(, "Eight Parlour Views") is a series of eight prints from 1766 by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Suzuki Harunobu. They were the first full-colour nishiki-e prints and are considered representative examples of Harunobu's work. The prints are mitate-e parodies of popular themes of the 11th-century Chinese landscape painting series, Eight Views of Xiaoxiang; Harunobu replaces natural scenery with domestic scenes.
Harunobu made an erotic shunga version of the series in called Fūryū Zashiki Hakkei (, "Eight Fashionable Parlour Views" or "Eight Modern Parlour Views"), each accompanied with a poem. He appropriated images and poetry for them from works by earlier artists, particularly those of the artist Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671–1750) and the poet Fukuo Kichijirō.
The Zashiki Hakkei theme became popular with artists such as Torii Kiyonaga, who produced two series based on Harunobu's Zashiki Hakkei in the late 1770s, and Isoda Koryūsai, who produced a Zashiki Hakkei series of his own.
Background
Ukiyo-e emerged in Japan as a genre of paintings and woodblock prints in the late 17th century. Early prints were printed with black ink; colour was sometimes added by hand, and by the mid-18th century with extra woodblocks. Suzuki Harunobu (1725–1770) achieved fame in the latter 1760s for his pioneering nishiki-e "brocade prints" made with a large number of coloured blocks. These arose at a daishōkai event hosted in 1765 by , a hatamoto samurai who produced haiku poetry and ukiyo-e art. The prolific Harunobu became the dominant ukiyo-e artist of his time. He made these prints typically on commission, and they bore the name of the patron rather than the artist on first printings; later printings for the public removed the patron's name or replaced it with the artist's.
The Eight Views of Xiaoxiang is a Chinese series of eight shan shui "mountain-water" paintings of views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers in China. The scholar-painter Song Di produced the first rendition in the 1060s with a series of landscape handscrolls, to which he later attached a one-line poem to each. The theme soon became a popular subject in artistic circles. It later became a popular theme with Japanese bunjin literati painters and became widely known after its introduction in Japan during the Muromachi period (1336–1573). Thereafter the subjects and titles formed the basis for paintings and poetry. The Japanese often adapted the theme to local geography, with such titles as Eight Views of Edo or Eight Views of Kanagawa. One of the earliest and most popular of these localized themes was Eight Views of Ōmi, set in Ōmi Province (modern Shiga Prefecture), which surrounds Lake Biwa, not far from the ancient capital of Kyoto.
Harunobu often employed numerous complex mitate allusions in his prints for viewers to take pleasure in recognizing and deciphering. Early in his career he made a Ōmi Hakkei no Uchi series of vertical hashira-e "pillar prints".
Publication
The series appeared in chūban size from the publisher Shokakudō of Yokoyama-chō in Edo (modern Tokyo) in . As was common at the time, the higher-quality first printing of the series bore the seal of the client who commissioned it: for Ōkubo Kyosen. Kyosen distributed some of the print sets, which came in an expensive paulownia box in which a packet wrapping the prints displayed Harunobu's name and the titles of the prints, which did not appear on the prints themselves in this printing.
Shōkakudō republished the prints for the general public with Harunobu's name on the wrapper, on which it advertised the new full-colour technique as Azuma nishiki-e ("brocade pictures of the Eastern Capital"—"Azuma" refers to the country's administrative capital Edo, found in eastern Japan). The publisher sold this edition of the set without Kyosen's seal, and with an index sheet listing the names of the prints. The publisher sold the prints individually without a wrapper from the third printing on with Harunobu's seal on them. Later printings appeared from other publishers as well, some of the full set, others of individual prints, sometimes with certain prints reused in other series.
Art historians have traced major compositional elements in Harunobu's work to earlier works by artists such as Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671–1750), Okumura Masanobu (1686–1764), Ishikawa Toyonobu. Harunobu's appropriations are so close in detail to the originals that he appears not to have tried to hide them. Art historian Akiko Tanabe considered this a deliberate approach demonstrating Harunobu's appreciation of the traditional themes of his art.
Harunobu produced an erotic shunga version of the series in titled Fūryū Zashiki Hakkei "Eight Fashionable Parlour Views" or "Eight Modern Parlour Views"). These were also in chūban size, and were likely sold separately, whereas the original Zashiki Hakkei was sold at first as a bundle. Art historians did not have access to a complete set of Fūryū Zashiki Hakkei until 1994. published the first study of the complete in 1999. provided an in-depth interpretation of mitate elements in them in a book on Harunobu's use of mitate in 2002.
It is thought that Kyosen had the prints based on kyōka poems by Fukuo Kichijirō and Nagata Teiryū (1654–1734); both had produced sets of poems on the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang, Teiryū in and Kichijirō in . Kyosen and Harunobu were almost certainly familiar with their work, and the poems on the Fūryū Zashiki Hakkei prints bear a close resemblance to Kichijirō's. Kichijirō, from Owari Province, put his humorous Zashiki Hakkei in domestic settings. He was an adolescent when his series appeared in the Kyōhō Sesetsu, a collection of poetry assembled in the Kyōhō era (1716–36). The Kyōhō Sesetsu exists only in hand-written manuscript copies, amongst which there may have been small differences. Because not one of Harunobu's is precisely the same as known copies of Kichijirō's, it is likely they were based on Kichijirō's with changes made. It is possible they came from a copy of the manuscript unknown to scholars, but differences in known copies are slight.
