A man with a shaved head (a monk), holding a paper lantern and an umbrella, walks with a young woman (a geisha) in the rain.
SIGNED: Gototei Kunisada ga [五渡亭国貞画]
Censor's seals: kiwame, futakata.
Blockcutter's mark: Seizô tô [改印：極、貳方]
MFA ACCESSION NUMBER 11.15150; MFA dating: about 1815–21 (Bunka 12–Bunsei 4);
Size: Vertical Ōban (382 x 260 mm). SOLD
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Title: Suzume fukube [美人団扇絵] (Sparrow and gourds).
Series: Kacho awase [花鳥合] (Collection of flowers and birds).
Publisher: Aritaya Seiemon [有田屋 清右衛門] (Japanese, fl. c. 1830 – 1862); Seal: Marks 17-011 | 014d.Signed: Ichiyosai Kuniyoshi ga in a red cartouche and sealed with paulownia crest (kiri mon).
Size: Uchiwa-e (untrimmed fan print) 296 x 230 mm.
Double nanushi censor seals: Kinugasa & Watanabe, Kaei 2-3 (1849–50).
Ref.: Kuniyoshi Project.
Sano Jirōzaemon [佐野次郎左衛門] – provincial commoner who killed a famous Yoshiwara courtesan named ManjiyaYatsuhashi [万字屋 八ツ橋] (on the second sheet of the pair):
 SVJP-0298.2019: Ichikawa Ebizō V as Sano Jirōzaemon. |
 SVJP-0297.2019: Iwai Kumesaburō III as Manjiya Yatsuhashi |
One more example can be seen at the two upper images in Waseda University Cultural Resources Database, № 006-2707:
Actor Onoe Baikō, artist Kunisada, publisher Ibaya Kyūbei, c. 1820.
 SVJP-0341.2021 |
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Kabuki actors Onoe Kikugorō III and Iwai Kumesaburo II. Year: c. 1832; Publisher: No seal; Signed: Kōchōrō Kunisada ga From Kunisada Project. |
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Kabuki actors Bandō Minosuke II and Iwai Shijaku I. Year: c. 1832; Publisher: No seal; Signed: Kōchōrō Kunisada ga From Kunisada Project. |
 SVJP-0342.2021 |
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Kabuki actors Onoe Kikugorō III and Iwai Kumesaburo II. Year: c. 1832; Publisher: No seal; Signed: Kōchōrō Kunisada ga From Kunisada Project. |
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Kabuki actors Bandō Minosuke II and Iwai Shijaku I. Year: c. 1832; Publisher: No seal; Signed: Kōchōrō Kunisada ga From Kunisada Project. |
Pictorial cloth boards, spiral-bound, pp.: 3 leaves: h.t., frontis., t.p., 1-326; 123 black & white plates within the pagination.
Japanese woodblock prints of the Edo period (1615-1868) were the products of a highly commercialised and competitive publishing industry. Their content was inspired by the vibrant popular culture that flourished in Edo (Tokyo). At any given time scores of publishers competed for the services of the leading artists of the day. Publishers and artists displayed tremendous ingenuity in finding ways to sustain demand for prints and to circumvent the restrictions placed on the industry through government censorship. Although Japanese prints have long been appreciated in the West for their graphic qualities, their content has not always been fully understood. This book draws on recent scholarship that makes possible a more subtle appreciation of the imagery encountered in the prints and how they would have been read when first made. Through stunning new photography of both well-known and rarely published works in the collection of the British Museum, including many recent acquisitions, the author explores how and why such prints were made, providing a fascinating introduction to a much-loved but little-understood art form.
