The Meeting at Yahagi: The Beginnings of the Jorurijunidan Story

Dated 1849 and held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Meeting at Yahagi: The Beginnings of the Jorurijunidan Story depicts a famous episode from the Jōruri Jūnidan, the medieval ballad cycle that recounts the love between the warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune and the lady Jōruri-hime. Yahagi, a station on the Tōkaidō road in Mikawa Province, was the place where, according to the tale, Yoshitsune in disguise as a strolling musician took shelter at the mansion of Jōruri-hime's family and won her heart with his flute playing. Utagawa Hiroshige, working here in a register more illustrative than purely topographic, presents the meeting as an interior scene framed by indications of the surrounding station town, allowing the design to function simultaneously as narrative print and travel souvenir. Architectural elements—a verandah, sliding screens, a glimpse of garden—locate the action firmly in the storied province of Mikawa, while a few figures of attendants and the postures of the lovers carry the legend. The palette of soft browns, muted reds, and clear greens marks this as Edo ukiyo-e of the late 1840s, when artists frequently combined classical narratives with the landscape print idiom Hiroshige had done so much to popularize. As such, the Victoria and Albert sheet usefully shows the artist's range, extending the topographic interest of his Tōkaidō series into legendary subject matter associated with the same route.