Anonymous | Fine horses in stable | Momoyama - Edo period, 17th century 

On loan to the Art Institute of Chicago, September 1989 - September 1991.

“In the homes of European nobility guests are first welcomed in the living quartets; in Japan their first reception takes place in the stables”.¹

In The First European Description of Japan (1585), the Portuguese Catholic missionary Luís Fróis (1532-1597) penned many enlightening comments on Japanese life and culture during the tumultuous decades of the Momoyama period (1573-1615). His writings on Japanese horses and stables are particularly illuminating when looking at the genre of stable scenes (umaya-zu) that were popular in the late sixteenth century, along with paintings of horse races, archery tournaments, falconry and hunting. Ownership of a horse was of great symbolic importance for the samurai warrior class, and whereas in Europe stables were always situated at the back or lower part of the house; in Japan they were located prominently at the front.² Often constructed from fragrant cedar wood, stables in Japan were exceptionally clean and fit to entertain guests. In a society where the appreciation of fine horses developed into a language of connoisseurship, such genre scenes were an outward celebration of martial culture for the newly empowered military class who were building elaborate mansions in Kyoto, as well as the surrounding provinces.

Twelve stalls containing the same number of horses punctuate each panel of this pair of six-fold screens. Each horse is represented with an animated life and energy; on the right-hand screen the horses are more active: one horse vigorously buckles, another rears, and a further with dappled coat moves with agitation beside a groom sweeping the stable floor. The left-hand screen is perhaps more languid in comparison: a horse bows to eat from a low trough, and on the opposite end another with white coat reclines on a rush matt. Fróis account also sheds light on the differences in the cut of the horses’ manes: some are shown with nogami, meaning “field” or “wild hair”, essentially the same unfettered style of mane preferred by Europeans, others with the karihoshi or “shaved priest” style mane tied at intervals with rice straw.³ Restrained by two lines leading from their bridle to stakes on the stalls, some of their muscular bodies, rendered with careful modulated linework and subtle shading, are suspended by stout ropes around their bellies (harakeke) to help support their heavy weight. The animals appear essentially in profile, and with the characteristic short legs and long torso of native Japanese horses.

Remarkable are the figurative depictions of informal genre activities and the stable as place of social gathering and leisure for different social classes: relaxing on tatami mats in a raised area adjoining the stalls, samurai gentleman discuss falconry, monks and nobleman attended by pages play go, sugoroku and shogi, a falconer preens two birds, and grooms can be seen working or at rest among and around the stalls. Animals too contribute to the feeling of activity: small hounds roam freely on both the ground and the tatami matting, and a pet monkey, believed to hold the power to abate equine illnesses, is also present with a young gentleman tamer. These stables scenes are significant in showing how people from different walks of life, as well as the interaction of social class, were brought together through their interest in horses and gaming.

This pair of screens closely resemble an example in the collection of the Cleveland Museum dated to the late Muromachi period (1392–1573). There are some notable differences in the configuration of the stalls, but many of the poses of the horses and groupings of the visitors are alike. The Cleveland example has band of misty cloud and gold leaf across the upper sections and a more truncated foreground. Here the clouds are scalloped and applied in gold leaf as they float over the moss encrusted stable roofs. In the Cleveland example, the tatami appears bifurcated, whereas it is of one matting here. The present pair of screens was clearly based on the earlier Cleveland pair; the influence of later Momoyama predilections for gold leaf and a showier sense of decoration suggesting a later date. 

For the pair of Muromachi period screens in the collection of the Cleveland Museum, accession number 1934.373, go to:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/11934.37334.373

A further example is in the collection of the Imperial Household Agency, see Tokyo National Museum, Screen Paintings of the Muromachi Period (Tokyo, 1989), no. 35.

1.    Richard K. Danford et al., The First European Description of Japan, 1585: A critical English-language edition of Striking Contrasts in the Customs of Europe and Japan by Luis Frois, S.J. (London, 2014), p. 167.

2.    Ibid.

3.    Ibid., p. 164.