Artist unknown, Tosa School


Edo period (1615-1868), second half of the 17th centuryThe right-hand of a pair of six-panel folding screens, ink and colours on gold paper, depicting a panorama of the annual horse race at the Kamigamo (Upper Kamo) Shrine with five mounted participants and numerous extravagantly dressed spectators and revellers on both sides of the racetrack, including courtiers, samurai and members of the townsman class, amongst temples, shrines and viewing and performance platforms set against a background of the Kamo River and distant hills interspersed with gold clouds. 171.5cm x 370cm (67½in x 145¾in).
|For the closest published version of the Kamo horse race, compare a pair of chubyobu (two-thirds size) screens in the Suntory Museum of Art, dated by Sakakibara Satoru to the Kanbun era (1661-1673). As Sakakibara notes, over time the religious and ceremonial aspects of the Kamo races became less important and the shrine itself consequently no longer needed to occupy the whole of the left-hand screen as in earlier examples. Held every year on the fifth day of the fifth month, the event became more of a straightforward entertainment, as the present lively version attests; see Takeda Tsuneo and others, Nihon byobu-e shusei (Compendium of Japanese Screen Painting), vol. 13, Fuzokuga: Sairei, kabuki (Genre Painting: Ceremonies and Kabuki), Tokyo, Kodansha, 1978, cat. nos.27-28, 29-30 and p.95.