Lions at the Stone Bridge of Mount Tiantai

Tiantaishan (J: Tendaisan), the holy mountain of the Tientai sect of Buddhism in Zhejiang Province, Southeast China, was the legendary abode of three famous Chan eccentrics, Fengkan, Hanshan, and Shide (J: Bukan, Kanzan, and Jittoku; cat. no. 54). The mountain was a favorite pilgrimage site for generations of Chinese and Japanese monks and literary men, who extolled its beauty in a number of memorable accounts.[1] One of the most impressive sights on the mountain was an extraordinary natural stone bridge, which is described in Chinese literature as rising to a height of eighteen thousand feet, its curve likened to the arc of a rainbow or the back of a giant turtle. Watered by the mist rising from nearby falls, its stone surface was covered with a slippery layer of ancient moss.

The fame of the bridge spread beyond China, and became the subject of legend. Perhaps the best known in Japan is the No play Shakkyō (The Stone Bridge), by Kanze Motokiyo (1363–1443).[2] A second popular legend, of uncertain origin, is illustrated here. To test the endurance of her newborn cubs, a lioness pushes them off a promontory near the stone bridge. She will care only for those that manage to climb back to her by scaling the steep cliffs. The subject is rare in the Chinese and Japanese repertory, and its depiction in this painting is even more bizarre than the story. Hundreds of lion cubs leap from rock to rock, trying to claw their way to the top of the cliff. Those that fail are shown falling to the churning waters thousands of feet below; the lioness, bewildered, observes the scene.

The artist would be expected to be a man of odd vision, and Soga Shōhaku (1730–1781) was indeed eccentric. Stories of his outlandish antics have entered the realm of folklore, and we can imagine him as a rebellious individual who knowingly violated the rules of social decorum. Interestingly, his behavior did not alienate him from his patrons, but was accepted—even applauded—no doubt because it held a refreshing appeal in the highly structured society. By the twentieth century, Shōhaku was virtually unknown in Japan. His reputation has recently revived, however, thanks in large measure to American scholars' and collectors' appreciation of his individuality and modernity. Many of his paintings are in American collections, and through the efforts in the 1880s of Ernest F. Fenollosa (1853–1908) and William S. Bigelow (1850–1926), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, today houses the largest collection of Shōhaku's work.

The facts of Shōhaku's life have undoubtedly been distorted by fictitious embellishments. It is generally believed that he was born in Kyoto to a merchant family named Miura. He made several trips to the Ise region when he was in his late twenties and early thirties, and Buddhist temples in that area still preserve a number of his paintings. As a young man, Shōhaku studied painting with a minor Kano artist, Takada Keiho (1673–1755), who was a student of Kano Eikei (1662–1702), a grandson of Kano Sansetsu (1589–1651). Shōhaku proclaimed himself the tenth-generation heir of an ink painter named Soga Jasoku (Dasoku), who lived at Daitokuji, Kyoto, in the fifteenth century and painted several screens in Shinjuan, a subtemple of Daitokuji. Shōhaku is thought to have used this painter's name as his own (he signed as both Soga Jasoku and Jasoku-ken), probably in an attempt to revive the earlier artist's reputation. Apparently, he was quite popular in the seventeenth century, but his identity is only now emerging.[3] Kano Sansetsu had also occasionally used the name Jasoku-ken. Interestingly, the mid-seventeenth-century painter Soga Nichokuan (cat. no. 106) claimed to be the sixth-generation descendant of the same artist. Nichokuan's paintings often include fantastic rocks that resemble those of Shōhaku.

Shōhaku's self-proclaimed heritage is certainly justified on stylistic grounds. While his subject matter is often bizarre—demons and skulls, for example, that are grotesque and repulsive—the basic vocabulary of his art remained largely within the tradition of Muromachi ink painting. His compositions, especially those of his large screen paintings, also rely on formulas used by artists of the Muromachi period. Pictorial elements are concentrated at either end of a screen, with the center left open, giving his landscape paintings structural stability.

The eccentricity of Shōhaku's work is sometimes criticized as a deliberate, aggressive attempt to draw attention to himself and away from his more successful contemporaries, such as Taiga (cat. nos. 157–159) and Ōkyo (cat. no. 115). The colophon that appears at the top of the scroll was composed and inscribed by the monk Gazan Nansō (1727–1797) of Tenryūji, Kyoto:

Tendaisan towers upward forty-eight thousand feet, ·
Fantastic cliffs, steep and sheer, lofty scarps that
reach the sky.
At the top a stone bridge, whereon Perfected
Beings tread
And winged magicians with cranes linger and
wheel.
Those who have not transmigrated cannot take
a step to cross it.
Oh, how wondrous/ Such an immortal is
Master Soga.
A hundred, hundred thousand lions appear at
the tip of his brush,
Chasing and racing top to bottom, ferociously
growling and snarling.
Scaling peaks, fording streams, the cubs
strive for first place
While one among them, old and huge, sits with
eyes like falling stars.
Those that have followed the wrong path
Fall from the craggy brink.
They can reverse their course if they repent their
basic nature.
The artistry and skill shown here cannot be
expressed in words.
Though mine are unworthy, this painting will be
handed down forever.[4]
—An'ei hachinen ryushū teigai Gazan yō nansō dai

