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Colors in the water

The Actor Danjûrô V in a Shibaraku Role

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1. Edo period uchikake Edo period uchikake (outer robe). 19th century. Gifted to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1924. This robe is to be worn on the outside of other garments, in order to display to best advantage the gold embroidery on the white, green, and deep blue silk representing the sights of the city of Kyoto. The watery motif of the deep blue ground inspires a stillness of presence and is directly evocative of the cool waters surrounding Japan. White picks out sacred torii gates, whereas the green hills of Japan may be easily distinguished.
2. Funaki ware
3. The Actor Danjûrô V in a Shibaraku Role
4. Tea ceremony bowl Tokugawa era, late 18th century. Ceramic. Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. The white used to make this vessel for the tea ceremony, lacking in hue, confers a gravity to the piece that is shared by the sacred white of Shinto--but beyond this, the importance of the white used here is to be found in its humble quality. No colors flash to catch the eye, and this is an ideal feature of a tea bowl: so unobtrusive as to emphasize the value of the moment of tea-drinking rather than the expense lavished on the vessels involved.
5. Atsumori noh mask Nomura Ran, mid-20th century. Painted and whitewashed wood with lacquer. Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. This mask is for use in noh, a traditional Japanese form of musical theater. The mask itself is made specifically for the depiction of the character named Atsumori, who features in an eponymous play as an exceedingly handsome youth; the stark whiteness of the face is reminiscent of the oshiroi makeup that was once used by actors, as it was codified as the paleness of the face long seen as a beautiful and desirable physical quality in Japan.
6. Meiji period uchikake
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Colors in the water The history of Japanese art spans millennia and colorizes every aspect of life from prehistory to present day.

Some of the most famous eras in Japanese history are those around which art revolves. The Heian period, characterized by a courtly grace and lassitude, was richest in its cultural arts and produced what is hailed as the world's first novel. The Tale of Genji, however, was able to be an especially engaging story as it has never existed as a text in isolation but was rather an artistic production of brightly-colored paper and handwriting so artfully written as to successfully convey the emotion of the narrator. The story itself is an invaluable chronicle of a court in which art and fashion were of the highest importance, color infusing meaning into every interaction with it.

A more immediately recognizable form of Japanese art is the woodblock print in its most popular iteration, ukiyo-e ('pictures of the floating world'). At its peak in the Edo period (1603-1868), ukiyo-e were inexpensive and available in large quantities, so these pictures were able to be owned by anybody who so wished. Typical subjects for ukiyo-e are beautiful views, likenesses of actors, and portraits of women - all of which necessitate high color and invoke their associations.

The art of color in Japan has never been bound to the page, however, and artistry abounds in every sphere where it can exist, where colors codify clothing and ritualize tea ware. The colors of stylistic movements pour out from screens onto boxes and furniture seamlessly.

Click below to start following the blue that manifests in different media in Japanese art, and explore its relationship to other colors and media.