Aviman Galit - Zen paintings in Edo Japan (1600-1868): playfulness and freedom in the artwork of Hakuin Ekaku and Sengai Gibon

1. COLOR PLATES
2. BLACK AND WHITE FIGURES
   1. 2 An Independent Artistic Language
   2. 3 Liberation from Rules
   3. 4 Letting Go of Common Conceptions
   4. 5 Emancipation from Social Conventions
   5. 6 Humor as an Expression of Freedom

This is a wonderful opportunity for me to express my gratitude to all those people who helped me with making this book possible.

I would like to thank Yad Hanadiv-Rothschild Fellowships 20102011 for funding my postdoctoral studies at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, where I dedicated most of my time to work on the book. A special thanks to Yukio Lippit, my host professor at Harvard, for his professional advice and for inviting me into such a wonderful environment for study and research. I would also like to thank Theodore J. Gilman, Executive Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute and the Assistant Director, Stacie Matsumoto, for providing me and my family the opportunity to stay at the Edwin O. Reischauer house, where I could quietly work on my book in Reischauer's own office, complete with beautiful view and relaxed atmosphere.

I would like to extend my gratitude also to the Japan Foundation Fellowship Program for supporting my research in 2012 at the International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism at Hanazono Univeristy (IRIZ). I owe a special thanks to Yoshizawa Katsuhiro, who invited me to take part in his seminars and use the library facilities at Hanazono. I would also like to thank Yoshizawa and his assistant, Tomimasu Kentaro, for their great assistance in obtaining permission to use some of Hakuin's images.

My deepest gratitude goes to my advisor, Izumi Takeo, who served as my supervisor during my MA studies at Kyoto University in Japan, continued to guide me as a second supervisor during my PhD, and was always ready and willing to provide help and support. I owe deep gratitude also to Katrin Kogman-Appel, who was my primary PhD advisor and who guided me through my studies at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

I would like to express a special thanks to my friend James Mark Shields, for professionally editing my book, for his helpful advice, and most of all for his friendship.

And to all my friends and colleagues who were there for the advice and support at different stages of my research: Jean-Sebastien Cluzel, Mori Toshiko, Aono Tomusuke, Leigh Chipman, Sara Offenberg, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, and Daniel Unger.

Finally, I would like to thank my extended family with special thanks in particular to my beloved children and husband, for being who they are.

This book explores the free attitude and the playfulness reflected in the artwork of the two prominent Japanese Zen monk-painters from the Edo period (16001868)Hakuin Ekaku (16851768) and Sengai Gibon (17501837). The particular evolution of Zen paintings during the Edo period, including the artwork of Hakuin and Sengai, is usually referred to as Zenga ; lit. Zen paintings). These paintings are in fact part of a long tradition of Zen ink painting that began following the importation of Zen Buddhism from China at the beginning of the Kamakura period (11851333). Zenga is usually referred to as the revival of the early Zen painting of the Kamakura and early Muromachi periods (13331573), though in some aspects Zenga differs from those paintings, particularly from those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The free attitude reflected in the paintings is one of the qualities that distinguish Zenga from Zen paintings of earlier periods. This book strives to understand the nature of this particular expression and to identify its sources, focusing on the lives of the monk-painters and their artwork. The emphasis is on the powerful interaction and the close collaboration that exists between words and images in the paintings.