Abstract
When Su Dongpo 蘇東坡 viewed “Mist and Rain Over Lantian” (Lantian yan yu tu 藍田烟雨図) by Wang Wei 王維, he remarked that “if one savors Wang Wei's poems, there is painting within the poetry; if one looks at his paintings, there is poetry within the painting.” This unity of poetry and painting (referred to in Japanese as shiga itchi 詩画一致) became the highest ideal of literati painting, and this was transmitted from China to Japan. In The Loquacious Recluse in the Mountains (Sanchūjin jōzetsu 山中人饒舌), regarded as the most important treatise on painting in Japanese literati painting, Tanomura Chikuden 田能村竹田 quotes this very appraisal of Wang Wei, even going so far as to extend this idea to say that through it one can apprehend the human qualities of the literati painter.
Guided by this “unity of poetry and painting” ideal, I initially set out to savor representative works by two of the so-called four masters of early Japanese literati painting, Gion Nankai 祇園南海 and Yanagisawa Kien 柳沢淇園. This was the starting point for the present paper. The conclusion at which I ultimately arrived was the notion of “poem–painting complementarity.” What they possessed, I believe, was a view of the relationship between poetry and painting that is captured by that phrase: the painting supplements the concrete aspects of a subject that cannot be expressed in poetry, while the poetry fills in the mental or affective images of a subject that cannot be depicted in painting. They appear to have conceived poetry and painting not as self-sufficient, perfect arts in themselves, but as the products of psycho-spiritual activities that complemented one another.
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