Help with Tsuba design

[BIG]

https://www.e-nihont.../products/detail/816

 

Find Chidori bird

 

any thoughts very welcome

 

Best

[SteveM]

Not a chidori, but a cuckoo (時鳥 - hototogisu). 

Great-looking tsuba, great attribution. 

[Spartancrest]

  Almost identical bird seen on the ura of a guard in the Brooklyn  Museum https://www.brooklyn...ction/objects/120876

[BIG]

Thanks Steve and Dale. Some thoughts about the „rain“??

 

Best

[SteveM]

Nothing about the rain raises any suspicion in me. The NBTHK paper states the tsuba theme of "cuckoo and rain", so presumably they thought it was fine. And its a Tokubetsu Hozon paper, so one supposes this was submitted and viewed twice by the NBTHK. The Kanzan hakogaki also looks OK to me. You think there is something suspicious about it?

[BIG]

Nothing wrong with the rain..

 

the rain theme is very common on paintings and prints. Earthly is finite, was my first thought about, but it should be the welcome of first spring showers.

 

https://artvee.com/dl/cuckoo-in-the-rain/

 

https://www.mutualar...94CD5EF7857B7E50FAA9

 

A poem too..

 

 

 

[BIG]

The lovers lament poem on the Hiroshige print and the Tsuba theme fits..

 

https://chazen.wisc....-flying-in-the-rain/

 

Best

[Nobody]

There is a poem composed by Takahashi no Mushimaro in Man’yoshu. I think it is the origin of the theme. The poem expresses a cuckoo sadly flying and chirping on rainy night. The motif is cuckoo’s loneliness, because it was a brood parasite, and it does not know its real parents.

 

Ref. Man'yōshū - Wikipedia

Ref. Takahashi no Mushimaro - Wikipedia

 

 

[BIG]

Thanks for the Takahashi No Mushimaro poem, thats the theme..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FlorianB]

Peter,

 

the hototogisu is connected with the summer season in which heavy rainfalls are common.

 

Furthermore there could also be an allusion to the Ise Monogatari. In chapter 43 the cocoo symbolizes infidelity in love.

 

Best, Florian

[BIG]

Danke dir Florian.

 

Best Regards

[thutson]

Lovely looking tsuba Peter, I have a tsuba along the same theme.

 

The Takahashi No Mushimaro poem certainly seems to be the theme. I've read that the lonley cuckoo often calls in the dark of summer nights, the call is said to sound like someone calling "return home".

 

I realise there is no moon on your tsuba but I have also read that the Japanese cuckoo is often shown flying across the face of the moon on a rainy night. This image signifies honor and advancement in status, and refers to the story of the samurai Yorimasa defeating the Nue. As Yorimasa was being awarded, a cuckoo flew overhead calling in the night. 

 

[BIG]

Hi Tom its not my tsuba. The only Naotane / Yoshitane TH Tsuba I found..

 

Thank you for sharing.

 

Here we have a nice Haiku by Taniguchi Denjo ( 1713-1779 )

 

Cukoo call-

One evening, into the heart

the rain falls

 

and Bessho Makiko wrote the Paul Verlaine verse:

 

Il pleut dans mon cceur / Comme il pleut sur la ville.. / It rains into my heart / like it rains on the city..

 

from the book HAIKU Gedichte aus fünf Jahrhunderten Reclam

[Spartancrest]

There is a bird and crescent moon tsuba in the Walters Art Museum  https://art.thewalte...d-clouds/#item-modal 

The crescent moon is large and under the bird so it might represent the moon reflected on water. They describe the bird as a Hawk but that is open to your own interpretation.