Moon and Kudzu Vine

Representations of plants and flowers, often species not traditionally depicted by Japanese artists, became more naturalistic and botanically accurate in later Rinpa works, as seen in this atmospheric rendering of kudzu leaves and blossoms on a moonlit night. By the nineteenth century, such detailed realism reflected not only the study of the natural sciences in Japan but also the advent of the Maruyama-Shijō school, founded by Maruyama Ōkyo, which specialized in naturalistic drawing and painting. Sakai Hōitsu was in personal contact with Watanabe Nangaku (1767–1813), one of Ōkyo’s top students, and also had access to the Chinese painting manuals on which Ōkyo and his followers drew heavily. Rinpa compositions nonetheless remained formalized and decorative to a certain degree, and were detached from any recognizable landscape setting.

Kudzu is not a frequent subject in earlier Japanese paintings, but here it becomes a backdrop for a poem on the subject by the courtier-poet Toyama Mitsuzane. The poem is a traditional waka (courtly verse), in five lines of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables, respectively. However, Mitsuzane’s use of “scattered writing” rearranges the lines so that the poem begins on the lower left and ends on the right, effectively reversing the traditional order of inscribing the poem by placing the last line, tsuki zo katabuku (“when the moonlight slants down”), in what should be the starting position. Mitsuzane’s signature lies just below the moon at upper right, instead of at the far left, as would be expected. His poem reads:

更る夜をはなもうらみの いろみえで
葛の葉てらす 月ぞかたぶく
光貫

Fukuru yo o
hana mo urami no
iro miede
kuzu no ha terasu
tsuki zo katabuku

Like the colors of the blossoms,
my bitterness over love remains
unseen 'til the depths of night,
when the moonlight slants down
upon leaves of kudzu vines.
—Trans. John T. Carpenter