Shima Seien (島成園) (artist 1893 – 1970)

Departed Spirit: The heroine Yūgiri from the play 'Yūgiri and the Straits of Naruto' Yūgiri Awa no Naruto [夕霧阿波鳴渡]

Print

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Date:1923
Dimensions:11.75 in x 18 in (Overall dimensions) Medium:Japanese woodblock print
Links Harvard Art Museums
Waseda University
National Museum of Asian Art Description:Scholten Japanese Art wrote of this piece: "This print accompanied volume 9 of the set, The Complete Works of Chikamatsu (Dai Chikamatsu zenshu), which was published in 16 volumes on a monthly basis beginning in April 1922. Each volume of the first edition was comprised of the work by the famous playwright, Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) and accompanied by at least one full-sized woodblock print depicting famous roles from his plays, with a total of 18 prints issued. A second edition published in 1925 was not accompanied by the color prints."

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Published in The Complete Works of Chikamatsu [Dai Chikamatsu zenshû]), Taishô period, 1923. Reproduced in The Female Image; 20th Century Prints of Japanese Beauties, Hotei, Leiden, 2000, pg.97 and in The New Wave. 20th. Century Japanese prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection London 1993, the print with accompanying text is accorded a whole page to itself (Pl. 208).

The carver may have been Yamagishi Kazue.

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The play was first staged in 1712 - probably for the puppet theater.

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Illustrated:

1) in color in The Female Image: 20th century prints of Japanese beauties, Abe Publisher, 2000, #124, p. 97.

2) in black and white in Light in darkness : women in Japanese prints of early Shôwa (1926-1945); curators, Kendall H. Brown, et al., Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, 1996, p. 52.

3) in color in The New Wave: Twentieth-century Japanese prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection, Bamboo Publishing, Ltd. and Hotei Publishing, 1993, page 169, no. 208.
Related entities modern prints (shin hanga - 新版画) (genre)
Yūrei-zu (幽霊図 - ghosts demons monsters and spirits) (genre)
Yamagishi Kazue (山岸主計) (carver)
Yūgiri (夕霧) (role)
Taishō era (大正時代) (genre)
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (近松門左衛門) (author)

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