狩野山雪と「和」の画題―「武家相撲絵巻」をめぐって

The Sumô Museum in Tokyo has a single handscroll by Kanô Sansetsu (1590-1651), titled Buke sumô emaki (Samurai Sumô handscroll). Until this work was introduced in the Special Exhibition Kanô Sanraku and Sansetsu that I organized and was held in the spring of 2013 at the Kyoto National Museum, it was largely unknown by art historians and had not been considered in the study of Sansetsu. The more than 12 meter-long painting surface presents 12 pictures of members of the samurai military class grappling in sumô bouts that appear in a Japanese medieval period tale. The depiction is vivid and the narrative contents of the tale are written above the pictures. At the end of the scroll there is a colophon by Sansetsu’s son and heir Kanô Einô, stating that it is a genuine work by Sansetsu. This colophon also includes such important information as the title of the work, the name of its commissioner and the reason for its creation. In the spring of 2016 I learned that a replica scroll existed with exactly the same iconography and imagery as found in the Sumô Museum scroll. This copy, found among the massive number of Kanô school copy works owned by the Tokyo National Museum, was made in Kyoto in 1840 (Tenpô 11) by the studio of Kanô Seisen’in Osanobu. This article first considers the Samurai Sumô handscroll within the context of art history, and within Sansetsu’s oeuvre, while also introducing the copy work. In detail, first the article organizes the objective data about the Samurai Sumô handscroll, and examines the scroll’s provenance based on information from the copy scroll. Continuing on, the texts written above the pictures are transcribed, and while confirming the depicted content, each of the pictorial scenes is considered. A detailed comparison with other Sansetsu works indicates that it is an authentic work by Sansetsu, and the article continues with a discussion of Sansetsu’s figural and group expression. An examination of the colophon also touches on the issue of Sansetsu’s patronage class. Kanô Sansetsu painted the Samurai Sumô handscroll, which was commissioned by Sen’nyo, the 13th abbot of Higashi-honganji, and was intended as a gift to the Tokugawa shogunal family. This work indicates the close connection between Sansetsu and Higashi-honganji, but it also can be said that Sansetsu, known for his scholarly character, was the most suitable painter for a work of this theme, which required a variety of evidence and information for the content depicted. The subject of this work is a purely Japanese topic, and thus completely overturns our image of Sansetsu who has been introduced solely as a painter of Chinese theme subjects. The superb figural and adroit group expression makes this one of Sansetsu’s major works, and it must be seriously considered in future studies of Sansetsu.