Review by Choice Review
This book is not very much about the painting of the Momoyama era. Brown (Univ. of Southern California) presents a complicated and wide-ranging discussion of the multiple and fluid factors that shaped the culture of "official" Japan during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a period of volatile social and political change. He investigates these as the setting for an examination and interpretation of two themes of Chinese hermits as these were perceived and adapted by sinophile Japanese elite during the medieval and premodern years. The book, then, is about these themes as they were used in painting, poetry, literature, and architectural environments through a process of highly selective adaptation and transformation. The topics (Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and Four Elders of Mt. Shang), as appropriated Chinese conventions, are perceived differently in various moments within the stream of Japanese experience; are invested with particular significance determined by the eddies and currents of that stream; and are linked in meaning in the primarily military culture of Momoyama/early Edo and in the cultural-counterpoint of the neo-Confucian scholarly ideal. This is, of course, not the broad image of Momoyama/early Edo culture but only a fragment of it. Most rewarding is the epilogue, which lays out, concisely and elegantly, the structure of a book on the topic that might have been written but has not yet been done. Glossary; 34 dismal black-and-white illustrations; excellent bibliography. Recommended for scholars in the field and advanced graduate students. D. K. Dohanian; University of Rochester
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
