Hototogisu

A hototogisu, a Japanese variety of cuckoo, descends in flight against the backdrop of a full moon emerging from a bank of clouds. The painting encapsulates the atmosphere of an evening whose silence broken by the song of the hototogisu, a visual and literary metaphor celebrated in Japan since ancient times—often referring to the sad departure of a male lover after a nocturnal tryst. Filling the blank spaces on the silk is an assortment of poetic inscriptions by associates of the artist, men of letters of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Numerous collaborative works of this type exist from the era, often executed in this particular format, with kyōka (popular, often witty or playful verses) poems accompanying a small image. Horizontal bands of ink and light color contribute to the evocative quality of the painting.

Kubo Shunman, a kyōka master as well as a painter and a designer of woodblock prints, lived and worked in Edo (Tokyo), where he studied ukiyo-e painting, composed poetry under various names, produced woodblock prints for book illustrations, and gained renown for his witty, sometimes satirical verse. This hanging scroll is evidence of his activity in the lively kyōka poetry circles of Edo sophisticates and literary men of his day.