Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) | Poem by Chunagon Yakamochi | Edo period, 19th century

S. Nagata, Hokusai Museum (Hokusai Bijutsukan): Tales (Monogatari-e), vol. 5, 2nd ed. (Tokyo, 1990), pl. 134.

The Japan Ukiyo-e Academy, Hokusai serial catalogue, Daimaru Museum, Tokyo, 29 December-11 January, exhib. cat. (Matsumoto, 1992), pl. 79.

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. 6.

W. Crothers, T. Kobayashi and J. Berndt, Hokusai, NGV International, Melbourne, 21 July- 15 October 2017, exhib. cat. (Melbourne, 2017) p. 173.

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 (1162-1241). 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 Chunagon Yakamochi (Otomo no Yakamochi, 718-785), an important political figure who compiled the first Imperial anthology of poems. The poem has been translated by Peter MacMillan in One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: A Treasury of Classical Japanese Verse, (London, 2016), p. 9:

How the night deepens.

A ribbon of the whitest frost

is stretched across

the bridge of magpie wings

the lovers will cross

Kasasagi no

wataseru hashi ni

oku shimo no

shiroki o mireba

yo zo fukenikeru

For another impression of the same print in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The MET), accession number JP2934, go to:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/56149