Jūnirui kassen emaki / war of the twelve zodiac animals
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 84). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: 15th century original; one historical dictionary dates it c.1451–1452
Region: Japan
Workbook date-sort bounds: 1400 CE to 1499 CE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
A poetry competition turns into warfare between zodiac animals and outsiders led by an offended tanuki; dressed animals parody human literary and military behavior.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
The zodiac-animal war survives through numerous later copies of a fifteenth-century original.
What remains uncertain
Many accessible copies belong to official Kano workshops or later elite collecting. The evidence supplied does not establish a fifteenth-century grassroots audience or ordinary remaking.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria