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The Servant
Okita And Some Important Erotic Work of
Utagawa Toyokuni.
Utagawa
Toyokuni (1768-1825) was born in Edo in 1768 as the son of a
woodcarver. In the 1780s he became a pupil of Utagawa
Toyoharu
(1735-1814), who is best known for his landscapes and uki-e.
In Toyokuni’s early work we sometimes can detect the
influence of his master in the use of careful European-style
perspective and wide views. In the late 1780s Toyokuni was influenced by
Kiyonaga (1752-1815) and designed oban triptychs with
beautiful elongated women in his style. After 1790, when
Kiyonaga had ceased to design prints, Toyokuni underwent
Utamaro’s influence as is shown for
example in his series Bijin nana Komachi or his
portrait of Okita (see image and description below!).
Perhaps his greatest
originality lies in his actor portraits in which he shows an
unerring eye for a striking pose. The best series, like the
‘Actors on the stage’ or the pportraits on grey ground,
all date from 1794, or shortly afterwards. The death of Shunsho
(1726-1793) seems to have stimulated many artists to compete
in the field of actor portraits. Around 1800 there is a
merked falling-off in Toyokuni’s prints. Hirano suggests
that the style of his later actor prints
might have been
influenced by the realistic tendency then prevalent in kabuki
acting (see Fig.1).
At this point the vast output
– more than five hundred books by him are known and he
designed thousand of prints – must certainly have
contributed to the feeling of haste and repetitiousness
these prints often reflect.
Okita
One of Toyokuni’s great
female portraits is the three-quarter-length portrait of the
famous beauty > Okita
(see Fig.2), a servant in the Naniwaya, an Edo teahouse. She
is dressed
in a transparent black kimono
decorated with small white figures, a green sash with a
pattern of mandarin ducks and a purple apron; she holds a
fan in her right hand and a porcelain cup on a lacquer
saucer in her left. Her fan, apron
and haircomb are all
decorated with paulownia leaves and flowers, which are Okita’s
crest.
At the top right the title of
the set of three to which this print belongs is printed Furyu
sampukutsui (Triptych of contemporary beauties). The
complete set is illustrated in Ukiyo-e Tasei, X, 38-40. The
middle sheet shows the famous
singer Toyohina and the left
sheet Ohisa, a servant of the Takashimaya teahouse. The set
resembles > Utamaro’s
famous portraits of the
same beauties very closely (Shibui,
1964, p.46; see no.60).
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Fig.2. Portrait of Okita
holding a cup and saucer, c.1790s
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Hectic
Starting from the early
1800s, his work focused increasingly on images of kabuki
actors. The theatre became his source of inspiration, with
the plots and dramatic tensions often brought out in the
poses, facial expressions
and postures of the
characters portrayed. In fact, his vast output and the
monopoly enjoyed by Toyokuni and his schol enable us today
to understand in considerable depth the history of kabuki
during that period. Because Toyokuni was producing
theatre prints at a hectic rate (so hectic, in fact, that
eventually it had a negative impact on the quality of the
work), he designed very few works with erotic subjects, and
mainly after 1820, Toyokuni produced prints and paintings
of female beauties, at the same time as artisitc giants such
as Kiyonaga, Utamaro and Eishi,
Phallic God
In 1823 Toyokuni published
the three-volume Picture Book: Mirror of the Vagina (Ehon
kaichu kagami), opens with a page depicting a kind of
god of phalluses, sitting in the lotus position as in
traditional Buddhist iconography
(see Fig.3). Even his nose is
phallus–shaped, and at his feet are several erect
phalluses representing, in all probability, votive
offerings, since they are inscribed with the word ’offer’
(hono). The book also contains the print that depicts a sex scene taking
place inside a > teahouse.
In the foreground a bored-looking young man, leaning on an
armrest and supporting his head with his hand, seems as though he is almost
being forced to have intercourse by a young courtesan.
Behind him, in the right-hand corner, three men can just be
seen, two of them wearing ceremonial dress (kamishimo),
and surrounded by various ledgers. A servant is
approaching them, carrying a tray heaped with food, and
stops for a moment to listen to what another serving-girl is
whispering to her while walking away. The following >
scene
is a ceremony of sexual
initiation (mizuage), involving a mature man and a
young apprentice courtesan who is covering her face,
overcome by emotion.
Skeleton Sex
Also of great interest are
the prints in which the artist seeks to create a link
between the different scenes by depicting the same setting
but from different scenes by depicting the same setting but
from different points of view in
successive sheets. Like the
lovemaking scene between a > man
and a woman who turns into a skeleton when he
falls asleep, the couple making love one last
time before > commiting
suicide together, or the close-up of an older
couple embracing; in the previous scene they are barely visible
on top of thebsmall table in the background, next to a
bonsai pine and plum trees and a thousand-year-old tortoise
with a long tail. They are Jo and Uba, the mythical old
couple who tend the pine on Tokasago beach, the legend
of their love is traditionally recalled at weddings.
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Fig.3. God of Phalluses,
c.1823
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Resource:
>
Poem
of the Pillow and other Stories by Utamaro, Hokusai,
Kuniyoshi and Other Artists of the Floating World
by Gian Carlo Calza.
Check out more shunga designs
of
Picture
Book:
>
Mirror of the Vagina
(The following
P-numbers on that page: P1104 to P1080)
> Click here for more articles
on ukiyo-e.
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