Accession Number
2003/1.388

Title
Yatsuhashi IV

Artist(s)
Nakazawa Shin'ichi

Object Creation Date
2002

Medium & Support
etching with platinum leaf on paper

Dimensions
18 1/16 in. x 27 7/16 in. ( 45.9 cm x 69.7 cm )

Credit Line
Museum purchase made possible by Jane and Ken Lieberthal

Label copy
Ise monogatari, or The Tales of Ise, is even older than The Tale of Genji. Based on the life of the ninth-century poet Ariwara no Narihira, Ise is a compilation of nearly 150 poems, each set in context by a short prose text. This striking contemporary print evokes one of the most famous episodes in The Tales of Ise, when the protagonist and some friends are traveling and come to an iris-filled marsh, crossed by an eight-fold plank bridge (yatsuhashi). Challenged to compose a poem using the word for iris— kakitsubata—as the first syllables of each line, the protagonist recited:
Karagoromo The touch of my beloved wife—
Kitsutsu narenishi As familiar to my skin as the silk
Tsuma shi aredo Of a well-worn Chinese-style robe
Harubaru kinuru And so this distant journeying
Tabi wo shi zo omou. Fills my heart with longing.*
* Adapted from a translation by Helen Craig McCullough.
The eight-fold bridge is such a well-known motif in Japanese artsthat it can immediately be recognized in this highly abstracted version by Nakazawa Shin’ichi. Nakazawa indicates the marsh with splattered gray ink on a cream ground, with only a few lines to suggest the wooden bridge supports. He has rendered the planks —only three are needed—in platinum foil, and their shadows in solid black, traced with the ghost of an ancient but unforgotten verse.
Maribeth Graybill, Senior Curator of Asian Art
Exhibited in "Stories from the Past: Narrative in Asian Art "
January 24–July 25, 2004

Primary Object Classification
Print

Primary Object Type
black and white print

Collection Area
Asian

Rights
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