Fujiwara no Michinobu

Data

Fujiwara no Michinobu
Print   (Part of the set: Nature and Landscape Collection)

Hokusai
O-Edo Mokuhansha
1960s

40.60 cm
26.60 cm

2018
00006-016
https://mokuhankan.com/collection/index.php?id_for_display=00006-016

Print is Public Domain; Photography is:   Creative Commons License

Description

In a very unusual move by the publisher, this set includes four designs by Hokusai taken from one of his final print sets, the 百人一首 乳母かゑとき (Hyakunin isshu uba ga etoki - The Hundred Poems as Told by the Nurse). 'Nurse' here is used in the sense of a 'wet-nurse', a woman taking care of children, and explaining things to them ...

The series was never finished, but many of the preparatory sketches and block drawings did get preserved (a group of them in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London).

None of the other major reproduction houses (Takamizawa, Adachi, Watanabe, etc.) made reproductions of these prints; they for the most part stuck to Hokusai's more famous designs. Perhaps the owner of the O-Edo company was a big fan of the poetry ...

The poem can be read:
Although I know the gentle night
Will surely follow morn,
Yet, when I'm wakened by the sun,
Turn over, stretch and yawn—
How I detest the dawn!

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