About The Project

My Photo
The Chester Beatty Library in Dublin with the continued support of The Sumitomo Foundation in Tokyo, have now commissioned Restorient to conserve three more of their most treasured Japanese paintings. Dating from the early 17th century this set of hand scrolls chart the epic tale of "Hunting the Ogres" It will be possible to follow the conservation of these magnificent hand scrolls here on this blog. We at Restorient are delighted to have the opportunity to share this remarkable project, and to offer some insights into this type of specialist conservation.

The Chester Beatty Library

Restorient Home

Friday 9 November 2012

Meet the Ogres!

The  Ogre-in-Chief we are hunting is Shuten Doji who can assume human form at will, is partial to human flesh and especially fond of sake....... He is the sixth devil of the 'World of Desires' and sometimes known as 'The Drunken Devil' It does seem curious that the artist chose to make the worst demon of all an overweight long haired blond?

The story is so old and well known that there have been numerous attempts to portray this particular ogre. Throughout the project we will be investigating how he has appeared elsewhere to compare this portrayal with  other paintings and prints.



Such is the  notoriety of Shoten Doji that just his demonic arm also features in this charming Japanese crepe paper book (These books are called chirimenbon and will be featured in a later blog) 

http://www.archive.org/stream/japanesefairytalse01no18thom


back to top