Picturing the Classics: Literary Traditions Depicted in the University of Melbourne’s Japanese Print Collections

Dr. Mark K Erdmann, Lecturer in Art History, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne

There is always a story behind a poem, and, with an added image, the sides to that story grow infinitely more complex. Within the University of Melbourne’s library and museum collections are a modest number of Japanese art works, the largest holdings being prints. Almost all of the subjects of these works derive from literary sources, including poems, novels, and plays. Inspired in part by Chinese examples that predated the Si Ku Quan Shu, Japanese literature was often compiled and reimagined, in anthologies and in visual arts, to become inspirations for more creativity. Between the lives of poets, protagonists, lovers, and gangsters, there has always been much fodder from which to work.

One of the most popular subjects of paintings and prints throughout Japanese history has been the  Hyakunin isshu 百人一首 anthology. This anthology was originally assembled around 1235 by the courtier and famed poet Fujiwara no Teika 藤原定家 (1162-1241). As its name, ‘one hundred persons, one poem’, suggests, this compilation consists of one hundred 31-syllable tanka poems, one each from emperors, courtiers, monks, and court ladies renowned for their poetic skills. While originally the cultural domain of the imperial court, by the Edo period (1616-1868), the anthology came to be used in memory games, was regularly referenced in the performance arts and in literature, and Teika’s selection of poems gradually came to be common knowledge.

The classical, lofty roots of these poems as well as their universality made them and their authors popular subjects for mass-produced books and single sheet woodblock prints. In the University’s collection are several examples including two sheets removed from the book Eastern Brocade of One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets 錦百人一首あつま織, designed by Katsukawa Shunshō 勝川春章 (1726–1793).  The book’s title is a reflection of old and new. Teika’s anthology is linked to and reinvented in the 'East,' referring to Edo (modern-day Tokyo) located in Eastern Japan, and 'Brocade,' referring to the newly invented techniques of multi-colored woodblock printing that had become synonymous with the city and region. The first of the two orphaned prints (fig. 1) depicts Teika’s contemporary, the courtier Saionji Kintsune 西園寺公経 in traditional court garb, looking over his shoulder. His Hyakunin isshu poem reads:

The second page (fig. 2) features Teika himself, seated in contemplative fashion and leaning on a low table with his ceremonial sceptre, known as a shaku, in hand. In the upper register, his poem appears as looming large in his thoughts:

Known best for his depictions of actors of the popular and flamboyant kabuki theatre, Shunshō’s poets are comparatively restrained in their expressiveness and color. Nonetheless, both figures embody a sophisticated balance of poem and image that is accomplished by way of a subtle handling of face and hands. This emphasis on the visage as a locus of meaning is one that Shunshō pioneered as a means to capture the essence of both actor and role.³ Here, however, where no likeness was known, the iconic poems are mined. A reflection on the travails of aging, Kintsune’s poem is reflected in the figure’s distinguished nose and wrinkles. His turning back reads as a moment of recalling times past. The image of Teika, in contrast, is characterized by a youthful appearance with rounded cheeks and a modest round hook for nose. The lovelorn passions of his poem, typical of youth, are left exposed in his squinting eyes, pouting lips, and his restless grip on the shaku.

Working two generations after Shunshō, the print designer Utagawa Kuniyoshi 歌川国芳 (1797-1861) took the subjects of the Hyakunin isshu to dramatic new heights. In the University collection is number 77 of 100 (fig. 3) in this full colour series, depicting Emperor Sutoku-in 崇徳院 (1119-1164). Sutoku-in’s Hyakunin isshu poem, along with commentary, is contained within the cartouche to the upper right.

Although the poem evokes the image of separated lovers and a determination to be reunited, Kuniyoshi’s design points to a different focus for Sutoku-in’s passions. Sutoku-in was exiled in his lifetime to the island of Shikoku for having taken part in a failed coup attempt in 1156. Several retellings of his final days in this remote backwater recount that the former Emperor attempted to send copies of Buddhist sutras to the imperial court to honour his deceased father.⁵ However, the court rejected these offerings and sent them back, whereupon the enraged Sutoku-in threw the sutras into the ocean. The print depicts the moment after this tantrum when Sutoku-in, in his rage, transformed into a mythical creature known as a tengu. Kuniyoshi unifies story and poem here to recast the object of Sutoku-in’s desire as the imperial throne. The waters cut by rock in the poem now also clash with a poet obsessed with his loss of power.

