Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
Japanese, 1839-1892
Reflected Moonlight, 1886
from the series: One Hundred Views of the Moon
Published by Akiyama Buemon
With Taiso seal (Great Resurrection) of artist
Nishiki-e (color woodblock print)
Oban format
Museum Collection
Yoshitoshi, the pupil of Kuniyoshi, is considered the last of
the great Ukiyo-e artists, reaching artistic maturity during the
Meiji period, after 1868, when Japan began to Westernize.
Swinging between strenuous exaltation and bloody despair,
Yoshitoshi, in his art and life, absorbed the perhaps impossible
contradictions of a Japan that was evolving centuries in a few
decades. A master of tradition and an anguished believer in
Japan's ancient glory, Yoshitoshi fused Western realism and
craftsmanship with Japanese feeling. But beauty drips with blood
in his work, while even his aching tenderness is oddly
earthy-and must strive for its Buddhist consolation.
In this print, part of a justly famous series which ranges widely in
Japanese history and legend, a lady of the medieval Heian court plays her
lute and prepares to drown herself because of unrequited love. A poet,
Lady Ariko later became a character in Noh plays with a Buddhist theme.
Love - being earthly passion - is always unrequited, and we are reminded
of its transient nature by the purity of the mutable moon. A woman, of
course, proves both her courage and her essential purity by losing
everything - at least in the realm of Kabuki and Noh theater. Lady
Ariko's poem is recorded on the print: How hopeless it is/it would
be better for me to sink beneath the waves/perhaps there I could see my
man from Moon Capital. Is the necessity of yearning the only
reality in the relationship between men and women? |