Spring Kakemono: Japanese Hanging Scrolls from Plum Blossom to Wisteria

Why Japanese Scrolls Change with the Season

In Japan a kakejiku (掛軸) rarely stays in place all year. In the tokonoma, the display alcove of the reception room, and above all in the tea room, it is changed as soon as the season turns – the scroll shows where in the year you stand. Japanese scroll dealers therefore sort their stock by hanging time: seasonal scrolls for the four seasons, year-round pictures, auspicious pictures and scrolls for New Year. This category gathers the spring pictures: kakemono, shikishi and makuri whose motif is assigned to spring in Japan.

Ume and Uguisu: The First Spring Picture

It begins with plum blossom, ume (梅). It opens on the bare, dark branch while it is still cold outside, and in hanging practice it is the picture of early spring for February and March. It has long been painted with the Japanese bush warbler, the uguisu (鶯), whose song announces spring in Japan; "ume ni uguisu" (梅に鶯) is a fixed pictorial formula. Plum also appears with sparrows, magpies or a rooster, as a branch in a vase, above a village or beside a lady in kimono.

Sakura, Willow and Swallow

Plum is followed by cherry blossom, sakura (桜), the motif of full spring. Japanese dealers hang cherry pictures from late February into April. Painters show a single branch with songbirds, a flowering tree by a river, a mountain village under clouds of blossom or a beauty beneath hanging branches – scenes that recall cherry-blossom viewing, hanami (花見). The young willow, yanagi (柳), with its pale green switches belongs to the same weeks, often together with the swallow, tsubame (燕).

Wisteria, Tree Peony and the Spring Meadow

Late spring is carried by wisteria, fuji (藤), whose flower clusters hang in April and May, and by the tree peony, botan (牡丹), the most lavish bloom in the painter's year. Smaller signs join them: butterflies above peonies, pheasants under the cherry tree, sparrows among horsetail shoots (土筆), dandelions and violets, peach blossom (桃) in a poem. Landscapes belong here when they show spring explicitly, with pink flowering trees or an inscription such as 湖山春暁, "Spring Morning over Lake and Mountains".

Festivals and Calligraphy in Spring

In Japanese hanging practice two annual festivals fall in spring. For the Girls' Festival on March 3, Hina dolls (雛) are shown from about a month before until the day itself. For Boys' Day on May 5, pictures of warriors in armor and helmet hang from early April until the festival. The calendar of haiku season words already places Boys' Day in early summer, but dealers count it as spring, and Densho follows them. Among calligraphy, works such as "Spring Wind" (春風) belong here, poems about spring rain and blossom, and the tea phrase "The fragrant breeze comes from the south" (薫風自南来), which the tea room shows in May.

When to Hang a Spring Scroll

Densho follows the monthly scheme of a major Japanese scroll dealer: spring is March to May, summer June to August. A seasonal picture, however, goes up a little earlier than the season begins outside – Japanese dealers recommend roughly a month's lead. For spring that means plum from February, cherry from March, wisteria and peony in April and May.

What Makes a Spring Picture – and What Does Not

What decides is the seasonal marker, not the main subject. Mount Fuji with flowering cherry in the foreground is a spring picture; Fuji without such a sign hangs all year. Cranes likewise become a spring picture when the first plum blossoms stand beside them, and so does a hawk swooping down over flowering peonies. This category deliberately leaves out motifs that Japan treats as year-round or as auspicious pictures: crane and tortoise, the pine on its own, bamboo with sparrow, tiger and dragon, Daruma and ink landscapes without a seasonal sign. The auspicious trio of pine, bamboo and plum, shōchikubai (松竹梅), and the Four Gentlemen are not included either, even though plum blossoms in both. A single picture that shows all four seasons at once belongs to none of them.

Transitions to Winter and Summer

Some dealers already list plum under winter; Densho assigns it to spring as long as there is no snow in the picture – plum in snow is a winter scroll, as is the winter peony under its straw shelter. Willow belongs to either side depending on its companion: with a swallow to spring, with a heron, rain or fireflies to summer. The collection also holds pairs and series whose scrolls belong to different seasons, such as flowering plum and red leaves as a spring-autumn pair or a four-seasons set. They appear under every season they cover.

Changing, Storing, Collecting

When the summer scroll's turn comes in May, the spring picture is dusted dry with a soft brush, rolled up loosely without tension and stored in its wooden box, away from sunlight, heating and cold outer walls. Collectors of spring pictures look for an unambiguous marker: whether a red blossom is plum or camellia decides between spring and winter. The inscription on the wooden box often names the motif or spring itself, for instance with the character 春. Such a box is part of the work and should stay with it.