Harunobu re-used compositional elements from the series in other prints, as did other artists. There is a series on the four seasons that uses rearranged visual elements from Zashiki Hakkei with the poems from Fūryū Zashiki Hakkei attached; it is signed "Harunobu" but is likely the work of Shiba Kōkan, who signed many of his works with Harunobu's name. In Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815) produced two of his own versions of Harunobu's Zashiki Hakkei under the titles Fūryū Zashiki Hakkei (1777) and Zashiki Hakkei Mono (1778), to both of which he added the poems from Harunobu's Fūryū Zashiki Hakkei. Kiyonaga's versions modernize the styles of the hair and kimonos and rearrange the figures and viewpoints of Harunobu's originals.
Zashiki Hakkei has come to be seen as a representative example of Harunobu's work. The art scholar considers Fūryū Zashiki Hakkei likely the most complex set of shunga prints.
Description and analysis
With the exception of Clearing Mist of the Fan, the prints depict indoor scenes set in a —a Japanese-style room floored with tatami straw mats. Two women feature in each print of Zashiki Hakkei, and each is a mitate parody that alludes to the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang series, replacing the landscape scenery of the paintings with contemporary domestic scenes and objects.
Aside from the erotic content, Fūryū Zashiki Hakkei differs most from Zashiki Hakkei by the addition of a kyōka poem to each print, set off from the rest of the picture with wavy, cloud-like lines. The mitate works on two levels: as a parody of the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang replacing natural scenery with domestic furnishings, and by adding a male–female tale to the eight views.
(, "Descending geese of the koto bridges") parodies Wild Geese Descending on a Sandbank ( ), which traditionally depicts a flock of geese descends on the banks of the Xiang River. The title poses translation difficulties. Common translations include Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges and Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges, suggesting geese landing on the bridges of the koto. A more word-for-word translation as The Koto Bridges' Descending Geese reveals ambiguity in the original title: it may also refer to geese landing on the bridges, or to the bridges representing the geese themselves.
The scene depicts a young girl from a privileged family practising the koto, an instrument with movable bridges for each of its 13 strings. The diagonal arrangement of bridges suggests a skein of geese across the broad paulownia-wood surface like a sandbank in allusion to ; the pine-strewn beach design of the girl's long-sleeved kimono reinforces the allusion. The Japanese clovers that peek out from behind the shōji sliding door indicate the scene takes place in autumn.
The girl in the foreground holds a koto training songbook, and another lies on the floor. They are titled Kinkyokushū and are in the same format as the two-volume Kinkyokushō collection of kumi-uta pieces for the koto published . Such songbooks typically opened with "Fuki", a piece by the priest that is considered the first of the kumi-uta genre. Contemporary viewers of the print would have been familiar with the piece and its third verse:
+ Third verse of "Fuki" by Kenjun Japanese text Romanized Japanese English translation
Before the moon a strain of melody, the autumn breeze foretelling the night's coldness. Wild geese in the sky, their voices falling with their shadows to the koto bridges.
The Fūryū Zashiki Hakkei version, titled , was the first in the series, which is thus perhaps why it is quieter and less explicit than the rest. In the print a young girl plays the koto while receiving a kiss from behind from a young male, who is untying her obi sash. The uncut forelocks of the male indicate a wakashū—a boy who has not yet had his genpuku coming-of-age ceremony, which at the time would have taken place when he reached 15 or 16. The changing colours of the leaves outside the window suggest indicate autumn, the season of migrating geese of , a version of which appears on a partitioning screen behind the pair. Further allusions include those relating to the koto, as in the original version of the print, and the painting of a skein of geese on the partitioning screen at right behind the boy. To the right a black dog appears to feign disinterest in its owner's lovemaking.
+ Poem accompanying The Wild Geese Descending on a Sandbank Japanese text Romanized Japanese English translation
Perhaps attracted by the sound of the koto, this year's first flock of geese descends together from the sky.
The mitate works on two main levels: first, replacing the traditional natural setting with a modern domestic one; and second, replacing the geese imagery with a scene of young love. Hayakawa finds mitate allusions in the poem that relate to the image: he sees the "first geese" signifying the boy's first love, and the sound of the koto—an instrument that most often young women learn—representing the awakening of the girl's romantic feelings. He sees the reddening Japanese maple leaves reflecting the girl's growing passion for the boy and the pattern of maple and Japanese ivy leaves on her sleeves representing her sensuality. Ishigami notes that Kichijirō's version of the poem emphasizes the shape of the descending skein of geese, while Harunobu's emphasizes the sound of the koto attracting the geese, an image on which Harunobu builds a visual allusion in the picture.
(, "Clearing mist of the fan") parodies Mountain Village, Clearing Mist ( ).