The Year of the Tiger

The tiger is the third animal of the Chinese zodiac featuring a well-known series of twelve animals, which are also common in Japan as “eto.” Japan has never known tigers in the wild, so the zodiacal tiger is a 100% import from its neighboring country. Tigers were very common in China in ancient times – although today only about 30 wild tigers are left (generally speaking, the tiger is an Asian animal, with a present population in the wild of roughly 3,300 in India, 500 in Bangladesh, 430 in Siberia and 370 in Indonesia). 

['Sitting Tiger' by Maruyama Okyo, 1777,]

In China, the tiger is a yang animal and is associated with a potent male principle of bravery, dignity and magisterial sternness. As the emblem of courage and fierceness, which should be characteristic of a soldier, a tiger head was formerly painted on the shields of soldiers. The presence or roar of a tiger is synonymous with danger and terror.

Throughout Chinese history, the tiger has incited a sense of both awe and admiration. It embodies the spirit and drive to achieve and make progress. It is said that it has the power to drive away demons - a painting depicting a tiger is often hung on a wall inside the building facing the entrance - in this way demons are scared away and cannot enter. For the same reason, the shoes of small children are often embroidered with tiger’s heads.

Each direction of the compass is traditionally believed to be ruled by a mythical creature; the White Tiger is the ruler of the West. The tiger is also associated with autumn, when it comes down from the mountains into villages. Medicinal virtues were ascribed to the ashes of the bones and other parts of the tiger (unfortunately helping its extinction).  

 

In the days of Marco Polo, the multitude of tigers in the northern part of the empire rendered traveling alone dangerous – the most famous tiger-slaying story by a lone traveler can be found in the chapters about Wu Song in the famous novel Water Margin (chapter 23, also adapted as the first chapter of another classical novel, Jinpingmei), where the hero, although half drunk, with his bare hands kills a tiger which attacks him in the mountains.

The tiger was an important motif in Chinese art, and tiger paintings were also popular in Japan, especially among samurai or in the palaces of feudal lords. Tigers, for them, were a symbol of strength. Japanese painters therefore studied the tiger paintings produced in China, but, as they had never seen a real tiger before, they often modeled their tigers on cats! As a result, Japanese tiger paintings look both a bit stiff and too cute -  so to speak “just a cat, which failed to become a tiger.”

I close this post with the first stanza from William Blake's famous poem "The Tyger" from 1794, which beautifully imagines the beast:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

(Read the whole poem at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger)

Have a great Year of the Tiger!