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Sesshū: The Master Painter Who Brought Chinese Styles to Japan
Sesshū (1420–ca. 1506) was a Japanese Zen monk and ink painting master. He was active around the same time as the Chinese Southern School painter Shen Zhou (1427–1509) and the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510). Amid the many works he produced in a variety of styles, his masterful late painting of Amanohashidate, completed with light brushstrokes like a preparatory sketch, gives a bird's eye view of the picturesque sandbar whose name can be rendered as 'Bridge to Heaven.' Amanohashidatezu (Picture of Amanohashidate), a national treasure. (Courtesy Kyoto National Museum) By contrast, the winter section of his Autumn and Winter Landscapes is a scene impossible in reality, semi-abstract in its overlapping rocks with strong outlines. Shūtō sansuizu (Autumn and Winter Landscapes), a national treasure. Autumn is on the right and winter on the left. (Courtesy Tokyo National Museum) Travel in China Born in what is now Sōja in Okayama Prefecture, Sesshū was raised from a young age at the temple of Hōfukuji and became a monk. After traveling to Kyoto, he studied under another monk and painter called Shūbun at the major temple of Shōkokuji. While his talent was recognized to some extent, his rough, powerful style did not match the delicate tastes of Kyoto intellectuals. Feeling himself at an impasse, in his mid-thirties Sesshū took a position under the daimyō Ōuchi Masahiro, whose territories extended over today's prefectures of Yamaguchi, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka. Masahiro was one of the country's leading daimyō, and his control of the port city Hakata brought him huge profits from trade with China and Korea. Imports included expensive paintings and artworks known as karamono (literally, 'Chinese goods'), which were quite different from the art that Sesshū had seen in Kyoto. As he studied from them, his admiration grew for their authenticity. Masahiro valued Sesshū not only for his painting but also as one of his representatives. When Sesshū was in his forties, Masahiro chose him as an adviser to Keian Genju, a Zen priest who headed the Ōuchi delegation of a trade and diplomacy mission to China. The three arts of poetry, calligraphy, and painting were of central importance to cultured Chinese, and therefore essential to diplomacy and communication, whether as presents, part of entertainment, or to lighten the mood. Another important job for Sesshū meant taking on the equivalent role of a photographer today, depicting the Chinese scenery and people's appearance to convey back to Japan. He must also have selected Chinese paintings to bring home. Sesshū made great progress as an artist over the years he spent in China. When the delegation had an audience with the emperor, there were always first-rate paintings on display, and he could experience many different styles when purchasing artworks. At that time, the Zhe school was in fashion; it was characterized by a rough, energetic style, and allowed for idiosyncratic use of space. This was a good fit for Sesshū's talents, and he picked up techniques from the source like cotton soaking up water. His Landscapes of Four Seasons , completed as a commission while he was in China, has a tight composition that cannot be found in Japanese painting of the era. Sesshū was the only Japanese painter of his time to be recognized in China. Spring (right) and summer (left) from Shiki sansuizu (Landscapes of Four Seasons). (Courtesy Tokyo National Museum) Autumn (right) and winter (left) from Shiki sansuizu (Landscapes of Four Seasons). (Courtesy Tokyo National Museum) At the same time, Sesshū mastered realistic sketching of scenery by studying Chinese artworks. His Picture Scroll of Chinese Scenes , painted on the way back from what is now called Beijing, is a work of high quality that conveys a sense of having faithfully reproduced the landscapes he saw on his travels. Tōdo shōkei zukan (Picture Scroll of Chinese Scenes). (Courtesy Kyoto National Museum) Developing His Style While other artists went to China as part of delegations, they did not so consciously study and absorb the styles of painting they encountered. Some 26 years after returning to Japan, Sesshū was in his seventies when he wrote recollections on a landscape scroll, describing how he had learned artistic techniques from Li Zai in China and Shūbun in Japan. There are no similar long pieces written directly by other Japanese artists of the period. Haboku sansuizu (Broken Ink Landscape), a national treasure. (Courtesy Tokyo National Museum) As Sesshū writes in these reminiscences, while he adapted to Japan after his return, he also opened up his own artistic world. Like someone ordering a Cézanne-influenced work today, in Japan at that time, painters might be asked to create a work in the style of a particular popular Chinese artist, such as Xia Gui, a court painter active in the thirteenth century. Sesshū produced 12 paintings in the style of six famous Chinese artists, as we know from copies by painters in the Kanō school. It was a way of showing patrons what he could do, although he added his own individual touches, so it is clear from a glance that they are by Sesshū. His Autumn and Winter Landscapes and Broken Ink Landscape were developed based on pieces by Xia Gui and Yu Jian. Copies by Kanō Tsunenobu of paintings by Sesshū. Names of the Chinese artists he was imitating appear in the bottom right of each, from left to right: