Description
This scene depicts three people playing a game in which three players make hand gestures simultaneously. The relationship among the gestures determines the winner. Known as hand games, during the eighteenth century they were popular in Japan among courtesans. In this version, the contestants use both hands, indicating a special variation such as the fox hand game, which features gestures for a fox, a village leader, and a hunter.
Provenance
Michener Collection, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, HI (? by 1968–?); (Dr. Richard Lane, Tokyo, Japan, sold to Mr. and Mrs. Kelvin Smith); The Kelvin Smith Collection, Cleveland, OH, given by Mrs. Kelvin [Eleanor Armstrong] Smith [1899–1998] to the Cleveland Museum of Art (?–1985); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1985–)
Accession Number
1985.258
Medium
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
Dimensions
Overall: 39 x 55.3 cm (15 3/8 x 21 3/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith
Tags
Painting Neoclassical & Romantic (1751–1850) Ink Paper Japanese
Background & Context
Background Story
Hasegawa Yasumasa (active mid-18th century) was a Japanese painter known for the elegantly composed genre paintings that make him one of the accomplished painters of the Edo period. Playing the Hand Game from c. 1760 depicts a scene of playing the hand game (ken) in the elegantly composed, characterful manner that distinguishes Yasumasa's best work from the more general genre painting of his contemporaries. The hand game (ken) was a popular party game in Edo Japan, and genre paintings of people playing games represent one of the most characterful subjects in Edo period painting. The c. 1760 date places this in the mid-Edo period, when genre paintings of everyday life were producing some of their most characterful works.
Cultural Impact
Playing the Hand Game is important in the history of Japanese genre painting because it depicts one of the most popular party games in Edo Japan in the elegantly composed, characterful manner of the mid-Edo period. Genre paintings of people playing games—representing the everyday life and customs of Edo Japan—are one of the most characterful subjects in Japanese painting, and the c. 1760 painting shows this tradition at its most elegantly composed.
Why It Matters
Playing the Hand Game is Yasumasa's elegantly composed Edo genre painting: a scene of playing the hand game rendered in the characterful manner of one of the accomplished painters of the mid-Edo period. The c. 1760 painting shows the everyday life and customs of Edo Japan in one of the most characterful subjects in Japanese genre painting.
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