Double Bass Does Anybody Here Read Japanese?

[Sam Sherry]

My wife Kathy brought home a Japanese scroll painting with some calligraphy on the back.
Does anybody know what it means? Many thanks.

 

[J_Bass]

@Winton
@taconeko
@Btbp

 

[Tom Lane]

My wife does. Her translation is the first two characters mean something like "Spring Sitar" or "Spring Piano" or maybe "Spring Music", but it could also be a girl's name, so it could be the artist's name. The next three mean "Spring Landscape". Is there any calligraphy on the front? If so, that could provide more context about what the first two characters mean.

 

[Winton]

The top two characters literally translate to “Spring Koto” (Koto being the Japanese sitar) but it’s read as shunkin. The only reference to shunkin I see is with the novel series by Japanese novelist Junichiro Tanizaki.

The bottom three reads “Aoyama Mizu” which means Aoyama Water (not landscape). Aoyama can be a place or a person’s last name.

If you can post more pictures, that would be helpful.

 

[Brent Nussey]

The bottom one isn't Aoyama Mizu, it's 春山水, the last 2 characters refer to a certain kind of black ink painting style, San sui, and the first character is Haru, or spring. So it's probably a spring themed black ink painting on the other side. Most are landscapes. It's a style originally from China, but which became popular in Japan too. I think it's just as likely that you have a Chinese scroll as a Japanese one. I agree that the upper characters are read "Shunkin" in Japanese, but it's rarity in the Japanese language makes me think this might be Chinese. You should have someone who reads Chinese look at it. Chinese ones seem to have other colors added sometimes as well, so that might be a clue. But I'm no expert at all.

 

[Brent Nussey]

BTW- Tom's wife is quite right, 山水, the characters for mountain and water, can mean landscape. But 山水 is a style of artwork. When referring to the general idea of a landscape, most Japanese will say 風景 (fuuke). A landscape painting, in general, would be 風景画 (fuukeiga).

It'd be nice to see the picture side.

春山水 - Google Search

 

[Winton]

The bottom one isn't Aoyama Mizu, it's 春山水, the last 2 characters refer to a certain kind of black ink painting style, San sui, and the first character is Haru, or spring. So it's probably a spring themed black ink painting on the other side. Most are landscapes. It's a style originally from China, but which became popular in Japan too. I think it's just as likely that you have a Chinese scroll as a Japanese one. I agree that the upper characters are read "Shunkin" in Japanese, but it's rarity in the Japanese language makes me think this might be Chinese. You should have someone who reads Chinese look at it. Chinese ones seem to have other colors added sometimes as well, so that might be a clue. But I'm no expert at all.

Good lord, SO sorry about that! That was a big mistake on my part! It was 5am and I was having a hard time falling asleep and responded to this, lol. Yes, Brent is right with everything he said!

 

[Brent Nussey]

Well, you just misread someone's handwriting, everyone knows that feeling!

 

[Sam Sherry]

Is there any calligraphy on the front? If so, that could provide more context about what the first two characters mean.

If you can post more pictures, that would be helpful.

It'd be nice to see the picture side.

Wow, TB/DB coming through again. Thank you all.
Sorry not to have shown the front.
What do we have here please, beyond a damaged but attractive scroll?

 

[two fingers]

Regardless of how the script reads, that's beautiful.

 

[Brent Nussey]

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say it might possibly be a work by Japanese artist 浦上春琴 (Urakami Shunkin).
The writing on the front also reads shunkin, and there’s a stamp on there in red ink which is unusual characters, the second one I don’t think is even used nowadays. It matches exactly the stamps on some of his works.

浦上春琴　墨梅図 大幅 | 古美術瀬戸
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

None of this is proof, just the musings of an ignorant man with Google.
Uragami Shunkin - Japanese Wiki Corpus
Shan shui - Wikipedia

That’s all I got. I really gotta go finish a transcription now…

 

[Winton]

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say it might possibly be a work by Japanese artist 浦上春琴 (Urakami Shunkin).
The writing on the front also reads shunkin, and there’s a stamp on there in red ink which is unusual characters, the second one I don’t think is even used nowadays. It matches exactly the stamps on some of his works.

浦上春琴　墨梅図 大幅 | 古美術瀬戸
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

None of this is proof, just the musings of an ignorant man with Google.
Uragami Shunkin - Japanese Wiki Corpus
Shan shui - Wikipedia

That’s all I got. I really gotta go finish a transcription now…

It's definitely the same stamp.

 

[Sam Sherry]

Geez. Wow. Thank you.

We'll have to find somebody who can give us some degree of authentication, and if it's authentic it begs for conservation.

And all that because people in our little town like to share. Amazing.

 

[turf3]

Your Portland is quite different from the more famous one at the other end of the country. I could be very happy living in Portland ME (or frankly pretty much anywhere in Maine).