Puppies with Hotei and Jittoku

The three puppies playing in the center of this triptych are flanked by the jovial deity Hotei, with his round belly and staff at right, and Jittoku, the otherworldly temple groundskeeper holding his emblematic broom at left. The central panel of a Buddhist triptych would normally be occupied by a Buddha. Here, the puppies gamboling beneath bamboo may be interpreted as an iconoclastic representation of enlightenment, often associated in the Zen tradition with eruptions of spontaneous laughter: the Chinese character for “laughter” 笑 is made up of the component parts for “dog” 犬 and “bamboo” 竹. Rosetsu, one of Maruyama Ōkyo’s best-known students, was himself an adherent of Zen, and these appealing paintings resonate strongly with the gestural spontaneity of Zen ink painting.