Very unusual, 2 bats patrol the night sky by the Buddhist Nun Oishi Junkyo enclosed in a period wooden box. Ink on paper freshly remounted in dark cloth with just a bead of red and gold piping around the image and features black lacquered wooden rollers. It is 38.3 x 192 cm (15 x 75-1/2 inches) and is in excellent condition.
Bats are auspicious in Asian lore because in China, the word for bat is a homophone for good fortune. This phonetic overlap turned the bat into a visual shorthand for luck. Bats live long lives relative to their size and roost in groups, making them symbols of longevity, family continuity and protective abundance. A house “visited” by bats was traditionally considered blessed, not cursed. Unlike Western folklore East Asian cosmology places them comfortably within yin for they are nocturnal, quiet and associated with caves, dusk, and hidden places. Yin is not negative—it complements yang. Bats therefore signify cosmic balance and harmony between visible and invisible worlds. They are blessings that arrive quietly—seen only by those paying attention.
Junkyo’s life is a triumph over tragedy. Born into a low family, she was sent to a tea house where she became an apprentice Geisha. In a famous incident, the Tea House owner in a drunken rage murdered 5 of the Geisha, and cut off both of Junkyo’s arms. She survived. Becoming then a teller of stories and singer, she one day saw a bird feeding her young, and realized she could paint if she used her mouth to hold the brush. She enrolled into a studio, and became an accomplished painter in the Nihonga tradition. She then married and had two children, but later divorced, raising the two children alone. She became a nun, and opened a counseling/self-help center for the disabled. This was the war years, and the midst of Japan’s industrial revolution. Both mishaps in the machinations of industry and battle kept her half-way house filled with people in need. After the war she established a temple, and continued her philanthropic work.
