Calligraphy Practice (Tenarai)

In this meticulously and sensitively painted screen, a young boy, who has set his hobbyhorse aside, is being initiated into the practice of traditional Japanese calligraphy by his older sister. Kneeling at a low desk with traditional writing implements (a brush, inkstone, and inkstick), he focuses as his sister guides his hand. The first page of practice, seen from reverse, includes the first four kana of the iroha—いろはに iro ha ni (the colors [of flowers are brilliant]—an ancient poem cleverly incorporating all forty-seven syllables of the Japanese syllabary, but each just once. The young boy then was clearly nudged to repeat the first two characters, iro いろ, and then again on the new page. The open book beside his work sheet provides model writing for him to follow. Traditionally, copying and mastering the iroha was the first step in practicing calligraphy for a young person.

The boy’s kimono is decorated with a tachibana (wild citrus) motif, which is not only a common crest for families using that surname but is also a fruit that was said to grow in the land of immortality, having buds, flowers, and fruits appear at the same time, and thus gained auspicious connotations of longevity. The young woman guiding her brother’s calligraphy practice is the central focus of the painting; she wears a kimono with long sleeves, indicating that she is not yet married. It is decorated with cherry blossom and spindle patterns. The cherry blossom petals scattered around the boy’s hobby horse nearby echo the flowers on the woman’s kimono and remind us that she is in the springtime of her life. The meticulous rendering of the woman’s layered kimono and exquisitely patterned obi sash reflect the special forte of the artist, who was known to have designed her own kimonos.

Created in her early twenties, during the time when the female artist Shōen was gaining national recognition as a Nihonga painter of special talent, the work looks back nostalgically on customs and fashions of the late Edo period. Interestingly, this modern painting by Shōen seems to have been directly inspired by an illustration in the woodblock-printed book Picture Book of Womanly Virtues (Ehon misao-gusa 絵本節操草, by Suzuki Harunobu( 1725–1770), a relatively rare book which is known from an edition dated 1778 in the Art Institute of Chicago (2022.1126). Shōen’s remarkably successful career as a professional painter was tragically cut short when she succumbed to pleurisy and tuberculosis at the young age of thirty-one. Counted as one the three “en,”—along with Uemura Shōen of Kyoto and Shima Seien of Osaka—who specialized in bijinga, these three women artists contributed greatly to this subject’s great popularity during the 1910s. Importantly, their achievements opened the door for following generations of women to seek recognition in the male-dominated art world of early twentieth-century Japan.