A Cock Crows (Tōten kō)

A Cock Crows (東天紅, tōten kō, "red of the eastern sky") is a 1909 [kuchi-e](/glossary/kuchi-e) woodblock-print cover illustration by Takeuchi Keishū, produced for volume 15, issue 1 of Bungei kurabu (文藝倶楽部). It is held by the Honolulu Museum of Art (accession 27265). The title is a classical phrase for the first light of dawn and, by extension, for the call of the rooster heralding day — an image of fresh beginnings appropriate to the magazine's January New Year issue. Keishū's design depicts a young woman in winter kimono accompanied by a rooster, a juxtaposition with both literal seasonal-calendar logic (the rooster is one of the twelve animal signs of the East Asian zodiac, and 1909 was the year of the rooster, making the motif particularly apt for that issue) and broader poetic resonance in classical Japanese and Chinese imagery of dawn and renewal. The kuchi-e format places the print at the late-Meiji intersection of literary publishing and woodblock printing: the work was designed by Keishū, cut and printed by Tokyo block carvers and color printers in the service of Hakubunkan, and distributed in editions of several thousand to Bungei kurabu's subscribers. Keishū's drawing in this print, in the soft late-Meiji palette characteristic of his mature kuchi-e, exemplifies the kind of seasonally specific, gently composed female-figure imagery that defined his contribution to Meiji literary illustration.