| architecture |
| calligraphy |
| ceramics |
| clothing |
| comics |
| gardens |
| lacquerwork |
| literature |
| movies |
| music |
| painting |
| poetry |
| sculpture |
| tea ceremony |
| television |
| theatre |
| weaponry |
| thematic routes |
| timeline |
| the site |
context: painting > general comments
Portraiture
There are of course paintings of individuals in Japanese art history where the depiction is genuinely of the person, as an individual, but they are the exception. Far more common is the depiction of people as types. This is sometimes explicit - there is a famous series of prints by Utamaro which state that they are types of courtesan. People are often included as human context for a landscape or town scene, as indication of a social context, but even those where we just get a close-up of one person are rarely intended in the Western way, with an aim of penetrating or capturing the psychological qualities of the person.
Even when we are seeing a thoughtfully differentiated individual, we still might be seeing an image of someone chosen to represent a kind of beauty, or we see something that is a symbol of a person rather than a real representation of them. Zen images of great monks are a good example of this - we are seeing attributes and classic poses (Daruma turned to the wall, Hotei pointing at the moon) rather than anything that anyone hopes or imagines might actually resemble the people.
Another particular example that should be mentioned is the countless courtesan prints. Many are of named subjects, but no one seems to suggest that the faces resembled the women in question, and body shapes vary with the prevailing artistic fashions rather than with the woman depicted. We see a face sketched in with half a dozen simple lines; then colossal care and time and energy spent on the hair and the clothing. I am inclined to see these more as the equivalent of fashion mags than of portraits - ways for the audience to see how the sexiest women in glamorous Edo are doing their hair, what sort of patterns are in vogue, given the lack of an actual Vogue. (You shouldn't take this as implying any lower artistic value than Ingres, Degas, Matisse.)
I'd be interested if anyone knows of any old examples of subjects sitting for portraits, in the traditional Western way - I don't think I've seen any mention of this happening at all.