Gantan no fuji
Series : One Hundred Views of Fuji, Fugaku Hyakkei.
Technique: nishikie, woodcuts in two shades of gray and one of pink.
Format: hanshinbon koban (about 183x123 mm).
Signatures : Zen Hokusai Iitsu aratame Gakyorojin Manji.
Artist's seal : Fuji no Yama.
Dates : 1834-1836.
Engravers: Egawa Tomekichi and Tsentaro.
Publishers: Nishimura Yuzo, Eirakuya Toshiro.
Beautiful proof with good contrasts, in a fourth edition published by Tohikedo in 1852 with the characteristic pink tone. Printed on Japan paper, in excellent condition, with clean edges all around beyond the marginal line.
Bibliography:
Calza GC Hokusai, the old fool for painting , Milan 1999-2000, London, 2003.
Calza GC Hokusai, the hundred views of Fuji , Milan, 1982.
Dickins FV Fugaku hiyaku-kei: one hundred view of Fuji by Hokusai , London, 1880.
Forrer M. Hokusai, prints and drawings , London, 1991.
Hillier J. The art of Hokusai in book illustration , London, 1980.
Lane R. Hokusai, life and works , Milan, 1991.
Salamon Villa T., The hundred views of Fuji, Turin, 1975.
Smith II H. Hokusai: one hundred view of Fuji by Hokusai, London, 1988.
Here is represented a moment of the Shinnen festival, a celebration for the first day of the new year, in Edo.
Symbolically on that day, the houses were swept from the waste of the past year by throwing beans in the corners with the invocation oni wa soto fuku wa uchi , demons out, luck in. The streets that day were joyfully crowded with manzai (travelling jesters), kadozuke (wandering players), kugutsu (puppeteers) , saizo (drum players). Are these the characters that populate the drawing, among which we note a manzai with his assistant (whose kimonos bear a mon with the ideogram san , three, inserted in a circle), a kadozuke .
On the left a kite with the ideogram Fu , signifying both Fuku , prosperity, and Fugaku , the divine mountain.
Plate with the same title and the drawing of the expulsion of demons from the house is in the illustrated album Hokusai soga (early 1820s) and in Mangwa IV (1816).