Scholar’s Studio: Rakushisha no aki (Autumn at the Rakushisha)

This painting invites us to enter a lyrical scene: a peaceful poetic hermitage almost completely encircled by the rippling greenery in which it is nestled. The eye is led into the hermitage via the pathway at the right hand side. As one approaches the soft-focus landscape periodically resolves into crisply descriptive highlights: a round straw hat hanging by the doorway, books and a rosary set within the resident’s studio, a crescent moon-shaped decoration cut into the wood of the shutter at far left, and the russet tips of a smattering of autumnal leaves in the garden. A slim tree trunk speckled with verdigris lichens rises up just right of center in the left screen; its elliptical leathery leaves arch down over the roof of the studio in the top center of the right screen, almost puncturing the fourth wall. The leaves that entreat us to enter are distinctive, identifiable as those of the persimmon and thus a key to the identity of the tranquil location depicted: we have come to the “Rakushisha” 落柿舎 or Hermitage of Fallen Persimmons.