ALLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM 17 Keisai Eisen 渓斎英泉 (Japanese, 1790–1848) Kōdo: Cormorant FishingBoats on theNagae River, no. 55 fromthe series The Stations of the KisoRoad, 1835 Color woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper MaryA. AinsworthBequest, 1950.904 Cormorant fishing, known in Japan as ukai 鵜飼, has been practiced for over a thousand years in specific parts of Japan and China. One famous location is in Japan’s Gifu province on the Nagae (or Nagara) River, seen here. The fisherman uses trained cormorants, seabirds known for their skill at fishing. A cord or ring is placed around the bird’s neck, loose enough so it can swallow small fish but not large ones. When the bird catches a big fish, it is pulled back to the boat andmade to drop the fish. Cormorant fishing is done at night, using a torch to attract fish to the boat. Utagawa Kuniyoshi 歌川国芳 (Japanese, 1797–1861) Takamiya: Kamiya Iemon, no. 65 fromthe series The Sixty-nine Stations of theKisokaidō, 1852 Color woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper MaryA. AinsworthBequest, 1950.649 A fisherman sits by a stream, grasping a thin bamboo fishing rod. He is multitasking, using two other rods simultaneously, anchored by a rock and his foot, which suggest his work is for subsistence, not entertainment. A small, rectangular tackle box lies at his feet and a creel for his catch, which is the bottle-shaped basket with a net opening that floats in the water nearby. But the man’s two swords indicate that he is a samurai. Why is he fishing in the countryside? This print is from a series by Kuniyoshi inspired by the names of the 69 stations on the Kisokaidō. The artist creates clever puns on the name of each station, here Takamiya. The fisherman, Kamiya Iemon, was a famous villain in many popular plays, driven to live in the wilderness after committing a pair of murders. In one popular version of the story, his name is Tamiya, so Kuniyoshi associates both names, Tamiya and Kamiya, with the station’s name, Takamiya.
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