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François Lachaud Ussel, 1967 Member since 2000, Director of studies since 2008 François Lachaud’s researches examine the reception of Japanese Buddhism in the visual arts and in literary sources from late medieval times to the Meiji era (1868-1912). For the most part, they cover the four centuries that go from the waning of the middle Ages to the end of the Edo period (1603-1867); with a special emphasis on the second half of the eighteenth century. Located at the crossroads between religious studies and art history, F. Lachaud’s work has deliberately used a comparative approach confronting Japanese visual and written sources (in classical and modern Japanese, in Sino-Japanese – kanbun, a local adaptation of classical Chinese – i.e. the lingua franca of the ‘Sinosphere’) with their Chinese (classical and modern) and Western equivalents along a time frame extending from the Age of Exploration to the advent of Modern Times. His first book, La Jeune Fille et la mort (Death and the Maiden. Paris. IHEJ, 2006) is a genealogical survey of negative representations of the female body (viz. the Nine Aspects of Bodily Decay), defilement, and impurity. It starts with their Indian origins (including pre-Buddhist sources), then proceeds to their translations in Chinese 'canonical' texts and in 'Buddhist apocrypha,' then their numerous Japanese visual and textual adaptations. Initially designed for celibate monks, these doctrines grounded on ascetic misogyny exerted a remarkable impact on Japanese visual arts and literature from the middle of the Heian period (794-1192) to the modern era, when they merged with Western prejudices about gender and sexuality and were endowed with a new vitality. The choice of a subject stretching across the whole history of Buddhist art and doctrines from India to Inner Asia, East Asia, and, eventually, Japan was conceived as a methodological template for further studies on ascetic life, solitude, world withdrawal, and eccentricity within Japanese civilization based on an 'iconological' method where images are critically interpreted against scriptures, while fully acknowledging the singularity of visual representations and their greater societal impact. Comparisons with medieval and early modern Christianity have proved themselves especially fruitful. For instance, the notion of “holy foolishness” (r. iurodstvo юродство), as it matured over the centuries within Orthodox Churches (from Byzantium to Russia), enriches noticeably our understanding of transgressive strategies of Enlightenment praising folly in Zen Buddhism. This comparison also enhances our understanding of visual representations of arhats (J. Rakan; Śākyamuni’s Great Disciples and Buddhist saints of the highest rank), eminent monks, and sheds new light on discourses underpinning them in canonical sources and literary compositions. Lives of eccentrics, lunatics, and artists, as exposed in the vastly influential text called Kinsei kijin den (Lives of Eccentrics of Recent Times) published in 1790 (a continuation was published in 1798), hold special relevance to the study of the biographical genre in late Edo Japan but also to the shaping of a local tradition of art history. The core of F. Lachaud's researches lies in this agonistic relation between solitude and community. Visual arts and literary works in Japan and in China (e.g. representations of eremitic life; visions of solitude; mountain retreats; &c.) extensively illustrate the drawing power and allure of solitude against the oppressive consolations of community. From ancient times, the ascetic model was the crucible in which Japanese notions of the individual were forged. And changes introduced by modernity in Japan only reinforced discourses on solitude throughout society. Starting from an in-depth study of the rival forms of the tea ceremony in Japan (leaf tea vs. powdered tea) as the perfect Gesamtkunstwerk, F. Lachaud investigates the role of the Ōbaku Zen school introduced by Chinese monks in the mid-seventeenth century in relation with new patterns of reception of visual and textual cultures issued from the Continent. Those foreign monks created and animated ‘informal academies’ where the burgeoning literati class and some of the major artists of the period were instructed in new canons of Chinese aesthetics, textual analysis, and scientific learning. F. Lachaud’s second book, Le Vieil Homme qui vendait du thé (The Old Man Who Sold Tea. Paris: Cerf, 2010) combines a general introduction to those crucial cultural issues and a biographical sketch of the archetypal Japanese eccentric: Kō Yūgai/Baisaō (1675-1763). The systematic study of artistic works produced by eminent monks of the Ōbaku school such as Yinyuan