Rakuchu rakugai zu: Politicized Cityscapes in Late-Medieval Japan

Rakuchu rakugai zu, folding screen paintings of Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital city, first appear around the beginning of the sixteenth century. These gold-emblazoned images were initially painted by artists of the Tosa and Kano schools for patrons of the martial elite. By the seventeenth century, the Kyoto screens had become enormously popular and were produced by a wide range of painters for a diverse clientele, as evidenced by the dozens of remaining works. This study attempts to decipher the complex pictorial program and selection of motifs of several early examples of the Rakuchu rakugai genre, in an effort to explicate how political motivations and biases governed the conception of these paintings. The first chapter examines the "Sanjo" screens, the earliest extant example of Rakuchu rakugai zu. This section makes an attribution to a particular artist, determines when the painting represents the capital city, and examines the screens in fight of late medieval political interests. The "Uesugi" screens have been much more closely examined than the Sanjo screens, so much of the second chapter is devoted to reviewing the history of research on this most famous of the Kyoto screens. The third chapter looks at screens produced from the second half of the sixteenth century into the beginning of the seventeenth, during which time Japan underwent its violent process of unification. The impact that this reconfiguration of the architecture of power had on Rakuchu rakugai zu is demonstrated by the representation of the palatial fortresses such as Azuchi, and of Nijo Castle in almost all Kyoto screens after the beginning of the seventeenth century. After the Tokugawa shogunate's removal of the seat of administrative government from Kyoto to Edo in the early seventeenth century, the political imperatives that shaped the Kyoto screens seem to disappear. In conclusion, the dissertation shows how Rakuchu rakugai zu after unification underwent a transformation in their fundamental character, responding to new demands of patronage.