Soken gafu sōka no bu

Soken gafu sōka no bu素絢画譜草花之部

FSC-GR-780.768

Commentary by Ellis Tinios

Posted December 13, 2016



Hishiya Magobē (Gosharō五車楼) was a major player in Kyoto publishing from the 1760s into the closing years of the nineteenth century. Chinese and China-related books dominate the firm’s lists, among which were a significant range of painting manuals. Counted among the latter were an outstanding new edition of The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting 芥子園畫傳 (C. Jeizhiyuan hua zhuan; J. Kaishien gadan), reprints of books edited by the prolific artist and theorist Kan’yōsai 寒葉斎 (Takebe Ayatari 建部綾足; 1719–1774), such as Kanga shinan 漢画指南 (Instruction in Chinese painting; 1778), and Riyōun chikufu (FSC-GR-780.610), as well as freshly commissioned works in the same vein, such as Bunpō’s Kanga shinan nihen (FSC-GR-780.281.1-3) and Kinpaen gafu (FSC-GR-780.283). Another of the publisher’s specialities was facsimiles of texts from celebrated Chinese and Japanese calligraphers.

Yamaguchi Soken collaborated with Hishiya Magobē on two major projects: Yamato jinbutsu gafu, which appeared in two three-volume parts in 1799 and 1804 (FSC-GR-780.767.1-3; FSC-GR-780.769.1-3), and this book Soken gafu: sōka no bu (Soken’s painting album, section on plants), which was published in 1806 in three “large-book” (ōbon) volumes. At some point, the covers of the Pulverer copy were removed from each of the three volumes, and the three book blocks were bound together within a pair of replacement covers to form a single volume. A hand-written title slip with the full name of the book followed by “[parts] 1, 2, 3” was pasted onto the front cover of the composite volume.

As the title indicates, Soken gafu: sōka no bu was devoted entirely to plants. The table of contents at the beginning of the first volume names all of the seventy plants depicted in the book using Chinese characters. Smaller size syllabic script (kana 仮名) printed to the right of the Chinese characters provides their pronunciation in Japanese. The plants are illustrated in boldly cropped close-ups over fifty double-page openings. The printing is in black sumi ink throughout. On some pages the ink employed was diluted to a pale gray. Elsewhere the printing block was deliberately abraded so as to produce a mottled black across the broad expanse of a large leaf. Soken exploited this limited range of tones and textures to great effect to produce endlessly inventive and powerful designs.

The double-page designs in the first volume rest between single-page representations of a crane and a turtle, auspicious symbols denoting longevity. In the second volume they appear between single-page designs of a pine sapling and a segment of bamboo. The third volume is introduced by a single-page design of a flowering plum branch. (The last page of this volume carries the colophon.) Taken together the pine, bamboo, and plum reference the “three friends” (sanyō 三友), a triad beloved of Chinese and Japanese literati painters.

The colophon advertises the availability of the two parts of Soken’s Yamato jinbutsu gafu, and gives advance notice of further parts of a Soken gafu series identified as  “landscape,” “figures”, and “flowers and birds.” No such titles were published by Hishiya Magobē. The only other major title by Soken was a landscape album that appeared twelve years after this book from another Kyoto publisher (see Soken sansui gafu FSC-GR-780.770.1-2). Soken gafu was very popular and remained in print into the twentieth century. The Pulverer copy is a fresh, early printing. [1] 

Selected readings:
Louise Norton Brown, Block Printing & Book Illustration in Japan (London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd.: E. P. Dutton & Co., 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, 536–57.

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).

Copies in other collections:

British Museum, London (multiple copies)

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

Freer Library, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Leiden

New York Public Library, New York

[1] A four-page preface in a cursive hand is omitted from the Pulverer copy. The only copy with that additional preface known to the writer is in the British Museum (1915,0823,0.195).