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| Hokusai: Daruma and a Courtesan |
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is one of the internationally most famous masters of ukiyo-e. Although he is best known for his woodblock prints, the picture I chose for this week is a painting. It is a mitate-e hanging scroll, depicting Daruma and a courtesan. Hokusai painted it in the beginning of the 1800s.
Mitate is usually translated as "parody" and a mitate-e is then a "parody picture". This translation is quite confusing, since mitate-e contains many forms of pictures. What they all have in common is, that they play with double meanings, symbols, analogies, and associations, often related to literature, legends, or history. One form of mitate-e contrasts impossible combinations or opposites. An historical person or environment and a contemporary one, a peasant and a nobleman, high and low, good and bad.
It is very difficult to understand mitate-e without profound knowledge of Chinese and Japanese classics, symbols, and history. It is even more difficult than that. It is hard to understand that a picture is a mitate-e. All those layers of hidden meanings might easily pass unnoticed.
In this painting Hokusai contrasts Daruma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, with a courtesan. The spiritual and the worldly. To me, this is an illustration of complementary opposites.