Published:
Kano Hiroyuki, et. al., Jidai byobu shuka (Anthology of screen painting) (Kyoto: Shikosha, 1993), color pl. 59, pp. 104-105.
There is a long tradition of tiger and bamboo or tiger and dragon painting in Japan but the animals depicted here are not in the least menacing. If anything, they resemble big, playful cats. Art historian Kano Hiroyuki observed that these tigers actually have characteristics that are reminiscent of Korean tiger paintings. They are also quite distinctive, owing to their long, looping tails and their fanciful eyebrows. The eyebrows are especially whimsical. Two of the tigers have eyebrows formed in centipede-like semicircular arcs of black and white, and one has a kind of star-burst or floret design. The leopard, of course, has spotted eyebrows. Their mischievous expressions and decidedly gentle nature are qualities seen in other tiger and dragon screens such as those by the sixteenth-century master, Sesson, in the Cleveland Museum of Art.