The date inscribed at the end of the colophon translates as "eighth year of the An'ei era, the end of the Year of the Boar." The eighth year of the An'ei era corresponds to 1779, but the cyclical sign, Teigai (second Year of the Boar), falls in 1767, which was not in the An'ei era. The cyclical sign for the eighth year of An'ei should in fact read "Kigai" (third Year of the Boar). Gazan refers to the peaks of Tendaisan as reaching a height of forty-eight thousand feet rather than eighteen thousand, the more commonly cited figure and the one used by the Chinese poet Li Bo (701–762); the figure given by Gazan reflects the enormous popularity of Chinese poetry and of Li Bo in particular among the Japanese literati at this time.

Lions at the Stone Bridge is one of a handful of dated works from Shōhaku's last period. His less restrained paintings were for the most part made early in his career. Evidently the excesses of his youth were later tamed by an element of humor. The crystalline quality of the rocks here recalls the work of Kano Sansetsu, whose landscapes are also oddly surrealistic. Shōhaku may have learned this effect from his teacher, Takada Keiho.

[Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams]

[1] Many Chinese records of visits to this mountain are included in the Tiantaishan Quanzhi, 6 vols., edited in 1717 by Zhang Lianyuan. The earliest Japanese account is by the monk Jōjin, who visited the site in 1072; see San Tendai Godaisan ki (Record of a Visit to the Five Great Mountains of Tendai), in Dai Nihon Bukkyō zensho 1959, p. 336.
[2] Sanari Kentarō 1930, vol. 2, pp. 1373–81.
[3] Tanaka Ichimatsu 1971, pp. 15–35; and Minamoto Toyomune 1972, pp. 29–39.
[4] Translation after Stephen D. Allee.

Signature: Soga Shohaku

Inscription: Inscription of 1779 (An'ei 8) by Gazan Nanso (1727–1797), a Rinzai Zen priest of Tenryuji, Kyoto.

Marking: Signed: Jasoku-ken Shohaku

[ Mayuyama & Co., Ltd. , Tokyo, until October 1974; sold to Burke Foundation]; Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation , New York (until 2015; donated to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," November 7, 1975–January 4, 1976.

Seattle Art Museum. "Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," March 10–May 1, 1977.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts. "Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," June 1–July 17, 1977.

Tokyo National Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," May 21, 1985–June 30, 1985.

Ishikawa Prefectural Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," July 13, 1985–August 11, 1985.

Nagoya City Art Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," August 17, 1985–September 23, 1985.

Atami. MOA Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," September 29, 1985–October 27, 1985.

Hamamatsu City Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," November 12, 1985–December 1, 1985.

New York. Asia Society. "Art of Japan: Selections from the Burke Collection, pts. I and II," October 2, 1986–February 22, 1987.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Seasonal Pleasures in Japanese Art, Part II," May 1–September 8, 1996.

Chiba City Museum of Art. "Soga Shōhaku ten: Edo no kisai," March 24, 1998–May 5, 1998.

Tsu. Mie Prefectural Art Museum. "Soga Shōhaku ten: Edo no kisai," May 13, 1998–June 14, 1998.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Japanese Art from The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 30–June 25, 2000.

Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," July 5, 2005–August 19, 2005.

Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 4, 2005–December 11, 2005.

Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," January 24, 2006–March 5, 2006.

Miho Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 15, 2006–June 11, 2006.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Celebrating the Arts of Japan: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 20, 2015–May 14, 2017.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Poetry of Nature: Edo Paintings from the Fishbein-Bender Collection," February 27, 2018–January 21, 2019.

Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art. "Soga Shohaku: The Ultimate Eccentric," October 8, 2021–November 21, 2021.

Tsuji Nobuo 辻惟雄, Mary Griggs Burke, Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha 日本経済新聞社, and Gifu-ken Bijutsukan 岐阜県美術館. Nyūyōku Bāku korekushon-ten: Nihon no bi sanzennen no kagayaki ニューヨーク・バーク・コレクション展 : 日本の美三千年の輝き(Enduring legacy of Japanese art: The Mary Griggs Burke collection). Exh. cat. [Tokyo]: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 2005, cat. no. 102.

Murase, Miyeko, Il Kim, Shi-yee Liu, Gratia Williams Nakahashi, Stephanie Wada, Soyoung Lee, and David Sensabaugh. Art Through a Lifetime: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection. Vol. 1, Japanese Paintings, Printed Works, Calligraphy. [New York]: Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, [2013], p. 356, cat. no. 436.

Carpenter, John T. The Poetry of Nature: Edo Paintings from the Fishbein-Bender Collection. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018, pp. 128–29, fig. 42.