Kano school (18th Century)
- Tale of the Hollow Tree (Utsubo monogatari)

Tale of the Hollow Tree (Utsubo monogatari)

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$150,000 - $200,000

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Sale 2296
Japanese & Korean Art
24 March 2010
New York, Rockefeller Plaza Buy Catalog

Kano school (18th Century)
Tale of the Hollow Tree (Utsubo monogatari)
Pair of six-panel screens; ink, color, gold and gold leaf on paper
36¼ x 107in. (92 x 272cm.) each (2)

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VARIOUS PROPERTIES

Miyazaki Momo, "Utsubo Monogatari-zu byobu o megutte" (A screen illustrating Tale of the Hollow Tree), in Bi no tayori, no. 167 (Summer, 2009) [exh. brochure].

Yamato Bunkakan, Nara, "Monogatari to kaiga" (Tales and painting), 2009.8.21--9.27

This story was written in the late tenth century and is thought to be the world's oldest novel. The author and exact date are unknown, but the tale was definitely in circulation by the early eleventh century when it was cited by Murasaki Shikibu in her Tale of Genji and by Sei Shonagon in her Pillow Book. The oldest extant manuscript dates from the mid-seventeenth century. Because the tale has never been translated, except in fragments, identification of the six scenes is problematic. But the text includes descriptions of accompanying images, so there is no doubt that it was illustrated from an early date. Unfortunately no extant images predate the Edo period. In the 1660s, the tale was published as an illustrated, woodblock-printed book and was widely circulated and read. It is also known from a total of ten illustrated handscrolls and manuscripts in the popular Nara ehon (Nara picture books) form. The pair of screens shown here is very rare; it is the only large-scale painting of this subject. Stylistically, the screens relate most closely to the work of an eighteenth-century painter such as Kano Naganobu.

This curious tale is in fourteen chapters divided into twenty fascicles, or three main sections. It is an amalgam of fairy tale, court romance, realistic fiction and thematic novel. A child prodigy, Kiyowara no Toshikage, sets out for China on an official mission at age sixteen but shipwrecks in Malaysia. He has various fantastic adventures and receives from the Buddha a gift of thirty marvelous seven-stringed zithers (koto), including two with supernatural effect. His descendants, he is told, will find prosperity through music. On the right screen, Toshikage, dressed as a Heian-period official, appears with eleven zithers. At the far right, he sits in a grove of blossoming cherry trees, accompanied by heavenly apsaras. At center, he is transported across a river on the back of a magnificent peacock, and at left, before returning to Japan, he learns the secret arts of the zither from three Chinese sages.

Toshikage returns to Japan, enters service at the Heian court, advances in rank, marries and then retires in order to pass on the secrets of performing celestial music to his daughter. She is left an orphan, living alone in her father's crumbling mansion. Then, she has a brief, dreamlike encounter with a nobleman named Kanemasa and gives birth to a son, Nakatada. Impoverished, she takes the child into the forest and raises him in a hollow tree (the tree that gives this work its title) formerly inhabited by bears. He becomes another musical genius.
On the left screen, we see how they are discovered by Kanemasa, who is attracted by their music, and who takes mother and son back to the capital. Kanemasa and his entourage come upon mother and son seated deep in the forest near the tree that serves as their home, surrounded by animals and playing the zither. Above right, they are transported to the capital in a royal palanquin and thereafter earn imperial favor with their music. This is the story related in the first chapter of the Utsubo.

This being a fairy tale, the son rises quickly in rank and becomes one of the sixteen suitors of the beautiful Princess Atemiya, daughter of the General of the Left. The suitors (including Nakatada) are disappointed when she marries the crown prince. There follows a vicious power struggle revolving around the Nakatada household and succession to the throne. Finally, Nakatada is appointed tutor for the designated heir. Nakatada instructs his daughter, Princess Inumiya, in the art of the magical zithers. In the end, Nakatada, his mother and daughter perform at court, achieving the pinnacle of success.

The supremacy of music and the arts (Toshikage had a storehouse filled with Chinese books, Japanese poetry collections and memoirs), and the manner in which these are passed down through the generations, is a major theme of the tale.

• Japanese Art

• 18th Century
• Paintings
• ink
• Japan
• Edo (1600-1868)
• mythological

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