Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) | Poem by Sarumaru Dayu | Edo period, 19th century

For his last single sheet series of woodblock prints, One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse (Hyakunin isshu uba ga etoki), Hokusai looked to an anthology of well-known poems, entitled One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets (Hyakunin isshu), as his source. These poems, based on love and melancholy, were assembled by the thirteenth-century poet Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241). Hokusai chose to visually recount the poems from the perspective of a fictional elderly nurse. Together with sixty-four preparatory drawings, twenty-seven published prints are known, each exhibiting bold colour and including a cartouche enclosing the relevant verse. The series was commissioned by the publisher Nishimura Yohachi (active circa 1762-1835) and his firm Eijudo successfully issued five prints before closing down; the additional twenty-two prints were then published by Iseya Sanjiro’s (dates unknown) firm Iseri, with the original Eijudo seal continuing to be employed. 

The poem by Sarumaru no Dayu has been translated by Peter MacMillan in One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: A Treasury of Classical Japanese Verse, (London, 2016), p. 8: 

In the deep mountains  

making a path  

through the fallen leaves,  

the plaintive belling of the stag – 

how forlorn the autumn feels.  

Okuyama ni  

Momiji fumiwake 

naku shika no 

koe kiku toki zo  

aki wa kanashiki  

A similar impression of the same print is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession number 11.17685, go to: https://collections.mfa.org/objects/209298