Item from the Mokuhankan Flea Market

Tree Cricket and Firefly

Size: 26.5cm by 38.0cm (10.43 in by 14.96 in) | Enlargement | Shipping Code: [L] ?

Designer: Kitagawa Utamaro

Era: Early Showa | Currency: $ / £ / €

Price: ¥ 12,000$ 96.00£ 70.00€ 82.00 [Item has been sold]

Description: The print is from Utamaro's series Pictures of Insects (Ehon Mushi Erami); a collection of 15 designs of insects and other garden creatures that pairs various insects with humorous or suggestive poems (kyoka) reflecting on human behavior. The poems were written by Ishikawa Masamochi.

In this nocturnal scene, a cricket rests delicately atop a small flowering plant, while a few fireflies hover above the long, slender leaves on the left side of the composition.

The accompanying kyoka on the right reads:

Under the mosquito net I wait for you, only to hear the sound of the tree crickets.

As intimate as the firefly is to the Saho River, and the Saho River is to the reed, we are forever bound, inseparable.

This verse playfully uses the insects as metaphors for themes of longing, intimacy and emotional closeness.

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