KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760-1849) POEM BY KANKE (SUGAWARA MICHIZANE) | EDO PERIOD, 19TH CENTURY

Timothy Clark, Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave (London, 2017), n. 140

S. Nagata, Hokusai Museum (Hokusai Bijutsukan): Tales (Monogatari-e), vol. 5, 2nd ed.(Tokyo, 1990), pl. 143

W. Crothers, T. Kobayashi and J. Berndt, Hokusai, NGV International, Melbourne, 21 July- 15 October 2017, exhib. cat. (Melbourne, 2017)

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 Kanke, also known as Sugawara Michizane (844-903):

Kono tabi wa

nusa mo toriaezu

Tamuke yama

momiji no nishiki

kami no manimani

At the present time

since no offering could I bring

Behold Mt Tamuke-

a brocade of red leaves

for the pleasure of the gods.

In this print, Hokusai depicted two individual narratives, both pertaining to the poet. The first is Kanke’s narrative, which describes how on a journey with Emperor Uda, whilst stopping at a Shinto shrine, he beheld the falling leaves of a maple tree over Mount Tamuke. Hokusai placed this story to the left-hand side of the print, depicting the Emperor’s magnificently decorated cart beside the entrance to the shrine. The second stems from a legendary description of Kanke’s funeral, which relays how, during the procession, the ox pulling the funeral cart lay down and as an act of mourning and defiance, refused to continue. Hokusai set this story to the right-hand side of the print and depicted the ox, covered in an elaborate textile, resting on the ground.

For a similar impression in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, see accession no. JP5.