Transactions of the Japan Academy

Rekidai Hoan is a collection of Ryukyuan diplomatic documents, covering 500 years from the 15th to the 19th century, which are the first class historical materials, to elucidate the history of Ryukyuan intercourse and especially trade with foreign countries and to make clear the historical situations of the East Asia of the times as well.

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“_??__??__??_”(shui-mo painting) is the short term of“_??__??__??__??_”which means watering the ink and describing the motifs through gradations of light and dark ink. This shui-mo painting has been changed and developed from the i-p'in style (untrammeled class) of the middle T'ang dynasty. Concerning the i-p'in style, nothing can be added to the essay written by Professor Shimada Shujiro. It can be imagined with ease that it had took time for the i-p'in style to develope into the shui-mo painting after much complications.
As Wilhelm Worringer said, the Chinese painting (I imagine) is indeed abstractive in part. However, following the similar painting process to that taken by Shiraga Kazuo, a member of Concrete Art Association (Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai), the abstract expressive style akin to the action painting represented by Jackson Pollok evolved to the abstract expression in the monochrome ink. This is one of the inevitabilities of the art history of T'ang dynasty. At the same time, to represent the figurations which the Chinese painting essentially had done and even the i-p'in style painting could not eliminate, the tonal variations were given to the monochrome ink through the technique of“_??__??_”(water-ink), which led to the shui-mo painting formulated in the beginning of Sung dynasty.

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