Published to accompany the recent successful exhibition at the Museu Picasso, Barcelona, this book sheds new light on Picasso's work - his connection with Japanese art. It is illustrated with images
This catalogue features the top ten percent of the collection ... presented in an exhibition ['Great ukiyo-e masters : common pleasures, uncommon prints : Japanese woodcuts from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts', sponsored by Asano Laboratories] that opened in Tokyo at the Shoto Museum of Art on October 2, 2007, and traveled to the Nara Prefectural Museum of Art and the Sanritz Hattori Museum of Arts"--Foreword. "This [2011] publication ... coincides with a special exhibition, 'Edo Pop: Japanese Master Prints from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts' (October 16, 2011, through January 8, 2012), which will [also] be shown at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta ..."--Foreword. "With contributions by Shūgō Asano, Akane Fujisawa, Murasaki Fujisawa, Yuriko Iwakiri, Yōsuke Katō, Junko Mutō, Noriko Yamamoto. Contents: Foreword / Kaywin Feldman Acknowledgments / Matthew Welch, Yuiko Kimura-Tilford Seductive beauty : coveting and collecting Ukiyo-e / Matthew Welch Time line of the artists Catalogue of selected prints Object list in English and Japanese
Foreword: A treasure trove of ukiyo-e prints / Kobayashi Tadashi The Grabhorn ukiyo-e collection at the Asian Art Museum / Melissa M. Rinne Edwin Grabhorn : passionate printer and print collector / Julia Meech Figures of humans and animals : some early Japanese color prints from the Grabhorn Collection / David Waterhouse. Edwin Grabhorn (1889—1968), co-founder of the Grabhorn Press, Northern California's premier letterpress printer, was a pioneer American collector of Japanese prints. The Grabhorn prints in the collection of the Asian Art Museum comprise the upper echelons of the original collection. The collection includes a superb selection of early monochrome and hand-colored ukiyo-e prints by Sugimura Jihei, Torii Kiyonobu, Okumura Masanobu and others, from the seminal decades of the woodblock print production in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
SVJP-0400.2023 — Saiko:
Note by Elena Varshavsky:
Tamagiku [玉菜] (Japanese, 1702 – 1726) – Precious Chrysanthemum (translated also as Jade Chrysanthemum; one can say also Gem Chrysanthemum). She was a courtesan famous for her beauty, kind heart, and countless artistic accomplishments. She died young and was deeply grieved by the establishment of Nakamanji-ya (中万字屋) for which she worked, and beyond. Her memory was celebrated during the Bon festival of the commemoration of the dead, and lanterns were hung at the gallery of that establishment and other neighbouring ones to commemorate her and appease her soul. These lanterns are seen behind her. Kabuki plays were continuously dedicated to her, she figured in Edo period literature and was often portrayed on ukiyo-e prints. In many cases, she was shown with the lanterns associated with her. Those lanterns were called “Tamagiku Lanterns”.
Other depictions of Tamagiku:
Tamagiku (Ancient and modern women's biography) by Kunisada, 1859.
Courtesan Tamagiku by Kunichika.
Tamagiku of the Nakamanjiya, Inaki Shinnojō, and Nakamanjiya Yahei (looking through the window) by Kunisada.
Nakamanji-Ya Tamagiku by Kunisada
Nakamanji-Ya Tamagiku by Kunisada, 1857
Horst Graebner also noted that the performance took place at Nakamura Theatre in Edo on Bunsei 13/03 (03/1830) (see Waseda University Cultural Resources Database # 100-4224):
Toyokuni II
"...The play Yoshitsune Koshigoe-jo was originally written for the puppet theatre (Bunraku) and staged for the first time in the 7th lunar month of 1754 in Ôsaka at the Toyotakeza. It was a revision of two early plays, Namiki Sōsuke's Nanbantetsu Gotō no Menuki (1735) and Yoshitsune Shin Fukumijō (1744). The title, which suggested that the play focused on Minamoto no Yoshitsune, was in fact dealing with the siege of the Ōsaka Castle, led by Tokugawa Ieyasu to destroy the Toyotomi clan in 1614 and 1615. This play was quickly forbidden because of the 4th act in which Gotobei's wife fired a gun at Yoritomo (this was of course interpreted as an attack on the Shogunate). Yoshitsune Koshigoe-jo was revised in 1770 by Toyotake Ōritsu, who completely rewrote the 4th act for a puppet production at the Kitahorieza in Ōsaka". Yoshitsune Koshigoe-jo was staged for the first time in Edo, at the Ichimuraza on the 9th lunar month of 1790, and is still performed.
Gotobei [五斗兵衛] (Gotohei or Gotobē), one of Yoshitsune’s loyal retainers, is forced to choose between his son’s life or his loyalty to Yoshitsune. Nishikidō brothers, who do not want Gotobei to become Yoshitsune's chief strategist, forced him to drink sake and get asleep. To prove Gotobei's military abilities, Izumi no Saburō fires a gun next to Gotobei's ear, and "he jumps up immediately, in full possession of his senses, ready to repulse any enemy". See: [LIB-1193.2013] Samuel L. Leiter. Kabuki Encyclopedia: An English-language adaptation of Kabuki Jiten. — Westport, CT; London: Greenwood Press, 1979; pp. 266-7).
Ref: [LIB-2993.2022] Fig. 24 in Israel Goldman. Japanese prints and paintings / 40th anniversary; Catalogue 27, 2021.
Two more Kunisada's fan prints (in Paul Griffith's collection), depicting the same actor Nakamura Shikan II as Toneri Matsuōmaru [舎人松王丸] were published in 1832 by Iseya Ichiemon. The play was Sugawara's Secrets of Calligraphy [菅原伝授手習鑑] (Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami). See: [LIB-1212.2017] Robert Schaap. Kunisada: Imaging, drama and beauty / Introduction by Sebastian Izzard, contributions by Paul Griffith and Henk. J. Herwig. — Leiden: Hotei Publishing, ©2016.
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Signed: Toyohiro ga [豐廣画]
Catalogue raisonné: Jacob Pins, The Japanese Pillar Print, № 923, p. 326.
豊国三代「豊歳子日若菜摘ノ図」
Metal. Izzard, 2020.
Fire. Faulkner, 2001.
