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Sōtatsu: Making Waves

Boats on the Sea

While these screens resemble the Freer’s Waves at Matsushima, they portray a more general topic—“pine shores.” This yamato-e (traditional Japanese painting) subject developed during the Muromachi period (1333–1573). Traces of thirty-six poem sheets (shikishi) indicate that the screens were once covered with waka poetry (thirty-one-syllable verses). This explains the overly expansive depiction of clouds, which provide blank spaces for the poetry. Other screens attributed to Sōtatsu feature shikishi pasted over a large representational image. These screens both bear the signature Sōtatsu Hokkyō and the round vermilion seal Taiseiken typically associated with the artist; here, however, the seal impression differs from the standard. The “Matsushima” theme was in the repertoire of seventeenth-century painters, and the Tawaraya atelier may have produced this work. However, that is the extent of any relationship to the Waves at Matsushima screens, which are not generic but have a highly specific celebratory intention.