Object data
nishikie
height 161 mm × width 213 mm
Kubota Shunman
A Game of Cards and its Box
Japan, Japan, Japan, Japan, 1806
Provenance
…; purchased from the dealer Hotei Japanese Prints, Leiden, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1993;1 by whom donated to the museum, 1995
Object number: RP-P-1995-287
Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Kubota Shunman (1757-1820), popularly called Kubo Shunman, was a pupil of Kitao Shigemasa who was also strongly influenced by Torii Kiyonaga and Katsukawa Shuncho. He created an attractive blend of the various ideals of feminine beauty prevalent in his time. He also used the art name Shosado. In addition to designing prints and making paintings, he was a poet and a writer and ran a studio that produced surimono. It was probably in this capacity that he introduced some of the innovations of the mid-Bunka period (1809-13), exploring the concept of large series of shikishiban surimono.
Entry
A wooden box of cards with a decoration of chrysanthemums on its protective cloth. Five of the cards beside it, three of them showing part of the poems and the portraits of Yamabe no Akahito, Murasaki Shikibu and Fujiwara no Toshiyuki Ason.
The three cards are used in a memory game based on the anthology A Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets, Hyakunin isshu, compiled by Fujiwara Teika in 1235, and are inscribed with the first halves of the poems by Yamabe no Akahito (8th century):
'Having gone to Tago's coast, I see the lofty peak of Mount Fuji, white with the falling snow' (Tago no ura ni uchi idete mireba shirotae no [Fuji no takane ni yuki wa furitsutsu]); the beautiful 'Meeting him by chance, but still wondering if it really is him - alas, my midnight moon has disappeared in the clouds' (Meguri aite mishi ya sore to mo wakanu ma ni [kumo kakure nishi yoha no tsuki kana]), by Murasaki no Shikibu (c. 978-c. 1014); and Fujiwara no Toshiyuki Ason's 'Waves gather on the banks of Suminoe, and even when I visit you at night in my dreams, I avoid letting people seeing me' (Suminoe no kishi ni yoru nami yoru sae ya [yume no kayoiji hitome yokuran]).
The dating written at top left reads 'First Day of the New Tiger Year', Tora no harutatsu [no] hi, i.e., 1806. The design is printed on crêped paper.
Three poems by Nakasando, Tago no Ishibumi and Naokoto Shibaura. All poems playfully refer to the classical poems and their poets in the anthology. The first poem alludes to the poem by Toshiyuki:
Waves gather on the banks of Suminoe, and come back again like the blessed Toshiyuki Ason Suminoe no kishi ni yoru nami tachigaeri mata aratama no Toshiyuki Ason.
The second poem alludes to Yamabe no Akahito; the last poem to Murasaki Shikibu: When Spring comes for Prince Genji at Suwa's coast, Murasaki Shikibu is caught in a deep mist.
Issued by the poets
Signature reading: Shunman ga, with seal: Shosado
Literature
M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 72
Citation
M. Forrer, 2013, 'Kubota Shunman, A Game of Cards and its Box, Japan, 1806', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.318702
(accessed 27 December 2024 10:21:04).