Title : Urawa: Uoya Danshichi

Artist : Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Date : 1852

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Source : Honolulu Museum of Art
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Description : Urawa is the fourth station of the Sixty-Nine Stations of Kisokaidö and is typically illustrated with a depiction of the landscape close to Tokyo. In Kuniyoshi's print, the cartouche at the top right, cleverly encircled by animals of the deep sea, does identify the scene as this station. To the left, small and relatively unimportant, is a scene of travelers in the landscape, something like what Utagawa Hiroshige might have used as the central image a generation before. Here, however, Kuniyoshi's focus is not the landscape but rather the Kabuki play "The Summer Festival", in which a tattooed Danshichi is pouring a bucket of water over his head, a device indicating that the murder of his father-in-law is complete. Kuniyoshi clearly found a way to circumvent restrictions imposed by reforms enacted during the Tenpö era (1830-44), which curtailed the depiction of beautiful women (bijinga) and Kabuki actors (yakusha-e) in woodblock prints. By titling the series Sixty-Nine Stations of Kisokaidö he avoided the censure of his highly animated and energized tattooed actor prints. (Tattoo exhibition 2005)

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