Metempsychosis (Ink on Silk; by Yokoyama Taikan)

A Handscroll Following a Drop of Water to the Sea

The Metempsychosis (絹本墨画生々流転図〈横山大観筆〉, Kenpon Bokuga Seisei Ruten Zu) is an ink-on-silk handscroll painted by Yokoyama Taikan in 1923, which in 1967 was designated an Important Cultural Property.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records one scroll owned by the National Museum of Art and held by the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

The museum's catalogue gives its size as 55.3 centimetres high and 4070 centimetres long, and notes that it was shown at the tenth Inten exhibition. The museum's English title is Metempsychosis.

The Scroll

According to the museum, the scroll begins with mist condensing on leaf tips in cloud-wrapped mountains. The drops become a stream that gathers force and dashes against cliffs, passes villages, collects tributaries into a river and a broad waterway, flows into the sea and, amid raging waves, calls up clouds again.

The museum explains that these changing forms of water are only the appearances of perpetual transformation, and that the work asks the viewer to grasp the formless nature of water behind them.

The museum suggests that, having painted several ink handscrolls from real scenery since 1910, Taikan here turned what he had learned about ink painting and the handscroll into an expression of a free spirit that had reached beyond appearances.

Why It Matters

Listing representative works of modern Japanese art, the Agency calls Taikan's Metempsychosis the great work of his life, in which his efforts to create a new ink painting style came to fruition in a grand conception.

Alongside works such as Shimomura Kanzan's Yoroboshi, it is one of the achievements of the painters who sought a new Japanese-style painting under Okakura Tenshin, and it has long been regarded as a classic of modern Japanese art.

Seeing the Metempsychosis Scroll

The Metempsychosis (Ink on Silk; by Yokoyama Taikan) is held by the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 3-1 Kitanomaru Park, Chiyoda City. As a very long scroll it is not always on view, so check the museum's website for display dates.