Ema Saikō
Ema Saikō (江馬 細香, 1787–1861) was a Japanese painter, poet and calligrapher celebrated for her Chinese-style art in the late Edo period.
Her specialisation as a bunjin, a painter of Chinese-style art using monochrome ink, was the bamboo plant which she perfected and which inspired her pen name.
It shows the high respect and affection for his daughter that Ema Ransai adhered to this decision and married Saikō's suitor to her younger sister.
Her tutor Gyokurin had displayed her work, noting that it received more attention than that of his other pupils; the scholar Oyamada Tomokiyo cited a poem of hers in a publication in 1814.
The same year, at the age of 27, she met Rai San'yō, a rising scholar who was also accomplished in Chinese-style writing and calligraphy and an amateur in painting.
Rai San’yō was instantly captivated by Ema, detailing his infatuation in a letter to a friend in Kyoto, Konishi Genzui.
In the letter, he describes his attraction to her, her previous abandonment of marriage ideas, insinuates that she should marry him and attests that she share similar feelings.
The intimacy of their correspondence and the poems they wrote about each other has prompted speculation about a relationship which was more than platonic; while these primary sources do show closeness and positive feelings, there is no concrete evidence to support these claims and their exchange has not been judged as scandalous by their contemporaries.
Some of her work show her as lonely in her old age, once mentioning ‘one mistake’ in her life which some scholars believe to allege to her relationship with Rai San’yō.
Further, she discusses how most work written by female poets displays the themes of “loneliness, isolation, and longing for their heartless lovers”.
Her poems describe her not serving any mother-in-law or father-in-law due to not being married, and divorces herself from the traditional women's three obediences to a father, husband and eldest son.
She also took pride in the work of other female artists of the era: one of her scrolls listed paintings and calligraphy from 22 different women which Ema owned.
[12][1] Ema Saikō had grown up in the late Edo period during which Japan was mostly sealed off its surroundings, with little intellectual or artistic exchange between the country and its neighbours.
The Japanese were, however, well informed about Western advance into Asia, the Opium Wars in which China was reduced to a semi-colonial status and the West's imperial ambitions.
Ema's associates as a free-thinking, modern intellectual circle feared Japan to suffer a fate similar to China's, which had experienced a humiliating defeat, decrease in power of its ruler and subjection to foreign commands.
She produced paintings for the Toda clan and was invited to Ōgaki Castle to be recognized for her work, but suffered a stroke in 1861 and died later that year.
[1] Temporary assessment states that her paintwork improved after she became a student of Uragami Shunkin in 1819: her style was composed of crisp and controlled brushwork.
While Ema Saikō was an accomplished painter and began to paint from an early age, modern scholarship pays closer attention to her poetry work.
Her description and reflection of her lifestyle, ageing and the people with whom she was associated reveal her personal thoughts; at times, however, they remain unspecific and reserved.
[15] Ema was a well-established poet and painter by the time of her death, having been featured in her contemporaries’ publications and leaving behind many works of art.
Due to the volume of kanshi art produced in the Edo period and previously as well as the shift of Japanese intellectuals from learning Western languages rather than Classical Chinese, many poets are lost from today's records.
The perception of Ema Saikō changed over time: while she was an accomplished artist and poet during her lifetime, modern critics of the 20th century have focused intensively on her relationship to Rai San’yō.
Especially critics that consider Rai San’yō's work and life primarily portray Ema as his mistress rather than his associate, student and a poet in her own right.
Thus, part of modern scholarship have emphasised her marital status, life style and relationships rather than her paintings and the content of her art.
Another 150 of her poems were translated into English and published in the 1998 book “Breeze Through Bamboo: Kanshi of Ema Saikō” by Hiroaki Sato.
