the scroll (done with Kōetsu) Flowers and Grasses of the Four Seasons.

So little is known of Sōtatsu’s life that it is impossible to give a physical description of him as a mature man. There are no self-portraits, and with the exception of a 1630 copy of a Buddhist scroll, his works have proved tantalizingly difficult to date. His signature seals were often added years after paintings were completed. Indeed, in a number of cases, scholars are not even certain which works are his and which are Kōetsu’s and must rely on subtle nuances of style to make their judgments. From the few details that have emerged of Sōtatsu’s later life, it is generally accepted that he moved to Kanagawa sometime around 1640. There he spent his last years in the service of the Maeda family of Kaga Province, where he died about 1643.

Significance

If precious little of Sōtatsu’s life is accessible to historians, it is almost impossible to overestimate the impact of the Rimpa school on Japanese art. In a very real sense, Sōtatsu and Kōetsu reflect in art the spirit of the Tokugawa age. Maturing during a period of robust political dynamism and foreign adventure in the 1590’s, followed by the concerted effort of the Tokugawas to cultivate Japanese values in an environment free from foreign influences, their art reflects the harmonious synthesis of traditional values and bold, vibrant technique. In the aesthetic hothouse of Edo Japan, the ability of Rimpa painters and artisans continually to develop original personal styles while drawing from centuries of native models ensured their popularity for generations of demanding patrons.

The style of the Sōtatsu-Kōetsu school continued after the passing of both men. Some scholars have argued that it reached its greatest refinement with the Ogata brothers, Kōrin and Kenzan, in the late seventeenth century. Both Sōtatsu’s and Kōetsu’s sons continued the artistic tradition, and it is probable that the Ogatas received their training from them. Most scholars believe that, following the deaths of the Ogatas in the early eighteenth century, the quality of Rimpa productions declined to a certain extent. The spirit, if not the technical quality, of the school would reappear during the Meiji period (1868-1912), another age of self-conscious Japanese national feeling, in the form of the Nihonga or modernist school of painting.

Sōtatsu’s style may be seen as one of the highest expressions of formalism in Japanese art. Although he exhibited considerable skill in the depiction of detail, as well as in evoking emotion, his main emphasis is on bold tonal experiments, eye-pleasing color, and the asymmetrical but harmonious use of space. As Shuichi Kato writes, Sōtatsu “was indeed a perfect visual expression of the traditional Japanese mind and sensitivity, manifest through ages also in other cultural spheres: in architecture, in literature, and, in a sense, even in social and political life.”

Bibliography

Grilli, Elise. Tawaraya Sōtatsu. Rutland, Vt.: C. E. Tuttle, 1956. Though dated, this work contains the most complete account of Sōtatsu’s life and work available to the general reader in English. Grilli provides a well-balanced examination of Rimpa art with an emphasis on the influences of the Tosa, yamato-e, and Kanō styles. Illustrated.

Kato, Shuichi. “Notes on Sōtatsu.” In Form, Style, Tradition: Reflections on Japanese Art and Society. Translated by John Bester. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. A capable translation that places Sōtatsu’s work in yamato-e context. Contains a good analysis of class tastes and their relation to the Rimpa school. The author contends that Sōtatsu represents the best of traditional Japanese eclecticism. Illustrated.

Lillehoj, Elizabeth, ed. Critical Perspectives on Classicism in Japanese Painting, 1600-1700. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004. Includes an essay on Kōrin and Sōtatsu and their patrons as well as a biographical list of seventeenth century Japanese artists.

Paine, Robert Treat, and Alexander Soper. “The Return to Native Traditions: Edo Period, 1615-1867.” In The Art and Architecture of Japan. Rev. ed. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1975. Perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of Japanese art, especially in the Edo period, available in one volume. Provides considerably detailed biographical information on Sōtatsu’s early years and his relationship with Kōetsu. The authors see the Rimpa school as a truly original Japanese art tradition. Illustrated.

Rosenfield, John J., and Shūjirō Shimada. “Kōetsu, Sōtatsu, and Their Tradition.” In Traditions of Japanese Art: Selections from the Kimiko and John Powers Collection. Cambridge, Mass.: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1970. A large, beautifully executed selection from the Fogg Art Museum’s holdings. Each chapter contains a concise overview of the period, and each illustration is highlighted by detailed explanatory text. There is an in-depth examination of Kōetsu’s Takagamine salon and perceptive and sensitive explorations of calligraphic technique.

Stanley-Baker, Joan. “Azuchi-Muromachi and Edo (1573-1868).” In Japanese Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1984. A brief, well-informed look at Sōtatsu, Kōetsu, and Kōrin within a broad context of three millennia of Japanese art. Especially effective in placing the Rimpa school within broader political and artistic developments of the Hideyoshi and Tokugawa eras. Illustrated.