Hexagonal Flower Basket Mononofu

Active in eastern Japan, Iizuka Rōkansai (1890–1958) was the charismatic leader of a new generation of bamboo artists who pushed the boundaries of the traditional medium and developed a rich lexicon of novel shapes, techniques, and styles. Rōkansai was trained in many of the traditional arts, including calligraphy, painting, tea ceremony, and flower arrangement. As an advocate for his field, he became involved with the Japan Craft Art Society and, along with Hōsai II, helped found the Wood and Bamboo Craft Society. At the same time, he sought to modernize the craft by experimenting with new techniques and revolutionary forms. Rōkansai divided his oeuvre into three styles according to function and technique: shin (formal), gyō (semiformal), and sō (freestyle, or “cursive”). The system, formulated about 1937, was based on categories originally established to describe calligraphy, but they were also applied to tea ceremony, garden design, flower arrangement, and the performing arts to indicate a degree of formality and personalization, with sō being the most individualistic. His gyō and sō works were generally saved for one-artist exhibitions; the former typically are more loosely plaited but still follow traditional or functional forms, whereas Rōkansai’s freestyle works are generally either loosely plaited or made simply of bent and curved strips.

This exquisitely plaited basket in the semiformal style (gyō) is an ambitious elaboration of a basket type pioneered by the artist’s elder brother and mentor, Iizuka Hōsai II (1872–1934). Its features include a boldly expressed, complex external framework executed in split culms of polished smoked bamboo (susudake, typically obtained from the roof structure of a farmhouse where it had been exposed to smoke and heat for decades) and contrasted passages of varied plaiting including variations of twill and hexagonal patterns. The upper section of the basket has a double wall. The basket comes with a black lacquer water container. The basket’s title, Mononofu, is an old variation of the word for samurai. Rōkansai applied this title to a few of his works, mainly to baskets in the semiformal style. Rōkansai is widely seen as the greatest of all Japan’s masters of bamboo. The powerful presence of this large basket and the complex and ambitious execution of its bamboo details indicate the high level of creative energy that Rōkansai applied to this work.