Three Old Men — Shin, Gyō, Sō (三老人眞行草)
One Hundred Pictures by Kyōsai (暁斎百図, Kyōsai Hyakuzu)
One Hundred Pictures by Kyōsai (暁斎百図, Kyōsai Hyakuzu) - Three Old Men — Shin, Gyō, Sō (三老人眞行草)
This woodblock print by Kawanabe Kyōsai, from the series Kyōsai Hyakuzu (狂斎百図), brings together three celebrated figures of extraordinary longevity from Chinese and Japanese mythology and history. They are the Chinese sage Dongfang Shuo, credited with a lifespan of eight thousand years; the legendary fisherman Urashima Tarō, who lived for more than seven hundred years; and the Japanese military commander Miura Daisuke Yoshiaki, whose name became associated with the age of 106.
The title Shin-Gyō-Sō (真行草) refers to the traditional division of Japanese calligraphy into three styles: the formal script shin, the semi-cursive gyō, and the cursive sō. A similar classification existed in East Asian painting. The Chinese masters Ma Yuan and Xia Gui were associated with the shin style, Muqi with gyō, and Yujian with sō. Kano Motonobu later adopted this principle to systematize the artistic methods of the Kano school.
The grouping of the three old men is also connected with the Japanese tradition of wishing for longevity. During Setsubun, the festival marking the transition to spring, it was customary to recite phrases at the entrance to a house to drive away misfortune. Some of these formulas invoked legendary long-lived figures: the crane was said to live for a thousand years, the tortoise for ten thousand, Dongfang Shuo for eight or nine thousand, Urashima Tarō for a thousand, and Miura Daisuke for 106 years. Similar expressions appeared in Edo-period literature, including the writings of Ihara Saikaku.
Standing in the upper right of the composition is Dongfang Shuo (c. 154–93 BCE), a Chinese scholar and courtier close to Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty. According to legend, he stole and ate one of the peaches cultivated by Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West. These magical fruits granted him immortality and an extraordinarily long life. Dongfang Shuo became the subject of the Japanese Noh play Tōhōsaku, written by Konparu Zenpō. In the play, the sage appears together with Xiwangmu before the emperor during the Tanabata Star Festival to bless him with a long reign. In 1770, the artist Tomikawa Fusanobu also explored this subject in the illustrated publication Tamatēbako Tōhōsaku Kyūsensai, whose title associates Dongfang Shuo with a lifespan of nine thousand years.
At the lower right is Miura Daisuke Yoshiaki (1092–1180), a military commander of the late Heian period and lord of Kinugasa Castle in Sagami Province, in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture. During the Battle of Kinugasa Castle, he was defeated by Hatakeyama Shigetada, his grandson through his daughter, and died at the age of eighty-nine. A later tradition, however, treated Yoshiaki as having survived until the seventeenth anniversary of his own memorial rites. This effectively added another seventeen years to his lifespan, giving rise to the traditional epithet “Yoshiaki of 106 Years.”
Kyōsai depicts the warrior drinking sake. His clothing bears a circular family crest with three horizontal stripes. However, the artist used a slightly inaccurate version of the Miura clan emblem: in its traditional form, the middle stripe should be white.
On the left is Urashima Tarō, the hero of one of Japan's best-known folktales. He supports a tortoise pouring sake from a large bottle. The fisherman wears traditional clothing with a waist skirt made of plant fibres, the same attire associated with his journey to the underwater Dragon Palace, Ryūgū-jō.
According to the legend, Urashima spent some time in the underwater kingdom, only to discover upon his return that hundreds of years had passed on earth. When he opened the magical box, or tamatēbako, that he had received as a gift, his youth vanished and he instantly became a seven-hundred-year-old man. Another continuation of the tale describes how Urashima travelled to the sacred Mount Hōrai, transformed into a crane, and remained there to live with the tortoise.
Kyōsai's composition thus combines three stories of extraordinary longevity. The crane, tortoise, magical peaches, and ancient figures form a unified group of symbols associated with wishes for a long life. At the same time, the solemn subject takes on Kyōsai's characteristic informality: the legendary figures have gathered together to enjoy sake.
