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Utagawa Toyokuni III (1786–1864)
Junitsuki no uchi (Twelve Months)  1854
Courtesy of the National Diet Library, Japan

 

Japanese woodblock prints
1854

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National Diet Library
Tokyo
Japan

This work is one of the nishikie or ukiyoe—Japanese woodblock prints depicting the lives of people who lived in Edo (now Tokyo) in the mid-nineteenth century. To make one such print, separate woodblocks for each colour were needed. Japanese nishikie were widely admired outside Japan, and influenced many Impressionist painters, including Claude Monet (1840–1926).

This fine set of nishikie depicts beautiful women participating in events symbolising Japanese life at the time. Each event indicates a season, from January to December. On display here is the December picture. At the top left is the toshidama in, the logo of the group to which the artist, Utagawa Toyokuni III (1786–1864) belonged. The picture's title is printed inside the logo.

In the Edo period, every well-to-do family greeted the New Year by making its own rice cakes. Some of the cakes were made into kagami-mochi or 'mirror rice cakes', which were large, round, hard cakes piled on top of each other, and offered to deities at the New Year. They represented mirrors, which from ancient times were regarded as sacred objects in Japan.

Here, we see a man pounding hot, steamed, glutinous rice in a mortar, while a woman turns the dough over. At the left, another woman shapes it into rounds. A lady sitting beside her fans the rice cakes to harden them, while in the arms of the young woman in the middle a small child waves a spray of mochibana—little balls of rice cake that look like flowers.

All the women are wearing colourful kimonos featuring various patterns of leaves and flowers. The stylised Mt Fuji and ivy depicted on the chochin (paper lantern) above right and on the man's jacket is the logo of Tsutaya Kichizo, publisher of this print.