Catching a catfish with a gourd

Catching a catfish with a gourd (瓢鮎図, Hyō-nen-zu) is a hanging scroll painting by the 15th-century artist Josetsu (如拙).

The painting was executed in c. 1415 and is held by Taizō-in, a sub-temple of the Myōshin-ji complex of Zen Buddhist temples in Kyoto.

This painting in ink on paper depicts an old man in ragged clothes holding out a bottle gourd (hyōtan) beside a narrow winding stream, with a stand of bamboo in the foreground to the left and mountains rising through mist in the background to the right.

It can be viewed as Zen humour, or as a kōan in an unusual visual form designed to provoke the viewer into new ways of thinking or seeing.

[citation needed] The work inspired popular otsu-e imitations in following centuries, often showing a monkey attempting to catch a catfish with a gourd.