Nantembo (1839-1925)
Bô
1920
Staff
Ink on paper
135,5 x 32,3 cm

If you speak Nanten's staff, If you can't speak, Nanten's staff.

The most characteristic subject for Nantembô is the Nanten staff. The inscription alludes to the famous saying of the Chinese master Deshan (J. Tokusan, 782-865) taken from the Rinzai-roku: If you speak, thirty blows; if you can't speak, thirty blows. Nantembô, who also whacked this followers when he felt it might awaken their spirit, wrote: If you speak Nanten's staff; if you can't speak Nanten's staff" In place of the last character, staff (J. Bo), he drew the staff itself.

Nantembô literally designates a stick made of nantin (Nandina domestica) a kind of evergreen shrub; the nickname of the Rinzai priest Tôjû Zenchû (Nakahara 1839-1925), it was the sobriquet Nantembô used when referring to himself. Nantembô recalls how, during one of his trips in the Kyûshû area, he happened to see an exceptional tree, which looked as if it were wriggling out of a cowshed. Struck by the sight, he asked the farmer to cut it, and used this piece of wood as his favourite stick. As the stick Nantembô carried throughout his life, it became a symbol of his spirited attempt to revive the Rinzai School. Nantembô's actual stick is kept at the Zuigan-ji Museum of Matsushima.