Yoshifuji | Two young women decorating for the Tanabata Festival
歌川芳藤 Utagawa Yoshifuji（1828 - 1887）
七夕多晴月
Two young women decorating for the Tanabata Festival
1851-53
木版画 | 横绘中判 | 28.5 x 22.5cm
Woodblock-print | Chuban yoko-e | 28.5 x 22.5cm
早期版次；颜色鲜艳；左上角经修复
Uncut fan; early impression; fine color; upper left corner restored
$2,600
It’s the seventh day of the seventh month on the Lunar calandar, the day of the Tanabata Festival. Two young women affix paper on which they’d written wishes to bamboo stalks that will then wave in the wind. Perhaps they are sharing some gossip as well. Whatever, they are having fun. Their kimonos and sashes are a riot of patterns, all intersecting energetically. The fan shape of the print adds wonderfully to the composition.
Orihime and Hikoboshi, legend has it, were lovers in the sky -- they were represented by the stars Vega and Altair -- and separated by the Milky Way, except on this date. Because the lunar calandar changes, the festival occurs on a different day every year, but usually in mid July. Hiroshige also famously depicted it.
Most prints designed for fans were cut and pasted to the fans themselves, ending their lives as free-standing prints. Well-preserved ones like this are rare indeed.
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Utagawa Yoshifuji（1828 - 1887）
Utagawa Yoshifuji had talent but lived in the wrong era. He was born in 1828 and became a student of the great Utagawa Kuniyoshi, but by the time he died in 1887, Ukiyoe was in decline. While there was still some great work being produced in those waning days of Japanese woodblock prints, the competition was tougher, the audience smaller.
Yoshifuji’s output touched on all the major themes of these years – warriors, Yokohama-e, bijin. This fan print of two young women writing down their wishes and attaching them to bamboo stalks for the Tanabata Festival is undeniably lovely. But in the end, Yoshifuji’s legacy was in omocha-e, or paintings of toys. This even earned him the nickname, Omocha Yoshifuji. He also illustrated children's books.
What could he do? He had to make a living using skills that were fast passing from popular favor. So: prints for children it was.
The scholar Rebecca Salter points out that these children’s prints were not without merit, even if serious collectors may have scoffed:
“The standard of production was undeniably inferior to earlier prints, but this does not mean that these prints are not worthy of attention,” she wrote. “They may have been made as throwaway items (and indeed few remain) but they demonstrate a visual sophistication reminiscent of earlier prints and can reveal subtle insights into the forces working to change Japanese society from within and without.”