YUASA KAGYO (1875-1952)

A Black and Gold-Lacquer Suzuribako (Box for Writing Utensils)
Taisho era (1912-1926), circa 1915
The scalloped edged kabusebuta (overhanging lid) decorated on the exterior and sides in gold and slight red takamaki-e and gold togidashi maki-e with five crows and two egrets at dawn, inlaid respectively in shakudo and shibuichi, in and above a forest of pines and other trees and with the kana syllables and kanji character asa koe su ru inlaid in silver within the design; the interior of the lid with clouds; the interior of the box with cloud-outline ita (baseboards) above and below supporting two fude (writing brushes), a tosu (paper knife), and a kiri (awl for piercing sheets of paper), all of them with cloud designs in the same techniques as the rest of the set; the upper insert with a cloud-shaped recess for the cloisonné-enamel suiteki (water dropper), the suiteki and an adjacent lacquer cloud with the syllables and character yo fu ka ki; the moon represented by the almost circular suzuri (ink-grinding stone), made from wood, itself carved with a cloud-shaped water reservoir and embellished with a cloud in gold maki-e, signed to the left of the lower ita Kagyo saku (made by Kagyo); with double lacquered wood tomobako storage boxes, the outer box inscribed and signed outside the lid Ariake maki-e onsuzuribako Kagyo sha (Writing box with maki-e design of dawn, drawn by Kagyo) with a seal Morikazu; the inner storage box inscribed Ariake (Dawn) on the lid, the interior of the lid inscribed with a poem in gold hiramaki-e Asagarasu / koe suru mori no / kozue shimo / tsuki wa yobukaki / ariake no kage (Even at daybreak / when the cries of crows are heard / from forest branches / the moon casts its pale shadows / as if it were still deep night); followed by an inscription Shokoin no Miya Doko Ho Shinno gyohitsu (From the Imperial Brush of Prince Shokoin no Miya Doko [1612-1678]). 5.5cm x 28cm x 25cm (2 3/16in x 11in x 9 13/16in). (11).
Footnotes:
This design of conifers and peaceable egrets contrasted with raucous crows, together with fragments of a poem, is seen on several other lacquer works, including a natsume in the Nasser D. Khalili collection (for further details, please see the footnote to lot 66 in this catalogue); a miniature suzuribako formerly in the Edmund and Julia Lewis Collection (see Honolulu Academy of Arts, Shadows and Reflections: Japanese Lacquer Art from the Collection of Edmund J. Lewis, exhibition catalogue, 1996, p.48, no.15); a third formerly in the Irving Gould collection; and a fourth published in Grace Tsumugi Fine Arts, Japanese Works of Art, London, 2013, cat. no.14. Given their consistently high quality, elaborate and extravagant technique, and the fact that the almost identical design was commissioned from several different artists, the case has plausibly been made that they were all likely commissioned by the Imperial Household Ministry as gifts to mark the enthronement ceremony of the Taisho Emperor in 1915 (three years after his actual succession in 1912), both the words and the imagery flatteringly symbolizing Japan's delivery from the dark night of the Meiji Emperor's death to the bright dawn of the Taisho Emperor's enthronement. The poem, reproduced in lacquer on the storage box in calligraphy copied from that of a seventeenth-century prince, is from the fourteenth-century anthology Fugawakashu and was composed by an unnamed daughter of the courtier Saki no Dainagon Saneakira; see jti.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/imperial_anthologies/fuga/AnoFuga.html.
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