Suzuki Harunobu (1725?-1770)
Suzuki Harunobu (1725?-1770)

Komuso (itinerant monk with basket hat), Uzuki (the Fourth Month)

Details
Suzuki Harunobu (1725?-1770)
Komuso (itinerant monk with basket hat), Uzuki (the Fourth Month)
Woodblock print, from the series Fuzoku shiki Kasen (Fashionable Poetic Immortals in the Four Seasons), signed Suzuki Harunobu ga
11 ¼ x 8 ½ in. (21.6 x 28.6 cm.)

Lot Essay

The online entry for another impression in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (JP 1634) identifies the poem in the cloud reserve as number 136 in a collection of seven hundred poems compiled by Lord Shirakawa around 1265 (Shirakawa-dono shichihyakushu). The translation of the poem, by an anonymous poet, is by John T. Carpenter:
hito mo toe Let everyone know
saku ya uzuki no that now in the fourth month,
kocho ni nitaru hana zakari the deutzia flowers in bloom resemble butterflies
yado no kakine o covering a hedge in the garden.

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