The World in a Jar

The weather forecast I saw yesterday predicted a 40% chance of precipitation in the morning, and a 60% chance in the afternoon. I got in my car with my umbrella to drive to Masaki Art Museum, located in Tadaoka, one of a few towns in Osaka prefecture. Driving south along Route 26, I crossed the municipal border between Izumi-otsu city and Tadaoka town easily, but found difficulty in getting to the town's center. Some former farm roads were so narrow and crooked, and a few of them were one-way streets. I should have approached via the waterfront industrial road.
I entered the museum, but could find no receptionist. I rang a small cast iron bell, and a lady popped out to accept my entrance fee, 600 yen, and to hand me the stub of an admission ticket numbered 15101. As I turned right to find the collection of Chinese ceramic vessels over the short hall way, I wondered if anybody gets a full admission ticket. Masaki Art Museum is a small private museum.
The exhibition is titled “Ko-chu-ten”, literally “Heaven in a Jar”, or “the World in a Vessel.” The first hall exhibits a collection of Chinese ceramic vessels. As you follow the exhibits, you learn how Chinese people decorated their vessels; historically, outside first, and inside next.
Exhibit No. 5 is called Seiji Shintei Ko, or Celadon Spirit-housing Jar, made before 316 in today's Zhejiang province. It was either a burial good or a spirit-summoning good, whose cap has almost everything: a variety of people, buildings, birds... The jar has its own “other world” on its cap.
Of course, not all the vessels are deathly ceramics. Some are decorated with flowers, butterflies, and even Chinese-favorite dragons (exhibit No. 9). Another Chinese-favorite imaginary animal is a phoenix, and two phoenixes are drawn inside a tea cup (No.46 and 47) which were made around the 12th century in today’s Anhui province. A pair of fish and waves are drawn on a piece of white porcelain (No. 19) made as early as in the 10th or 11th century in today’s Hebei province. At a certain stage of Chinese history, the world decorated or drawn on the outside vessels technically entered into the insides.
The idea goes back much earlier. The exhibition titled "Ko-chu-ten” is based on a story in 'The Book of the Later Han', published around the 4th and 5th centuries.
Fei Chang-fang used to be an officer who supervised a marketplace during the Later Han dynasty in the first 3 centuries. In the market, an old man was selling herbs, and he hang a gourd-shaped vessel, “hu” in Chinese, in front of his shop. Whenever the market was closed, the old man jumped into this vessel, without being seen by the people in the marketplace. One day, however, Fei found this from the top of his lookout. Fei insisted the old man to bring him into the vessel, and the following day he was allowed to enter inside the magical hu, where they feasted and drank from a wine vessel that would never empty.
According to a legend, Fei Chang-fang became a magician who had "the power of shrinking and collecting in an urn mountains and streams, birds and animals, people, pavilions, terraces, and buildings, boats and carriages, trees and rivers."
This paradisiacal fairly land is far from this world, just like the miniature gardens that play the same role for those who cultivate them. This story may suggest two possibilities:
1) Fei Chang-fang actually came to have a magical power.
2) Fei Chang-fang could produce miniatures so detailed as to transport the imaginations of viewers into other lands.
Some exhibits of sumi-e, or ink and water paintings, we can find in the later part of this exhibition clearly indicate the potential of the miniature landscape.
Masaki Takayuki was gazing through the entrance or the hallway to another hall. In 1968, 17 years before his death, Masaki Art Museum was founded by him. His bronze statue is too big for the hallway, and made me feel embarrassed checking souvenirs beside him.
The next part of the exhibition shows Japanese tea ceremony goods. They were so well exhibited that even I could see that a small tea room has its own universe. You can find histories via inherited tea ceremony tools. You can find nature via decorated flowers. You can talk with a late artist via a screen painting (No. 38).
As far as I guess, the smallness of the tea room might have a meaning. Being in a small room, or in a small universe, you can focus on something, separated from the outside chaotic world. That something might be the communication with your guest. That something might be decision you have to make. That something might be a fairyland where you would like to be healed.
Walking up the stairs, you are surrounded with Chinese miniature ceramics. The room has everything; a farmhouse, a pig pen, a cup, an ancient kitchen range, a well, a goat, a dog, a horse, a duck, and even a soldier, an entertainer ... etc. Those were obviously dedicated to the dead. The dead must have wanted to have another world after their death, which should be as convenient and prosperous as in this world.
As time passed by, the desire for another world after death might have descended to this real world. We might have come to be more stressed out. People wish to have another world right now right here.
One picture (No.34) in the last part of the exhibition, the collection of sumi-e screens, or ink and water paintings, clearly shows this desire. The picture has a study with no person. If you put yourself in the study, you could listen to the chattering of the clear and clean bubbling stream. At this time of the year, you might hear a Japanese nightingale singing. To the ears of Japanese people, the birds sound like as if they were chanting the title of a sutra. And you can think … think about the decision you have to make, think about the retreat you need to have, or think about the retirement you wish to make.
I went out of the museum building to find hot fine heavens contrary to the forecast. The sun was scorchingly beaming down on the earth. Looking at the heaven and earth, I wondered what world, or what jar, I am in.