The Kano School
A group of artists that has held sway over Japanese painting circles for 400 years
The Kano School is Japan's largest school of painters. The school began with Kano Masanobu (1434?-1530?), an official painter for the Ashikaga bakufu in the late Muromachi period (1336-1573). It continued to produce official painters for the bakufu during the Azuchi-Momoyama (1573-1603) and Edo (1603-1867) periods, thus continuing to be a central force in Japan's painting circles. This painting style, based on Chinese Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1279-1368) paintings, uses strong ink wash lines for accent and adds vivid coloring. It is classified as a Chinese style of painting, in contrast to the Yamato-e style of the Tosa School.
Masanobu's son Motonobu sought to further fuse Japanese and Chinese painting styles by laying a foundation in which the style preserved the ornamentation of Yamato-e paintings in clear room partition paintings, and by gathering many students in his workshop. After Motonobu, Masanobu's grandson Eitoku further developed composition for large painting surfaces, thus perfecting the Momoyama style. Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi made use of him for large projects such as the sliding doors for the keep of Azuchi Castle, the palace Jurakutei, and Osaka Castle, giving him ample opportunity to display his talent.
After Eitoku's death, his son Mitsunobu, who became the new head of the school, Japanized Eitoku's style, making it more delicate and mild, and Mitsunobu's pupil Sanraku added realism and ornamentation to his teacher's style. (Unless their family name is mentioned, all painters of the Kano School, whether biological sons or adopted sons, had the family name Kano.)
Tan'yu (originally named Morinobu), the son of Kano Takanobu, who was the pupil of Mitsunobu, created a more tasteful and orderly style by painting compositions with much more white space. He and his pupil Naonobu were ordered to serve as regular official painters for the Edo bakufu.
At this point the Kano School breaks off into lineages. There are the Nakahashi Kano family, tracing back to Yasunobu, the pupil of Naonobu; the Kajihashi Kano family, harking back to Tanyu; and the Kobikicho Kano family, going back to Naonobu. These together are called the three Kano families. Naonobu's grandson Minenobu later established the Hamacho Kano family. This family and the three other Kano families are called the four inner painter families (oku eshi). The sixteen families stemming from the four inner painter families are called the outer painters (omote eshi), and they make up the Edo Kano School. Then there is the Kyo Kano family (the Kyoto lineage), tracing back to Sanraku. In addition, various pupils of the Kano School were employed by many daimyo families. In short, the Kano School was the greatest authority on painting throughout the Edo period.
However, after Tanyu and Naonobu, the school lost its artistic creativity, painters like Kusumi Morikage and Hanabusa Itcho started painting compositions that got them expelled from the school, and other painters painted works that distanced themselves from the school. Nonetheless, the Kano School, as an institution, opened the door wide to education in the art of painting and provoked reactions that led to new artistic movements.
In these ways and others, the Kano School had a profound impact on Japanese painting. Indeed, in the early Meiji era (1868-1912), Kano Hogai and Hashimoto Gaho, who studied under the Kobikicho Kano family and later came under the influence of Ernest Fenollosa and Okakura Tenshin, contributed to laying the foundation for modern Japanese painting.
Related People, Things and Events
Books
Kano Masanobu
Kano Motonobu
Kano Eitoku
Kano Tanyu
Kano Sanraku
Kano Sansetsu
Hashimoto Gaho
Kano Hogai
Painters of the Kano School
Kano School: Collected paintings and research papers
Related Works
Kano School in the Muromachi period (1336-1573): From Kano Masanobu to Kano Motonobu
The style of Kano Eitoku: Azuchi-Momoyama period (1573-1603)
The reforms of Kano Tanyu: Edo period (1603-1868)
Kano Hogai and Kano Gaho: Kano School in the Meiji period (1868-1912)
Search for National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties
Videos
Past Exhibitions
| Title | shusai | Place | open | close |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 京都国立博物館 | 2015/4/7 | 2015/5/17 | ||
| 京都国立博物館 | 2008/4/16 | 2008/5/18 | ||
| 出光美術館 | 2013/11/12 | 2013/12/15 | ||
| 出光美術館 | 2020/2/11 | 2020/3/22 | ||
| 京都文化博物館 | 2004/9/18 | 2004/10/24 | ||
| ハラミュージアムアーク | 2014/3/15 | 2014/5/28 | ||
Institutions Holding Related Materials
二の丸御殿の障壁画は狩野探幽が一門の総力を挙げて制作したもの。
The National Diet Library (NDL), founded in 1948, is the library which belongs to the Diet. The NDL assists the activities of the National Diet. The Library collects and conserves materials and information both from Japan and abroad, serving as a foundation of knowledge and culture and providing library services to administrative and judicial entities and Japanese citizens.
