Daikoku with a Forked Radish / Ebisu with a Flounder (pair)
二股大根と大黒天／鮃と恵比寿天（双幅）
- Inscription
- Only the Ebisu scroll is signed: “brush of Gakyo Rojin Manji, aged eighty,” with a square intaglio seal reading Katsushika.
- Dimensions
- 各73.0 × 30.8 cm
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Provenance
- Said to have been mounted originally on a six-panel folding screen, and since remounted as twelve hanging scrolls; this pair is two of them.
Literature
- Exhibition catalogue, The Beauty of Japan Seen from Gunma (the account of this work follows its entry).
About This Work
An Ebisu who has hooked a flounder
A pair of scrolls: Ebisu, who has hooked not the customary sea bream but a flounder, and Daikoku, shouldering an enormous forked radish. The fish seems not to be on the hook at all: Ebisu stands his rod upright, stoops, and points at the flapping flounder, his face showing less delight than astonishment. Daikoku carries the mallet of fortune on his back and lets one long lucky ear show from behind the radish — a forked radish being an auspicious offering made to him for abundance and for the continuation of a line. Rather than paint the immortals to formula, Hokusai raises them by such wit into pictures that reward the viewer who notices.
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