Lot Essay
In the past many students of ukiyo-e, both in Japan and the West, have interpreted this image of a fisherman to represent Hokusai himself. Perhaps they mistook the phrase jiga in the signature to mean "self-portrait," or perhaps they surmised that the image must somehow reflect his own features.
Edmond de Goncourt in his biography of Hokusai notes the ruminations of Hayashi Tadamasa to this effect:
Hayashi sees in this bald old man with a turned up nose, mocking expression, and the features of an ironic Kalmouk, the portrait of Hokusai himself. [1]
In fact, a comparison with surviving sketches and drawings generally considered to be portraits of Hokusai makes this claim highly untenable. Perhaps we can say that the artist intended this image to be a self-mocking, mitate-e portrait of himself as a fisherman relaxing on the shore, enjoying a pipe, and gazing at the sky--the way he would like his friends to see him. Or it could simply be interpreted as the achetypal Hokusai figure, the "everyman" of the artist's imagination.
The poems here are of special interest not only because of the master's own contribution, signed Manji, but because the verse on the right, signed with a character that can be read as Ei, is most certainly by his daughter Oei. [2] Surviving poetry anthologies reveal that Hokusai used the poetry name Manji during his mid-sixties to early-seventies to sign senryu (humorous 17-syllable verse). [3] This information and the figure style and coloration of the image all indicate a dating to the late 1820s or early 1830s.
Oei's poem reads:
kono haru wa
tsuki no katsura o
oru bakari
This coming spring
I shall snap off the branch
of the katsura tree in the moon.
The poem on one level refers to the legend of the katsura tree which is said to grow on the moon, yet the expression tsuki no katsura o oru, "snap off the branches of the katsura tree," was also once used idiomatically to refer to "passing a test." Here the poet may simply be engaging in wordplay to describe a person gazing at the moon, or perhaps it indicates that the coming spring promised to be a turning-point in her life.
Hokusai's poem is similarly cryptic:
hama suna ni
tsura mezurashiki
yomena kana
On the sandy beach,
the aster reveals
a most striking face.
Since the word yomena, a type of aster, literally means "bride flower," various Japanese critics, including Hayashi, have speculated that the poem is somehow connected to Oei's marriage to Minamizawa Tomei (which apparently soon ended in divorce) but this cannot be confirmed.
Another possible interpretation is that the image and both poems pun on the word tsura (face). The central focus of the image is the expressive "face" of the fisherman, while tsura can also refer to the surface of the sea (as in the expression umizura, "face of the sea."). The word tsura is found in both poems: in the first as part of the word katsura; in the second it refers to the face of the flower.
[1] Trans. from Forrer, Hokusai (New York: Rizzoli, 1988), 324.
[2] Hayashi Yoshikazu, Empon kenkyu: Oei to Eisen (Tokyo: Yuko Shobo, 1967), 58; see also Richard Lane, Hokusai: Life and Work (New York: Dutton, 1989), pl. 241 and caption. Oei's various modes of signing paintings and poems is briefly discussed in Kubota Kazuhiro, "Oi-eijo no yukikata," Prints 21 (Tokyo), October 1993, 44-47.
[3] Nagata Seiji discusses Hokusai's use of the poetry name Manji in Hokusai Bijitsukan (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1990), Vol. 3: 155).
Edmond de Goncourt in his biography of Hokusai notes the ruminations of Hayashi Tadamasa to this effect:
Hayashi sees in this bald old man with a turned up nose, mocking expression, and the features of an ironic Kalmouk, the portrait of Hokusai himself. [1]
In fact, a comparison with surviving sketches and drawings generally considered to be portraits of Hokusai makes this claim highly untenable. Perhaps we can say that the artist intended this image to be a self-mocking, mitate-e portrait of himself as a fisherman relaxing on the shore, enjoying a pipe, and gazing at the sky--the way he would like his friends to see him. Or it could simply be interpreted as the achetypal Hokusai figure, the "everyman" of the artist's imagination.
The poems here are of special interest not only because of the master's own contribution, signed Manji, but because the verse on the right, signed with a character that can be read as Ei, is most certainly by his daughter Oei. [2] Surviving poetry anthologies reveal that Hokusai used the poetry name Manji during his mid-sixties to early-seventies to sign senryu (humorous 17-syllable verse). [3] This information and the figure style and coloration of the image all indicate a dating to the late 1820s or early 1830s.
Oei's poem reads:
kono haru wa
tsuki no katsura o
oru bakari
This coming spring
I shall snap off the branch
of the katsura tree in the moon.
The poem on one level refers to the legend of the katsura tree which is said to grow on the moon, yet the expression tsuki no katsura o oru, "snap off the branches of the katsura tree," was also once used idiomatically to refer to "passing a test." Here the poet may simply be engaging in wordplay to describe a person gazing at the moon, or perhaps it indicates that the coming spring promised to be a turning-point in her life.
Hokusai's poem is similarly cryptic:
hama suna ni
tsura mezurashiki
yomena kana
On the sandy beach,
the aster reveals
a most striking face.
Since the word yomena, a type of aster, literally means "bride flower," various Japanese critics, including Hayashi, have speculated that the poem is somehow connected to Oei's marriage to Minamizawa Tomei (which apparently soon ended in divorce) but this cannot be confirmed.
Another possible interpretation is that the image and both poems pun on the word tsura (face). The central focus of the image is the expressive "face" of the fisherman, while tsura can also refer to the surface of the sea (as in the expression umizura, "face of the sea."). The word tsura is found in both poems: in the first as part of the word katsura; in the second it refers to the face of the flower.
[1] Trans. from Forrer, Hokusai (New York: Rizzoli, 1988), 324.
[2] Hayashi Yoshikazu, Empon kenkyu: Oei to Eisen (Tokyo: Yuko Shobo, 1967), 58; see also Richard Lane, Hokusai: Life and Work (New York: Dutton, 1989), pl. 241 and caption. Oei's various modes of signing paintings and poems is briefly discussed in Kubota Kazuhiro, "Oi-eijo no yukikata," Prints 21 (Tokyo), October 1993, 44-47.
[3] Nagata Seiji discusses Hokusai's use of the poetry name Manji in Hokusai Bijitsukan (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1990), Vol. 3: 155).