Toyokuni III | Actor Sawamura Tanosuke III as Mishima Osen, Selected Underworld Characters for the Six Poetic Immortals
三代目歌川豐国 Utagawa Toyokuni III (1786–1865)
见立白波六歌撰 伪小町 三岛阿仙
Actor Sawamura Tanosuke III as Mishima Osen, from the series of Selected Underworld Characters for the Six Poetic Immortals
1861
木版画 | 纵绘大判 | 36.5cm x 25.3cm
Woodblock-print | Oban tate-e triptych | 36.5cm x 25.3cm
品相完好
Fine condition
$1,250
六歌仙，是《古今和歌集》序文中所提到的，六位平安时期最具代表性的歌人之合称。著名的歌人小野小町就身列其中，且为入选的唯一女性。尽管小野小町的生平事迹早已亡佚，但关于她的传说逸事，古往今来仍不可胜数。她绝代风华的美貌，风流蕴藉的才情，以及寂寥无常的终生，都令人感慨万千。
由于小町实在太过出名，后世的人们便将一切能与她产生关联的人或事，都冠以一个“小町”之名；以她为母题创作的各种文艺作品，则更是五花八门。本作名中的“伪小町”，就是一个很好的例子。
本作中的主角名为三岛阿仙，生平现已不可考，或为传说人物。按照江户时代的一些话本描述，她生活在平安时代末期到镰仓时代初期，是一名为报未婚夫灭门之仇，发誓要斩杀仇人北条时政的烈女；而在明治期后的净琉璃中，她又成为了一位为复仇只身大战北条军，最终英勇战死的女山贼首领。但无论如何，她的形象都是富有传奇色彩的。也正因如此，艺术家们才会将她与小町联想到一起。
画中的阿仙戴着头巾，双眼睥睨，牙关紧咬。虽是一身典型的女性纹样衣装，但衣面零星点缀的毗沙门龟甲纹仿佛宝铠覆身，暗暗表露出一股女武神般的气概；既然“披坚”就定要执锐，阿仙此时的袖内，或就藏着一把寒光闪闪的胁差，正准备要向仇敌奋起一击，也未可知。最带动观者情绪的瞬间，恰在这将发未发之时。
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Utagawa Toyokuni III (1786–1865)
In the pantheon of Japanese woodblock prints, some names loom large and legendary – Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro, to name a few. Each in his own way revolutionized his genre. But for sheer productivity and quality and longevity, no one rivals the great Utagawa Kunisada. He was without a doubt the most prolific Ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, and the quality of his work was remarkably high throughout his lifetime.
His life caught the tail end of the early golden age of Ukiyo-e and ended during the final, halcyon days of Japanese woodblock printmaking. His legacy lived on with many famous pupils. In between, he produced countless designs of bijin (beautiful women), warriors, legends, Surimono, more bijin, the Tale of Genji, actors, landscapes, Shunga, fan prints and even more bijin. He led the Utagawa School, home to Hiroshige among others, for nearly 40 years.
His work embraced a subtle elegance and simplicity, a timelessness, when other woodblock artists often favored busy energy. Except when it didn’t. (Read on.)
He was born in 1796 and always had a steady income from his family’s ferry business – making him unusual in the world of Ukiyo-e, where so many struggled to make ends meet. He became a student of Toyokuni when he was 15. The master gave him the name Kunisada, using the tradition of a teacher starting a student’s name with the end of his own.
After getting his start doing book designs, Kunisada saw his first major successes in the 1820s. His initial specialties were bijin and warriors, as well as erotic books. He often put his subjects in well-drawn landscapes but rarely produced pure landscapes themselves.
One example of this occurred in the early 1830s when, reacting to the runaway success of Hiroshige’s Great Tokaido series, he began his own series that copied Hiroshige’s designs but placed a beautiful woman in the foreground. While Hiroshige’s prints were oban yoko-e (horizontal oban prints), Kunisada’s “copies” were smaller chuban-size prints, meaning two could be cut from a single oban-sized sheet. These little prints were phenomenally successful – as successful at least as Hiroshige’s – and eventually Kunisada was publishing his little Tokaido prints ahead of Hiroshige’s, and thus designing his own background landscapes.
Kunisada would later produce the “two-brush” Tokaido series with Hiroshige in the 1850s, in which he drew figures in the foreground while Hiroshige supplied beautiful little landscapes behind them. This was one of several notable woodblock print collaborations during his lifetime.
By then, Kunisada had taken the name Toyokuni III, to honor his master. (Toyokuni II had already been taken by Toyoshige, though Kunisada didn’t acknowledge the legitimacy. But that’s another story for another day.)
He kept going and going. In fact, in his long life, 1852 was his most productive year. His design skills were later matched by new technologies in woodblock prints, and some of his final series feature spectacular and intricate production, such as “Lasting Impressions of a Later Genji Collection” in 1859-61 and “A Contest of Magic Scenes by Toyokuni” in 1861-4. Okay – this series was not subtle: It featured over-the-top designs of Kabuki actors with fabled and ghostly beasts. Double-printing, mica, burnishing, raised printing, heavy paper, complex bokashi – no expense was spared for these deluxe editions.
Kunisada was generous with his students, many of whom went on to great success, including Kunichika, Kunisada II, Sadahide, and Kunihisa II. This last pupil, who among other projects designed the in-set landscapes in Kunisada’s wonderful “100 Famous Sights in Edo Matched with Beautiful Women” in 1857-1858, was a rarity among Ukiyo-e artists – a woman.
Kunisada died in 1865, just three years before the end of the Tokugawa epoch, leaving behind a body of work unmatched in his time.
Don’t believe me? Checkout The Kunisada Project. It’s all there. Just make sure you have some time.
Citation: Research for this brief biography included “Japanese Woodblock Prints” by Andreas Marks (Tuttle; 2010), among other sources.