歌川国芳 • 丰前国与肥前国 • 日本木版画 • 浮世绘 - 日本 - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳, 1797–1861)
Title: Buzen Province (豊前) and Hizen Province (肥前)
Series: Kōtō nishiki imayō kuni-zukushi (江都錦今様国尽), also read Edo nishiki… — "A Modern Set of the Provinces in Edo Brocade"
Date: Kaei 5 (1852), 8th month
Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga), polychrome (nishiki-e)
Format: Ōban tate-e — approx. 36 × 24 cm
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IMPRESSION & COLOUR: A vigorous Edo-period impression with the clean, confident keyblock Kuniyoshi's best designs demand. The lower scene carries the weight of the sheet: the fine hair-carving (kewari) at the pirate's temples and the dense curl of his side-locks are crisply registered, and the deep blue-black of the great wave behind him sets off the pallor of his grimacing face

PAPER & CONDITION: Minor trimming otherwise excellent condition.
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THE SCENE

For Hizen Province below, Kuniyoshi gives a half-length portrait of the notorious sea-pirate Kezori Kuemon — one of the great villain roles of the kabuki stage, here played by Ichikawa Danjūrō VII. He turns with a furious, white-eyed glare over his shoulder, lips parted, the great crescent of a moon behind him and dark water breaking at his back; one hand grips a stout pole. His costume is the role's signature: a stiff, fluted European-style ruff at the throat and a magnificent robe worked with golden dragons, billowing flames and stylised clouds. That foreign collar is the visual key — Kezori is a smuggler whose wealth comes from illicit overseas trade, which is precisely why he stands for Hizen, the province of Nagasaki and Japan's only window onto foreign commerce.

For Buzen Province at top (see notes), the mood reverses entirely: a fashionable beauty and a young girl walk beneath flowering cherry trees, each carrying a matching blue-and-white crested umbrella, with blossom-viewers picnicking on the green slopes beyond. It is an elegant, up-to-the-minute imayō genre vignette — the "Edo brocade" fashion-plate that gives the series its name — set against the villainy below.

THE SERIES

"A Modern Set of the Provinces in Edo Brocade" — was issued in 1852, a banner year in which Kuniyoshi produced several province-themed sets. Each sheet pairs provinces of Japan with "modern style" vignettes: a stylish genre or beauty scene above, a kabuki actor or dramatic subject below, the linkage sometimes geographic, sometimes a visual pun, sometimes simply fashionable. Designs from the set are held by the British Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. The series sits at the height of Kuniyoshi's late maturity, when his command of the dramatic head and the decorative surface alike was complete.