The Four Accomplishments, late 1500s-early 1600s. Attributed to Kano Shōei (Japanese, 1519-1592). Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and slight color on paper; overall: 174 x cm (68 1/2 x 149 in.). At first this scene appears a bit strange, if not bizarre: men, young and old, sit in a vast wilderness playing a board game or executing an ink painting. The furniture and ceramic wares are elegant, the attire is fashionably informal, and the young attendants outnumber the gentlemen of leisure. Clouds and mist roll through the landscape, whose bleakness suggests late fall or early spring

The Four Accomplishments, late 1500s-early 1600s. Attributed to Kano Shōei (Japanese, 1519-1592). Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and slight color on paper; overall: 174 x cm (68 1/2 x 149 in.). At first this scene appears a bit strange, if not bizarre: men, young and old, sit in a vast wilderness playing a board game or executing an ink painting. The furniture and ceramic wares are elegant, the attire is fashionably informal, and the young attendants outnumber the gentlemen of leisure. Clouds and mist roll through the landscape, whose bleakness suggests late fall or early spring, a chilly time to be outdoors engaged in what Westerners would call pastimes or hobbies. But we are viewing the past, a pictorial vision of a cultured gentleman’s ideal in classical East Asian history: the Four Accomplishments. This enduring Confucian theme embraces the arts of calligraphy, painting, music, and go (a game of strategy akin to chess), each of which is portrayed or suggested in this pair of 16th-century folding screens, or by?bu. In the left screen, the multiple brushes and a large flat rock surface for writing refer to painting and calligraphy; in the right screen, a seven-stringed musical instrument called a qin, protected in cloth and resting on the large wooden table close to the game players, indicates music and the game of go. The daily pursuit of one or more of these activities has a venerated history in ancient China, one that was transmitted to Korea and Japan by at least the 1400s, when interest in Chinese culture pervaded medieval Japanese society. In Kyoto, Zen culture favored this theme, introducing it into mural painting programs organized for temple interiors as early as the late 1400s. The Kano school painters, in particular, are noted as the most prolific exponents of this theme, and their popularity reached a high point in the early 1600s. The Kano atelier produced many hundreds of paintings in various formats for private and institutional cl

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