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Lot Essay
This pair of screens is showing the Dog-chasing Event, an equestrian sport which originated as a form of martial-arts training as early as the thirteenth century. By the early seventeenth century, however, the sport was virtually defunct. After dog-chasing was revived in 1646, the complicated rules of conduct were rigorously codified and illustrated manuals depicting the sport came into circulation. The sport transmogrified into a grand annual affair and became a popular theme on screens of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Here, a crowd of interested spectators from all walks of life are shown in a dazzling display of costumes and amusements.
The dog-chasing event is shown in two stages. There is a deliberate contrast between the suspenseful preliminary stage of the game preceding the release of the dog and the dramatic action at left where archers and attendants converge to drive the fleeing dog toward the scorekeeper's roofed enclosure. This is also the dignitaries' viewing stand. At the center sits a scorekeeper. The artist provides a panoply of props and characters: archers, dog handlers, judges, old and young spectators, men and women. The variety of costume, gesture and facial expression is infinitely entertaining.
The sport was important as target practice and as training in military etiquette. Different schools or families evolved their own sets of rules. An event in 1489 records the use of more than 150 dogs and three teams of archers, each with twelve riders. The competition went into abrupt decline in the second half of the sixteenth century as it may have seemed superfluous in an era of violent civil war. There is a long hiatus between the last recorded event in 1576 and the 1646 revival in the Shiba district of Edo (Tokyo) on the order of Shimazu Tadahisa, daimyo of the Satsuma fief.
The dog-chasing event is shown in two stages. There is a deliberate contrast between the suspenseful preliminary stage of the game preceding the release of the dog and the dramatic action at left where archers and attendants converge to drive the fleeing dog toward the scorekeeper's roofed enclosure. This is also the dignitaries' viewing stand. At the center sits a scorekeeper. The artist provides a panoply of props and characters: archers, dog handlers, judges, old and young spectators, men and women. The variety of costume, gesture and facial expression is infinitely entertaining.
The sport was important as target practice and as training in military etiquette. Different schools or families evolved their own sets of rules. An event in 1489 records the use of more than 150 dogs and three teams of archers, each with twelve riders. The competition went into abrupt decline in the second half of the sixteenth century as it may have seemed superfluous in an era of violent civil war. There is a long hiatus between the last recorded event in 1576 and the 1646 revival in the Shiba district of Edo (Tokyo) on the order of Shimazu Tadahisa, daimyo of the Satsuma fief.