The same combination of characters also appeared in a colour woodblock print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi from the series Ikkai Zuihitsu (一魁随筆), published in 1873. His print bears the title “Dongfang Shuo, the Child of Urashima, and Miura Daisuke Yoshiaki.” It has been suggested that Yoshitoshi drew inspiration for this composition from Kyōsai's earlier treatment of the subject in the Kyōsai Hyakuzu series.
The title Shin-Gyō-Sō (真行草) refers to the traditional division of Japanese calligraphy into three styles: the formal script shin, the semi-cursive gyō, and the cursive sō. A similar classification existed in East Asian painting. The Chinese masters Ma Yuan and Xia Gui were associated with the shin style, Muqi with gyō, and Yujian with sō. Kano Motonobu later adopted this principle to systematize the artistic methods of the Kano school.
The grouping of the three old men is also connected with the Japanese tradition of wishing for longevity. During Setsubun, the festival marking the transition to spring, it was customary to recite phrases at the entrance to a house to drive away misfortune. Some of these formulas invoked legendary long-lived figures: the crane was said to live for a thousand years, the tortoise for ten thousand, Dongfang Shuo for eight or nine thousand, Urashima Tarō for a thousand, and Miura Daisuke for 106 years. Similar expressions appeared in Edo-period literature, including the writings of Ihara Saikaku.
Standing in the upper right of the composition is Dongfang Shuo (c. 154–93 BCE), a Chinese scholar and courtier close to Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty. According to legend, he stole and ate one of the peaches cultivated by Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West. These magical fruits granted him immortality and an extraordinarily long life. Dongfang Shuo became the subject of the Japanese Noh play Tōhōsaku, written by Konparu Zenpō. In the play, the sage appears together with Xiwangmu before the emperor during the Tanabata Star Festival to bless him with a long reign. In 1770, the artist Tomikawa Fusanobu also explored this subject in the illustrated publication Tamatēbako Tōhōsaku Kyūsensai, whose title associates Dongfang Shuo with a lifespan of nine thousand years.
At the lower right is Miura Daisuke Yoshiaki (1092–1180), a military commander of the late Heian period and lord of Kinugasa Castle in Sagami Province, in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture. During the Battle of Kinugasa Castle, he was defeated by Hatakeyama Shigetada, his grandson through his daughter, and died at the age of eighty-nine. A later tradition, however, treated Yoshiaki as having survived until the seventeenth anniversary of his own memorial rites. This effectively added another seventeen years to his lifespan, giving rise to the traditional epithet “Yoshiaki of 106 Years.”
Kyōsai depicts the warrior drinking sake. His clothing bears a circular family crest with three horizontal stripes. However, the artist used a slightly inaccurate version of the Miura clan emblem: in its traditional form, the middle stripe should be white.
On the left is Urashima Tarō, the hero of one of Japan's best-known folktales. He supports a tortoise pouring sake from a large bottle. The fisherman wears traditional clothing with a waist skirt made of plant fibres, the same attire associated with his journey to the underwater Dragon Palace, Ryūgū-jō.
According to the legend, Urashima spent some time in the underwater kingdom, only to discover upon his return that hundreds of years had passed on earth. When he opened the magical box, or tamatēbako, that he had received as a gift, his youth vanished and he instantly became a seven-hundred-year-old man. Another continuation of the tale describes how Urashima travelled to the sacred Mount Hōrai, transformed into a crane, and remained there to live with the tortoise.
Kyōsai's composition thus combines three stories of extraordinary longevity. The crane, tortoise, magical peaches, and ancient figures form a unified group of symbols associated with wishes for a long life. At the same time, the solemn subject takes on Kyōsai's characteristic informality: the legendary figures have gathered together to enjoy sake.
The same combination of characters also appeared in a colour woodblock print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi from the series Ikkai Zuihitsu (一魁随筆), published in 1873. His print bears the title “Dongfang Shuo, the Child of Urashima, and Miura Daisuke Yoshiaki.” It has been suggested that Yoshitoshi drew inspiration for this composition from Kyōsai's earlier treatment of the subject in the Kyōsai Hyakuzu series.
Other variations of this print
