New Year's Arrangement with a Tiger

…; purchased from the dealer Hasegawa, Japan, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1994;¹¹Coll. cat. Goslings 1999, p. 67, cat. no. 150 by whom donated to the museum, 1995

ObjectNumber: RP-P-1995-302

Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse

The poet Asakuraan commissioned a design from Shunman for the New Hare Year 1807.²²Mirviss, Joan B. and John T. Carpenter, The Frank Lloyd Wright Collection of Surimono. New York: Weatherhill; Phoenix, Ariz.: Phoenix Art Museum, 1995, p. 250.

An alcove, tokonoma, decorated in anticipation of the New Year with slips of paper, ferns, urajiro, and another leaf attached to a string and hung from the pillar, hashira, at back left. A poem inscribed as a calligraphy on a hanging-scroll. Before it, on a small lacquered stand, a bronze figurine of a seated tiger.

The tiger refers to the zodiacal animal for the New Tiger Year 1806. This print also serves as a picture calendar, egoyomi, giving the long months of the year, 1, 2, 4, intercalary month, uru 8, and 10, in red, as if they were symbols giving the reading of uncommon characters, furigana, alongside the poem and its introduction.

One poem by Asakuraan [Hashi no Sansho, a judge of the Tsubogawa],³³Kano, Kaian (ed.), Kyoka jinmei jisho (Dictionary of Names of Kyoka Poets). Kyoto: Rinsen shoten, 1977 (1928), p. 82. with a written seal, kakihan.

Issued by the poet
Unsigned

M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 195

M. Forrer, 2013, 'anonymous, New Year's Arrangement with a Tiger, Japan, 1806', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.318717