National Treasures & Important Cultural Properties
of National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan

Ichian Ichijo, the author of the praise, was a Chinese Zen (Ch: Chan) monk who arrived in Japan in Ouei 9 (1402) as a member of a delegation from the Ming dynasty and left in the following year, Ouei 10. As we can be certain that he wrote the praise in that period, it is reasonable to think that this painting was produced around then. The complimentary poem quotes a line from Saishisou (the title of the lyrics of a song played with koto, written in the gafu style), "mushrooms flourish, they can cure the hunger," which tells us that the theme is Shouzan Shikou (Ch: Shangshan Sihao). Shouzan Shikou refers to four elderly sages in the late Qin period, who fled the turbulence of the society at that time and lived in seclusion on Mt. Shang. They are called kou (white) because the hair of all of them was grey (in Japan and China, the same color of hair is called white). Since there are only two of them painted in the picture, it is assumed that there was another piece that constituted a pair with this one. The painting style is rather old, with the atmosphere of the late fourteenth century.