This carefully executed ink drawing comes with a box that bears the following inscription on the inside: 

    This drawing was once a treasured part of my uncle Okakura Tenshin’s collection, but it
    recently came into the possession of Mr. Ito. The work on which it is based is now in the
    collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It is an underdrawing for a painting that
    Hogai made as a design for a Western lady’s clasp at the request of Mr. [William Sturgis]
    Bigelow. Afterwards, Unno Shomin, a master craftsman of his time, created a splendid
    clasp in silver based on this drawing. 

Signed “Shusui,” the text must have been written by Okakura Shusui, a nihonga painter and nephew of Okakura Tenshin. On the outside of the box, the title reads “Demons Pulling on a Sacred Bell. Drawn by my former teacher, Kano Hogai.” The circumstances that surround Bigelow’s commissioning of the clasp reveal an interesting piece of Meiji period art anecdote. According to a recollection/eulogy dedicated to the above-mentioned Unno Shomin (written by Unno Bisei, his nephew, and published in the journal Shoga kotto zasshi in 1915), Bigelow approached Hogai for the design of the clasp. For the execution of the actual work, he was then introduced to Unno Shomin via a common acquaintance. Upon leaving Japan in 1889, Bigelow is said to have taken the clasp with him to Boston, where it eventually entered the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, alongside Hogai’s original painting. Those in Japan, including Okakura Tenshin and the painter Hashimoto Gaho, who had a chance to see Unno’s creation admitted that while the drawing was brilliant, the clasp was a true masterpiece. Moreover, seeing Unno’s work may have been one of the contributing factors to Okakura hiring him as a teacher of metalwork at the new Tokyo Fine Arts School. While the whereabouts of that clasp are now unknown, the painting by Hogai remains part of the Japanese collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The present scroll likely was made by Hogai as a preparatory drawing for that painting.

It is tempting to draw Kano Hogai’s life in somewhat tragic colors: one might think of phrases such as “the last of the Kano painters.” Such interpretation is furthered by Hogai’s unexpected death in 1888 at the age of 60, which—though by then at the height of his career—prevented him from ever fulfilling a major role in Okakura’s newly-founded Tokyo Fine Arts School. As chance would have it, he also did not live to see Unno’s clasp completed, since he died before the latter finished it in or around 1888/89. As a side note, it appears that Unno may have altered Hogai’s design. While his sketch books contain a drawing of a bell that corresponds to the one by Hogai, there is also another sketch showing only two demons pulling the bell, while in Hogai’s version there are fourteen. It is not possible to say how closely Unno followed Hogai, but a replica of the right part of the clasp in the collection of the Tokyo University of the Arts by Fujimoto Masayoshi raises the possibility that Unno attempted to reproduce it faithfully, though he may have changed details in the final product.

Kano Hogai (nihonga painter; 1827–1888)
Nihonga painter, originally from Choshu Province. Hogai together with Hashimoto Gaho counts among the most influential painters of the early Meiji period. With initial training from Kano Shosen’in Tadanobu, Hogai strove to enrich the traditional Kano style with elements of Western art, in the process contributing to the establishment of nihonga, modern Japanese painting. Hogai is known for his close connection to Ernest Fenollosa and Okakura Tenshin, and his involvement in the founding of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts.