Introduction

The botanical details of the trees in this pair of byōbu folding screens are painted so accurately that, three centuries after their creation, we can identify eight species of deciduous and evergreen trees that are native to Japan. The folding screens are only marked with the round “I’nen” seal used by Tawaraya Sōtatsu and members of his studio, so we don’t know the name of the artist. But whoever painted them must have devoted much time and effort to observing their real-life subjects. 

Such close botanical observations reflect the popularity of plants in seventeenth-century Japan. Physicians adapting Chinese herbal medicine to Japan published books about medicinal plants, while flower arranging and gardening flourished. These pursuits were all made possible by the peace and prosperity of the Edo period following a century of civil war.

In stark contrast to the realistic botanical features, however, the gold leaf behind the trees does not even attempt to depict the earth or the sky, or a garden or a forest to which trees naturally belong. Western paintings of the era were grounded in mimesis—depicting things to make them look as they appear in reality. In a Western painting of the time, such a group of trees would surely have depicted some kind of lifelike natural background. Why would Edo artists work so hard to observe and painstakingly reproduce botanical details only to place them in a fantastical environment that is impossible in real life? What effects might artists have intended for their work to have on viewers?