Four-Case Roiro Lacquer Inro with the Aridoshi Shrine Keeper in the Rain


Of tall rectangular shape with an oval cross-section, this four-case inro is lacquered in a deep, polished roiro ground. One face shows the old keeper of the Aridoshi shrine wrapped in billowing robes, bent against a heavy downpour and clutching a broken umbrella that offers him little shelter.

The figure is worked in iro-e hiramaki-e and takamaki-e, his geta picked out in gold. Fine slanting strokes of gold rain sweep across the upper part of the ground and carry over onto the reverse. There, a dense stand of pines rises in richly textured gold takamaki-e, the needles rendered in fine raised strokes and flecked with aogai, partly screening a shrine hall whose roof is set with small squares of kirikane.

At the lower right, a vermilion torii emerges from behind the trees. The interiors are finished in gold nashiji.

The subject is drawn from the legend of the poet Ki no Tsurayuki (c. 868–945). Passing the Aridoshi shrine in Izumi province on a dark, rainy night, Tsurayuki's horse suddenly collapsed, for he had unwittingly ridden through the sacred precinct.

An old shrine keeper appeared and explained the deity's displeasure. Tsurayuki appeased the god with a poem, and his horse recovered. The story was dramatised by Zeami in the Noh play Aridoshi, in which the shrine keeper, carrying an umbrella through the rain, is revealed as the deity himself in disguise. Although not strictly a rusu moyo, the "absent" design in which the protagonists are left out and a story is evoked only through its setting and attributes, the composition works in the same allusive spirit: the poet and his horse are omitted, and the viewer who recognises the rain-swept grove, the torii and the old keeper with his umbrella completes the story for himself

Compare:

• Inro with Aridoshi before a Torii in the Rain, signed Koma Kansai, Edo period, 1775–1850, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, W.254-1921
• Inro with a Figure with Umbrella and Lantern Approaching a Torii, Edo period, 18th–19th century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 13.67.70

Condition: Very good; fine surface scratches to the roiro ground, chiefly on the face with the figure.