Puppy Love: The Legacy of Yi Am’s Paintings in Edo-Period Japan

This essay examines the Japanese reception of the Korean painter Yi Am 李巌(b. 1499), and by extension considers the relationship between ink painting technique and pictorial meaning. In particular, it examines how Yi Am’s unique approach to the painting of puppies with blended washes of ink opened up new interpretive possibilities among Japanese viewers. Although Yi Am’s puppy paintings appear to have been circulating in Japan as early as the seventeenth century, they were misattributed to Chinese painters such as Mao Yi, and Yi Am’s seal was mistaken as belonging to a Japanese monk-painter of the Muromachi period. The monochrome ink puppy paintings of the Kyoto artist Tawaraya Sōtatsu 俵屋宗達(ca. 1600-1640), however, depict the bodies of their canine protagonists with the same wash-based approach found in Yi Am’s works, and appear to have been catalyzed in some way by an encounter with the Korean artist’s paintings. In the case of Sōtatsu, this approach eventually came to be known as tarashikomi, a signature technique of the Rinpa School, and therefore it is no exaggeration to state that Yi Am’s works played a role in inspiring one of the most recognizable techniques of early modern Japanese painting. Although dog and puppy paintings are traditionally linked to auspicious meanings, Sōtatsu’s puppy paintings appear to have been associated within a Zen Buddhist themes, in particular the koan “A Dog Has No Buddha-Nature.” This Zen Buddhist framework of meaning can be gleaned from inscriptions on his paintings by Zen monks such as Isshi Bunshu 一絲文守(1608-1646) and Tangai Musen 丹崖無染(1693-1763). I would propose that the particular wash-based approach of Yi Am and Sōtatsu to this subject was particularly significant in generating this association. The eighteenth-century painter-poet Yosa Buson 与謝蕪村(1716-1784) also based his puppy paintings upon models derived from Yi Am. In the case of Buson, however, the cultural meaning of these works can be gleaned from his haikai poetry, in particular a poem accompanying a Maruyama Okyo 円山応挙(1733-1795) painting of a puppy that associates its inky body with the interiority of a poetic subject. The final case study examined in this essay is Itō Jakuchū 伊藤若冲(1716-1800). Jakuchū left a number of puppy paintings that embody Zen Buddhist themes in highly sophisticated ways. Because he was close to Tangai Musen, it is likely that he was aware of Sōtatsu’s puppy paintings, and indirectly familiar with those of Yi Am. Thus the case could be made that Yi Am’s wash-based technique opened up a new horizon of interpretive possibility among Japanese painters extending from Sōtatsu to Jakuchū.