ATTRIBUTED TO KAIHO YUSETSU (1598-1677), EDO PERIOD (MID 17TH CENTURY)

This newly-discovered handscroll is one of a partially extant set, originally about twelve in number, which constitutes the earliest painted version of the Taiheiki [Chronicle of the Great Peace], a prose chronicle composed around 1372 and covering the bloody civil conflict that raged in Japan during the 14th century. As noted by Professor Tsugio Miya, it is remarkable that no attempt was made to illustrate this major literary work during the Muromachi period (a golden age of narrative scroll painting), a failure that is perhaps explained in part by the very length and complexity of its text.1 Helen Craig McCullough, in the introduction to her 1959 English translation which only covers the first twelve of Taiheiki's forty chapters, remarks: '..more than two thirds are devoted to episodic, disorganized accounts of fighting in local areas . . . where stories of particular interest to a certain family or other small group have been added haphazardly over the years . . '2 Yet whatever the status of the chronicle from the standpoint of modern literary scholarship, the chapters contained in the present scroll, numbers 16, 17 and a small part of 18, include (as will be seen below) one of the most critical events in the entire story, the Battle of the Minato River, a fierce, seven-hour engagement ' . . [that] was a turning point in mediaeval history [whose] repercussions lasted for centuries.'3

The extant scrolls discovered and published to date are as follows according to currently available data, listed in order of the chapters of Taiheiki portrayed in the illustrations and on the basis of the prevailing assumption that there were originally twelve scrolls in all:4

Chapter 1 to Chapter 3: Scroll 1, acquired by Saitama Prefecture Museum in September 1972, 12 7/8in. x 49ft. (32.7 x 1494.5cm.)

Chapter 4 to Chapter 7: Scroll 2, sold in our New York rooms on 30 March 1996 (Lot 407) and acquired by Saitama Prefecture Museum in the following month, 12 13/16in. x 53ft. 3in. (32.5 x 1624.3cm.)

From the end of Chapter 7 to the start of Chapter 10: Scroll 3, in the Spencer Collection, New York Public Library and acquired about fifteen years ago from a private house where it had been mounted as a screen; as a result it is a good deal shorter than the original and must lack several chapters, 12 13/16in x 36ft. 7in. (32.5 x 1114.6 cm.)

From the start of Chapter 16 to the start of Chapter 18: Scroll 4, the present Lot, at 12 13/16in. x 54ft. 8in. ( 32.5 x 1665cm.) apparently the longest extant scroll

Exact content unknown, Scroll 5, in the Kokuritsu Rekishi Minzoku Hakubutsukan [National Museum of Japanese History], Sakurai

From the end of Chapter 18 to Chapter 22: there is a monochrome copy in Tokyo National Museum, possibly by Tani Buncho5 (with colour indications demonstrating that the original was coloured), constructed of pieces measuring 16 x 10 13/16in. (40.6 x 27.5cm.)

Exact content unknown: Scroll 7, acquired by Saitama Prefecture Museum in October 1995

From the end of Chapter 23 to the first half of Chapter 27: Scroll 8, in the Spencer Collection, New York Public Library (exhibited in Tokyo and Kobe, 1987), 12 15/16in. x 42ft. 4in. (32.8 x 1289.7cm.)

From the last half of Chapter 27 to Chapter 31: there is another monochrome copy in Tokyo National Museum, constructed of pieces measuring 40.6 x 27.5cm.

Exact content unknown: Scroll 10, acquired in November 2001 by Saitama Prefecture Museum


A further two original scrolls are said to be in the Kokuritsu Rekishi Minzoku Hakubutsukan [National Museum of Japanese History], Sakurai, but at the time of writing no information is available regarding their nature and contents, while two more monochrome copies are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The emergence of this scroll, following hard on the heels of another auctioned in the United States last October and now added to the three already in Saitama Prefecture Museum, is an event of major importance for the study and appreciation of Japanese narrative painting: Professor Miya's 'much longed for'6 discovery of the remaining scrolls is proceeding apace.

