Ehon onna imagawa 絵本女今川

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Commentary by Anne Yonemura

Posted November 2014

Onna imagawa is a book of admonitions for girls to promote virtuous character. It was written by Sawada Kichi, a woman who adapted it from Imagawa-jō, a book of admonitions written to his son by the poet and warrior Imagawa Sadayo 今川貞世 (1325–1420), who was also known as Ryōshun 了俊 (Toda 1931, p. 266; Steenstrup 1973). Due to its widespread use, Sawada’s book was published in many editions, some illustrated, beginning around 1700. It also was used as a textbook and model for practicing calligraphy.

Hokusai’s illustrated version, titled Ehon onna imagawa on the daisen and Hokusai onna imagawa on the title page, has no colophon and is undated. Most catalogues give a date of publication as 1844, but Jack Hillier suggests the date might be earlier, perhaps 1828 (Hillier 1980, pp. 201–202). Both monochrome and color printings exist. The uncolored edition displays outstanding impression quality and is an earlier imprint. [1]

The unusually elaborate designs on the covers feature embossed white chrysanthemums against a colorful background of horizontal stripes. The daisen inscription is printed over a pattern of white floral roundels on a red ground. The title page is filled with a dense composition of spring garden flowers.

The thirteen double-page illustrations are each preceded by double pages of text in large-scale semicursive calligraphy that combines Chinese characters with cursive phonetic hiragana. Readings in hiragana are provided for each Chinese character. Hokusai presented a variety of compositions, which range from tranquil, domestic scenes to dramatic and even violent confrontations. They do not directly illustrate the text, although their narratives may elaborate on an element of the teaching.

Selected reading:

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

Jack Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book, vol. 1 (New York: Sotheby’s Publication, 1987).

Karl Steenstrup, “The Imagawa Letter: A Muromachi Warrior’s Code of Ethics which became a Tokugawa Schoolbook,” Monumenta Nipponica 28, no. 3 (autumn 1973).

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).

Copies in other collections:

Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson Collection

British Library, London

Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Library, Special Collections, Smithsonian Institution Libraries (754.7H8f c. 1 and 754.7H8f c.2)

Library of Congress

National Institute of Japanese Literature

Rijksmuseum vor Volkenkunde, Leiden

[1] An example of each type is in the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Special Collections, Smithsonian Institution Libraries.