Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan (1336-1573)

by Joseph D. Parker

Overview

Examining inscriptions on landscape paintings and related documents, this book explores the views of the "two jewels" of Japanese Zen literature, Gido Shushin (1325-1388) and Zekkai Chushin (1336-1405), and their students. These monks played important roles as advisors to the shoguns Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408) and Yoshimochi (1386-1428), as well as to major figures in various michi or Ways of linked verse, the No theatre, ink painting, rock gardens, and other arts. By applying images of mountain retreats to their busy urban lives in the capital, these Five Mountain Zen monks provoke reconsiderations of the relation between secular and sacred and nature and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781438415536
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	09/30/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Joseph D. Parker is Associate Professor of East Asian Thought at Pitzer College.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Chinese Religious and Cultural Context

2. Japanese Five Mountains Zen and the Poem-and-Painting Scrolls

3. The East Asian Religious Context for Cultural Practice

4. Zen Buddhist Readings of the Landscape: The Hermit at Court

5. Buddhist Illusion and the Landscape Arts

6. Buddhist Playfulness and the Landscape Arts

Conclusion

Epilogue

Notes

Glossary

Selected Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

An interdisciplinary study of the views of two monks and their contemporaries on the Zen Buddhist significance of the landscape arts of painting, poetry, prose, and rock gardens. It explores the general question of how religion is related to culture and society as it was formulated and answered by early Muromachi Japanese Zen monks. Some of the topics covered include: the Chinese religious and cultural context; the East Asian religious context for cultural practice; Zen Buddhist readings of the landscape; and Buddhist playfulness and the landscape arts. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

Booknews

This book presents concrete data—biographical, intellectual-historical, and art-historical—pertaining to eminent Zen Buddhist monks of the Muromachi period who have not previously been the object of serious study. Parker challenges the entrenched views of Japanese scholars who dismiss the Zen monk artists and art critics of the period as spiritual degenerates who had succumbed to worldly enticements. His weaving together of the themes of illusion, playfulness, and non-dualism and his use of them to explicate the attitudes toward art evinced in the writings of medieval monks is original and provocative.” — T. Griffith Foulk, University of Michigan

From the Publisher