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Hailey E Herrera
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Parade of the Seasons Painting
The four seasons in the arts of Japan
Nature has been a source of inspiration and subject matter in the arts of Japan throughout the centuries.
Even when looking closely at this painted folding screen by Sesson Shukei, one barely notices the first plum blossoms of spring blooming on trees that dot the landscape on the right side. As we move to the far left, we can see a snow-covered mountain that suggests deep winter. Throughout the landscape, people are engaged in day-to-day activities, fishing, walking, and riding horses, yet all of these activities are shown occurring over the course of four seasons. Paintings like Shukei’s—that envision a single landscape transformed through the four seasons—is a distinctly Japanese artistic phenomenon.
Japanese artists have also taken other approaches to visualizing nature and the four seasons, with some only hinting at the ephemerality of the seasons. A seventeenth-century lacquerware ewer, for instance, pairs chrysanthemums (that bloom in summer) and paulownia (that bloom in spring). Visual references to the changing seasons may also be shown subtly—a single branch of a tree might show a few budding blossoms, the lightest dust of snow, or mists obscuring our view of it.
Regardless of the different ways artists have chosen to visualize seasonal transformation, one thing is clear: nature and the seasons have played a vital role as a source of inspiration and subject matter in the arts of Japan for thousands of years. Interest in the rhythm of the four seasons specifically is one of the oldest and most enduring topics in Japanese poetry, painting and calligraphy, ceramics and lacquerware, and many other forms of craftsmanship and artistic expression. Seasons have stood for the endless cycles of nature, the impermanence of each season as it gives way to the next, and the spiritual and social calendar of season-specific rituals and festivals that articulate the year. Poets have even developed entire anthologies that focused on nature and the seasons, and used them as a way to explore the passage of time and human emotion.
Interest in nature and the ephemerality of the four seasons was also tied to different religious belief systems in Japan, including Shintō (a religion native to Japan) and Buddhism (introduced to Japan in the 6th century). Both demonstrate an interest in the changing seasons and how this affects nature, as well as the ways that the divine could manifest itself in the landscape. In Shintō, deities are believed to live in springs, rivers, trees, and mountains, imbuing nature with divinity, and of course these natural features changed with each passing month. For Buddhists, the fleeting nature of the seasons was also a reminder of change and the transience of things—an important concept in Buddhism. Shintō and Buddhist beliefs would become intertwined in Japan, and paintings such as Shukei’s folding screen and lacquerware objects such as the sake ewer above can encompass a wide set of ideas about nature, beauty, and the cycle of the seasons.
This chapter explores the representation and evocation of the four seasons in Japanese arts across periods and mediums (though primarily in painting), through the lens of religious belief systems, sociocultural practices, and related literary and artistic traditions.
The four seasons through Shintō and Buddhist lenses
Shintō
Nature is central to Shintō, a set of beliefs and practices that developed in Japan sometime around the late 1st century B.C.E. In Shintō, everything is believed to be held together by a network of connections—nature and people, animate and inanimate things, and material and spiritual elements. They all communicate within the same field of existence. Deities ( kami ) inhabit objects and natural elements, and people pay their respects to them, honoring them with ceremonies and worshipping outdoors at important sites. Ritual leaders also aided communities by acting as intermediaries with the kami, helping to bring rain and grow food. Harmony with the kami—and so nature—remains central to Shintō belief.
Shrines were also built to appease, honor, and otherwise communicate with deities. For example, the Izumotaisha is one of the oldest Shintō shrines in Japan, dedicated to Okuninushi-no-Kami, the deity believed to have built Japan. Shintō shrines like this one were typically built in nature, often on mountains or deep within a forest. They are often built of wood, and so with time have to be remade, as the wood decays with age—yet another reminder of the passage of time and the transformation of nature. A shrine like Izumotaisha helped to mark a place as sacred, and would have reminded anyone approaching it to pay their respects.
Beginning in the 6th century C.E., Buddhism arrived in Japan, after making its way from India via Central Asia, China, and Korea. As Buddhism was adopted and adapted to Japanese culture, it gradually influenced and altered existing Japanese beliefs and practices, including those about nature and the seasons. Buddhism was woven together with Shintō, leading to a dynamic process of cross-pollination referred to as Shinbutsu shūgō (the syncretism of Shintō and Buddhism).
The influence of Buddhism grew at Japan’s imperial court and spread throughout the country through imperial patronage, solidifying a bond between the religious and the secular.
When it was completed in the 740s, during the Nara period , the Buddhist temple of Tōdaiji epitomized the prominence of Buddhism as the largest building project to date in Japan. Beyond its expression of the new importance of Buddhism as a religion in Japan, the very way it was built relates to the deeply rooted importance of nature in Buddhist thought: built in wood, it was closely linked to the natural environment and to the longer history of wooden structures in Japan and among other Buddhist places.
