PICTURING RICE AGRICULTURE AND SILK PRODUCTION:APPROPRIATION AND IDEOLOGY IN EARLY MODERN JAPANESE PAINTING

The canonic Chinese theme Pictures of Agriculture and Sericulture 耕織圖 (Chinese: gengzhitu, Japanese: kōshokuzu) was transmitted to Japanese painting circles from the fifteenth- through the nineteenth- centuries. Paintings with agrarian motifs decorated the palaces of the Ashikaga shoguns and the abbot's quarters in the Daisen'in temple, and were reproduced many times by masters and disciples of the Kano school throughout the Edo period (1603-1868). From theeighteenth century on, agrarian vignettes also appeared in woodblock prints of various types:from the encyclopedic guidebook to the erotic color print.My dissertation focuses on this theme as a case study of painterly transmission. The first chapter compares the wall-paintings in the Daisen'in with earlier Chinese paintings, anddemonstrates that Japanese painters consciously altered the original figures in order to change their Confucian messages. Thus, I propose that the transmission of k!shokuzu exemplifies that painters and patrons consciously appropriated this theme to convey varied messages in changing ideological discourses.In the second chapter I argue that the Japanization of Chinese farming figures and motifs reveals that Kano painters used printed painting manuals imported from China to a much greater extent than has hitherto been suggested. Additionally, I link the rise of proto-nationalistic schools of thought to the Japanization of the portrayed landscape. In the third chapter, I concentrate on the print artist Tachibana Morikuni (1679-1749) and argue that his popular painting manuals cannot be the source through which Kano secret models were leaked to ukiyo-e artists. Rather, his work was part of a growing trend in the Japanese market of using printed books as painting manuals. Later print artists, such as Harunobu (fl. 1765-1770), acknowledged their transmission of Morikuni's models by parodying his books. The fourth chapter surveys the history of Pictures of Sericulture. I link the lack of sericultural images and the inattention to their study to their association with a female audience. I also detail how weaving women in ukiyo-e served as parodies of Neo-Confucianism and - in later Meiji-period prints - as propaganda for imperial technology