decorative effect was seen especially in the Korin school. Here effects actually became impressionistic both in painting and in lacquer ware. Detail was minimal, and bold strokes were used to obtain the decorative effect. In lacquer ware large, strong, almost crude-appearing pieces of tin, pewter, lead, and mother-of-pearl would be encrusted in an impressionistic manner offsetting a few finely decorative touches (Fig. 8). To achieve such effects a flower may be proportionately greatly enlarged in eye-catching fashion and perspective purposely distorted. Such artistic liberties were taught to a lesser degree in Chinese art, where flowers and leaves were made relatively larger than the remainder of the branches, or the tree trunk. Such disregard for proportion is often seen in netsuke—for example, a frog squatting on a relatively large leaf or, conversely, a large frog climbing out of a relatively small water bucket. Occasionally such disproportion was used for symbolic reasons father than purely artistic ones.
Asymmetry has always been a keynote in Japanese artistic taste, evinced in architecture, gardens, flower arrangement, and all of the arts. The basically symmetrical arrangement of Chinese lacquer art was soon replaced in Japanese lacquer ware by greater and greater asymmetry both in pictorial effect and in ornamentation (Figs. 25, 29). Subject matter was displaced to one side or low down in a picture, often leaving a large completely blank area which was occasionally enhanced with a few ornamental leaves or blades of grass. Similarly, the details within the subject matter itself would be asymmetrically arranged to avoid visual boredom. Flowers and branches would show a variety of shape and form, the stems and leaves being carefully eccentrically placed. The designs on a robe may vary in pattern, shape, design, and color and yet form a decorative cohesive whole. The same applies to ornamental patterns. Here various geometric and scroll-like patterns may be scattered throughout or border the pictorial element. Such patterns similarly vary in design and shape and are eccentrically dispersed, often twisting at various angles and even overlapping one another. The perfect balance between such ornamental design and the pictorial element is typical of Japanese artistry.
The Japanese handling or ornamentation of an object of art is unique. To the Japanese artist the entire surface area must be a part of the design. The sides, bottom, insides, and edges of the object all enter into both the pictorial and the ornamental effects. Specifically by the Momoyama period (1573-1615) both the picture and the supplemental ornamentation began to flow over the rims, edges, and sides of the objects. The entire object, no matter what its shape, was part of the design. While the insides of boxes and their bottom surfaces did not usually contain the pictorial design, they were enhanced with fine lacquer, frequently of nashiji. The inside of the covers, however, usually revealed designs often finer than those of the outside (Figs. 9, 130, 131). Even the natural openings of an object, such as a tsuba, were often employed for decorative purposes or as part of the picture. The holes in the tsuba were artistically made use of by including them as part of the design or permitting the design to sweep through them as if they never existed. Similarly, in the kimono, the design incorporated the entire surface area, including the neck and the sleeves.
We now come to more specific Japanese methods of ornamentation, the simplest being variations of fretwork. Japanese fretwork, like the comparable ancient Greek fretwork, consists of repeated angular geometric designs such as the well-known key pattern, which is usually used as an ornamentation about the. edges of the lacquered object. The Japanese frets, however, are usually intermittent rather than continuous. They are extended or reduced to suit the size and shape of the objects to which they are applied. Japanese fretwork is extremely diversified and is further developed in Japanese diaperwork.
Japanese diaperwork again illustrates the love of variety. Diaperwork is essentially a more complicated, diversified, and extended form of fretwork. The designs are again geometric in nature or combined with geometriclike conventionalized forms. The diaper is often used as a supplementary ornamental design to the main pictorial element or, most or all, the design itself may consist of pure diaperwork (Fig. 35). The diaperwork on Japanese art objects is usually of several designs. The surface of the object is divided up into asymmetrical spaces constructed by the intersection of straight or curved lines, by combinations of the triangle, square, circle, or multisided forms. Thus there may be displayed intersecting circles, hexagons, lozenge forms, fish-scale diapers, etc. Quite often varying irregular spaces are left between the diaper forms, or the diapers are effectively contrasted and broken up with delicate scroll or floral patterns. Diapers may be of pure geometric designs or of conventionalized patterns of flowers and foliage. Attempts are purposely made to disguise any repeated symmetrical pattern or diaper so that the varied diaper designs may be irregular or geometric divisions which often intersect each other at varying angles. Finally the diaperwork may be dispersed in the form of medallions, which is a unique Japanese method developed as an offshoot of powderings.
Powdering consists of a decorative effect obtained by distributing small conventional geometrical (often floral) or pictorial designs through a field (Fig. 37). Quite often the powderings consist of various Japanese heraldic crests. The Japanese technique, in contrast to Western methods, employs powderings which are irregularly distributed, while the powderings themselves are usually varied. These powderings may be irregularly scattered, combined in varying-sized groups, or made to overlap one another. This seemingly haphazard distribution of powderings, as well as medallion decoration, is in reality very carefully planned so as to render a flexible, pleasing, nonboring appearance. In general powderings are most commonly seen as small circles within which appear conventionalized designs of flowers, animals, and heraldic crests.
A higher form of development of powdering technique, unique to Japanese art, is the medallion system. The medallion is a geometrically outlined form filled in with more ornate decoration, such as landscapes, flower, animal, or figure subjects. These medallions are of various sizes and shapes, most commonly circles or segments of the circumference of a circle. Circular medallions are often formed by conventionalized birds and foliage which coil on themselves. The medallions are kept distinct from the background by having different material, color, or groundwork and usually have well-defined borders of geometric shapes. When the circular medallions are used alone they are usually of different sizes. Commonly medallions of different shapes and sizes, as well, as different designs, are used. The medallions, like powderings, ate asymmetrically distributed (Fig. 36). In typical Japanese fashion the irregular dispersal of powderings and medallion work against varied backgrounds and pictorial effects makes the entire surface area quite pleasing to the eye and does not induce boredom. Similarly, their dispersal on all sides of the object makes it pleasing from all directions. Upon closer scrutiny this effect is still maintained by the detailed and variegated designs within the powderings, medallions, background, and picture. In small objects, such as inro, however, the use of medallions and powderings is limited by the small surface area. These techniques nevertheless were used on inro. More commonly, such ornamentation was absent or was achieved by means of diapers, powderings, or medallions along the edges of the inro outlining the subject matter or decoratively placed on the risers, on the external cord channels, or on the top and bottom surfaces. This ornamentation was done in makie, mother-of-pearl, chinkin-bori, and other techniques (Fig. 10).
Special geometric designs were used by the Japanese artisan—for example, the oblique or zigzag line which divided the surface roughly into corresponding asymmetrical halves. These contrasting halves were usually decorated differently. This technique became popular in the Momoyama period (1573-1615) and was applied to textile and lacquer-ware decoration (Figs. 158, 229). There are specific names for some of these geometric patterns (saja-gata), such as rinzu and asa-no-ha. The rinzu pattern is essentially a series of straight lines resembling the well-known "key pattern." Asa-no-ha, which is commonly found on Chinese and Japanese tsuishu lacquer ware, consists of a series of circles whose points of intersection are connected by lines forming a star (Figs.- 40, 74). This pattern was called the hemp-leaf pattern and was used for babies' clothing, indicating the desire for the baby to "grow with a strength like that of the hemp plant." In other cases the geometric pattern represents decorative effects by conventionalizing the pictorial elements. The popular Zeshin "wave design" is such an example and consists of a repetitive series of concentrically smaller arcs fitting within one another (seigai-ha; Figs. 11, 25).
In