Longqi (1592-1673), Mu'an Xingtao (1610-1684), and especially Yiran Xingrong (1600/1601-1688) — whose importance as a painter cannot be overemphasized — vindicates the prominent role played by Ōbaku monasteries in the training of artists (painters, sculptors, calligraphers, tea masters, &c.), literati, collectors and connoisseurs. Yiran was one of the most influential Chinese artists in Japan. The careful study of the main Japanese painters connected with the Ōbaku School such as Itō Jakuchū (1716-1800), Ike [no] Taiga (1723) and his wife [Tokuyama] Gyokuran (1727-1784) reveals their profound understanding of Buddhism and of the new pictorial techniques introduced by the eminent monks of the Ōbaku School. This 'Zen Renaissance' in the arts went alongside the rebirth of the field of Buddhist historiography and erudition as observed in the works of 'rival' Japanese Rinzai school monks such as Mangen Shiban (1626-1710) or Mujaku Dōchū (1653-1744) — the two founding fathers of modern Buddhist studies. Brought to Japan against a background of dynastic change and warfare in China, this 'Zen Renaissance' also exemplifies a unique form of curiosity and cosmopolitanism in artistic and intellectual circles that still defines Japan today, as it already did when the first Portuguese traders and missionaries reached for the first time its shores in the mid-sixteenth century. This new ‘Golden Age’ triggered by a revitalized Zen Buddhism is linked to an ongoing work on Japanese antiquaries, eccentrics, curiosi, virtuosos, collectors and connoisseurs. The main thread uniting all these characters is none other than the protean figure of the polymath and collector extraordinaire: Kimura Kenkadō (1736-1802). His diaries are the most important document to map out a history of collections, private academies, religious and artistic exchanges in eighteenth century Japan. Since F. Lachaud’s first articles on Izumi Kyōka (1873-1939) and early modern Japanese representations of the supernatural in literature, iconography, and dramatic arts, he has carefully avoided to draw an artificial separation between classical legacies and new artistic forms that emerged once Japan had opened its borders to Western nations. A biography of Kanō Kazunobu — the last great Buddhist painter — will attempt, through a study of the most complete iconographic cycle ever conceived in Japan to explain Buddhism in visual terms, to map out another history of modern art, fully taking into account the influence of Buddhist traditions, equally observed in the works of Kazunobu’s contemporary counterparts and models such as Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891) or Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831-1889). The study of melancholy and the modern city in the visual arts centered on prints by Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915) and other artists of the Shin-Hanga 'New Print' movement is conceived as a parallel exploration of another form of discontent with modernity in Japanese art. The main resource for this project is the extensive Robert O. Muller collection (now in the possession of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC). The analysis of these prints almost ideally complements researches on modern Zen Buddhism as two forms taken by the disquiet engendered by the advent of modern times. In order to reach a detailed understanding of this phenomenon, works of the aesthete-cum-writer Nagai Kafū (1879-1959), of other literati such as Kinoshita Mokutarō (1885-1945) or Kitahara Hakushū (1885-1942), alongside treatises in Sino-Japanese about Edo and Tōkyō, illustrated descriptions of famous sites in the ancient and the modern city, and essays by prominent painters and visual artists such as Kaburagi Kiyokata (1878-1972) require to be taken into account. Prints by Kiyochika and Shin-Hanga artists attempt to define 'new aesthetics' for the new Japanese capital echoing the Meisho Edo hyakkei (The One Hundred Famous Views of Edo) by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1958), while acting at the same time as a bridge of longing between an idealized past and an uncertain, fluctuating modernity. An exhibition entitled Kiyochika Master of the Night will be take place in 2014 at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery then at the Princeton University Art Museum. F. Lachaud's study of the works (both fiction and essays) of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) dealing with Japanese Buddhism and its artistic legacies also takes place in critical discourses on Westernization and its discontents. Hearn's aesthetic stance in his description of Japanese Buddhism as a possible antidote to modernity, takes place within a set of melancholy discourses on a vanishing