The Artist:    Toyohara Kunichika. 1

The Work:     Meeting for Peace Negotiations is a triptych showing the Japanese on the left separated from the Chinese on the right by the negotiating table at Shunpanro Restaurant, April 1895.  A large tray landscape in the center panel sits on the rear edge of the large red cloth-covered table.  A gray barked pine (equivalent to a meter high?) is shown with rocks and iris-like-leaved flowers in a broad tray which might have been only 1 cm deep.  (Perhaps the landscape is resting on something to the right of the main table.)  This is said to be the better of two versions done of the subject by the artist.

The Artist:     Kiyochika (b. Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1847-1915) was an independent from Edo who was influenced by imported lithographs and etchings, and thus turned to woodblock printing.  He had a considerable success, particularly between 1876 and 1881, but after that the style in which he worked lost its popularity.  He was also a book, magazine and newspaper illustrator.  His prints contained views of contemporary Tokyo as it changed under the impact of Western influence.  2

The Work:     First Month: The Sleeping Dragon Plum at Kameido is a triptych from Views of the Famous Places of Tokyo, c.February 1896.  The sharp lines and areas of solid color characteristic of the Ukiyo-e tradition are gone, and the print has become virtually a replication of Japanese-style painting.  In the lower right corner of the right-most panel, a young Japanese girl and her European-garbed father are viewing two bonsai under a covered porch.  On a low raised stand in a pale blue bowl is a red-berried plum tree.  On a mat in a slightly larger pot at the print's edge is larger plum.  The background scene is of plum-blossom viewing at Plum Estate (Umeyashiki) in Kameido in eastern Tokyo.  Some forty other people, in mixed culture clothing/warm winter dress, are milling around or are at low mat-covered tables not far from a lake's edge.

The Subject:    The Sleeping Dragon Plum, a tree right of the triptych's center, is surrounded by a low fence and marked with a plaque.  It was the single most famous tree in Tokyo.  The ancient plum was known for the habit of sending roots into the ground from its descending branches, which would then rise in turn as new shoots, giving an overall contour of a reclining dragon.  The tree was badly damaged by a great flood in 1910.  It survived until the 1920s.

The Artist:     Kiyochika. 3

The Work:    An untitled painting dated to 1890 is located over the doorway of the Inn Mantei in the Gion quarter of Kyoto.  The silk background has turned brown with age and the black ink is smudged and misty.  This work shows a double-trunk pine in a low rectangular pot, some utensils nearby, and large leaf, and a poem inscribed in the upper right.  The similarity between the two trees planted side by side might be faulted as too much sameness in height, trunk size, and even to the number of branches.  But the lines in the trunks and branches have been combined into a beautiful linear arrangement. 

The Artist:    Tessai (b. Tomioka Hyakuren, 1837-1924) was one of the most renowned artists in Japanese history.  He painted in the so-called "Literary Men's Style," employed by Chinese artists of the Tang dynasty.  Occasionally he even included Chinese poems in his own paintings.  But he was not a slavish copier of the soft and shaded Chinese style of painting, the artists of which he admired both for their manner of painting and their lofty ideas.  He shared with them their love of untouched nature represented often by very free brush strokes for which Tessai became famous.
     At first he trained to be a Shinto priest, and he eventually became high priest at the important Otori Shrine near Osaka.  In the meantime, he had started a successful school of painting.  He also helped by actually working on the restoration of some old shrines and temples.
     In his youth the artist met the aged nun Otagaki Rengetsu, a poetess who made pottery on which she inscribed her poems.  Tessai was entrusted to deliver these pots to the nun's parishioners.  From this he learned pottery making, which he practiced to some extent throughout his life, poetry and the joy of giving.  In later years, when his paintings on fans or scrolls were in great demand, he continued to give them away, as he had done for years, rather than sell them.
     When his brother died, Tessai returned to Kyoto, his birthplace, and bought a small house in which he lived the rest of his days.  He never gave up his interest in religious philosophy and was always known as a scholar-artist.
     A master of ink painting (sumi), Tessai reduced details in his pictures to the essentials and thereby was able to create literally thousands of works, ranging in size from small sketches to large scrolls.  In his lifetime he also made many long journeys, mostly on foot, throughout the islands of his homeland.
     Even before his death, numerous forgeries of his paintings were put on the market.  This was a kind of tribute, perhaps, but also a great annoyance to him.  4

The Work:     A Pleasant Life in a Gourd (1923) is noted here because it is a late depiction of a very early theme in this history .