Xia Gui, Liang Kai, and Yu Jian. (Courtesy Tokyo National Museum) Growing Reputation The era helped Sesshū rise to prominence. When he returned to Japan in 1469, the country was in the midst of the Ōnin War of 1467–77. Japan's daimyō split into two armies, taking Kyoto as their battlefield, and the decade-plus of conflict became a major historic turning point. The daimyō who had previously lived in Kyoto, enjoying the capital's culture, returned to their domains after the war was over, where they had to provide their own culture locally. This led to a number of regional 'little Kyotos' arising. Yamaguchi was a classic example, and as its leading painter, Sesshū received many orders not only from the Ōuchi clan, but also from other samurai and monks, sometimes traveling to create artworks. Notably, Sesshū went on a major trip in 1481 at Masahiro's order, trekking from what is now Gifu Prefecture to the Noto Peninsula. He met with governors and other local leaders to convey Masahiro's wishes and also communicated with monks to gather information. His stories of experiences in China and the ink paintings he created on his travels won admiration and his reputation spread. He also made sketches of the places he visited, and in providing both these and the information he gleaned, he was important as Masahiro's 'eyes and ears.' Sesshū's own style, unbound by his Chinese influences, began to be recognized. A work like Autumn and Winter Landscapes followed Xia Gui, but the brushstrokes and composition were all Sesshū's own. A 16-meter scroll completed in his late sixties was a definitive example of Sesshū's style. This monumental work, presented to Masahiro, is filled with every imaginable landscape motif as it depicts the passing of the four seasons. The scroll's rendering of an idealized world and the eternal cycle of time even inspires a religious feeling transcending the laws of nature. While this is also based on a picture by Xia Gui, the rocks and trees are in the Chinese painter's manner, but the landscape is original with Sesshū. It would later become a kind of 'bible' for landscape paintings, and many artists would copy it. Detail from Sansui chōkan (Long Landscape Scroll), a national treasure. (Courtesy Mohri Museum) Building Originality In his seventies, Sesshū painted Eka danpizu (Picture of Huike Cutting Off His Arm), based on a Buddhist legend. Although it is an ordinary ink painting, Bodhidharma's clothes are rendered in dynamic brushstrokes with an unchanging thickness recalling that of a marker pen. In contemporary terms, the face has a graphic appeal, almost like that of a cartoon character. The picture takes inspiration from Minchō, another artist monk who was active in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with Sesshū incorporating his own 'Zen' in a form of expression that transcends what is considered common sense in ink painting. In his eighties, Sesshū traveled to Amanohashidate in what is now the north of Kyoto Prefecture; this was his last long 'business trip.' His picture of what is traditionally considered to be one of Japan's Three Scenic Views seems to be copied from nature, but there is actually no location from which it appears like this. Sesshū based his sketches on what he saw at ground level, creating a scene from an imaginary viewpoint. In some respects, it is very accurate; a similar landscape can be seen by helicopter today. While it is a common perspective today, among his Japanese contemporaries only Sesshū painted a bird's eye view. This work also faithfully reproduces holy Buddhist and Shintō sites, and recalls Hanghzhou's West Lake in China. In fusing Japanese and Chinese painting traditions, it can be seen as a culmination of Sesshū's work in a different sense than his Long Landscape Scroll . After this, he returned to Yamaguchi, which was where he probably was when he died around 1506. Sesshū's genius lies in how he continued to construct new worlds rather than remaining in any particular style. Among his portraits, Picture of Plum Blossoms and Jurōjin , featuring one of the seven gods of fortune, has a strong Chinese atmosphere, while Portrait of Masuda Kanetaka is in the Japanese tradition, but with a greater realism. Yet he was not simply painting at a whim. While following the styles of his predecessors, he developed his own distinctive approach. This is in the East Asian tradition of both learning from the past and bringing forth new ideas, to slowly build toward originality. Sesshū succeeded brilliantly at doing so. Baika jurōzu (Picture of Plum Blossoms and Jurōjin), at left (Courtesy Tokyo National Museum), and Masuda Kanetakazō (Portrait of Masuda Kanetaka) (Courtesy Sesshū Memorial Museum). Sesshū was also highly influential on later Japanese painters, including those active in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries like the Kyoto artist Hasegawa Tōhaku, who called himself Sesshū V, and Unkoku Tōgan, who started a school of painting in Yamaguchi. The Kanō school, which was backed by the Tokugawa shogunate to become dominant in Japanese art, revered Sesshū as the originator of Chinese-style painting in Japan, with Kanō Tan'yū in particular following him in ink painting. Indeed, no Japanese through history producing an ink painting landscape could possibly be unaware of Sesshū, who is rightly considered a gasei , a 'saint of painting.' (Originally published in Japanese on March 25, 2025. Banner image created based on Sesshū gazō [Portrait of Sesshū] by Tokuriki Zensetsu. Courtesy Tokyo National Museum.)
