Miyamoto Musashi (宮本武蔵): the swordsman as ink painter
Miyamoto Musashi (宮本武蔵, 1584–1645) is known far beyond Japan as a swordsman, founder of the two-sword technique Niten Ichi-ryū, and author of the Gorin no sho. Less well known is that he was also a serious ink painter. As a painter he used the artist name Niten (二天), and also Niten Dōraku. That Musashi painted is attested early: the Kaijō monogatari, already written in 1666 — 21 years after his death — reports on it.
The Kumamoto years 1640 to 1645
Musashi's pictorial work did not emerge over the course of a lifetime but concentrated in his last five years, which he spent in Kumamoto. During this time he hardly appeared as a fighter anymore; painting, writing, and the elaboration of his teaching coincided. Musashi did not go through training at any of the established painting schools. His pictorial conception developed outside those school contexts that otherwise dominated the painting of his time.
Surviving works: shrike, cormorant, and Bodhidharma
Of the surviving ink works, several are today classified as Important Cultural Property. The best known is the Shrike on a Dead Branch (枯木鳴鵙図), held in the Kubosō Memorial Museum in Izumi: a bird on a bare, vertically rising branch, set down with a few decisive strokes and much empty ground. Also listed as Important Cultural Property is the cormorant depiction (鵜図). Further works — two Bodhidharma paintings and a depiction of wild geese in the reeds — are held in the Eisei Bunko collection, and a wild horse in the Matsui collection.
Reduction as principle: Musashi's suibokuga
Musashi's painting is suibokuga in the strictest sense: ink on paper, no color, no narrative accessory. Characteristic is the extreme economy of means — a branch, a bird, nothing else. The stroke is not corrected and not reworked; it either sits or it does not. That this manner of painting is readily connected with his swordsmanship teaching is understandable, even though Musashi himself never spelled out this connection in his writings.
Reproductions after works in museum collections
Musashi's surviving ink works are held as Important Cultural Property in Japanese museums and collections and do not reach the market. What is accessible are prints after these compositions, as well as kakemono created in the spirit of his repertoire of motifs — the shrike on a dead branch, the cormorant, the bird on a branch. Such sheets can be recognized by the screen pattern of the print or by the brushwork of a later painter, and are described accordingly. For the tokonoma they have their own appeal: the compositions live from a few strokes and much empty ground, and for this reason work well even in the format of a reproduction.
