Item from the Mokuhankan Flea Market

Playing Fox Game (set of 3)

Size: 29.5cm by 19.5cm (11.61 in by 7.68 in) | Enlargement | Shipping Code: [L] ?

Designer: Kikugawa Eizan

Era: Post-war | Currency: $ / £ / €

Price: ¥ 17,000$ 140.00£ 105.00€ 125.00 [Item has been sold]

Description: These prints date from the 1970s/80s, and were made by the Kajikawa workshop, which was hired to produce a folio containing 20 triptychs (60 prints all). They were made at a reduced size (29.5 x 19.5cm) from the original Edo-era prints, which were in the large o-ban format.

This triptych shows an interior scene where three seated women in the foreground, one in each sheet, dressed in traditional clothes are playing kitsune-ken (fox game), a game similar to rock, paper, scissors, with the hand gestures fox (kitsune), hunter, and village headman. From left to right, the first woman plays the village headman, the woman in the center is the fox and the last one is the hunter. The fox defeats the village headman, the village headman defeats the hunter, and the hunter defeats the fox.

The background is very amusing and adds a poetic touch, it shows the dancing shadows of people behind shoji (paper sliding door).

Please note that the prints are lightly glued to a mat paper with three windows, and will be shipped folded.

There are a few slight foxing spots on the middle sheet.

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