Description

Hand-painted scroll

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Details

Title
  • Horse Racing
Contributors
  • Unknown (Author)
Resource Type
  • Image
  • Note
    • Dimension: 11 x 105 in.
    • Date: ca. 1700
    • Important ceremonies and festivals often included horse races (kurabeuma). This scroll depicts one such horse race between two samurai dressed in Heian period clothes, one in black and the other in red, who race from right to left before a varied audience behind a post-and-lintel fence. The racing pair is depicted five times and ends in disaster – one falls off his horse and the other races into a frightened crowd. This representation follows common iconography of Kami (Upper) Kamo shrines horse races, the most important kurabeuma, which was held on the fifth day of the fifth month. The Kami Kamo shrine horse races became a very popular subject for painted scrolls and screens, particularly during the 18th century.1 Most surviving examples of Kamo shrine horse races in art include elaborate drawings and sumptuous materials. This scroll, however, consists of simple line drawings with very little color and lacks any kind of backing, suggesting it was a copy or a sketch. It is rare to find this scene depicted at such a late date. By the time of this scroll’s creation, the capital had moved away from Kyoto, and therefore away from the Kamo shrine. Simultaneously, traditional courtly scenes were of decreasing popularity with the rising affluent middle class.2 And yet, the excitement and powerful symbolism of the mounted samurai performing kurabeuma at the Kamo shrine saved it from completely disappearing as a motif. Susie Anderson 1 Sherman Lee, “Horse Racing at Kamo Shrine,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 64 (1977), 260. 2 Ibid, 274.

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