I’ve been asked to paint a large painting (48″x60″) of a banner seen in the background of a 1963 Japanese movie (13 Assassins). The banner is never fully shown so I have two missing parts to fill in. The man asking for the banner is 91 years old and was born in Japan, but is nearly blind and can’t help much. HIs great great niece has tried to fill in the missing area (light blue on right), but I she had very little confidence it’s correct. Nor did she help with the **missing character** behind Shimada Shinzaemons head. Thanks in advance (I did try many, many google searches first, including for family name and Edo period banners). Any help with just identifying what type of banner this is would help too, its in the personal residence of a retainer. [https://ibb.co/ZTWZGx7](https://ibb.co/ZTWZGx7)
3 comments
The character cut off at the top can hardly be anything but 心. It’s a common character (“heart”) with a distinctive lower half.
I can’t guess what character is hidden by the actor’s head, but searching for the following line returned this: https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/modules/d3ndlcrdentry/index.php?page=ref_view&id=1000176550
The text is 「上事於君 下交於友 内外一誠 終能長久」 so the missing character must be 君.
I found where to buy the movie
https://samuraidvd.com/13-assassins-toei-allstars-version/
I have a couple of old japanese movies but not this one. I do think I have the remake which closely follows the original but I doubt they have the banner in there.
I found this image
https://tm.ncl.edu.tw/article?u=001_004_0000363970
So the character at the top may be 忠