At the Well on New Years Morning

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An updated classic "waka" poem heralds the New Year in the cloud cartouche above this apparently simple domestic scene of a young girl waiting for the water drawn by a youth. Matching the verbal wit of the poem are cleverly embedded signs of the season and auspicious symbols. The picture reflects the most obvious reading of the poem: "With the arrival of spring, as in ages past, we offer heaven in the first drawn water."Deepening the charm of the scene is the implicit eroticism of the first stirring of young love, as the couple's eyes meet. Felicitous seasonal symbolism disguised as a natural setting appears in the glimpse of flowering prunus above the wall of fresh bamboo. These are spring's first blossoms and herald the beginning of the year, which coincided with the first day of spring according to the lunar calendar used in Japan until the end of the Edo period. (In China, the new year is still set according to ths ancient calendar and usually falls mid-February.)In poetic tradition, plum blossoms bursting anew from an old tree betoken the awakening of love. To the literate viewer, this all but hidden element signals erotic feelings as surely as do the locked eyes and arrested activity of the young couple. Another clue to traditional symbolism is the raven in flight above the clouds. In combination with the rising sun beyond, it evokes the ancient Chinese myth that idenitfies the bird as the sun. Augmenting the auspicious nature of the imagery, the raven provides the pleasure of erudite allusion, an artistic convention as traditional as the ceremonious first drawing of water to mark the new year.

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