Study of Sotan
As part of its “Research on Materials for the Study of East Asian Art” project, the Art Research Materials Section of the Department of Research Programming is conducting basic study of Sotan (1413-1481), the official painter of the Ashikaga shogun family during the Muromachi period. Last fiscal year, we first made a comprehensive collection of materials related to Sotan which we compiled into an archive that will serve as the foundation for our study. In executing this work, we used the method of the pre-World War II ”Corps of East Asian Arts” project that produced comprehensive results concerning some painters of the Muromachi period as reference. In the process of this work we were able not only to confirm what may be called the “universal usefulness” of the method of ”Corps of East Asian Arts” for the purpose of forming a foundation for research but also to confirm the fact that the various kinds of archives related to art history which were formed intermittently from before the war and continue to be formed from time to time even now and which are found at the Institute are still effective today.
This year by studying each material in detail and by making a general judgment of the collected materials, we are improving the quality of the materials so that we may achieve a closer and more accurate understanding of Sotan. The process of this phase of the project was presented at the 2nd In-House Research Seminar (July 10, “Study of Sotan” by Watada). Many parts of this presentation delved into more details when compared with the content of the public lecture given on October 28, 2006 (“Sesshu and Sotan” by Watada). We plan to publish the results of our study in The Bijutsu Kenkyu (The Journal of Art Studies).