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

This work has been known as "bent bamboo" by Zhao Chang for a long time now. Zhao Chang was a painter in the Imperial Painting Academy in the first half of the Chinese North Song dynasty, and was good at painting birds and flowers, particularly bent branches. Regardless of whether the widespread reputation that it was painted by Zhao Chang is true or not, it is hard not to be impressed by this excellent work, which shows a gorgeous and precise painting style, quite unlike the paintings of plants and worms in Biling (Changzhou) in the Yuan and Ming dynasties. It carries 雑華室, the owner's seal attributed to Ashikaga Shogunate, and was valued highly as a Higashiyama Imperial property. Previously owned by the Asano clan.