資料名 |
Fifty-three Stations of the Toukaidou Highway Narumi |
解説 |
Utagawa Yoshikazu The production date: 1853 (Kaei 6) The very famous local product of Narumi post station was the shibori, or tie-dye textile of Arimatsu and Narumi. During the Edo period, almost the entire shibori (A special dyeing technique to produce patterns on kimono by tying threads around cloth.) in Japan were produced in this region. In this picture, a traveler is surprised by a dragon and an octopus pattern drawn on the yukata, a casual summer kimono. A local specialty of Kuwana post station is clam. In this picture, sparrows are about to hop out from clam shells. This scene visualizes the autumn’s kigo (a seasonal word used to construct Japanese poetries), and expresses the scene of “Sparrows turn into clams.” There was a superstitious belief that there are not many sparrows during cold autumn season since they turn into clams. As seen in this picture, people would be surprised if it actually happens in reality. Many Utagawa school ukiyo-e artists published the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Toukaidou Highway”. In this distinctive series, Yoshikazu introduced the legends and episodes that related to the post stations of the Toukaidou Highway humorously. Generally, he produced humorous pictures with horizontal small ko-ban size format. Utagawa Yoshikazu Date of birth and death unknown Yoshikazu was a pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi and active from the Kaei era till Meiji 3 (1848~1870). He also used the artist names such as Shunsai and Ichikawa. He produced many worrier pictures, kacho-ga (pictures of birds and flowers), and Yokohama-e (ukiyo-e depicting foreigner’s life styles or the scenes of Yokohama). He also produced illustrations of kusa-zoshi (books with illustrations ). |
資料番号 |
10621 |
