A Flute-Playing Monk (Komusō); The Fourth Month (Uzuki), from the series Fashionable Poetic Immortals of the Four Seasons (Fūzoku shiki kasen)
Suzuki Harunobu Japanese
Not on view
Komusō were itinerant Zen Buddhist monks of the Fuke sect who traveled the countryside, covering their heads with oversize basketlike hats and playing bamboo flutes (shakuhachi). Here the young monk has caught the attention of young women, who ogle him from indoors. He turns to watch the flight of a cuckoo bird (hototogisu), a symbol of “the fourth month,” the beginning of summer, and fleeting love.
The anonymous poem is from the summer section of Seven Hundred Poems Compiled by Lord Shirakawa (Shirakawa-dono shichi-hyakushu, no. 136), compiled around 1265:
Hito mo toe
saku ya uzuki no
hana-zakari
kōchō ni nitaru
yado no kakine o
Let everyone know
that now in the fourth month,
the deutzia flowers in bloom
resemble butterflies covering
a hedge in the garden.
—Trans. John T. Carpenter
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