Artist: Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳, 1797–1861) Title: Oki Province (隠岐) and Harima Province (播磨) 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IMPRESSION & COLOUR: A lively Edo-period impression in which the lower scene plainly carries the sheet. Colors are very well preserved. PAPER & CONDITION: Minor trimming and minor repaired insect damage on the left margin. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE SCENE For Harima Province below, Kuniyoshi gives a powerful half-length portrait of the actor Bandō Mitsugorō in the role of Ōboshi Yuranosuke — the chief of the loyal retainers in Kanadehon Chūshingura, the dramatised account of the Forty-Seven Rōnin and the single most beloved subject of the kabuki stage. The lower panel depicts Harima Province with the actor Bandō Mitsugorō as Ōboshi Yuranosuke from Kanadehon Chūshingura. He turns sharply over one shoulder with a tense, white-eyed glare, lips set, one hand drawn up at the breast — the held, watchful moment of a man dissembling his true purpose. His robe carries the comma-form tomoe crest long associated with Yuranosuke and the Ōishi house, the visual key that fixes the identification. The province itself is the link: the historical model for Yuranosuke, Ōishi Kuranosuke, was chief retainer of the Asano of Akō — and Akō lies in Harima. For Oki Province above, the register and mood reverse. Beneath flowering cherries stands the loyalist Kojima Takanori, here named by his alias Bingo Saburō (備後三郎), the yellow-robed figure at the tree, attended by a woman, a child and a straw-laden companion. The upper panel shows Oki Province with Bingo Saburō in yellow writing on a cherry tree. The subject is one of the great loyalist set-pieces of the Taiheiki: when Emperor Go-Daigo was sent into exile on the island of Oki in 1332, Takanori — unable to reach him — carved a poem of encouragement into a cherry tree along the route, invoking the Chinese king Goujian and his faithful minister Fan Li (the verse beginning Ten Kōsen wo munashiku suru nakare, visible in the cartouche). The pairing is unusually tight for the series: both panels turn on the theme of the loyal retainer who will not abandon his lord. 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.