MIYAMOTO'S RICE BOX
ACRYLICS ON RED CEDAR
(SUMMER 2012)

     I love to watch Hiroshi Inagaki’s “Samurai Trilogy” and I try to view the three movies yearly. One of my favorite scenes in “Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island” sees the hero Musashi Miyamoto (played by Toshiro Mifune) impress a bunch of local toughs by catching flies with his chopsticks.  Besides being a wonderful scene in the movie, the box containing his rice* caught my eye.  I’m sure it was just a common, simply made box but the elongated finger joints were wonderful.  It inspired me to make a cedar box with elongated finger joints upon which to paint.  The box itself is made from five pieces of red cedar all cut from a board and then pegged together at the corners and base.  For the left and right sides, I used a design adapted from a late 1820’s kimono I saw on a woodblock print by Toyokuni II (see Ukiyo-e; 250 Years of Japanese Art, by Roni Neuer, Herbert Libertson, and Susugu Yoshida, ©1979, page 278).  The designs found on the front and back of the box were inspired by the entralac designs of Archibald Knox.  Stephen A. Martin’s Archibald Knox (©2001) continues to be a great source of inspiration.  I divided the interior of the box into four compartments so that the box can be used for various purposes.

*I recently re-watched this scene and the box is filled with noodles (soba?) and not rice.  Oops!


DIMENSIONS:   LENGTH:  9.25 inches
                             WIDTH:     7 inches
                             HEIGHT:   8 inches

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