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

Collection Hayashi Tadamasa (1853-1906).

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 in this print was written by Emperor Tenji (628-681), describing how he sheltered in the hut of a rice farmer during an autumnal rainstorm. It is the first poem in the Hyakunin isshu anthology and has been translated by Peter MacMillan in One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: A Treasury of Classical Japanese Verse, (London, 2016), p. 3: 

In this makeshift hut 

in the autumn field 

gaps in the thatch  

let dewdrops in, 

moistening my sleeves.  

Aki no ta no 

kari-o no io no 

toma o arami 

waga koromode wa 

tsuyu ni nuretsutsu 

Emperor Tenji draws attention to his drenched sleeves, a reference, it has been said, to weeping for the hard-working people of the land, for whom he felt great empathy. Hokusai depicts these labourers at sunset, harvesting their crops after a long day of work. 

Another impression of the same print is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession number 11.17674, go to:  https://collections.mfa.org/objects/209286