Sesshiu, the remarkable painter who founded the school bearing his name, was of the noble family of Ota, and was born in 1440. At the age of twelve or thirteen he was intended for the Church and placed under the instruction of the abbot of the temple of Hōfukuji. Sesshiu’s sympathies, however, were all in the direction of the fine arts, he neglected religious training, and a story is told of him—one of those extraordinary legends familiar in Chinese and Japanese annals—that upon one occasion, when bound to a pillar as punishment for some misconduct, he beguiled the weary hours of waiting by drawing rats upon the floor, using his toes for pencil and his tears for ink (!), the representation being so life-like as to alarm his janitor. Some versions of the story affirm that, upon the approach of the priest, the rats scampered away.
At the age of forty he visited China, the fountain-head, but was surprised to find that he had more to teach than to learn.
The fan of Hotei and the children, probably by Kanō Shō-yei, 1591, may be accepted as one of the finest examples of a painted fan of the Kanō school, the last of the three branches of the fifteenth-century revival of Chinese teaching. The school was founded by Masanobu, a painter of landscape, born c. 1423 and died 1520, its actual head, however, being Motonobu, his son, born 1476.
Hotei (Master Linen-sack), the god of prosperity, was a Chinese priest of the tenth century, famous for his fatness and his love of children. He could sleep in the snow, never washed himself, and had the power of infallibly predicting future events. The legends attached to his name are very similar to those narrated of many Taoist Rishis, but his claim to a position as Divinity appears to be due to the view enunciated in the Butsu-Zō dzu-i and other works, that he was an incarnation of Miroku Bosatsu Mâitrêya, the Messiah of the Buddhists, in which capacity his image has long been worshipped in Chinese temples. He is usually represented with a fan of the pear-shaped gourd type, and carries a cloth bag as a trap for little boys and girls, who are enticed inside to see the wonderful things it is supposed to contain, and then imprisoned until they can beg their way out. These ‘Precious Things’ include the Lucky Rain Coat, the Sacred Key, the Inexhaustible Purse, etc.[51]
Innumerable pictures of Hotei by Japanese artists are in existence, some dating from the fifteenth century.
The charmingly poetic view of the Tamagawa River, with the tea-plant in blossom, and flying cuckoo (Hoto-Togisu), is probably by Kanō San Raku, 1633. Both these fans are accompanied by a Japanese certificate of authenticity.
Autograph, motto, and inscription fans are referred to in another part of this work.[52] The practice of inscribing sacred texts upon fans, obtained during the latter part of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century, the period ‘when the Buddhist religion was openly professed by the wealthy and warmly supported by the luxurious.’ Fragments of Buddhist sûtras written on fans and fan leaves exist at the temples at Yamato, Ôsaka, the Imperial Museum Tôkyô, and elsewhere. These are copied from the ‘Lotus of the True Law,’ or other Mahâyâna texts of a like nature. The fans, though differing somewhat in size, are all alike in paper, pigments, and style of painting, and evidently had a common origin; they are overlaid with gold-leaf and dusted with fine sand; upon this a thin wash of red or black pigment is applied. The sacred text is written in ink, over a painting, usually a figure-subject and bearing no reference to the text; the faces sketched in a curious convention known as Hikimé Kagihana (eye with a line, the nose with a key), in which the eye is represented by a straight line and the nose with a somewhat acute angle. This convention has been traced to Kasuga Takayoshi (beginning of the twelfth century), who painted a number of picture rolls illustrating the tales of the Genii.
| The Tamagawa River. with teaplant & flying cuckoo. by Kanō San Raku, 1633. | Mr Wilson Crewdson. |