Spring Pony Dance (harukoma), Shima Seien

Exhibition Label: "Nature/Natural," Feb-2011, Kris Ercums Historically, men dominated the painting profession in Japan, and women painters remained in the minority at the time that this hanging scroll was painted in the mid-20th century. The nihonga (modern Japanese-style painting) painter Shima Seien accessed the art world through her family connections—her father and elder brother were both painters—and mastered the art of bijinga (paintings of beautiful women), a favored subject of nihonga. The bijin seen here is a young woman readying for a performance of the harukoma odori (the “Spring Pony Dance”) a traditional song and dance that incorporated a hobbyhorse prop and celebrated the beginning of the new year. At the start of the new lunar calendar, street performers went door to door performing this song and dance for the public, while courtesans performed it in private to entertain their patrons. Seien depicted falling flower petals to suggest the coming of spring, and the characters for “luck” and “longevity” in the kimono of the young woman to emphasize the auspicious theme of this painting. Archive Label date unknown: Seien's father and elder brother were both painters, and she started painting at the age of fifteen. As an accomplished female painter of bijinga (paintings of female beauties), Seien was grouped together with Uemura Shōen of Tokyo and Ikeda Shōen of Kyoto as the three "en's." The woman seen here is a harugoma (literally, spring horse), a street performer who would go from door to door at the begining of the new year to sing and dance using a hobbyhorse. Characters for "luck" and "longevity" are on her kimono, and the falling petals remind us that the lunar calendar new year signals the begining of spring. Despite the auspicious nature of the subject matter, the woman's expression and that of the hobbyhorse add an enigmatic air to the painting.