Red and White Plum Blossoms: Korin's Last Great Statement
A stream of blackened silver runs down the seam between two golden screens. On the right, a red plum tree in full bloom fills the panel, its trunk bending almost double before shooting upward. On the left, only the lower portion of a white plum appears; the rest of the tree exists somewhere beyond the frame, leaving a single low branch to reach toward the water. This is the Red and White Plum Blossoms (Kohakubai-zu Byobu), a pair of two-panel folding screens painted by Ogata Korin in the early eighteenth century and designated a National Treasure of Japan on June 28, 1956.
Each screen measures 156.0 by 172.2 centimeters. The pair is held by MOA Museum of Art in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, perched on a hillside above Sagami Bay about an hour from Tokyo by bullet train. The screens descended through the Tsugaru family, lords of the Hirosaki domain in northern Japan, before entering the collection assembled by the museum's founder, Mokichi Okada (1882–1955).
The Painter Behind the Screens
Ogata Korin (1658–1716) was born into Kariganeya, a prosperous Kyoto textile house that dressed the imperial court and the wives of shoguns. He inherited a fortune, spent it on theater and pleasure quarters, and turned seriously to painting only around the age of forty, partly out of financial necessity. The training of a kimono designer never left him. His paintings treat natural motifs the way a textile pattern does: flattened, repeated, cropped with deliberate daring.
Korin never studied directly under Tawaraya Sotatsu, the early seventeenth-century master of the Wind and Thunder Gods screens, but he absorbed Sotatsu's work so thoroughly that the two are now bracketed together as founders of the Rinpa lineage. The subject of plum trees flanking a stream, arranged across the left and right screens of a two-panel pair, came from that inheritance. What Korin did with it did not.
The right screen bears the signature "Seisei Korin" and the left "Hokkyo Korin," each stamped with a circular red seal reading "Hoshuku." The honorary title Hokkyo was conferred on Korin in 1701, and the style of the work places it in his final years, likely shortly before his death in 1716. Scholars regard it as the summation of everything he had worked toward.
Why It Is a National Treasure
The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the composition plainly: a red plum and a white plum face each other across a stream, gold ground against silver water, a contrast so stark it organizes the entire work. The official assessment calls the screens Korin's supreme masterpiece and a culminating point of the decorative Rinpa style.
Look at how unequal the two halves are. The red plum is shown nearly whole, young and vigorous, its branches spraying across the gold. The white plum is an old tree, and Korin hides most of it outside the picture, admitting only a gnarled section of trunk and one branch that dips toward the water before rising again. Between them the stream widens as it descends, its curved banks drawn with a draftsman's precision, its surface patterned with scrolling lines of current that behave like no river in nature. Art historians have read the pairing in many ways, as youth and age, or as a meeting of two presences across flowing time. Korin left no explanation. The design holds its meaning in reserve, which is part of why it has been argued over for a century.
The flowers themselves became a brand. Korin painted plum blossoms as flat disks of pigment without outlining the petals, a shorthand so distinctive that this manner is still called korin-bai, the Korin plum. Along the trunks he used tarashikomi, the Rinpa technique of dropping ink or pigment into a still-wet wash so the colors pool and mottle like lichen on old bark.
Gold Leaf, Silver, and a Scientific Detective Story
For decades, specialists debated what the screens were actually made of. An X-ray fluorescence study published in 2005 raised the startling possibility that the gold ground was not leaf at all but painted pigment, and that the stream contained no silver. The claim unsettled the standard account of the work.
In 2011 the museum conducted a new examination using digital microscopy, portable X-ray fluorescence, and powder X-ray diffraction. The results restored the traditional reading: the ground is covered in genuine gold leaf, and silver remains across the entire stream. The water's dark color comes from silver sulfide, which suggests the silver foil was deliberately blackened with sulfur. The stream visitors see today, in other words, is tarnish as a design choice, a surface that would once have shifted between bright metal and shadow as the viewer moved past it.
Seeing the Screens in Atami
The screens are not on permanent display. MOA Museum of Art brings them out once a year for its Meihinten (Masterpieces) exhibition, timed to the blooming of the plum garden at the adjacent Zuiungo grounds. The 2026 showing ran from January 24 to March 11 and presented all three of the museum's National Treasures together: these screens, Ninsei's tea-leaf jar with wisteria design, and the Kanbokujo album of classical calligraphy. Dates shift slightly each year, so check the museum's website before planning a trip.
The museum itself rewards the visit. From Atami Station, a bus climbs the hill in about ten minutes; visitors then ride a series of long escalators through a tunnel cut into the mountain, emerging at galleries with a wide view over the sea. The building reopened in 2017 after a renovation directed by architect Hiroshi Sugimoto, who refinished the display rooms in dark lacquer-toned materials and low-iron glass that all but disappears in front of the works.
Plan the day around plum season if you can. Seeing the painted blossoms indoors and the living ones outside, sometimes on the same afternoon in February, is an experience the artist himself could not have arranged better. Atami's hot-spring inns, the seaside Atami Baien plum garden, and the morning fish markets fill out an easy overnight itinerary from Tokyo.
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Q&A
- Can I see the Red and White Plum Blossoms screens at any time?
- No. The screens appear only during a limited annual exhibition at MOA Museum of Art, usually from late January to early or mid-March, coinciding with the plum blossom season. Exact dates vary by year, so confirm on the museum's official website.
- How do I get to MOA Museum of Art?
- Take the Tokaido Shinkansen or a JR limited express to Atami Station, about 40 to 50 minutes from Tokyo. From the station, a direct bus reaches the museum in roughly ten minutes.
- Is photography allowed in the galleries?
- Policies differ by exhibition and by individual work, and National Treasures are often excluded from photography. Follow the signage posted in each gallery and ask staff if unsure.
- Why is the stream in the painting black instead of silver?
- Scientific analysis in 2011 detected silver across the stream and silver sulfide in its dark areas, indicating that silver foil was blackened through sulfurization. The tarnished tone is now considered part of the work's intended or accepted appearance.
- What does "Rinpa" mean?
- Rinpa is a decorative lineage of Japanese art associated with Tawaraya Sotatsu, Hon'ami Koetsu, and Ogata Korin, from whose name the term derives. It favors bold flat compositions, gold and silver grounds, and stylized natural motifs, and it influenced later design far beyond painting.
Basic Information
| Name | Red and White Plum Blossoms, color on gold-foiled paper, by Ogata Korin (pair of two-panel folding screens) |
|---|---|
| Designation | National Treasure (painting), designated June 28, 1956 |
| Artist | Ogata Korin (1658–1716) |
| Period | Edo period, 18th century; regarded as a late work |
| Quantity / Size | One pair of two-panel screens; each 156.0 x 172.2 cm |
| Owner | Sekai Kyuseikyo (Church of World Messianity) |
| Custodian | MOA Museum of Art, 26-2 Momoyama-cho, Atami City, Shizuoka Prefecture |
| Public display | Annual limited exhibition, typically late January to March; not on permanent view |
| Access | About 10 minutes by bus from JR Atami Station |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/201/134
- MOA Museum of Art: Red and White Plum Blossoms (collection page)
- https://www.moaart.or.jp/?collections=053
- MOA Museum of Art: Masterpieces Exhibition with National Treasure "Red and White Plum Blossoms"
- https://www.moaart.or.jp/event/bestcollection2026/
- Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties: X-ray Fluorescence Analysis of the Red and White Plum Blossoms Screens
- https://www.tobunken.go.jp/ccr/pdf/44/04401.pdf
Last verified: 2026.06.10