Kind of a dramatic title, don’t you think? No, this post will not be about crime, punishment, and the noose, but rather, stuff to put up on the wall in my bonsai workshop and pottery room.
I came across this painted cloth from famous bonsai potter and painter Fujikake Yuzan a couple of weeks ago, and thought it would be something nice to hang in the bonsai workshop and pottery display room, among the Naka drawings and occasional scroll.
It’s very large, close to 4 feet, although the cloth itself is only around 3 feet long.
Hanging in my pottery room.
The cloth depicts the “kitsune no yomeiri”, or “Fox’s Wedding.” In Japanese folklore the Fox’s Wedding is a personification of unexplained lights or a “sunshower”, where it is raining but the sky is clear and the sun shining, what we in the American South call “The Devil Beating his Wife.” Folklore surrounding the sun shower is some fascinating reading, and I’ve long been enamored of the stories in folklore, and have written about them before on the blog in a previous post on Shunka Shouzan:
Fox’s Wedding in the Shunka Shozan Article
For more on the “Fox’s Wedding” in Japanese Folklore, go read this, it’s an awesome article in a great blog:
Kitsune No Yomeiri: The Fox Wedding
Outside of Japan, in the majority of the rest of world, it is also regarded as the marriage of animals or devils, and include wolves, foxes, jackals, and hyenas, in addition to “the devil”. What is fascinating is that all of the animals in the various parts of the world are “tricksters” or devious gods in the local folklore, and it bears mention to note that even in the American Southern version, this theme holds true, as we can certainly classify “the Devil” as our local “trickster god”, and his marriage is implied in the statement.
Two classical paintings or triptychs from the mid 1800′s showing the Fox’s Wedding.
So, enough about the history, here’s a detail view of the painting I picked up. The painting, as previously mentioned, is by Fujikake Yuzan, one of the most well regarded painters of bonsai pottery of the latter half of the 20th century. For more on Yuzan and other works, see these previous posts:
Fujikake Yuzan
Gold Accented Fujikake Yuzan
A Very Interesting Yuzan
Detail of the procession and the Bride.
Fujikake Yuzan Hanko and Rakkan.
Thanks for reading, up next, more “Pots From My Collection”.