Indian Express
27-04-2025
- Indian Express
QR codes: How a Japanese engineer's invention changed the world
When you enter a restaurant and ask for the menu, chances are you are told to scan a QR code with your phone to view and order food and drinks – no paper menu needed. Similarly, many people now scan a QR code daily to buy fish and vegetables from a local shop. Since the pandemic, QR codes have popped up everywhere: on payment apps, coconut water carts, and even billboards. They have become a signature of our digital lives, especially in India. But have you ever wondered where this pixelated black-and-white square comes from? Masahiro was inspired by the board game Go and invented the black-and-white data square now used by millions of people every day. (Image credit: Desno Wave) The story starts in Japan. It was 1994 and Masahiro Hara, who was working at Denso Wave, a Toyota car-parts subsidiary, got the idea to create the QR code. Hara, a lead in automobile manufacturing, was playing the ancient strategy game Go at work when he noticed the arrangement of the black and white stones on the board. The concept of placing black and white dots on a grid sparked the idea behind the QR Code, which stands for 'Quick Response Code'. Before QR codes In the early 1990s, barcode scanning wasn't new – it was already being used in Japan and other parts of the world. Barcode technology was first patented in 1949 by Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver. Their patent described the basic structure of using pairs of lines to represent numbers – a method still used today. Interestingly, the first barcode didn't include vertical lines at all; instead, it used a series of concentric circles. Barcodes had been used to track parts, but the system was inefficient. (Image credit: Denso Wave) Woodland and Silver initially struggled to get companies interested in their invention. But that changed in the 1960s, when engineer and physicist Theodore H Maiman built the first working laser, making it possible to quickly decode a barcode's line patterns. The first official barcodes soon began to be adopted in some industries. However, a major issue emerged: different stores in the US launched barcode pilot projects using vastly different types of barcode symbols. By the late 1960s, grocery stores across the US were facing challenges such as rising labour costs and difficulties in tracking inventory. Barcodes were seen as the ideal solution to automate the process – but only if everyone in the industry agreed to use the same symbol. To address this, the industry formed an ad hoc committee in the early 1970s to develop a workable barcode system. This committee created the Universal Product Code (UPC), which was designed to be compatible with different types of barcode symbols. Hara and his team basically transformed a one-dimensional barcode into a compact, two-dimensional grid that could be read swiftly — QR stands for 'quick response.' (Image credit: Denso Wave) The committee then had to choose a standard symbol. They invited submissions from various companies, narrowed the list down to seven finalists, and after three years of deliberation, chose IBM 's design. The IBM symbol has become synonymous with the word 'barcode'. It became the industry standard, and the very first UPC barcode was scanned at a grocery store in Troy, Ohio, on June 26, 1974. Limitations of barcodes Hara knew the standard UPC barcode was far from perfect and had several limitations. These barcodes were one-dimensional, encoding information horizontally through the width and spacing of vertical lines. One major issue was that if part of the barcode was torn or damaged, the machine couldn't read it. Another limitation was that each barcode could hold only about 20 characters of data. The credit of revival of QR codes goes to China. At that time in Japan, the automotive industry was going through a transitional phase. Hara had been receiving requests from field workers to develop a better way to scan inventories. A single box of components often carried as many as 10 barcodes that had to be scanned individually. There was a clear need for a less labour-intensive method to store more information. Hara wanted to change that. He and his team set out to solve the problem by creating a 'better barcode' that could efficiently track automobiles and auto parts during manufacturing. Hara eventually came up with the concept of the QR code, which could decode up to 10 times faster than its predecessors and store approximately 7,000 characters. He developed a two-dimensional barcode in the shape of a square, which addressed the issue of limited data capacity. However, Hara faced early challenges with