Ono no Tofu Watching a Leaping Frog

Ono no Tofu Watching a Leaping Frog, an early 1760s hosoban mizu-e color woodblock print at the Art Institute of Chicago, illustrates one of the most beloved didactic legends in Japanese culture. Ono no Tofu (894-966) was a Heian-period calligrapher, traditionally regarded as one of the three great brush masters of his age. According to the legend, he was on the verge of abandoning his studies when he saw a frog repeatedly leaping at a willow branch, failing again and again until at last it succeeded. Tofu took the lesson to heart, returned to his calligraphy, and went on to define classical Japanese script. The story became a standard moral exemplar of perseverance and was a popular subject in painting and print. Shigemasa - himself a respected calligrapher who taught the brush professionally - had personal reasons for treating the subject. The mizu-e technique gives the print the muted, almost monochromatic tonality of an ink painting, appropriate for a calligrapher's tale. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression sits within Shigemasa's broader project of bringing classical narrative subjects into the floating-world idiom, alongside his Genji and Sumida views.