Artist: Hishikawa Moronobu (1618 – 1694)
Title: Untitled Page of the third month of the year
Book Title: Monthly Amusements (Tsukinami no Asobi)
Date: 1691
Medium: Partly hand-colored single-color woodblock print; ink on paper.
Publisher: Unknown
Engraver: Unknown
Gift of Dr. Cecilia Segawa Seigle

This print comes from the book, Monthly Amusements (Tsukinami no Asobi), that illustrates the activity and entertainment of each month probably in the city of Edo in the late seventeenth-century. This page depicts the activity in spring, in the third month of the year. Two men looks at the cherry tree in full-bloom. The inscription, though has not yet been fully translated, describes the walk and the feasts by the sweet scent of the fresh flowers of spring. This print is in fact, two sheets from the book glued together in the middle, probably done by later collector.

The book, Monthly Amusements (Tsukinami no Asobi), is reproduced in 1920, by Tōkyō: Beizandō.

Another sheet from this book can be found at Brooklyn Museum: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/120849/Ayame_no_Sikku

Selected Readings

• Asano, Shugo. Hishikawa Moronobu to ukiyo-e no reimei. Tōkyō : Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2008.
• Noma, Kōshin, ed. Moronobu Masanobu Ehonshū. Tenri: Tenri Daigaku Shuppanbu; Tōkyō: Seisaku hatsubai Yagi Shoten, 1983.

Posted by Naoko Adachi
May 1, 2016