The haiga genre and the art of Yosa Buson (1716-1984). (Volumes I and II).

Abstract

Yosa Buson (1716-84) was a leading practitioner of both literati painting and haiku poetry in Edo period Japan. Although he felt that the same creative impulse fed each discipline, existing scholarship has tended to compartmentalize his work. Taking a more integrative approach, this dissertation examines the form which most consistently and clearly expresses the unity Buson perceived between his painting and his poetry: the haiga. This genre has never been comprehensively surveyed in the West. So that Buson's haiga may be better understood, they are treated first in the context of several broader considerations of the form: its definition, sources, and earlier history of practice. First, there have been varying, frequently subjective definitions for the haiga ever since the term appeared in 1849. This study proposes that the genre may be studied most effectively when its identifying criteria are objective rather than subjective. Accordingly, the haiga is defined here as a composite work in which at least one inscribed haiku and a usually abbreviated painting exhibit linkage based on content. Second, neither general nor unique sources for the genre have ever been systematically explored as such. Therefore, this study discusses the haiga in terms of its specific configuration of pictorial and poetic sources in both the Chinese and Japanese traditions. Third, Buson's haiga were not an isolated phenomenon, but culminated generations of development. That prior history is surveyed here, with fuller discussion of haiga by Hinaya Ryuho (1595-1669), Matsuo Basho (1644-94), and Sakaki Hyakusen (1697-1752), the genre's most important earlier practitioners. Finally, Buson's haiga are comprehensively examined and interpreted. Often treated as addenda to his literati painting, they constitute a greater proportion of his oeuvre than has previously been perceived, and are central, not peripheral, to his creative activity. With consistently greater mastery than his predecessors, through appropriate linkage and stylistic and compositional choices, he fused the haiga's components into a whole that was repeatedly greater than the sum of its parts. In short, Buson's haiga may be seen as the crowning achievement of the genre and his most distinctive contribution to the history of Japanese art.