The Night Visit
- Date:
- 1959
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Edition:
- Self-printed
- Source:
- Art of Japan
Description
"The Night Visit" from 1959 captures a figure arriving — or departing — in the darkness: a nocturnal visitation with all the narrative ambiguity the genre carries in Japanese art and literature. The night visit is a subject with deep roots in Japanese love poetry and narrative, the lover arriving in secret after dark being one of the central motifs of the Heian classical tradition. Munakata's rendering would carry neither the delicacy of that tradition nor the coyness of its imagery, but the direct, urgent energy of his mature carving style applied to a subject of romantic and perhaps spiritual tension.
More Prints by Shiko Munakata
More Night Scenes Prints
Evening in East Africa
Woodblock print
Evening Shower at Teradomari (Teradomari no yau), from the series "Souvenirs of Travel, Second Series (Tabi miyage dai nishu)"
Teradomari no yau
1921
Color woodblock print; oban
![Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)" by Kawase Hasui](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d0960668-1e73-339a-b182-fb995a54bff0/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)"
1947
Color woodblock print; oban
Evening Moon at Nakanoshima, Sapporo (Sapporo Nakanoshima no yuzuki), from the series "Collection of Views of Japan, Eastern Japan Edition (Nihon fukei shu higashi Nihon hen)"
March 1933
Color woodblock print; oban
Featured in Collections
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Night Visit was created by Shiko Munakata (棟方志功) in 1959.
The Night Visit depicts night scenes.