The Moon inquires/Myself and my past/I avert its gaze and look down/This evening

Ōtagaki Rengetsu

As a source of income, the poet Ōtagaki Rengetsu (late Edo-Meiji Period, 1791-1875) crafted hand-sculpted pottery with her waka poems inscribed with a nail. Imitations of her work were already common as her works were popular souvenirs among Kyoto’s art connoisseurs.

One day, a merchant attempting to make an imitation piece visited and confided to Rengetsu, “I can’t seem to get the carvings of the words right.” In response, it is said that Rengetsu replied, “My pleasure,” directly incising onto the merchant’s ceramic ware, in addition to gifting them with an original to use as a model.

This anecdote, cited by Yanagi Sōetsu in his essay “On Imitation,” is not necessarily untrue*1. In a recent excavation at Shōgoin-mura where the poet reportedly lived, imitation Rengetsu ware by an individual named Tamaki Ryōsai was discovered amidst authentic pieces*2. Though distinct from most imitations as Ryōsai’s ceramics were carved with his poems and directly instructed by Rengetsu, they still lack the rustic charm of Rengetsu-ware.

If so, then how does one properly imitate her work? In the first part of his anecdote about Rengetsu, Yanagi quotes Shōji Hamada as saying, “Imitations are usually worse than the originals because most of them only attend to the result and not to their causal process.”

When I look at Haruka Matsumoto’s work, I am reminded of Hamada’s quote. Matsumoto, who also works as a courtroom artist, is interested in the underlying cause of a crime instead of the crime itself. Visiting the crime scene as an observer, she creates lithographs of the fragmented reality she witnesses. On the other hand, Yuta Nakamura, who is interested in modern Japanese art and craftwork, gathers historical artifacts and documentation to sculpt clay while imagining the causes of such circumstantial evidence. His handling of these small objects reanimates the past from which they emerged.

By connecting and examining a series of events (the excavated Tamaki Ryōsai-ware, a roundtable discussion on imitation by a Mingei circle, Yagi Kazuo’s theory on Nibansha and Munemaro Ishiguro, and the forged print scandal), these two artists—who feel as if Rengetsu herself is asking them about imitation—seek to demonstrate an exact contemporary form of imitation without averting their gazes.

1: Yanagi Sōetsu “On Imitation,” Selected Works on Religion, 1960

2: Yutaka Chiba “On Imitation Ceramics of Rengetsu-ware,” Annual Report on the Research and Investigation of Kyoto University Archaeological Sites, 2018