Winter Landscape, Chō Kōran

Archive Label 2003:
Kōran was more highly educated and played a more active role in politics as well as in literati activities than was usual for a woman in nineteenth century Japan. She studied the Chinese classics with a great uncle and poetry with her future husband Yanagawa Seigan (see calligraphy to the right), who ran a private Confucian academy in the small town of Ogaki in Gifu prefecture. In the 1850s, she and Seigan became deeply involved in a loyalist movement that was seeking to restore real power to the emperor at the expense of the ruling Tokugawa regime. For these activities, Ko-ran spent six months in prison. Late in life, enjoying a high reputation for her poetry and painting, Kōran opened a school for women.

In this painting, produced during a period of intense political turmoil, Kōran has created an icy landscape remote from the world of politics. A lone scholar starts the steep ascent to a chill pavilion high above the gorge. The inscription describes the landscape and alludes to the snowy landscapes of the eighth-century Chinese poet and painter Wang Wei.

Wind cuts through the jade forests and silvery peaks,
Rich lustre shines to the limits of nature’s beauty.
[Wang] Ziyu turning back his boat and [Meng] Huoran on his travels—
Together they enter a scene worthy of Wang Wei.