Kinpaen gafu 金波園画譜

FSC-GR-780.283

Commentary by Ellis Tinios

Posted September 5, 2016

Kawamura Bunpō’s Kinpaen gafu (Kinpaen’s album of paintings), a book of flower-and-bird pictures (kachōga), is directly descended from the second and third parts of the Chinese Jiezhiyuan hua zhuan 芥子園畫傳 (J. Kaishien gadan; The mustard seed garden manual of painting; 1701). The Chinese manual became widely known in Japan through imported copies and, more importantly, through various Japanese editions, the earliest of which was published in Kyoto in 1748. Jiezhiyuan hua zhuan came to play a significant role in furthering the appreciation and creation of Chinese-style paintings in Japan; it also inspired the publication of similar manuals by Japanese artists. The publisher Hishiya Magobē (Gosharō) advertised Kinpaen gafu alongside his own fine edition of Jiezhiyuan hua zhuan and other titles relating to Chinese art and culture.

Bunpō delivered his designs for Kinpaen gafu to the publisher in 1811; this is the date he appended to the preface he composed for it. The title uses Kinpaen, one of Bunpō’s Chinese-style studio names with the literal meaning “Golden Wave Garden.” In the following year Hishiya Magobē advertised the book as forthcoming and announced that it would be in three volumes. Publication was delayed; the book did not appear until 1820 and then complete in just one volume. The reasons for the delay and reduction in the size of the book are not known.

In 2003 the Tokyo antiquarian bookseller Isseidō offered for sale a three-part draft (funpon 粉本) for the three-volume book advertised by Hishiya Magobē in 1812. (It is today in a private European collection.) One part of the draft provided the basis for Kinpaen gafu. Remarkably, designs from the other two volumes—including figures, landscapes, and animals—were incorporated into the Kihō gafu (FSC-GR-780.290). Yoshidaya Shinbē’s rival Hishiya Magobē published the latter in 1827. Kawamura Kihō, the putative artist, was Bunpō’s most significant pupil and had been engaged by Yoshidaya Shinbē to edit the posthumous 1824 Bunpō sansui gafu (FSC-GR-780.284). His motives in appropriating his teacher’s work and presenting it as his own are not known.

Kinpaen gafu is the only Bunpō book to be printed in a wide range of colors. In imitation of Chinese practice, the outlines of leaves and stems are omitted, and reserve lines indicate the veins on leaves. There are also many instances in which delicate colors subtly blend one into the other. The play of the artist’s brush is rendered as more tightly controlled, and the draftsmanship seems more precise compared to his other books. This results in more delicate designs that are at the same time more complex than the flower-and-bird illustrations in his three Bunpō gafu volumes that are also in the Pulverer collection. The combination of an understated palette and intricately worked images make this a particularly attractive book.

Bunpō’s preface is written employing Chinese characters but it is not in Chinese. The characters are employed phonetically to record Japanese in a form known as man’yōgana (万葉仮名). The preface was lifted with only minor alterations—and without acknowledgment—from Mōkyō wakan zatusga 孟喬和漢雜画 (Mōkyō’s blend of Japanese and Chinese paintings; five volumes, 1772), a work of Takebe Ayatari. The text states that it does not matter whether the artist is Chinese or Japanese. What is important is that the artist’s work possesses depth of feeling, skill in handling the material, and the ability to depict the essence of things.

Some of the earliest printings of Kinpaen gafu employ imported “Chinese paper” (tōshi 唐紙). The Pulverer copy is on fine Japanese paper (washi 和紙).

Selected readings

Louise Norton Brown, Block Printing and Book Illustration in Japan (London: George Routledge and Sons: E. P. Dutton, 1924).

Jack Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book, 2 vols. (London: Sotheby’s Publications by Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd., 1987), see esp. vol. 1, 686–99.

Owen E. Holloway, Graphic Art of Japan: The Classical School (London: Alec Tiranti,1957).

C. H. Mitchell, with the assistance of Osamu Ueda, The Illustrated Books of the Nanga, Maruyama, Shijo and Other Related Schools of Japan. A Biobibliography (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1972).

Suzuki Jun and Ellis Tinios, Understanding Japanese Woodblock-Printed Illustrated Books: A Short Introduction to Their History, Bibliography and Format (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013).

Kenji Toda, Descriptive Catalogue of the Japanese and Chinese Illustrated Books in the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: 1931; repr., Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2004).

Copies in other collections

Art Institute of Chicago

British Museum, London

Ebi Collection (private) (viewable on online database of the Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto)

Freer Gallery of Art Library, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

New York Public Library, New York

Victoria and Albert Museum, London