{"product_id":"vintage-japanese-hanging-scroll-bush-clover-cricket-dragonfly-autumn-hana-mushi-zu-shijo-nihonga-signed-takeru-hagi-season-poem","title":"Vintage Japanese Hanging Scroll — Bush Clover, Cricket \u0026 Dragonfly — Autumn Hana-Mushi-zu — Shijō Nihonga — Signed Takeru — Hagi Season Poem","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis vintage Japanese kakemono (掛け物) presents hana-mushi-zu (花虫図) — \u003cbr\u003eflower-and-insect painting — one of the most intimate and seasonally precise \u003cbr\u003egenres in all of Japanese art. The subject is autumn: not the dramatic autumn \u003cbr\u003eof red maples and pagodas, but the quiet, grassy, close-to-the-ground autumn \u003cbr\u003eof the Japanese countryside that poets have written about for thirteen centuries.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e𝗛𝗔𝗚𝗜: 𝗝𝗔𝗣𝗔𝗡'𝗦 𝗙𝗜𝗥𝗦𝗧 𝗙𝗟𝗢𝗪𝗘𝗥 𝗢𝗙 𝗔𝗨𝗧𝗨𝗠𝗡\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHagi (萩, bush clover — Lespedeza) appears 141 times in the Man'yōshū \u003cbr\u003e(万葉集, 759 CE) — Japan's oldest and most revered poetry anthology — \u003cbr\u003emore than any other plant. More than the cherry blossom. More than the \u003cbr\u003echrysanthemum. More than the plum.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is not an accident. Hagi represents everything that Japanese aesthetics \u003cbr\u003eprizes about autumn: the small and easily overlooked, the muted over the \u003cbr\u003evivid, the sound of wind through delicate stems over the visual spectacle \u003cbr\u003eof colour. Its tiny pink-purple flowers are individually unremarkable; \u003cbr\u003eas a mass of nodding branches in the autumn wind, they are unforgettable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe hagi was the flower of the autumn moon-viewing parties (月見, tsukimi) \u003cbr\u003eheld by Heian aristocrats. It was the flower that Matsuo Bashō (松尾芭蕉, \u003cbr\u003e1644–1694) — Japan's greatest haiku poet — associated most deeply with \u003cbr\u003ethe season. It remains one of the seven autumn plants (秋の七草, aki no \u003cbr\u003enanakusa) that define the Japanese experience of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗦 𝗜𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLook closely at the lower left of this scroll: among the stems and leaves, \u003cbr\u003etwo insects make their presence known.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA cricket (コオロギ, kōrogi) — antennae long, body dark, resting on a stem — \u003cbr\u003eand a dragonfly (蜻蛉, tombo) — wings spread, hovering near the ground.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Japanese culture, the sounds of autumn insects are not background noise — \u003cbr\u003ethey are the season's music. From the Heian period onward, aristocrats \u003cbr\u003eorganized mushikiki (虫聴き, \"insect-listening\" parties) in temple gardens, \u003cbr\u003esitting in the dark to hear crickets sing. The court lady Murasaki Shikibu \u003cbr\u003e(紫式部, c. 973–1014) wrote in the Genji Monogatari of characters who \u003cbr\u003ecollected singing insects in decorated cages.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe painter who added these two small creatures to this scroll was not \u003cbr\u003efilling space. They were composing a complete sensory experience — \u003cbr\u003ethe visual (hagi in mineral blue-green), the sonic (cricket's song, \u003cbr\u003edragonfly's wing-hum), and the tactile (the autumn chill implied by \u003cbr\u003ethe warm brown of dying grass stems) — all within a single hanging paper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e𝗧𝗘𝗖𝗛𝗡𝗜𝗤𝗨𝗘 \u0026amp; 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗦𝗧\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe technical approach belongs to the Shijō school (四条派) at its most \u003cbr\u003erefined — direct observation of nature rendered with minimal means:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Hagi leaves: mokkotsu (没骨) in mineral gunjo (群青, ultramarine) \u003cbr\u003e  and rokushō (緑青, malachite green) — each leaf a single wet \u003cbr\u003e  brushstroke placed with precision, the colour mixing on the paper \u003cbr\u003e  rather than the palette, creating the subtle blue-green variation \u003cbr\u003e  of living foliage\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Hagi flowers: the palest possible wash of pink-purple mineral pigment \u003cbr\u003e  — barely there — the way hagi flowers actually appear en masse: \u003cbr\u003e  present but not insistent\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Autumn grass: kasure (掠れ) dry-brush in warm brown — \u003cbr\u003e  the bristles dragging across the surface at speed — \u003cbr\u003e  capturing the texture of dry autumn stems without \u003cbr\u003e  a single slow stroke\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Insects: saimyō (細描) fine detail work — the cricket \u003cbr\u003e  in particular is rendered with entomological accuracy \u003cbr\u003e  in a few dozen strokes that would be invisible at the \u003cbr\u003e  scroll's full viewing distance but reward close inspection\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe vast empty space above the composition — more than half the \u003cbr\u003escroll's length — is the painting's most important element: \u003cbr\u003ethe sky through which the dragonfly has just passed, \u003cbr\u003ethe silence in which the cricket's song will resound.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSigned with brush name 竹るのね (Takeru no Ne — \u003cbr\u003e\"The Sound\/Root of Bamboo\") — a poetic gago that \u003cbr\u003eplaces the artist within the tradition of listening \u003cbr\u003eto the natural world. Oval red seal below — the same \u003cbr\u003edistinctive oval seal format seen in other works of \u003cbr\u003ethis period, suggesting an artist of confident and \u003cbr\u003eindividualistic aesthetic identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEstimated period: Shōwa era (c. 1940s–1960s).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e𝗠𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 \u0026amp; 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMounted in two-colour hon-hyōgu (本表具): the main border \u003cbr\u003ein warm terracotta brocade with gold cloud-scroll (唐草, karakusa) \u003cbr\u003epattern, the upper heaven border (天裂, ten-gire) in a darker \u003cbr\u003efloral brocade — a sophisticated two-fabric mounting that frames \u003cbr\u003ethe cool blue-green of the painting with warmth and depth.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCondition: Very good. Paper bright with minimal toning. \u003cbr\u003ePigments vivid — the mineral blues and greens particularly \u003cbr\u003estable. Mounting intact and sound.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e📋 Period and attribution are based on stylistic and material \u003cbr\u003eanalysis only. No certificate of authenticity is included. \u003cbr\u003eSold as-is.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Chikoyaki","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45153320042575,"sku":"CKY-SCR-015-SHJO-HGMZ-460","price":179.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0667\/6588\/1423\/files\/IMG_E1187_result.jpg?v=1777452270","url":"https:\/\/chikoyaki.com\/products\/vintage-japanese-hanging-scroll-bush-clover-cricket-dragonfly-autumn-hana-mushi-zu-shijo-nihonga-signed-takeru-hagi-season-poem","provider":"Chikoyaki","version":"1.0","type":"link"}