Lot 232D
19th C. Chikanobu Triptych, Shogun's Lawsuit
19th C. Chikanobu Triptych, Shogun's Lawsuit
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Toyohara "Yoshu" Chikanobu (Japanese, 1838-1912). "The Shogun Hearing a Lawsuit at Fukiage" (Shogun-ke Fukiage ni oite Kuji jocho no zu), from the series "Onko Azuma no Hana" (Flowers of the East: Revisiting the Past), woodblock print triptych, 1889. Artist's signature, seal, and publisher's seal at lower right of right sheet.
A formal judicial tableau in three woodblock sheets, set within the precincts of Edo Castle, where the shogun's household convenes to hear a lawsuit at Fukiage, the inner garden reserved for the ruling family. The composition moves from open air to inner chamber across the three sheets. At left, a castle keep and clipped pines rise beyond a slatted fence and a curtain of indigo and white, while a woman in a brilliant vermilion robe scattered with blossoms kneels among kneeling officials in striped hakama. The center sheet brings a second woman forward, her robe a cascade of purple, crimson, and floral brocade, her hair crowned with the radiating pins of the pleasure quarters, kneeling upon scattered papers as an official in black looks on and a dignitary in formal kamishimo presides from a raised bench. At right, retainers in muted silks sit in ranks along a tatami platform behind a screen of bamboo blinds, the chamber receding into a wash of golden light. Size of each panel: 9.4" W x 14" H (23.9 cm W x 35.6 cm H); of all together: 28" W x 14" H (71.1 cm W x 35.6 cm H).
The series "Onko Azuma no Hana" belongs to a vein of Meiji printmaking steeped in nostalgia for the vanished Tokugawa order, recreating the ceremonies, gardens, and protocols of a feudal world that the Restoration had swept away within living memory. Here the subject is justice administered from on high: "kuji" denotes a legal suit, and "jocho" the act of the shogun deigning to hear it in person. The richly attired women may be parties to the case, perhaps figures of the licensed quarters whose dispute has risen to the highest court in the land, a reading the elaborate coiffures and the documents strewn beneath them would support. The explanatory panel pasted to the shoji, in the manner of a theatrical program, frames the scene for a Meiji audience hungry for the pageantry of the old regime.
Chikanobu came to this material by blood as much as by craft. Born Hashimoto Naoyoshi in 1838, a samurai retainer of the Sakakibara clan, he fought for the shogunate through the Boshin War and made his last stand at the siege of Hakodate before laying down the sword for the brush. Trained in the Utagawa lineage and adopting the artist name Yoshu, he became the foremost chronicler of Tokugawa court life in the new era, his series on the women of Chiyoda Castle and the customs of old Edo carrying the unmistakable longing of a man who had served the order he now memorialized. The sheet shows the technical refinement of his mature period, with passages of lacquer and blind embossing lending sheen and texture to the brocades, the printer's art deployed in service of a courtly world rendered all the more luminous for being gone.
Signed lower right of the right sheet "Yoshu Chikanobu" with the artist's seal, accompanied by the publisher's gourd-form seal of Egawa Hachizaemon. Series and print title cartouche upper right of the right sheet. Explanatory text panel mounted on the shoji at upper center of the center sheet, signed by the writer "Jirakudo shujin."
About the artist: Toyohara Chikanobu (1838-1912), born Hashimoto Naoyoshi in Echigo Province, arrived at printmaking by way of the battlefield. A retainer of the Sakakibara clan of Takada Domain, he fought as a Shogitai loyalist in the Battle of Ueno and later at the Goryokaku star fort in Hakodate during the final, doomed stand of the Tokugawa order, earning a reputation for personal bravery before the new Meiji government made samurai careers obsolete. The sword exchanged for the brush, he traveled to Tokyo in 1875, found work illustrating for the Kaishin Shimbun, and built a prolific parallel practice in nishiki-e woodblock printing.
His training traced an unusually layered lineage: early study in the Kano school of painting, followed by instruction under a disciple of Keisai Eisen, then the workshop of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (under whom he called himself Yoshitsuru), and finally Kunisada, before studying nigao-e portraiture with Toyohara Kunichika, whose name he adopted into his own art name, Yoshu Chikanobu.
He worked across a remarkable range of subjects: warrior prints and war reportage, kabuki actor portraits, scenic views, historical pageant, and the genre that made him a household name, bijinga, images of beautiful women. His series on women's fashion and court life inside the Imperial Palace at Chiyoda captured an audience hungry for glimpses of a world few could enter. His "Mirror of Ages" (1897) traced the evolution of women's hairstyles across eras with the precision of a social historian and the eye of a colorist. When he died in 1912, the Miyako Shimbun mourned that Edo-e, the great Tokyo woodblock tradition, had perished with him.
Provenance: private Las Vegas, Nevada, USA collection
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Item #
195214
- Condition: Fair. Three separate panels. Some minor tears to edges as well as foxing and areas of discoloring and staining to paper. Nice overall imagery with good remaining detail.
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