The folding screens titled “Parent and Child Lion and Tiger” (親子獅子虎屏風) by Sakurai Yoshiyama are representative works of the Maruyama-Shijō school, executed in the late Edo to early Meiji period by a painter associated with the Matsumae region. This pair of six-panel screens adopts the canonical format of paper (紙本), measuring 351×155cm for the artwork and 367×171cm for the screens themselves, and is catalogued with physical condition notes such as stains and wear.

The iconography of the screens follows well-documented narrative tropes concerning animal behavior to illustrate filial and parental relationships. The first screen depicts the theme of “The Lion Sending Off Its Cub” (獅子の児渡し), referencing the Taiheiki, in which a lion throws its cub into a ravine and raises only the one that manages to return. The compositional details include the presence of the parent lion supporting cubs over hazardous terrain amid flowering peonies, with attention to behavioral attributes documented in classical sources. The portrayal is constructed to emphasize parental vigilance and anxiety, objectively described through visual cues such as the drooping lower lip of the lion, a feature interpreted in prior scholarship as indicative of protective concern rather than mere ferocity.

The second screen presents “The Tiger Crossing with Its Cub(s)” (虎の児渡し), based on accounts from Nansō’s “Xing Huadian Zalu.” According to this tradition, one in three tiger cubs is naturally selected out (sometimes referred to as a “deer” variant), with cubs at risk of predation by siblings or adults if separated from the parent. The narrative further documents the parent tiger’s behavior during river crossings, characterized by sequential transport of cubs and strategic vigilance to ensure their survival. The depiction includes the motif of cubs clinging to the mother’s back for transport across water, supporting well-established descriptive conventions of animal behavior in premodern Japanese painting.

Sakurai Yoshiyama (dates unknown) was active from the late Edo into the early Meiji period. He was a younger brother of Sakurai Koran and studied under Okamoto Toyohiko (1773–1845) or Shibata Gito (1780–1819), painters central to the Kyoto-based Maruyama-Shijō school. The Maruyama-Shijō school is characterized by its focus on direct observation from nature (shasei), with compositions that favor empirical accuracy, descriptive clarity, and avoidance of overt stylization. Yoshiyama’s screens conform to these academic standards through their careful narrative construction, fidelity to textual sources, and detailed attention to zoological behaviors as understood in the period.