Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) | Poem by Tenchi Tenno | Edo period, 19th century

For his last single sheet series of woodblock prints, One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse (Hyakunin isshu uba ga etoki), Katshushika Hokusai looked to an anthology of well-known poems, entitled Hyakunin Isshu (A Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets), as his source. These poems, based on love and melancholy, were assembled by the thirteenth-century poet Fujiawara no Teika. Hokusai chose to visually recount the poems from the perspective of a fictional elderly nurse. Together with sixty-four preparatory drawings, twenty-seven published prints are known, each exhibiting bold colour and including a cartouche enclosing the relevant verse. The series was commissioned by the publisher Nishimura Yohachi and his firm Eijudo successfully issued five prints before closing down; the additional twenty-two prints were then published by Iseya Sanjiro’s firm Iseri, with the original Eijudo seal continuing to be employed.

The poem in this print was written by Emperor Tenchi Tenno (628-681) and describes how he sheltered in the hut of a rice farmer during an autumnal rain storm.

Aki no ta no

Kario no io no

Toma wo arami

Waga koromode wa

Tsuyu ni nure-tsutsu

Coarse the rush-mat roof

Sheltering the harvest-hut

Of the autumn rice-field

And my sleeves are growing wet

With the moisture dripping through

Tenchi Tenno draws attention to his drenched sleeves, a reference, it has been said, to weeping for the hard-working people of the land, for whom he felt great empathy. Hokusai depicts these labourers at sunset, harvesting their crops after a long day of work.

For another impression in The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, see accession no. 21.6714