Violets between Cherry Blossoms. The diffusion of classical motifs to the East : traces in Japanese art : fictions, conjectures, facts

Abstract

This richly illustrated book is a comparative study, which shows how motifs and images travelled throughout Eurasia from Rome to Tokyo. It covers a period from around the early fifth century BC up until today. It is likely that already in the fifth century BC there was some indirect cultural exchange between the Black Sea region and China. From the second to the sixth century AD elements of Greco-Buddhist culture gradually found their way to China and subsequently, from the mid-sixth century AD on, reached Japan. This book is the first comprehensive work to provide a critical and compelling study of the cultural flow across this extensive area. It shows convincingly how Greek images and motifs travelled East, were adopted and preserved in Chinese art and how they spread to Japan.