Kiefer und Chrysanthemen sind noch da
Tao Yuanming among Chrysanthemums, Tsuneshige
A tsuba of sentoku with rounded corners and a raised band of cloud along the top, signed Tsuneshige. On the signed face a gnarled trunk rises at the left under a pine, and chrysanthemums grow at its foot. On the back an old man with a long beard and a tall cap sits at the lower right, smiling, beside a stream with chrysanthemums.
The old man is Tao Yuanming, Tō Enmei in Japan, the Chinese poet who lived from 365 to 427. At about forty he gave up his post as governor of Pengze and went home to his fields. Two of his texts made his image. In Returning Home, Kikyorai, he finds the three paths to his house overgrown, but the pines and chrysanthemums still standing. In his poems on drinking wine he picks chrysanthemums under the eastern fence and looks, at ease, toward the southern mountains. JAANUS calls him the model of the scholar who withdraws from office, and notes that he is usually shown a little drunk. The smile fits.
The guard divides the two texts between its faces. The signed side holds pine and chrysanthemums without a figure, the garden he came back to. The other side holds the man among his flowers by the water. Among the Tsuneshige guards in this collection he has two counterparts from China: Taikobo waiting at the river and Zhuge Liang in his reed hut, both found there and called to serve. Tao Yuanming is the one who went home.
The tsuba comes from the collection of Alan Hartman in New York and is at present in Japan, on its way from the United States. Its page follows on its arrival.
This guard is one of eight signed Tsuneshige in the collection. They are set side by side, with what they share and where they differ, on a page of their own.
Tsuba. Signiert Tsuneshige. Sentoku, takabori mit iroe. Kiefer und Chrysanthemen; Rückseite Tao Yuanming (Tō Enmei) bei den Chrysanthemen am Wasser. Mittlere Edo-Zeit. Privatsammlung, zuvor Sammlung Alan Hartman, New York. Seite in Vorbereitung.
In the collection
- Type
- Tosogu › Tsuba
- School
- Nara › Tsuneshige
- Period
- Edo-Zeit › Mittlere Edo-Zeit
- Material
- Sentoku
- Motif
- Mensch und Legende
