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Overview
Besides his two important bijin-ga (beautiful women) prints, Te Papa's collection currently includes four works by Kesai Eisen (1790-1848) from an 11-composition set, each illustrating one of the acts of Kanadehon Chūshingura (Treasury of Loyal Retainers), one of the enduring classics of the kabuki theatre repertoire. The play’s original 1748 jōruri (‘narrated script’) recounted the historical events of the so-called Akō Affair of 1701–03 in the jidaimono format, which reframed the main protagonists in the guise of earlier events. Its Byzantine narrative melded numerous sub-plots into an 11-act, 11-hour theatrical extravaganza. It accommodates the theatrical gamut, from heart-rending love stories, to grisly murders, earthy sub-plots and bloody battles. Narrative representations of Chūshingura usually followed the theatrical structure closely, each print representing a key scene from a particular act of the play. Characters were generally arranged in the highly expressive mie, or 'frozen poses', that punctuated each scene. Although they illustrated only a single dramatic moment, these images offered sufficient information for knowledgeable fans – and there were many – to reconstruct the surrounding events in their imaginations.
Stage representations of Chūshingura are exciting and filled with tension. The excitement was sustained in part by the music and dance performances that informed acts like ‘Tōkaidō michiyuki’, or by the actors’ highly expressive frozen mie (poses) that punctuated key moments in each act. Compositions like Eisen’s capitalised on these mie moments, set in naturalistic landscape settings like that for ‘Tōkaidō michiyuki’, or in syntheses of stage-set constructions and contrived landscape views. These compositions provided Eisen’s viewers with something of a shorthand narrative composed of snapshot views of key events – images they could view at their leisure, and around which they could crystallise their own imaginative reflections on the play’s themes of on (obligation of debts of filial piety), kō (honour), chū (loyalty) and giri (fulfilment of obligation before self-interest).
The opening act of the play relates the events leading to the humiliation of a young En'ya Hangan (historically Asano Naganori, Lord of Ako, 1667–1701) by the kōke 'high-house' court official Ko no Moronao (Kira Yoshinaka, 1641–1703). The subsequent episodes reveal the narrative that then unfolded. The first of the four prints currently in Te Papa's collection represents a key moment in Act II, 'Momonoi no yashiki' ('At Momonoi's mansion'). Moronao's slight had been severe; Momonoi Wakasanosuke, on the right-hand side of the composition, has vowed to avenge his friend. At far left we see Oboshi Rikiya, son of the play's hero, Oboshi Yuranosuke, arriving with a message from Hangan to Wakasanosuke. He and his fiancee, Konami, watch as Wakasanosuke's retainer, Honzo, pledges support for his master, seizing his sword and dramatically slashing a branch of pine. He replaces the blade in its scabbard uncleaned, so that the sap on the blade would prevent Momonoi drawing it in anger and shaming himself.
The other Eisen compositions illustrate Act III, 'Kamakura denchu Ashikaga-yakata monzen-no-ba' ('Before the gate of the Ashikaga Palace at Kamakura’); Act VI, 'Kanpei sumika' ('At the dwelling of Kanpei'); and Act VIII, 'Tōkaidō ōmichiyuki' ('The journey along the Tōkaidō').
See: David Bell and Mark Stocker, 'Rising sun at Te Papa: the Heriot collection of Japanese art', Tuhinga, 29 (2018), pp. 50-76.
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2019