Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) / Toyokuni III (三代豊国) (artist 1786 – 01/12/1865)

A beautiful, elegant woman standing outside the entry to a building which houses the Chūshuntei restaurant [柱春亭] - center panel of a triptych

Print

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Date:ca 1822
Dimensions:9.5 in x 15 in (Overall dimensions) Medium:Japanese color woodblock print
Inscription:Signature: Gototei Kunisada ga
五渡亭国貞画
Publisher: Yamamotoya Heikichi
(Marks 595 - seal 04-007)
Censor's seal: kiwame
Links Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Mead Art Museum, Amherst
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna - right panel with title cartouche
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna - left panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - an 1852 print by Hiroshige and Toyokuni III showing the Chūshuntei restaurant
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna - center panel
Museum of Fine Arts - an 1871 Yoshitoshi of this restaurant
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Hiroshige revelers in front of this restaurant
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, Leiden) via Ritsumeikan University Description:There is a description of the Chūshuntei restaurant, in reference to another print, in Kunisada's World by Sebastian Izzard, p. 54:

Located in front of the Dainoji temple in Fukugawa, the Chūshuntei was also called the Tagawaya... after its owner Tagawaya Kōjirō, and Dainoji mae (in front of the Dainoji). It was famous for its cuisine of heron and other wildfowl.

Elsewhere in this book, p. 75, Izzard notes that: "The famous Rimpa-school painter Sakai Hoitsu (1761-1828) is known to have been a frequent visitor to this restaurant."

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Kunisada's women from the 1820s are often stooped over somewhat. He may have borrowed this design element from the prints of Eisen.

If you use the zooming tool you will notice a large insect, probably a beetle, either on the bijin's undergarment decorated with intertwined blue swastikas - a common and positive motif - or as part of the decoration of the under-robe. The former is more likely. That is, this is an insect that has found its way to her collar. However, if it is a beetle that has landed there then this is a very rare design indeed. The use of butterflies and dragonflies and such are not uncommon, but this occurrence is. Perhaps it has been inserted into this image to add just one more element of reality.

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The notes to this print in the collection at Amherst not only state the belief that this is one panel of a triptych but that it was most probably produced in 1822. Records show that Kunisada worked with this publisher, Yamamotoya Heikichi, at that time when they came out with a number of untitled series of triptychs.

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Thirty years after the publication of this print Kunisada collaborated with Hiroshige to produce a print series, Famous Restaurants of the Eastern Capital (Tōto kōmei kaiseki zukushi). One of these included the Chūshuntei. We have added a link to a copy of this print at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston above. Click on it if you would like to see how greatly it differs from this one.

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There is a black and white illustration of an Eisen triptych, Summer Evening Rain in Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field showing three bijin carrying umbrellas with the name of Tagawaya on them. These were advertisements for the Chūshuntei restaurant.

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There is a copy of the full triptych at the Hagi Uragame Museum.
Related entities Yamamotoya Heikichi (山本屋平吉) (publisher)
beautiful women (bijin-ga - 美人画) (genre)
Historical - Social - Ephemera (genre)

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