国芳 • 陆海吉祥之愿 • 第18号 • 日本木版画 • 浮世绘 - 日本 - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳), 1797–1861
Titel: Hayaku kite mitai (早くきて見たい) — "I want to try it on right away"

Series: Sankai medetai zue (山海愛度図会) — "Auspicious Desires on Land and Sea" — No. 18
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 fresh and strong — the saturated cobalt-blue ground, the vermilion of the asanoha robe and the camellia-framed cartouche, and the gold of the hairpins are all bright and unfaded. Offered honestly as a fair-condition example. The sheet has been folded — the fold lines remain visible although flattened. The paper is otherwise firm and supple. Please examine all photographs.
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The Scene

Against a flat, brilliant blue ground, Kuniyoshi sets a beauty caught in an unguarded, intimate moment. She has let a dark indigo outer robe slip from one shoulder, baring the nape and throat so prized in bijin-ga, and lifts a length of sheer, pale-blue gauze — a light summer garment she seems on the point of trying on. Beneath it a red robe patterned in white asanoha (hemp-leaf) glows warm against the cool background; her hair is dressed high and pinned with elaborate gilt kanzashi, a smaller pin held ready in her hand. Her expression is absorbed, a little impatient — the very picture of the caption above her: hayaku kite mitai, "I want to try it on right away."

It is a quietly sophisticated design. The whole upper register belongs to a second, smaller world — a landscape cartouche and a flowering red title panel — while the beauty fills the lower two-thirds at close, almost confiding range. Kuniyoshi plays the cool expanse of blue against the warm reds and golds of the figure, and the languid curve of the gauze against the crisp geometry of the hemp-leaf print. The effect is both decorative and human: a fashionable woman, alone with a new robe and her own anticipation.
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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).