Page 274 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

cat. 184
Ando Hiroshige,
Spring Rain at Tsuchiyama,
from Fifty-three Stations
of the Tókaidó, 1833 -1834,
color woodblock print,
approx. 26 x 38 (ioV4 x 15),
Nippon Express, Co.,
Ltd., Tokyo

27 3

his friend Tosai's rustic country wife at Fukui (2.6). This selection accords with Buson's credo of using
the mundane to transcend the mundane. 30
Interspersed with pictorialization of the everyday are some — but not too many — references
to the past. These include Saigyô's chestnut tree at Sukagawa, a pun turning on the character element
meaning "west" that appears both in the name of Saigyó and the word "chestnut" (1.3); the jar-shaped
stone memorial commemorating a castle built in the early eighth century (1.4); and the wives of the
Sato clan at Maruyama, whom Buson playfully made to look like Boy's Festival dolls, a witty turn on
Bashó's poem noting that he visited the place on Boy's Day, the fifth day of the fifth month (1.6). When
he came to Bashó's passage waxing nostalgic about the deeply tragic events that took place at Hiraizumi,
Buson pictured Bashó and Sora seated in conversation instead of showing any of the great northern
Fujiwara (1.7).
Buson reintroduced the quality of artlessness that Bashó had banished from his own travel

illustrations. While Buson's formal portraits of Bashó (cat. 167) are descriptive and dignified, his
illustrations designed to accompany haikai prose are abbreviated and informal. With the exception of
the jar-shaped memorial, Buson visualized the diary exclusively through the human figure, audaciously
deleting Bashó's beloved landscape. With an economy of means — a few deft outlines and touches of
color — Buson suggested a spectrum of humanity: the stalwart physicality of the young guide at
Natagiri, the childish exuberance of Kasane and her brother, the minatory authority of the provincial
barrier-keeper at Shitomae, and the coyly weeping prostitutes at Ichifuri.
In casting about for how to pictorialize this relatively new, and as yet unformed, genre of the
illustrated haikai journal, Buson reverted to that classic East Asian solution for doing something radical: