The Minister Toru Daijin Standing by a Lake Beneath a Crescent Moon, from the series A True Mirror of Chinese and Japanese Poetry (1834–35): Art, History and Details

The Minister Toru Daijin Standing by a Lake Beneath a Crescent Moon, from the series A True Mirror of Chinese and Japanese Poetry (1834–35) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A high-ranking minister, Toru (822–895) was the son of an emperor. In this scene, he enjoys the company of two other men in his landscape garden overlooking the water. Here Hokusai may have illustrated a poem by Toru that mentions boats floating on the water in bright moonlight, shaded by the pines.

Object facts

• Title: The Minister Toru Daijin Standing by a Lake Beneath a Crescent Moon, from the series A True Mirror of Chinese and Japanese Poetry
• Date: 1834–35
• Creator attribution: Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Print
• Technique: color woodblock print
• Dimensions: Overall: 52 x 23 cm (20 1/2 x 9 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1916.1142

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• Thompson, Barbara. The International Block Print Renaissance Then and Now: Block Prints in Wichita, Kansas, a Centennial Celebration, 1922-2022. [Wichita, Kansas]: Wichita Art Museum, 2021.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.