Kentoku Ko

Our sixth print this year represents Fujiwara no Koretada, or Kentoku Ko, as he was known posthumously. We will be meeting his son Fujiwara no Yoshitaka later on in the 1998 set. The 'ko' in his name designates a 'prince', and I suppose that as there was no emperor to start off this year's set, I should have put this one at the beginning, back in February! And actually, now that I realize it, Shunsho has here given us his standard 'royal' face, a very posed, formal expression common to most of the emperors in his set, one in quite marked contrast to the faces of the 'common' people. Interestingly enough, Gotoba In, who hardly qualified as a typical emperor (see last year's notes) has a 'real' expression. Shunsho obviously went to quite some pains to try and make his expressions fit the characters involved.

The poem is quite mortal and down to earth:

My wife came into my workshop when I was doing the test printing this month, and when she saw the colours I had mixed, asked me if I had been studying Picasso's paintings. Of course, she was trying to suggest that perhaps I have been using too much blue recently! This is the fourth print this year in which I have chosen a blue tone, and in the entire first three year's work, I used blue only three times. Actually, that was due mostly to my imitation of the colours of the original book, in which yellow/brown/red combinations dominate. Now that I am feeling more 'independent', it is perhaps natural that I have swung to a different palette.

I am very much enjoying my explorations with the blue pigment known as 'ai' (appearing in its 'raw' state twice on this print). It is one of the oldest colours in the printmaker's collection, and can be used in an infinite range of tones. (One of my prints last year used only black sumi, and in the future I think I might try one using just this 'ai' ...) Our textbooks tell us that black is the true 'non-colour', absorbing all light, but I think that this 'ai' is far more so. Looking down into a bowl of 'ai' standing next to my printing bench is like looking into 'nothingness'. It is impossible to tell where the surface of the liquid is, impossible to tell how deep it is, impossible to actually see anything. I wish I could catch this mystery in the finished printed colour ...

I hope you are enjoying my 'Blue Period'. If you're allergic to this colour, please relax, as the kimono on next month's print (Jakuren Hoshi) is mostly black!

August 1992