Tosa Mitsunobu and the Small Scroll in Medieval Japan is the first book-length study to focus on short-story small scrolls (ko-e), one of the most complex but visually appealing forms of early Japanese painting. Small picture scrolls emerged in Japan during the fourteenth century and were unusual in constituting approximately half the height of the narrative handscrolls that had been produced and appreciated in Japan for centuries. Melissa McCormick's history of the small scroll tells the story of its emergence and highlights its unique pictorial qualities and production contexts in ways that illuminate the larger history of Japanese narrative painting.

Small scrolls illustrated short stories of personal transformation, a new literary form suffused with an awareness of the Buddhist notion of the illusory nature of worldly desires. The most accomplished examples of the genre resulted from the collaboration of the imperial court painter Tosa Mitsunobu (active ca. 1469-1522) and the erudite Kyoto aristocrat Sanjonishi Sanetaka (1455-1537). McCormick unveils the cultural milieu and the politics of patronage through diaries, letters, and archival materials, exposing the many layers of allusion that were embedded in these scrolls, while offering close readings that articulate the artistic language developed to an extreme level of refinement. In doing so, McCormick also offers the first sustained examination in English of Tosa Mitsunobu's extensive and underappreciated body of artistic achievements.

The three scrolls that form the core of the study are A Wakeful Sleep (Utatane soshi emaki), which recounts the miraculous union of a man and a woman who had previously encountered each other only in their dreams; The Jizo Hall (Jizodo soshi emaki), which tells the story of a wayward monk who achieves enlightenment with the help of a dragon princess; and Breaking the Inkstone (Suzuriwari soshi emaki), which narrates the sacrifice of a young boy for his household servant and its tragic consequences. These three works are easily among the most artistically accomplished and sophisticated small scrolls to have survived.

If what we wish for is a book based on first-rate scholarship that proposes a new way of seeing, understanding, and appreciating art within a particular historical and cultural setting, then this book is it. -- Gregory P. A. Levine, University of California, Berkeley Melissa McCormick's excellent study covers much material almost completely ignored in Western scholarship, and brings fresh insights even to one who knows the works and the Japanese scholarship. -- Quitman E. Phillips, University of Wisconsin-Madison

About the Author

Melissa McCormick is professor of Japanese art and culture, Harvard University.

Reviews

"McCormick has demonstrated tremendous originality in interpreting the background to each individual work, and her writing brims with the spirit of an author breaking new territory. . . . a remarkable vision of Muromachi culture . . ."

-- Masahiko Aizawa * Monumenta Nipponica *

"I found her combination of visual and literary analysis to be brilliant, bringing the various scrolls alive and resonant in the way the stories alone were not . . . This book would be a valuable additional to the libraries of all concerned with Japanese literary and visual arts."

-- Donald F. McCallum * Journal of Japanese Studies *

"... it is very welcome that Melissa McCormick has developed a full monograph to an early member of the bloodline-cum-atelier of the Tosa School.... Few works of Japanese art have been subjected to such close readings in English, and this ... set of studies deserves to be widely used."

* Art Bulletin *

"This book, beautifully designed and illustrated, is indispensable for any student or scholar of Japanese art, literature, and culture. Summing up: Essential."

* Choice *



Book Information
ISBN 9780295989020
Author Melissa McCormick
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint University of Washington Press
Publisher University of Washington Press
Weight(grams) 1814g