The Black Isle

Absolutely fascinating story about the decades-long rivalry between two Jewish-Americans who stayed in Beijing through the Mao era, both named Sidney, both married to Chinese women, except while Sidney Shapiro lived as an ordinary man, Sidney Rittenberg was part of Mao’s inner circle.

From The National newspaper, published in Abu Dhabi. Found via Arts & Letters Daily.

Kuniyoshi (1797 - 1861)
Japanese Woodblock print
Samurai and Toad Spirit

USA USA USA!

Plus:
This medal was created by Imperial Edict No. 496 of July 27, 1939, was given for service in China during or after the 1937 invasion, AKA The China “Incident.”

BONUS item below! (not WWII tho’ it might as well be)
People’s Republic of China, cased medal and bar device as given to the soldiers who participated in the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989. While the government of the People’s Republic seems to have initially stood by the nature of its response to protests at Tiananmen Square, this incident has become an embarrassment. Consequently, the medal has become supressed, and it is illegal to wear it in China.

Kuniteru II (1829 - 1874)
Japanese Woodblock print
Meiji Diplomats 

Detail:

Kunichika (1835 - 1900)
Japanese Woodblock print
Samurai with Explosion

The complete woodblock print series, with accompanying descriptions, by Yoshitoshi.

From The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (pp. 258-260): 

Tancredi and Angelica were passing in front of them at the moment, his gloved right hand on her waist, their outspread arms interlaced, their eyes gazing into each other’s. The black of his tail coat, the pink of her dress, combining formed a kind of strange jewel. They were the most moving sight there, two young people in love dancing together, blind to each other’s defects, deaf to the warnings of fate, deluding themselves that the whole course of their lives would be as smooth as the ballroom floor, unknowing actors made to play the parts of Juliet and Romeo by a director who had concealed the fact that tomb and poison were already in the script. Neither of them was good, each full of self-interest, swollen with secret aims; yet there was something sweet and touching about them both; those murky but ingenuous ambitions of theirs were obliterated by the words of jesting tenderness he was murmuring in her ear, by the scent of her hair, by the mutual clasp of those bodies of theirs destined to die.

The two young people moved away, other couples passed, less handsome, just as moving, each submerged in their transitory blindness. Don Fabrizio felt his heart thaw; his disgust gave way to compassion for all these ephemeral beings out to enjoy the tiny ray of light granted them between two shades, before the cradle, after the last spasms. How could one inveigh against those sure to die? It would be as vile as those fish-vendors insulting the condemned in the Piazza del Mercato sixty years before. Even the female monkeys on the poufs, even those old baboons of friends were poor wretches, condemned and touching as the cattle lowing through the city streets at night on the way to the slaughterhouse; to the ears of each of them would one day come that tinkle he had heard three hours earlier behind San Domenico. Nothing could be decently hated except eternity.

And then these people filling the rooms, all these faded women, all these stupid men, these two vainglorious sexes were part of his blood, part of himself; only they could really understand him, only with them could he be at his ease. “I may be more intelligent, I’m certainly more cultivated, but I come from the same stock as they, with them I must take common cause.”

From Yoshitoshi’s 36 Ghosts series, circa 1862:

Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892) Japanese Woodblock print
Kiyohime Changing into a Serpent at Hidaka River, No. 11 Series;
New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts

Kiyohime Changing into a Serpent at Hidaka River, No. 11
Dealer Description: A fantastic illustration of the story of Kiyohime changing into a serpent. Kiyohime had fallen in love with a young monk from the Dojo Temple who visited her family yearly. After proclaiming her love, Anchin (the monk) told her he could not possibly return her love as he was a devoted monk and he immediately fled and returned to the temple. She was so distraught that she pursued him and was stopped on her way to the Dojo Temple by the Hidaka River. Her passion was so intense that in order to cross the river she began to change into a serpent as illustrated in this fantastic print. Upon reaching the temple, she had completely transformed into a large serpent and found the young monk near a bronze bell, where she coiled around his body and the huge bell. The heat of her passion was so intense that it melted the bell and killed them both. A fantastic ancient love story from Japan. This wonderful image by Yoshitoshi shows Kiyohime in the process of changing into the serpent emerging from the Hidaka River.

Detail:

There were many tigers to choose from at the Age of the Imagination (Japanese Art 1615-1868) exhibition at LACMA, but this one by Nagasawa Rosetsu is my favorite.

I love his humanoid posture. Since tigers didn’t exist in Japan, the tiger-portraits were copied and altered from Western and Chinese pictures — hence the alluringly off-kilter look they all have. The Price collection also has a female ghost painting by Rosetsu but the tiger is still more haunting.