(Listening to a Bush Warbler) - from "Shin Shun", Bungei Kurabu

 

Kajita Hanko

 

1910  

color woodcut kuchi-e (frontispiece) 

12 1/16 x 8 3/4" image and paper size 

red artist's seal, lower right 

not stated 

 

 

delicate cream laid 

published 

Bungei Kurabu (Literary Club), Vol. 19, No. 2 

24869 

$250.00 

In this kuchi-e (frontispiece) illustration for a magazine, "Shinsyun" (The New Year), published in Bungei Kurabu (Vol.19, no.2), a girl has come to find the shuttle - or hane - lost during a game of hanetsuki, a racket game similar to badminton without a net. As she nears a brick wall on her hunt for the shuttle, she notices an uguisu, or Japanese bush warbler, singing its early spring song.

Bungei Kurabu was a popular literary magazine that focused primarily on fiction intended for young women of the Meiji era. Kuchi-e prints were meant to boost sales of the publications as they were the first image seen upon opening the magazine, hinting at what the tale inside might tell, and the works were often of a high caliber.

The Meiji period is often viewed as the demarcation between traditional and Western printmaking in Japan, as industrialization and Western influence rapidly changed the socioplitical landscape. Traditionalists, loyal to ukiyo-e and other, older styles, rejected this change as the market became flooded with quickly produced artwork that pandered to the tourism trade - or was simply different, as the popularity of lithography and photography rose. However, kuchi-e prints managed to remain of a quality that reflected traditional artistic values, even as some of the imagery incorporated modern fashions and other elements.

Because this image was one such kuchi-e print, and its purpose was intended for ease of transitory enjoyment, the paper shows the vestiges of use, with shallow handling creases throughout and the creases and binding holes from publication.