Auspicious painting for the New Year

This painting is a typical auspicious Japanese painting for the New Year. Depicted on the big turtle are a family of cranes and "the three friends of winter": pine, bamboo and ume plum. In pre-modern period, it was believed that cranes and turtles had extremely long lives, as there was a saying: "cranes live for 1000 years and turtles live for 10000 years (鶴は千年、亀は千年)". Thus, the turtle and the cranes are symbols of longevity. Of the "three friends of winter", the pine symbolizes endurance and longevity, the bamboo reflects strength and flexibility, and the plum evokes purity of character.

Itō Jakuchū's paintings of the whale and elephant are on display at Miho Museum

Last December, I wrote about newly found screen paintings of whale and elephant by an Edo-period Japanese painter, Itō Jakuchū (伊藤若冲; 1716-1800). When I walked around Shin-monzen, the antiques district in Kyoto, last Sunday, I saw many posters of the Jakuchu's whale and elephant.


According to the posters, the screens together with many other paintings by Jakuchu are on display at Miho Museum in Shiga prefecture from Sep. 1 to Dec. 13. You can see bigger photos of the whale-elepahnt paintings from this page in Miho Museum's Website.

People in Tokyo in 1805

Kidai Shoran (煕代勝覧) painted at c.a. 1805 depicted various people in the Edo period (1603-1867).

These people are commoners. The left panel shows two men and a male child. The left guy in the panel is wearing only kimono, and the right guy in the same panel is wearing a haori (羽織) jacket over his kimono. Wearing haori jacket was considered to be more formal than wearing only kimono. The style of wearing kimono without haori jacket was called kinagashi (着流し) and considered to be a casual style. On the right panel, two people are chatting with each other in a store in the kinagashi style. The man on the left is a merchant. Can you find an abacus, a necessity of merchants, in front of him? Japanese people had been using abacuses, or soroban (算盤) in Japanese, for calculation before electric calculators became popular in the late 1970s.

When people wore kimono, they considered it important to keep the lower part of kimono around the legs neat. Unintentional exposure of legs was regarded as clumsy and a bad manner even when they were working. When people do muscular labor, however, it is impossible to keep their legs unexposed. In such situations, they intentionally exposed their legs from the beginning by rolling the lower part of their kimono up above their waists. The lower part of the kimono was fixed at the waist by inserting it under the belt on the back. The man in the left panel is doing that. This style was called shirippashori (尻っぱしょり) and often regarded as manly and "cool". The man on the right is wearing a short kimono instead of doing shirippashori. Both men are wearing hachimaki (鉢巻), or Japanese-style headbands. They are for avoiding sweat to enter into their eyes.

The left panel shows a mother in a green kimono and her daughter in a yellowish one. They are wearing kimono in a formal way at the period; the mother, or a married woman, has a knot of the belt, or obi (帯), in front, whereas the daughter, or an unmarried woman, has the knot on her back. Since the knot in front interferes with the movement of the upper body, the habit of married women to make knots in front was gradually changed to make the knot on the back in the late Edo period. So women today make the knot on their back regardless of their marital status. Also seen in the illustration in the left panel is that the daughter is wearing a kimono with long sleeves, or furisode (振り袖). This habit that unmarried women wear long-sleeved kimono is still seen in Japan. The middle and right panels show women wearing scarves called okoso-zukin (御高祖頭巾). Okoso-zukin started to be in fashion among women in the 1720s-1730s, and it had been popular among women until Meiji period (1868-1912). The following photo was taken in the early Meiji period.


The women in the following illustration is carrying something wrapped in furoshiki (風呂敷).

They seem to have bought many goods. Furoshiki is just a large square cloth, but it is convenient for wrapping and carrying goods of various sizes. You can see how various goods are wrapped in furoshiki here.

The men in the above illustrations are samurai in full dress, indicating that they are on duty. They are wearing kamishimo jackets on the upper bodies and hakama trousers on the lower part of their bodies. Kamishimo was a jacket evolved from jinbaori (陣羽織) jacket worn over yoroi armor. The shoulder line of kamishimo was kept straight by inserting baleen. Both men are wearing swords on their waists. Samurai always wore two swords; one was a long sword, which is called katana (刀), and another was a short sword called wakizashi (脇差). Can you find two swords on the waist of each samurai?

