Passing the Bamboo Grove
Suzuki Harunobu (Japanese, 1724–1770)
1868–1912
- Medium
- color woodblock print
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 34.7 x 21.3 cm (13 11/16 x 8 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Bequest of Edward L. Whittemore
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The young woman in this print likely stands in for Meng Zong, one of the Chinese Twenty Four Paragons of Filial Piety. Legend has it he went out in the dead of winter to dig bamboo shoots for his aged parents. Harunobu designed a calendar print for the year 1765 with a more explicit allusion to the theme. It shows a young woman actively digging for bamboo shoots. The first state of this print was privately issued as a calendar print for 1766, with the months of the year depicted in the woman's sash. It was illegal to sell any type of calendar without a government license, and a second state with the calendar replaced with a checked pattern was produced so that the print could be sold commercially. This print is several centimeters taller than the original, which together with its bright colors, indicates that it is a later reproduction.
