Page 300 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

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222 Set of shelves with design based on and silver takamaki-e (relief maki-e ) lacquer
Kokei sanshd with cut gold and silver leaf, tin plate, and
maki-e and black lacquer, gold, silver, inlaid mother-of-pearl (raden).
tin, and mother-of-pearl on wood The daimyo and tea master Furuta
65.5 X 72.8 X 32.7 (253/4 X 285/8 X 127/8) Oribe (1544-1615) ordered a set of shelves
Momoyama period, i7th century with the Kokei sanshd motif from Kóami
Chôgen, younger brother of Koami
Tokyo National Museum Chóan, the seventh head of the Kôami
Important Art Object
school of maki-e craftsmen who served the
This set of shelves, similar in form to cat. Tokugawa shogunate. Seven such sets are
221, is decorated on the top with a design extant today, although it is not clear which
of a plum tree, and on the lower two tiers is the original. SN
with packages of incense and an incense
burner. On the upper shelf is a depiction
of three men on a bridge, based on the
apocryphal Chinese allegorical tale known
in Japanese as Kokei sanshd (Three laugh-
ers of Tiger Stream). Long ago, according
to the tale, the monk Huiyuan retired to
the Donglin Temple at Mount Lu in
Jiangxi Province and pledged never to
cross the tiger stream into the secular
realm. Once, his friends the poet Tao
Yuanming and the Daoist Lu Xiujing vis-
ited him; the three became so engrossed in
conversation that in seeing his two friends
off, Huiyuan inadvertently crossed the
bridge, and they burst into laughter. The
front doors are decorated with a brush-
wood fence and the sides and back with di-
anthus. The decoration is executed in gold

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