, also known as , was a school of Japanese painting

Japanese painting

is one of the oldest and most highly refined of the Japanese visual arts, encompassing a wide variety of genres and styles. As with the history of Japanese arts in general, the long history of Japanese painting exhibits synthesis and competition between native Japanese aesthetics and adaptation of...

 which flourished in the late Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

 among artists who considered themselves literati

Literati

Literati may refer to:*Intellectuals or those who read and comment on literature*The scholar-bureaucrats or literati of imperial China**Literati painting, also known as the Southern School of painting, developed by Chinese literati...

, or intellectuals. While each of these artists was, almost by definition, unique and independent, they all shared an admiration for traditional Chinese culture. Their paintings, usually in monochrome black ink, sometimes with light color, and nearly always depicting Chinese landscapes or similar subjects, were patterned after Chinese literati painting, called wenrenhua (文人画) in Chinese. The name nanga is an abbreviation of nanshūga, referring to the Chinese Southern school

Southern School

-Brief:The Southern School of Chinese painting, often called "literati painting" , is a term used to denote art and artists which stand in opposition to the formal Northern School of painting...

 of painting (nanzonghua in Chinese).

Chinese literati painting focused on expressing the rhythm of nature, rather than the technical realistic depiction of it. At the same time, however, the artist was encouraged to display a cold lack of affection for the painting, as if he, as an intellectual, was above caring deeply about his work. Ultimately, this style of painting was an outgrowth of the idea of the intellectual, or literati, as a master of all the core traditional arts - painting, calligraphy, and poetry.

Due to the Edo period policy of sakoku

Sakoku

was the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner could enter nor could any Japanese leave the country on penalty of death. The policy was enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633–39 and remained in effect until...

, Japan was cut off from the outside world almost completely; its contact with China persisted, but was greatly limited. What little did make its way into Japan was either imported through Nagasaki, or produced by Chinese living there. As a result, the bunjin (literati) artists who aspired to the ideals and lifestyles of the Chinese literati were left with a rather incomplete view of Chinese literati ideas and art. Bunjinga grew, therefore, out of what did come to Japan from China, including Chinese woodblock-printed painting manuals and an assortment of paintings widely ranging in quality.

Bunjinga emerged as a new and unique art form for this reason, as well as due to the great differences in culture and environment of the Japanese literati as compared to their Chinese counterparts. The form was to a great extent defined by its rejection of other major schools of art, such as the Kano school

Kano school

The ' is one of the most famous schools of Japanese painting. The Kanō school of painting was the dominant style of painting until the Meiji period.It was founded by Kanō Masanobu , a contemporary of Sesshū and student of Shūbun...

 and Tosa school

Tosa school

The Tosa school of Japanese painting was founded in the 15th century, and was devoted to yamato-e, which are paintings specializing in subject matter and techniques derived from ancient Japanese art, as opposed to schools influenced by Chinese art....

. In addition, the literati themselves were not members of an academic, intellectual bureaucracy as their Chinese counterparts were. While the Chinese literati were, for the most part, academics aspiring to be painters, the Japanese literati were professionally trained painters aspiring to be academics and intellectuals.

Nanga or bunjinga paintings almost always depicted traditional Chinese subjects. Artists focused almost exclusively on landscapes and birds and flowers. Poetry or other inscriptions were also an important element of these paintings, and were often in fact added by friends of the artist, not by the painter himself.

Unlike in other schools of art which have definite founders who pass on their specific style to their students or followers, nanga was always much more about the attitude espoused by the painter and his love of Chinese culture. Thus, as mentioned before, every bunjin artist displayed unique elements in his creations, and many even diverged greatly from the stylistic elements employed by their forebears and contemporaries. As Japan became exposed to Western culture at the end of the Edo period, many bunjin began to incorporate stylistic elements of Western art into their own, though they nearly always avoided Western subjects and stuck strictly to traditional Chinese ones.

Ernest Fenollosa

Ernest Fenollosa

Ernest Francisco Fenollosa was an American professor of philosophy and political economy at Tokyo Imperial University...

 and Okakura Kakuzō

Okakura Kakuzo

was a Japanese scholar who contributed to the development of arts in Japan. Outside of Japan, he is chiefly remembered today as the author of The Book of Tea.-Biography:...

, two of the first to introduce Japanese art in any major way to the West, are known to have criticized nanga as trivial and derivative. As a result, the style has only attracted academic attention in the West in recent decades, roughly 100 years later.

Cultural Derivations

A particular style of bonsai

Bonsai

is a Japanese art form using miniature trees grown in containers. Similar practices exist in other cultures, including the Chinese tradition of penjing from which the art originated, and the miniature living landscapes of Vietnamese hòn non bộ...

 is called variously bunjin, bunjingi or "literati" and is intended to look like the trees portrayed in nanga art. Examples of the style are often elegantly elongated and with few branches, being mainly a long slim trunk surmounted by a very small mass of foliage.

Nanga Artists of Note

• Kameda Bōsai
  Kameda Bosai
  was a Japanese literati painter . He originally trained as a Confucian scholar, but spent the second half of his life as a literati and artist. The book Mountains of the Heart contains many of his most famous paintings.-References:...
  
  
• Tani Bunchō
  Tani Buncho
  was a Japanese literati painter and poet.He was the son of the poet Tani Rokkoku . As his family were retainers of the Tayasu Family and descendents of the eighth Tokugawa shogun, Bunchō inherited samurai status and received a stipend to meet the responsibilities this entailed...
  
  
• Hanabusa Itchō
  Hanabusa Itcho
  was a Japanese painter, calligrapher, and haiku poet. He originally trained in the Kanō style, under Kanō Yasunobu, but ultimately rejected that style and became a literati . He was also known as Hishikawa Waō and by a number of other art-names....
  
  
• Watanabe Kazan
  Watanabe Kazan
  was a Japanese painter, scholar and statesman member of the samurai class.- Early life :He was born Watanabe Sadayasu in Edo to a poor samurai family, and his artistic talent was developed from an early age. His family served the lord of the Tahara Domain, located in present day Aichi prefecture....
  
  
• Ike no Taiga
  Ike no Taiga
  was a Japanese painter and calligrapher born in Kyoto during the Edo period. Together with Yosa Buson, he perfected the bunjinga genre. The majority of his works reflected his passion for classical Chinese culture and painting techniques, though he also incorporated revolutionary and modern...
  
  
• Tomioka Tessai
  Tomioka Tessai
  was the pseudonym for a painter and calligrapher in Meiji period Japan. He is regarded as the last major artist in the Bunjinga tradition and one of the first major artists of the Nihonga style. His real name was Tomioka Yusuke, which he later changed to Tomioka Hyakuren.-Early life:Tessai was born...
  
  - widely regarded as the last of the nanga artists