The Independent Administrative Institution National Museum of Art stands as the nexus of art advancement in Japan, charged with fostering the creation and development of art and culture in Japan, and the cultivation of aesthetic awareness among the Japanese people. Through its six art museums — The National Museums of Modern Art, Tokyo and Kyoto, National Film Archive of Japan, the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, and the National Art Center, Tokyo — the National Museum of Art carries out diverse and distinctive activities that fully utilize the unique character of each member museum.
As Japan’s representative museum, Tokyo National Museum collects, preserves, displays, and researches the cultural properties of Asia with a focus on Japan, and also provides educational programs.
Kyoto National Museum collects, preserves, displays, researches and provides educational programs focusing on cultural properties from Heian- through to Edo- period Japan, when the capital was located there.
The Tokyo Fuji Art Museum is founded on November 3, 1983, in Hachioji, a thriving university town in the western suburbs of the Japanese capital. Priding itself as “a museum creating bridges around the world” to facilitate the exchange of different cultures, our museum has forged cordial relations with art museums and cultural institutes in 32 countries and territories to date. We do so by bringing the world’s finest works of art to Japan while reciprocating in kind by introducing the finest Japanese treasures to the world through special exhibitions that showcase their beauty and wonder through a unique new set of prisms and perspectives. Our museum possesses some 30,000 pieces of artworks from various periods and cultures including Japanese, Eastern and Western works, ranging from paintings, prints, photography, sculptures, ceramics and lacquer ware to armor, swords and medallions. Especially noteworthy is its outstanding collection of Western oil paintings that spans a five-hundred-year period from the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Romanticism to Impressionism and contemporary art, as well as its exceptional collection of photographic masterpieces that can give an overview of the history of photography from the birth of the photograph to the present age.
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art was founded as the successor of the Aichi Prefectural Art Gallery, which originally opened in Sakae, the center of Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, in 1955. The museum opened in 1992 as part of the Aichi Arts Center, an urban cultural complex, and has established a wide-range collection of approximately 8,000 items, centered on works of art of the twentieth century. The Museum has also organized numerous exhibition of a wide-range of themes. The Museum has actively worked to develop and communicate new aspects of art and culture to the public, based on its core mission to serve as the primary art museum of the Chubu region.
The Art Research Center was established in 1998. Since then, the Center’s mission has been not only to conduct historical and social research and analyses of both tangible and intangible human cultural properties such as visual and performing arts and craftsmanship, but also to record, organize, preserve, and disseminate the research outcomes. To make the vast amount of database of resources on Japanese culture kept at the Art Research Center available to joint researchers in and outside of Japan, while providing the hitherto accumulated digital archiving and database management technologies as the basis for research project activities to promote information archiving and the circulating of joint research on knowledge. Through these undertakings, the Center aims to “become a world class research center” in the field of Digital Humanities.
External Links
館蔵品展の 「狩野派学習張 今こそ江戸絵画の正統に学ぼう」(2020年7月-8月)の紹介。動画もある。
狩野派の絵師26名の41件の作品を収蔵する。その中から12点を紹介。
References
- 「狩野派」の項
- 「狩野派」の項
- 日立デジタル平凡社,平凡社
- 小学館
- 「狩野派」の項
- 「狩野派」の項