Jittoku (Ink on Paper)

An Important Cultural Property since 1976

Jittoku (Ink on Paper) (紙本墨画拾得図, Shihon Bokuga Jittoku Zu) is an ink painting at 13-9 Ueno Park, Taito Ward, Tokyo, designated an Important Cultural Property on 5 June 1976. The owner is the Tokiwayama Bunko Foundation.

The address at 13-9 Ueno Park is that of the Tokyo National Museum. A foundation owns the work and a museum keeps it.

The Nezame handscroll was likewise owned by a company and kept by a museum. Ownership and keeping divided in this way keeps recurring.

Jittoku, Not Hanshan and Shide

The title repays care: this is a painting of Shide, called Jittoku in Japanese, alone.

Accounts elsewhere give the title as a painting of Hanshan and Shide, the pair. The name of this property does not include Hanshan.

The two figures are often painted as a pair, and works showing one on each of two scrolls are common. But this title covers Shide alone.

With the Taima Mandara Engi, both the opening words of a title and its closing words had to be read to keep properties apart. Here a single word in the middle of a title makes the difference.

Titles must be neither shortened nor lengthened. They have to be handled as recorded.

A Work on the Same Subject under a Different System

Cultural Heritage Online carries another property, a painting of Hanshan and Shide in ink on paper, attributed to Kao, of the fourteenth century in the Muromachi period, mounted as hanging scrolls, each 88.7 centimetres by 34.0 centimetres, in two scrolls.

That work is not an Important Cultural Property. It was registered on 25 January 2017, under the category of registered art object.

Registered art objects fall under a system separate from National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties. The scheme exists to encourage the public showing of works of art, and it registers rather than designates.

Just as registered tangible cultural properties are registered on notification rather than designated, registered art objects differ in character from designation. Works on one subject stand under different systems.

With the images of Fudo Myoo the difference lay in the listing authority, state, prefecture or city. Here the difference is in the system itself.

More Than One Painting of Shide Is Known

The record for the registered art object says something about paintings of Shide.

Several paintings of Hanshan and Shide attributed to Kao are known, and the Shide of that work resembles in composition the Hanshan of a nationally designated version and of a version in the Freer Gallery.

Works passed down under Kao's name are several, and closely related compositions are held in Japan and abroad.

The same record speaks of the painter. Kao, whose dates are unknown, is thought to have been active from the early to the middle fourteenth century, and stands as a representative figure of early ink painting in Japan.

It continues: his identity is unknown, with one view holding him to be the Zen monk Kao Sonen and another an artist of the Takuma school using one character of that name. That the identity is unknown is set down plainly.

Seeing It

The painting is at 13-9 Ueno Park, Taito Ward, Tokyo, owned by the Tokiwayama Bunko Foundation. It is on deposit at the museum and not kept on permanent display.

Work on paper is vulnerable to light, so periods on view are limited.

Since ownership and keeping are divided, decisions about showing it involve both parties.

Exhibition plans can change, so check the museum's information before travelling.