A fox dressed in the robes of a priest walking under the moonlight by Otani Kubutsu enclosed in the original signed wooden box. Ink and light color on silk in a fine slik border, the scroll is 48.5 x 192 cm (19-1/2 x 75-1/2 inches) and is in excellent condition.
Otani Kubutsu (1875-1943 ) was a monk of the Jodo Shinsyu sect, and served as the 23rd head monk of Higashi Honganji temple He was born as the second son of Otani Koei. His mother was from the Kinoshita family, and his childhood name was Mitsuyasu-maro. Frail from an early age, he became disabled in one leg around the age of twelve due to illness. Until 1900, he studied under prominent Buddhist scholars such as Nanjō Bun’yu, Murakami Sensho, and Inoue Enryo. He also studied Japanese painting with Kono Bairei and Takeuchi Seiho, and was influenced by Masaoka Shiki. Submitting his haiku to the magazine Hototogisu, he received critiques from Kawahigashi Hekigoto and Takahama Kyoshi, to whom he became deeply devoted and regarded as his teachers. Later, however, he moved beyond the influence of Hototogisu and pursued his own independent path. Over his lifetime, he composed more than twenty thousand haiku, demonstrating his broad cultural talent and establishing a distinctive place within the world of Japanese haiku. He became affectionately known as Kubutsu Shōnin (“the saint who praises the virtues of the Buddha through verse”).
