Tomiko Hayashi, one of the last masters of

Suminagashi

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The painting handmade by water

Tomiko Hayashi is one of the last masters of Japanese art called suminagashi (墨流し, “floating ink”). Suminagashi is not properly panting. When Tomiko shows us suminagashi it appears us like a religious rite. She uses a basin of water fude (筆), the brush used for calligraphy suzuri (硯), the stone used to apply ink sumi (墨) , to Japanese paper washi (和紙). She dips her brush in black ink and after she dips brush tip into basin. Ink makes water transparency a little dirty. Then Tomiko puts an half washi sheet into water and ink becomes attached to washi and creates color waves. That’s why this kind of art is called suminagashi. Ink veins on washi sheet deeply look like marble grains. In fact this art resembles Middle East and Europe marbling techinques. If we look at suminagashi paintings from a little distance, their “marble grains” turn into mountain and waves landscape mixed together by mist. In fact suminagashi art could be linked to Chinese traditional landscape painting, shan shui (山水, “mountain and water”). Shan shui painting developed in China during Song era (960 – 1269 AD) and its characteristics are natural landscapes showing high and steep mountains and narrow and foggy gorges. Tomiko herself tells us suminagashi could be called in Japanese words yama nami (山波, “mountain and wave”). When we look at Tomiko’s paintings, we see, or better, it seems us to see foggy mountains and waves. In fact suminagashi is not “painting” in the meaning of “painted sheet”. Suminagashi is a painting born by chance, it is an image hand painted by ink stained waves. Suminagashi hasn’t got a subject or a model to paint. Suminagashi is a nature painting because it is made of natural elements like water, waves and ink not because it paints these elements.
However in Tomiko’s little and big works, in kakemono too, there are endless variations of same mountains and waves subject. In one of Tomiko’s paintings it seems us to see waves foam on the seaside, a river, the sky with only a cloud and a landscape with a snow covered peak which ubelievably resembles Fuji-san. Suminagashi let us see our inside landscapes, sometimes worryingly sometimes reassuring landscapes, always symbolic and unreachable as well. After all suminagashi origins are as foggy as its painted landscapes. Suminagashi technique was probably introduced into Japan by Chinese and Korean artists at the beginning of Heian period (794 - 1185). Originally suminagashi was perhaps a divination ritual: the will of kami, Shinto spirits within objects, could be interpreted in ink signs in water. It is also possibile suminagashi was an aristocratic court game like kōdō (香道, "way of Incense) Japanese incense ceremony. As the story goes Jizemon Hiroba was inspired by kami to invent suminagashi at Kasuga-taisha, the endless lanterns Shinto shrine in the city of Nara. Hiroba roamed Japan searching purest water till he got to Echizen, in Fukui prefecture in the Middle East of Honshū, where he at last found an ideal spring for suminagashi. Also nowadays, not only in Fukui prefecture, there are some artists very skilled in suminagashi. Tomiko is one of them, she was born in Ibaraki in Kantō. She dedicated her own life to suminagashi, an art which young Japanese people don’t know and don’t understand any more because they only want to know and to follow Western cultural models.

Floriano Terrano