Bamboo Grove

This boldly ink landscape by the modern painter Kawamura Yōkoku depicts layer upon layer of mountains, each brushed with bold ink dots and distinctive vertical contour lines.A diagonal band of blank paper suggests a mist-filled valley that effectively separates the middleground from the distant mountains. Dense clusters of bamboo fill the interstices between the peaks. In the foreground, a scholar with a bamboo hat can be seen ascending a winding path that leads into the mountains. Another gentleman sits in a two-story cottage nestled between towering peaks and a bamboo grove, perhaps awaiting the arrival of the traveler.

A poem about bamboo by the Tang dynasty itinerant poet Chen Tao (ca. 812–885) is inscribed in bold standard script characters in the sky above the mountains:

不厭東谿綠玉君，天壇雙鳳有時聞。
一峰曉似朝仙處，青節森々倚絳雲。

I never tire of the Lord of Green Jade in the Eastern Stream,
I have heard the calls of the pair of phoenixes on Mount Tiantan.
At dawn, the peak appears like the dwelling place of immortals,
the luxuriant green bamboo leans on the descending clouds.

(Translated by Tim Zhang)