浮世の花 - Sanders of Oxford

it was also traditional to cast dried beans [signifying prosperity] in a dwelling’s nooks and
crannies to drive any resident recalcitrant oni away.
9. Utagawa Kunisada [Utagawa Toyokuni III] (1786-1864) and Utagawa Hiroshige
(1797-1858).
Azuma Genji Yuki no Niwa [The Eastern Genji in the Snowy Garden]
Date [Western]: 1854
Date [Japanese]: Twelfth Month of Ansei 1
Signatures and Artist’s Inscriptions/Seals: Toyokuni-ga in a toshidama cartouche [left
and right-hand sheets]; Yuki no kei oju [‘The Snow Scene on Request’]; Hiroshige-hitsu
with Ichiryusai seal
Censor Seal: Aratame [‘examined’]
Zodiacal Date Seal: tora jûni/tiger 12
Publisher’s Seal: Moriji
School: Utagawa
Method: Nishiki-e woodblock print
Format: Ôban tate-e triptych
Condition: Excellent; particularly fine colour and bokashi
Dimensions: Each sheet 15 x 10 inches
Code: SOX
Price [Framed]: £1, 650
This collaborative design, showing Genji and Murasaki watching a group of maids building
a yuki-usagi [snow rabbit], consists of a landscape background by Hiroshige, with figures by
Kunisada. Although the genji mon forming the cartouche in the right-hand sheet is that of
Chapter 12 of Genji monogatari, the construction of a snow sculpture that forms the central
motif of the work, seems to bear a closer relationship to an oft-depicted passage in Chapter
20, Asagao [Morning Glory]:
‘There was a heavy fall of snow. In the evening there were new flurries. The moon turned
the deepest recesses of the garden into a gleaming white. The contrast between the snow on
the bamboo and the snow on the pines was very beautiful...The flowerbeds were wasted, the
brook seemed to send up a strangled cry, and the lake was frozen and somehow terrible. Into
this austere scene, Genji sent little maidservants, telling them that they must make snowmen.
Their dress was bright and their hair shone in the moonlight. The older ones were especially
pretty…the fresh sheen of their hair black against the snow. The smaller ones quite lost
themselves in the sport…It was all very charming.’ [Seidensticker, trans., 1976: p.357].
In Japanese cosmology, the quasi-divine figure of the white rabbit was thought to embody
the spirit of the moon; the god of the moon and the seasonal tides, Tsuki-Yomi, often
depicted as riding a giant usagi. As such, the construction of a snow rabbit in the moonlit
garden would have been particularly appropriate. That the maid servants are shown placing
the final eye in the rabbit is of import, as its recalls the Buddhist eye-opening ceremony
[kaigen], based on the tenet that a wooden or painted image can only embody its signified
divinity when the eyes are painted in. Kaigen often drew huge crowds of people, in 752, for
example, when a large bronze image of Roshana (Mahavairocana) was dedicated in the main
hall of Todai-ji in Nara, the Buddha's eyes being painted in by an Indian monk, it was
witnessed by roughly ten thousand priests and numerous foreign visitors.
10. Utagawa Kunisada [Utagawa Toyokuni III] (1786-1864)
Yukimi tsuki [Snow Viewing Month]
Series: Genji Jûnikagetsu no uchi [The Twelve Months of Genji]
Date [Western]: 1856
Date [Japanese]: Seven Month of Ansei 3
Signature: Toyokuni-ga in a toshidama cartouche
Zodiacal Date Seal: tatsu shichi/dragon 7
Publisher’s Seal: Fujioka-ya Keijirô
School: Utagawa