KUNISADA • 紫式部的源氏卡牌 • 1857 • 日本木版画 - 日本 - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Utagawa Kunisada II 二代歌川国貞 (Kunimasa III, later Toyokuni IV, 1823–1880)
Series: Murasaki Shikibu Genji karuta 紫式部源氏かるた — "Lady Murasaki's Genji Cards"
Title: 花の宴 Hana no en, "The Festival of Cherry Blossoms" — Chapter 8 of The Tale of Genji. The clamshell cartouche is numbered 九 (9); institutional records catalogue this design as "No. 9 [sic; actually 8], Hana no en", the printed numeral being a slip in the series' own sequence.
Ukiyo-e

Format: Ōban tate-e, single sheet, ca. 36 × 24 cm
Technique: Nishiki-e (full-colour woodblock print) on hōsho paper, with a gold-speckled decorative border
Date: 1857 (Ansei 4)
Publisher: Tsutaya Kichizō 蔦屋吉蔵 (Kōeidō) — Fuji-and-ivy-leaf mark at lower left
Signature: 梅蝶楼国貞画 Baichōrō Kunisada ga, in the red double cartouche at right
Seals: Round aratame censor seal and date seal at lower left
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Condition:

Good impression and good condition overall. Some minor toning, soiling and trimming outside the image area. The paper is firm with a subtle texture. Please refer to the images for full detail!
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About the print:

Chapter 8 of the Genji is the one that begins with a party and ends with a mistake. After the cherry-blossom banquet at the palace, Genji, restless and slightly drunk, finds the doors of the Kokiden wing unlatched and meets a young woman in the dark — Oborozukiyo, sister of the woman who most wants him destroyed. Neither of them learns the other's name. Everything that goes wrong for Genji later starts in that corridor.

Kunisada II sets it on a veranda under a night sky, cherry in full flower overhead and petals already on the boards, the roofs and paling of the compound receding into blue-grey distance behind. The Genji figure stands at left in a deep aubergine robe with mon at the shoulder, a sword laid down beside him; the woman is seated on scarlet bedding at right, lifting a blue flowered ornament to her hair, a fan dropped on the floor between them. The palette is deliberately cool — greys, slate-blue, muted plum — with the red of the bedding and the white of the blossom carrying the whole design.

The series was designed and printed around 1857, and Tsutaya Kichizō gave it unusually good paper and pigments; each sheet carries its chapter identification in a cartouche shaped like an opened clamshell, with the corresponding Genji-mon incense symbol alongside. Murasaki Shikibu Genji karuta is generally reckoned among Kunisada II's finest work, and the speckled gold border framing each scene was intended to evoke the gold-flecked papers of the Heian court.