Autumn Moon of Matsukaze

Autumn Moon of Matsukaze, dated about 1765 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is one of Suzuki Harunobu's mitate compositions, in which the classical noh play Matsukaze — a story of two sisters of the saltworks, Matsukaze and Murasame, who fall in love with an exiled courtier — is restaged in an Edo idiom. The autumn moon, a touchstone image in waka poetry and in the noh play itself, hangs over the scene and lends the print its emotional key. Harunobu's slender, soft-featured figures, rendered in the manner of his Edo bijin-ga, evoke the sisters of the original story while wearing patterned robes and conducting themselves as contemporary townswomen. The composition exploits the new technical possibilities of nishiki-e at the moment of its early flowering: discreet gradations of blue, pink, and gray are registered carefully so that the moon, the figures, and the sea or shore behind them all read clearly. By collapsing centuries of classical theatrical tradition into a single horizontal sheet of polychrome print, Suzuki Harunobu offered Edo collectors the pleasures of recognition — they could enjoy spotting Matsukaze and Murasame in modern dress — alongside the formal beauty of his line and color. The V&A's impression preserves both layers of the design with notable clarity.