The Japanese "tiger" is coming

In recent years, every Spring Festival, the Shanghai Museum will have a small zodiac cultural relics exhibition, the mascot of the 2022 New Year is the tiger, in order to welcome the Year of the Tiger and the 50th anniversary of the normalization of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations, the Shanghai Museum and the Kyushu National Museum in Japan jointly held the "Year of the Tiger Laughing Yin - The Spring Festival Exhibition of the Year of the Tiger in China and Japan".

A total of 10 cultural relics were exhibited in this exhibition, 6 offline physical exhibits and 4 were online exhibits. The Shanghai Museum selected 6 fine cultural relics for this exhibition, and the Kyushu National Museum in Japan has 4 exchange cultural relics. The exhibition runs from January 18 to February 27.

The five cultural relics on display in the hall on the first floor of the Shangbo museum are the Golden Dynasty Yellow Ground Black Colored Goose Reed Pattern Tiger Pillow in the Shanghai Museum, the Western Han Dynasty Gilded Golden Tiger Town and the Golden Dynasty Autumn Mountain Jade Ornament, and the 19th-century Blue and White Tiger Bamboo Figure Twelve-Shaped Plate and the Blue and White Tiger Bamboo Pattern Plate from the National Museum of Kyushu, Japan.

Jin Dynasty Yellow ground black color goose reed pattern tiger pillow

Many people see the Golden Age Yellow Ground Black Color Goose Reed Pattern Ceramic Tiger Pillow in the Collection of the Shangbo Museum, and they can't help but ask: Could ancient people really sleep on such a cold and hard pillow? Can't sleep out cervical spondylosis?

In fact, the ancient Chinese used a variety of pillows. Pillows are divided into hard pillows and soft pillows, and the materials of light hard pillows include jade, stone, wood, bamboo, pottery, copper, amber and so on. Among the tiger pillow cultural relics circulating today, there are also two kinds of funerary products and daily necessities, the tiger pillow as a funerary product is particularly high, as a daily necessities generally do not exceed 15 cm in height, and many are cushioned on the neck. From a medical point of view, when people sleep, the head body temperature is 34 degrees to 35 degrees, slightly lower than the body temperature, and the ceramic tiger pillow is conducive to cooling down and improving the quality of sleep. In Ge Hong's "Elbow Reserve Emergency Formula" of the Jin Dynasty, it is advocated that the tiger head pillow can treat sleep-related diseases.

As the king of the hundred beasts, the image of the tiger has always been believed to have the effect of exorcising demons, and the ancients used tiger pillows, including folk to sleep tiger pillows for children, often taking its evil and auspicious meaning. Ceramic tiger headrests were popular in the Jin Dynasty, and the production areas were mainly in Shanxi and Henan. Today, the Chinese ceramic tiger head pillow is also a very good collection category.

Western Han Dynasty Gilded Tiger Town

The Western Han Dynasty Gilded Tiger Town in the Shangbo Museum is in the form of a roll,around, and the tiger is filled with lead to make it more stable, and the whole vessel weighs 3600 grams. What did the ancients do to make tiger towns? In the Qin and Han Dynasties and earlier times, the main way of living was to "sit on the ground", it is conceivable that in order to avoid getting up, folding the corners of the seats or worrying about clothes, there was a "seat town", that is, the weight of pressing the four corners of the seat, and the tiger's sense of might is more suitable for the meaning of "town".

Jin Dynasty Akiyama jade ornament

The front of the Jin Dynasty Qiushan jade ornament in the Collection of the Shangbo Museum uses a transparent carving technique to express the mountain forest scenes such as tulip trees, mountain stones, and ganoderma lucidum, during which a tiger crouches down and looks back, and the head and hair are delicately carved, full of mountain and forest interest. Jade ornaments use jade skin color to express the tiger's fur and ganoderma lucidum, which belongs to the "pretty color" process. What does "Akiyama" mean? Because in the Liao Dynasty, whenever the rulers of the spring and autumn seasons had to travel to camp and fish and hunt, the Jin Dynasty inherited this custom and renamed it "Spring Water" and "Autumn Mountain". "Chunshui" and "Qiushan" jade became very distinctive jade categories in the Jinyuan period.

Influenced by Chinese culture, Japan has long had the custom of worshipping tigers, but there are no tigers in Japan, so the image of tigers in cultural relics is often full of curiosity and imagination, and today it looks very kawaii.

19th century Arita kiln in Japan Blue and white tiger bamboo figure twelve-shaped plate

The twelve-shaped plate of the blue and white tiger bamboo figure in the Collection of the Kyushu National Museum in Japan was fired in a Japanese Arita kiln. At the end of the 16th century, Japanese samurai families used large plates to arrange dishes at banquets, initially they used Chinese porcelain plates, and in the early 17th century, after the rise of the Arita kiln, the large plates made in Japan gradually became a luxury on the tables of high society.

