japanese scroll paintings (emaki)
Eunice Poh
but i still don't really know the background of when & how it was
popularised in japan. i read & surfed abt it but i would be glad if anyone
has anymore advices / resources for me to look upon further.
thank you!
Rosh
Emaki is like an Anime in old days. They describe famous stories
and why temples and shrines were constructed (Engi-emaki). Some
even describe hell. Using Emakis, buddhist priests lectured what
people would face if they did wrong things.
Charles Eicher
says...
>
>"Eunice Poh " <ging...@singnet.com.sg> wrote in message
>news:<a4iimq$9nu$1...@coco.singnet.com.sg>...
>> elo. i'm doing a research on japanese scroll paintings (emaki) & related,
>> but i still don't really know the background of when & how it was
>> popularised in japan. i read & surfed abt it but i would be glad if anyone
>> has anymore advices / resources for me to look upon further.
>>
>> thank you!
>
>Emaki is like an Anime in old days.
Yeah right. Was this some parallel universe where aliens came and showed 12th
century brush painters how to produce animated pictures on plain paper?
>They describe famous stories
>and why temples and shrines were constructed (Engi-emaki). Some
>even describe hell. Using Emakis, buddhist priests lectured what
>people would face if they did wrong things.
I found the web page that you copied from to give this description. It's not
very accurate. Maybe you should refrain from commenting on things you are
ignorant of, if the best you can do is copy from some web page's description and
pass it off as your own.
To answer the questions more directly:
Q: When did emaki become popular?
A: Never. Unless your definition of "popular" includes items accessible only to
the most elite .01% of the Japanese population.
Q: How did emaki become popular?
A: It didn't, except amongst the ruling class which commissioned expensive and
elaborate emaki to commemorate important battles, historical events, illustrate
their favorite literature, etc. These scrolls were shown to other rulers, who
commissioned their own.
In ancient Japan, artists were in a regulated profession and no artworks of ANY
kind could be commissioned except through their patrons in the ruling class. It
was much later in the Edo era that ukiyo-e became popular, the merchant class
ursurped some of the financial power of the samurai class, and the merchants
began to commission their own artworks. However, those items were generally
prints not scrolls, mass-produced by block printing, and the paper sizes were
regulated. Most items that would have been scrolls were produced as tryptich or
larger multiple prints series.
Religious scrolls produced by many different sects do exist, but they were never
used for "lecturing" as you assert so ridiculously. Hand scrolls are intended
for viewing up close, by one or two persons at best. They would be completely
unsuitable for lecturing. Many of these emaki were produced as part of the
meditative practices of the priests and were not intended for public viewing.
But to get to THE POINT..
If you want to make a connection between emaki and anime, you'll fail. They are
only vaguely related, in much the same way that Leonardo or Canaletto's
perspective drawing is the precursor to television. The whold world does not
revolve around anime.
Rosh
>
> Yeah right. Was this some parallel universe where aliens came and showed 12th
> century brush painters how to produce animated pictures on plain paper?
>
Many Japanese Anime/commics are just printed on papers only. I guess
I was carefule enough not to say "animation".
The point is that Emakis describe stories primarily by pictures but not
by sentences. I have seen/read books which explains the meaning of
some emakis long time ago but they are not ordinally books sold at
ordinally book stores in Japan. And I don't remember the titles of
those books, so I can't help.
Talking about aliens, I still remember a flying saucer-like object
and a man chasing it painted on Sigisan-engi-emaki I have seen on a
Japanese history text book when I was a junior-high student. And, then
those 100 devils marching in Kyoto, Shugen dougi and Sotouba Komachi.
Some of them are weird.
Charles Eicher
says...
>The point is that Emakis describe stories primarily by pictures but not
>by sentences.
No. The distinctive feature of emaki is "linear narrative." It's a real Art
History term, go look it up. There are plenty of pictures that tell stories
without words, but don't use linear narrative. Comics use linear narrative
(mostly) but that's all that they have in common with emaki.