Yoshitoshi

This is an informal setting of a peasant couple relaxing at the end of a hard day, viewing the moon. The woman is suckling her infant son, while the man is leaning back and singing with a cup and a kettle of sake beside him, his garment lightly falling off his shoulder. A beautiful, robustly growing gourd vine called yūgao (moonflower) frames the scene. A friend of Yoshitoshi, Keika, composed the poem in the upper right cartouche, which is reflected in the title of this work.

A samurai stands backstage at a humorous dance performance known as saragaku (‘monkey music’), which includes song, dance and music. Originating in the tenth century, saragaku evolved into nō theatre by the 15th century. Here, a crowd of men carrying umbrellas have come early to try and find seats to watch a performance. It is a dawn moon, indicating it is an early performance which would last from 8am until the afternoon. During the Edo period the emperor’s envoy would be sent from Kyoto to Edo to send new-year greetings from the Tokugawa family. It was customary that the envoy and commoners from districts in the city be invited to a nō performance.

The famous onnagata Mizuki Tatsunosuke (1673–1745) was a male kabuki actor who specialised in female roles. An edict in 1629 banned women playing parts, and eventually only males were cast in roles. The poem alludes to Tatsunosuke’s journey up the Sumida River to view the cherry blossoms at Sekiya, a village celebrated for its blossoms. Here, the actor is portrayed enjoying the evening along the river with the moon in view. His forehead is covered with a purple scarf – the onnagata shaved their forehead – and he has an androgynous-style topknot. Tatsunosuke wears a bright robe with the feminine sleeves of a wakashū, a male prostitute.

By the light of the full moon and by the river, washed clothes piled on the straw mat are being beaten with mallets by two women in order to soften them. They are then laid out to dry. The sound of women beating cloth is associated with the notion of women waiting for their husbands (see also no 29 Cloth-beating moon – Yūgiri). Chōfu, also known in Japanese as tatsukuri, means ‘tax cloth’; the town was probably known to have used cloth as payment in lieu of tax at some time. This is a common scene used in ukiyo-e prints and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) produced similar prints, often identifying the town on the Musashi plain by including Mount Fuji in the background.

During the mid autumn festival, two farmers are enjoying a picnic under the full moon, when an elderly man drops by: Matsuo Bashō (1644–94), Japan’s most celebrated haiku poet who sometimes referred to himself as okina (old man). His clothing, which he often wore on his travels around Japan, is that of a lay priest. The farmers, with exaggerated and bony faces similar to caricature types in comical prints, are sitting on a straw mat and have gone to much effort for this festival by preparing food and drink. They have even arranged a bamboo vase with bellflowers and suzuki grass, typical flora during the full moon festival of the eighth month.

This print illustrates a scene from the popular kabuki play Kanadehon chūshingura (‘The treasury of loyal retainers’), which is based on a true story of revenge by the 47 rōnin (masterless samurai) in the early 1700s. The young man is Oishi Rikiya, son of Yuranosuke, the leader of the rōnin. Rikiya tries to secretly deliver a letter containing news about the conspirators’ activities to his father, who lives in disguise at the Ichiriki teahouse in Kyoto’s pleasure quarter Gion.

In the kyōgen play Konkai (‘The cry of the fox’), a fox whose entire family was killed by a hunter transforms himself into the hunter’s uncle, the priest Hakuzōsu. The disguised fox almost succeeds in convincing the hunter to give up his cruel profession. However, on his way home, the priest turned back into a fox and, having lost the power of human reasoning, fell into a trap and was captured. The tasselled seed heads of the grasses suggest the shape of ‘foxfires’, flames created by foxes to distract travellers from their way.

The old couple are Uba and Jō from the nō play Takasago. They represent the spirits of two ancient pine trees at Takasago and Sumiyoshi. The twin pine trees, which have remained spiritually close and loyal despite the distance between them, symbolise the fulfilment of a long, happy marriage. Even though the moon is nowhere to be seen in this image, the audience of the time could identify the print as an illustration of the scene in which the old man is looking at the moon and the woman is checking the tide before they sail away to Sumiyoshi.

This print depicts a scene from the nō play Sotōba Komachi (‘Gravemarker Komachi’). The play is one of a set of seven important nō pieces based on the life of Ono no Komachi, a famous beauty and poetess of the ninth century. Here, she sits in a thoughtful, melancholic remembrance of her life on a fallen gravemarker, having been criticised for disrespecting the dead by two passing priests.

This print illustrates a scene in the nō play Tamura. Three itinerant priests meet a man sweeping fallen cherry petals as they visit the Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto. The man reveals himself as the ghost of Sakanoe no Tamuramaro, a famous general of the later Nara period (710–94). Sakanoue waged campaigns against the Ebisu, the indigenous people of northern and eastern Japan, and was deified as the Shinto god Tamura Myōjin after his death in 811. It is said Tamura assisted the priest Enchin in the founding of Kiyomizu temple on Mount Otowa.

Here, Yoshitoshi makes use of kaimami, a popular erotic motif in Japanese literature and visual art, in which a man peeps at an unsuspecting woman. The ‘peeping Tom’ is Lord Kō no Moronao, the chief retainer of the 14th-century Ashikaga Takauji. Moronao fell in love with Kaoyo, the reputedly beautiful wife of shogunal official Enya Takesada, and contrived to have her as his wife. When his advances were rejected, Moronao plotted to have Kaoyo’s husband executed. The story of Enya’s retainers who avenge their lord’s unjust death became famous in the kabuki play Chūshingura.

The main figure is a masked nō actor performing the role of Kumasaka no Chōhan, a Buddhist priest who became an outlaw and led a band of robbers. One night, in 1174, Kumasaka’s gang robbed a travelling gold merchant, not knowing that the prodigy warrior Minamoto Yoshitsune was in the merchant’s entourage. Kumasaka was defeated and killed. His story was dramatised in the nō play Kumasaka. There is no moon in this design, but audiences familiar with the play would have recognised the reference to a ‘hazy-night moon’ in the title from a chorus line: ‘Though the moon is out, it is a hazy, moonlit night – “Storm in,” he orders …’