Description SHUZAN: A BRONZE FIGURE OF NINOMIYA SONTOKUBy Shuzan, signed ShuzanJapan, Meiji period (1868-1912)The famous agricultural leader depicted as a boy, standing on a naturalistically cast base, reading an incised book, the Great Learning (Daigaku), while carrying bundles of brushwood cast in openwork secured by robes on his back, his face neatly detailed. The back incised with the signature SHUZAN.HEIGHT 45.4 cmWEIGHT 6.6 kgCondition: Very good condition with minor wear and casting flaws. Provenance: US collection.Ninomiya Sontoku (1787-1856), bown Ninomiya Kinjiro, was a prominent 19th-century Japanese agricultural leader, philosopher, moralist, and economist. It is not uncommon to see statues of Ninomiya in or in front of Japanese schools, especially elementary schools. Typically, they show him as a boy reading a book while walking and carrying firewood on his back. These statues depict popular stories that said Ninomiya was reading and studying every moment he could.The book held in the boy's hand is incised with a passage from the Great Learning. one of the 'Four Books' in Confucianism attributed to one of Confucius' disciples, Zengzi. The passage reads, "When one family becomes humane, the whole country will be stimulated to be humane. When one family becomes easy to get along with, all the people in the country are stimulated to become easy to get along with. If one man greedily upsets things, the whole country can be plunged into chaos. Its function is really like this. Hence there is the saying "one word can win the whole affair, one man can settle the whole kingdom."