Incense case with Zhou Maoshu in underglaze blue

A man gazing at the pond while leaning on the handrail is depicted in a quiet tone of underglaze blue on the grayish porcelain. The man is Zhou Maoshu, a Confucian scholar in the Chinese Northern Song period and a founder of neo-Confucianism, who had a passion for the lotus as it is the flower for men of virtue. Designs based on the Chinese classics were very popular in Japan in those days. Therefore, people knew that the man was gazing at the lotus flowers in spite of their absence in the design.