Woman Playing a Shamisen while Her Son Clasps Her; “Sekidera Temple” (Sekidera), from the series Fashionable Adaptations of the Seven Komachi Plays (Fūryū nana Komachi)
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.A woman attempts to strum a shamisen—the three-stringed instrument popular in the pleasure quarters and on the Kabuki stage of the Edo period—while her little son affectionately embraces her. This print belongs to a series showing contemporary women and children likened to Noh plays based on seven legendary episodes in the life of the ninth-century poetess Ono no Komachi. In the play Sekidera Komachi, the elderly Komachi is staying at a hut near Sekidera Temple in Ōtsu City, northeast of Kyoto, and is visited by two monks and a child who want to learn about poetry, and the child dances to gagaku (ancient court music); the artist may have wanted viewers to link this picture to that story. This rare print is better known from early twentieth-century facsimile reproductions.
Artwork Details
- 喜多川歌麿画 「風流七小町 関寺」
- Title: Woman Playing a Shamisen while Her Son Clasps Her; “Sekidera Temple” (Sekidera), from the series Fashionable Adaptations of the Seven Komachi Plays (Fūryū nana Komachi)
- Artist: Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese, ca. 1754–1806)
- Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
- Date: ca. 1803
- Culture: Japan
- Medium: Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper; vertical ōban
- Dimensions: Image: 15 × 10 3/8 in. (38.1 × 26.4 cm)
- Classification: Prints
- Credit Line: Lent by Lee E. Dirks
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art