Mandarin Duck and Pearl Barley, from Pictorial Monograph of Birds (Shūchō gafu)

Mandarin Duck and Pearl Barley depicts the oshidori (mandarin duck, Aix galericulata), one of the most iconic and most heavily symbolized birds in the entire East Asian painting tradition, paired with hatomugi (pearl barley, Coix lacryma-jobi), a tall grass with characteristic teardrop-shaped seed heads that grows in damp ground along streams and pond margins. The mandarin duck is the supreme East Asian emblem of marital fidelity — male and female birds are conventionally shown as a pair, and the species' Japanese name oshidori has become a common idiomatic shorthand for a devoted married couple. Kashū's plate in the Shūchō gafu (1885) draws on the long iconographic literature surrounding the bird while still applying the close observational discipline that runs throughout the album: the elaborately structured male plumage with its orange "sail" feathers, white facial crescent, and chestnut breast is described with the kind of feather-by-feather color carving that the Tokyo block-printing trade had refined to a technical peak. The pairing with hatomugi places the bird in its actual aquatic habitat rather than against a generically decorative ground, signaling the album's commitment to ecological as well as symbolic accuracy.