Page 170 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

Mount of Heaven's Perfume, a hill near Nara where in Jitó's time people spread their white under-
kimono in early summer to air them. The white cloths in the Hokusai print are at first reminiscent of
the garments laid out for airing, but closer inspection reveals that the workers are soaking flax in the
river to weave into linen later. The epithet used in Hokusai's time to describe the stench of soaking flax
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was "heaven's perfume." Thus the romantic impression of the aristocratic poem is reduced through
the nurse's practical experience to something of a less appealing nature.
Another print illustrates a poem by Minamoto no Muneyuki ason (cat. 101) describing winter
loneliness in a mountain hamlet after the departure of guests. A group of huntsmen warm themselves
by a raging bonfire. To their right is an abandoned hut, perhaps used as a way station for hunters during
a more hospitable season. Snow piles up on an oven and a hanging pot while the hunters stand out- 169
side around the enormous fire. Ignoring the shelter nearby, they strike uncomfortable poses: some splay
their hands out toward the fire; one turns his rear end toward the flame; and another turns his face
away from the extreme heat. The group's tense postures, belying their friendly banter, suggest that they
may shortly give up on the frigid mountain. Soon the hut will be abandoned, mirroring the lonely and
dejected mood of the poem.
Another print illustrates a poem by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (cat. 102) that compares the
drooping tail of a pheasant to the despondent feeling of preparing to sleep alone. The first poem's
word, ashibiki, means "foot-drawn" or "foot-dragging," and is also a homonym for "mountain."
Hokusai's wet nurse, as one who has always labored, seizes on the word "foot-drawn" as she relates
this image of foot-dragging work. To the wet nurse perhaps a long night would mean not loneliness

but comforting a sleepless child, an occupation as exhausting as this scene of fishermen hauling
a net uphill.
In a final insult to high literary accomplishment the wet nurse makes a travesty of Fujiwara
no Michinobu ason's poem (cat. 103) about the sadness of parting at dawn and anticipation of
meeting again. In this design customers hurry home at dawn from a night of revelry in the brothels
of the Yoshiwara district, which they no doubt regretted leaving. Some customers hide behind the
curtains of palanquins, while others trudge the paths toward Edo holding lanterns lit in the still-dark
early hours.

THE WORKER Among artists of the nineteenth century, Hokusai was the champion of the worker. In his manga
IN ACTION sketches, produced from about 1810 to 1820, he took a step beyond the encyclopedic array of figures in
the Occupations and Activities of Each Month screen (cat. 88). Hokusai analyzed the scope of activities of
working-class people, devoting pages of sketches to the actions of a single figure or of a group engaged
in a variety of related motions — for instance, women bathing, monks chanting, or people dancing.
Hokusai also made masterly depictions of interactions among groups of working-class people, perhaps
by studying the behavior of his neighbors. He approached his subjects sympathetically at times and

somewhat derisively at others. As we examine the manga (and the prints that resulted from these
studies), it becomes evident that the multifarious poses of the human body, in their potential for fore-
shortening, dynamism, interplay, and drama, were deeply fascinating to Hokusai. Noble subjects would
seem less likely to be caught in such poses, except when, as we see in novels that Hokusai illustrated,
they were being murdered.