![Dike of Ogura Pond, from the series "Ashikari" (The Reed Cutter) by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro](https://inventory.yokohama.art.museum/art_images/75/74467m.jpg)
Dike of Ogura Pond, from the series "Ashikari" (The Reed Cutter) by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro
蘆刈 巨椋堤
- Birth Year
- 1916
- Death Year
- 1994
- Date
- 1987
- Technique, Material, Format
- color on paper, framed (one of the set of four)
- Dimension
- 45.6 x 182.0 cm
- Donor name
- Ms. Morita Sadako
- Category
- Nihonga (Japanese-style Painting)
- Inventory Number
- 98-JP-004-03
These four paintings are based on Tanizaki Junichiro’s fantastical novel Ashikari (The Reed Cutter), which was in turn inspired by a Noh play of the same title. The original source was a folk tale about a couple from Namba (the old name for Osaka), where reeds once grew in abundance. In the novel, a reed bed on a moonlit night is the setting in which a man recounts the checkered life of his father, who married the sister of a girl he fancied. Morita Kohei depicts the four scenes in a long horizontal format reminiscent of traditional picture scrolls, but instead of binding them in a single scroll, he framed them as separate images of varying length. Viewing the four very different images is akin to watching the set changes in a play, and they prompt leaps of imagination in their viewers. We can also see that the artist, who was interested in new approaches to narrative picture scrolls, put a lot of thought into the compositions and mounting of his works in order to convey their charms in contemporary exhibition spaces.
(UCHIYAMA Junko)
*You can see other works from this series .