Sakai Sanryō (酒井三良): Painter of the Snow Country
Sakai Sanryō (酒井三良, 1897–1969) was a Japanese Nihonga painter. He came from Mishima in Ōnuma District in Fukushima Prefecture – a region in the mountainous area of Aizu, where winters are long and snow lies meters deep. This origin remained the defining theme of his work.
The Path via the Kokuga Exhibition and Inten
Sanryō studied under Bannai Seiran, a painter from the same region. In 1919, one of his works was accepted at the second exhibition of the Kokuga Sōsaku Kyōkai – a Kyoto-based association that had formed in opposition to the academic establishment. In 1921 followed acceptance at the eighth Inten, the exhibition of the Nihon Bijutsuin. In 1924 he became a member of the institution and from then on was counted among its leading painters.
Snow, Village, and Memory
Sanryō's landscapes show no sublime views, but rather life in a harsh region: the snow hut, the village under the weight of snow, the work of winter. His best-known work is titled Kamakura, named after the hut built of snow in which children in northern Japan celebrate the New Year festival. What carries these paintings is not depiction, but retrospection – he painted them mostly from a distance, in memory of the landscape of his childhood.
Water and Mist as Pictorial Means
Alongside the snow paintings stands the water landscape. A waterfall in mist requires the painter to depict two states of the same substance at once: the plunging mass and the haze into which it dissolves. This is resolved through the picture ground, which remains unpainted at the decisive points, not painting the mist but omitting it. Such hanging scrolls are not bound to a season and are suited for year-round use in the tokonoma.
