Waves in Japanese Art

In line with the East religions, waves are representative of perpetual moving, transformation, dynamism – albeit in the unity and permanence of the constituent element that is water -, hence, of the relentless dualism between being and becoming. Waves are evocative of vacuum, in the sense of potentiality and novelty-generating energy, rather than of negativeness and nihilism: in fact, the sea continuously produces new waves. However, waves derive and are inseparable from, actually return without a trace to, the sea ​​that therefore, while constantly changing, always remains the same. 

As the waves are part of a unitary whole that is the sea, so every element of nature is part of the universe, from it derives and returns to it. There are no perfect, steady and complete waves; and yet, by the same token, everything in nature is imperfect, incomplete and unsteady: the beauty of the universe consists of being everlastingly in the becoming.

The waves may individually represent the feminine (yin) or masculine (yang) principle, depending on their verse, and, together, they recall the unity of the universe with its creative power. Last, their repeating undertow symbolises the passing of time.

The schematic view of concentric waves (seigaiha) becomes a symbol of surging good luck, besides being a widely adopted pattern of fabrics, pottery and lacquers. Waves are a recurring motif in the figurative art, and one proof thereof is the existence of a sketching handbook (Hamonshū, Yūzan Mori, 1903) reporting all sorts of wave models, including slow and lazy undulations gently lapping the shoreline, a symbol of resilience, as well as rushing, roaring and foaming whitecaps, thus emblem of lifeforce.

One of the most popular representations of the present subject-matter is that entitled Waves at Matsushima by Tawaraya Sōtatsu, cofounder of the Rinpa school. In that artwork, the tarashikomi technique, essentially based on blurring the contours, has been adopted for the whitish clouding of the stormy sea to be optimally rendered, even with a view to the Buddhist idea of impermanence applied to everything, given that it continuously dissolves as seafoam.

The line does not have the function of marking the contours, but only of creating very delicate calligraphic effects as curvilinear waves with fringing crests and pine needles intermingled in the vegetation: there is a palpable tension between indefiniteness and care of the details. The gold-leaf-coated sky and the sea backdrops are represented according to an abstract style and are not distinguishable, but in reciprocal trespassing. The splashy ocean still manages to turn into golden nuances that bring out both the gofun (a mineral pigment) adopted to depict the bright white of the foam, and the vivid green, ochre and light blue of the rocks and pine trees, which are also rendered with blurred spots, as the Rinpa school requires. The unrealistic azure adopted for the shadows of the rocky cavities can be explained by having recourse to a careful study of light effects dating back to several centuries before Impressionism. The point of view is more distinctly from above in the left screen, where it appears to be that of a bird perched on the branch of the pine tree in the foreground. In the screen on the right, on the other hand, the perspective is twofold: to the panoramic view of the sea and the pines it joins a frontal vision from the bottom of the rocks.

Tawaraya Sōtatsu, Waves at Matsushima, right screen of a pair of six panel screens, XVII century, Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

Tawaraya Sōtatsu, Waves at Matsushima, left screen of a pair of six panel screens, XVII century, Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

Light and shadow effects are also visible in Rough Waves by Ogata Kōrin, where the waves look like they are about to collide from opposite directions (yinyang; in’yō in Japanese). Their restless linearism, in conjunction to the anthropomorphic-like claws, anticipated Hokusai and then it would be a source of inspiration for him. The waves under examination seem to come out of the darken ocean, this being rendered by a deep blue halo with indefinite contours. The light foam emerging from the dark background evokes in an almost theatrical fashion the idea of vital force and the perennial movement of the universe.

Ogata Kōrin, Rough Waves, two-panel screen, ca. 1704-09, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Japanese sensitivity towards nature is expressed in a very original way by Hokusai, who succeeds like nobody else in capturing the vital spirit of nature. A valuable specimen is Under the wave off Kanagawa (The great wave) which has contributed so much to the Western art. In that example, the artist draws the purely aesthetic feature from the observation of the physical phenomenon: the conical Mount Fuji inscribed into the semicircular wavefront results in a stroke of art genius. This is a seminal example about how the geometry of nature comes out in all its own artistic beauty. The enchantment of the form is magnified due to the wonderful staining adopted: the alternating bands in blue of the wave are such that a deep-to-bright gradient texture is given. For them was adopted the Prussian blue which best allowed the rendering of depth. On the other hand, the traditional indigo was also used to create chromatic games between different shades.

However, the artist not only can see in nature the perfection of shape and colour purity, but he can also capture any spirit. In such a case, it is admissible to speak about of an anthropomorphic vision: the wave looks as being enlivened by a sort of willingness to compete in elevation with the mountain in the background; it is like the formidable dynamism of the former is at odds with the mighty immobility of the latter. The hook-shaped minute components of the wavefront fringing rather resemble claws out in the act of snatching the flattened and tiny human figures on the boards. It is as if the whole scene, rather than the result of realistic observation, were the representation of a restless vision, of a troubled dream of the artist’s soul.

The destructive force of the sea is in contrast, even in a symbolic sense, to the mountain appearance: if the former evokes the fragility of the human existence facing nature, the latter is instead representative of immortality. These two extremes, namely transiency of being and eternity, seem to have exerted a great influence on the artist’s sensitivity which has been expressed in the representation of numerous views of Mount Fuji.

