Happy Improvisations on a Riverboat Journey

This scroll records a journey in spring 1767 down the Yodo River from Kyoto to Osaka enjoyed by Jakuchū, one of the most inventive artists of the Edo period, and his friend and mentor Daiten Kenjō (1719–1801), a Zen monk. According to Daitens inscription at the end of the scroll, the two friends captured the scenery with his own short, impromptu poems and with Jakuchūs impressionistic sketches. Adopting an aesthetic stance honored for centuries among Chinese literati artists, he tells that they worked as the spirit moved them without care for the result. While the image of the river landscape retains the spontaneous quality of the casual sketch, its production in a format that simulated ink rubbings used to take impressions of calligraphic texts carved on stones in China was highly ingenious and paid homage to the Sinophile taste of Daitens circle. In his first venture into this unprecedented mode, Jakuchū employed the unusual medium to create the grainy effects of a rock surface in combination with the velvety black and pure white of ink intaglio for a hauntingly lovely effect.