Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) / Toyokuni III (三代豊国) (artist 1786 – 01/12/1865)
View of Minakuchi (Minakuchi no zu: 水口之図) from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsugi no uchi: 東海道五十三次之内)
ca 1838
Signed: Kōchōrō Kunisada ga (香蝶楼国貞画)
Publisher: Sanoya Kihei
Censor's seal: kiwame
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - published by Moriya Jihei
National Diet Library - published by both Sanoya Kihei and Moriya Jihei
Honolulu Museum of Art
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna
Fujisawa Ukiyo-e Museum - published by Moriya Jihei
Spencer Museum of Art - published by Moriya Jihei
Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art - they date their copy to 1836
Bryn Mawr
Honolulu Museum of Art - published by Moriya Jihei
Google maps - Minakuchi
Victoria and Albert Museum
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art All the prints in this series are chūban sized. The example in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is 10 1/8 x 7 5/16 in. The print in the Lyon Collection is not quite as tall because it appears to be somewhat trimmed at the top.
****
This is number 51 of the series. This print is not based on a Hiroshige template, but is wholly Kunisada's invention. We are presenting them both here, inviting your own comparison because their representations could not be more different.
****
In Tokaido Landscapes: The Path from Hiroshige to Contemporary Artists, 2011, #51, p. 64, speaking of the original Hiroshige print it says in a text by Sasaki Moritoshi: "The area around Minakuchi was known for the production of kanpyō, or dried gourd shavings. The process of shaving thin strips from the fruit of moonflowers remains a typical summer scene in that area today. The girl with the baby on her back has a moonflower gourd ready for shaving; the woman in the center dexterously shaves the fruit; the woman on the right hangs the shavings. There is a theory that Hiroshige sought to avoid a wholesale dependence on the famous products of each station, but here he consciously depicted the evocative process of making the gourd shavings in a manner that was easy to understand.
****
Muneshige Narazaki in Masterworks of Ukiyo-e: Hiroshige, the 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō (p. 87) says that the inns in this area were "...famous for serving loach soup (dojōjiru) the year round..." Later he added: "The station, some six miles from Tsuchiyama, is reached after a walk along the Yokota River."
****
Illustrated in a small color reproduction in Kunisada's Tokaido: Riddles in Japanese Woodblock Prints by Andreas Marks, Hotei Publishing, 2013, page 75, T24-51.
Sanoya Kihei (佐野屋喜兵衛) (publisher)
landscape prints (fūkeiga 風景画) (genre)
beautiful woman picture (bijin-ga - 美人画) (genre)