Akizuki Yuminosuke's Daughter Miyuki, Later the blind Musician Asagao (Akizuki Yuminosuke musume Miyuki, nochi ni goze Asagao)

Akizuki Yuminosuke's Daughter Miyuki, Later the Blind Musician Asagao (1843) is a print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi depicting the heroine of the popular drama Shokoku Monogatari, also known as the Asagao Nikki (Diary of the Morning Glory). The narrative follows Miyuki, daughter of the samurai Akizuki Yuminosuke, who falls in love with the young Komazawa Jiroza. Separated from her beloved through family circumstance, Miyuki eventually loses her sight from grief and becomes a wandering blind musician (goze) under the name Asagao, the morning glory, traveling Japan in search of Komazawa. The story became one of the most popular romantic narratives of the late Edo theater and inspired a substantial visual tradition in [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e). Kuniyoshi's composition focuses on the transformed Miyuki/Asagao, allowing the kimono, the koto or other instrument, and her bearing to evoke both the courtly past and her present condition as a blind itinerant musician. Although Kuniyoshi is most famous for warrior prints, his treatment of dramatic and literary heroines reflects the breadth of late Edo ukiyo-e. The 1843 date places the print within the Tenpo Reforms period, during which character-only designations were a useful strategy for publishing theatrical material. As [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) of the era, it employs the layered color woodblock palette and the patterned costume vocabulary of mid-century Utagawa-school design. This impression is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago.