These graphic works were not originally meant for use by the general public; they were intended for refined collectors, men of letters, who, in Japan, lived in close company with artists, or for the women represented in Utamaro, and they remained luxury items. But in the nineteenth century their prestige diminished: in the hands of profit-motivated publishers and an undemanding mass audience, the quality of printing diminished and the discrete, muted, and harmonious colours gave way to garish and tawdry colourings. And although, in 1830, the painter Hiroshighe attempted to bring back the colourings of the eighteenth century, it was in vain.
Edmond de Goncourt had the discernment to note a tendency, in the painter of the women of the “green houses”, to portray motherhood, to present the mother in maternal postures, such as breastfeeding. There is the tilted head of our Virgin over the divine Bambino; there is the ecstatic contemplation of the nursing mother; there is the loving embrace in her arms, the delicate wrapping of one hand around an ankle while the other caresses the back of the neck of the child clinging to her breast. He paints the mother rocking the child; bathing it in a wooden vat, the bathtub of that country; a comb between her teeth, gathering up his little queue; one hand through his loose belt, supporting his first steps; amusing him with a thousand little games; having him take a marble from her mouth; frightening him with a mask of a fox, that legendary animal in the nursery rhymes of the country. Even the Japanese encyclopaedia attests to the mythological dimension of this animal by asserting that when the fox blows on the bones of a horse that he is eating, it ignites a fairy fire which illuminates him, so that he then lives one hundred years and salutes the Ursa Major before being transformed.
“Geisha” (Geigi), from the series “Komachi and his Children”, c. 1800.
Naga-Ōban, nishiki-e, 53.1 × 25.2 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (left and right sheets) and Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu (centre sheet).
“Husband and Wife Caught in an Evening Shower”
(Fūfu no yū-dachi), from the series “Three Evening Pleasures of the Floating World” (Ukiyo san saki), c. 1800. Naga-Ōban, nishiki-e, 51.4 × 23.3 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.
“Breastfeeding” (chibusa), from the series “Yamauba and Kintarō”, c. 1801–1803.
Ōban, nishiki-e, 37.5 × 25.4 cm.
Musée national des Arts asiatiques – Guimet, Paris.
“Water-Basin Mirror” (Mizu kagami), from the series “Eight Views of Courtesans with Mirrors” (Yūkun kagami hakkei), c. 1798–1799.
Ōban, nishiki-e, 38.2 × 25.5 cm.
Musée national des Arts asiatiques – Guimet, Paris.
Yamauba and Kintarō, c. 1796–1804.
“Yamauba Holding Chestnuts, and Kintarō” (Kuri o motsu Yamauba to Kintarō), from the series “Yamauba and Kintarō”, c. 1804–1805.
Naga-Ōban, nishiki-e, 23.6 × 51.7 cm.
Musée national des Arts asiatiques – Guimet, Paris.
Among all these scenes, there is one of a marvellous realism: the scene in which a Japanese mother is helping her child to pee, the mother’s two hands holding the calves of the two spread legs of the child, while, in a gesture typical of infants, his two tiny hands flutter absently above his eyes. In these images of mother and child, in which the existence of the two is, so to speak, not yet completely separate and where, from the womb of the mother, the child seems to have gone directly onto her lap or onto her shoulders, one plate stands out: a mother has her child on her back, leaning forward over her shoulder, and both are looking at themselves in the water collected in the hollow of a tree trunk. Their faces appear to draw closer, to unite, almost to kiss, in the reflection of this natural mirror. Among these expressions devoted to motherhood, one series shows pudgy little children as they caper about above their mothers’ heads, children with chubby arms and legs, with folds of fat at their knees and wrists, who appear in their fleshy nudity, dressed only in a little apron.
Several other series are dedicated to the depiction in images of childhood in the woods, of an heroic child, with mahogany-coloured skin, seen in the Ehon Sosi fearlessly holding a bear cub by the tail and violently pulling it towards him. This future hero, who was nursed, nourished, and brought up by a woman with a wildly-dishevelled mop of black hair who could be mistaken for a Geneviève de Brabant in her cave-dwelling days. Here is the story, no doubt legendary, of this little tyke, named Kintaro. Minamoto no Yorimitsu (944-1021) was one day hunting on the mountain of Ashigara, in the province of Sagami. Not catching any of the sparse game, he pushed on to the more remote parts of the mountain, and there he found a boy with the muscular body of a young Hercules, with very red skin, playing with a bear. Questioned by Yorimitsu, the boy went to fetch his mother. The woman, uncoiffed and dressed in leaves, explained in noble language and in the manner of the court that she did not wish to identify herself. Therefore she is given the name of Yamauba (mountain mother). And yet the mountain mother agreed to Yorimitsu’s request when he asked her to let him take charge of the child, telling him that he was the son of a great general of Minamoto clan, killed in a war against Taira clan. Thus, she had raised the boy in the mountain to be a hero.
When the child was grown, he took the name of Sakata no Kintoki after the lands with which he had been rewarded by Yorimitsu, who had made him one of his four highest officers. In the mountain of Oyeyama, and in the province of Tampa, there lived a great devil, an outlaw named Shuten-doji, who pillaged the neighbouring provinces, shamelessly carrying off young maidens and, with his band of devils, routing the soldiers of the provincial governors. Complaints arrived at the court and Yorimitsu was appointed to lead an expedition against the brigand. But instead of taking a whole battalion with him, he took just Kintoki and his three high officers, disguised as pilgrims. Having made the brigands drunk on sake and dancing with them, and while Kintoki hand wrestled with Shuten-doji, holding his hands and laughing, Yorimitsu drew his sword like lightening and cut off his head so quickly that, on the other side of the room people were still dancing without suspecting anything. A general melee ensued, but the five heroes, among whom was Kintoki, accomplished feats of prowess and overpowered the devils who were demoralised by the death of their chieftain, burning their hideout and returning the captive women to their homes.
Kintoki is also the hero of another adventure. When Yorimitsu fell ill as a result of a wound inflicted by a monstrous spider, he set out with three of his comrades to slay it.
We must also mention Momotarō. Along with Kintarō, this other legendary boy is honoured by Japanese children who fill their albums with depictions of his feats and adventures. The fable tells the story of an old couple. One day, while the man was cutting wood and the woman was washing laundry in the stream, there rose up from the water a huge red thing which the old woman recognised as an enormous peach: peach momo. She waited for her husband to cut it open. […]. Great was the astonishment of the old couple to find a beautiful boy inside, whom they named Momotarō (peach child). The child soon became a tall charming youth. But in those days, the people who lived on the coast were being eaten by the horrible inhabitants of a neighbouring island. One day the young man, accompanied by his dog, his monkey, and his pheasant, set sail for the island. Once there, he and his companions began to accomplish such marvels that the king of the island agreed to stop the cannibalistic expeditions. Ever since this promise, the inhabitants of Japan have been able to live unmolested.
“Woman Holding up a Piece of Fabric” (Nuno o kazasu onna), c. 1795–1796.
Ōban, nishiki-e, 38 × 25.5 cm.
Musée national des