Page 224 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

reflects the fashionable mode of Kano
Mitsunobu's painting in Kyoto around
1600, the clarity of the composition and
the open handling of space make Sakyô's
work unique among seventeenth-century
screens of the Edo period.
Date Masamune himself brushed the
inscriptions in cursive writing on the pan-
els. They are poems chosen from various
poetic anthologies, including the Ko-
kinshü and Shin kokinshü; two are Zen-
related sayings, one by the Chinese
scholar and poet Su Dongpo (1036-1101) on
panel four of the right screen, the other at
the top of panel three of the left screen,
referring to an answer in verse form made
by the great Chinese Chan (Zen) patriarch
Maozu Daoyi (709-788) to a question put
to him by Layman Pang (c. 740-808). Se-
lected translations follow:
[right screen, third panel]
0 cord of life!
Threading through the jewel of my soul,
If you will break, break now:
1 shall weaken if this life continues,
Unable to bear such fearful strain
(translated in Brower and Miner 1975, 301).
[right screen, fourth panel]
Nof a thing is;
it stores everything without limit;
there is a flower;
there is the moon;
there is a pavilion.
[left screen, second panel, top]
It is in winter
that a mountain hermitage
grows lonelier still,
for humans cease to visit
and grasses wither and die
(translated in McCullough 19853,77).
[left screen, third panel]
While you contemplate
swallowing the water of the West
in one gulp,
The river continues to flow East,
day and night,
without ceasing or waiting. YS

131 Mythological scene
Kano Tan'yu (1602-1674)
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
109.0 x 31.9 (427/8 x 12^/2)
Edo period, after 1638
Tokyo National Museum
The title of this painting, Ugayafukiaezu
no Mikoto kdtanzu, translates literally as
'The picture of the birth scene of the
Prince-cormorant-rush-thatch-
unthatched." This long, dangling name,
which first appears in a mythological nar-
rative in Kojiki (Records of Ancient Mat-
ters, c. 712 AD) refers to the father of the
now legendary first emperor of Japan,
132 Jinmu Tenno. The narrative is about Hiko-

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