The Artist:     Tessai.  5

1.     Seen by RJB at a vendor's display of woodblock prints at the February 1992 Phoenix Matsuri Festival; cf. the lobster and non-bonsai pine in Hokkei's Choko Chorei, c.1825, b&w fig. 126 on pg. 218 of Mirviss, Joan B.  The Frank Lloyd Wright Collection of Surimono; (New York: Weatherhill, Inc. and Phoenix, AZ: Phoenix Art Museum; 1995).  The motif, to a less extent, can also be found in Hokkei's A Set for the Hanazona Group, early 1820s (Keyes, Surimono, Fig. 17 color, pg. 57, caption on pg. 56); Hokkei's New Year's Arrangement,  late 1810s (Mirviss, small b&w Fig. 99, pg. 209); or Hokusai's Woman with a New Year Arrangement, 1797 (Mirviss, small b&w Fig. 150, pg. 226). 

2.     Roberts, Laurance P.  A Dictionary of Japanese Artists (Tokyo: John Weatherhill, Inc.; 1976), pg. 85; Peace Meeting from Allen Adler & Ruth Leserman Collection, #99, seen at Phoenix Art Museum, c.late 1980s; 

3.     First Month seen at Phoenix Art Museum, c.late 1980s; Smith, Henry D. II  Kiyochika, Artist of Meiji Japan (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art; 1988); cf. Du Cane, Florence  The Flowers and Gardens of Japan (London: Adam & Charles Black; 1908), pp. 112-113: 
     "One of the most famous and beautiful [plum orchards] is at Sugita, a charming little village nestling by the bluest waters near Yokohama, where a thousand trees have stood for upwards of a century, displaying their blossom every spring to admiring eyes from all the country round.  Here there are six special kinds of the tree, and their fancy names mark the different characters of the flowers, the Japanese being very clever at finding characteristic names for flowers and trees.  The Gwario Bai, or Recumbent Dragon Tree, is the most famous of these, being indeed the most notable thing in the outskirts of Tokyo.  Some fifty years ago [i.e., c.1858] there grew a wonderful tree of vast age and strange shape, its branches having ploughed up the ground and thrown out new roots in no fewer than fourteen places, thus naturally covering an extensive area.  The name of Gwario Bai was given to the tree by old Prince Rekko, who planted the groves in Tokiwa Park in 1837, a piece of forethought highly appreciated by many visitors to this day.  The Shogun (or Generalissimo) of that day also paid a visit to the spot, and made the tree Goyobaku or the Tree of Honourable Service, in return for which gracious act of condescension the fruit was presented to him every year.  All these honours, however, could not save it from a natural death when its time came; in its place now flourish a number of much less interesting trees, which nevertheless bear the same name, and apparently the same reputation, as their predecessor the Dragon of the Prime."
     The Reclining Dragon Plum (aka Garyubai) can also be seen in another piece by Hokkei from the early 1820s (Keyes, Surimono, small b&w Fig. 61, pg. 158).
     Japan, The Official Guide (Tokyo: Board of Tourist Industry, Japanese Government Railways; 1933, 1941), pg. 298, states that Kameido in eastern Tokyo is also noted for the large wisterias in the grounds of its Shinto shrine which dates from the seventeenth century.

4.     Index of Japanese Painters, compiled by the Society of Friends of Eastern Art (Toyo Bijutsu Kokusai Kenkyukai) (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company; 1940.  First Tuttle edition published 1958), pg. 120; Moore, Lamont “Bonsai and the 47th Ronin,” Bonsai Journal, ABS, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1971, pp. 8-9, 18, b&w photo on pg. 8, which also contains the following:  The Inn Mantei is noteworthy because it was here that Oishi Yoshio in 1702 or 1703 visited, reveled, and squandered his money away.  This was to give the impression that he was a frivolous wastrel when actually he and his forty-six companions – the 47 Ronin -- were furiously plotting to avenge an insult to their master.  After completing their mission, they were forced to commit suicide.  More than two hundred and fifty years later, guests at the Inn were assembling as their forefathers had assembled on each anniversary of Yoshio's death to pay tribute to his memory.

5.     Stein, Rolf A. The World in Miniature: Container Gardens and Dwellings in Far Eastern Religious Thought (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; 1990), Fig. 27, pg. 59.