Poem by The Monk Jakuren

Poem by The Monk Jakuren, dated 1845 and preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is one of Utagawa Hiroshige's contributions to the Edo ukiyo-e tradition of illustrating the Hyakunin Isshu, the celebrated thirteenth-century anthology compiled by Fujiwara no Teika. The monk Jakuren (died 1202) was a poet of the early Shinkokin generation, and his contribution to the anthology—"murasame no / tsuyu mo mada hinu / maki no ha ni …"—turns on the autumnal image of mist rising from cedar leaves after a passing shower. Hiroshige translates this lyric image into a vertical landscape print: the upper register carries the poem in a decorative cartouche, while below a mountain slope thick with maki cedars rises out of a damp mist, with the suggestion of a hermit's path or a thatched dwelling at lower right. The palette—muted greens, soft greys, and the cool washes that Hiroshige used for vapor—matches the climatic specificity of the verse, and the heavy bokashi gradation of fog at the base of the trees performs the poetic action of "the mist rising" in pictorial terms. Within the artist's catalogue this print is significant for showing how he extended his landscape vocabulary into the explicitly literary territory long claimed by court culture, demonstrating that Edo ukiyo-e could engage classical waka while remaining accessible to a broad commercial audience. The Victoria and Albert Museum impression preserves the careful color balance the design requires.