Page 240 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

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145 Tethered horse or Department of Repair and Construc-
Kano Sanraku (1559-1635) tion of the Imperial Palace, an honorific
ink, color, and gold leaf on wooden title; i.e., Sanraku], First day of the sixth
panel month of the nineteenth year ofKeichd
88.7 x 125.0 (347/8 x 49 vy [corresponding to 1614]. Along the left
Edo period, 1614 edge is another inscription: To hang as vo-
tive offering; the donor [Kibei Ujichika] of
Myôhôin, Kyoto An'ydji. The painting was originally of-
As late as the Kamakura period live horses fered to Hokoku Jinja, a mortuary shrine
were offered to Shinto shrines as gifts to of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), whom
deities by those who believed in their pro- Eitoku and Sanraku had served as
tective power. In the Muromachi period painters. YS
life-size wooden horses were sometimes
substituted for the live ones, soon followed
by less expensive paintings of horses.
Named ema (votive paintings of horses),
usually of modest size, they form a cate-
gory of their own in Japanese art; some
ema were painted by major artists.
This work, impressive for its size and
no less so for its expressive quality, was
painted by Kano Sanraku, a former war-
rior turned painter who headed the studio
of the famous artist Kano Eitoku when the
latter prematurely died in 1590 at the age
of forty-seven. Along the right edge of the
painting is an inscription: By the brush of
Kano Shùri [member of the Shüridokoro,

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