Bush Clover

Catalog note / 解説

Within Japanese culture the seasons and their expression are well codified, with particular plants, birds, animals, and insects all signaling a change in season and in the feelings associated with particular times of the year. The bush clover depicted here is representative of autumn and the melancholy of the season as summer ends and winter approaches. The two figures, a high-class lady in a luxurious kimono and her attendant, who holds the lady's cape in her left hand as she glances away from the bush clover, or hagi, as it is known in Japanese, appear to be deep in thought. A sense of melancholy pervades the scene that is reinforced by the poem at the top of the print: To those delicate…