Utagawa Kuninaga (歌川國長) (artist ca 1779 – 1827)
Mitate representations of the Eight Legendary Chinese Wizards or Fūryū hachi sennin (風流八仙人)
10/1806
10.125 in x 14.875 in (Overall dimensions) Japanese woodblock print
Signed: Kuninaga ga (国長画)
Publisher: Izumiya Ichibei
(Marks 180 - seal not listed)
Censor's seal: kiwame
Date seal: 1806, 11th month
Royal Museums of Art and History, Belgium (via Cultural Japan) - left-hand panel only
The Chester Beatty Library
Lyon Collection - Kiyochika representation of Kinkō, the Taoist immortal, riding on a fish The Cooper-Hewitt describes their copy as: "Sennin are immortals who have gained magical powers through asceticism and the teachings of Taoism. The sennin encountered so often in Chinese and Japanese lore are usually pictured as wizened old men with large ears, scanty clothing, and long beards. Kuninaga’s triptych, however, illustrates eight of the sennin’s attributes, and here the Taoist ascetics appear in the guise of eight fashionable Edo beauties. In the left panel, Chokwaro releases a magic horse from a gourd; Oshikyo rides a white crane. The center panel depicts Kinko riding her carp-steed, Chinnan conjuring a dragon, and Tekkai breathing forth a reproduction of herself. The right panel depicts Koreijin with a tiger, Chokiuka transforming cuttings from her robes into butterflies, and Gama playing with her toad."
[Onomastics is the study of names. In and of itself, it is a worthy and fascinating field of study, but the problem lies in the orthography (i.e., spelling). No one seems to have established an absolute rule on how names are to be spelled, which makes it incredibly difficult for the scholar or just plain curious to do serious research. That is why we have started adding guides on many pages which give the alternate spellings for many of the names found on each individual page. While this may seem to be an in-the-weeds problem, we assure you it is meant to help you cut through the mass of confusion that thwarts further in-depth explorations. For example, the sennin called Chokiuka (張 can also be found spelled as Chang Kiu Ko or Zhang Ju Qiao (張巨喬) in Chinese transliterations. The British Museum gives it as Zhang Jiuge 張九哥 and Chochuka. Henri Joly also uses the same Chinese characters.
Click on the image on this page to enlarge it. Enlarge it even further and you will see that the standing woman along the right edge of the right-hand panel has released a group of seven butterflies which have come to life from fabric she hss cut into the shape of those creatures. She is Chokiuka, aka Zhong Jiuge. It says in the Tales of Immortals, compiled by Yuan Yang, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 2nd edition, 2010, pages 107-108, in the section called 'Brocade Bees and Butterflies': "During the Qingli reign period (1041-1048) of Emperor Renzong of the Song Dynasty, a man named Zhang Jiuge, who was reputed to have magic powers, lived in the capital. One day Prince Yan asked Zhang Jiuge: "Do you know Taoist magic?" "No," Zhang Jiuge replied. "Do you have any skills?" "I can only let others be happy." Prince Yan burst oout laughing, and gave him a gift of expensive wine." Several years passed until Zhang Jiuge came to the residence of Prince Yan again. He announced that he was about to depart on a long journey, whereupon Prince Yan prepared a farewell banquet for him. During the banquet, Zhang Jiuge said to Prince Yan: "May I amuse Your Highness with some of my trifling skills?" Then Zhang Jiuge asked for a bolt of cloth and from this he cut out the shapes of bees and butterflies. As soon as one was finished it would take flight. Soon swarms were flying all about the room. Then Zhang Jiuge captured then all in his hands, with the exception of one, and they turned back into the bolt of brocade.]
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The use of beautiful young women as stand-ins for the Taoist immortals
The use of substitutes or mitate in Japanese woodblock prints is common. The term 'mitate' has many shades of meaning, but here, for our purposes, it is the use of beautiful young women in lieu of the original Taoist figures. We will focus briefly on just one of them, a woman riding an enormous fish while reading a love letter. She represents the immortal Kinkō 子英 (in Chinese it is Qingao 琴高). Kuninaga was not the first to use this trope. Utamaro had created a similar image in the early 1790s, Harunobu had used this image more than once in ca. 1768-69, and Okumura Masanobu before him in the early 18th century.
Note that we have added two jpegs below the featured triptych on this page. One is by Utamaro and the other is Harunobu. David Waterhouse wrote on page 311 in the text volume of The Harunobu Decade: "The conceit in all these Daoist mitate is that beautiful courtesans possess and can confer on others the secret of immortality. These prints were therefore suitable as congratulatory gifts at New Year."
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Illustrated
1) in color in a three page foldout in Ukiyo-e Masterpieces in European Collections: Museo d'Arte Orientale, Genoa II, vol. 11, Kodansha, 1989, supervised by Muneshige Narazaki, #125.
2) in black and white in Japanese Woodblock Prints in the Collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Design, 1979, page 13. Their title is 'Beauties Impersonating the Eight Sennin'. They date their copy to 1818.
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"This triptych depicts the eight famous Chinese hermits or wizards (Ba Xian) as contemporary beauties in various poses. These figures are, from left to right: Zhang Guo-lao depicted as a young courtesan in a long-sleeved kimono, shaking a horse out of a bottle gourd; Wang Zi-qiao, as a noble woman riding on a crane; Lu Dong-bin as a samurai's wife, calling forth a dragon out of a bowl in her hand; Qin Gao as a geisha riding on a carp; Li Tie-guai as a concubine, blowing out a small image of herself; the 'Toad' Wizard as a girl of the merchant class, playing a game using different hand shapes with a frog; Feng Gan as a courtesan, accompanied by a tiger; and Zhuang-zi, famous for his dream of a butterfly, as a wife of the merchant class."
Quoted from: English Supplement: Ukiyo-e Masterpieces in European Collections 11, Museo d'Arte Orientale, Genoa, II, Kodansha, n.d., p. 8, Pl. 125.
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The woman riding on the fish in the center panel represents Kinkō (Qingao 琴高) the Taoist immortal. The figure standing on the far left represents Chōkarō (Zhang Guo-lao 张果老). Zhang Guo-lao rode around China on a remarkable donkey that could be folded up like a piece of origami. Zhang often rode it backwards. He is often seen carrying a peacock feather and a peach, which is not evident here. He could also produce a magical horse which he carried in a gourd with him.
Izumiya Ichibei (和泉屋市兵衛) (publisher)
mitate-e (見立て絵) (genre)