Byobu or folding screen in two panels, painted on paper in sumi ink, gofun or clam shell gesso and mineral pigments, with a scene from the margins of a deep forest glade, focusing on a weasel pausing amid wild strawberries. Signed on the lower left by the artist: Bokuyo, and sealed: Bokuyo (Katayama Bokuyo, the go or art name of Katayama Kenzo, 1900 – 1937). Showa 3 or 1928.

Entitled Mori or Forest, this painting was created for exhibition at the 9th Teiten in 1928. It is illustrated in the Nittenshi, volume 8, page 291, number 68. This painting is now in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Katayama Bokuyo was born in Hiroshima in Meiji 33. He studied painting under Tsutaya Ryuko. In 1927, he was first accepted into the annual Imperial art exhibitions with the 8th Teiten, where his entry took the tokusen or grand prize. The next year he exhibited this painting, Mori or Forest, at the 9th Teiten, where it earned him mukansa or non-vetted status. Thereafter he exhibited every year through the 12th Teiten in 1931. He died in Hiroshima at the young age of 37 in 1937.

Bokuyo frames the composition around the weasel. Light illumines only the foreground, the forest shading mysteriously into darkness. The tall verticals of hinoki or Japanese cypress trunks pace across the screen, their bark cracked and weathered. Below, rich undergrowth textures the forest floor. Horizontal slivers of brown earth dash around the weasel, balanced by two lines of crimson wild strawberries in dotted counterpoint. We focus upon the weasel, just as it seems to consider us, pulling us deeper into its world. The mood is cool, feral and unfamiliar. This is naturalism inspired by a feeling for the nature’s indifferent beauty.