Japanese Winter Paintings: Kakemono for the Cold Season

Why the scroll changes with winter

In Japan a kakejiku (掛軸) does not hang permanently. It stays on the wall as long as its subject suits the season, then it is rolled up and replaced by another. In the tokonoma, the picture alcove of the reception room, and all the more in the tea room, the scroll thus becomes a calendar: anyone who enters can read from the picture what time of year it is. Japanese dealers therefore divide their stock into seasonal scrolls (季節掛け) and year-round scrolls (年中掛け). This category follows the dealers' hanging practice and gathers the pictures whose subject clearly belongs to winter.

Snow as the leading motif: sekkei and the white left blank

The most important winter motif is snow itself. The snowscape, sekkei (雪景), shows mountains, villages, farmsteads, riverside paths and bridges under a white blanket. Often the snow is not painted at all: the artist leaves paper or silk untouched, and only the grey ink of the sky around it makes the snow-covered roofs and peaks stand out. The smaller format speaks just as clearly – a bird on a snowy branch, crows as dark dots above white ground, sparrows in falling snow. A variant without snow is the bare winter grove, kanrin (寒林), which conveys the cold through leafless trees alone. Calligraphy belongs here too, such as the single character yuki (雪, snow) or a poem about snow-covered peaks.

Camellia, narcissus, nandina: the plants of winter

Besides snow, a few plants carry winter into the picture. The camellia, tsubaki (椿), blooms in Japan in the middle of the cold season and is hung until about mid-February. The narcissus, suisen (水仙), belongs, according to Japanese guides, to the weeks from January to mid-February. Nandina, nanten (南天), is recognized by its clusters of red berries among narrow leaves; it hangs from late November to early February and is a favorite over the turn of the year, tied to the wish that the old year ends without misfortune and the new one begins well. Among animals it is the duck, kamo (鴨), that comes to Japan in autumn, winters on ponds and rivers and flies north again in spring.

Plum blossom in snow: where winter meets spring

Plum blossom, ume (梅), is the first sign of early spring in Japan and counts as a spring picture in hanging practice. But when snow lies on the branches, it becomes setchūbai (雪中梅), plum in the snow, and the picture belongs to winter. The same applies to calligraphy such as “Walking through the snow in search of plum blossom” (踏雪尋梅). If you change scrolls in February, you can move from the snowy to the open plum blossom, and the wall carries the story on without a break.

When to hang winter paintings

Japanese kakejiku dealers count winter from December to February. At the same time they recommend hanging a seasonal scroll about a month ahead of its season, so that it runs slightly ahead of nature. A winter painting may therefore go up as early as November and stay into February. Between late December and mid-January, many Japanese homes put a New Year scroll in its place; afterwards the winter painting returns.

What makes a winter painting – and what does not belong

What decides is the seasonal marker, not the main subject. A hare, a wild boar or playing puppies are not winter pictures in themselves; in driving snow they become one. Bamboo counts as year-round, bamboo bowed under snow as winter. Cranes on a pine actually belong to the auspicious pictures without a season – with a snow-covered mountain behind them, the scroll becomes a winter painting. Deliberately left out of this category are the subjects hung in Japan all year or for celebrations: crane and tortoise, the pine on its own, hawk, tiger and dragon, Mount Fuji without snow, and shōchikubai (松竹梅) – pine, bamboo and plum, known in English as the “Three Friends of Winter”. They may hang in winter but are not tied to it.

Combining and rotating through the year

A winter painting is the natural counterpart to a summer one: with two scrolls you divide the year into a cool half and a warm half. Around the turn of the year, a snowscape can make way for a New Year scroll for a few weeks; a nandina sprig, on the other hand, carries on through the holidays. In February, plum in snow leads toward spring before a picture with open ume blossom takes over. If you want just one winter painting, an ink snowscape is the best choice: it suits the first frost as well as the last cold weeks.

Storing at the change of season and what collectors look for

In winter, heated air and cold exterior walls are the greatest dangers to a scroll; an interior wall away from the radiator is the better place, and as a rule of thumb about 50 to 60 percent relative humidity is ideal. When the picture comes down in spring, roll it up loosely and without tension on a dry day and return it to its wooden box. With snowscapes it pays to look closely at the blank white: foxing and yellowing show there first. An inscription on the box often gives the title of the work, such as “Cold Sky” (寒空), and helps to identify subject and season with confidence.