Postcard JP-993655

We are curious, what does the sign in the picture translate to in English? Can anyone translate it for us? Thank you!

I think these three words are Chinese. The last one is 梅, means plum flowers. And the second one maybe is 龙 in traditional form of Chinese. I'm not sure :( If it's right, that means dragon. By the way, 龙 in Chinese culture is different from the one in western cultures. The first one is not clear, maybe is 醉 or 卧. In the last, this picture is drawn by 铃木春信. I'm also curious, why there are so much Chinese in this Japanese painting.

卧龙梅，the characters on the left hand side, indicate that the branches of the plum tree resemble the lying dragon. There are a lot kanji 漢字 in Japanese, which are not exactly the same as Chinese characters, especially simplified characters简体字.

There are 3 character sets in Japanese language; hiragana, katakana, kanji. Kanji are drived from China. Hiragana and katakana are created from kanji. Words of this picture was written in kanji.