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The Tale of Genji was written in 12th century Japan during the Heian period. Murasaki was a lady in waiting at a Shinden mansion and that is where she used the newly devolved alphabet, Hiragana, to write the Tale of Genji. The story become so popular that it was rewritten on Emakimono, a hand scroll that had pictures to go along with the text. The art that went along with the story was drawn in the Onna-e style, a woman's style in which there are no direct emotions on the people's faces but in the environment around them. In this particular scene of the Tale of Genji, the main character, Genji, went to visit his first love. Murasaki, his first lover (Murasaki named this character after herself), is sick and dying. This entire scene has he use of light colors to represent the sadness the characters are feeling. Murasaki is covering her face, she is still in love with Genji but has moved on, so she is bittersweet (which can also be represented in the bamboo curtains to the left of her). Genji is looking down because he guilty for all the love affairs he had after her. The sparse garden behind them can symbolize their relationship. They planted it together, but at this point in there relationship, their love has died and the relationship is barely there.

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The animal scrolls are a famous example of otoko-e style. This style has lots of emotion draw on faces, a lot of the time overexaggerated expressions. With the use of calligraphic lines, rather then wire lines, there is more looseness to the drawings. Unlike the onna-e style which only focuses on ideal looking high class society, otoko-e has representations from multiple class and  age groups. There is not a lot of color and the color that does appear is only light washes of it. In the animal scrolls, no color is used. Artist who used this style would often draw depictions of everyday life, a favorite being women breast feeding. In this particular piece, animals represent humans and it is thought to be commissioned by Buddhist monks as satire.

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During the Kamakura period of Japan, there were many scrolls going around that was said to give people nightmares. The people still believed that they were living in the mappo era (and still do today) which Buddhist explained as the era of misfortune and the lack of the following the law of the buddha. A lot of these grotesques scrolls were the results of the Japanese people living through a constant state of gory war and they were meant as a warning of how things could get worse and so one can assume that their outlook was quite pessimistic. In the hungry ghost scroll, it serves as a reminder that no one is safe or immune from lower realms of existence, even the aristocracy. This scroll is otoko-e style so you really get to see all the gross details of hungry ghost and the not so pretty aspects of everyday life.I was explaining these scrolls to a friend and she compared them to an anime called Noragami, which is about a girl who died but not fully because a god happened to be there. Basically she can be both in the human realm and the spirit realm which is full of scary ghosts who are constantly hungry and feed off of human emotions rather than their earwax and poop.

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Wo Zhen was not a famous painter when he was alive and was know for being a hermit. He was known for including either bamboo or fishermen in his paintings, both of which were important symbols in Chinese culture. In Wo Zhen's handscroll painting, Fishermen, there featured many techniques that had a greater meaning. Fishermen represented having escaped from the harsh reality that was living under Mongol rule. Throughout the scroll, there are many different, skewed perspectives of the fishermen. They all looked like they should be in different placing rather than being together in the same water. A large part at the end of the scroll featured city architecture which also had skewed perspectives, even more so than the fishermen. The landscape also increasingly becomes more ridded throughout the scroll, especially around buildings. The skewed perspective that Wo Zhen uses is a way to convey the strong emotions that he had about the Han Chinese's situation. Although the people can escape to the river and live a peaceful fishermen life doesn't mean that situation the they tried to escape is gone. The skewed buildings can be seen as the situation and the fishermen are the people fleeing from it. Some of the fishermen are skewed as well to portray that not everything is as peaceful as it seems, there are still problems that they must face in the world.

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This ink and color handscroll, Xang Xizhi Feeding Geese, was created by Qian Xuan in 1295. Qian Xuan was a traditionalist painter who practiced archaism and techniques like the ma dot. In this specific painting, Qian uses blues and greens which is a reference to the Tang Dynasty, which is said to be the golden age of china. The famous 4th century calligrapher, Xang Xizhi, is standing in an open air structure with his tenant, Xang feeding the geese in the water below them. The mountains in the background as well as the trees in the foreground, both have ma dots and multiply brush techniques incorporated.
Qian Xuan used the style and many ideas from a previous artist named Ma Yuan. For example Ma Yuan liked to paint a scholar and his tenant looking off in the distance. He also had the main parts of the painting in the corners of the scroll. Both of these styles can be seen in Qian Xuan's paintings.
Qian Xuan used old styles and traditional ideas as a way to remember the past when China was fully under Han control.

