A Spray from Waterfall
瀧しぶき
- Date:
- 1905
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print (kuchi-e frontispiece for Bungei Kurabu)
瀧しぶき
A Spray from Waterfall (Taki Shibuki, 瀧しぶき) is a color woodblock print by Mishima Shōsō dated to 1905 (Meiji 38), published as a [kuchi-e](/glossary/kuchi-e) (literary frontispiece) for the monthly literary magazine Bungei Kurabu (Literary Club) — the flagship Meiji-period literary periodical, published by Hakubunkan, that was the principal vehicle for the kuchi-e genre — and now held by the Honolulu Museum of Art among its substantial holdings of Meiji kuchi-e. The composition depicts a young woman in early-Meiji kimono and elaborate hair arrangement standing or seated beside the spray of a waterfall, her posture combining the [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) tradition of the contemplative beauty with the kachō-e (bird-and-flower) idiom of close natural observation that Shōsō had inherited from his Maruyama-Shijō training. The waterfall (taki) is one of the most heavily encoded landscape subjects in East Asian painting, with strong associations of natural sublimity, of the cleansing power of mountain water, and of the meditative withdrawal from urban life that the cult of the waterfall represented in the Meiji-era yearning for natural retreat. The spray (shibuki) — the spattering droplets thrown up by the waterfall's plunge — is the close-observed natural detail on which the composition turns: Shōsō's careful drawing of the water droplets against the kimono and the moss-covered rock represents the kind of close attention to atmospheric natural detail that distinguished his kuchi-e from the more conventional bijin-ga of his contemporaries. The print is representative of his mature kuchi-e style of the mid-1900s, in which the disciplined drawing of figure and costume he had learned in the Yōsai studio is combined with the close botanical and meteorological observation of the Maruyama-Shijō tradition.
A Spray from Waterfall (瀧しぶき) was created by Mishima Shōsō (三島蕉窓) in 1905.
A Spray from Waterfall depicts waterfalls and autumn foliage.
