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TAKEBE SOCHO (1761-1814)
Discussions under a Mosquito Net
Ink and color on paper, 13 3/8 x 21 3/8 in.
Masuda Shozaburo Collection, Tokyo
One of Socho's most delightful haiga shows four old men, two women, and a baby clustering under a mosquito net, just like a slumber party...
| Susuki kara ka no deru yado ni tomarikeri |
From the pampas grass mosquitoes came into the inn where I stayed |
Socho has arranged the figures in a semicircle extending into a horizontal like the shape of a ladle. The lumpy form of the final body is echoed in a kind of visual parody by the lamp and the sedge hat. In back, the women seem content to sleep, but the baby looks on in wonderment as the four old geezers smoke, wave a fan, and chat. The purpose of haiku and haiga is to show ordinary moments and make them special: the scroll evokes the full flavor of summer at a Japanese inn.
Stephen Addiss, Haiga: Takebe Socho and the Haiku-Painting Tradition, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press) 1995,80
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