Disconsolate Lovers

"Disconsolate Lovers" — catalogued with an erroneous "ca. 1800" date that clearly belongs to another work — depicts two figures in the posture of romantic grief or separation. The subject connects to Munakata's interest in Japanese theater and narrative, particularly the love-suicide (shinju) tradition of bunraku and kabuki that Chikamatsu Monzaemon had made into high art. Two figures in the extremity of feeling — their bodies arranged in the archetypal geometry of desperate love — gave Munakata's carving style exactly the kind of emotional intensity it could render most powerfully.