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Ochiai Yoshiiku

Utsusemi: Watanabe no Tsuna, Chapter 3 from the series Modern Parodies of Genji (Imayō nazaroe Genji), 1864, 7th month

Description

Maker

Title

Utsusemi: Watanabe no Tsuna, Chapter 3 from the series Modern Parodies of Genji (Imayō nazaroe Genji)

Year

1864, 7th month

Medium

Polychrome woodblock print

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Techniques

Supports

Dimensions

Vertical ōban: 37.5 x 22.9 cm (14 3/4 x 9 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Ikkeisai Yoshiiku ga

Place

Japan; Tokyo

Type

Credit

Gift of Paula and Leonard Granoff

Object Number

85.197.2

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Text, Paratext, and Images

September 1, 2020 - July 24, 2021

This artist playfully connects classical Japanese literature with contemporary tales, pairing texts and images to form clever similes. Watanabe no Tsuna, a samurai known for his adventures, is pictured with an amputated arm of a demon in this scene. The dismembered arm is likened to the cast-off robes mentioned in a chapter from the Tale of Genji, a narrative from the 1000s referenced in the text above the image. Utagawa Yoshiiku’s series includes 54 prints, each pairing a chapter from the Tale of Genji with a contemporary story.

Heroes and Warriors

September 28, 2007 - January 13, 2008

The samurai Watanabe no Tsuna (993–1024) was famed for having cut off the arm of the demon Ibaraki after a long night’s watch at the Rashomon Gate of Kyoto. The illustrated inset at the top of the print matches this subject with “The Shell of the Locust” (Utsusemi), chapter 3 of the 11th-century Tale of Genji, the earliest novel in Japanese literature. The connection between the historical subject and the theme from the novel is unclear, but usually there is a relationship between such insets and the main subject of the print.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Utsusemi: Watanabe no Tsuna, Chapter 3 from the series Modern Parodies of Genji (Imayō nazaroe Genji) with the accession number of 85.197.2. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.