Heart Painting by Mincho Kitizan Cabin in a Mountain Gorge

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  “Painting of the Heart”

Steiner E.S.

“Hut in a mountain gorge” (“Keiin Shotiku”) is the earliest surviving example of an idealized landscape (sansuiga) on the theme of “learned cells”. The image is attributed to the prominent monk-artist Kitizan Mincho (1351-1431) from Tofuku-ji. The painting is an example of a shigajiku, a hanging scroll inscribed with verses commenting on this “picture of the heart”.

In the early shigajiku scrolls, the poetic part noticeably prevails over the pictorial part. In the paintings of that time, the image occupies no more than the very bottom of the panel, while poems occupy everything else. The predominance of the poetic part over the picturesque can be attributed to the fact that many of the paintings were inspired by literary traditions that came from China – often “farewell poems”. Such scrolls were given to a departing friend as a farewell gift.

A hut in the Mincho mountain gorge. “Hut in a mountain gorge”

In addition to the scrolls of “farewell gifts”, in the first quarter of the 15th century, the theme shosaizu (“pictures of learned cells”) arose and became popular by the middle of the century. The appearance of this theme was caused by the peculiarities of monastic life in the capital’s monasteries. The atmosphere there was very active and active, which entered into some discrepancy with what was commanded from the ages. Therefore, as a kind of spiritual joy, the monks liked to have an image of their cell, but not of the real dwelling that existed within the monastery walls, but of what seemed to the monk’s ideal gaze. Other monks wrote verses on the scroll, supporting the noble aspirations contained in the name of the cell and not inspired by the imaginary landscape around it.

The earliest scroll of this type is “A hut in a mountain gorge”. The prose introduction by Taigagu Shingen (1358-1415) is dated “the water year of the big brother snake of the Oei era” (1413). The text tells that a monk from Nanzen-ji named Junshi Boku built himself a hut for scholarly work and called it “Secret of mountain gorges.” Although she was inside the city, but in his heart he would like her to be in the mountains, near the expanse of blue waters. Knowing his moods (“knowing his heart”), his friend, Mincho, drew him a picture and asked other friends, poets, to inscribe it. The completed scroll was given to Junshi Boku.

A hut in the Kichizan Mincho mountain gorge. “A Cabin in a Mountain Gorge” (detail)

This artistic practice has important differences from the Chinese: “In Japan, in each period, one city tended to be the cultural center of the country. This was different from the state of affairs in China, where it was customary for educated people to travel through the provinces, composing poems about the sights of each locality they passed. Tang poets, for example, did not always draw their material from the streets of Chang’an. The poets of Japan during the Heian era lived in the capital and wrote poems about famous places in the province – places that they had never visited themselves and used conditional epithets to describe them. Consequently, the custom of working from imagination, and not from nature, was characteristic of Japanese art in the earliest stages of its development.

But only at the beginning of the 15th century did this custom get its “scientific” name, thanks to Taigaku Shingen, who in the above-mentioned introduction to the Mincho painting used the expression “picture of the heart” for the first time in Japan in relation to poetry and painting. In the same place, Shingen writes: “Find [landscape] in the heart and forget the external.”

The ideological and aesthetic tradition of the “picture of the heart” goes back to the “Tao-te-ching”. It says: “Without leaving the door, you can know the Celestial Empire. Without looking out the window, one can see the Path of Heaven. The further you go, the less you know… Without seeing things, you can penetrate into their essence” (§ 47). Zhuangji has statements that are close in meaning: “I find his image in my heart, I no longer need to look at him with my eyes” (chapter “Wandering in the Infinite”).

Dao de jin Laozi. Tao Te Chin

This Taoist lineage continued as the main theme in Ch’an and Zen. Meditation (dhyana, “contemplation”) was considered no less important for achieving enlightenment than reading the sutras, listening to sermons, actually observing the surrounding nature, etc. All this was not as important as the contemplation of the “pictures of the heart.” This was all the more significant since the Chan school in China was often called the School of the Heart or Consciousness (xingxu).

Thus, the abstract “pictures of the heart” recorded on shigajiku had meditative functions, serving as bridges between the real environment and the state of pure non-objective contemplation.

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