Utagawa Kunisada/Toyokuni III (1786-1865) A Comparison of the 100 poets #52: Taiheiji and O-Yone, 1847. Oban.
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This series of 100 prints is one of the outstanding achievements of woodblock printing in Japan in the nineteenth century. Commissioned by the publisher Ibaya Senzaburo in 1845, the series is the joint work of Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige and Kunisada - the three outstanding woodblock artists of the age. The prints in the series are beautifully composed, drawn and printed and they exhibit a remarkable conformity of style. The edition was one in a long line of anthologies which gathered together the canon of great poetry going back to the eighth century. Whilst there had been previous attempts by artists to anthologise and illustrate the great poems, notably by Hokusai, and Kuniyoshi himself, this was the first major work to be completed.
The poems themselves were gathered together by the scholar Fujiwara no Teika in 1235. It is presumed that these poems were taken from a commission that resulted in the pieces being written out by hand by Teika and glued to the doors of his villa in the shadow of Mount Ogura - hence the name of the series. Some of these fragments still exist in museums in Japan. One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each, became the standard textbook for Japanese poetry for centuries to come. The poems themselves are in the Tanka style, that is, five lines of five, seven, five, seven and seven syllables - different to the more familiar Haiku of today. The prints are mitate - pictures that allude via analogy to the subject of the print. In this way, the publisher challenged the reader to find the meaning of the pictures within the visual clues of the print.
Contributions to the series by Kunisada are much rarer than those by Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi on account of Kunisada making only fourteen of the designs. In this print Kunisada depicts an actor… probably Ichikawa Danjuro VII as the kabuki villain, Taiheiji. The subject is loosely based on real events and adapted to the theatre via the drama, Book of the Crossroads at Gappo of 1804. In the play, two rival clans plot and scheme against each other. Whilst it is easy to imagine medieval Japanese clans as Hollywood perceives them… samurai swords and exotic silk robes in wooden palaces; in reality many of these clans were little more than Chicago style gangsters or like the tawdry modern gangs in London or any big city. Taiheiji has been hired to exterminate the key members of a rival clan. He unwittingly is employing the wife of one of his presumed victims in his tea shop. When he finds out, he confronts the girl — O-Yone — pictured recoiling, and ties her up in the smoke filled room upstairs. When his enemy, her husband chances upon her, Taiheiji returns and slaughters them both.
The poem:
Because it has dawned
it will become night again
this I know and yet,
ah, how hateful it is —
the first cold light of morning!
The poem by Michinobu relates the coming dawn to the deaths of O-Yone and her husband, Magoshichi. The caption in the cartouche reads:
Taiheiji’s poisonous evil is sharper than the stinger of the striped mosquito; (alluded to here in the fire smoke designed to dispel the insects), Mogoshichi’s unfortunate fate is shorter than a summer night. In the darkness of the fifth month, blinded by desire, they cannot see an inch ahead.
This is a great design, especially the tremendous swirls of smoke behind the distinctive pose of the actor. The colour and impression are very good. The condition is good with some surface marks. The print has been professionally re-margined.
Published by Kawaguchiya.
36 x 23 cm.
