Gotoba In

It's that time again. Another year's work on the Hyakunin Isshu Hanga Series begins this month, with this print of the retired Emperor Gotoba. I'm just as excited about starting this new set of ten as I was the first year, and I hope you share my enthusiasm. My skills are still far, far below the level I would like to reach, and hopefully I'll be able to make more progress this year.

As usual, we are starting with an emperor (There are only eight emperors in the entire set, and next year we'll have to start off with a 'lesser' poet). My history books tell me that Gotoba became the emperor when only a child, and was invited to 'retire' from the throne at the ripe old age of 19 in favour of his own son, who we may suspect was not quite ready to rule with an iron hand.

When Fujiwara no Teika was compiling the Hyakunin Isshu, he felt it was wise to place this particular verse by his friend in the 'love' section, presumably to try and prevent certain highly placed powers from reading anything incriminating into it.

Whether or not this proved an effective cover may be judged by the fact that his friend Gotoba later ended up on a distant island, where he died after 19 years in exile. This seems to have been one of those periods in Japanese history when Mr. Machiavelli could have profited from a study trip to this country! Perhaps Gotoba can be forgiven for the rather dreary outlook of his poem.

When I first started work on this series, I had the idea that I would study the poetry at the same time that I studied printmaking. If I could memorize each poem as I was carving it, I would eventually come to have the whole set in memory, and in the beginning it worked well. 'Aki no ta no kariho ... ' 'Hana no iro wa ... ' Recently though, I seem to have reached an 'overload' point, and find that I can no longer get them to stay in my memory. I think that from now on I'll just concentrate on becoming a good printmaker, and not worry so much about becoming a fast 'karuta' player. Jack of all trades .....

I hope you enjoy this print. Coming next month, the Lady Sanuki.

February 1991

Translation - Tom Galt 1982 Princeton University Press