Edo is the period of Japanese history from 1603 to 1868 and was also the name of the era’s capital city, which is now Tokyo. During the Edo period, Japan isolated itself from the world while shoguns presided over a thriving economy. Although the samurai were the ruling class, the merchant class prospered, generating an endless demand for innovative art. Artists responded, experimenting with asymmetry, abstraction, stylization, and empty space to depict the natural world on hanging scrolls (kakejiku) and on large-scale folding screens (byōbu). Many of the techniques artists innovated in the Edo period emerged much later in the modern art of the West.
In her documentary film Edo Avant Garde, Linda Hoaglund traces one source of Edo artists’ ingenuity to their engagement with the spirits they believed to inhabit the natural world—a belief inspired by Buddhism and Shinto animism. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the term avant-garde has typically referred to artists who explore ideas ahead of their time, but the film imagines Edo artists as an earlier avant-garde: those who challenged traditions to leave an enduring legacy of artistic innovations that are explored in this curriculum.
After the Edo period, countless works were sold to Western collectors, who were captivated by the works’ elegant originality, and many are now housed in US museums. The National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) has one of the world’s most important collections of Edo art, and this website explores treasures depicting the natural world from NMAA’s as well as other institutions’ collections. This image-driven, digital resource is designed for students to discover Edo-period art and to learn about the basic principles of art and design from a fresh perspective. Lesson plans leveled for elementary, middle, and high school students explore outstanding works of Edo art through video clips from the film, virtual image galleries, relevant articles, interview excerpts, and other educational resources.
This website approaches the Edo period’s artistic legacy through five major themes: Painting Nature, Our Environment, Depicting Birds and Animals, Artistic Techniques, and Edo Avant-Garde. Each theme has two subthemes along with lesson plans filled with investigations and discoveries.
Each subtheme begins with a high-resolution image of a major Edo artwork, with the question What do you see? This initial exercise is intended to motivate students to discover the art with their own eyes and to respond in their own language, whether that be verbal or artistic, to express what they see. Each subtheme examines a featured artwork and includes a brief introduction. The level-graded lesson plans provide a PDF for educators with learning objectives and assignments, additional artworks for reference, links to video clips, brief readings, assignment worksheets, and additional references. The Google Slides pages provide students with links to the resources and student-friendly instructions to follow in the classroom or remotely.
The user-friendly navigation also includes indexes of art, artists, videos, and resources relevant across both the site and lesson plans as well as an introduction to and preview of Linda Hoaglund’s film Edo Avant Garde.
Introduction to Edo-Period Art Videos
Suggested readings
Suggested further readings
- In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki Junichiro
- Designing Nature by John T. Carpenter (Met Museum exhibit catalogue)
- Storytelling in Japanese Art by Masako Watanabe (Met Museum exhibit catalogue)
- Colorful Realm by Yukio Lippit (National Gallery of Art exhibit catalogue)
- The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
- Bird Sense: What It’s Like to Be a Bird by Tim Birkhead
- The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben
- Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans De Waal
- Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan by Azby Brown
- Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane
- The Great Wave by Christopher Benfey (history of 19th century American collectors)
About this project
Investigating Japan’s Edo Avant Garde was made possible by a generous grant from The Freeman Foundation.
- Project Director: Linda Hoaglund
- Project Video and Digital Editor: Cody Horne
- Curriculum Supervisor: Dr. Brenda G. Jordan
- Curriculum: Angie Stokes
- Curriculum: Kachina Leigh
- Web Design and Development: 908A (E Roon Kang & Andrew LeClair)
