Item from the Mokuhankan Flea Market

Sparrow Dance

Size: 20.5cm by 14.0cm (8.07 in by 5.51 in) | Enlargement | Shipping Code: [M] ?

Designer: Kawanabe Kyosai

Era: Recent | Currency: $ / £ / €

Price: ¥ 7,000$ 53.00£ 42.25€ 49.25

  

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.

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This print features the proverbs “Dance of the Sparrow” and “Until One Hundred Years Old Sparrows Do Not Forget Their Dance”. These proverbs express the idea that we do not forget the things we learn when we are young, and use sparrows as a metaphor, as they hop along the ground from the time they are young until the day they die. Here Kyōsai depicted sparrows in a variety of ways, such as dancing on a tightrope, whose poses were inspired by the “Dance of the Sparrow” illustrations from the “Hokusai Manga”, and the scene from the folk tale “The Sparrow with the Slit Tongue”, where the kind old man is received at the sparrow’s inn.

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