Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) Fifty-three Parallels for the Tokaido Road (Tokaido gojusan tsui) Fujisawa Station: Ogura Kojiro and Terute, 1845-46. Oban.
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The series is fascinating in that it was a collaboration of the three great artists of the day: Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige and Kunisada. The exact number of prints is unknown, but it is assumed currently that they produced 30, 20 and 8 respectively. The series is a precursor to one of the very best series of prints of the 19th century, A Comparison of the Ogura Poets from 1847, in which the same three artists collaborated on a series celebrating the great Japanese poems. There are many compositional similarities to the two series… the unusual, aberrant cartouches, and the one third, two thirds division of the oban page. Both series were attempts by artists and publishers to circumvent the recently imposed censorship laws for woodblock prints. These punitive laws, called the Tenpo Reforms were designed to quell opposition to the government by creating a less decadent society. Of course the attempt failed but it nevertheless acted as a stimulant to the artists of the day by encouraging them to find creative ways to find new subjects.
The writing in the upper left surrounded by the casual line tells the story of the hapless Princess Terute and her lover, Oguri Hangan. Princess Terute is sent to work in a brothel after making love to her betrothed Prince Hangan. Meanwhile Hangan is in hell but the god of Hell agrees that Hangan can return to the world, but only in the form of a grotesquely disfigured man in order to cure him of his love sickness. He has to remain sitting in a cart which will be pulled by various people to whom it will be counted as merit toward going to heaven.
Terute refuses work like the others. Instead she does all the menial household work. One day Hangan's cart is left outside and she goes out to enquire about him. When she realises that she can earn merit for her late husband and his followers by pulling his cart she takes five days' leave. She never realizes that the man she is pulling is in reality her late husband returned from the dead. Hangan, however, does realise when she tells him why she is pulling his cart, but he cannot bring himself to reveal his true identity to her. However, during the few days they are together they develop a warm bond. Finally, she poignantly says that she would be glad to find out that her husband were still alive even if he were disfigured like him. They are eventually reunited after a miraculous cure at the waterfall in the sacred land of Kumano and Hangan is restored to life.
The print shows Hangan at the sacred waterfall, proving his return to robust health by lifting a huge rock above his head. His redundant cart is visible at his feet. A copy of this print is in the collection of the MFA in Boston. Colour, impression and condition are fine.
36 x 25 cm.
