Mount Fuji and the Tokugawa shogunate

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Jin Matsushima

Published:

2017

Publisher:

Routledge

Mount Fuji has been understood as a portrait of Japan which reflects Japanese mentalities, aesthetics and ideologies. At the same time, the mountain has had an iconic existence that both visualizes and symbolizes the Japanese community. Kano Tan'yu worked as an official painter of the Tokugawa shogunate and made paintings to visualize Tokugawa ideology. In order to achieve this objective, he created images of Mount Fuji which were in a new style. According to the Menko Shuroku, a record of the Hosokawa clan who originally owned this copied Sesshu painting, the image was painted by the wish posed by the Emperor of China and the Emperor ordered addition of a praising caption to the painting by Zhan Zhonghe. Tan'yu's new painting style was also applied on sliding doors of the shogun's residence, the Edo castle. This chapter examines the process of how images of Mount Fuji were created based on understanding of Fuji symbolically overlapping itself with the Tokugawa shogun.

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