Azuma asobi 東遊

FSC-GR-780.235

Commentary by Ann Yonemura

Posted November 2014

With the publication of Azuma asobi in 1799, Hokusai began to give greater prominence to his illustrations for collections of contemporary kyōka poetry. The twenty-eight illustrations in this volume reveal his exploration of elaborate figures and landscape or cityscape compositions in single and double-page formats. They reflect his familiarity and interest in conveying the scenery, crowds, and incessant activity in the great metropolis of Edo.

Although his illustrations were initially printed in line only, with no color, Hokusai clearly intended them to form a coherent series that would engage the reader and provide as much interest and amusement as the poems. The single-page illustrations feature close-up views of craftsworkers and retail shops, including that of Tsutaya Juzaburō, the publisher of Azuma asobi. Another scene depicts children attempting to catch a glimpse of Dutch merchants, who are partially concealed in a building with barred windows. During their occasional trips from Nagasaki to the shogun’s capital, foreigners were kept away from the Japanese populace.

In the larger double-page format, Hokusai employs many of his most effective compositional techniques for engaging the viewer. Nihonbashi, the crowded bridge at the Edo terminus of the Tōkaidō, the main road to the imperial capital Kyoto, is shown from above, with crowds spilling into the foreground. The shogun’s castle towers nearby, breaking through the border of the picture. Mount Fuji appears in the distance in some scenes, and several of the depicted sites are also included in Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei) published thirty years later.

Selected reading:

Jack Hillier, The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration (London: Sotheby Parke-Bernet Publications; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 43–46.

Jack Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book, vol. 1 (New York: Sotheby’s Publication, 1987), p. 497.

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), p. 235.