Art and Beauty in Japan

Art and Beauty in Japan By: Kylie Choi, Daphne Chau, and Jamie Paik

Japanese art Japanese art and beauty was a way for Japanese people to express their ideas. Ceramics was a way for Japanese to create pottery with elegant designs that represent something meaningful. Poems were a way to express feeling that the author wrote about. But most Japanese art can look similar to Chinese or Korean art as well.

Ceramics by Kylie Choi The Japanese Ceramics are some of the best in the world and are the earliest known artifacts in Japan. In a legend, a man named Katō Shirozaemon Kagemasa studied ceramics in China and brought it back to Seto, Japan in 1223 where Japan imitated the Chinese way. In Seto, Japan, the Seto kiln made a variety of new glazes like ash, iron black, feldspar white, and copper green.

Ceramics of Japan • This picture of Japanese ceramics bowl, it shows a dragon and a phoenix gliding over the blue waves. • This is a picture of an ancient Japanese pot that was said to be created sometime between 1333 – 1573. • This pot was made in the city of Kagoshima in Kyushu. This shows a bouquet of flowers that is know as the Satsuma Porcelain marking.

Poems by Jamie Paik Japanese poetry came in many forms such as: Haiku, Tanka, Kanshi, and Collaborative Verse.

Haiku Haiku’s are short poems that are made up of three verses that are usually about nature. Typically, the first verse has 5 syllables, the second verse has7 syllables, and the last verse had 5 syllables. Some people can spend an entire lifetime writing one haiku. Here is an example of a haiku written by Basho Matsuo, the first great poet of haiku in the 1600s: An old silent pond... A frog jumps into the pond, Splash! Silence again.

Tanka A Tanka is a poem that is very similar to a haiku. It is made up of 5 verses. The first line has 5 syllables, the second verse has 7 syllables, the third verse has 5 syllables, the fourth verse has 7 syllables, and the fifth verse has 7 syllables. Here is an example of a Tanka from Shadow Poetry: A cool wind blows in With a blanket of silence. Straining to listen For those first few drops of rain, The storm begins in earnest.

Kanshi A Kanshi is poetry written in Chinese by Japanese poets. In Japanese Kanshi means Chinese poetry. Here is an example of a Kanshi poem that has been translated: So many cliffs, jade blue to scour the sky, I've rambled, years uncounted, brushing aside the clouds, to seek to ask the Ancient Way, or maybe leaned against a tree to listen to a stream flow. Among sun-warmed blossoms, the blue ox sleeps. In the tall pines, the white crane naps. Words came to me, with the river sunset: alone, I came down, through the cold mist.

Collaborative Verse A collaborative verse poem is also known as a Regna. This kind of poetry has the exact same formatting as a Tanka but in a collaborative verse one person writes the first three lines/verses and another person writes the last 2 lines/verses. Here is an example of a collaborative verse: Despite some snow The base of the hills spreads with haze The twilight scene Where the waters flow afar The village glows with sweet plumb flowers

Art collections by Daphne Chau Japanese Art is very well known, as shown in the Art Collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum. The Metropolitan Museum of Art had a great variety of Ancient Japanese artifacts, from double edged blades, known as kens, to ink and color paintings of Japanese scenery. Japanese art was made by the high level artisans of Ancient Japan, and the art was taken months, maybe years to complete.

Examples of art This is an example of Japanese painting, the View of Amanohashidate, shows a bird’s eye view of a sandbar in the Tango Province of Japan. This painting took approximately a year and a half to complete. Another example would be the Taishakuten, a mask. It was made in the Heian period of time, and it depicts the face of a buddha with his crown. This piece took only 2 months to complete.

THE END!!!!! We hope you like it, 

Art and Beauty in Japan