Artworks

Gods of Wind and Thunder (Fūjin and Raijin)

Artwork · Tawara Sōtatsu · after 1621 · byōbu · Kennin-ji Temple

Probably made after 1621, when the wife of the shogun Hidetada commissioned Tawara Sōtatsu to decorate the Yōgenin; by then he had left the fan shop to his successor and turned to screens and fusuma. The God of Thunder takes the demon of the Kitano Tenjin engi as model, the God of Wind perhaps the Kei-school statues of the Sanjūsangendō. Raijin, white against gold, and Fūjin striding forward, both in flat solid colours with horns in tarashikomi (colour dropped into wet colour), suggest the course of a storm across the gold void between them. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 270–271, fig. 312. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.