# Irises (Kakitsubata-zu) > Ogata Korin - c. 1701-1705 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/ogata-korin/ogata-korin-irises-nezu-museum/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-17 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Ogata Korin - **Date:** c. 1701-1705 - **Medium:** Ink and color (mineral pigments, principally azurite blue and malachite green) on paper, against a ground built from individual squares of gold leaf; pair of six-panel folding screens (byobu) - **Dimensions:** Each screen 150.9 x 338.8 cm (six panels, a pair) - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Japan, Edo period, Genroku-Hoei transition (c. 1701-1705) - **Current location:** Nezu Museum, Tokyo - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A pair of six-panel gold-ground screens painted by Ogata Korin around 1701-1705, showing nothing but blue irises and green foliage against a shimmering field of individually applied gold leaf squares. The composition stages, by implication only, a celebrated episode from the tenth-century Tales of Ise: irises at a place called Yatsuhashi, the Eight Bridges, where a travelling poet composed an acrostic verse of longing for the wife left behind. Korin's screens omit the bridge and the poet entirely, a deliberate abstraction that later art writing reads as a wager that the viewer already knows the story.The screens were held by Kyoto's Nishi Honganji temple for over two hundred years before being sold in 1913 and passing, at an undocumented date before 1940, into the collection of the industrialist Nezu Kaichiro. His son founded the Nezu Museum in 1941 to house the family collection, and the screens have remained there since, designated a National Treasure of Japan and shown to the public for only about a month each spring.Korin painted a second, related pair roughly five to fifteen years later, this one showing the bridge explicitly, now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1953. The two pairs are one of the most persistently confused version pairs in Japanese art history; this record is about the earlier, bridgeless Nezu pair only, and every image and claim here has been checked against that identification. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1701-1705** Ogata Korin (painter); possibly the Nijo family `[unknown]` (origin / possible commission) Painted by Korin in the years immediately after he received the hokkyo rank in 1701. The standard secondary account states the screens were probably made for the Nijo family, but no commission record, contract, or payment document was located, and this record could not independently verify the claim that Korin had personal access to the Nijo family residence beyond the secondary sources consulted. Any Nijo connection to these specific screens is an inference, not a documented commission. - **-1913** Nishi Honganji Buddhist temple, Kyoto `[documented]` (temple custody) Held by Nishi Honganji for over two hundred years before being sold by the temple in 1913. The date and circumstances of the screens' original entry into the temple's holdings are not stated in the sources consulted; only the length of custody and the exit year are documented. - **1913-1940** Nezu Kaichiro (1860-1940), industrialist, Diet member and president of Tobu Railway `[unknown]` (acquisition, undated) The screens entered Nezu Kaichiro's wide-ranging private collection at an unspecified point between the temple's 1913 sale and his death in 1940. No source consulted gives a specific date, price, or intermediary for this acquisition. - **1940-1941** Nezu family foundation `[documented]` (foundation established, collection preserved) Following Nezu Kaichiro's sudden death in 1940, his son and heir, also named Kaichiro, established a foundation to preserve the collection and opened the Nezu Museum the following year at its present Minami-Aoyama, Tokyo site. - **1941-present** Nezu Museum, Tokyo `[documented]` (public collection, National Treasure designation) Held and displayed by the Nezu Museum since 1941, shown to the public for a limited period, roughly one month, each spring because of the light- and humidity-sensitivity of the paper support and mineral pigments. Designated a National Treasure of Japan in the painting category under the postwar Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties; the specific designation year was not found in the sources consulted. ## Open questions - When, and by what transaction (gift, bequest, or purchase), did the screens enter Nishi Honganji's holdings? Only the duration of temple custody, over two hundred years, and the exit date, 1913, are documented in the sources consulted. - On what date, at what price, and through which dealer or intermediary did Nezu Kaichiro acquire the screens after the 1913 temple sale? He died in 1940; the acquisition falls somewhere in that 27-year window without a documented date. - In what year were the screens formally elevated to National Treasure status, and under which designation act (the current 1950 law or an earlier framework)? Neither the Agency for Cultural Affairs' own online record nor the standard English-language National Treasure paintings list consulted states the year. - Is the standard claim that the screens were made for the Nijo family a documented commission or an unverified inference? No commission record was located, and this record could not independently confirm even the claim of Korin's personal access to the Nijo family that the inference is said to rest on. - Does any conservation or technical (infrared, pigment-analysis) study of the paint layers exist that would confirm, at the level of physical examination rather than written description, the use of tarashikomi in the leaves and the stencil in the flowers? - What is the primary source, ideally a Bank of Japan or National Printing Bureau design record, confirming that the 2004 five-thousand-yen note's reverse design is drawn specifically from the Nezu pair rather than a generic or composite rendering of Korin's iris compositions? ## Sources - [1] Wikipedia, 'Irises screen', consolidating the Nezu and Metropolitan Museum catalogue data, the Ise Monogatari poem text, and the Van Gogh reception note. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the Nezu Museum's and the Metropolitan Museum's own primary catalogue entries. - [2] Nezu Museum, official collection entry, 'Irises' (Kakitsubata-zu), item id 10301. - [3] Nezu Museum, special exhibition page, 'National Treasure Irises Screens: A Legacy of Poetic Allusion'. - [4] Agency for Cultural Affairs (Japan), Cultural Heritage Online (Bunkazai Online) database, Kakitsubata-zu record. - [5] Japanese Wikipedia, 'Kakitsubata-zu' (using this work's own Japanese title, distinct from the Metropolitan Museum pair's separate title Yatsuhashi-zu byobu), for the 2004 five-thousand-yen note reverse design and the Nijo Tsunahira access detail. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a Bank of Japan design record and a Japanese-language scholarly source respectively. - [6] Nippon.com, 'Ogata Korin: The Artistic Innovator Famed for His Folding Screens', for the biography, the hokkyo rank, the reading of the Irises screens' omission of the bridge and figure as a deliberate compositional choice, and the tarashikomi/mokkotsu description of the leaves. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Ogata Korin', for the biography, family background, the 1694 pawnbroker letter, and the Edo-period career timeline. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with Frank Feltens, 'Ogata Korin: Art in Early Modern Japan' (Smithsonian), cited in the secondary literature but not consulted directly for this record. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Nezu Kaichiro', for the collector's biography and the 1940-1941 founding of the Nezu Museum by his son. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the Nezu Museum's own institutional history page. - [9] Wikipedia, 'National Treasure (Japan)', for the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties (1950), the Agency for Cultural Affairs' designation process, and the export/repair/reporting obligations attached to National Treasure status. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the text of the law itself. - [10] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object record for 'Irises at Yatsuhashi (Eight Bridges)', accession search result 39664, for the later pair's dimensions, dating and 1953 acquisition. Cited via Wikipedia's direct quotation of this page; the Met's own site returned repeated rate-limit (HTTP 429) errors on direct access during research and should be re-fetched directly to confirm. - [11] Yukari Mochizuki, 'National Treasure "Yatsuhashi Makie Raden Writing Box", Korin Ogata', for the lacquer writing box's materials and its 1878 Paris exposition and 1879 Tokyo National Museum provenance. Specialist lacquer-arts blog, not an institutional source; flagged for replacement with the Tokyo National Museum's own catalogue record. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.