Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A Japanese scroll that displays painting or calligraphy, hung vertically on a wall.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A Japanese wall-picture or decoration, painted in transparent colors on a band of silk, gauze, or paper, and mounted on a roller

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun art A vertical Japanese scroll painting

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a Japanese (paper or silk) wall hanging; usually narrow with a picture or writing on it and a roller at the bottom

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Japanese : kakeru, to hang + mono, object.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Japanese 掛け物 (kakemono). Literally "hanging thing".

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Examples

  • The competition began with more than 270 hopefuls, but many got stung by words such as kakemono and cyamonke (ph).

    CNN Transcript Jun 2, 2005 2005

  • The rooms are not encumbered by ornaments; a single kakemono, or fine piece of lacquer or china, appears for a few days and then makes way for something else; so they have variety as well as simplicity, and each object is enjoyed in its turn without distraction.

    Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Isabella Lucy 2004

  • The room through which you enter from the street always has an open door, through which you see houses showing a high degree of material civilization, lofty rooms, handsome altars opposite the doors, massive, carved ebony tables, and carved ebony chairs with marble seats and backs standing against the walls, hanging pictures of the kind called in Japan kakemono, and rich bronzes and fine pieces of porcelain on ebony brackets.

    The Golden Chersonese and the way thither Isabella Lucy 2004

  • In the alcove hangs a kakemono of exquisite beauty,

    Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Isabella Lucy 2004

  • The shoji are often beautifully painted, and in each room is hung a kakemono (a wall picture, a painting finely executed on a strip of silk).

    Peeps at Many Lands: Japan John Finnemore

  • Usually it is a recess a few feet long and a few inches wide, and over it hangs the finest kakemono that the house can afford, and in front of it is

    Peeps at Many Lands: Japan John Finnemore

  • One may follow Woman Decorative in the Orient on vase, fan, screen and kakemono; as she struts in the stiff manner of Egyptian bas reliefs, across walls of ancient ruins, or sits in angular serenity, gazing into the future through the narrow slits of Egyptian eyes, oblivious of time; woman, beautiful in the European sense, and decorative to the superlative degree, on Greek vase and sculptured wall.

    Woman as Decoration Emily Burbank

  • If a visitor be present in the house, the guest-chamber will be decorated afresh every day, each design showing some new and unexpected beauty in screen, or flower-decked vase, or painted kakemono.

    Peeps at Many Lands: Japan John Finnemore

  • They have probably never seen the same picture or the same ornament twice in the kakemono.

    Impressions of a War Correspondent George Lynch

  • One scroll is hung in the kakemono, and in front of it one ornament, and afterwards a solitary flower.

    Impressions of a War Correspondent George Lynch

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  • "To enter any public space, be it a restaurant in Gion or a dark little café in the narrow streets of Shinjuku, a tiny basket or lacquer shop whose smallness is apparent as soon as you walk in the door, you have to bend over on entering and walk with your head down while contorting yourself around the shelves, all the time making sure you don't bang your head against a kakemono or knock over an entire shelf of precious ceramics, tea pots, or little saké glasses with your backpack while turning around."

    Self-portrait abroad by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, translated by John Lambert, p 35

    July 5, 2010