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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 as in this print to dreamy maidens. 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 harrowing scene represented in this double ōban colour woodblock print comes from the famous kabuki play Kanadehon Chūshingura (The treasury of loyal retainers), an 11-act vendetta saga that accommodates the theatrical gamut, from heart-breaking love stories to grisly murders, earthy sub-plots and bloody battles. Te Papa's collection also currently has four scenes from the play, all by Keisai Eisen, and a melacholic Hayano Kanpei in a mie pose by Utagawa Kunisada (2016-0008-30). Kuniyoshi, Eisen and Kunisada were all contemporaries, supposedly - as early 20th century critics would have it - presiding over the decline of the woodblock print as an art form! Kuniyoshi's stunning print alone suggests otherwise. The circumstances to the climactic death of En'ya Hangan are as follows. In Act III, Hangan and his ally Monomoi Wakasanosuke are invited to festivities at the Ashikaga Palace in Kamakura. Hangan, goaded by his adversary, the high-ranking court official Kō no Moronau, draws his sword and attacks him. Hangan is sentenced to take his own life by performing seppuku, ritual disembowelment. Kuniyoshi's illustration for Act IV focuses on the final moments of Hangan's life. The setting is his own home - identifiable by the striking mon (emblems) of crossed feathers on a blue field. At right are the kneeling figures of the shogun's retainers, Ishido and Yakushiji. In the rear, Hangan's retainers Hara Gōemon and Ono Kudayū witness the event. You can hear a pin drop. Hangan kneels left of centre, on a white quilt, with sakura at each corner. His chief retainer, Yuranosuke, receives his master's dying wish: to avenge the wrong he has been done. Kuniyoshi's claustrophobic composition is tightly grouped. Its sober arrangements of white, umber, blue and black, and its refined printing, including shomen-zuri 'polished ink' details, compellingly emphasise the gravity of the moment. The stage is set for the narrative in which Yuranosuke leads 46 of Hangan's loyal retainers towards the final, violent enactment of their vendetta. Moronao must die!
Source: David Bell and Mark Stocker, 'Rising sun at Te Papa: the Heriot collection of Japanese art', Tuhinga, 29 (2018), https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/document/10608
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2019