This room was reserved for the relatives of the Date lord. The delicate ceiling work and the classical design of the fusuma door paintings by Hasegawa Toin (dates unknown) lend the space a palatial grandeur. The clouds in the paintings have delicate raised patterns created by adding artist’s chalk made from crushed seashells before painting the images.
The fusuma depict a scene from the Chinese classics in which King Wen of Zhou (1152–1056 BCE) meets a seemingly ordinary fisherman named Jiang Ziya. King Wen was so impressed by Jiang Ziya’s benevolent world view that he made Ziya his military adviser. This decision is said to have been the basis for the success of the Zhou dynasty. The Chinese classics present King Wen as a model sovereign, and this scene is a fitting motif for a room used by the ruling Date clan. The room takes its name from the Japanese reading of the name of the Chinese King Wen, which is “Bun-O.”