painting;
handscroll
- Museum number
- 1960,0409,0.3
- Title
- Object: Shijuni no mono arasoi 四十二の物争い (Poetry contest on forty-two themes)
- Description
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Painting, handscroll. Poetry contest of forty-two matches. Paintings depicting scenes of: cherry blossoms; courtiers composing poems inspired by "pairs"; courtiers making instrumental music; forty-two poetic pairs with poets. Ink and colour on paper. Inscribed and sealed. With paulownia storage box.
- Production date
- 16thC(late)
- Dimensions
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Height: 15.80 centimetres
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Width: 1166.50 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- Hizo Nihon bijutsu taikan Vol 2
In journals and other works by court nobles of the Muromachi period, works such as 'Kanmon gyoki' and 'Sanetaka-ko ki', one frequently comes across the word 'koe' ("small pictures"). This is believed to be a general term for miniature scrolls produced for the amusement of the younger members of the court and the shogun's household. Most of them resemble the 'otogi-zoshi' in being simple in content and in measuring little more than fifteen centimeters in width, so that, when rolled up, they could be carried on the palm of the hand. This work in the British Museum is one such miniature scroll.
The painting describes how, long ago, when the capital was in Nara, the emperor happened to pay a visit to the Togu Gosho on the sixteenth day of the fourth month. While admiring the beauty of the cherry blossoms and lakeside willows at the Nanden, he composed a series of poems inspired by "pairs" - a moonlit night and a snowy morning; Higashiyama and Nishiyama; passing showers and wind in the pines - and passed judgment on their relative merits. He then stayed up all night making instrumental music with his courtiers. There were forty-two themes in all, whence the title of this work; the figure is said to derive from the total number of the spots on the two dice used in 'sugoroku' (a form of backgammon).
The work can be viewed as a kind of exercise in "poetic pairs," deriving from the 'mono-awase' ("pairing things") and comparisons of the rival merits of spring and autumn that had been a popular pastime in aristocratic circles since the Heian period. However, the choice and ordering of the themes seem in practice to vary somewhat from version to version. In view of the fact that this work is a miniature scroll and that the bands of haze used to help out in the composition are completely stylized, it would seem almost certainly to have been produced at the very end of the Muromachi period, in the latter half of the sixteenth century. At the end of the scroll, two cinnabar seals reading "Tosa" and "Kikusui" are to be found, but as seals they are undistinguished, and both are probably forgeries of a later age. It is virtually impossible to view this scroll as a product of the Tosa school, and the artist remains unidentified.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2006 Oct 13-2007 Feb 11, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japan from prehistory to the present'
2010 Jun- Oct, BM Japanese Galleries, ‘Japan from prehistory to the present’
2010 Oct- 2011 Feb, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japan from prehistory to the present'
2011 Feb 14- Jun 13, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japan from Prehistory to the Present'
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Shijuni no mono arasoi 四十二の物あらそい (A Poetry Contest of Forty-two Matches)
- Acquisition date
- 1960
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1960,0409,0.3
- Additional IDs
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Asia painting number: Jap.Ptg.Add.369 (Japanese Painting Additional Number)