Ghosts & Tengu — Kuniyoshi's Supernatural Tametomo |...

歌川国芳 — UTAGAWA KUNIYOSHI (1798–1861) Tametomo Prevented from Committing Seppuku by the Spirits of Emperor Sutoku and His Followers in the Guise of Tengu From: Ten Famous Excellences of Tametomo (為朝譽十傑, Tametomo homare no jikketsu), Robinson S64.9 Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga), polychrome (nishiki-e) on Japanese washi Date: c. 1848–1851 Publisher: Arita-ya Seiemon (有田屋清右衛門) Text: Ryūkatei Tanekazu (柳下亭種員) Signature: Ichiyūsai Kuniyoshi ga (一勇斎国芳画), with kiri (paulownia) seal Format: Ōban tate-e (approx. 37 × 25 cm / 14.5 × 10 in.) CONDITION The sheet has a very good impression with moderate toning, moderate soiling on the margins, fading to colours and two minor repairs. The paper is firm and supple. Good overall. Upon checking the image and the print I noticed that the blacks looks a bit brownish in hand. So the dark black in the image you see is a bit of exaggeration of the camera. The Scene — A Hero Saved by the Dead Minamoto no Tametomo (1139–1170) was the most famous archer of his age, a giant of a man said to draw a bow that took several men to string. In the Hōgen Rebellion of 1156 he fought for the retired Emperor Sutoku against the reigning Emperor Go-Shirakawa. The rebellion failed: Tametomo's father Tameyoshi was executed, the minister Fujiwara no Yorinaga was killed, and Sutoku was exiled to Sanuki Province on Shikoku, where he died in 1164. According to legend, Sutoku died consumed by rage and became a vengeful spirit, later counted among the great tengu kings of Japanese folklore. Tametomo himself was spared but exiled to the island of Izu Ōshima. The inscription on this sheet opens in the second year of Kaō (1170), with Tametomo travelling to Sutoku's tomb at Shiramine in Sanuki Province. At the moment Tametomo resolves to end his own life, the spirits of the dead emperor and those who fell in the Hōgen conflict appear in the form of tengu and stop him. This episode belongs to Kyokutei Bakin's celebrated novel Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki (The Crescent Moon: The Adventures of Tametomo, 1807–1811), which turned the historical Tametomo into a figure of epic romance. In the novel the hero is rescued by the supernatural over and over again, and he survives to sail to the Ryūkyū Islands. Note: The term "hara-kiri", although more common in English than "seppuku", is considered in Japan a vulgar and disrespectful description of an honourable act. Tengu are forest-dwelling creatures of Japanese folklore, pictured either as human-like figures with wings and long noses or as bird-like beings. The Series — Ten Famous Excellences of Tametomo Kuniyoshi designed this ten-sheet series for the publisher Arita-ya Seiemon around 1848–1851. It tells Tametomo's life through its most famous episodes. Among them are the thirteen-year-old Tametomo catching arrows in mid-flight, the hero separating two fighting wolves that became his loyal companions, his beheading of the mountain monster Yamaotoko, and his wife Shiranui setting out through the night rain to rescue him. This sheet, the ninth in Robinson's numbering, is the series' supernatural climax. Each sheet carries a narrative text by Ryūkatei Tanekazu (1807–1858), one of the leading popular fiction writers of the late Edo period. The series had a lasting influence: Kuniyoshi's pupil Tsukioka Yoshitoshi based one of his own later Tametomo designs on a print from this set roughly thirty years afterwards.

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