Yayoijin – The Last Day of Spring

In late 2016 an opportunity arose to acquire several nice stones from a collection in Japan.  What made these two stones special was knowing the prior owners and the provenance of the stones.  The first stone we present has the formal name of “Yayoijin” which directly translated means the last day of the third month of the lunar calendar. The more poetic meaning is – the last day of spring.

Yayoijin – Furuya Mountain Stone – 14cm x 7.5cm x 4cm

The word yayoijin is used in haiku poetry, and in the case of the stone it likely refers to the find thread waterfalls, in which the final melt off of the once snow covered peaks.

This is a small stone at only 14cm wide (5.5 inches) but it has great character, movement and lovely thread waterfalls.  It has ideal “shun” – surface texture that the great Furuya stones have.

Provenance

Inscribed by Tanimoto Hyakusui

This stone was once owned by Tanimoto Kyakusui who was a great authority on Furya stones from Wakayama back before the stone boom (1960s).  He was a stone dealer, and inscribed most of his boxes, and was also a daiza carver. In this case, the daiza was not carved by him but by a different person.  A side note is that Tanimoto was Koju Suzuki’s teacher for daiza making.

Fune (Boat)

The daiza was carved by a person using the “Fune” mark which translated means boat.  All we currently know about him was he was one of the top daiza carvers in the Tanabe aera from the 1960s-1980s.

The back of the box has text that we have not had translated as of yet. It also includes at least three seals. One we recognize as that of Sugii Chugi from Kyoto. Sugii had an incredible collection of stones and we are very pleased this one came from his personal collection.  At the end of Sugii’s life his collection was sold and this stone passed into the hands of Matsurra Arishige, the past president of the Japan Suiseki Association.  We hope to have the back side of the lid of the kiri-bako translated at some point. Help anyone?

Sugii’s Stamp and Box Number

From the left side of the box, we see Sugii’s stamp and his acquisition number of 421.  This is a relatively early addition to his collection as we have seen other box numbers 2900 and higher.  As we mentioned, Sugii had an extensive collection.

Matsuura’s Seals

Now that we are temporary owners of this wonderful stone, we wanted to share it with you so that its beauty can be seen beyond those that have had the opportunity to hold and cherish it.

More to come…

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An Old Suiseki from the Kamogawa

Tags

Kyoto, Rai San'yo, Suiseki

It is hard to believe we haven’t posted since who knows when but life has been busy as we moved across the country to be closer to family.

We haven’t been to Japan in a few years which means our collection of Japanese suiseki has been sparse. Our time has been spent collecting stones from Northern California rivers and about those we hope to post soon.  Today, we want to share with you a stone we purchased from Kyoto, Japan.

One of the suiseki sites we take a peek at a few times a week is Mr. Kawai’s located in Kyoto.  We visited him a few years ago and he is not only a delightful individual he has a great collection of stones for sale in his second floor shop above his flower store.  We had seen this stone on his site, but unfortunately the photos were small and didn’t reveal how beautiful this stone actually is.  We were fortunate to have Dr. Tom Elias and Hiromi Nakaoji post a photo of this stone on their VSANA Facebook page after their return from Japan last month.  When we saw it we immediately went back to Mr. Kawai’s site to see if it was available.  After a few days of negotiations on price, we purchased the stone.

Kamogawa (28 x 10 x 12.7cm)

This is a remarkable stone and without question one of the nicest in our collection. It reminds us of the stone said to be owned by Rai San’yo a very long time ago and reportedly is from the Kamogawa . The name of this stone is Yamato Murayama (“Mountains of the Kanto Plain”) and is 27.0 x 10.0 x 8.0 cm.

Rai San’yo stone

We wonder if our stone wasn’t modeled after the Rai San’yo stone. What do you think?  Let’s take a look at the other views of the stone and its daiza.

Unfortunately the daiza isn’t marked so it is impossible to tell who made it, but their craftsmanship was superb as seen by viewing the detail on it’s edges. Click the photo for a much larger version.

So what about the stone being worked. It is clear to us that it has as we can see marks on the stone. Does it diminish it for us? Not at all.  The Rai San’yo stone was worked as well and it is still shown at the Nippon Suiseki show in Japan.  Clearly because it is an important stone, has a provenance and it quite beautiful.

We only know the stone was in a collection in Japan for a very long time. We have no idea what was the cause for selling it but often stones exchange hands at the end of one’s life.  Regardless of the cause we are quite happy it has a home with us.