Gourds Inspire Us - Jingdezhen Ware, Pickles, and Naoya Shiga 瓢箪パワー！ 景徳鎮、奈良漬け、志賀直哉

Japanese follows English.　英語の後に日本語が続きます。

A horse coming out of a gourd (瓢箪から駒): A Japanese saying which means that unexpected things often happen.....
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This is Jingdezhen wucai or five-color painted vase in overglaze enamel and gold in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty. It's over 60cm high and gourd-shaped.

Gourd-shaped Jingdezhen wucai vase
in overglaze enamel and gold, 16th century
Ming dynasty 五彩金襴手瓢形大瓶

Gourds must have inspired not only potters, but pickle makers.... The below on a white plate are pickles of gourds I bought at Imanishi Honten, a more than 150-year old pickle store in Nara prefecture. (Read this for details.)

Narazuke pickles of gourds
奈良今西本店の瓢箪の奈良漬け

Gourds have been said to bring luck and must have also inspired Naoya Shiga, a famous Japanese author to write "Seibei and his gourds," a short story about a 12-year-old boy named Seibei, who collected gourds to make water/sake containers from them, and his father, who disapproved of this hobby and ultimately destroyed all his gourds.

This short story then led me to finding an interesting website, which says, "....With the help of this story, the author wants to say the responsibilities of parents for their children..." Wow.. That's interesting, but I disagree with this.

Seibei's father sold all the gourds but one and this surviving one was bought by a gourd container collector for, in today's terms, more than 10,000 dollars. I believe that the author wanted to write about the inability of adults to understand the real value of things in an ironic manner (since nobody, including Seibei, knows this happy? ending). Shiga is known for his conflict with his father in his real life. 

Anyway, a gourd-shaped vase at Tokyo National Museum led to Narazuke gourd pickles, then to "Seibei and his gourds," and ultimately to this interesting website... The occurrence of these unexpected things is literally "A horse coming out of a gourd (瓢箪から駒)"!!

For another two Jingdezhen wares in overglaze enamel and gold, read this!

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景徳鎮の「五彩金襴手瓢形大瓶」。60センチ以上あります。大きいです。そして瓢箪形です。瓢箪と言えば、以前もご紹介した奈良の今西本店の瓢箪の奈良漬け。可愛いです。瓢箪は福を呼ぶと言われているんですね。知りませんでした。

そういえば志賀直哉も「清兵衛と瓢箪」という短編を書いています。瓢箪に熱中する12歳の少年とそれに反対で最後は全部壊してしまう父親の様子を淡々と描いているのですが、ちょっと面白いものを見つけました。

ある英語サイトに「著者（志賀直哉（ナルジマ注））は子供に対する親の責任を描きたかったのだろう（ナルジマ訳）」とあったのです。でもそれは違うと思います｡｡｡ というのも、一つだけ壊されなかった瓢箪があるのですが、それが現在の価値でいうところの120万円で好事家に売れるんです。父親との葛藤を抱えていた志賀が、ものの本当の価値を理解しない大人への皮肉を描いたものだと私は理解しています｡｡｡ 文学作品の解釈って難しいですね。

東京国立博物館の「瓢箪形の大瓶」から「瓢箪の奈良漬け」、そして「清兵衛と瓢箪」そしてこのサイトとの出会い。正に「瓢箪から駒」でした！

同じく景徳鎮の「五彩金襴手水注」と「三彩金襴手龍濤水注」をご覧になりたい方はこちらをどうぞ！

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