painting; hanging scroll BM-1913-0501-0.38

Period:Unknown Production date:15thC(late)
Materials:silk
Technique:painted
Subjects:scholar,flower
Dimensions:Height: 152.50 centimetres (mount) Height: 71.30 centimetres Width: 41.20 centimetres (mount) Width: 29.40 centimetres

Description:
Painting, hanging scroll. Sugawara no Michizane (Tenjin) standing, in Chinese robes, holding sprig of plum blossom against his chest, with bag containing Buddhist priest’s surplice (kesa) at his waist. Ink and colour on silk. Inscribed. With inscribed paulownia storage box.
IMG


Comments:Conservation Credit Line: Conservation of this painting took place in 2007-9 as part of the Collaborative Project for the Conservation of Japanese Paintings in the British Museum, undertaken jointly with the Association for Conservation of National Treasures (Kokuho Shuri Soenshi Renmei), and funded by the Sumitomo Foundation. Smith et al 1990Sugawara no Michizane (845-903) was a scholar of Chinese literature and politician who rose to the rank of Minister of the Right, and was then exiled to Kyushu by a conspiracy of the Fujiwara family. Calamities in the capital following his death led to his reinstatement and upgrading to the rank of a Shinto deity (renamed Karai Tenjin), and the founding of the Kitano shrine there to honour his memory. He is still regarded as the patron of scholarship as well as Japan’s greatest poet writing in the Chinese language. A revival of interest in ‘kanbun’ (Chinese written in a manner understandable by Japanese) in the Muromachi period resulted in his being held in even higher regard; this portrait is from that time. He is shown in pure Chinese dress, holding the plum bough which is one of the symbols of the Chinese scholar-gentleman, as well as being associated with a number of other stories about Michizane himself. His totally Chinese appearance also refers to a complex legend that he studied Zen posthumously in China, a tradition that was maintained in the Zen Tofukuji Temple in Kyoto. Hizo Nihon bijutsu taikan Vol 1This theme is based on the legend that Tenman Tenjin, the spirit of Sugawara no Michizane (a Heian-period politician and literatus), went to China to pay a visit to the Song-dynasty Chan priest Wuzhun Shifan (1178-1249) on Mt. Jing, and was given a robe.The iconography on this motif is well established: Sugawara no Michizane looks Chinese and wears Chinese clothing; he faces the viewer straight on, his head covered with a long, draping headgear; and his arms are folded in front. He presses a sprig of flowers against his chest with one arm. The sack for the robe he received from Wuzhun is slung casually over his chest, hanging at his right hip.This work, painted on silk, conforms closely to this tradition. However, such elements as the near-transparency of the headgear that falls over his shoulders, the hair visible beneath it, the relative width of the bridge of his nose, and the use of crimson in the sprig of flowers, are all departures from the usual Japanese depictions of “Sugawara no Michizane in China” painted in the Muromachi period. The poetry collection ‘Baika Mujinzo’ by the Rinzai Zen monk Banri Shuku (d. 1498 at the age of seventy years) provides evidence that inscriptions were added in Japan to Tenjin paintings imported from Ming China. The stylized ink lines of the folded green garment and the fact that the inscription at the top bears no signature and no date are probably both related to the work’s being a copy of a Chinese original. This painting may be considered to date from the mid-Muromachi period, or latter half of the fifteenth century, and is of great interest for its distinctive iconography. For related works, see ‘Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan’ (New York: Japan Society, 2007), p. 47 & cat. nos. 35-36. See also essays in Imaizumi Yoshio & Shimao Arata, Zen to Tenjin (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 2000).