Title: Kusozu (The Nine Stages of Decay), Circa 1800-1850. A Set of Nine Silk Paintings on Kusozu, Depicting the Process from when a Beautiful Woman Dies to when she Decays and Ends up in her Grave, Gruesomely Depicted
Condition: Very Good
A Late Edo Period, early to mid 19th century series of nine silk paintings, depicting the Nine Stages of Decay, with the series of images known as Kusozu in Japan.
A Buddhist meditational practice, one must imagine and observe the gradual decomposition of a dead body. The setting for the nine stages is outdoors, where a corpse would be left exposed to decay in a field, graveyard, or charnel ground.
The history of the meditation on this process of bodily decay in fact originates with Early Buddhism, in India, before coming to Japan. Early lists can be found in the "Sutra on the Samādhi Contemplation of the Oceanlike Buddha," and the "Discourse on the Great Wisdom".
Buddhist monks in Japan would use this contemplation on a decaying corpse as a monastic practice to reduce their sexual desires or reduce one’s attachment to their own body.
The nine stages are as such:
Distention, Rupturing, Exudation of Blood, Putrefaction, Discoloration and Desiccation, Consumption by Wildlife, Dismemberment, Reduced to Bones, Reduced to Ashes
As the stages would imply, the depictions are morbid and gruesome but serve as an important meditational practice in regard to death.
The series of paintings here vary in context, but follow as such:
1. A beautiful maiden, prior to death, and in her many-colored kimono
2. The maiden, now deceased, and in her funeral robe
3. The corpse of the maiden begins to rupture and bloat, the funeral robe becoming heavily stained with blood, and the body swollen all over
4. The corpse has become to putrefy, depicted in nauseating detail, rot and flies emanating from the body, the hair having fallen off, and the chest sinking in
5. The corpse is torn apart and consumed by various wildlife, wolves tearing apart limbs and ripping out organs, and crows gathering to take what they can
6. The corpse is messily picked clean, hair and blood remaining, and only a skeleton left, among slowly sprouting greenery
7. Time passes, and the skeleton is largely cleaned, but slowly breaking apart and wearing away. The greenery continues to grow
8. Only a handful of bones remain now, amongst flowering greenery
9. A burial mound with tomb atop is built where the body once lay, the ground now fresh and full of grass.
There are two artist seals which I do not recognize.
Nine silk paintings, 21.2 x 33.8 per painting
These paintings are in very good shape, with some marginal wear and a few small holes, mostly to the lower margins, and not affecting illustrations, except slightly in the ninth illustration. Two of the paintings have had marginal reinforcement and repairs.