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GAKUTEI, Yashima (1786 - 1868)	Twelve Zodiacal Animals ('Juni-shi') Sennin Koshohei and the 'goat stone' (*)
	Signed:                    Gakutei Date:                         c.1820 Size:                         shikishiban (21.1 x 18.2 cms) Condition: Very fine impression, with very good colors, a small, faint stain, slight rubbing to upper right stamp, else in very good condition; with metallic pigments and areas of blind-printing.

(*) The term 'Sennin' is a generic name of Immortals and carries with it the meaning of a life spent away from the rest of mankind in the mountains peopled, in the imagination of the Taoists, with hosts of immortal animals and mythical trees. The depiction in the surimono has the following legendary (Chinese) background: Koshohei (Chin. 'Hwang Ch'u P'ing'), when fifteen years old, led his herd of goats to the mountains and, having found a grotto, stayed there for forty years in meditation. His brother, Choki, was a priest, and he vowed to find the missing shepherd. Once he walked near the mountain and he was told of the recluse by a sage, and set out to find him. He recognized his brother, but expressed his astonishment at the absence of sheep or goats. Koshohei thereupon touched with his staff the white stones with which the groudn was strewn, and as he touched them they became alive in the shape of goats. - Here we see Koshohei after he had turned the rock - on which he was sitting and reading a book - into a goat. The position of the goat's head and the way Koshohei is holding the book gives the impression of the animal reading in the book. This surimono belongs to a series of (twelve?) designs related to the Twelve Zodiacal Animals commissioned by a subgroup of the Katsushika-ren ('Katsushika poetry circle'), the Hisakataya-ren, indicated by the stylized koto bridge emblem at the top of the red title cartouche. Surviving impressions from this series seem to be rare as we could only locate one other design, in the catalog of an outstanding, recent exhibition of surimono, at the Ôta Memorial Museum of Art: "Jewels of Japanese Printmaking: Surimono of the Bunka-Bunsei era 1804-1830", May 2000; pp. 108-09, no. 60

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