歌川国貞 · 三代豊国 · 源氏絵
1786–1865 · the supreme designer of Genji pictures
源氏後集余情
A deluxe ōban diptych from Lasting Impressions of a Late Genji Collection — 第三十九の巻・夕霧
| Artist | Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞, 1786–1865), in his late period working as Toyokuni III — each sheet signed Toyokuni ga (豊国画) within a red toshidama cartouche |
| Title | 源氏後集余情 — Genji goshū yojō, "Lasting Impressions of a Late Genji Collection" |
| Chapter | 第三十九の巻・夕霧 — Volume 39, Yūgiri ("Evening Mist"), the title-chapter of Genji's son in the Tale of Genji |
| Source | After Ryūtei Tanehiko's Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji (偐紫田舎源氏, "A Country Genji by a Fake Murasaki"), the runaway Edo bestseller, and its sequel |
| Scene | A long letter read by candlelight on a mountain night: a standing woman, hair loosened, a fue held between her lips, raising a three-branch candle-stand and unrolling a gilt scroll that crosses the gutter into the hands of the kneeling prince Mitsuuji |
| Date | Ansei 5 (1858) — series published 1857–61 |
| Publisher | Ebisuya Shōshichi (恵比寿屋庄七 / Kinshōdō) |
| Block-cutter | Yokogawa Horitake (横川彫竹 / Yokokawa Takejirō), the master engraver of this series |
| Technique | Woodblock print (mokuhanga), nishiki-e — super-deluxe printing (see below) |
| Format | Ōban tate-e diptych (two sheets) — each approx. 37.5 × 26 cm (14¾ × 10¼ in.); together approx. 37.5 × 52 cm |
| Signature & seals | Signed Toyokuni ga (豊国画); red title cartouche 源氏後集余情; chapter cartouche 三十九の巻・夕霧; publisher and carver seals and aratame date seal in the lower margins |
IMPRESSION & COLOURS
Excellent — a deluxe impression with everything that makes this series prized fully present. The keyblock is crisp throughout, and the special effects read beautifully: the karazuri (blind-embossed) ground of interlocking patterns, the burnished blacks of the hair, the lacquer-like sheen of the standing screen, and the scattered "cut-gold" flecks across the ivory field. Colours are rich and well balanced — the court aubergine of the robes, vermilion linings and cartouches, teal and cedar-green, and soft bokashi gradations. A superb, fresh example.
PAPER
Two separate ōban sheets on thick deluxe washi, with full margins on both. In excellent condition. Light, even toning consistent with age is to be expected and is entirely normal for a sheet of the 1850s.
One long letter ties the two sheets together. It uncoils from the hands of the standing woman at left, sweeps across the gutter, and comes to rest in the lap of the kneeling prince at right — a single gilt-edged emaki binding the pair across the divide of the diptych. It is a night scene: the woman has loosened her hair, taken a fue (flute) between her lips, and raised a three-branch candle-stand so that its three small flames fall across the writing. Behind her stand the tall, dark trunks of cedar, placing the encounter deep in the mountains.
At right kneels Mitsuuji — the hero of the Edo "Rustic Genji," recognisable by his trademark forelock — absorbed in the text, his sumptuous aubergine robe spread over an under-kimono dense with pine, blossom and lozenge patterns picked out in blue, green and gold. Kunisada lets the scroll do the storytelling: two figures, a single document, and the quiet tension of what is being read.
The chapter is Yūgiri, "Evening Mist" — Chapter 39 of the Tale of Genji, and one of the few named not for Genji himself but for his son. It is a chapter steeped in mist-wrapped mountain villas, music at dusk, and, above all, a letter: in the classical tale an intercepted note sets the whole episode in motion. Kunisada distils that mood into this single candlelit exchange.
Genji goshū yojō is widely regarded as the most ambitious and visually satisfying of all Kunisada's Genji designs — and there were, astonishingly, hundreds of them. The title is a deliberate pun: read aloud it echoes Genji gojūyojō, "the fifty-four chapters of Genji," while the characters themselves mean something closer to a "collection of lingering Genji charms." Published collaboratively by four houses between 1857 and 1861, it gathered all the chapters into a suite of ōban diptychs.
What sets it apart is the printing. These were issued as super-deluxe sheets on thick paper, allowing the full repertoire of luxury techniques: karazuri (blind embossing) covering the entire ground with shippōmon, genjimon and hishi patterns; shōmenzuri (burnishing) on the robes and hair; lacquer printing on the screens; nunomezuri (textile-weave printing) on the cartouches; and grounds sprinkled with imitation cut gold and silver leaf — the very flecks scattered across this ivory field. The blocks were cut by Yokogawa Horitake, among the finest engravers of the day.
The parent novel, Tanehiko's Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji, relocated the Heian romance to the world of the Ashikaga shoguns and was the first Japanese book to sell more than ten thousand copies — it touched off the entire Genji-e craze in late-Edo print culture. This series is its grandest pictorial afterlife. An impression of this Yūgiri design is held in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the design is also recorded in the Tokyo Metropolitan Library; the series is represented in the British Museum and other major collections, and is catalogued in Andreas Marks, Genji's World in Japanese Woodblock Prints (2012).
Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865) was the most commercially successful and prolific ukiyo-e artist of the nineteenth century. A pupil of Toyokuni I, he eventually assumed the leadership of the Utagawa school and the name Toyokuni III, the signature he uses here. Across a career of some sixty years he produced an enormous body of actor prints, beauties and literary subjects — but no theme occupied him more than Genji.
It was Kunisada who illustrated Tanehiko's Inaka Genji in the 1830s, and he returned to its world for the rest of his life in print after print. Genji goshū yojō, made in his seventies, is the crowning statement of that lifelong preoccupation — the work of a master at the height of his command of colour, costume and the woodblock medium. His prints are held in the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and major institutions worldwide.
For collectors, the appeal of Genji goshū yojō lies in the printing itself: a complete deluxe impression of one of these diptychs — full karazuri ground, burnishing, lacquer and cut-gold flecking all intact — is the way the series was meant to be seen, and is increasingly sought after as such. This is a fine, fresh example of the Yūgiri chapter, complete as a two-sheet diptych with full margins. A handsome and substantial Kunisada to own, and a fitting cornerstone for any Genji-e collection.
Shipping: Shipped flat, protected between acid-free tissue and rigid boards, by tracked and insured international post. Ships from Germany.
Guarantee: Original Japanese woodblock print diptych, Ansei 5 (1858). Guaranteed authentic. Full refund if not as described.