KUNISADA • Wakana-hime – The Spider Princess • RARE 1861 • Japanese Woodblock Print - Japan - Edo Period (1600-1868)

** The Wakana-hime design rarely appears on the market. In 2008 it was offered at Christie's as one of three sheets from the series in a mixed lot, described there as a fine impression in fine colour and condition. A Wakana-hime sheet from the series is held by the Princeton University Art Museum (2011-57)..! **

Artist: Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞, 1786–1865), signing as Toyokuni III
Title: Wakana-hime (若菜姫) – Princess Wakana
Series: Toyokuni kigō kijutsu kurabe (豊国揮毫奇術競) – A Contest of Magic Scenes by Toyokuni
Date: 1861 (Bunkyū 1) – Rooster-year date seal
Publisher: Hiranoya Shinzō (平野屋新蔵) – publisher's cartouche Hiranoya (平のや)
Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga) – polychrome nishiki-e
Format: Ōban tate-e, approx. 37 × 25 cm (14½ × 9⅞ inches)
Signature: Ki-ō Toyokuni hitsu (㐂翁豊国筆) – "from the brush of Toyokuni, aged seventy-seven" – in a red cartouche
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CONDITION

Excellent impression. The colours are very well preserved: the dense ink-black ground with its silver-grey web lines, the coral and vermilion of the outer robe, the deep blue of the hakama, and the yellow, green and pale blue accents all remain fresh.

Paper

Some minor toning, normal for a print of this age. A light crease along the upper margin, caused by the heavy inking of the dark ground; it is very unobtrusive. Two tape residue on the upper margin on the backside are noted. Very good overall!
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The Secret Scroll – How Princess Wakana Learned the Spider's Art

Wakana-hime is the heroine of Shiranui monogatari (白縫譚), the longest of all Edo gōkan illustrated novels – ninety parts, begun in 1849 and not completed until 1885. She is the lost daughter of Ōtomo Sōrin, lord of Bungo, whose house was destroyed by the rival Kikuchi clan. Smuggled away as a child, she grows up not knowing who she is, as Suzushiro, the daughter of a woodcutter.

Her life changes when the spider of Mount Nishikigatake appears to her in the form of a woman, tells her whose daughter she is, and offers her a rare art to avenge her father. The spider gives her a few words of incantation and a scroll of secret writing. With them Wakana-hime becomes a sorceress, commanding spiders and webs in her campaign against the Kikuchi. This is the scene Kunisada gives us: the princess reading the long scroll, a web spread across the night behind her and a spider waiting at the scroll's end. The Princeton University Art Museum catalogues its Wakana-hime sheet from this series as Wakana raising a great spider through incantation.

The novel was a best-seller of the late Edo period. Kawatake Mokuami adapted its first fourteen parts for the kabuki stage in 1853, and the book kept admirers long after: the novelist Izumi Kyōka praised Wakana-hime as a woman with true Edo spirit, and Edogawa Ranpo kept a set of the original volumes.
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Utagawa Kunisada – The Most Successful Print Designer of His Age

Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865) entered the studio of Utagawa Toyokuni I around 1800 and was already regarded as the leading talent of the Utagawa school before he was twenty-five. He took his master's name in 1844 and is often called Toyokuni III. He was the most prolific and commercially successful designer of woodblock prints in 19th-century Japan – in his own lifetime his reputation exceeded that of Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi. He continued to design prints until his death in January 1865.