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Paper short abstract

This paper compares two early-Edo editions: Onna Kasen shinshō (uta-awase, pub. Edo) by Hishikawa Moronobu (male) and Onna Hyakunin isshu (hyakushu, pub. Kyoto) by Isome Tsuna (female). How do these different formats respond to differences in purpose, audience, and geography?

Paper long abstract

This paper will compare two early printed illustrated versions of what might be called “onna shūkashū” 女秀歌集, or “collections of exemplary poems by women.” The earlier is the Onna Kasen shinshō (A New Commentary on The Female Poetic Immortals) by the earliest important ukiyo-e artist, Hishikawa Moronobu, published in Edo in 1682. Published six years later is the Onna Hyakunin isshu (The Women’s One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each), calligraphed and illustrated by the prolific female artist and calligrapher Isome Tsuna and published in 1688 in Kyoto.

While the origins of Fujiwara no Kintō’s original Sanjūrokunin sen (The Selected Poems of the Thirty-Six Poets, ca. 1009-1012) are complex, extant illustrated versions of exemplary collections of thirty-six female poets—like illustrations of the Hyakunin isshu—can only be traced back to the Edo period. While the earliest examples of both appear to be works by official ateliers—the Tosa, Kano, and Sumiyoshi—printed versions appear shortly thereafter.

Moronobu’s text is designed as a poem-matching contest (uta-awase) and includes an imaginary portrait of the poet, with her poem inscribed above her figure in chirashi-gaki (“scattered writing”), a brief written commentary, and an illustration of the “heart” (kororo) taking up a full third of the page at the top. Tsuna’s text is partly a manual for nyohitsu (“women’s brush”)—a distinctive epistolary form of calligraphy derived from court women’s writing that flourished among a variety of classes, including courtesans, until the mid-18th century—with no written commentary but including a pictorialization of the dai (題), or circumstances of the poem’s composition. While all the thirty-six poets of Moronobu’s edition also appear in Tsuna’s one hundred, their position in their respective collections, as well as the poems chosen to represent them, differ. This paper aims to explore and explain the reasons for these differences—especially the uta-awase format compared to the hyakushu (“one-hundred poem sequence”)—as linked to the editions’ differing purposes, audiences, and geographies.