EDO PERIOD (17TH-18TH CENTURY)

By the middle of the Edo period, kaioke were an essential component in any set of konrei dogu [wedding furniture], along with more familiar items such as comb boxes, incense sets, writing boxes and basins. The Konrei dogu shoki keisunpo sho [Document on the shapes and dimensions of wedding furniture], dating from 1793, illustrates a typical kaioke on the first page of the first volume and lays down detailed instructions regarding the correct construction, proportions and measurements of a kaioke. Kaioke were used to contained one hundred pairs of clam shells, whose interiors were painted, as in the example associated with this lot, with matching scenes from the Genji monogatari [Tale of Genji] and other courtly texts. These formed the basis of a memory game similar to Western pelmanism. Because each half-shell can only be exactly matched to only one other half-shell, kaioke assumed great symbolic importance in the wedding ceremony itself, and the handing over of the kaioke was a ceremony reserved for the most senior members of the families involved.1

Tosa school painters continued the tradition of Yamato-e ('Japanese pictures'), as opposed to styles influenced by China. They worked chiefly for the Edokoro [Imperial Painting Office]. One feature of the school was the use of decorative clouds, often painted in gold, which divide up different scenes of a story, or lead the eye on from one incident to the next.

1. Sendai-shi Hakubutsukan [Sendai City Museum], Daimyoke no konrei [Marriage Among the Feudal Lords] (Sendai, 2000), cat. nos. 10, 36, 37.
For a similar example see www.britishmuseum.org, accession number JA 1933.12-11.1