KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760-1849) POEM BY SOJO HENJO | EDO PERIOD, 19TH CENTURY

S. Nagata, Hokusai Museum (Hokusai Bijutsukan): Tales (Monogatari-e), vol. 5, 2nd ed. (Tokyo, 1990), pl. 138

W. Crothers, T. Kobayashi and J. Berndt, Hokusai, NGV International, Melbourne, 21 July- 15 October 2017, exhib. cat. (Melbourne, 2017) p. 178

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 Sojo Henjo (Yoshimine no Munesada, 810-850), a cousin of Emperor Nimmyo.

Ama-tsu-kaze

Kumo no Kayoiji

Fuji-toji yo

Otome no sugata

Shibashi todomen

O ye winds of Heaven

In the paths among the clouds

 Blow, and close the ways

that we may these virgin forms

Yet a little while detain

For a similar impression in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago see accession no. 1928.1093