Japanese Portable Shrine (493)

This work depicts a mikoshi, the portable shrine carried through the streets on the shoulders of festival participants during matsuri. A departure from Tanaka's usual rural architecture, the image concentrates on the ornate ritual object itself — its gilded roof in the form of a miniature shrine, carved phoenix finial, brocade tassels, and the heavy carrying poles lashed beneath. Such subjects allowed him to apply his close descriptive method to dense ornament rather than thatch and timber: the carved kumimono brackets, the lacquered panels, and the metalwork of the surrounding fittings. The lower catalogue number (493) places this earlier in his output than many of his Kyoto countryside prints, when he was still expanding his range of subjects beyond the minka. Even within this ritual subject, his characteristic stillness holds — the shrine is rendered as object rather than as event, removed from the noise and movement of the festival procession.