These samurai are wearing hakama trousers. They are wearing haori jackets instead of kamishimo jackets, indicating that they are off duty. The samurai in the above illustrations would look to be relaxed when compared to the samurai in the previous illustrations, wouldn't they? Even when they are off duty, however, samurai almost always wore hakama when they went outside. It was a preparation for a possible accidental fight. If they fight in kinagashi style without hakama trousers, they would have to expose their legs during the fight, which was regarded as clumsy as I mentioned earlier.

These people are servants of samurai. Have you noticed that each guy is wearing only a single sword? Although I am not sure, their swords are probably wakizashi, or short swords, which were not regarded as katana. They are doing shirippasyori by folding the lower part of their kimono since they have to work around for their masters.

This is a tea stand on the street. On the right bench are two commoners. The man on the left bench is perhaps a samurai. The waitress serving tea is wearing a small red apron. We can still find similar tea houses in the grounds of some Buddhist temples in Kyoto.

Here I stop writing today. I will write more about people in Kidai Shoran in the next update. The update will be slow as always. Please be patient!

Related Post:
(1) Tokyo in 1805
(2) People in Tokyo in 1805 (this post)
(3) Disabled people and musicians in Tokyo in 1805

Tokyo in 1805

Kidai Shōran (煕代勝覧) is a 12-metre-long picture scroll which describes a street in the City of Edo (present Tokyo). It was painted approximately 200 years ago, ca.1805. The street corresponds to a part of present Chuo-dori street, which is between JR Kanda Station and Tokyo Metro Nihonbashi Station shown in red in the above map. The painting provides the exact location of buildings along the street and daily lives of people there at the time.

The above illustration is from the right-most part of Kidai Shōran. The bridge at the right side was called Imagawa-bashi (今川橋), or Imagawa Bridge. There is no bridge at the site now, but the name of the bridge remains as a name of a crossing. The following google street view shows a southward view from the Imagawa-bashi crossing, which corresponds to the leftward view from the bridge in the above illustration.

View Larger Map

Can you differentiate samurai from commoners in the illustration? Samurai have swords on their waists.


The fashion and stuff in the Edo period may look strange for those who are unfamiliar with them. I'll get into some details of them in the posts to follow. Please don't expect, however, quick update in this blog; it takes much time for me to write anything in English.

Related post:
(2) People in Tokyo in 1805
(3) Disabled people and musicians in Tokyo in 1805

Screen paintings of whale and elephant by Itō Jakuchū

A pair of folding screens by a Japanese painter, Itō Jakuchū (伊藤若冲; 1716-1800), was found in a private home in Kanazawa city. Itō Jakuchū's paintings usually depict animals, birds and plants in bold composition. Like his other works, the newly-found screens uniquely contrast a black whale spouting water on the left-side screen and a white elephant sitting on the beach on the right-side screen.

The design of the newly-found screens is similar to a Jakuchu's missing work.

Folding screens in the above photograph were listed in an auction catalogue of Osaka Art Club (大阪美術倶楽部) issued in 1928. Notice that, whereas the tail of the elephant and the plants over the back of the elephant are drawn on the newly-found screen, they are missing on the one in the old auction catalogue. According to the catalogue, the screens had been owned by Baron Kawasaki in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture. They were knocked down to an anonymous person for 3,100 yen, which roughly corresponds to present five million yen, or 50,000 US dollars. After the auction, no one but the unknown owner has seen the screens.

According to Yomiuri Online, the pair of the newly-found screens has signatures saying: "Painted by Beito-ou, 82 years old (米斗翁八十二歳画)"; Beito-ou (Uncle Beito) was a Jakuchū's pseudonym that he used in his last years. Perhaps, in the last years of his life, he painted again the composition of the black whale and white elephant that he had once painted.

The followings are some of other Jakuchu's works for your eyes' pleasure.