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Catching a Catfish with a Gourd by Josetsu

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Catching a Catfish with a Gourd by Josetsu

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Josetsu painted this for the Shogun at the time and it was used as a way of mediation. He used what he learned from Chinese ink paintings to make this visual Koan. There is use of blank space, references to fishing and fishermen, and mountains. Koan is a way to practice mediation in Zen Buddhism by (simplified) thinking of a irrational answer to a rational question because of the believe that the reality we live in is an illusion.

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In this piece, Wen Zhengming uses his incredible skills to make a beautifully detailed hand scroll of zoomed in branches of a juniper tree. In most of his works, he mainly focuses on details in nature and uses stippling as well as a dry brush to make texture in the branches. Through utilizing light and dark ink and blank space on the paper, he creates a look of depth. In Seven Junipers the top and bottom is cropped off so the viewer knows that the tree goes beyond what is painted on the scroll, that there is more to it.  He wants the mind to wander past the scroll and even past the tree. In his inscription at the end, he states that he wants people to use his painting to meditate on the imagery and to let one's imagination run wild. To Wen Zhengming personally, he sees winding dragons with their claws reaching out.

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The Circular Mound in the Temple of heaven was the area where only the emperor could make sacrifices for the winter and spring solstices. This open air altar consists of three platforms made out of marble, meaning it is a very important and sacred structure. The number nine is present throughout the Circular Mound, for example the stairs are nine steps on each level. To make a sacrifice for heaven, an animal would be put in a kiln and burnt to ash. They would bring the smoldering ashes to the Emperor and he would chant prayers to heaven while watching the smoke rise from the ashes.

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Hasegawa Tohaku (orginal name was Nobunaru) was adopted into a family of cloth dye makers and as a child, that is what work he grew up with. As he got older, he took interest in art. Although he wasn't into any family of samurai (therefore he could not be apart of the kano school of arts) he still sold his art. The style that he favored was Sesshu style, which was the style of a late famous painter who took from Chinese ink paintings, making his own. Hasegawa Tohaku moved to the capitol in Kyoto where he got to know a well respected tea master Sen no Rikyu. Through this tea master, Tohaku was able to get into the Daitokuji temple which was an important Buddhist temple in japan. There he ocuntiued his practice of art, studying paintings by Mu Qi.

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Viewing Maple Leaves by the Waterfall by Harunobu

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Viewing Maple Leaves by the Waterfall by Harunobu

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This piece, Viewing Maple Leaves by the Waterfall by Harunobu, is a Ukiyo-e piece or a wood block print. Ukiyo-e is a long process that take multiple people to complete. First the artist does an outline for the wood carver to engrave into apiece of cherry wood. The wood carving works like a stamp and once its done, they use a special brush to apply black ink onto the wood. After they line it up with the paper, they would take a barren to rub the surface of the paper to ensure a even distribution of ink. Nishiki-e are multicolor prints and have a complex version of the ukiyo-e process. For every different color, the wood block is only carved to outline the particular color being printed. They layer all the colors and the results is one uniform print.

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Badashanren was born as a prince born with the surname of the Ming family, his birthname being Zhu Da. By the time he was 18, the Manchus took over the throne and the Qing dynasty began. Suddenly Badashanren had to live out the rest of his life as a commoner. He was a loyalist to the Ming dynasty and a lot of his art reflected on that. In this particular painting he depicts a landscape, it having many similarities to Dong Qichang. There is the bold use of ink and abstract brushwork. Unlike Dong Qichang, Badashanren was less harsh with is paintings and focused on using minimal brushwork, just enough brushstrokes for the viewer to know what he was trying to depict.

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This piece is by an artist under the category of eccentric. Hua Yan painted his whole life in order to make money, because of this he traveled a lot. This hanging scroll called Snow on Mount Tian is a fun piece to look at. Both the man his travel companion, the camel, are looking up at the sky at the small bird in the distance. We assume that they are travelling on the silk road and have been traveling together for so long that they start to look like each other. The two beings have similarities like the the way the man's robes fall upon him look like the camel's wrinkly skin.