Japanese Works of Art
Beauty with a Fan and Cuckoo by SUIMUTEI SHŌROKU 酔夢亭蕉鹿 (TAKAO NOBUYASU 高尾信保, 1779–1845)
Image: 85.2 × 31cm (33 1/2 × 12 1/4in)
Further images
Literature
Itabashi Art Museum. Nikuhitsu ukiyo-e meihinten (Exhibition of Ukiyo-e Masterpieces). Edo Bunka series, vol. 9. Tokyo: Itabashi Art Museum, 1989. Plate 79.
New Otani Museum. Nyū Ōtani Bijutsukan shozō sakuhin hyakusen (100 Works in the New Otani Museum). Tokyo: New Otani Museum, 1991. Plate 80.
Tokyo National Museum, Shōroku. Setsugi bijin (Beauty Playing with Snow)
Tokyo National Museum Shōroku. Fumiyomi bijin (Beauty Reading a Letter)
Shōroku’s works are held in major Japanese institutions, including Tokyo National Museum, Kumamoto Prefectural Museum, and the Nara National Museum.
Beauty with a Fan and Cuckoo by SUIMUTEI SHŌROKU 酔夢亭蕉鹿 (TAKAO NOBUYASU 高尾信保, 1779–1845)
This evocative hanging scroll depicts a tall, slender courtesan in a moment of quiet, wistful introspection. A high-ranking samurai retainer (旗本, hatamoto) of the Shogunate who turned his hand to the arts, Shōroku was a distinguished pupil of the celebrated master Chōbunsai Eishi. That lineage is clearly visible here in the figure’s elongated grace, delicate features, and the sophisticated layering of her summer wardrobe. She wears a diaphanous black gauze overcoat adorned with irises (菖蒲, ayame), through which one can glimpse the intricate spider web and cherry blossom patterns of her scarlet under-kimono. Her elaborate tate-hyōgo hairstyle, bristling with tortoiseshell pins, marks her as a woman of the highest aesthetic and social standing in Edo’s Floating World.
The painting is imbued with a poignant literary depth through an inscription by the famous Edo poet and novelist Shoku Sanjin (Ōta Nanpo, 1749–1823). The verse suggests the beauty is waiting for a lover who will not return and compares the melancholy of the otokogokoro (男心, male frivolity) to the sound of falling rain. Above the beauty, a cuckoo darts through the air. In Japanese poetic tradition, the cuckoo is a messenger of the spirit world and a symbol of the transience of love; its name (時鳥, hototogisu) is also a homonym for ‘never turn back,’ reinforcing the painting's theme of longing and the fleeting nature of time. Both the cuckoo and the iris design suggest the fifth month of the lunar calendar (mid-summer).
Technically superb, this work employs a rich palette of sumi ink, mineral colors, and gofun (胡粉, calcified shell powder), accented with gold and shimmering mica. Signed ‘Shōroku-ga’ and sealed Shōroku, this painting has nearly identical versions held in the Itabashi Art Museum and the New Otani Museum. This scroll has been meticulously preserved in modern silk mounts by the Kyoto master mounter Kami Kentarō (1998) and features striking red lacquer roller ends. It is presented in its original wooden storage box within a further red-lacquered outer protective case, representing a rare confluence of Edo-period samurai-artist sensibility and master-class ukiyo-e painting.
SUIMUTEI SHŌROKU 酔夢亭蕉鹿 (also known as TAKAO NOBUYASU 高尾信保, 1779–1845)
Suimutei Shōroku (June 12, 1779 – September 12, 1845) was a Japanese painter and samurai retainer active in the late Edo period. Born in Edo (present-day Tokyo) in the Tsukiji, Kobiki-chō area, he was the son of a samurai retainer with a stipend of 800 koku. His family name was Takao, his given name Nobuyasu, and he was also known by the sobriquet Eiyōjō; in the arts, he used the name Suimutei. Shōroku served as a hatamoto, a direct retainer of the Tokugawa shogunate, and held a relatively high rank within the bakufu administration. Despite having a successful bureaucratic career, he retired comparatively early, around 1820, during the Bunka era, and thereafter devoted himself fully to literary and artistic pursuits.
Artistically, Shōroku studied ukiyo-e painting under Chōbunsai Eishi (also known as Chōbunsai Eiyō), a leading painter of bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women), and kyōka poetry (comic verse in the waka tradition) under Ōta Nanpo (pen name Shokusanjin), one of Edo’s most prominent poets and writers. His surviving works consist primarily of paintings of beautiful women, closely aligned with the refined style of his teacher Eishi. Many of his works bear inscriptions by Ōta Nanpo, attesting to Shōroku’s close ties to Edo’s kyōka and artistic circles. His works are held in major Japanese collections, including the Tokyo National Museum, the New Otani Museum, and the Nara National Museum.
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