Serpent's Banquet

At the ACAO OPEN RESIDENCE #5, held at the Hotel New Akao after the 2021 Mt. Izu mudslide disaster in Atami, a six-panel gold folding screen depicting an eight-forked serpent (Yamata no Orochi) was unveiled in that hotel's banquet hall, “The Great Snake Banquet”.

In the folding screen, the eight-forked serpent is drinking sake, eating food from the sea and mountains of Atami, and soaking in a hot spring. By once again treating the eight-forked serpent in the story, which is based on the oldest disaster in Japan, to a banquet, the artist hoped that the damage caused by the landslide would not spread further and that the wounds would heal quickly.

Two years later, in contrast to the “Great Snake Banquet” painted in sumi ink on gold leaf, he created a counterpart to the “Great Snake Banquet” using gold paint on a sumi ground.

The motif is Susanoo-no-Mikoto, who is said to have defeated the eight-forked serpent.

The masked and expressionless figures march in a procession around Susanoo-no-Mikoto riding on a chariot. Are they on their way to exterminate the eight-forked serpent, as the folklore says?

Or, looking at the way they are holding sake and foodstuffs in their hands, do they just want to have a banquet?

The work became a pair of six-fold screens and was titled “Eight-fold Banquet. I feel that by having a pair of screens, I was able to leave behind a work that symbolizes the atmosphere of this period.

It was a favourite pastime during my student years, to avoid the scorching heat of the city and get on the bus bound for Kumogahata Iwaya Bridge to go stream fishing. There were streams all over the place where great salamanders lived, and I would sometimes stroke their heads without knowing they were a protected species. Their forms showed charm but never evoked awe; however, the moment I saw its form depicted on an immense scale in Niwa’s thesis work for the first time, I felt an incredible gravity that purely overpowered the ink. Since then, they jump with the writhing power of ink, fast as lightning onto the sliding doors of the city one by one, to appear in Komyoin of Tofukuji immediately after this fair. Apparently, Soga Shōhaku said “If you want a picture come to me, if you want a diagram go to Maruyama Ōkyo”.

（Noboru Tsubaki）