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Mythical animal from a pictures book


PietroParis

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Hi All,

 

A longish discussion has developed in the Tosogu section on the identification of a beast depicted on a Choshu tsuba. I have eventually found an illustration from a book entitled 絵本写宝袋 (Ehon shaho bukuro / Picture Book: Treasure-bag of Sketches) published in 1720 by one Tachibana Morikuni 橘守国, see this link.

 

Foundit!.thumb.png.fac6845fafff3f52f758fa159932b8be.png164105213_Bobs.JPG.1c99e3d04d51ec9a62c7fb715574d0a1.thumb.JPG.d5a364c97aa3d64d82c92313fc3d1f9e.JPG

 

The animal on the right is clearly our guy. Can anyone please translate the name, which is probably given by the two boldface characters on the top-right corner of the picture?

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Thanks Piers! that's very valuable for the Hakutaku discussion in the other thread, as it reinforces the idea that even in the Japanese literature there are two "parallel" versions of the beast (a lion-like one with just two eyes and a cow-like one with extra eyes on the sides).

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Hi Thomas, all of these pictures are discussed at length in the last two pages of this other thread:

 

https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/34920-a-series-of-fittings-or-how-not-to-build-a-collection/

 

see in particular this summary:


https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/34920-a-series-of-fittings-or-how-not-to-build-a-collection/page/20/#comment-398868

 

The picture that you posted is not a Kirin, unless you use the term in the very wide sense of "mythical horned creature". In particular, Kirin are supposed to have hooves. Based on what transpired from the discussion in the other thread, it appears that yours is rather a 獬豸 (Xiezhi/ Kaichi).

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Hi Pietro,
Den-Kirin it is :laughing:. One of the most important sayings I learned from Micha Hagenbusch is: "there is nothing that does not exist!  Even Joly writes in the "Legend" that the Chinese sources were often interpreted quite freely by Japanese artists. This, of course, makes an "academic" reappraisal quite difficult. But in fact the Hakutaku and the Kaichi are the most similar, even if they all come under the heading "Kirin" in Joly's work.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
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