Hikone screen

The screen comes from the feudal Hikone Domain, ruled by the screen's owners, the Ii clan. It is owned by the city of Hikone in Shiga Prefecture, in the Ii Naochika Collection. The work is seen as representative of early modern Japanese genre painting; some consider it the earliest work of ukiyo-e. In 1955 it was designated a National Treasure of Japan and given the official name Shihon Kinjichaku-shoku Fuzoku-zu (紙本金地著色風俗図).

The 94 xx byōbu screen depicts a scene in which eleven male and female figures amuse themselves. On the left, a blind man and some women play shamisens before a four-panel ' screen with a landscape painted on it. To their right a group of men and women play a sugoroku board game. • Illustration — The Hikone screen

• Illustration — The Hikone screen resides in the Hikone Castle Museum The work has been considered a masterpiece of Japanese genre painting since at least the mid-17th century. It has been widely copied, sometimes with variations, and some of the copies themselves have found renown. In 1955 it was designated a National Treasure of Japan and given the official name Shihon Kinjichaku-shoku Fuzoku-zu (紙本金地著色風俗図).

As with almost all byōbu screens of the early modern period, no record remains of who commissioned the Hikone screen, nor of who executed it. It is thought most likely the commission came from someone of the upper ranks of society, from the kuge aristocracy, a buke samurai house, or a machishū business leader. Ukiyo-e artist Hanegawa Chinchō (c. 1679–1754) depicted a man leaning against a panel of the Hikone screen; the caption states the screen was on display in the Shitaya neighbourhood of Edo in about 1745. A record made states the painter Shibata Zeshin (1807–91) discovered the screen in the collection of an old Edo family, and later made a copy or derivative of it. The discovery is conjectured to have been c. 1833–36, and Zeshin's derivative c. 1840. • Illustration — Ii Naosuke (1815–60) may have first obtained the Hikone screen for the Ii clan of Hikone, of which he was the thirteenth family head. The screen came into the collection of the Ii clan of the city of Hikone—its modern namesake—in what is now Shiga Prefecture no earlier than the late Edo period (1853–67). There is no record of the screen having been at the Ii residence in Edo, though as it neither appears in the family records in Hikone it is presumed it remained in the capital until the Shōwa period. Tea master Takahashi Yoshio (1861–1937) recorded a Noh event at the Ii residence on 30 June 1912 at which Ii Naotada (1881–1947, fifteenth head of the family) had numerous art objects on display, including the Hikone screen; an unnamed member of the family told him "the famous ukiyo Matabei's Hikone screen" had first been obtained by Ii Naosuke (1815–60, thirteenth head of the family), who interested himself in curios and objets d'art.