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...READING period goes back to the earliest artifacts of western literature. We learned from fragments of papyrus discovered in the early 1940's by the archeologist, Ichbin Scheissmann, and now known as the Lead Sea Scrolls. Inside one of these withered "Blue Scrolls" (as Scheissmann calls them) one of the ancient scribes tells a tale of woe: previous to his writing in his blue scroll he had been forced to write scroll after scroll and read even more than that, all in a period of two weeks. The poor fellow threatens suicide because he wasn't prepared to write...
...will provoke great curiosity. On the whole, the curiosity will be rewarded: there are splendid objects in the group (see color opposite and next page). The earliest is a 14th century hand scroll of portraits of Emperors, seated in their ceremonial robes like weighty butterflies. There is an exquisite passage from the Tale of Genji copied out on silver-dusted paper by the great 17th century calligrapher Konoe Nobutada. The screens include two designs of drying fish nets, probably by Kaihō Yūsho (1533-1615)-resplendent documents of the moment when Japanese painting, having absorbed its Chinese influences...
...supreme examples of the art of color-painting on silk, the imperial collections' Flowers and Birds of the Twelve Months. It would be hard to imagine a subtler, less cluttered image of nature than the cherry branch and spray of white blossoms in the February scroll (opposite); in this whispering refinement, Hōitsu was far removed from the earlier Jakach...
Jakachū has never been well represented in the West, mainly because his finest paintings, the almost legendary 30 scrolls depicting animals and plants, all belong to the imperial collections. To look at the dense patterns and twining lines of a Jakachū in reproduction is at first to be reminded of Victorian illustration, as though he were an Eastern Aubrey Beardsley or Arthur Rackham. Not so. In fact, he was nearer to being a cross, improbable as it may sound, between Audubon and Vincent Van Gogh. When Jakachū painted the arrogant feathers of a cock's ruff...
Even in painting, the traditional assurance was flickering out by the 1880s. One scroll by Yokoyama Taikan (1868-1958), of a cataract thundering vertically into a gorge, has a real sense of sublimity-a white blade of water dividing the black walls of rock. But in general it is clear that in the expressive Chinese phrase, the "mandate of heaven" had been withdrawn from most traditional-style Japanese painting by the turn of the century. No matter; the viewer goes to this show for its older works, and they are superb...