Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) / Toyokuni III (三代豊国) (artist 1786 – 01/12/1865)
View of Kanaya (Kanaya no zu: 金谷之図) from the chuban 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: Gototei Kunisada ga (五渡亭国貞画)
Publisher: Sanoya Kihei
Censor's seal: kiwame
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - published by Moriya Jihei
National Diet Library - published by both Moriya Jihei and Sanoya Kihei
Spencer Museum of Art - published by Moriya Jihei
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Hiroshige's 'Kanaya: The Far Bank of the Ōi River' (金谷 大井川遠岸)
Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art - they date their copy to 1836
Bryn Mawr
Honolulu Museum of Art
Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts The Ōi River and its sometimes dry bed could be found in the two miles between Shimada and Kanaya. Although both towns were small they were large enough to accommodate travelers who were stranded there during heavy rains. 700 carriers were also available to transporting people and their goods across the river.
****
This is print 25 in the series. This print is very close to the Hiroshige version. The woman is holding a shamisen. The black box seen in the lower right is the carrying case for this instrument. It should be noted that in a lecture, 'The Poetics of Inscribed Kabuki Actor Prints', viewable on YouTube, by John T. Carpenter said that the three-string shamisen was "the most common instrument of the Yoshiwara brothels as well as kabuki and among geisha."
Gian Carlo Calza in his description in Hiroshige: The Master of Nature of the original Hiroshige print re-imagined in this scene said: "This is one of the landscapes that led to doubts as to whether Hiroshige, an advocate of images conforming to reality and not interpretations such as those that Hokusai [composed], ever actually travelled along the Tōkaidō, or at least whether he travelled the entire length. The imposing dark grey profile of he mountain in the background of this scene at the ferry crossing of the Ōi River is a powerful visual element, but that mountain does not actually exist....
There is an interesting gathering of people at the waterside. Using mobile platforms or simply their shoulders, porters from a village nestled in a valley of the nearby mountains are transporting the daimyo (in the sedan chair in the middle of the river), his retinue of samurai and his baggage across the river."
****
In Tokaido Landscapes: The Path from Hiroshige to Contemporary Artists, 2011, #25, p. 37, speaking of the original Hiroshige print it says in a text by Sasaki Moritoshi: "This print depicts the same daimyo's procession crossing the Ōi River, they are here seen from the Tōtōmi Province side of the river, the opposite bank from the previous print. Hiroshige again uses an elevated perspective, but the vantage point is somewhat lower and he has added mountains in the distance. A valley on the hillside is thickly settled with the buildings of the next station town, Kanaya."
****
The curatorial files say of the Munakata Shiko version in the British Museum: "In this series Munakata attempted to revive a subject which had been used by artists and writers since the later seventeenth century, originally recording the posting-stations along the mainly coastal road between Edo (Tokyo) and the old capital of Kyoto. Its best-known example was the series of prints by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858) 'Fifty-three Posting Stations on the Tokaido', published in the early 1830s. By the early twentieth century rural mountain and maritime scenes poetically described by Hiroshige had already been much altered by industrial and population growth, but Munakata overcame these potential difficulties by concentrating on either close-up views... or on the grand vista, as in this example dominated by Mount Fuji, and by the Expressionistic energy of his treatment...
He was commissioned in 1963 to do this series by the Suruga Bank, Suruga Province (modern Shizuoku Prefecture), which includes the most dramatic part of the Tokaido Road where it passed near to Mount Fuji. The artist made seven sketching trips and completed the series of sixty-two in 1964, a mixture of black and white and hand-coloured prints. Using the same sets of sketches, he made a second series of black and white prints in 1966 (Tsuikai Munakata hanga Tokaido myotai byobu).
[Timothy Clark wrote] In March 1963, at the age of sixty, Munakata was commissioned by the Suruga Bank to make a series of Tokaido prints. In the course of the next year he went on numerous field trips for this project, producing sixty-two designs, some in black and white, some with hand-colouring. For 'Kanaya', colour has been painted by hand from both the front and the back of the sheet to embellish luminously the ruggedly cut main black block. The hand-colouring for each impression is radically different: compare, for instance, the impression featured in the publication of the artist's complete works (Munakata Shiko, 'Munakata Shiko zenshu, vol. 11: Kaido no satsu', Tokyo, Kodansha, 1979, frontispiece and no. 98). However, the painted, gradated bands of deep blue across Fuji - so reminiscent of the Berlin blue of Hokusai's 'Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji' - appear fairly consistent. Each impression has a subtitle in pencil in the margin, which presumably reflects the differences in colouring - here, 'Evening peak of the heart' ('kyokin bogaku'), and on the impression in the collected works, 'Opening of the heart' ('kyokin gyokai'). Another title given to this design in the collected works is 'Fuji in Winter' ('Fuyu Fugaku no satsu'). In his diary-commentary about the series the artist describes coming over a pass from the west and suddenly seeing this vast view of the Oi River below with Fuji rising up beyond: 'My heart opened up - it was as splendid as could be' ('Nantomo subarashii ni tsukiru kyokin gyokai deshita') ('Ibid.', p. 138). In contrast, Hokusai's view of Fuji from Kanaya (cat. 69) takes us right down to the level of the Oi River."
****
Illustrated in a small color reproduction in Kunisada's Tokaido: Riddles in Japanese Woodblock Prints by Andreas Marks, Hotei Publishing, 2013, page 68, T24-25.
Sanoya Kihei (佐野屋喜兵衛) (publisher)
landscape prints (fūkeiga 風景画) (author)