A fine example of a funpon – an artist’s study – showing luxurious palanquins. The present copy is from the library of the great bibliophile and scholar of Japanese literature Nakano Kochi (1932–present), Emeritus Professor at Waseda.
We know the present copy is a funpon due to the thinness of the paper and the way that it has been pieced together. When making a study scroll, artists usually did not use high-quality paper, instead opting to use cheaper scraps of paper that could be glued together to form a larger sheet. Additionally, funpon tend to have a looser, sketchier drawing style. The present scroll is rather interesting example of a funpon, as the paper has been resourcefully pieced together but the quality of the drawing is very high.
The contents are a copy of an earlier scroll, which is noted as being made in the 10th year of Keicho (1605). A scroll showing the same contents appears in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum (object P-414) – this is also a copy, and in less fine condition. It is not entirely clear whether the original 1605 scroll has survived, and so the present scroll and surviving copies give the best sense of what it would have looked like. Later on, the same plates and contents were recreated in woodblock for the first volume of the Tankaku sosho series compiled by Mizuno Tadanaka (1814–1865), published in 1848.
The scroll itself depicts eight highly ornate palanquins which were used by the Saionji family in Kyoto. A branch of the Fujiwara clan, the Saionji family were well-known patrons of the arts, and many members were accomplished waka poets. Clearly their artistic sensibilities extended to material objects, and the scroll allows us to view the palanquins they rode and see their fabulous interior decoration.
NB. While Prof. Nakano Kochi’s collection has been mostly donated to Waseda University, he was known to have sold parts of his collection within the Japanese rare book trade at various points in his career. As such, the present scroll is one of the items which he dispersed from the Kuyo-bunko collection.
