Denshin gakyō (Denshin kaishu) 伝心画鏡 (伝神開手)

FSC-GR-780.252

Commentary by Ann Yonemura

Posted November 2014

The illustrations in this book, called Denshin gakyō according to its title page, are repeated in part in a color version, Shūga ichiran, that is usually dated by its preface to 1818 (Yonemura 2006, vol. 1, p. 38 and vol. 2, p. 72). This example in the Pulverer collection is uncolored and has a title label (daisen) on its front cover that gives a slightly different title (Denshin kaishu) Hokusai gakyō. The colophon page on the inside back cover states that this volume is a reprint from the seventh lunar month of Tenpō 5 (1834). An earlier date—Bunka 8 (the new year of 1811)—also appears on the colophon page after identifying Hokusai as the artist and Ozaki Shōkurō as the block-carver. The Pulverer volume includes the 1818 preface.

Because the uncolored and full-color versions have somewhat different content and generally lack colophons, their publication history is difficult to ascertain. However, the colophon in the uncolored Pulverer example clearly indicates that it was issued in 1834, at the height of Hokusai’s fame as a designer of color print series. He is identified as “Katsushika Iitsu rōjin,” the name he was using at that point, rather than with an earlier name that would correspond to a previous printing. The colophon in the Pulverer volume provides valuable evidence for one datable reprint in the history of publication of these images.

The significance of the Bunka 8 date is difficult to interpret. [1] It is seven years earlier than the preface date of 1818 that is usually accepted as the date of publication for either of the book’s two titles. However, the earlier date suggests Hokusai created these lively images before he launched his extraordinarily successful Manga series, rather than after the first volumes of Manga were published around 1814 (see FSC-GR-780.233.1–14 and FSC-GR-780.254).

Whatever its publication history, this book of miscellaneous, occasionally humorous, images of a wide variety of subjects must have been popular, since it was reprinted in more than one version. The images appear on pages that are divided horizontally or occasionally vertically. Four scenes, usually detailed settings and landscape scenes, are depicted on most of the double-page openings.

Selected reading:

Jack Hillier, The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration (London: Sotheby Parke-Bernet Publications; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 112–19.

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

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 (Hokusai gakyō)

British Library, London

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Library (NE 1325 K3 A762 1818 [Shūga ichiran])

[1] Toda 1931, p. 257, also notes the Bunka 8 (1811) date without comment in his brief description of the example in the Ryerson Collection, Art Institute of Chicago.