diptych print
- Museum number
- 2012,3005.2.1-2
- Title
- Object: Ro Chishin ransui Gotaizan Kongōjin o uchikiwasu no zu 魯智深爛酔打壊五台山金剛神之図 (Drunken Lu Zhishen Smashes the Guardian Deity Statue at the Temple of Mt Wutai)
- Description
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Colour woodblock print, vertical diptych. Warrior-monk Lu Zhishen smashing the wooden statue of a temple guardian. With burnishing, 'textile printing', 'woodgrain printing' and embossing. Oxidation of the lead white used to print the body of the statue. No publishing information.
- Production date
- September 1887
- Dimensions
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Height: 37.20 millimetres (bottom sheet)
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Height: 36.90 centimetres (top sheet)
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Width: 25.30 centimetres (bottom sheet)
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Width: 25.20 millimetres (top sheet)
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- The story comes from chapter three of the famous Tales of the Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan). To escape a death penalty, the soldier Lu Da gained admittance as a monk of the temple at Mt. Wutai, under the new name Lu Zhishen (‘Lu of Deep Wisdom’). However, he was unable to curb his riotous behaviour. One night he came back drunk to the temple and smashed the gate pillars. Then he thought the statue of the temple guardian deity was mocking him and smashed that too. Dismissed from the temple, Lu went on to become one of the novel's 108 heroes. The tattooed flowers on his upper body inspired his nickname, ‘Flower Monk’ (Ka Oshō). (Keyes 1980, no. 37, gives a more detailed account of the story.) An early and very fine impression of a striking vertical diptych design considered among the most important of Yoshitoshi’s whole oeuvre. (2/2012)
See Roger Keyes, Courage and Silence (1982), no. 498; Roger Keyes & George Kuwayama, The Bizarre Imagery of Yoshitoshi (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980), no. 37; Isao Toshihiko, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi no seka (Tokyo National Museum, 1992), no. 13; Chris Uhlenbeck & Amy Reigle Newland, Yoshitoshi: Masterpieces from the Ed Fries Collection (Hotei Publishing, 2011), no. 90.
- Location
- On display (G93/dc10)
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2012 Feb – Jun, BM Japanese Galleries, ‘Japan, from Prehistory to the Present’
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Tales of the Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan)
- Acquisition date
- 2012
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 2012,3005.2.1-2
