A painting on silk in sumi ink and pigment by the Japanese artist Kawahara Keiga (1786 to 1862), dated 1822 to 1830, depicting the deity Inari as an elderly man carrying a yoke slung with rice stalks and walking with a staff, accompanied by a white fox. This personified, elderly-man iconography is one of Inari's several traditional forms alongside the more familiar fox alone, and situates the kami of rice, agriculture and prosperity as a wandering human figure rather than purely as the fox messengers who serve as intermediaries at Inari shrines. The painting is held by the National Museum of World Cultures (Wereldmuseum) in the Netherlands under accession number RV-360-4362, measuring 28.2 by 42 centimetres.
Facts
Subject Matter
Devotional FunctionKawahara Keiga worked mainly as a documentary and export artist attached to the Dutch trading post at Dejima, producing paintings of Japanese customs, flora and deities largely for a foreign, Dutch audience rather than for temple or domestic devotional use, so this image likely functioned as an explanatory record of Japanese religious iconography for its patrons rather than as an object of worship. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Netherlands directly: "World Cultures (Wereldmuseum) in the Netherlands under accession number RV-360-4362, measuring 28.2 by 42 centimetres."
Belongs to Tradition
Depicts
Inari, Deities The painting's explicit named subject per its own Dutch title, portrayed in the elderly-man-with-fox form of the kami, in the holding museum's own catalogue record.
Sources
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