the new 2D barcode design. When barcodes were printed alongside other text, scanning machines often failed to detect them, making the square barcodes impractical. One day, while looking out a subway window on his way to work, Hara noticed how skyscrapers stood out distinctly from the surrounding landscape. This observation helped him find out a way to make square barcodes visually stand out from text. After a lot of iterations, he came up with the idea of embedding three small squares – each with a specific black-to-white ratio – at the corners of the barcode. This design worked, and scanners could recognise and read the code, regardless of its orientation. Not only that, the QR code designed by Hara could still be read even if it was smudged or partially damaged. ISO certification Part of the reason why QR technology worked so well was that its two-dimensional design allowed more data to be accessed by optical scanners at any given time. The code could also be scanned from a variety of angles and distances. This was especially useful on assembly lines and worked well for machine parts – many of which had unique and different shapes. A QR code is characterised by a two-dimensional pattern of square black and white dots. (Image credit: Denso Wave) Since Hara worked for a car components manufacturer, the QR code was originally designed with the automobile industry in mind. Japan's leading carmaker, Toyota, showed interest in Hara's QR code and adopted it in its factories – a testament to the technology's potential and its ability to improve efficiency in the manufacturing process. But it was the beginning of something much bigger. Not even Hara could have predicted that his invention would not only transform industries but also create entirely new segments and markets. QR codes began to be widely adopted when Hara's employer, Denso Wave, made the technology freely available to the public without charging licensing fees, despite holding the patents. A new wave of adoption began when the QR code received ISO certification in Japan in 2000, and the technology started to find its way into everyday life. New lease of life By 2012, many began to question whether QR technology was dead or still had life left. Businesses weren't using QR codes as widely as initially projected. In fact, QR codes were even called 'dead'. However, in China, the QR code found a new lease of life, thanks to the smartphone boom that had begun in the country. QR codes started to be used for making mobile payments, accessing key services, claiming discounts, and enabling entirely new apps and services to be built. WeChat is a prime example of how the app utilised QR codes and created new services and features around them. One of the major advantages of the QR code is their vast data storage capabilities. (Image credit: NPCI) As smartphones gained popularity, businesses found new ways to take advantage of the phone's cameras, making the QR code an underlying technology behind many popular and mainstream apps and services. What had been successfully implemented in China in the early 2010s was then introduced elsewhere, including in India, during the height of the pandemic. Local businesses began to adopt QR codes, allowing users to simply scan them with their phone camera to access a new service or website. However, what many hadn't anticipated in India was how QR codes could introduce digital payments to over a billion people. Story continues below this ad UPI revolution With the launch of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), an infrastructure created by the country's top payments processor, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), mobile apps built on the UPI infrastructure could securely access multiple bank accounts and merge services such as making digital payments and peer-to-peer money transfers in real time. Today, UPI is one of the most dominant methods of digital payment in India. UPI transactions hit Rs 24.77 trillion in value and 19.78 billion in volume in March 2025, showcasing how cashless payments using QR codes have caught on in India. India is taking a lead in cash-less payments, thanks to UPI. Yes, QR codes are everywhere, but ironically, Japan – where the QR code was invented – has been left behind. In Japan, cash is still king, and the country is still warming up to the idea of cashless payments and QR codes. Consumers and businesses are reluctant to change, even as other countries are already on the path to becoming cashless societies. However, Covid-19 led to a push toward contactless solutions, including QR codes in Japan. The government also began promoting cashless initiatives by offering incentives to businesses and consumers.
