The area around Tatsumi Bridge in Gion, Kyoto, is nowadays a popular spot for couples, including many from abroad, to pose for photographs. A nearby commemorative stone bears the inscription of a poem by Yoshii Isamu, “No matter what they say / I love Gion / Even in my sleep / The sound of water / Flows beneath my pillow.” It marks the location of the former tea house “Daitomo,” owned by the geisha Isoda Taka (who had a reputation as a “literati geisha” because of her connections to the world of art and culture). In the old days, before the forced evacuations during the war, this area was one of Kyoto’s centers of tea houses and elegant dining, with one establishment lining up next to the other. The painter Yokoyama Taikan often reminisced his youthful memories of Tatsumi Bridge and the Shirakawa rivulet, for instance when he captured the rows of old houses along Shirakawa in one scene of his series Ten Views of Rain In and Around the Capital, namely the painting Tatsumi Bridge in the Evening Rain of Taisho 8 (1919). The present work Maiko suggests rows of houses faintly in the background; from details such as the wooden handrail and the paper lantern with an attached poem paper one imagines the scene to take place along Shirakawa, perhaps on the second floor of a traditional tea house.

With her right arm rested on the rail, the white make-up of her face shines despite the semi-darkness of her surroundings. Her half-closed eyes remind the gaze of a boddhisattva, Buddhist deity of compassion, leaving it open to the viewer to surmise if she is listening to the boisterous noise outside or has her attention turned inward. The pattern on her kimono and obi, her hairstyle or even the contour of the lantern with a hint of written characters all contribute to create an air of ambiguity, the evocation of a fleeting nocturnal moment. Given the artist’s abandon to this abbreviated brushwork, many among Murakami Kagaku’s audience may have felt something missing, yet he explained his ideas his essay “Night Conversation” (included in his publication Garon [Thoughts on Painting]) as follows:

Of course, to the cursory eye my paintings may appear half-finished, or at least abbreviated, and sometimes this description        comes close to the way I work. Yet to me, as a painter, among all the works I produce there is rarely anything I would myself consider as half-finished, or not-yet-complete. Neither is there anything I would call abbreviated. These aspects that to some people look abbreviated or simplified are the way they are because at some point during the process I deemed them complete and felt that no further brushstroke was necessary.
 
Kagaku’s paintings usually appeal to more than what the eye perceives. There is a psychological layer hidden in many of his works, from which Maiko as well derives its significance and meaning. If we want it or not, we long for beauty, which was symbolized to Kagaku by the notion of the “eternal woman.” As an ideal, this woman possesses all virtues; moreover, she transcends the ordinary female as well as her male counterpart. The artist’s representative work, Nude in the collection of the Yamatane Museum (1920, Important Cultural Property), attempts to express that ideal, an aerial beauty way above the common female / male dichotomy. Given that context, it becomes more tangible that the painter aimed to capture not just any nude or maiko, but the essence of beauty itself.


Murakami Kagaku (nihonga painter; 1888–1939)
Nihonga painter. Born in Osaka, Kagaku graduated from Kyoto Municipal Special School of Painting. Though successful at the Bunten, Kagaku doubted the merit of the selection criteria and eventually ceded his submissions. Together with Tsuchida Bakusen, Ono Chikkyo, Sakakibara Shiho, and Nonagase Banka, Kagaku founded the Kokuga sosaku kyokai (Association for the Creation of National Painting) in 1918, an organization that would hold its own annual salons, the Kokuten. Due to declining health, he moved to Ashiya near Kobe and led a recluse life, concentrating on Buddhist themes. Many of his works are deeply sprititual and meditative in tone.