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FUJIWARA,Shigeo The Shoji Screen Paintings of Saishoko-in Imperial Chamber as Gyoji-e and Meisho-e:Its Relations with Hokongo-in (translated by Haruko Wakabayashi)
The History of portrait paintings in Japan is generally understood to have begun with the opening of the new age of Insei and Kamakura periods, when the realistic nise-e portraits developed, breaking traditional taboos. Although this familiar and stereotypical understanding has been widely accepted, some scholars have become critical of such simplistic view. The author wishes to place this article within such current. The article examines the Saishoko-in's gosho shoji-e, a lost work that is almost always referred to in the study of portraits, and analyze it from the perspectives of meisho-e (illustration of famous sites) and gyoji-e (illustration of events).
Saishoko-in was vowed in 1173 by Kenshunmon-in (empress to Goshirakawa-in). Depicted on the shoji screens of its imperial chamber were scenes of emperors and empresses' visit to temples and shrines. The artist was Tokiwa Genji Mitsunaga, but Fujiwara Takanobu was in charge of the depiction of facial features. Kujo Kanezane mentions this painting in his diary, Gyokuyo, and comments on the fact that he was not one of those depicted in it as "the first of all divine protections."
Other paintings in the Saishoko-in include Illustrations of the Lotus Sutra on the shoji screens in the main hall and the corridors leading to the hall, and the honmon shoji-e (illustrations of Chinese tales) on the screens of the Tenjo-ro. As for the latter, we know that Goshirakawa-in had made orders to use the paintings in Honkongo-in as its precedent. The position of the empress and other proofs suggest that referenced were indeed made to the Honkongo-in painting.
Honkongo-in is a temple close to Ninna-ji that was vowed by Taikenmon-in, and a memorial service for the Amida Hall was carried out in 1130. The Homon shoji-e was painted on the screens of the shinden and tai, and although its location is unknown, meisho shoji-e, too, is known to have existed. Could it be that this meisho-e was the model for the gosho shoji-e in Saishoko-in? In this context, a reference to the "painting of Emperor Uda's visit to Kazan (Gangyo-ji)" made in Kensho's Commentaries to the Kokinshu, is noteworthy. It is most probably a reading of one of the scenes in the meisho-e that depicts a mountain temple amidst blooming cherry blossoms and the excursion of a nobleman, within the spatial context where the paintings' appreciation took place. Here we see that instead of the original theme of the painting, that is, a series of scenes of a certain site during a particular season, he had brought to the foreground the motifs that were depicted, i.e., the visit to temples and shrines, by identifying the nobleman with a specific emperor.
With the above example in mind, and if the same conception were to be applied, the shoji-e of Saishoko-in that illustrates the visit of temples and shrines may have taken after the theme read in the Hokongo-in painting, based the motifs on an actual recent event, and included portraits of contemporary people into the painting. Both the event and the participants were identified and individualized (differentiated), and an effort was made to actualize such concept in the illustration of the scene as well. It was this very point of choosing a contemporary event and people as the subject that was perceived as unipue and novel to the people of the time.
Between the two shoji-e, we see a transition from meisho-e to gyoji-e and the change in the ways in which yamato-e were viewed. This transition suggests the workings of viewing/reading of a painting in which motifs that were initially chosen and depicted accordingly with a certain theme could, as the viewers rendered new narratives to the painting, result in a new framework with a different theme.
Finally, the gyoretsu-zu, or illustration of processions, should also be examined as a possible model for the Saishoko-in painting. Not only were processions depicted in emaki, but they may also have been painted on larger screens.