KUNIYOSHI • 陸と海の吉祥なる欲望 • 第69号 • 日本の木版画 • 浮世絵 - Japan - Edo Period (1600-1868)

** 本の中でも特に求められる題材の一つ。およそ60点近い挿絵のうち、船、窯、作業場、畑を描くものが多く、西洋海の潜水女性であるあまの像を描いたものはごくわずかだ――そしてあまの図像は国芳という名前とは別に、独自のコレクターを必ず引きつけてきた。 **

Artist: Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳), 1797–1861
Titel: Tsushima konbu nori (對馬 昆布海苔) — "Kelp and Nori Seaweed from Tsushima," with the wish Hana o goran asobashitai (はなをごらんあそバしたい) — "I do so want to look at the blossoms"

Series: Sankai medetai zue (山海愛度図会) — "Auspicious Desires on Land and Sea" — No. 69
Publisher: Tsutaya Kichizō (蔦屋吉蔵)
Date & Censors: Kaei 5 (1852), 12th month — nanushi censor seals beside the signature
Carver: Hori Shōji (彫庄治)
Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga) — nishiki-e (polychrome)
Format: Ōban tate-e — approx. 36 × 24 cm (14½ × 9¾ in.)
Signature: Ichiyūsai Kuniyoshi ga (一勇斎国芳画), with kiri-seal
Literature: Robinson (1961), no. 117, design 43
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Paper & condition

The colours remain strong — the grey ground, the graded blue of the inset sea and the deep teal of the foliage all read clearly. Offered honestly as a fair-condition example. The sheet has been folded — the fold lines remain visible although flattened. Minor toning and light soiling consistent with age; The paper is otherwise firm and supple. Please examine all photographs.
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The Scene

Two worlds, stacked. The upper left corner opens onto the Tsushima coast: a pale coral sky over blue headlands, sails on the horizon, and the sea printed in bands of graded blue running down to a rocky foreshore. Among the rocks the ama are at work — one figure hauling herself onto the stone, another already under, legs breaking the water as she goes down for the kelp beds. It is a small picture, no more than a hand's breadth, but it is a properly composed landscape.

Below it, filling the sheet, the beauty herself, set half-length against a flat grey-black ground that throws every colour forward. Her coiffure is the real performance: a great lacquered sweep of hair pinned with amber-coloured combs and bar-pins and loaded with dense clusters of yellow blossom ornaments, red silk cords looping out behind. Her head is turned and lifted, mouth just open. The robe is pure late-Kuniyoshi excess — coral and cream peonies, white chrysanthemums and blue-green leaves scattered across a dark ground, a striped pale outer robe slipping from the shoulder, a scarlet collar and a panel of blue brocade at the waist. Cool, distant, salt-water labour above; warm, close, hothouse luxury below.
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The Series — Wishes, Beauties and the Bounty of Land and Sea

Sankai medetai zue is one of Kuniyoshi's most charming conceits. The title puns: the characters 愛度 ("loving desire") are read medetai, the everyday word for "auspicious," so the set of 62 designs is at once a gallery of beautiful women voicing their wishes — every caption ending in -tai, "I want to…" — and a string of good-luck images. Each sheet pairs the half-length beauty with a celebrated regional product (meibutsu) of the mountains or the sea, shown in a small inset landscape drawn by one of Kuniyoshi's pupils. The series is catalogued in Robinson's standard reference on Kuniyoshi (1961, no. 117).