The is a Japanese painted

byōbu are Japanese folding screens made from several joined panels, bearing decorative painting and calligraphy, used to separate interiors and enclose private spaces, among other uses. History are thought to have originated in Han dynast ...

folding screen of unknown authorship made during the

Kan'ei was a after ''Genna'' and before '' Shōhō.'' This period spanned the years from February 1624 through December 1644. The reigning emperors and empress were , and .Titsingh, Isaac. (1834) ''Annales des empereurs du japon'', p. 411./ref> Chan ...

era (). The screen folds in six parts and is painted on gold-leaf paper. It depicts people in the pleasure quarters of Kyoto playing music and games. The screen comes from the feudal

Hikone Domain was a '' fudai'' feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan. It was located in eastern Ōmi Province, in the Kansai region of central Honshu. The domain was centered at Hikone Castle, located in what is now the city of ...

, ruled by the screen's owners, the

Ii clan is a Japanese clan which originates in Tōtōmi Province. It was a retainer clan of the Imagawa family, and then switched sides to the Matsudaira clan of Mikawa Province at the reign of Ii Naotora. A famed 16th-century clan member, Ii Naomas ...

. It is owned by the city of

Hikone 280px, Hikone City Hall is a city located in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 111,958 in 49066 households and a population density of 570 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Hikone i ...

Shiga Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Shiga Prefecture has a population of 1,412,916 (1 October 2015) and has a geographic area of . Shiga Prefecture borders Fukui Prefecture to the north, Gifu Prefecture to the north ...

, in the Ii Naochika Collection. The work is seen as representative of early modern Japanese

genre painting Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attache ...

; some consider it the earliest work of

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk ...

. In 1955 it was designated a

National Treasure of Japan Some of the National Treasures of Japan A is the most precious of Japan's Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan, Tangible Cultural Properties, as determined and designated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs (a special body of the Ministry ...

and given the official name ' ().

Description

The ''

'' screen depicts a scene in which eleven male and female figures amuse themselves. On the left, a blind man and some women play shamisens before a four-panel ' screen with a landscape painted on it. To their right a group of men and women play a

sugoroku (literally 'double six') refers to two different forms of a Japanese board game: ''ban-sugoroku'' (盤双六, 'board-sugoroku') which is similar to western tables games like Backgammon, and ''e-sugoroku'' (絵双六, 'picture-sugoroku') which i ...

board game.

Analysis

The manner of brushstrokes indicate the anonymous painting is in the style of the school. The activities of the figures in the Hikone screen display the traditional

four arts The four arts ( 四藝, ''siyi''), or the four arts of the Chinese scholar, were the four main academic and artistic talents required of the aristocratic ancient Chinese scholar-gentleman. They were the mastery of the ''qin'' (the guqin, a stri ...

of the Chinese scholar. The clothing and personal items of the figures suggest the four seasons, as in traditional .

Attribution

The work is anonymous, which would have been typical of such genre works; further, if the artist were of the Kanō or similar schools, the common subject matter would have been considered beneath the artist's dignity and thus would likely not have been signed. The screen was probably a commission, and it was customary for artists not to sign works made for those of high rank. At times the work was attributed to the painter

Iwasa Matabei Iwasa Matabei ( ja, 岩佐又兵衛, translit=Iwasa Matabē; original name Araki Katsumochi 1578 – July 20, 1650) was a Japanese artist of the early Tokugawa period, who specialized in genre scenes of historical events and illustrations ...

(1578–1650); Until 1898 it was not known that Matabei had signed his paintings with the name ''Katsumochi'', thus comparison with his actual works was not possible, and many anonymous works such as the Hikone screen were attributed to him. His nickname was "Ukiyo Matabei", which was assumed to link him to the ''ukiyo'' demimonde and the

genre of art. Works such as the '' Ukiyo-e Ruikō'' implied Matabei was the founder of the ukiyo-e, and early Western scholars including

Ernest Fenollosa Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (February 18, 1853 – September 21, 1908) was an American art historian of Japanese art, professor of philosophy and political economy at Tokyo Imperial University. An important educator during the modernization of Ja ...

also considered the screen a work of Matabei and an early work of ukiyo-e. This attribution came to an end in 1898 with the discovery of Matabei's art name and the fact that the meaning of the word ''ukiyo'' bore different meanings before

Asai Ryōi was a Japanese writer in the early Edo period. A Shin Buddhist priest who was at one time head of a Kyoto temple, he is held to be one of the finest writers of Kanazōshi. Kanazōshi was a form of popular literature that was written with little ...

