Tōshisen ehon gogon ritsu 唐詩選画本五言律

FSC-GR-780.218.1–5

Commentary by Ann Yonemura

Posted November 2014

The five volumes ofEhon Tōshisen (Illustrated Tang Poems) illustrated by Hokusai and published in 1833 (Tenpō 4) are the sixth of a nine-part series begun by the Edo publisher Kobayashi Shinbei (Suwaraya) in 1788. The same publisher had produced an unillustrated edition of the text in 1724. Earlier volumes in the series were published under the title Tōshisen ehon, which is also the internal title of this edition (Toda 1931, pp. 259–61). Verses by poets of the Tang dynasty (618–907) are reproduced in various calligraphic styles that reflect the antiquity of the poetry. Japanese phonetic (hiragana) notations provide readings of the Chinese characters, which are followed by an explication in Japanese. The illustrators for parts 1–3 were selected for their familiarity with Chinese artistic styles and subjects. Tachibana Sekihō, the illustrator for part 1 (1788), and Suzuki Fuyō (1752–1816), illustrator for part 2 (1814), were Nanga painters; a third artist, Takata Enjō, was a painter of the Kanō school, which specialized in older Chinese painting styles.

The continuation of this series in multivolume parts and the reprinting of some of those parts attest to the popularity of Chinese literature (especially this series of classical poems) among the Sinophile literati—Japanese scholars, poets, calligraphers, and artists—whose interests were a strong cultural force during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Tōshisen ehon series, with its transliterations and explications, was clearly designed to appeal to members of a wider audience who were not necessarily able to read Chinese yet were fascinated by the cultural prestige of Chinese literature and the beauty of Chinese painting styles. Widespread interest in China had been fostered during the early nineteenth century by extraordinarily popular Japanese illustrated serializations of Chinese warrior and adventure tales.

The illustrated poems in this set are in the Chinese form of five-character lu (ritsu in Japanese), each comprising eight verses of five Chinese characters each. The Pulverer collection also includes a set of five volumes of seven-character lu published in 1836. Hokusai’s illustrations reflect his extensive experience as an illustrator of Chinese subjects, particularly in the popular Suikoden narrative published between 1805 and 1835. They also reveal his familiarity with Chinese painting styles for landscapes and other subjects, such as birds, animals, and flowers.

Hokusai’s mature and sophisticated style in Ehon Tōshisen relates closely to his original and artistically innovative designs for single-sheet prints and books during the 1830s. His greatest landscape print series—including Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokukei, circa 1830–32) andTraveling the Circuit of Waterfalls of Various Provinces (Shokoku taki meguri, circa 1832)—belong to this period. Hokusai also created a series of extraordinarily beautiful single-sheet color prints of Chinese and Japanese poets in the nagaban format that resembles in miniature the proportions of a hanging scroll painting. These prints lack verses and are clearly designed to appeal to a wide audience, including those with a limited ability to read. The continuum of adaptations for audiences of different levels of education and literacy that is revealed by Hokusai’s publications of the 1830s reflects the critical role Edo publishers played in disseminating subject matter that formerly had been restricted to a literate and bilingual elite.

Selected reading:

Jack Hillier, The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration (London: Sotheby Parke-Bernet Publications; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 233–35.

Toda Kenji, Descriptive Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Illustrated Books in the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago (1931; repr., Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2005), pp. 259–61.

Ellis Tinios, “Imagining China in Tokugawa Japan,” Andon 58 (1998), pp. 19–27.

Copies in other collections:

Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson Collection

British Library, London

National Institute of Japanese Literature

New York Public Library

Ehon Tōshisen gogonritsu hairitsu