TOHAKU HASEGAWA FINALLY GETS HIS DUE

Tigers and bamboo (one screen)

The exhibition at the Idemitsu Museum, “New Discovery: The Beauty of Hasegawa Tohaku,” has quite a tale to tell, one that adds much interest to the stunning screen paintings on display. It is a tale of rivalry and skullduggery that stretches beyond the grave and has seen one of the great artists of Japan’s Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568-1600), deprived of his full glory. Until now, that is.

As museum curator, Hirokazu Yatsunami, explains, recent scholarship is revolutionizing the way Hasegawa is regarded.

“This exhibition is to present these new views and the most representative works among these new discoveries,” he says.

Up until now, Tohaku Hasegawa has been considered primarily a sumi-e (monochromatic ink) painter, who suffused his screen paintings with an emotionalism absent from the work of rivals, like Eitoku Kano (1543-1590) with whom he competed for the favor of the great men of the day, like the Shoguns, Nobunaga Oda and Hideyoshi Toyotomi.

Although striving for emotion, Tohaku Hasegawa skilfully avoided sentimentality in his work by using animal subjects. This can be seen in “Cranes and Bamboo” (ca. 1590), a pair of screens, like most of the works at this exhibition. In one set of panels, the male crane appears to be crying out for his mate, while in the other the female crane looks coyly round, creating a subtle but powerful emotional impact.

Cranes and Bamboo (one screen)

Another pair of ink screen paintings, the smouldering “Tigers and Bamboo” (ca. 1590), is not only a testament to Hasegawa’s genius, but is also evidence of artistic chicanery, Yatsunami explains.

“This screen painting was damaged, therefore these two panels on the left were added by Tanyu Kano,” he mentions. “He has reattributed this work to Tensho Shubun, the grandfather of Japanese ink paintings. Because of the time difference, which is so close, it seems likely that he intentionally changed attribution.”

As the Kano family dominated the Japanese art world in the years following Hasegawa’s death, Yatsunami believes this is evidence of a concerted attempt by the family to erase Hasegawa’s legacy. Another example of reattribution is the atmospheric “Crows on Pine, Egrets on Willow” (ca. 1593) where Hasegawa’s seal has been crudely scraped off so that the screen can be reattributed to Sesshu, the most famous name in Japanese ink painting.

In addition to his ink works being reattributed, Hasegawa’s polychrome works were all but forgotten, except for one example “Cherry and Maple Trees” at Chishakuin Temple in Kyoto. So much was his reputation for colour paintings forgotten that even a work that bore his seal, like “Japanese Bush Clover and Eulalia” (ca. 1602) was suspected to be by someone else. Partly, this was because traditional Japanese polychrome painting is more of a technique-based, craft-like art than the more expressive sumi-e, in which the personal styles of great artists tend to as unmistakable as signatures.

Due to close analysis of the one clear example of his polychrome work at Chishakuin Temple, scholars can now state for the first time that three large colour screens are definitely by Hasegawa. The most impressive of these is “Willow Trees by the Bridge” (ca. 1603), an extravaganza of gold leaf and paint that is said to depict Uji Bridge, a symbol of the connection between this world and the next.

Such gorgeous works, using expensive materials, were a sign that an artist had truly arrived. While Eitoku Kano was alive, the two painters competed for the patronage of the greatest in the land, but after Eitoku's death in 1590, Tohaku stood alone as the greatest living master of his time, something the successors of Eitoku found hard to accept. The Kano family may have helped to suppress the legacy of their great rival, but this fascinating exhibition at least ensures that Hasegawa will have the last laugh.