Love, Fight, Feast: The Art of Storytelling in Japan

Khanh Trinh

Softcover | 27.94 x 3.81 x 24.13 cm | 328 pp

Scheidegger & Spiess | 2021 | 9783039420247

This is a uniquely comprehensive survey of Japanese narrative art (Monogatari-e, or story pictures) across eight centuries and demonstrates the entire range of artistic media and techniques used for this type of Japanese art. The book features some 100 rarely or never before published art works, including paintings, woodblock prints, illustrated woodblock-printed books, lacquer and metal objects, porcelain, and textiles.

The use of pictures to communicate a story has a long tradition in Japanese culture that dates back more than a thousand years. Such narrative illustrations draw on Buddhist texts, classic literature, poetry, and theatrical scenes to create rich visual imagery realised in a wide range of media and format. Quotations from and allusions to heroic epics and romances were disseminated through exquisite paintings, woodblock prints, and in pieces of applied arts such as lacquer ware or ceramics, thus becoming anchored in the collective consciousness. As story-telling art found expression in a variety of materialities, it became an integral part of daily life. A fascinating narrative space evolved that combined artistic excellence and aesthetic pleasure.

Love, Fight, Feast features some one hundred paintings, woodblock prints, illustrated woodblock-printed books, as well as lacquer and metal objects, porcelain, and textiles from the 13th to the 20th century, alongside scholarly essays on a range of aspects of Japanese narrative art. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the renowned Museum Rietberg in Zurich, the book offers a unique survey of the multifaceted, colourful, and imaginative world of Japanese narrative art across eight centuries.