北斎と馬琴
「葛飾北斎伝」（飯島虚心著）に、葛飾北斎が曲亭馬琴と喧嘩をしたと書いてある。
馬琴は読本作家で、その読本に北斎が挿絵を描いていた。『三七全伝南柯夢』（さんしちぜんでんなんかのゆめ）という三勝と半七が心中しようとする場面で、北斎は勝手に挿絵に狐を描いた。馬琴は狐の絵が気に食わない。話には狐のことには一切触れていないからだ。「狐を削れ」「いや、削らない。二人は狐にとりつかれたように気が狂ったことを現わすために、狐は必要だ」と言い争う。
北斎はどういう狐を描いたのかと思い、図書館で「三七全伝南柯夢』を借りてきて挿絵を全部調べたが狐の絵はない。ネットでも調べたが、狐はどこにもない。北斎は狐を削ったのかと思ったが、もう一度、丁寧に調べてみたら、あった、あった。小さな狐が七匹ちゃんと描いてある。見落とすところであった。
北斎と馬琴はこのことで喧嘩をしたのかと思うと、二人とも自分の仕事に真剣だったのだ。
さて、上の写真で、どこに狐がいるでしょう。
Hokusai and Bakin (an illustrator and a novelist)
According to “Katsushika Hokusai Den” (Biography of Katsushika
Hokusai) written by Kyoshin Iijima, Hokusai once had a quarrel with Kyokutei
Bakin.
Bakin was a novelist near the end of Edo period (19th century)
and Hokusai was a painter, who drew illustrations for Bakin’s novels. Hokusai
drew foxes in a scene of “Sanhichi Zenden Nanka no Yume” in which Sankatsu (a
woman) and Hanhichi (a man) tried to commit a love suicide. Bakin did not like
the illustration of foxes because he did not mention anything about foxes in the
novel, nor did he give permission to Hokusai to draw the animals.
Bakin said, “Erase the foxes,” but Hokusai
refused saying, “Foxes are necessary because I want to suggest that the couple
were as insane as those who were haunted by foxes.”
I wanted
to see the foxes Hokusai drew, went to a library, and borrowed the book aforementioned.
I check all the illustrations in it but failed to find the picture of the
foxes. I googled the novel, but there were no foxes in it. I thought Hokusai
had erased the animals as Bakin wanted him to, but one more time I looked at
each illustration with the utmost care one by one, and at last, I found the
foxes. There were seven of them and were so tiny that you would miss them.
Considering the quarrel over the tiny foxes, or
in other words, a trivial matter, I admire Hokusai and Bakin because I think
they were truly serious about their jobs. They did not make light of even a trifling
thing.
Look at the picture above, can you find the foxes?
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