Friday, December 15, 2017

Best picture of birds in kimonos you'll see this month


This delightful 19th century advertising card, for Liebig Company's Fleisch-Extract, is a companion to the one that I posted and wrote about in November 2015. You can read about the company and the voluminous number of advertising cards it issued in that previous post.

This near-mint card features a Japanese couple kneeling in their living with a trio of birds in kimonos.1 There is also an oversized container of Fleisch-Extract.

The German-language caption states:

Der Sperling mit der geschlitzten Zunge.
(Japanisches Kindermärchen) _No. 2.

That translates to:

The sparrow with the slotted tongue.
(Japanese children's fairy tale) No. 2

Shita-kiri Suzume ("Tongue-Cut Sparrow") is a Japanese fable or fairy tale that explores greed and jealousy and is similar in theme to other tales from around the world — tales that might feature dwarves, witches or other supernatural creatures in the place of sparrows.

You can read many versions of the tale at D.L. Ashliman's website, hosted by the University of Pittsburgh.

Related posts


Footnote
1. Google, before this post goes live, says: "No results found for 'trio of birds in kimonos'."

1 comment:

  1. Another thing to add to my resume - I have read 2 entire posts about meat extract. :)

    ReplyDelete