As Thomas Rimer writes in his introduction to this interesting collection of papers on Japan's artistic pedagogy, an "underlying assumption behind these Japanese aesthetic assumptions is that of cognition." An important part of the aesthetic pleasure was to be derived from the use, reuse and new uses of those conventions of style and content deemed by artist and patron alike as appropriate to the particularly occasion for which a particular work was created. Technique was art.
This is an idea quite opposite to that entertained by the West, where originality is usually prized and mere technique derided. Blatant individuality rather than any individual use of conventionality has become the standard of a perceived excellence.
Though Japanese aesthetics left some room for fresh, new vision, and though Western art has had its share of "mere" technicians, in large the two approaches, East and West, stand separate. In Japan the artist was expected to master fully his technique before any such ambition as self expression was tolerated.
The means through which this was achieved was the so-called copy-book method. The master's creation, itself based upon a prior master's work, was copied and recopied until a kind of perfection was reached. Just as the poet was expected to learn by copying other poetry, just as the sushi-maker still learns his trade by copying the methods of the master chef, the painter was expected to become, first, a vessel of tradition.
In Europe and America talent and training have been, ever since the Romantic Movement, seen as antagonistic. There remains an underlying assumption that all art must be new, original, "creative." Rote memorization of artistic skills is thought to stifle creativity, too detailed a study of past art is suspicious.
In Japan and much of the rest of Asia, however, training came first -- after that, if there was any, came talent. The means was the academy and in Japan this meant the Kano painting workshop, which was responsible for training the great majority of painters through the 250 years of the Edo Period.
As one of the papers in this volume comments, the system was a patriarchal one, modeled after medieval guilds that passed leadership down through generations of male blood relatives. Political connections, patronage, organization and influence on the art world were important factors that insured a hegemony. Only the most strict pedagogy could keep such a complex organization securely within the canons of the Kano style.
One of the many means was the assumption that the style had its secrets and that the student must learn these if he were to get ahead. One such novice, admiring the master's painting of the depths and softness of fur of his monkey model, slipped into the warehouse, stole a glimpse of the underside of the painting, and discovered that the secret was to first paint the back of the silk and then the front.
That such an institution as the Kano School lasted so long is an indication of its importance, and several papers in this collection (by Karen Gerhart, Frank Chance and Martha McClintock, as well as the two editors) explain its means, its history and its various political uses. Particularly interesting is Ernest Fenollosa's account of its confrontation with Meiji Era plans for the future. He opines that through the Kano school had a noble history it now suffered from stagnation and "a lack of creativity."
Rimer has well indicated the effects of such opinion when he writes that now "the walls have been smashed down, perhaps forever, and in the postmodern arena in which we find ourselves, fragments of past and present mix together . . . and that extremely strict yet infinitely flexible way of training here described has apparently disappeared in our time."
Yet, as we learn of this long continuing presence in the Japanese tradition and as we stare at the postmodern mess around us, "the accomplished art that such training produced takes on a fresh significance and perhaps a more enduring reality."
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