A Good Joke Never Gets Old...

[Darcy]

I fell in love with this Goto Joshin futatokoromono at first sight. Filled with charm. 

 

I had one thing explained to me, and then Ted spotted another thing. There are two jokes in this futatokoromono. The second is a bit tricky because it is easy to be deceived which may indeed be him being humorous again for a third joke and then there is maybe a fourth joke on top of that, after I went back and looked at these again. 

 

Joshin to me always seemed very stern because he made such powerful pieces. Knowing what he did here gives some extra insight into who he was I think. 

 

Maybe members more familiar with kodogu can spot the jokes and explain. I don't feel entitled as the first was spoon fed and the second Ted figured out.

 

 

I'll check back tomorrow and update if necessary... 

[Stephen]

too dense here, only joke i see is i cant afford them

[Guido]

I know the wasps and antler word play "hōroku", but the other joke(s) elude me.

[Pete Klein]

It would be really nice to have the kanji so we could figure out the 'joke', or is the joke just on us???

[Darcy]

bee/wasp: 蜂 

deer: 鹿

 

Pronounce the first as Hou and second as Roku and you have "Salary" ... so it's an amusing gift you can use for someone on their first job. 

 

蜂 is also read as Hachi.

 

Some of the bees are set up so on a quick look they can appear to be parts of horn. So he's trying to trick the counts.

 

For the antlers you have:

 

Ni Roku, San Roku, and if you add those up you get Go Roku which sounds like Horoku again. 

 

For the bees you have Hachi Hachi and on the other a hidden be makes you assume Hachi Hachi again until you see his head and it feels like he's poking fun again. 

 

If you look at the kogai and mistake the bees shaped like an antler for an antler, you have a bee-antler. That is Houroku... again!

 

If on the kogai though you count the individual prongs on the antlers you will find there are 8. So you have... hachi-roku which is a bee-antler again... Horoku!

 

He keeps playing with numbers because 8 is bee and 6 is deer and he keeps combining them so you can get bee-deer or houroku out of it. Salary!

[Brian]

Early Sudoku!

 

:laughing:

 

Beautiful set btw!

[John A Stuart]

I can see the 'hō' used as a rebus. Salary is 俸給 Hōkyū, it sort of falls down there. 蜂九 maybe. Even first salary is Shoninkyū . The rebus suits more 'wandering'. John

[BIG]

All the beasts are staring at : me

 

Best Regards

[Pete Klein]

Oh -- I get it. He was a rent samurai! No wonder he was so creative!!!

[Stephen]

I fig there might have been a haiku in there,

but did think it had something to do with count.

[Henry Wilson]

Nice set of kodogu. I have a very Zen question: If people don't get a joke, is it still a joke? Humour wise, it seems a bit over-thought to me, but it is clear the motif has been contrived to level Di Vinci meets the Virgin Mary on a peice of toast.

 

Knowing all the Goto masters personally they are much funnier than that. This is what they were up to last night here in Tokyo:

Joshin: Knock,knock!

Wilson: Who's there?

Joshin: Goto master

Wilson: Goto master who?

Joshin: Goto master gotono Dragons!!!

 

Thanks for sharing.

[Guido]

蜂鹿 (wasp/bee & deer) has the same pronunciation as 俸禄 (a salary for a certain duty): hōroku.

 

There is also a Japanese proverb: 鹿の角を蜂が刺す (shika no tsuno o hachi ga sasu) – wasps/bees stinging antler, referring to being unaffected by something, like an elephant that doesn't feel a flea-bite (or the German saying "was kümmert es die stolze Eiche wenn sich das Borstenvieh dran wetzt" [why should the proud oak tree care about pigs rubbing against it]).

 

Although the salary allusion was often used in the Edo period, I don't think it was appropriate as a motif for samurai (and the Gotō were iebori, not working for commoners). The proverb, OTOH, would be well-suited for the stoicism expected from a member of the warrior class.

 

I'm not convinced that there is an underlying meaning based on a possible counting error (especially since go [short vowel] isn't close to hō [long vowel]), that might be overthinking it a little.