Happy New Year to you all! A little late for a New Year’s greeting, you say? Actually, here in Okinawa, many annual events are celebrated according to the lunar calendar, and in some areas New Year’s Day is still celebrated based on the lunar calendar. This year, the lunar New Year will fall on February 14 of the Gregorian calendar. At Shurijo Castle Park, in celebration of the New Year and the year of the tiger, we will have a special exhibit of art pieces created by the people of Ryukyu, focusing on the tiger and other members of the feline family, including cats.

"A Tiger" By Zhen Yuanjin	A Contest of Skill! The Royal Painters of Ryukyu

The above three Sacred Cat paintings are all works by royal painters of the Shuri Royal Government. The artist of the piece to the left is Wu Shike (1672~1743) who studied abroad in Fujian, and excelled in painting flowers and birds. In the center is "A Sacred Cat" by Yin Yuanliang(1718~1767). Unfortunately its original was lost during the war and only photographs remain. Yin Yuanliang was a pupil of Wu Shike. The third artist who painted the piece on the right is Cha Pilie, who contributed much through the twilight of Ryukyu Kingdom until the Meiji era. If you take a close look at the three pictures, you can see that their composition is exactly the same. It is probably safe to assume that the younger artist depicted the similar piece in order to closely study and learn from his master. As Wu Shike and Yin Yuanliang were in a master and disciple relationship, that assumption is logical. But why would Cha Pilie draw the same picture as his predecessors from long ago? As the Kingdom of Ryukyu saw its annexation, perhaps it was his strong will and wish as the last of the royal painters, to attempt to surpass the great masters that came ahead of him.

The first public exhibition!
The picture of the tiger on the left was drawn by Shen Kexi, who was from a line of royal painters. The one to the right was not drawn by a painter, but by a calligrapher named Zheng Yuanjin from a family of calligraphers. There are many calligraphy pieces by Zheng Yuanjin, but he was apparently talented in painting as well, as we can see from this piece. These tigers look sweet like kitty cats, don’t they? Their large eyes are distinctive features. This techniques used in these pieces are influences of a Chinese technique called Nanshuga?. Japanese painters learned this technique by studying the paintings of Chinese artists that were brought to Nagasaki, or learned directly from them and spread the technique, leaving many paintings of tigers similar to this. It leaves us wondering, where did the Ryukyuan people learn the techniques of Nanshuga?