Bravery, drunkenness and murder are vividly represented at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery where a small but theatrical exhibition focuses on one of Japan’s best known legends. “The Tale of Shuten Doji” revolves around the valiant quest of a giant who turns into a vengeful red demon after slurping sake.
This exhibit presents the adventure story through artwork produced during Japans Edo period (1615-1868). This era is named after the city of Edo — now called Tokyo — when the Tokugawa shogunate, or feudal leaders, ruled Japan from this urban center.
The political stability under these commanders enabled new artistic styles to develop in highly decorated screens, scrolls and woodblock prints. As reflected in the exhibit, artists used the folk tale of Shuten Doji as an opportunity to combine traditional landscapes with monstrous creatures and violent battles to dramatic effect.
Even today, the tale has all the makings of a good action movie. Set in medieval times, around the year 1000, it starts with the news of young women from the imperial capital of Kyoto being abducted and eaten by Shuten Doji (Drunken Boy) and his goblin henchmen.
To destroy the evildoers, the emperor orders a group of samurai to track them down in the nearby mountains. The hero of these warriors, Minamoto Yorimitsu, or Raiko, tricks the giant into drinking a sake potion and beheads him before returning home in triumph.
By focusing on a single story, the exhibit allows the viewer to compare the different formats and techniques developed by Japanese artists during the Edo period.
Some of their paintings use cinematiclike arrangements to move the action through time and space. Scenes of temples, battles and parades are separated by golden clouds to create effects akin to camera zooms and dissolves.
Labels help the visitor understand how to view the scrolls and screens from right to left so that the narrative unfolds as intended.
The story of Shuten Doji belongs to a Japanese genre known as otogi zoshi, or companion tales, written for entertainment and moral edification. Its lesson of a cunning warrior triumphing over evil had a particular appeal for the Edo period’s ruling shoguns who identified with the hero Raiko.
The exhibit reveals how the story was portrayed for both aristocrats and the new merchant class of the era. On display are lavish, hand-painted scrolls as well as more modest, woodblock-printed books, including a volume of Japanese children’s stories in English. One trio of brightly colored silk scrolls, painted by artist Kano Shoun around 1700, incorporates calligraphy by an imperial prince.
The show’s best known artist is Katsushika Hokusai, whose woodblock prints of Mount Fuji and cresting ocean waves are familiar to Westerners from T-shirts and coffee mugs. Here, Hokusai’s small book illustration, picturing the monster’s head hovering above the hero, is forgettable in comparison to the larger artworks in the show.
A 12-foot-wide pairing of screens presents the narrative of the folk tale in an easily digestible, but impressive format. The episodes begin in the emperor’s palace, move across the top to the rooms of the monsters castle and end along the bottom with the samurais return to Kyoto. The artist cleverly uses the divide between the two screens to show the warriors, who are disguised as Buddhist priests, moving up through a mountain pass and down the other side.
One of the most striking scrolls pictures a human Shuten Doji on a mountainside in the tranquil moments before Raiko enters the scene. He is surrounded by his female captives and trees full of cherry blossoms, which are seen by the Japanese as representing the brevity of human life.
Painted in the early 1800s by artist Suzuki Kiitsu, the landscape is full of playful details. The ogre sits on a tiger skin, its tail still intact, before a trussed rabbit and bird, while one of the women washes a kimono in a stream.
For sheer gore, a grouping of 13 fan-shaped sketches satisfies with grisly details absent from the more elegant scroll paintings. One scene portrays Shuten Doji eating his human prey, while others show dead maidens hanging from trees and baskets full of the victims body parts.
One of the drawings of the monster is separated from the rest and shown at the beginning of the exhibit. It depicts Raiko being attacked by Shuten Dojis severed red head after the monster has been killed. The samurai is protected by a magic helmet, given to him by three Shinto gods who appear in human form to guide and protect the warrior on his journey.
Such textless versions of the folk tale could be understood by rich and poor alike. These graphic scenes helped establish the Japanese tradition of vivid storytelling that continues today through popular comics and animated films.
WHAT: The Tale of Shuten Doji
WHERE: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1050 Independence Ave. SW
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily; through Sept. 20
ADMISSION: Free
PHONE: 202/633-1000
WEB SITE: www.asia.si.edu
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