44 - Toyokuni I: A picnic party among blossoming plum trees

Toyokuni I: A picnic party among blossoming plum trees

This is A picnic party among blossoming plum trees, a triptych by Toyokuni I (1769-1825).

Blossoming trees are important in Japanese aesthetics. Cherry blossoms, sakura, are most highly venerated, followed by peach and plum tree blossoms - all of them common motives in Japanese art.

43 - Yoshiiku: Hyakumonogatari Ameonna

Yoshiiku: Hyakumonogatari Ameonna

Utagawa Yoshiiku (1833-1904), also known as Ochiai Yoshiiku, was one of Kuniyoshi's many students. He made portraits, bijinga, musha-e and satire. Yoshiiku also created newspaper illustrations and was a co-founder of the newspaper Tokyo E-iri Shinbun (folded in 1889).

In co-operation with Yoshitoshi, Yoshiiku also created the series  Eimei nijūhasshūku - Twenty-eight famous murders, which officially started the subgenre of ukiyo-e that is called muzan-e.

The print this week is Hyakumonogatari Ameonna (a female rain spirit), from 1890.

42 - Gekkō: Monkey and the Moon Reflection

Gekkō: Monkey and the Moon Reflection

Monkey and the Moon Reflection by Ogata Gekkō is a masterpiece in its simplicity. With very subtle means, Gekkō expresses the whole character of a playing monkey. The picture is from about 1895.

41 - Sadanobu II: Bijinga

Sadanobu II: Bijinga

This bijinga is a painting by Hasegawa Sadanobu II (active between 1867 and the 1880s). It is signed “Ho Utamaro Sadanobu”, which means “Sadanobu imitating Utamaro”. That probably refers to the style. The painting is unusual and beautiful.

40 - Hiroshige: Shōno

Hiroshige: Shōno

This print by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) shows Shōno, the 45th station of the Tōkaidō. A scene where passengers are surprised by rain.

Tōkaidō, along which Hiroshige had the opportunity to travel in 1832, was the road connecting the capital of the Shogun, Edo, with the capital of the Emperor, Kyoto.

The stations were post stations, and travellers had to have an official permit in order to cross a station. Travelling freely was not permitted in old Japan. Hiroshige's trip, however, resulted in the famous series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, 1833-1834, from which Shōno is taken. The series is Hiroshige's best known work and one of the most famous works of ukiyo-e.

See also:
Hiroshige: Kanbara

39 - Yoshitoshi: Adachigahara hitotsuya no zu - The lonely house on Adachi Moor

Yoshitoshi: The lonely house on Adachi Moor
1885

This is Adachigahara hitotsuya no zu - The lonely house on Adachi Moor, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. It illustrates a folk tale, where a woman on Adachi moor, the hag of Adachigahara, preys on children and pregnant women in order to eat them. The picture shows the moment before the hag kills her captive, a pregnant woman.

This is an example of a subgenre of ukiyo-e which is called muzan-e, or "bloody prints", and displays violence, often murder and torture. Yoshitoshi created the genre and it lived on far beyond ukiyo-e, and influences Japanese art and film still today. It also absorbed erotic motives and came to characterise some branches of Japanese pornography.

The lonely house on Adachi Moor was printed in 1885. The first genuine muzan-e, however, was the series Eimei nijūhasshūku - Twenty-eight famous murders - from 1866-1867, which Yoshitoshi and Yoshiiku created together.

38 - Koryusai: Sagi musume - The Heron Maiden

Koryusai: Sagi musume - The Heron Maiden

Here we have one of my personal bijinga favourites, “The Heron Maiden” [Sagi musume], a woodblock print by Isoda Koryusai (1735-1790).

The Heron Maiden is a character in a Japanese folk tale, and often a motive in pictorial art. Briefly, this is the story:

A young man finds a wounded heron, which he takes home and tends until it is healed. When it is, it flies away.

After some time, the man meets a girl, falls in love with her and they get married. They are happy, and to earn a living the wife weaves a precious brocade which the husband sells. But there is one constraint: the man may never watch his wife while she weaves. When he cannot resist to take a look, he sees a heron at work. In front of his eyes, the heron is transformed into his wife. But the spell is broken. When the man has seen her secret, their life together must come to an end and she must leave him. She bids him  goodbye, joins a swarm of herons and disappears.