Talk:Bonkei

What's the difference (if any) between a bonkei scene and a diorama? Boneyard90 (talk) 14:30, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if there's a great deal of difference if you compare the written descriptions. There appear to be some visual differences between bonkei and diorama, but I suspect the biggest difference may be intangible, based on the history of miniature landscapes in some Eastern cultures and the diorama tradition in European-derived cultures. I have no bonkei photos unencumbered by copyright,^[1] so will have to describe them in prose to highlight the visual differences I see.

First, the large style of dioramas we often see in museums, which have at least one full-scale (true size) item in them, are not typical of bonkei. Bonkei are generally between the size of a large tray and a small tabletop (very roughly, the largest dimension will be 50 cm to 150 cm). There are dioramas that fit into the same size class as the bonkei for which I have references.

Second, small dioramas in the European tradition seem to have no limit as to the type of scene depicted, including historical battles at various scales, topographical maps of real locations, settings for miniature machines (e.g., the model railroading tradition), and so on. But the artifacts called bonkei are almost universally scenes of the Japanese countryside and wildlands, generally decorated with miniatures depicting a simple, historical time (oxen and wooden bridges, but no high-speed trains, for example).

Third, and most difficult to describe, is the intangible purpose of the bonkei. As far as I can understand, it is to provide a locus of attention that allows the viewer to contemplate a simple, rural or wild, peaceful scene. Like bonsai, it allows a town or city dweller to look at a detailed depiction of nature and may provide a focal point for meditation, formal or informal. There is a long tradition of miniature landscapes in some Asian cultures, some based on living contents, others more static, like bonkei. They do not seem to be used in these cultures for the wide variety of public and teaching purposes served by dioramas in the European cultural tradition, but instead for personal or private enjoyment.

In summary, dioramas can be any reasonable size, depict any content of interest, and serve public and teaching purposes as well as others. Bonkei are typically small enough to fit easily on a small table, depict the countryside of old Japan, and serve the purpose of private contemplation.

Gryffindor: Thank you for adding the resource 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō as Potted Landscapes to this article. It's fascinating to see well-preserved Japanese documents from this period.

In your contemporaneous edits, you said a couple of times that these paintings depicted saikei and bonkei:

The ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Yoshishige created a series of prints of bonkei and saikei titled 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō as Potted Landscapes (Tokaido Gojusan-eki Hachiyama Edyu) in 1848. The book might have been inspired by Utagawa Hiroshige's The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. The bonkei and saikei pieces were created by Kimura Tōsen.

The Public Domain Review article you referenced has this statement:

There are two main arts of the potted landscape in Japanese tradition - saikei and bonkei. Similar to the practice of bonsai, saikei is the art of creating tray landscapes, combining miniature trees with rocks and water as well as other vegetation, while bonkei is a permanent tray landscape in which no living materials are used. While saikei landscapes feature only scenes of nature, a bonkei can feature people or buildings, with mountains made out of rocks and sculptable materials such as papier-mâché. It seems that these landscapes created by Kimura Tōsen are the latter.

I think the article suggests all paintings were of bonkei, not saikei (the antecedent to "latter" in the final sentence is ambiguous to me). Also, not to put too fine a point on it, the Japanese art form Saikei was invented after WWII, per WP. Should this section of the Bonkei article be amended to remove the "saikei", or have I missed your full reference?

Sahara110 (talk) 22:01, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Hallo Sahara110, please feel free to correct any mistakes you find, I welcome them of course. It would be wonderful to have images of the objects. Thank you for your help. Gryffindor (talk) 20:36, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Gryffindor: Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to set up a workflow so that I can process all of the 53 Stations graphics files from the Smithsonian consistently. I feel it'll be a job for a bit deeper into winter. I will drop a note here if I'm successful. Sahara110 (talk) 01:57, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Gryffindor: I'll blame the plague, as my "process the 53 Stations" task took longer than anticipated and I've no better excuse. In brief, I found a different government source for the needed images in plain JPG format, so the whole problem of preserving 'authenticity' that had bothered me is now moot. I'm in the process of importing "53 Stations as bowls of sand and gravel" images into Wikimedia at the moment, and have processed sufficient images already to add a couple to the article. The remainder should be on Wikimedia shortly. Once more, I am grateful to you for bringing these information sources to the article. Sahara110 (talk) 22:25, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Gryffindor: Job done. Images of all pages from 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō as Potted Landscapes, including pages of prefatory text, are now uploaded into Wikimedia. I have created a pair of image galleries from the two volumes, which may be moved out of my personal space when I've got a bit more time to create a collection page for the 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō as Potted Landscapes. Thank you for keeping me in the loop, as WP's toughness on VPN/TOR access for editing has mostly silenced me in recent years. Sahara110 (talk) 20:10, 22 April 2022 (UTC)