Description:
Picture calendar (egoyomi) of "go" board game, with white and black game pieces indicating the long and short months of the lunar caledar, and the game piece holders functioning as a legend for deciphering of the print; the one on the right holding white pieces is designed with a stylized character "dai" (large) indicating that white pieces represent long months, while the one on the left has a stylized "shō" (small), indicating that the black pieces represent the shorter months. Kyōka poetry verse on the left.
Label Text:
This calendar print, or "egoyomi," is an illustration of the board game go, a sort of Japanese chess, with a poem at left. The alternating colors of the game pieces indicate the long and short months of the lunar calendar. The game piece holders function as a legend for the deciphering of the print: the one at left is embellished with a stylized rendering of the character "shō" ('small') while the one at right features the kanji "dai" ('large'), thus indicating that the black pieces represent the shorter months with the white ones representing the longer.
While there are no identifying marks on the print — typical of privately commissioned prints, or 'surimono' — it has been dated based on the style of the print and the order of the long and short months, which corresponds to 1769.
Tags:
black and white; calendars; games; text; writing Subjects:
black-and-white (colors); Games; text (layout feature); Writing Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2005.297 |
