An image of monsters coming out of a basket, threatening an old man. An old man and an old woman were neighbors. Every evening the old man fed a sparrow that visited him. When he returned home one day he was disturbed not to see the sparrow and...
depictions; men (male humans); women; children (people by age group); kimonos; interior spaces; fude; artists' brushes
A man with a handlebar mustache kneels on a red rug drawing irises on paper with an ink brush. A woman holding a towel and wearing a half-dozen hairsticks in her elaborate coiffure stands beside him. A small child sits at her feet stirring...
This later Setsu gekka series, which numbers at least 30 prints, is rather lyrical in its depiction of seasonal change. Flower petals flutter to the ground as a little dog tugs on its leash. Mist crosses a full summer moon as Niwaka Festival...
women; kimonos; Single Built Works; agricultural land; teakettles; tables (support furniture); stoves (heating equipment)
Several tourists are enjoying the interesting phenomenon of the moon being reflected on the water surface of flooded rice fields in Shinano Province (Nagano Prefecture). This famous view was well-known to travelers and even illustrated by Hiroshige...
Kintaro, also called Kaidomaru, was raised in the wilderness of Mt. Ashigara by Yamauaba. Supposedly he could speak animal languages and is often depicted with animals (see prints 93.6.10 and 93.3.39 for treatments of Kintaro's youth.) As a young...
In the autumn fashionable geisha would dress in their lover's garments to visit the neighborhood shrine and participate in Niwaka kyogen, impromptu skits about life in the brothels. Dressed like an elegant young man, a young lady glances up at a...
A man in ragged robes sits on the ground before a yellow-flowering bush watching sparrows flying above him. Sanekata was a poet and high-ranking nobleman of the Fujiwara clan. He died in exile in 994. Toward the end of his political career,...
A man in ragged robes sits on the ground before a yellow-flowering bush watching sparrows flying above him. Sanekata was a poet and high-ranking nobleman of the Fujiwara clan. He died in exile in 994. Toward the end of his political career,...
women; elderly; kimonos; men (male humans); hats; Single Built Works; trees; fences; hand spinning; bridges
An image from the series of parodies of the Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety, in which a bijin with a green sack stands at a gate, while an old woman can be seen in the interior of the house behind the gate. The inset shows a young man and...
men (male humans); women; kimonos; hairstyles; hair ornaments; hats; swords; trees
Nakamura Shikan IV (1830-1899) stars in the role of the evil Matsunaga Daizen Hisahide (1510-1577), who has caused the murder of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshiteru (1536-1565) and seized control of the imperial capital of Kyoto. Daizen is flanked here...
men (male humans); women; kimonos; books; axes (tools)
According the Konjaku monogatari, a devout young woman valued all sentient beings, and bought some live crabs at a market to set them free. Later when her father saw a snake about to eat a frog, he asked the snake to give up his meal in return for...
An old, bearded man holding a feather fan floats above a young man in white with a sword. A bucket and dipper sit in the background. Tengu are forest creatures with long noses who can fly and fight fiercely; his supernatural status is indicated in...
Back to back print. A man in a blue robe and a black samurai hat stands holding a fan; a younger man in a red kimono and holding a sword sits at his feet. Behind them is a screen painted with crane, and through an open doorway one can see a stone...
Back to back print. A withered man in tattered robes, with a deadened look on his face, sits in a chair with a candle on his head; he is viewed with shock by a younger man.
In late 6th - early 7th centuries, Japan sent several embassies to China to...
legends (folk tales); robes (main garments); children (people by age group); boys; sandals
Back to back print. A man in a priest's robes and headdress cups the chin of a young boy standing beside him; a rosary dangles from his right wrist. The boy, dressed in traveling clothes, grasps the priest's wrist and lays his face in the man's...
Although the Heike forces had fled to boats off the shore of Yashima, one vessel turned back to the beach. At its prow stood a young woman, dressed in beautiful court garments, who took a folding fan decorated with the rising sun emblem and...
women; kimonos; built works; built complexes and districts
The esoteric Buddhist deity Marishiten is of Indian origin, the daughter of Brahma (J: Bonten) and associated with rays of the sun. Images of Marishi have multiple arms and faces and are shown riding a wild boar, hence the association with this...
women; men (male humans); children (people by age group); girls; boys; hats; hairstyles; Built complexes and districts; zoos
Two women accompany a young girl in the foreground, while at rear a man in kimono and Western style hat supervises his son and daughter petting a ram at the Tokyo Zoo, founded in 1882 at Ueno Park.
women; men (male humans); kimonos; folding screens; flowers (plants); swords
Princess Sen (1597-1666) was the oldest daughter of Tokugawa Hidetada and married at age 7 to Toyotomi Hideyori who died in 1615 at the Battle of Osaka Castle. She was then married to Honda Tadatoki, a Tokugawa ally, but when Tadatoki died in 1626,...
This scene is from the 2nd act of the long play "The Precious Incense and Autumn Flowers of Sendai" / Meiboku Sendai hagi, first written in 1777 for the Osaka kabuki stage in and then greatly expanded in 1785 for the puppet theater, the reverse of...
