Parody of Palace Servants Heating Sake over a Fire of Maple Leaves
Okumura Masanobu Japanese
Not on view
In one scene of The Tale of the Heike, Emperor Takakura happens upon servants who have swept up maple leaves to make a fire to heat sake. The emperor remarks that they seem to be aware of a poem by the Tang poet Bo Juyi alluding to just such a scene. In this parody of the episode, one of the servants plays a three-stringed shamisen, which is anachronistic, since the instrument was not used in Japan until the seventeenth century. Beside the scene the artist has added a hokku (seventeen-syllable seasonal poem), perhaps of his own composition
Irozuku ya
momiji o takite
sake no kan
How colorful!
Burning crimson leaves
to heat rice wine
—Trans. John T. Carpenter
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