19th century Japanese Shida kiln blue and white tiger bamboo pattern plate

This large plate of blue and white tiger bamboo pattern from the Kushu National Museum in Japan is produced in the Shida kiln in Japan. Due to the increasing demand for Arita kiln porcelain, Shida, located in the Arita Owaiyama area, became a kiln for mass porcelain production in the early 18th century, and in the early 19th century, the Shida kiln entered its heyday. The large porcelain plate was suitable for banquets or high-end restaurants that were popular among the wealthy merchants in Japanese cities at that time.

On the electronic screen on the first floor of Shangbo, four other cultural relics will be displayed online, including shen quan's "Album of Flowers, Birds and Animals" in the Shanghai Museum collection, "Zhao Cai Na Fu Fu To Ward Off Evil New Year Paintings" in Zhangzhou, Fujian province in the Qing Dynasty, and "Tiger Diagram" by Japanese painter Xiong Fei in the Collection of the National Museum of Kyushu in Japan and "Tiger Diagram" by Tufang Daoling in the collection of the National Museum of Japan.

Qing Dynasty Shen Quan Flower Bird Walking Beast Book

The flowers, birds and animals painted by the Qing Dynasty painter Shen Quan are beautiful. He was employed in nagasaki, Japan, in the ninth year of Kiyonagashi (1731), where he remained for three years. At that time, the Japanese attached great importance to Shen painting, and there were many students. In his later years, Shen Quan settled in Suzhou and became famous.

This book of flowers, birds and animals is colored on silk, each depicting a saddle horse, a dog cow, an egret, a tiger rabbit, etc., leisurely swimming under the water's edge forest. Among them, the tiger is painted as soon as it opens, and the tiger's tail is half hidden behind the forest, and a dragon stands in the thick clouds of the sky, and the surrounding grass and trees shake, and the springs and stones are excited. Although the scale of the work is small, the weather is vivid.

Xiong Fei Hu Tu 1792

Xiong Fei is a Japanese painter whose real name is Shinshiro Nobujin. Because his adoptive father served as a "Tang Tongshi", that is, a "Chinese translator" in the Nagasaki area, he was able to enter and exit the Chinese mansion "Tang Guan". When Shen Quan taught Chinese painting techniques in Nagasaki, Japan, he lived in the local "TangGuan" for nearly two years, and Xiong Fei was his disciple. Xiong Fei inherited Shen Quan's painting style and founded the Nagasaki School, which had a great influence on the Japanese Edo period painting world. In the painting, the tiger hunched over Weihe, and the tiger stands on the mountain rock. The tiger's fur is exquisitely colored, but it is cute in its majesty.

Tufang Rice Ridge Tiger Map 1803

Togata Daoling was born into a Japanese samurai family, but he aspired to learn painting and entered xiong fei's disciple Song Zishi. Famous for his expertise in the style of the Chinese painter Shen Quan, he became the royal painter of the Tottori Domain in 1798. In the painting, the tiger is majestic and determined, walking in steps, using a flexible and meticulous pen, and the theme is festive and auspicious. The theme and style of this kind of "tiger figure" was formed after the 18th century by Shen Quan's flower, bird and animal map, and was widely popular throughout Japan.

Qing Dynasty Fujian Zhangzhou Zhao Cai Na Fu to ward off evil New Year paintings

The tiger is not only a town house god beast that drives away evil spirits and avoids disasters, but also a money tiger that symbolizes wealth. In this New Year painting, the tiger's mouth has a copper coin of "Zhao Cai Jin Bao", and in front of him there is also a cornucopia filled with coral, Ruyi, "Spring Zhao Caizi" copper coins and other treasures, and the tiger's back is printed with Taiji Gossip, and the auspicious patterns on the body reflect the people's psychology of seeking wealth and driving away evil spirits. The shape of the work is vivid and lively, and the color contrast is strong, reflecting the distinctive characteristics of folk culture.

Yuan Dynasty Anon. White Painting Group Immortal Scroll (Partial)

The Chinese Painting Museum on the third floor of the Shanghai Museum also cooperated with this exhibition to exhibit the yuan dynasty anonym "White Painting Group Immortal Picture Scroll". The work uses white painting techniques to draw nine groups of immortal figures, and in addition to several fairy wind Dao bone figures in the fifth group, there is also a tiger, whose size is much smaller than that of humans, with uniform hairs and a lovely mood, it seems that it is not the king of the mighty hundred beasts, but has become a cute pet.

Source: Morning News