Ehon mushi erami 絵本虫えらみ

FSC-GR-780.321.1-2

Commentary by Julie Nelson Davis

Posted September 30, 2015

Published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō, this kyōka album takes up the theme of mushi, a category that includes insects, amphibians, and reptiles, with poetry selected by Yadoya no Meshimori and illustrations contributed by Kitagawa Utamaro. The colophon includes advertisements for three forthcoming titles to be illustrated by Utamaro and edited by Yadoya no Meshimori on the themes of birds (鳥), animals (獣), and fish (魚). Of these, only the volume on birds was produced. [1]

The opening preface by Meshimori sets the stage for the occasion on which these poems were composed (or at least this is the pretense): “On this, the night of the fourteenth of the eighth month, the usual group of comic poets dragged one another along to listen to the voices of the insects that chirp in the fields.” [2] Explaining that they took their poetry seriously this time—and did not indulge in drinking sake—they wiled away the night considering the singing insects in a contest of “playful poems on the sentiments of love.” [3]

Each of the fifteen illustrated pages features two poems, each by one poet, on the mushi depicted. For example, in the first double-page opening with paper wasps and a caterpillar, two poems appear along the left border. The first, by Shiriyake no Sarundo (painter Sakai Hōitsu), has been translated, “Like reaching into an opening in a beehive, I’m timid when meeting a lovely young maiden who tastes as sweet as honey” (こわごわに/とる蜂のすの/ あなにえや/うましおとめを/みつのあちわい). [4] (The word hachi, or bee, can refer to wasps as well as to honeybees, and Utamaro’s decision to depict wasps instead of honeybees might suggest he was informed of the theme but had not seen the poem when he made his design.) In the second poem by Yomo no Akara (Ōta Nanpo), the poem for the caterpillar says, “If you crawl all over her, you’ll only get stung yourself, since, as the saying goes, ‘If you blow on another’s hair, your own faults will show!’” (毛をふいて/くずやをもとめん/さしつけて/きみがあたりに/はいかかりなば). [5] Here, the poem plays on the image of a hairy insect and aligns it with a phrase about not meddling with things that are fine as they are and are better left alone.

The Pulverer copy of this work is a later printing, and the two volumes have been rebound as one. Its famous postscript by Toriyama Sekien, Utamaro’s teacher, has been moved to the front of the volume. In this text Sekien praises his student by using established rhetoric about Utamaro’s talent for learning directly from nature (rather than from the years he spent in Sekien’s studio studying established precedents). Using tropes long familiar in Chinese and Japanese painting histories to refer to “natural genius,” Sekien wrote, “These are true pictures from the heart—my student Utamaro captures the life expressed in the being of the insects, and he follows the laws of painting in pictures and abides by the rules of the brush to draw life in its heart and spirit.” [6] Comparing compositions by Utamaro and those by Sekien and others reveals the student was skilled at melding observations of nature with painted images on the theme of insects. Sekien also acknowledges the skill woodblock carver Fuji Kazumune, a highly regarded artisan in his own right, for his contribution to the project.

For a digital presentation of this title that features translations of all the poems and a commentary by John T. Carpenter, see the website of the Fitzwilliam Museum: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/utamaro/start.html

Copies held in the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and other museums may also be viewed online. See also the facsimile version by Betchaku and Mirviss cited below.

Selected readings:

Asano Shūgō and Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun; London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1995).

Yasuko Betchaku and Joan B. Mirviss, Songs of the Garden (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984).

Julie Nelson Davis, “Tsutaya Jūzaburō, Master Publisher,” in Julia Meech and Jane Oliver, eds., Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680–1860 (New York: Asia Society and Japanese Art Society of America; Seattle: University of Washington Press), 115–41.

Julie Nelson Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty (London: Reaktion Books; Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007).

Suzuki Toshiyuki 鈴木俊幸, Tsutaya Jūzaburō 『蔦屋重三郎』 , vol. 9 of Kinsei bungaku kenkyū sōsho 近世文学研究叢書 (Tokyo: Wakakusa shobō, 1998).

Copies in other collections:

Art Institute of Chicago

British Museum, London

Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

Chiba City Museum of Art, Chiba

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University

Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge

Donald and Mary Hyde Collection

Japan Ukiyo-e Museum, Matsumoto

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin

National Diet Library, Tokyo

New York Public Library

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Takima Bunkō

Tōyō Bunko, Tokyo

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Werner Schindler Collection

[1] Momo chidori kyōka awase, ca. 1790 (百千鳥狂歌合, 寛政２年).

[2] Translated by Timothy T. Clark, in Asano Shūgō and Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun; London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1995), vol. 2, entry 463.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Translated by John T. Carpenter, presented in the online exhibition of Utamaro kyōka books at the Fitzwilliam Museum: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/utamaro/start.html (accessed July 21, 2015).

[5] Ibid.

[6] Translated by the author in Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty (London: Reaktion Books; Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 56.