KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760-1849) POEM BY FUJIWARA NO YOSHITAKA | EDO PERIOD, 19TH CENTURY

Hayashi Tadamasa (1853-1906) (collector's stamp)

Okayama Museum, Tokubetsu-ten Hiroshige to Hokusai Rokuju yoshu meishozu-e to Hyakunin isshu uba ge etoki (Sakai Collection), Okayama Museum, Okayama, 29 October - 23 November, exhib. cat. (Okayama, 1983), pl. 23

For his last single sheet series of woodblock prints, One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse (Hyakunin isshu uba ga etoki), Katshushika Hokusai looked to an anthology of well-known poems, entitled Hyakunin Isshu (A Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets), as his source. These poems, based on love and melancholy, were assembled by the thirteenth-century poet Fujiawara no Teika. Hokusai chose to visually recount the poems from the perspective of a fictional elderly nurse. Together with sixty-four preparatory drawings, twenty-seven published prints are known, each exhibiting bold colour and including a cartouche enclosing the relevant verse. The series was commissioned by the publisher Nishimura Yohachi and his firm Eijudo successfully issued five prints before closing down; the additional twenty-two prints were then published by Iseya Sanjiro’s firm Iseri, with the original Eijudo seal continuing to be employed.

The poem in this print is by Fujiwara no Yoshitaka:

Kimi ga tame

Oshikarazarishi

Inochi sae

Nagaku mo gana to

Omoikeru kanai

For thy precious sake

Once my eager life itself

Was not dear to me

But 'tis now my heart's desire

It may long, long years endure.

For another impression in The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, see accession no. 21.6741

This print was once in the collection of the great Japanese art connoisseur, collector and dealer, Hayashi Tadamasa (1853-1906), as evidenced by the presence of his collector’s stamp in the bottom right-hand corner. Tadamasa moved to Paris in 1878 for the Exposition Universelle and became a great proponent of Japonisme, opening his gallery in 1883 and thereby contributing to the important market for Japanese prints and works of art in France. Tadamasa also played a vital role in introducing Western art to Japan.