Artist: Isoda Koryūsai 磯田湖龍斎 (1735–1790)
Title: The Tenth Month (Kannazuki 神無月)
Series: The Fashionable Twelve Seasons (Fūryū jūni kikō 風流十二気候)
Date: 1776–1781
Medium: Full color woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Gift of Dr. Cecilia Segawa Seigle

Against a blue, patterned wallpaper, a standing woman slips a folded document, possibly a letter from a paramour, into the mauve sash of a crouching woman. This clandestine moment from ‘the tenth month’ of the lunar calendar, one in a series of twelve by Isoda Koryūsai, is framed with signs appropriate for the season, including an autumnal rain and scattered leaves falling beyond the window. An additional indication of the time of year can be found in the room’s alcove, where a painted image of the Shinto god Ebisu, with his distinctive crest, fishing pole, and large fish in hand, recalls the eponymous late-autumn ‘festival of Ebisu’.

Viewers of the Kislak Collections’ impression of The Tenth Month will note the unusual scarcity of unprinted areas in the composition, as well as the watery application of blue color in the patterned wallpaper. A comparison with two additional impressions from the National Museum of Asian Art reveals that these qualities are unique to the Kislak impression, suggesting that it was made subject to revisions. In particular, the irregular application of blue indicates that the Kislak print was possibly hand-colored at some point after the initial printing.

Two additional impressions of this print can be found in the collection of the National Museum of Asian Art (FSC-GR-779.31); (FSC-GR-779.32).

Selected Reading

• Haft, Alfred. Aesthetic Strategies of the Floating World: Mitate, Yatsushi, and Fūryū in Early Modern Japanese Popular Culture. Leiden, The Netherlands; Boston, Massachusetts: Brill, 2013.
• Hockley, Allen. The Prints of Isoda Koryūsai: Floating World Culture and Its Consumers in Eighteenth-Century Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003.

Posted by Bryce Heatherly
November 2, 2020