Herb Gatherers in the Mountains (detail) 

Yosa Buson created this painting, Herb Gatherers in the Mountains, sometime before his death in 1784, using ink and color on silk. Buson lived in a Japan in which Neo-Confucianism shaped social hierarchies. He would have been familiar with a rigid class structure that valued farmers and laborers less than scholars. Here, we see two men gathering herbs on the mountainside while a third rides a horse. These figures, their labor, and their connection to the land, exist outside the social spaces of the city. Unlike traditional landscape paintings that highlighted the elite, Buson elevates these common men by placing them within the natural landscape. They become part of the idealized vision of a simple, rural life. What emotions arise as you consider these men making their way through the landscape? While this artwork celebrates the nobility of labor, does it also romanticize a life of hardship?