11 - Keisei: Benzaiten Seated on a White Dragon

Keisei: Benzaiten Seated on a White Dragon - 1832-1833

Aoigaoka Keisei was active during the 1820s and 1830s. He was Hokkei's student, possibly also Hokusai's, and his prints, mainly surimono and book illustrations, are of a very high technical standard.

This print is named "Benzaiten sitting on a White Dragon". It is also called "The Goddess Benzaiten Appears to Hôjô Tokimasa at Enoshima". But that title is misleading, unless one sees the whole vertical diptych, of which this is the top print. The bottom print is missing here.

Benzaiten is a Japanese Buddhist goddess of everything that flows: water, words, music, time, and knowledge - and she is one of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune. She is also considered a Shinto kami and a protector deity of Japan, and she is associated with dragons. Her origin can be traced back to the Hindu goddess Saraswati.

The musical instrument she holds is a biwa, a traditional Japanese lute.

10 - Utamaro: Three Beauties of the Present Day

Utamaro: Three Beauties of the Present Day - 1793

Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806) is one of the most influential ukiyo-e artists, and one of the few who became famous beyond Japan. He is best known for his bijinga, pictures of beautiful girls, one of the major sub-genres of ukiyo-e. 

Utamaro introduced a certain realism of the faces, which had so far been idealised and stereotyped. This print, "Three Beauties of the Present Day" [Tōji San Bijin], from 1793, shows a triangular composition of three girls in the style of okubi-e (large head). Okubi-e had so far been yakusha-e, portraits of kabuki actors, but Utamaro applied it in bijinga.

The heads seem alike, but on a closer look, there are subtle differences which make them individual. In fact, the girls are the geisha Tomimoto Toyohina (top), and the two waitresses Takashima Hisa (left) and Naniwa Kita (right), who figure on many prints by Utamaro and others.

It has sometimes been claimed that this picture was the first (or one of the first) bijinga with girls who were not courtesans. That is not true - it was already started by Harunobu, who sometimes made bijinga with beauties from everyday life.

09 - Hiroshige: Kanbara

Hiroshige: Kanbara

Landscapes were not initially a part of ukiyo-e. As a motive, it was introduced by the founder of the Utagawa school, Utagawa Toyoharu (1735?-1814). However, the great landscape master of ukiyo-e was a later member of the school: Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858). He firmly established landscape prints, fūkei-ga, as a sub-genre of ukiyo-e.

Hiroshige is one of the most widely known ukiyo-e artists, and one of only a few, whose name is known worldwide also by people not specifically interested in ukiyo-e. As a landscape artist, he belongs to the topmost world elite.

The print this week is Hiroshige's "Kanbara" from the series "The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō" (Hōeidō edition), from 1833-1834. "Kanbara" is the 15th station but the 16th print in the series. (There is an initial picture before the stations.)

Tōkaidō was the road connecting the capital of the Shogun, Edo, with the capital of the Emperor, Kyoto. The stations are post stations, and travellers had to have an official permit in order to cross a station. Travelling freely was not permitted in old Japan.

08 - Toyohara Kunichika: Actor Kawarazaki Gonnosuke as Daroku

Toyohara Kunichika - Actor Kawarazaki Gonnosuke as Daroku - approx. 1869

For Toyohara Kunichika (1835-1900), kabuki was a great passion and his most important works were yakusha-e. With one foot in the Meiji era, he was one of the last ukiyo-e masters.

This print is Actor Kawarazaki Gonnosuke as Daroku, and was made about 1869. While the title, as well as literature to which I have access, only says Kawarazaki Gonnosuke, this most likely is Kawarazaki Gonnosuke VII, although I am not entirely certain of the number.

The picture is a yakusha-e, a portrait of a kabuki actor, but also an okubi-e, which is the term for "big head" portraits. The colours illustrate an innovation within ukiyo-e during Kunichika's career: the introduction of aniline colours to Japan. Strong red, blue, and purple aniline shades became common in prints, and they were sometimes exaggeratedly used in the last phase of ukiyo-e, during the Meiji era.

In Kabuki, red make-up indicates anger, forcefulness, and obstinacy.

07 - Hokusai: Daruma and a Courtesan

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.

06 - Kuniyasu: Rakuda no zu - A Pair of Camels

Kuniyasu: Rakuda no zu - 1824

This woodblock print from 1824 by Utagawa Kuniyasu (1794-1832) is named “Rakuda no zu”, and shows a pair of camels. They are probably the first camels ever on Japanese soil - namely the pair of camels that were brought to Japan by Jan Cock Blomhoff, the head of the Dutch East India Company, in 1821, as a gift to his Japanese courtesan. The camels were moved to Edo over the Tōkaidō road, and did get enormous attention. The courtesan showed them for money and is said to have made a fortune.

At least one source claims that the camels were intended as a gift to the Shogun, who refused to take them. They were then given to Blomhoff's courtesan.

The calligraphy is made by Santô Kyôden. It is a description of the animals and their tour in 1821.

Pictures like this are called Nagasaki-e. That is pictures of goods and animals from abroad, which (1639-1854) always entered Japan through the port Deshima in Nagasaki.

05 - Yoshitoshi: The Giant Carp

Yoshitoshi: The Great Carp

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) is often considered as the last ukiyo-e master, although there are many bids on that epithet. However, he is one of the last, and one of the great geniuses of late ukiyo-e. He feels unmistakably modern.

Here we see "The Giant Carp" from the 1880s. The red figure is Kintarō.

Kintarō, a fictitious character, is probably based on a real person: Sakata Kintoki, from the Heian period (794-1185 AD). In Japanese folklore, however, he has grown to a superhero, a boy with superhuman strength. According to legend, he was raised by Yamauba (or Yamanba), a mountain hag on Mount Ashigara (or Mount Kintoki). There are several versions of his further story, some of them contradictory.

Still a popular figure in Japanese popular culture, Kintarō had his heydays during the Edo period, frequently appearing in traditional theater (both kabuki and nō) as well as in ukiyo-e.

In this woodblock print by Yoshitoshi, Kintarō is fighting against a great carp.