Overview

The body of this unusually thick mirror is approximately 3 mm and is dark brown in color, and its reflective face is plated with tin. The inner surface of the medium-sized, straight-sided rim (on the image to the right) is rough with spots, where the pattern is unclear, apparently, flaws caused during the casting. The knob surround, in the form of flower pistils, spread out around the knob. The rare design composition features five blossoming plum trees branching inward from the outer area of the pictorial space. The motif of a pair of small birds facing each other in either the upper or lower part became standardized in the latter half of the Kamakura period (1185-1333).

This mirror bears the branches and leaves typically associated with plum blossoms, but the flowers are indistinguishable from kerria blossoms (J., yamabuki), and in places the leaves, too, take the form of kerria leaves. During the transitional stage when plum blossoms were first represented on mirrors, some confusion arose between them and kerria blossoms. It is thus impossible to definitively distinguish between the two on Kamakura-period mirrors. In general, when the trunk of the tree is depicted, it is referred to as a plum tree.