Kitten was shown in August 1959 at the fifth Sankokai exhibition at the Matsuzakaya department store in Ginza, Tokyo. Kumagai Morikazu painted a related work, Kitten and Zinnia, in the same year but later than the present work.

The painting shows a kitten strolling about in front of blossoming hydrangea flowers. It lowers its front legs as if stopping ahead of something, giving away an impression of its hesitation to move forward. Maybe the little cat discovered something ahead that caused it to halt. The three blossoms of the hydrangea appear as if they are watching over the kitten. It might be a stray baby cat; its pure innocence is suggested by the fact that it is painted as a white shape. In Morikazu’s house there would be both stray and domestic cats, as the painter enjoyed having animals and pets around. Morikazu first painted a work titled Kitten in 1952 and re-visited the subject matter in 1959 with Cat and Sleeping Cat. During this period, the artist often painted the head brown, with black spots on the forehead, and a black tip on the tail. But he also created several variations, for instance a cat with reddish-brown head and tail in the same color. Or a black head and tail. He also painted cats completely in either black or white. At least six of such cat paintings are known, among them a white cat in Eggplant and Kitten of 1961, White Cat of 1962, and another White Cat of 1963. Cats grow up in about two years, so perhaps the kitten of the present painting, done in 1959, became the model for the cat of the later paintings. 

Living in East Nakano (Tokyo) back in 1925, Morikazu already had a habit of feeding wild birds. This attracted cats, which the painter would keep around as pets. Fellow artist Umehara Ryuzaburo would then buy Morikazu’s cat paintings. In 1932, Morikazu moved to the neighborhood of Chihaya (now part of the Toshima Ward north of Nakano). His wife Kumagai Hideko later reminisced how the stray cats used to rub themselves against the vines of the hardy kiwi, a plant common around their new home and related to the silver vine (matatabi; known to cause euphoric responses in cats). In Kumagai Morikazu’s Cats (Kyuryudo Art Publishing, 2004) there is a drawing titled Sleeping Cat—Chusuke. Further sketches show a stray kitten with yellow fur, a blind cat named hashira-neko (“pillar cat”), then a spotted cat, buchi-neko. Finally kuroneko, a black cat that Morikazu took care of. Another of these drawings might be a study for Kitten: in the center, there is a kitten, similarly placed like in the painting, while on the left there are two overlapping blossoms of hydrangea. In the upper right, an inscription reads “morning,” and further on the left Hyndragea—White Cat. From the title pattern we might infer that the kitten in this painting was probably called “Shiro” (Jp. white; Chusuke is a proper name, shironeko “white cat” could either be a name or a descriptive term, in the case of a proper name one would casually abbreviate to Shiro). The date on the study is 1958.

Kumagai Morikazu (yoga painter; 1880–1977)
Painter from Gifu Prefecture. Kumagai graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and soon became active in the Bunten exhibitions. In 1913, he returned for two years to Gifu, working in forestry while continuing to paint. After his return to Tokyo, he joined the Nikakai art association. After the war, Kumagai became a member of Nikikai art association, during this period also greatly reducing his color palette and formal vocabulary. He also produced ink painting and calligraphy. Kumagai famously reclined the Order of Culture in 1968 and various other awards and late in life garnered a reputation as a “solitary sage of the art world.”