酒井抱一はこの作品で、真実なのか技巧によるものか、見る人を翻弄させる。30本の扇子は、いずれも実物が表面に貼り付けられたかに描写されている。抱一はこの幻影を、それぞれさまざまな扇面とし、骨の部分に胡粉を厚く塗って立体感を出すことで達成している。全開あるいは半開の扇子は、右隻右下の春から左隻左上の冬へと、季節の移り変わりに従い配置されている。　

In this work Sakai Hoitsu plays with our notions of reality and artifice. Each of the thirty fans depicted on the screens is painted to appear as an actual object pasted onto the surface. Hoitsu achieved this illusion by giving each fan its own distinct “paper,” and by rendering the ribs of each one with a thick, oyster-shell pigment to make them stand out in relief, mimicking wood or bamboo. The fully opened or partially closed fans are loosely positioned according to season, transitioning from spring in the bottom right corner of the right screen to winter at the upper left corner of the left screen.

The subject of fans floating in a stream (senmen nagashi) is said to have originated with an event that took place in Kyoto in which a fan belonging to one member of a shogunal procession was swept away by the wind and floated to the river below. The other members of the party found this accident so beautiful, that they too threw their fans down to the water.

These four panels were once sliding doors (fusuma) set into grooves in the floor. When the doors were converted into a freestanding pair of two-fold screens is not known, but the holes made by the removal of the door-pull hardware have been carefully patched.

Rotation 2: August 15-September 27, 2009