Figures from Chinese History and Legend

Yosa Buson was the son of a wealthy farmer in Settsu, a village near Osaka. Buson left home in his late teens to study poetry with the famous poet Hayano Hajin (1677-1742) in Edo. In 1751, Buson settled in Kyoto and began seriously to pursue his interest in painting. By 1770, he was widely regarded as one of the greatest haiku poets and Nanga painters in 18th-century Japan.

The scroll on the right depicts Yue Fei (1103-1142), a famous general who became an icon of loyalty, bravery, and patriotism. Commanded by the Southern Song emperor Gaozong to resist the Jurchen army invaders from the north, Yue valiantly led his troops on a counterattack that nearly drove the foreign intruders out of China. As a reward for this action, the emperor personally bestowed upon the general a banner inscribed with the words "the dedicated and loyal Yue Fei".

The central scroll depicts three generals and statesmen of the later Han dynasty, Liu Bei (162-233), Guan Yu (d. 219), and Zhang Fei (d. 220), who are visiting a legendary scholar, Zhuge Liang (181-234). They are trying to persuade him to leave his seclusion and help them establish the Kingdom of Shu as successor to the Han. On their third visit Zhuge agreed to join their cause. All four men became archetypal figures of loyalty and valor, and their exploits were popularized in the historical novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which may have been the inspiration for the painting.

The exact subject of the scroll on the left has not been firmly identified. Given the nature of the other two subjects, it seems that this triptych was painted for a member of the Japanese elite who valued the Confucian virtues embodied by the characters depicted in these scrolls.

(Chung-Lan Wang, AMAM Curator of Asian Art, February 2007)