Koto from the series The Six Arts in Fashionable Guise
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Chinese classical education consisted of the Six Arts: performing rites, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics. The Chinese qin, a stringed musical instrument in the zither family, customarily symbolizes the art of music. In this print a similar Japanese instrument, the koto, replaces the qin. The fashionable Japanese entertainer playing it stands in for an accomplished Chinese scholar.
