Spirit of Ume Tree

Reika’s father was a Confucian scholar and Reika had access to Chinese classics from his childhood. He studied under Yoshinobu Kano, Tsurayoshi Yamana, and others. Being an ardent admirer of Tamechika Reizei, he studied yamato-e and old Chinese paintings of the Sui and Tang dynasties. In 1916, he took part in the foundation of Kinreisha. Based on the traditional spirit of Oriental painting, he established a dignified style of line drawing in sumi.

The spirit of the ume (Japanese plum) tree lived on Mount Luofu in China. Shixiong Zhao, a man in the Sui dynasty, went to a plum grove on Mount Luofu, where he met a beautiful woman and drank wine with her. The story goes that when he recovered from his intoxication, he found himself under a plum tree and realized that the beautiful woman was the spirit of the ume tree. Having studied the Kano and Tosa schools and taking Tamechika Reizei for his model, Reika established a method known as hakubyoga, which employs elegant line drawing in sumi. Though Reika rarely presented his work in public, he submitted Profound Grief from the Poem by Qu Yuan to the Teiten in 1926 and won high praise. This painting is in line with that masterpiece. Though, other than the ink lines, there is only some gold on the robe and the crown and some vermilion on her lips, this painting is overflowing with refreshing, sublime dignity and is a fine noble-minded work. It was submitted to the first new year Shobikai exhibition held in February 1928.