#69 The Old Man Mad About Art

Shunro, a celebrated 19th century Japanese artist, lies on his deathbed as his daughter cares for him.

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#69 The Old Man Mad About Art

10 May, 1849.

The pain was too much. It was like someone had a fist around his guts and was squeezing as hard as they can, pumping each squeeze, needling pain in small, sharp hits. He turned to his side where he could see, through the doors, a bird dip its beak into a puddle in the rain outside. Sun leaked through the trees and cast a shadow of the bird onto the puddle it drank from.

‘Shunro, stay still! The doctor said to stay still!’ Ōi, his daughter, pleaded as she crouched beside him. Sweats broke out at his temples and she dabbed them with a cloth.

‘I’m okay,’ he mumbled. ‘Okay.’

Ōi laid down beside him, mirroring his pose, and looked into his eyes.

‘This will be all of it,’ he said to her, a tear, or a droplet of sweat, crawling over the bridge of his nose and dripping onto his mat beneath him.

‘Don’t say that. You will come through this, you always have.’

‘This is different.’

‘What can I do?’

‘You can’t do anything.’

There was a pause and Ōi listened to the writhing pains of his body working through, and the light rain that started outside.

‘At least know this, father, you have become a great artist, one of Japan’s greatest ever. You have done so much.’

Shunro smiled through tears, a smile more pained than joyful, like he smiled at his unhappiness with her conclusion.

‘Dear Ōi, I am barely an adolescent in art.’

‘If you are an adolescent, then the rest of us are unborn.’

Shunro wriggled his nose and sniffled, and Ōi’s heart quivered at the sight of his vulnerability.

‘If only I could have ten more years. Five even. Perhaps then I might become a real painter.’

‘Oh, father… I remember when you wrote to Hiroshige saying: “When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvellous artist. At 110, everything I create - a dot, a line - will jump to life as never before.”

‘Mm,’ he grunted.

‘Do you feel you have cut deeply into the mystery of life?’

‘If only I had five more years… I could do something truly remarkable.’

Shunro closed his eyes Ōi stared at him, waiting for him to say something. She thought deeply, about him, about his past, about his works and his legacy. After 3 or 4 minutes, she realised that he had not moved at all.

‘Father,’ she said. ‘Father!’

But all she heard was the rain which had grown to a battering. The sun was hidden behind clouds now and everything was consumed by darkness.