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

Paintings that depict familiar scenes, such as fields in a suburb, a river running through them, intricate river shores and flocks of small birds, are called shokeiga (small-scale paintings of landscapes). It is said that Esu, a painter in the period of the Five Dynasties, initiated the style. It was used often by the painters of imperial families in the end of the Northern Song period and also attracted the attention of later painters as an unconventional painting form. Very few shokeiga now exist and older ones are much rarer. This painting is one such hard-to-obtain example.
　This picture depicts a flock of wild geese on a sand-bar covered with dead reeds at the bottom of the picture. This is a popular motif in shokeiga. There is a small forest of slim bamboo trees on an earth mound on the right, out of which a dead tree crawls. The small bird perching on the dead tree branch is quite impressive. Two bamboo trees grow diagonally along with the dead tree and one of them hangs down and extends its branches as if to obstruct the viewer's view. While the bamboo trees are outlined with fine sumi lines and light green is applied inside, the reeds are outlined with thin sumi lines, to which light brown is added. The dead tree is outlined with cadent brush strokes, to which small brush effects are added in thin sumi ink. Compared to these bamboo and other trees, the wild geese are represented using a mokkotsu technique (a technique to depict objects without using any outlines), which clearly demonstrates thematic and technical traditions. Thin indigo blue is applied to the water surface and blank space to represent space effectively.
　There is another example of shokeiga of this type, Sansuizu (an important cultural property at the Museum Yamato Bunkakan) authenticated as a Cho Tainen. Although this picture shows certain technical similarities to the Sansuizu in the representation of wild geese and small birds, this picture shows a centripetal composition whereas the Sansuizu has an open composition. Moreover, the representation of this picture is more elaborate and it is as if it were pursuing a different painting approach. It seems appropriate to assume that it was created after the early Southern Song period. It is a valuable example not only as a shokeiga, but also as a sansuiga of the Song period.