Japanese and Korean elites enjoyed appreciating Chinese landscapes through the imagery of poetry because most could not travel to China. Even though some diplomatic delegations were dispatched there, they could not journey to all the mountains and rivers described in the poems. Because most of the poems related to paintings, were written during poets occlusion or exile, the poetic settings were usually far from the capitals which the Japanese and Korean delegations visited. Among the Chinese landscape paintings based on poems that affected Japanese and Korean art, three representative themes of landscapes are Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, Gazing at a Waterfall, and West Lake. (ed: not shown)
Japanese and Korean Art The Lure of Painted Poetry
Cleveland Museum of Art 2011 p23
Volume 36 no 3 January / February 2022