Saishiki mitsu no asa 彩色美津朝

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Commentary by Julie Nelson Davis

Posted July 13, 2017

In Saishiki mitsu no asa (The colors of the triple dawn) Torii Kiyonaga depicts seven scenes of New Year’s activities. The title plays on the notion of the start of the new year as a triple dawn: the first day of the first month of the new year. Each illustration is made as a sheet print, folded down the center, and the outer edges are joined to the next to create this luxurious album.

Following the preface praising the talent of the illustrator, the book is comprised entirely of images of the first occasions enjoyed by people of various ranks in Edo culture. The first six of these are matched in a manner that suggests a deliberate pairing of the courtly with the urban chic. The writing of the first poem opens the volume, depicting women of high status wearing courtly garb; these are followed by courtesans from the Tsuruya house on their first parade in the Yoshiwara. In the next scene men in courtly costume demonstrate their skill at their first archery competition, while in the following a merchant family enjoys the first opening of its storehouse, the elderly patriarch paying homage to Daikoku, the god of wealth, while young girls play their first game of shuttlecock and battledore. A handsome young man taking his first ride on horseback, watched with admiration by samurai-class women and their attendants, is likewise compared to a view of women from the town enjoying their first morning ablutions in an interior surrounded by snow.

The seventh and final scene shows the shop exterior of the publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi (Eijudō 永寿堂) with the first printed works of the New Year now available for sale. The title of this album, issued by Nishimuraya, is listed on the pillar at left while other works, also in Kiyonaga style, are prominently displayed. Born the son of a bookseller, Kiyonaga was apprenticed from the age of ten in the atelier of Torii Kiyomitsu (1735–1785); he was later adopted into the line and given the name Torii Kiyonaga. [1] Although the Torii line’s main trade was in materials for kabuki, Kiyonaga became one of the most influential designers of his era in the genre of bijinga (pictures of beautiful women), due in no small part to Nishimuraya’s patronage. Nishimuraya’s seal appears on many Kiyonaga designs, indicating his frequent commission of the artist, in a collaboration that began at least a decade prior to this project. [2] Depicting the publisher’s shop as the final image in this volume pays homage to their long-term partnership in the print trade, mimicked in the design of the colophon page.

The Pulverer copy of this title includes the rectangular red seal of the French critic and connoisseur Théodore Duret (1838–1927), visible in the lower left of the colophon page. An early advocate of the Impressionists, Duret was an avid collector of Japanese books. In 1900, he compiled the early catalogue of the Japanese prints and illustrated books in the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, where he expressed the views of his generation. For Duret and many of his circle, Kiyonaga was one of the most sublime designers of ukiyo-e. Duret put this succinctly, writing that:

Among the great artists who, at the end of the eighteenth century, have taken printing in color to its perfection, Kiyonaga is the greatest. His design in a powerful style is at the same time both firm and supple—and where one does not sense any hesitation—and it gives his figures a natural allure, animated with an intensity of life, and creating among these, in groups full of movement, an arrangement at once simple and balanced.

(Parmi les grands artistes qui, à la fin du XVIIIème siècle, ont porté la graveur en couleur à sa perfection, Kyonaga [sic.] est le plus grand. Son dessin d’un style puissant, à la fois ferme et souple, où l’on ne sent aucune hesitation, donne des personnages aux allures naturelles, animés d’une vie intense, liés entre eux, dans des groups pleins de movement, d’un arrangement à la fois simple et équilibré.)

Duret supplied only a short description about this title in the catalogue, observing that it is “one of the perfect works by Kiyonaga” (“une des oeuvres parfaites de Kyonaga”). [3] According to the note appended to the opening sheet of the Pulverer impression, this copy may previously have been in the collection of the German-French art dealer Siegfried Bing (1838–1905), from whom Duret purchased numerous items. The Pulverer copy retains its original cover and fine printing.

Selected readings:

Chiba City Museum of Art 千葉市美術館, ed., Torii Kiyonaga: Edo no Vi-nasu tanjō 『鳥居清長: 江戸のヴィーナス誕生』　(Chiba: Chiba City Museum of Art, 2007).

Julie Nelson Davis, Partners in Print: Artistic Collaboration and the Ukiyo-e Market (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015).

Théodore Duret, Livres et albums illustrés du Japon (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1900).

Chie Hirano, Kiyonaga: A Study of his Life and Works (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1939).

Yamaguchi Keizaburō 山口桂三郎, “Torii Kiyonaga to sono shūhen ni tsuite” 「鳥居清長とその周辺について」,in Kiyonaga 「清長」, vol. 2, Ukiyo-e hakka 『浮世絵八華』 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1985).

Copies in other collections:

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

National Diet Library, Tokyo

New York Public Library, New York City

Shimane University, Matsue-shi

[1] Yamaguchi 1985, 128; Kiyonaga’s father’s name was Shirokoya Ichibē and Kiyonaga’s was initially Seki Shinsuke; he later became Seki Chōemon. For more information on Kiyonaga’s biography, see Hirano 1939, 58–60, and Yamaguchi, 128–40.

[2] For further discussion of their collaboration, see Davis 2015.

[3] Duret 1900, 93 and 96, respectively.