Itaya HIROHARU
(Japan)
- Title
- Night procession of one hundred goblins
- Other titles:
- Procession of goblins
- Alternative title:
- Hyakki Yagyô
- Place of origin
-
Japan
- Cultural origin
- Style - Yamato-e.
- Period
- Edo (Tokugawa) period 1615 - 1868 → Japan
- Year
- circa 1820
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- handscroll: ink and colour on paper
- Dimensions
-
29.5 x 600.0cm
- Signature & date
- Signed, "Itaya Keiji". Sealed "Hiroharu". Not dated.
- Credit
- Asian Collection Benefactors' Fund 1995
- Accession number
- 125.1995
- Location
- Lower Asian gallery
- Further information
A humorous yet revealing image of anthropomorphic beliefs, this scroll depicts a medley of 'object-goblins' - kitchen utensils, musical instruments and the like. Recent scholarship explains that, according to old Japanese belief, objects that reached 100 years acquire a spirit. One surviving narrative scroll from the Muromachi period tells how used objects, discarded during the spring-cleaning of a temple, turned into demons and wreaked havoc on the village until a Buddhist monk quelled them and eventually turned them into good Buddhists. This scroll is one of many existing versions of the subject. As a pictorial representation, the scroll can be seen as part of the Japanese caricatural cartoon tradition that continues today as 'manga'.
The Asian Collections, AGNSW, 2003, pg.196.
- Bibliography (3)
-
Bruce James (Australia) (Author), Edmund Capon (England; Australia, b.1940) (Director), Art Gallery of New South Wales handbook, Domain, 1999, 282 (colour illus.).
'The art of Buddhism and other worlds', The Asian Collections Art Gallery of New South Wales 2003, 2003, 196-197 (colour illus.). The colour illus. on page 197 are details of this work.
Art speaks Japanese: Japanese language education kit from the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales 2007, 2007, colour illus.. card no. 08
