- Museum number
- 1981,0730,0.12
- Title
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Object: Kanaya 金谷 (Kanaya)
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Series: Tokaido Munakata hanga (Munakata's Prints of the Tokaido Highway, No. 25)
- Description
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Monochrome woodblock print, with hand-colouring front and back. Landscape with village, Oi River and Mt Fuji. 5/10 (first). Inscribed, signed and sealed.
- Production date
- 1964
- Dimensions
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Height: 63 centimetres
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Width: 48 centimetres
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- Curator's comments
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Smith 1994
Most sources state that Munakata applied colour by hand almost entirely from the back, but this example has colours applied from both sides. It is strikingly different in its tonal schemes from the example published in 'Munakata Shiko hanga zenshu', XI, Kodansha, Tokyo, 1978-9, frontispiece, where the composition is dominated by red and yellow. In this series Munakata attempted to revive a subject which had been used by artists and writers since the later seventeenth century, originally recording the posting-stations along the mainly coastal road between Edo (Tokyo) and the old capital of Kyoto. Its best-known example was the series of prints by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858) 'Fifty-three Posting Stations on the Tokaido', published in the early 1830s. By the early twentieth century rural mountain and maritime scenes poetically described by Hiroshige had already been much altered by industrial and population growth, but Munakata overcame these potential difficulties by concentrating on either close-up views (as in no. 7, 'Fujisawa', a view of a massive tree trunk) or on the grand vista, as in this example dominated by Mount Fuji, and by the Expressionistic energy of his treatment. Where he used colour, he could also introduce much variation into each individual print, and indeed used different subtitles (in pencil) for those variations.
He was commissioned in 1963 to do this series by the Suruga Bank, Suruga Province (modern Shizuoku Prefecture), which includes the most dramatic part of the Tokaido Road where it passed near to Mount Fuji. The artist made seven sketching trips and completed the series of sixty-two in 1964, a mixture of black and white and hand-coloured prints. Using the same sets of sketches, he made a second series of black and white prints in 1966 (Tsuikai Munakata hanga Tokaido myotai byobu).
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Clark 2001
In March 1963, at the age of sixty, Munakata was commissioned by the Suruga Bank to make a series of Tokaido prints. In the course of the next year he went on numerous field trips for this project, producing sixty-two designs, some in black and white, some with hand-colouring. For 'Kanaya', colour has been painted by hand from both the front and the back of the sheet to embellish luminously the ruggedly cut main black block. The hand-colouring for each impression is radically different: compare, for instance, the impression featured in the publication of the artist's complete works (Munakata Shiko, 'Munakata Shiko zenshu, vol. 11: Kaido no satsu', Tokyo, Kodansha, 1979, frontispiece and no. 98). However, the painted, gradated bands of deep blue across Fuji - so reminiscent of the Berlin blue of Hokusai's 'Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji' - appear fairly consistent. Each impression has a subtitle in pencil in the margin, which presumably reflects the differences in colouring - here, 'Evening peak of the heart' ('kyokin bogaku'), and on the impression in the collected works, 'Opening of the heart' ('kyokin gyokai'). Another title given to this design in the collected works is 'Fuji in Winter' ('Fuyu Fugaku no satsu'). In his diary-commentary about the series the artist describes coming over a pass from the west and suddenly seeing this vast view of the Oi River below with Fuji rising up beyond: 'My heart opened up - it was as splendid as could be' ('Nantomo subarashii ni tsukiru kyokin gyokai deshita') ('Ibid.', p. 138). In contrast, Hokusai's view of Fuji from Kanaya (cat. 69) takes us right down to the level of the Oi River.
Munakata began making prints in the late 1920s, inspired by Kawakami Sumio and Hiratsuka Un'ichi. After first meeting Yanagi Soetsu in 1936 he was immediately given strong support by the leaders of Yanagi's folk art ('mingei') movement and around this time began to explore Buddhist subjects. His work became increasingly explosive, reflecting his unique method of attacking the plywood block at great speed with a chisel. From the 1950s onwards Munakata's prints have received considerable international attention and acclaim (A recent English-language catalogue of his work is South Bank Centre (London), 'The Woodblock and the Artist: The Life and Work of Shiko Munakata', London, 1991).
Literature:
Joan Stanley-Baker, 'Mokuhan: The Woodcuts of Munakata and Matsubara', Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1976, no. 34.
Smith, Lawrence. 'The Japanese Print Since 1900'. London, British Museum Press, 1983, no. 23.
Smith, Lawrence. 'Modern Japanese Prints, 1912-1989'. London, British Museum Press, 1994, no. 65.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2001, 11 May-29 Jul, BM Japanese Galleries, '100 Views of Mount Fuji'
2008 Feb 18-2008 Jun 1, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japan from prehistory to the present'
- Acquisition date
- 1981
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1981,0730,0.12
