A Man Folding Happi Coats

Provenance

…; purchased from the dealer Bernard Haase, London, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1999;¹Coll. cat. Goslings 2004, p. 11, cat. no. 325 by whom donated to the museum, 1999

ObjectNumber: RP-P-1999-243

Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse

Context

Ichikawa Danjuro VII (1791-1859) acted under this name from XI/1800 to III/1832, when he adopted the name Ichikawa Ebizo V.

The artist

Biography

Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865) was a pupil of Utagawa Toyokuni, who dominated the field of kabuki prints until his death. Kunisada's prints of beautiful women, bijinga, were also very successful. Only well after he had established himself as a designer of actor prints did he enter the world of surimono design, becoming the most prolific designer of surimono in the Utagawa tradition. He also used the art-names Ichiyusai, Gototei and Kochoro.

Entry

A man in a cross-patterned kimono with a decoration of dragons, seated by a brazier. To his right a pile of pieces of cloth, which he is folding into short kimono, happi coats. Behind him a two-panel standing screen decorated with a flowering plum.

The word ‘Kiba’ appears twice on the collar of the finished happi coat in the foreground, a reference to the Edo district where Ichikawa Danjuro VII (1791-1859) - the kabuki actor represented in the image - lived.

The dragon of Danjuro’s kimono has been taken as a reference to the New Dragon Year 1832. Kruml, however, dates the print to 1830, because Danjuro left for the Kansai region in 1829, the happi coats serving as a farewell present to his Edo fans. However, since he only toured Osaka from V/1829 until IV/1830, it is quite unlikely that this surimono would have been issued for I/1830. Moreover, the poems do not mention a farewell or or a tour to the Kansai region (though it must be admitted that neither mention the New Dragon Year either).

Two poems by Shunchosha Awayuki and Hakuroen Asobi. The second poem speaks of Danjuro as ‘our flower of Great Edo’, waga Oedo no hana.

Issued by the poets
Signature reading: Tojuen Kunisada ga

Literature

M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 561

Citation

M. Forrer, 2013, 'Utagawa (I) Kunisada, A Man Folding Happi Coats, Japan, 1832', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.359174

(accessed 3 June 2025 15:39:41).

Footnotes

¹Coll. cat. Goslings 2004, p. 11, cat. no. 325