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Overview
Together with his near contemporary Kunisada, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861) is one of the most famous Edo print designers of his period. He was a highly versatile artist, ranging from horses crossing the water in heroic military episodes illustrating Japan’s glorious past, to ritualised suicides to dreamy maidens as here. Te Papa has prints of all three diverse themes. He was hugely productive, with an output estimated at about 20,000 designs, compared with Harunobu/Utamaro with just 1000-2000. Although he initially struggled to achieve fame and was forced for a while to sell reed-mats, he eventually headed a large studio with many pupils, carrying his influence into the late 19th century. So popular was his imagery that admirers had their bodies tattooed with his designs. He often adopted Western drawing techniques and perspective into his work.
The foreground scene in this print, Yokkaichi, depicts a young woman stroking the head of a stone Inari fox guardian outside Nezu Gongen shrine in the port city of Yokkaichi-shi – literally, ‘Fourth-day Market’ – in Mie prefecture, west of Edo. This is a mitate-e composition, a provocative, witty, intellectual play on pictorial and culturally significant themes. Each of the eight images in the series is set in front of an expanse of water – here the confluence of the Nikko, Kiso and Nagara Rivers and other smaller streams at Ise Bay. The reference is to the classical Chinese poetic and painting theme of Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers suggested in Harunobu’s composition of figures by a stream (Te Papa 2016-0008-8). Additionally, it is a self-referential work – each of its figures is transposed from Kuniyoshi’s contemporaneous mitate series Daigan jōju arigata taki jima (Women in Waterfall-striped Fashions Whose Earnest Prayers Would be Answered, c.1843–46). The Shinto kami spirit Inari, usually taking the form of a fox, was associated with the protection of rice cultivation and the promise of prosperity. The significance of the reference is echoed in the shadowed landscape composition in the distance, with the bridge over the busy waterway, thick with river ferries and, to their right, fishing boats. The white-plastered warehouses at upper left were used to house goods, especially rice, at what was then – as now – a busy sea-trade centre. Even today, however, viewers can locate deeper layers of reference in the work. Inari was also associated more specifically with fertility, both of crops and of people. Women would pray to Inari to grant them children. Ironically, Inari was also the patron of entertainers and brothels. Kuniyoshi’s contemporaries would have delighted at these ambiguities in the work.
Source: David Bell, 'Floating world at Te Papa: the Heriot collection', Tuhinga, 30 (2019), pp. 56-81.
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2019