traditional Japan that were to define until recently art-historical appreciations of Japan's religious heritage. The interdisciplinary survey of the reception and transformation of Chinese aesthetics in Edo society (alongside Iberian, Dutch, Russian, Arabic, and Persian artifacts) is mirrored by the contemporary Western vogue for things Chinese and Japanese in Enlightenment Europe, and in the New World. These parallel histories, firmly grounded on an examination of East Asian and Western sources (in Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Italian, Latin, and French) take place within a large-scale international research program sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation on cross-cultural exchanges in Asia. A first volume, Empires éloignés (Distant Empires. Paris. EFEO: 2010, co-edited with Dejanirah Couto, the other initiator of this interdisciplinary project) examined ‘encounters,’ real and fictitious, between Japan and the West between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century at a time when Japan was in a period of national isolation. A companion volume, Empires en Marche/Empires on the Move is currently being edited. Its contributions explore the various modalities of exchange between China and Western countries in the early modern era and their significance to contemporary historiographical debates on 'national identities' and international relations. |
Publications 2007 Bouddhisme et littérature dans le Japon classique, document de synthèse présenté en vue de l’habilitation à diriger des recherches, soutenue le 24 avril 2007, 157 p. (inédit). 2007 Excentriques, lettrés, amateurs de thé : Formes modernes du retrait du monde dans la littérature d’Edo, manuscrit inédit présenté en vue de l’habilitation à diriger des recherches soutenue le 24 avril 2007, 92 p. 2008 Le Vieil homme qui vendait du thé : excentricité et retrait du monde dans le Japon du 18e siècle, Paris, Cerf, 2010, 200 p. 2008 « En marge des livres : Michel Wasserman, D'or et de neige, Paul Claudel et le Japon », compte rendu, Bulletin de la Société Paul Claudel, n. 191, 3e trimestre, septembre 2008, p. 47-50. 2008 « De la pivoine à l'Eveil : essai sur le zen, les arts et les lettres dans le Japon d'Edo (1615-1867) », Shôkokuji, pavillon d'Or, pavillon d'Argent. Art et zen à Kyôto, Paris, Paris Musées, Petit Palais, catalogue, p. 233-244. 2009 « Éloge de l’intranquillité. La force décapante du zen », Le Nouvel Observateur. Hors-Série. Comprendre les pensées de l’Orient, p. 54-56. 2009 « Raffinement et délicatesse. La cérémonie du thé », Le Nouvel Observateur. Hors-Série. Comprendre les pensées de l’Orient, p. 57. 2009 « Japonisme et bouddhisme : des Frères Goncourt à Paul Claudel »,150e Anniversaire de l’établissement des relations diplomatiques entre le Japon et la France, éd. Jean-Noël Robert et Jean Leclant, AIBL-Diffusion de Boccard, Paris, 2009, p. 91-100.. 2009 « Mada kuraku natteinai. Bobu Diran no rokujûnen dai (Not Dark Yet. Bob Dylan’s Sixties) », dans Tenkaiten wo motomete. Senkyûhyaku rokujû nendai no kenkyû (Searching for the Turning Point: Studies on the 1960’s), Kyôto, Sekai shisôsha, 2009, p. 255-280. 2009 « Des cérémonies et des hommes : quelques réflexions sur l’art du thé et les toros » (à paraître). 2009 « La femme et le serpent : le bouddhisme et ses démons dans le Japon d’Edo (1603-1867) », Images et imaginations : Le bouddhisme en Asie, Paris, École française d’Extrême-Orient / Musée Guimet, 2009, p. 178-205. 2009 « Le bouddhisme zen : routes et déviations d’une religion », dans Religions et Histoire, Éditions Faton, n°28. 2009 « L’école zen Ôbaku : Zen et diffusion de la culture chinoise dans le Japon d’Edo (1603-1867) », dans Religions et Histoire, Editions Faton, n°28. 2009 « Montagnes du néant, nuits obscures et chemins du rien : apophase, aphérèse et représentations du divin, de l’Espagne au Japon », Herzog August Bibliothek, Wölfenbüttel, 2008 (à paraître). 2010 Le Vieil Homme qui vendait du thé : excentricité et retrait du monde dans le Japon du xviiie siècle, Paris, Les Éditions du Cerf, coll. « Conférences de l’École pratique des Hautes Études ». 2010 avec Dejanirah Couto : Empires éloignés : l’Europe et le Japon xvie-xixe siècle, Paris, EFEO, coll. « Études thématiques », 24. 2010 « La force corrosive du zen » dans La Pensée asiatique, Paris, CNRS Éditions, p. 119-124. 2010 « Esthétique du thé » dans La Pensée asiatique, Paris, CNRS Éditions, p. 169-171. 2010 « Un art du thé portugais : sur quelques pages de L’História da Igreja do Japão de João Rodrigues « Tçuzu » (1562-1633), L’Œuvre scientifique des missionnaires en Asie, Paris, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (à paraître, 2010)
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