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Tofu
Daikō Sōgen (1772–1860)
c. 1856
- Medium
- paper, ink
- Classification
- hanging scroll
- Dimensions
- height 109 cm x width 44.9 cm
- Museum
- Rijksmuseum
- Credit line
- On loan from the Royal Asian Art Society in The Netherlands (bequest F. Hess, 2023)
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
About this work
Here, a poem by a Zen monk is juxtaposed with the image of a block of tofu. Through clever wordplay, the verses draw a parallel between humanity on the one hand and the seemingly ‘soft’ yet ‘firm’ block of cooked soybeans on the other hand. Shouldn’t people also be ‘gentle’ and ‘pliable’, while simultaneously standing ‘firm’ and ‘resolute’?
