Poverty Dulls the Wit

The title plays on the Japanese expression 貧すれば鈍する, the idea that poverty deprives a person of energy and dulls the mind. Kyōsai, however, constructs the scene so that this saying is gradually turned on its head: the family depicted is extremely poor, yet the very need to survive forces them to display extraordinary ingenuity.

The household is furnished largely with objects that have been found and adapted for entirely different purposes. A dog investigates an empty cooking pot in which nothing appears to have been prepared, while the family nevertheless has rice to eat. Within the logic of the scene, the rice seems to consist of discarded leftovers they have collected. Even the vessel holding it is a child’s chamber pot, an omaru, filled almost to the brim. Beside it stands a large basket, probably another salvaged object.

The cooking arrangement is equally improvised. Wooden geta sandals have been placed beneath the vessels, wood chips and scraps are used as fuel, and above the fire, suspended from an adjustable hook, hangs a shibin — an object originally intended as a urinal. It is now being used to boil water. A chopping board serves as a food tray, while the other household objects have likewise been assigned new functions. In this world of poverty, almost nothing is used for its original purpose.

The family has four children, reinforcing the traditional association between poverty and large families. One child lies apart, while the others remain close to the adults during the meal. Particularly comic is the fact that the children do not appear desperately hungry at all: the suggestion is that scavenged food has already become part of their normal life.

The central joke is revealed in the figures of the binbōgami, the gods of poverty. In traditional belief, the appearance of such a being in a prosperous household foretells the loss of wealth and eventual ruin. Here, however, the poverty gods themselves peer into a house that is already destitute. One looks through a gap in the wall, while another watches through a hole in the earthen partition; both carry the characteristic torn fans.

What surprises them is not the family’s poverty but the fact that sounds of eating can be heard in such a place at all. They seem to be observing people who possess almost nothing, yet have somehow managed to find rice and arrange a meal. The family, meanwhile, remains entirely unaware of its supernatural spectators and calmly continues eating.

Kyōsai thus gives the proverb that “poverty dulls the wit” an ironic continuation. Poverty here is associated not with helplessness but with adaptability, resourcefulness, and practical vitality. Even the gods of poverty seem astonished by how successfully these people have learned to survive in a world assembled from found, altered, and repurposed objects.