Koko Tenno

To the new subscribers: 'Welcome' to my second series of Hyakunin Isshu prints; and 'Welcome back' to all of you from last year who are continuing. I am looking forward to another very full year of studying, carving and printing. I hope that I will be able to make further progress in my attempt to master the skills of the Edo 'shokunin', and I await your comments and criticisms. Please don't hesitate to give me your 'feedback', both positive and negative.

Just as I did last year, I am starting with an emperor this time. Shunsho gave all the emperors in the set a fairly 'busy' kimono pattern, along with screens and mats, and they take a lot longer to carve than the average prints. I understand that the bird pattern represents a phoenix, although it doesn't seem to have any correlation with the poem, which describes an early spring/late winter episode of herb gathering.

If you look back to the print of Tenji Tenno that you received last year, you may notice that the vertical and horizontal lines of the bamboo screen are slightly different shades - I printed them with separate blocks, to avoid carving a million little 'corners', a very slow job. This year, as the screen is fairly small in area, I decided to carve them together on the same block. It still took the best part of 10 hours.

The colours on this particular page of the old book that I am copying have faded very badly, and it is anybody's guess as to what actual shades the old printers used. After much mixing, testing, and consulting colour books, I settled on the tints you see here. It is of interest that the original publisher of the book (in the 1770's) made no attempt whatsoever to re-create colours that may have been prescribed in the actual era in which each of the poets lived (from the 600's to the 1200's), but used instead colours common in his time and place. This indeed, is one of the main points behind his title: 'Hyakunin Isshu Azuma-ori', or 'The Hundred Poets, Eastern Style'. Eastern here means Edo (Tokyo), as opposed to central Japan (Kyoto-Nara), where these people all lived. The poets were thus being presented to the people of Edo with quite a 'contemporary' mood. Of course, from our viewpoint hundreds of years in the 'future', this 'fashionable' feeling is only recognizable to specialists in the fields of fabrics or colours.

I hope you enjoy the print this month. Coming up next, one of the favorite poetesses in the set - Sei Shonagon.