Criticism, Appreciation, Japan 

HANIWA are the baked clay images of men and animals & artifacts that once ringed the great mounded tombs built in Japan from the 3rd to the 7th century. Whether they were first made as substitutes for human sacrifices at the death of a king or noble or if they evolved from jars used to hold back the freshly mounded earth of the tomb in a rainy climate is not certain, for their origins are lost in legend. Whatever their purpose, haniwa possess a striking beauty & immediate visual appeal. Helmeted warriors, nobles, shamans, farmers with their hoes, women with children ornamented the tombs, their stylized features & gestures curiously expressive. With them were the animals they knew & valued - horses equipped with elaborate trappings, chickens, boar, monkeys, & deer - as well as replicas of military equipment. There are also haniwa of the houses they lived in, pleasing structures of graceful proportions with distinctively flared roof-ends whose basic style is still visible in traditional Japanese farmhouses. But great as is the charm of these clay forms as art objects, they play still another important role as historical records. They tell us much about the society of the time & the tremendous changes that were taking place as the Japanese began to organize themselves into a nation with one political center. Much of this information has been recovered & reconstructed by archeologists & scholars like Fumio Miki, who in this book has provided a fascinating study of the development & use of haniwa in the context of the culture of the Tumulus period. In tracing the two major haniwa traditions - & illustrations that bring to life the world of kings & warriors in which these objects were made. THE ARTS OF JAPAN presents in English translation selected issues of the distinguished series NIHON NO BIJUTSU, published monthly since 1966 by Shibundo of Tokyo. - from Amzon