Overview

These sliding doors were originally used in the Hojo hall in Yotoku-in, one of the Tatchu temples within Daitoku-ji Temple. Twenty-eight panels from the same temple still remain today, including fourteen panels of landscape painting, eight panels of "Four Elegant Pastimes," and six panels of "Reed and Geese." Although some of them were late reproductions, these four panels are the original pieces, painted with soft brush strokes in the manner of the priest artist Mu Xi in the Southern Song Dynasty in China.
The artist is Oguri Sokei, who was a son of Oguri Sotan, an artist that worked for the Shogunate in the Muromachi Period. According to the article of July 26, 1490, in the “Inryoken Nichiroku”, Sokei painted these panels to enlarge the original scene of two panels painted by his father when the Yotoku-in Temple building was extended.
Many parts had been repainted and the design itself was changed some time later. Nonetheless, these four panels are important as the oldest sliding door panel paintings in ink which still remain today and as the only masterpiece by Sokei.