Unknown artist
Inuoumono, Dog Chasing Screen
Item number: T-1674Size: H 64.4" x W 142.1" (163.5 x 361 cm)
Age: 17th century
Six-panel folding screen
Colors, ink, and gold leaf on paper
Artist’s seal:
An undeciphered seal is located on the right edge of the screen.
In this striking, newly-discovered screen we are presented with a game of inuoumono, or »dog chasing,« an unusual Japanese military game that turned into a general spectacle during the seventeenth century. The game tested the samurai on their military skills, specifically riding and archery. Judges, seen riding on horses and seated in the house to the left, judged the samurai on their deportment and skill as they aimed their padded arrows at a dog that ran out in front of them. Contestants could win points when the soft arrows hit a dog on its side, or lose points for hitting the dog on the head or legs.1
The game had its origins in the medieval period, with an early reference in the Azuma kagami, a chronicle of the Kamakura period, compiled in the thirteenth century. It was seen, along with two other games, as part of a set of three annual warrior events in which the samurai perfected their archery skills.2 As such it had an importance beyond a mere game, and was esteemed for its symbolic and ceremonial value, as well as the educational. After a period of disuse, the game again became popular in the seventeenth century as a large public event, only to again fall into disuse in the mid Edo period.3
Most screen pairs follow the same pattern, with a right screen showing the contestants in a circle with the dog in the middle and a left half, showing the dog running away, pursued by samurai on horseback. A curious emphasis of the screens focuses on the audience watching the scene.4 Great skill and time is lavished on drawing the individual features of the people in the audience, which includes all levels of society, from samurai and monks to courtesans, servants, travelers, and merchants. All ages are included, from children to the very old, in a cross-section of society that in this screen includes over 340 individuals. Some are engaged in activities quite removed from watching the dog chasing, such as sightseeing, flirting, preparing tea and eating delicacies in the fine spring weather. The tendency of the inuoumono screen genre to include more and more crowd details over its century-long history may reflect the gradual loss of interest in this curious game during the mid Edo period.
Only a small number of inuoumono screens exist, most closely related to an early pair of screens attributed to Kano Sanraku (1559–1635), now in the Tokiwayama Bunko. Sanraku is recorded in the seventeenth-century text Honchō gashi as having created a pair of inuoumono screens and scholars have made compelling arguments for accepting the Tokiwayama screens as the prototype of this type of screens.5 A comprehensive survey text from 1980 records a total of only 14 sets, to which examples in the San Francisco Asian Art Museum (pair of screens), the Oxford Ashmolean Museum (only the right screen), and the present screen should be added.6 Not only is this screen an important new addition to this select set of inuoumono screens that exist in the world, but it also most likely is the long-lost left-hand screen that complements the Ashmolean Museum’s right-hand screen, completing and reuniting an inuoumono screen pair.7 As such it represents a major discovery within the world of early Edo genre paintings.8
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