Rinpa: designs carried across generations

Look at the placement of shapes: repeated flowers, curving water and intervals of open ground can organise a composition. Gold or silver grounds and tarashikomi—colour or ink pooling into a still-wet area—are familiar techniques. The treatment varies with the artist and material. Kōrin’s Irises at Yatsuhashi uses a bridge and irises to recall the episode in The Tales of Ise in which a traveller composes a poem longing for his wife. The traveller is absent from the painting, yet the combination of plants and bridge can evoke the literary scene.

Rinpa encompasses decorated papers and calligraphy, lacquer, ceramics, textiles and illustrated books as well as paintings. Ogata Kōrin designed lacquer decoration and collaborated with his brother, the potter Kenzan. Moving a motif between paper and a ceramic surface changes its scale, material and method of production.

In Fujita Museum’s square dishes, Kenzan made the ceramic forms, Kōrin painted them, and Kenzan added inscriptions. White slip provides a pale ground beneath iron-brown decoration and transparent glaze. On the crane dish, bird and reeds occupy the centre and left, with writing at the right. Raised edges turn this picture surface into a vessel.

Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–1637), a calligrapher and craftsman, and the early Edo painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu worked in Kyoto. Decorated papers, fans and books brought text and image together within a culture supported by court, warrior and townspeople patrons. The cover design of the chant book Miidera is attributed to Sōtatsu, and its calligraphic model to Kōetsu.

Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716) studied Sōtatsu’s works and developed simplified motifs. In Red and White Plum Blossoms, trees flank a central stream. Clothing pattern books marketed “Kōrin” designs during his lifetime, but this commercial connection does not mean that he designed all of them himself.

The white plum trunk extends largely beyond the left edge; the red tree stands within the right screen. A widening stream separates them. Unoutlined blossoms, mottled trunks and repeated water curls give each area a different treatment. Analysis in 2011 confirmed gold leaf and detected silver and silver sulphide in the stream. MOA interprets the latter finding as evidence suggesting deliberate sulphur blackening.

Sakai Hōitsu (1761–1828) investigated Kōrin’s works and documents in Edo. For Kōrin’s centenary in 1815, he organised an exhibition and issued books including Kōrin hyakuzu. Hōitsu and his pupil Suzuki Kiitsu (1796–1858) are associated with what was later called Edo Rinpa. Printed versions carried designs to new readers.

Summer and Autumn Plants was painted on the reverse of Kōrin’s Wind God and Thunder God screens. Rain-bent summer plants stood behind the Thunder God; windblown autumn plants behind the Wind God. Hōitsu paired earthly effects with heavenly figures, and silver with gold. Conservation separated the faces in 1974; they are now distinct screens.

The artists did not all call themselves Rinpa. Hōitsu used “Ogata school”; in the Meiji period, “Kōrin school” expanded from living artists to a historical grouping including Sōtatsu and Kōrin. The term Rinpa became more widely established in the twentieth century; the Tokyo National Museum’s 1972 Rinpa exhibition was a milestone in its consolidation. The label is therefore also part of the later writing of art history.

Books such as Kōrin hyakuzu entered European collections. In Meiji and Taishō Japan, Mitsukoshi promoted Kōrin-related design through exhibitions, competitions and textiles. Kamisaka Sekka (1866–1942), a painter and designer, studied Kōetsu and Kōrin while working across clothing, ceramics, lacquer and printed pattern books. These are successive acts of selection and adaptation. One concrete route was Siebold’s collection: a copy of Kōrin hyakuzu he brought to Europe later entered the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Collecting and resale moved printed designs beyond the original paintings.

Mitsukoshi’s 1915 competition sought new Kōrin-style kimono designs. Winning entries appeared in publicity, a fabric-design exhibition and a published catalogue; the following month’s report recorded dozens of orders for the first-prize design. Sekka also designed a mica-printed pine cover for that year’s Kōrin commemorative exhibition catalogue. Publication connected historical study with new commercial design.