Cleveland Museum of Art

Preface

Rai Sanyō

Date

1817

Medium

Double-leaf from a pair of folding albums; ink on silk

Culture

Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)

Department

Japanese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Historian Rai San’yō, whose family came from Hiroshima and achieved elite samurai status from modest beginnings as textile dyers, contributed three calligraphies to these albums, including this preface, in which he explains that the albums were being assembled to show off the beauty of the landscape along Lake Biwa near Hikone Castle in central Japan. The albums also feature one leaf each by San’yō’s father, a scholar, and his two uncles, a physician and a scholar turned local government official. From a samurai family, Rai Sanyō sought to evade training to be a bureaucrat, leading his father to lock him in his room for three years.

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