A World of Edo Art

Japan is an island nation surrounded by the sea. For centuries, its people have depended on the bounty of the ocean for protein and other nutrients. Edo painters depicted aquatic creatures in their native habitats, just as they did their other natural subjects. But water is translucent and usually transparent, a difficult element to convincingly render in paintings. Artists took up this challenge by innovating a range of techniques to conjure the illusion of fish swimming in water. 

Deftly deploying empty space, yohaku, to suggest the depth and expanse of watery realms, they positioned tufts of seaweed, faint washes, and supple strokes suggesting rippling currents. But more than any artful stratagem, it is the fish themselves, painted with the precision of natural science, propelled by powerful muscles, and liberated from the pull of gravity, that persuade us they are living creatures.