All of the eighteen sections of the present Lot closely combine writing and image in the highly unusual manner which characterises the set as a whole. This approach, contrasting strongly with the strict alternation of words and pictures in the other narrative scrolls and albums offered in the present sale (Lots 66-9), allows the viewer to absorb verbal and visual information simultaneously, prefiguring the close coordination of text and image seen in many later 18th-century illustrated books. The fact that the text itself is drastically abridged from the voluminous paragraphs of the original is another aid to appreciation of the very rapid tempo and tireless narrative energy of the painting. Miya and Sato have suggested that the painter of these magnificent scrolls was Kaiho Yusetsu (1598-1677), the son of Kaiho Yusho, and this attribution is accepted by the Saitama Museum. Since Yusho died when Yusetsu was still only eighteen, he had little opportunity to learn from his father and was soon forced by poverty to become an eya, professional painter working largely to special commission, although he was later able to revive the family fortunes thanks to the support of Kasuga no Tsubone, wet-nurse to the third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu. Among the signed or sealed works of Yusetsu that are considered close in style to the Taiheiki scrolls are a screen of the Battle of Ichinotani, a scroll of Yoshida Kenko's Tsurezuregusa [Essays in idleness] and a screen of the Genpei wars. There is also a late-Edo tradition that he painted thirty scrolls of a Taiheiki ekotoba, and the historian Kurokawa Mayori (1829-1906) quotes sources mentioning ten-scroll and six-scroll Taiheiki paintings attributed to Yusetsu, as well as two isolated scrolls seen by Kurokawa himself in which text and images were mingled. Miya and Sato note that the depiction of natural, landscape and architectural elements has much in common with contemporary genre screen painting (precisely the sort of work done by eya); they also point out the distinctly different means that are used to depict the Emperor and his courtiers, the samurai and the common people. The first category are painted in especially fine lines using the time-honoured convention of 'a stroke for the eyes and a hook for the nose', while the samurai are more realistically depicted with a great variety of individual expression. When applied to the common people as well this approach has much in common with the style of figure painting seen in genre screen paintings of the period and it is this feature, along with details of the handling of particular elements such as trees, that points to Kaiho Yusetsu as the creator of this masterpiece.7

The main theme of Taiheiki is the unsuccessful attempt by the Emperor Go-Daigo (1288-1339) and his supporters to wrest political power from the military government that had ruled Japan, under various guises, since the end of the twelfth century, a struggle that resulted in the creation of two rival Courts and led ultimately to the defeat of the Imperial loyalists at the hands of the ruthless and cunning (or so he is always portrayed) Ashikaga Takauji (1305-58). The narrative abounds with stories of treachery, heroism and divine intervention as the two sides vie for control over the country, and the very futility of Go-Daigo's quixotic stand against the inexorable march of history has made two of his supporters, Nitta Yoshisada and Kusunoki Masashige, among the most admired of heroic failures.

At the start of Chapter 16,8 Ashikaga Takauji finds himself on Tatara beach in Kyushu at the head of a force of only 500 cavalry, confronting an army of 40,000 or 50,000 led by the loyalist Kikuchi Taketoshi. Telling his men that 'to confront the Kikuchi forces would be like an ant trying to move a great tree or a mantis trying to stop a carriage' he decides to take his own life, but his younger brother Naoyoshi stops him with the argument that numbers alone will not decide the outcome of the conflict. Surprised by the desperate onslaught of the Ashikaga band, the Kikuchi are utterly routed. Takauji, his fortunes recovered, crosses to Honshu with a vast army and heads for Kyoto, receiving a commission en route from the puppet Emperor Kogon who orders him to 'chastise' Nitta Yoshisada, thus bringing to an end Takauji's ignominious status as an enemy of the Imperial house. Learning that Takauji is on the way to Kyoto again, Go-Daigo orders Kusunoki Masashige to raise an army. Masashige unsuccessfully urges Go-Daigo to realise the hopelessness of his situation and abandon the capital, but eventually feels obliged to entrust the future conduct of the loyalist campaign to his eleven-year-old son Masatsura and, resolved to perish, sets off for the decisive battle of the Minato River. The Kusunoki forces are unable to withstand the enemy attack, Masashige himself receiving eleven wounds, and he and his brother Masasue commit suicide by disembowelling themselves and then stabbing one another (a scene which is decorously omitted in the scroll).


In Chapter 17, Takauji enters Kyoto and Go-Daigo flees to the mountains of Omi Province. There ensures a series of ferocious battles between the Ashikaga and the Imperial armies which reduces the capital region to a state of starvation. Go-Daigo plans to revive his fortunes by sending Prince Takayoshi and Nitta Yoshisada, the other great loyalist general, to the north of Japan but in the course of its march Yoshisada's army is beset by unseasonal weather and many of his men perish from the cold. In the tenth month Go-Daigo returns to Kyoto, surrenders the Imperial regalia to Emperor Komyo and goes into retirement. At the start of Chapter 18, however, he claims that the surrendered treasures were fakes and, determined once more to re-establish his power, goes into hiding in Yoshino, an act that initiates the schismatic era of Nanbokucho ['Northern and Southern Courts'], one in Kyoto and another in Yoshino.

NOTES

1 Miya Tsugio and Sato Kazuhiko (eds.), Taiheiki emaki [The Taiheiki Scrolls] (Tokyo, 1992), English-language preface; see also Miyeko Murase, The Taiheiki Emaki: The Use of the Past, Artibus Asiae 53 (1993), pp. 262-89
2 Helen Craig McCullough, Taiheiki: A Chronicle of Medieval Japan (New York, 1959), p. xvi
3 Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan (London, 1975), p. 107
4 Based on Miya and Sato, loc. cit., the website of Saitama Prefecture Museum (www.saitama-kenpaku.com) and our own New York catalogue, 30 March 1996 (Lot 407)
5 Miya and Sato, op. cit., p. 226
6 Miya and Sato, op. cit., English-language preface
7 For the attribution of the scrolls, see Miya and Sato, op. cit., pp. 224-6
8 This summary is based on Miya and Sato, op. cit., pp. 192-3 and Morris, op. cit., pp. 129-35