Wooden Sliding Doors (Itado)

Wooden Sliding Doors (Itado) is a pair of painted wooden sliding doors by Mori Kansai held by the Yale University Art Gallery (accession ILE2014.9.3.1-.2). Executed in mineral colors on pine with black Japanese lacquer surrounds and copper-alloy fittings, the doors belong to the architectural painting tradition of fusuma-e and itado — the painted panels that fitted into the sliding partition walls of Japanese domestic and ceremonial architecture and that, alongside hanging scrolls and folding screens, formed one of the principal formats for high-status Japanese painting. The Mori-Kishi school's command of large-scale animal, bird, and landscape subjects made it a natural source for itado commissions in Kyoto and surrounding domains in the late Edo and early Meiji periods. The Yale pair, with their lacquered surrounds and metal fittings, preserves a sense of the architectural context in which Kansai's large-scale painting was originally encountered. Dated stylistically to the mid-nineteenth century, the doors are a rare survival of the architectural format in an American museum collection.