The Tongue-Cut Sparrow
publisher
Hasegawa Takejiro
(Tokyo, 1853 - 1938)
illustratorIllustrated by
Kobayashi Eitaku
(Tokyo, 1843 - 1890, Tokyo)
translator
David Thompson
(Cadiz, Ohio, 1835 - 1915)
Date1886
Place MadeJapan, East Asia
MediumPrinted ink and color on paper
Dimensions18 x 12 cm (7 1/16 x 4 3/4 in.)
ClassificationsBooks
Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Accession number8.a.1.2
eMuseum ID720287
EmbARK ObjectID17685
TMS Source ID5930
Last Updated8/9/24
Status
Not on viewWeb CommentaryIsabella Stewart Gardner’s collection includes a selection of children’s books. This paperback is one of a popular series of Japanese folk tales translated into English and illustrated with woodblock prints by Kobayashi Eitaku. On the cover of this volume, a procession of sparrows wearing colorfully patterned kimonos follow an elderly woman carrying a large basket that they have filled with demons—her punishment for having cut out the tongue of one of their friends.
BibliographyNotesSusan Sinclair and Philip B. Eppard. Catalogue of Children’s Books from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Collection and the Personal Libraries of John Lowell and Isabella Stewart Gardner (Boston, 1988), p. 28, no. 32.
ProvenanceNotesPurchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the East Asian art dealer, Otto Fukushima, New York for $1.50 for sixteen volumes on 16 December 1893.
