Item from the Mokuhankan Flea Market

Even Monkeys Fall from Trees

Size: 20.0cm by 14.0cm (7.87 in by 5.51 in) | Enlargement | Shipping Code: [M] ?

Designer: Kawanabe Kyosai

Era: Recent | Currency: $ / £ /

Price: ¥ 7,000$ 55.00£ 43.50€ 51.00

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Description: This is an unusual item in our Flea Market catalogue - a freshly made print, but not by us here at Mokuhankan. One of the traditional printers living and working in Tokyo for many years, Mr. Tsutomu Mitamura, has decided to try his hand at issuing some print reproductions himself.

He is a huge fan of Kawanabe Kyosai's work, and has begun his publishing activities with a series of reproductions of some of Kyosai's yokai related designs. He arranged for one of the younger carvers in the traditional crafts association, Kayoko Suga, to do the carving, and did the printing himself.

The designs he selected are all connected to ことわざ絵 (images based on proverbs) and this one is kind of international ... 猿も木から落ちる ... Even Monkeys Fall from Trees. The nearest English equivalent is a bit old-fashioned to us now ... Even Homer Sometimes Nods ...

In the image, we see Rai-jin, the thunder god ... who has (literally) fallen from the sky ...

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“The Great Shower” is not a proverb, but in this picture it suggests a storm of such ferocity that the God of Thunder himself has fallen from the rain clouds and become caught up in a spider’s web with his drums. A child and man in a white robe sweeping the grounds of a shrine are surprised and caught up in the action. In this picture Kyōsai may have used the God of Thunder to illustrate proverbs like “Even Kōbō Daishi’s Writing Contains Mistakes”, “Even Kappa Drown”, and “Even Monkeys Fall from Trees”, meaning that everyone makes mistakes.


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