As widely known as it came to be, Hyakunin isshu, however, pales in comparison to the popularity achieved by the classical Japanese text, The Tale of Genji 源氏物語 as a source of inspiration for the visual arts. Written by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu 紫式部 (973 or 978-c. 1014 or 1031) in the opening decades of the eleventh century, this book is widely considered the world’s first novel and tells the story of Prince Genji and his descendants as they navigate the intertwined complexities of love and politics in the imperial court. The foundations of the tale can be explained via another woodblock print (fig. 4), designed by Kuniyoshi’s most accomplished disciple Utagawa Kunisada 歌川国貞 (1786-1865). Kunisada’s print is one of fifty-four, one for each chapter of the novel, and represents one of many sets of illustrated versions of the tale that have been produced over the centuries. Depicting a scene from the novel’s first chapter, 'The Paulownia Pavilion,' two women stand on a veranda overlooking an unkempt garden. Holding a lantern and having received the lavish outer coat of her guest, the foregrounded woman is shown to be of mature age via her hunched back and shaven eyebrows, a signifier of marriage. Her visitor, more refined in stature as she stands straight up, looks on with a mix of pity and surprise as the older woman appears to trip as she walks. The poem in the large cartouche above the older woman locates the scene in the novel.

The poem is original but directly draws from two verses in the tale that bookmark this night-time visit. The first of these comes from Genji’s father, the emperor, who has sent it via a confidant to check in on Genji’s maternal grandmother in the months after Genji’s mother’s death. The second poem, a reply to the first accompanied by the confidant’s report to the emperor that the grandmother sadly lives in a state of steep decline, brings memories of the emperor’s lost love and a renewed desire to protect his son’s future prospects. The death of Genji’s mother, caused by incessant bullying brought on by the emperor’s lavish attentions and the jealousies that they aroused, represents the original sin of the novel and a wound that Genji spends the rest of his life seeking to heal.

Genji’s efforts to this end and the consequences of his actions are crystalized in another woodblock print (fig. 5) by Ogata Gekkō 尾形月耕 (1859–1920) depicting a scene from chapter 38, “The Bell Cricket.” Like Shunshō’s prints, the copy in the University collection of Ogata’s design has been torn from a book. Published in 1892, this print reveals one of Genji’s later wives, the Third Princess, in a slightly dishevelled state and seated alone in a tatami-mat room. The poem in the cartouche is one offered by Genji. Constrained by formal protocol that dictated strict segregation between genders, Genji sits behind the sliding door paintings of lily pads amongst mist to the right where the Princess’ attention is directed. A response to her poetic musings on the song of bell crickets heard outside the room and her sadness as the season of autumn approaches, the poem reads as follows:

Genji’s expression of enduring love here is too little, too late. As her short hair reveals, the Third Princess has taken tonsure and has become a nun. Her renunciation of the world is the product of karma come full circle. Years prior, Genji secretly fathered a child with his stepmother, a woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to his mother. Genji’s transgression towards the imperial throne was never publicly exposed, but consequences came to bear when the Third Princess had relations with an obsessive suitor and, in turn, a child was produced. Like Genji’s son by his stepmother, the world is none the wiser as to the boy’s paternity, but both parents are burdened with this secret. Ogata’s rendering of this scene follows a long precedent that harkens back to the oldest illustrated version of the tale dating from the 1140s (fig. 6). In both versions, the Princess is shown isolated and boxed-in like a captive while unique visual flourishes are deployed to emphasize this point. In the twelfth-century version, she examines a bell cricket trapped in a cage. Ogata, in contrast, adds a more subtle touch in the form of a spiderweb-patterned kimono. The robe not only corresponds to the early autumn season, but suggests that the Princess is akin to a fly caught in a web.

Although notions of karmic retribution permeate its pages, The Tale of Genji is, however, not a religious text and representations of it do not always carry such weighty themes. A final example (fig. 7) is worth raising both to demonstrate this point as well as the degree to which the tale can become a playful source of new meanings. Kuniyoshi’s rendering of chapter 16, 'At the Gates' from the series Ukiyo-e Parallels for the Cloudy Chapters of the Tale of Genji 源氏雲浮世絵合 attempts to find points of correspondence between protagonists of tales present and past. Although the title of the series explicitly evokes Genji, the central subject of the print, a ruffian character stepping on the head of a palanquin bearer, appears to be the opposite of the refined prince of classical Japan. As clarified in the accompanying text, the figure depicted is not Genji, but the outlaw hero Shirai Gonpachi 白井權八.

A real life-figure moulded into legend, Gonpachi allegedly murdered a man in his provincial hometown and escaped to Edo where he became famed for his dashing good-looks, charm, and fighting skills. The link to Genji is tenuous, as the overlap with the referenced chapter is limited to the two characters being in transit when they encounter an unexpected meeting. For Genji, it is a woman who rejects his advances as they meet at a narrow pass known as the Ōsaka Barrier. For Gonpachi, it is opportunistic thieves. The scene depicted comes from Act III of the kabuki play Ukiyozuka Hiyoku no Inazuma 浮世柄比翼稲妻 wherein Gonpachi defeats a gang of thieves who had learned of his arrival by palanquin and hoped to capture and claim the bounty on the wanted criminal. Although the link requires a stretch of imagination, it demonstrates the importance of The Tale of Genji as a standard from which both real-life and fictional characters could be compared and meanings found, even some eight hundred years after the tale was written. The poem, situated in the upper register of the print, is one that was composed by Genji in the novel. It offers new meaning in this new age. No longer for lovers, the poem is flipped on its head to aggrandize the sophistication and wit of a premodern action hero doing away with his rivals.