歌川国芳《源氏三联画》— 猴戏表演（Performing Monkey）— 大判三联画，1851 - 日本 - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳, 1797–1861)
Prince Genji and six beauties watching a performing monkey (saru-mawashi)

Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga), polychrome nishiki-e on Japanese washi
Date: Kaei 4 (1851) — censor seals Mera and Watanabe
Publisher: Izumiya Ichibei (和泉屋市兵卫)
Format: Ōban tate-e triptych (大判三枚続), three separate sheets, each approx. 36 × 24 cm
Signature: 一勇斎国芳画 — Ichiyūsai Kuniyoshi ga, on each sheet
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Impression & Colours: Good impression with colours still well preserved. Minor trimming noticeable on the lower margin, minor scuff, minor creases. Very good overall. Please check the images!
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About the Print

A domestic scene from the world of Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji, Ryūtei Tanehiko's enormously popular Edo-period parody of the Tale of Genji, whose hero Ashikaga Mitsuuji became the standard "modern Genji" of the print market. Here the prince stands at centre in a magnificent paulownia-patterned robe, while attendant beauties are gathered across all three sheets in a shoreline apartment, the blue water and green hills visible beyond the verandah rail.

The occasion is a saru-mawashi — a monkey performance. At the foot of the centre sheet the small costumed monkey appears in checked robe and green hat, its handler's line running away to the left, where a man in a brown crested haori kneels holding the cord. It is a characteristically Kuniyoshi touch: the celebrated Genji of literature reduced to an audience member at a common street entertainment, the courtly and the plebeian sharing a single room.

Kuniyoshi produced a number of these Genji triptychs through the late 1840s and early 1850s, and while they are far better known for his warriors and cats, the group is prized for exactly the qualities visible here — dense textile printing, an unusually cool blue-and-green ground, and a comic sensibility running just beneath the elegance.