Zen Ancient Japanese Ink Painting Effect

Historically, Chinese art had a profound and extensive impact on the establishment and development of the Japanese aesthetics and artistic style, and became implanted in the Japanese artist’s aesthetic thinking. Chinese ink painting was introduced to Japan before the Kamakura period (1185-1333). However, a lot of ink painting works, the most of which were created by Xia Gui, Liang Kai, Mu Xi and other artists, were brought from China to Japan during the Kamakura period. During the Muromachi period (1336-1573), they were introduced to Japan accompanied by Zen Buddhism of the Song Dynasty."Five Mountains and Ten Temples", on which Japanese culture was based, were established. Ink painting development dominated the trend with the help of political forces. At that time works of painter Mu Xi of the Southern Song Dynasty had the greatest impact on Japan. Surprisingly, Mu Xi’s works received little attention in China, but they had an extremely high reputation in Japan and were said to have a pioneering role in the history of Japanese painting. The impact of Mu Xi and his ink paintings at the time led to the development of Japanese ink painting. It can be said that the Japanese ink painting was introduced into Japan accompanied by Zen Buddhism and had reached its peak during the Edo period after the development during the Muromachi and Momoyama periods since the Kamakura period.Especially Chinese paintings represented by Mu Xi of the Song and Yuan dynasties inspired the transformation of Japanese painting from the art form of "picture scroll" to "poetry scroll". During that period early Japanese ink painters largely imitated Mu Xi’s works, so this kind of painting style was called "monk style" or "Mu Xi style". Hasegawa Tohaku was one of the unique painters. Seen from his works, Japanese ink painting introduced from China had become independent ink painting. Therefore, he also played an important role in the development of Japanese painting. Mu Xi is a Zen monk, and his simple picture with Zen style fit the aesthetic image of meditators."Zen painting", a new form of painting, came into being. Even the simple and quaint aesthetic consciousness of the Japanese culture also came from the feelings of ink painting. Zen thinking as one of the important aesthetic senses of Japanese art, precisely because of the change in the ideas, gave birth to Japan’s unique sense of beauty.