Imagery of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering: Visualizing Tokugawa Cultural Networking

Abstract

Imagery of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering examines the cultural networks that connected people during the Edo period (1603-1868) by surveying a wide range of visual representations of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering. This study explains how artists of different social classes and artistic lineages used classic themes as a symbol of refined cultural amusement and authority. Through intricate networks, artists from different painting schools met not only with each other but also with intellectuals, publishers, patrons, and other cultured contemporaries. Their shared ideology and connections were often manifested in the pictorial representations of assemblages.