's use of it in 1661 to refer to the demimonde. Paintings now known to be Matabei's are in the elegant, aristocratic ''

Yamato-e is a style of Japanese painting inspired by Tang dynasty paintings and fully developed by the late Heian period. It is considered the classical Japanese style. From the Muromachi period (15th century), the term Yamato-e has been used to disting ...

'' tradition and show little of the liveliness and rich colouring associated with ukiyo-e. His general association with the work nevertheless continued for generations.

Provenance

As with almost all ''byōbu'' screens of the early modern period, no record remains of who commissioned the Hione screen, nor of who executed it. It is thought most likely the commission came from someone of the upper ranks of society, from the ''

kuge The was a Japanese aristocratic class that dominated the Japanese Imperial Court in Kyoto. The ''kuge'' were important from the establishment of Kyoto as the capital during the Heian period in the late 8th century until the rise of the Kamak ...

'' aristocracy, a '' buke'' samurai house, or a ' business leader. Ukiyo-e artist (–1754) depicted a man leaning against a panel of the Hikone screen; the caption states the screen was on display in the

Shitaya is the name of a neighborhood in Taito, Tokyo, and a former ward (下谷区 ''Shitaya-ku'') in the now-defunct Tokyo City. The former ward encompassed 15 neighborhoods in the western half of the modern Taito ward, including Ueno, Yanaka and Akih ...

neighbourhood of Edo in about 1745. A record made states the painter

Shibata Zeshin was a Japanese lacquer painter and print artist of the late Edo period and early Meiji era. He has been called "Japan's greatest lacquerer", but his reputation as painter and print artist is more complex: In Japan, he is known as both too ...

(1807–91) discovered the screen in the collection of an old Edo family, and later made a copy or derivative of it. The discovery is conjectured to have been , and Zeshin's derivative . Ii Naosuke

The screen came into the collection of the

of the city of

—its modern namesake—in what is now

no earlier than the late Edo period (1853–67). There is no record of the screen having been at the Ii residence in Edo, though as it neither appears in the family records in Hikone it is presumed it remained in the capital until the

Shōwa period Shōwa may refer to: * Hirohito (1901–1989), the 124th Emperor of Japan, known posthumously as Emperor Shōwa * Showa Corporation, a Japanese suspension and shock manufacturer, affiliated with the Honda keiretsu Japanese eras * Jōwa (Heian ...

. Tea master (1861–1937) recorded a

Noh is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Developed by Kan'ami and his son Zeami, it is the oldest major theatre art that is still regularly performed today. Although the terms Noh and ...

event at the Ii residence on 30 June 1912 at which (1881–1947, fifteenth head of the family) had numerous art objects on display, including the Hikone screen; an unnamed member of the family told him "the famous ukiyo Matabei's Hikone screen" had first been obtained by

Ii Naosuke was '' daimyō'' of Hikone (1850–1860) and also Tairō of the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan, a position he held from April 23, 1858, until his death, assassinated in the Sakuradamon Incident on March 24, 1860. He is most famous for signing th ...

(1815–60, thirteenth head of the family), who interested himself in curios and objets d'art.

Reception and legacy

The work has been considered a masterpiece of Japanese genre painting since at least the mid-17th century. It has been widely copied, sometimes with variations, and some of the copies themselves have found renown. In 1955 it was designated a

and given the official name ' ().

Notes

References

Works cited

* * * *

External links

Details
at the National Treasures of Japan website (in Japanese)

at Hikone Castle Museum website Anonymous works Byōbu Japanese art National Treasures of Japan