The artwork may be interpreted in different ways, as many as the philosophic and religious perspectives. A condition peculiar to Japan is that the whole country is surrounded by ocean. The especially experienced – sometimes even overwhelming – power of nature shows the double character of source of richness, sustenance and life, and cause of mortality through earthquakes and tsunamis. Hokusai’s wave is a natural element that can give life, but also, in a surge of omnipotence, take it away, it can support and at the same time annihilate; fishermen resisting the adverse energy of nature while pulling out food, vividly symbolise the fight of life against death.

In the light of daoism, the contrast between yin and yang is also felt in the bulk of the wave against the empty background. The tension between the opposites surrounds the scene: sea is opposition to empty, mountain, man. That is a fluid dialectic, rather than a rigid and schematic one: as in Daoism, opposites are inserted in a cyclical dynamic in which each of them, containing the potential of the other, once reached its peak, transforms itself into its opposite. In fact, in the hollow of the wave, a smaller wave is raising with a resemblance to the distanced mountain, in turn covered with snow like sea foam. It is worth noticing that water splashes merge with light snowflakes into the background, as a result of having implemented the same technical modality used for snow, consisting in engraving holes in the woodblock. Through the mediation of empty, the sea tries to be transformed into mountain, as well as the latter does into the former. Like there is a bit of white in the black and a smudge of light in the dark, similarly something’s changing within eternity and, correspondingly, a bit of eternity within mutability.

As discussed before, a recurrent geometrical shape is the circular one evoked, as an example, by the curved semicircular wave, this being adopted by Hokusai and other Japanese artists to symbolise the zen enlightenment. Indeed, the circular form evokes the concept of perfection even in the Western art. In another of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the artist  incorporates the latter into an original composition delimited by a circular form, the one of a cask on which a man is currently working. This print captures, likewise The Great Wave, the relationship between the triangular and circular shapes of the Fuji and cask, respectively: reduction of the nature representation to a basic geometry seem to form a corpus of Hokusai’s experimental study.

Human’s effort, imperfection, materiality and body mortality contrasts with the majestic and imperturbable beauty of nature, but there are also accents of compassion, solidarity, irony at times, perhaps even an unprecedented (for the Japanese sensitivity) subtle vein of epic celebration.

Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, ca. 1830-32, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave, detail), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, ca. 1830-32, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Katsuchika Hokusai, View of Mount Fuji from the Plain of the Province of Owari, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, ca. 1830-32, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Even in the Hiroshige production we can find prints representing waves. Among those is The Sea off Satta in the Province of Suruga in the best position to recall The Great Wave because of the stormy sea and Fuji reproduced therein.

From a comparison between those two artworks, Hirosige’s intention to represent the nature harmony in a variety of circumstances is clearly expressed, thus departing from that of Hokusai who was rather prone to get the public’s attention with emotional and dramatic scenes. Even a stormy sea is in a certain order, has its own equilibrium, is well proportioned as a whole: the smaller waves seem to mark the rhythm of a melody whose high point is represented by the biggest, but not gigantic, wave elegantly enclosing the Fuji in its fluid cavity. The foam on the crest spreads out in a wide number curls, rather than claws, from which the flying birds seem to take flight, thus creating a very graceful imagery.  It is worth noticing the effective opposition between the raising wave on the right and the rocks overlooking the sea on the left, as they do the sea foam and the pine trees, almost as in Waves at Matsushima. Against the backdrop, the sea is smooth and a vessel is sailing gently towards the coast: even in this environment, one feels a game of opposites involving movement and stillness, unrest and peace. On reflection, our thoughts turn to the Nō theatre masks, whose variety of expressions depend on their exposure angle to light: it is as if one thousand aspects of nature are a remainder of the multifaceted nature of the human spirit.

And in fact, nothing except than the sea is a candidate to represent variability, inconstancy, mutability. In the artwork Naruto Whirlpools in Awa Province, Hiroshige picks up on another aspect of the sea, the one in relation to countercurrent streams which become entangled almost in an attempt to engulf anything. The vortex in the foreground forms an inclined surface that cuts the image obliquely, catalyzing the observer’s gaze as if to “suck” it. That vortex inspires a fear not different from that of the dashing wave that is about to shatter on the left-hand rocks. However, a clarification is needed: the wave is a surge of energy, natural impetus, vitality, extroversion, whereas the whirlpool is the representation of a sea folded on itself, deeply enraged, subject to introverted brooding.

The close-up technique applied to the subject (wave, whirlpools) positioning in the foreground, thus resembling the target of lenses, is perceived by observing the pair of masterpieces at hand. The author creates an effective composition between subject and background, namely manages to transmit the sense of an unmeasurable, undetermined distance with a final effect akin to that of cinematography.

The framing only partially includes the subject, in order that the observer is prone to restore with his own mind’s eye the complementary parts that have been left out. The artist seems to have drawn inspiration from the kire (cutting), a Japanese aesthetic principle, in performing that type of composition. This in order to bring out the Buddhist idea of being “cut off” from the mundane life through renunciation to the superfluous. Therefore, the cutting of the scene foreground becomes functional, according to Hiroshige, to expressing the subject’s essence, also creating a sort of time-out, an emotional withdrawal.

Utagawa Hiroshige, The Sea off Satta in the Province of Suruga, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, 1858, Art Institute of Chicago

Utagawa Hiroshige, Naruto Whirlpools in Awa Province, from the series Views of Famous Places in the Sixty-Odd Provinces, ca. 1853, The Metropolitan Museum of Art