Priest Mending His Clothes in the Morning Sun, after Kaō

A man holds up to his face an object not immediately identifiable, formed by several strokes of a brush soaked in jet black ink. Araki’s trailing brushstrokes suggest movement, as if the man has just lifted the object to his face, perhaps even furtively. Our sense that this fellow is up to no good is encouraged by his shifty eyes, cast in shadow by a prominent furry brow and darting dramatically to the left. The most important hint at this man’s identity, however, is hardly noticeable except on close inspection: the man holds between his right thumb and index finger a needle, indicated by a short, exceedingly fine black line. It seems he is sewing, not stealing, the inky black object, recognizable now as a cloth of some kind. Araki took this mysterious figure from a Japanese Zen painting of the 1300s long attributed to the painter Kaō. In that painting the monk’s gaze is focused intently on the tiny needle in his outstretched right hand. The monk is mending his clothes in the bright morning sun, a traditional painting subject depicting an old poem that encapsulates Zen practice. Araki’s reconfiguring of this painting results in a noticeable misconception of the original composition and the monk’s dramatic line of vision.