Parody of Matsuura Sayo-hime

Catalog note / 解説

Although it appears that a young beauty merely gives a send-off to someone leaving in a flat bottomed boat, the scene is actually a parody of the Noh play Haku Rakuten. The man in the boat represents the Chinese poet Bo Juyi, while the young maiden on the embankment plays the role of the old fisherman. In the Noh play, the god of Sumiyoshi in the guise of a fisherman represents Japan and its poetry repelling an invasion by the Chinese poet and his nation’s poetry. (Tadashi Kobayashi, Edo Beauties in Ukiyo-e, 1994) The woman wears a light kimono suggestive of a summer scene, and as she lifts her arms the fabric of her light summer kimono flaps like sails in the steady, cooling breeze coming…