This paper examines the relationship between learning and practice, rule and invention, in Japanese art. Drawing on Chinese precedent, learning through the close observation of conventional models for technical mastery or stylistic construction, underpinned training in almost all of the arts and crafts in Japan. The practice of building individually inventive projects was usually developed only after the successful completion of long apprenticeships in studio settings. The pictorial engagements of Edo, today's Tokyo, form the principal focus for this examination of (...) how individually forged learning pathways developed within the formal constraints of Tokugawa period art-training arrangements. This paper... (shrink)

How was creativity understood in the distinctive artistic practices of eighteenth-century Japan? How were its artists able to maintain consistently inventive creative pathways over extended periods? Artistic creativity is sometimes assumed to derive from chance, opportune, or accidental events. For early Western creativity theorists like Graham Wallas,1 Alex Osborn,2 or Robert Fritz 3 such fortunate moments of illumination engendered creative innovation. The invention of synthetic dyes,4 Japanese haboku “splashed ink painting,” or Jackson Pollock’s spatters of paint all involved elements of (...) chance. Given favorable conditions and alert minds, serendipity can contribute to... (shrink)