Artworks

Yorobōshi (The Beggar Monk)

Artwork · Shimomura Kanzan · 1915 · byōbu · Tokyo National Museum

A pair of screens by Shimomura Kanzan (1873–1930) after the Nō play: the blind monk Shuntokumaru, falsely accused and disowned, looks to the west at sunset and, holding the image of the sun in his heart, sees the whole landscape. A flowering plum against gold spreads across twelve panels; between its branches the thin figure prays, a cluster of grave markers half hidden by the trunk — the debt to Kōrin’s Red and White Plum Blossoms is obvious. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 365–366, fig. 433. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.