From the poem <i>Li Sao</i> "Encountering Sorrow" by Qu Yuan. Some consensus the man depicted is poet Qu Yuan. Hosono surmised it to be scene where Qu Yuan "beckon[s] the water-dragons (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jiaolong" class="extiw" title="en:jiaolong"><i>jiaolong</i></a> 蛟龍) to make a bridge" (Hawkes tr.) from a line in the poem named in the artwork  title. But other hypothesize the imagery come from e.g. "The Lady of the Xiang" section of a different poem, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiu_Ge" class="extiw" title="en:Jiu Ge">Jiu Ge</a></i> "Nine Songs".<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup> In "The Lady of the Xiang" occurs the phrase "[Why] the water-dragons (<i>jiao</i> 蛟) outside the waters?" (Hawkes tr.)
<bdi><a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11413112" class="extiw" title="d:Q11413112"><span title="Japanese painter (1875-1929)">Reika Kikkawa</span></a>
</bdi>
1926<div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1926-00-00T00:00:00Z/9</div>
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120510041759/http://www.momat.go.jp/Honkan/kikkawa_reika/index.html">The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo</a> (archived version of the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.momat.go.jp/Honkan/kikkawa_reika/index.html">original</a>)