(Nihon) meizan zue

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Commentary by Frank L. Chance

Posted August 11, 2016

Tani Bunchō was born into a samurai family serving as retainers to the Tayasu clan, close relatives of the Tokugawa shoguns. His talents as a painter were recognized at an early age, and he began training with the Kano school painter Katō Bunrei 加藤文麗 (1706–1782). Bunchō produced his first surviving works at age twelve. After Bunrei’s death, Bunchō studied other styles, including Chinese idealist literati painting (bunjinga 文人画 or nanga 南画), nativist yamato-e (大和絵), Nagasaki school decorative naturalism, and Western painting; however, he is best known today as a bunjin, or “literati” artist. In 1774 Bunchō became a retainer of Matsudaira Sadanobu 松平定信 (1759–1829), an influential shogunal advisor of the Tayasu clan, and was adopted into the Matsudaira family. This relationship guaranteed Bunchō a steady income and the privilege to travel widely across Japan.

Bunchō sketched wherever he went, and during his journeys he collected images of mountains depicted by other artists. He used his own and others’ drawings as reference material for his designs in Meizan zufu 名山図譜 (Pictorial album of famous mountains). Meizan zufu was first published in three volumes in 1804, and the edition in the Pulverer collection was released later in 1812 with the title altered to read (Nihon) meizan zue.

In this later imprint the term Nihon 日本 (Japan) was added in smaller script as a subtitle, and the original term zufu 図譜 (Pictorial album) was changed to zue 図絵 (Picture collection). Both versions include a long preface written in 1802 by Shibano Ritsuzan 柴野栗山 (1736–1808), head of the Confucian academy Yushima Seidō 湯島聖堂 (Hall of the sage in Yushima) in Edo and friend to both Sadanobu and Bunchō’s father. Bunchō also contributed a shorter preface as well. In his preface Ritsuzan praises Bunchō for traveling around the entire country, indicating his addiction to visiting mountains and his interest in representing them. Bunchō’s preface emphasizes his accuracy in depicting issanissui (一山一水), or “mountain by mountain, stream by stream.”

(Nihon) meizan zue includes Japan’s tallest and most celebrated peaks, from the four mountains on the northern island of Hokkaido to the active volcano Sakurajima, near the southern end of the southern island of Kyushu. The first volume begins with the portrayal of a sacred peak, labeled “Kinbusen in Yamato province, Yoshino-gun” (金峰山在大和洲吉野郡), but modern viewers are probably most familiar with the second mountain in the book, Mount Fuji. The stark grandeur of Mount Fuji is enhanced by the space surrounding its summit, and the forms are delineated with angular lines hooking over the top of each rill to render a rich texture. Other pages employ differing linear approaches, from darkly dotted representations of forested summits (including Kinbusen) to lightly textured outlines indicating snow-covered peaks. The emphasis on towering mass creates a vicarious experience of seeing, or even climbing, the mountains.

(Nihon) meizan zue is the best known of Bunchō’s published works, and the Pulverer copy is from the third printing of the set (1812). Further editions of the title include hardbound reproductions of 1896, 1955, 1970, and 1977.

Selected readings

Frank L. Chance, “Tani Bunchō” in Grove Art Online (http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T083257).

Timon Screech, The Shogun's Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States, 1760–1829 (London: Reaktion Books, 2000).

Tani Bunchō 谷文晁, (Nihon) Meizan zue 『(日本) 名山図絵』 (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1970), esp. the afterword by Higuchi Hideo 樋口秀雄, “Bunchō no gafu obogaki” 「谷文晁の画譜覚書」, unpaginated.

Copies in other collections

British Museum, London
Library of Congress, Washington, DC (1807, 1812, and other editions)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia (1842 edition)