Six Fashionable Female Poetic Immortals

(Fûryû onna rokkasen, 大石眼竜斎吉弘)

1853

Publisher: Tsuta-ya Kichizô

This group of prints illustrates carved “dolls” displayed at Kannon Temple in Asakusa. Among other subjects, present-day women representing classical poems by six female poets were exhibited and are illustrated in this series. Although the word ningyô is translated as “dolls”, these lifelike dolls (iki-ningyô) were in fact extremely realistic life-sized clothed statues. This series is not listed in Kuniyoshi by Basil William Robinson (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1961). The prints are each about 14 by 10 inches (36 by 25 centimeters), a size known as ôban. I am grateful to Robert Pryor for assisting with this series.

	Poets: Gosaga-in no Tenji (後嵯峨院典侍) who is also known as Fujiwara no Chikako) and Shikikenmon-in no Mikushige (式乾門院御匣) Doll carver: Ôishi Ganryûsai Yoshihiro of Kyoto Date seal: 6^th month of 1853 Description: A woman in the dress of incantation, with candles on her head and a mirror breast-plate. She is performing ushi no toki mairi (丑の刻参り) by visiting a shrine at the hour of the ox (2 AM) and hammering nails through a straw doll into a sacred shrine tree.
	Another state of the above design
	Poets: Shôshô no Naishi (少将 内侍) and Uma Naishi (馬内侍) Doll carver: Ôishi Ganryûsai Yoshihiro of Kyoto Date seal: 6^th month of 1853 Description: Woman and child holding a tortoise suspended on a string, and a female firewood seller
	Poets: Poems by Sei Shônagon (清少納言) and Izumi Shikibu (和泉式部) Doll carver: Ôishi Ganryûsai Yoshihiro of Kyoto Date seal: 6^th month of 1853 Description: Two women with a music box labeled charugoro (チャルゴロ) NOTE: This print is not by Kuniyoshi, but by his student Yoshifuji, signed Ippôsai Yoshifuji ga (一鵬斎芳藤画)

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