The Surimono Specialist Kubota Shunman.

The Surimono Specialist Kubota Shunman.

Kubota Shunman (1757-1820) was born in Edo. As a painter his first training was in the Chinese inspired tradition of the Shikunshi (‘Four noble plants’: orchid, bamboo, plum and chrysanthemum). He later became a pupil of Kitao Shigemasa (1739-1820). Print designing, however, seems to have been but one of his pastimes. He is probably best known in Japan as a writer of novels and kyoka, the comical verse that is so closely linked to the > surimono (privately printed prints).

Benigirai

Apart from surimono Shunman did not design many single-sheet prints. Two of the most famous are described below, both in the benigirai (‘red avoided’, colour print without red or pink which enjoyed a vogue in the early 1790s) technique which enjoyed a vogue in the late 1780s. It has been suggested that this was a reaction to one of the most sumptuary edicts of the Tokugawa regime but too few seem to have been designed to make this plausible. It seems more probable that they were inspired by brush paintings which sometimes also exhibit this spare use of colour. The sweeping lines in the Mutamagawa do evoke the handling of the brush more than the neat incision of the woodcutter. The other benigirai, an oban triptych, has recently been discovered (mid 1970s) to be an egoyomi (calendar print) for 1788, probably the largest in existence. It would be tempting to suppose that it commemorates an important point in Shunman’s own acitivities as a kyoka (humorous poems of 31 syllables) poet, perhaps his becoming a pupil of the master Tsumuri Hikari, whose successor Shunman became around 1796.

Study of lacquered box and three combs, c.1830, Kamakura-shi-series.

Poems

Shunman’s activities as a poet naturally led to the designing of surimono as the leading kyoka clubs all started to commission kyoka albums around that time, illustrated by leading ukiyo-e artists such as > Utamaro, and surimono. The latter ofte appeared in sets inspired by themes, like the Tosa Nikki and the Ise monogatari series described below. The connection between the poems and the subjects of the prints is often tenuous and the poems themselves are so filled with puns and allusions that their wit escapes the modern reader. But the prints however can be enjoyed as one of the subtlest forms of Japanese art and the introduction of a new genre, still-life, gives a refreshing impetus to the sometimes repetitious gallery of ukiyo-e subjects.

Signatures

Apart from the activities described above, Shunman also owned his own publishing house and therefore some doubt exists as to whether all the surimono which appeared under his name were in fact designed by him. On the basis of datable surimono we have tried to establish whether they give a solution to this problem and whether there is any indication of the chronology of the different signatures and seals Shunman used. It seems however, that Shunman used most of his signatures throughout his artistic career and therefore the dating, except in cases where a surimono is datable because one of the zodiacal animals occurs on it, is not more than very tentative.

Shunman’s Masterpiece The Six Tama Rivers

Below two sheets from the Tama river set.Left sheet: The Toi Tama river in Settsu province. Two kneeling women on a mat are fulling cloth wound on a roller. Behind them two standing women. The background is formed by a gnarled pine tree, the meandering river and a house between green hills. The only other colour is the red of a few maple leaves. Right sheet: The Chofu Tama river in Musashi province. A woman is washing narrow strips of cloth in a river. She looks back at a man and two women standing behind her. In the distance people beating cloth in a wooden tub and laying down strips of cloth to dry and bleach. The only colours are the green of the hills, some red and some more green.

The Six Tama Rivers, late 1780s. Signed: Shunman ga (on each sheet). Artist’s seal: Shunman (on each sheet). Publisher’s mark: Fushizen. This famous set of the Six Tama rivers has often been descirbed. It is one of the masterworks of benigirai-e. It is unusual as a set depicting the Six Jewel rivers, with their poetic connotations (see Ledoux, 1948, 26 for the description of the rivers and the poems about them), because the picture is continuous on all sheets, so that it really forms a hexaptych.

> The following image show two other panels from this hexaptych (six panels).