<div class="description">
At 7 feet tall, Ozora Buzaemon became a tabloid sensation when he arrived in Edo (Tokyo) in 1827. His handprints were cherished souvenirs, and his image was hawked in woodblock prints. He was treated essentially as a sideshow freak. As inscriptions on the scroll detail, the scholar-painter Kazan met Buzaemon at the residence of noted Confucian scholar Sato Issai. Using a camera obscura-type device, Kazan captured Buzaemon’s image on a quiltwork of paper patches, making a preliminary drawing that would later be turned into a finished painting. This sad portrayal depicts Buzaemon’s inherent discomfort in his imposed role as entertainer-unlike the bombastic caricatures found in the broadsheet prints that hyped his arrival in Edo.</div>
<div class="fn value">
Watanabe Kazan</div>
<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.177">https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.177</a>