Description
Although the painter's seal is missing on this scroll, the inscription by the literati priest Zuikei Shuhu indicates that it was painted before 1473. The sasanqua tree, which is slightly covered with snow, represents winter, and the little bird on the branch represents the approaching spring. Sasanqua painting has a long history. In China, at the latest, it started in the Northern Song Dynasty, and in Japan, according to old documents, sasanqua was a painting subject visible in the Namboku-cho Period. This piece was supposedly modeled after some flower-and-bird painting of the court style imported from China.
Data source
ColBase
"ColBase: Integrated Collections Database of the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan" is a service that enables a multi-database search of the collections in the four national museums (To...
Contents holder/Provider
Aggregator
National Institutes for Cultural Heritage
The National Institutes for Cultural Heritage (NICH) comprise four National Museums (Tokyo National Museum, Kyoto National Museum, Nara National Museum, and Kyushu National Museum) and two National Research Institutes for Cultural Properties (Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, and Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties), as well as the International Research Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region (IRCI) in Sakai City, for a total of seven institutions.
Last updated
July 20, 2026