The Year of the Tiger says Tiger. Tigers have long become one of China's totems, and China's tiger culture has a long history. In the long history of inheritance, tiger culture also spread to Japan, leaving many historical relics and documentary records in Japan. Recently, a number of Japanese "tiger cultural relics" crossed the ocean to China and told about the origin of Chinese and Japanese tiger culture.
▲ On February 1, the first day of the first lunar month, exhibits such as the reed pattern tiger pillow of the Golden Dynasty attracted visitors. On the same day, the Shanghai Museum is holding the "Year of the Tiger Laughing Yin - China-Japan Spring Festival Exhibition of the Year of the Tiger", attracting people to visit. (Photo by Zhang Hengwei, reporter of China News Service)
The tiger bamboo chart is favored and passed down the most in Japan
On the occasion of the Spring Festival in 2022, in order to welcome the Year of the Tiger and the 50th anniversary of the normalization of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations, the Shanghai Museum and the Kyushu National Museum of Japan jointly held the "Year of the Tiger - Spring Festival Exhibition of the Year of the Tiger in China and Japan". From the artifacts on display, you can learn about Japanese tiger culture.
Yang Zhigang, director of the Shanghai Museum, introduced that Japan is influenced by Chinese culture and has long had the custom of worshipping tigers, but it does not produce tigers in its territory, so the image of the tiger in the cultural relics is often full of different imaginative interests, and the tigers in the paintings are gentle and amiable, as can be seen from the two pieces of Imari blue and white plates of the Edo period on display.
At the end of the 16th century, Japanese samurai families used large plates to set up dishes at banquets, and at first they used Chinese porcelain plates produced in Jingdezhen and other places. Until the beginning of the 17th century, after the rise of the Arita kiln (present-day Arita-cho, Saga Prefecture), locally produced large plates gradually became a luxury on the tables of Japanese high society, and such tiger bamboo map plates were widely favored and passed down the most. The twelve-shaped plate of the blue and white tiger bamboo figure on display is fired in the Arita kiln, and the inner wall is painted with patterns such as tiger, bamboo, Taihu stone, and xiangyun, and the outer mural peony and camellia pattern. Perhaps because there are no tigers on the Japanese archipelago, the image of the tiger in the painting is always gentle and amiable.
Due to the increasing demand for Arita porcelain, Shida, located in the Arita Ōwaisan area, became a kiln for mass porcelain production in the early 18th century. At the beginning of the 19th century, Shida kiln entered its heyday. At that time, banquets began to become popular among the wealthy merchants in Japan's cities, high-end restaurants came into being, and the demand for large porcelain plates increased greatly. Another large blue and white tiger bamboo plate was fired at the Shida kiln and dated between about 1810 and 1840. Most arita kiln porcelain is transported to various places through the nearby port of Imari, so it is also called "Imari porcelain". The two large plates on display depict the different tastes of Imari porcelain from the Edo period (1603-1867) in Japan.
▲On February 1, exhibits such as the reed tiger pillow of the Golden Dynasty attracted visitors. (Photo by Zhang Hengwei, reporter of China News Service)
Qing Dynasty painters went to Nagasaki to teach Chinese painting techniques
The Kyushu National Museum in Japan brought four exchange artifacts this time, in addition to the above two pieces of porcelain on physical display, there are also two paintings on display online.
In one painting, the tiger's front paws are slightly crossed, and its back is hunched over, and the tiger is standing on the rock. The bamboo leaves are rough and strong, as if they are rattling in the wind. The tiger's fur color is exquisite, majestic but cute, and there is "Mid-Autumn noon" in the falling model, which is a representative work of Japanese painter Xiong Fei in 1762.
Xiong Fei, whose real name is Shinshiro Nobuyoshi. Because his adoptive father served as a "Tang Tongshi" in the Nagasaki area, that is, Chinese translator, he was able to enter and exit the Chinese mansion "Tang Guan", and Xiong Fei was his Chinese name. Xiong Fei was also a disciple of the Chinese Qing Dynasty painter Shen Quan. Shen Quan was good at painting flowers, feathers, and walking animals, and in the ninth year of Yongzheng (1731), he was invited by the Tokugawa shogunate to teach Chinese painting skills in Nagasaki, Japan, and lived in the local "Tangguan" for nearly two years. Xiong Fei inherited Shen Quan's painting style and founded the Nagasaki School, which had a great influence on the Japanese Edo period painting world.
In another painting, the tiger is majestic and determined, walking in steps, and magpies flying on the branches of the pine, with a flexible and meticulous pen, and the theme is festive and auspicious. The theme and style of this kind of "tiger figure" was formed after the 18th century by Shen Quan's flower, bird and animal map, and was widely popular throughout Japan. This painting is the work of the Japanese painter Tokata Inagyu when he was 63 years old, the tiger's fur color is vivid and delicate, and the turquoise pen is smooth and layered, which is a large "tiger figure" masterpiece after he became a royal painter.
"In Chinese folk customs, the tiger carries beautiful meanings such as eliminating disasters and warding off evil spirits. The exhibition is titled 'The Year of the Tiger Laughing', which shows the resilience of the Chinese nation very well - to dissolve the cold of winter with laughter, to enhance the connection between each other's hearts and hands with smiles, and to declare the firm belief in a better tomorrow with laughter. Yang Zhigang said.
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