Caption label from exhibit "Floating World," Images & Literary Sources section: Retrospective of an Early Master, Hanabusa Itchô. This lively and humorous image by influential genre painter Hanabusa Itchô (1652-1724) illustrates the well-known Buddhist parable of blind men examining an elephant. In the parable, a king assigns a group of sightless men to examine an elephant and report a description of the animal. Depending on the part of the elephant explored, each man's report is different one man states that an elephant is shaped like a broom (tail), another that an elephant is shaped like a drum (belly), yet another likens an elephant to a thick rope (trunk), and so on.