Siskin and Euonymus Alata, from Pictorial Monograph of Birds (Shūchō gafu)

Siskin and Euonymus Alata pairs the mahiwa (Eurasian siskin, a small yellow-green finch common in Japan as a winter resident from northern breeding ranges) with the red-leaved autumn branches of nishikigi (Euonymus alata, the burning-bush spindle tree, a shrub whose brilliant scarlet autumn foliage is among the most prized of the Japanese garden palette). The combination places the plate firmly in autumn, with the siskin's olive-yellow plumage set against the burning red of the nishikigi leaves in a deliberately concentrated complementary-color composition. Kashū's drawing in the Shūchō gafu (1885) shows the siskin in the kind of alert clinging posture that the species characteristically assumes on seed-bearing branches, with the structure of its short conical beak and forked tail carefully described. The plate is a good example of the way the album balances small-scale anatomical observation with the larger-scale autumn-color decorative logic that the Japanese kachō-e tradition had inherited from centuries of seasonal poetry and Rinpa-influenced decorative painting.