Five Pictures of Low Tide, "Woman Catching an Octopus"

From a Utagawa Kuniyoshi series of five low-tide scenes, this sheet depicts a woman seizing an octopus on the shallow shore, the kind of comic-and-physical subject that lies between bijin-ga, genre print, and the playful mitate that Kuniyoshi was famous for. Low tide along Edo bay was a celebrated annual occasion: city dwellers descended to the exposed shoreline to gather shellfish, seaweed, and small octopus, and the resulting visual material—half landscape, half costume drama in skirts hitched up against the wet sand—was a recurring theme in nineteenth-century Edo ukiyo-e. Kuniyoshi treats the encounter between woman and octopus with characteristic energy, using the strong silhouette of the cephalopod against the figure to create the kind of comic visual surprise that distinguished his work from his more decorous contemporaries. While he is best known as the master of warrior prints, this sheet shows the lighter, observational side of his practice, in which the same draftsmanship that animated mounted samurai is turned on a domestic catch. The Harvard Art Museums record the impression without firm year; on stylistic grounds and from the series rubric it fits comfortably within his mature output. The print documents one of Kuniyoshi's recurrent themes: the dignity and humor of ordinary Edoites going about ordinary, occasionally absurd, business. Source: Harvard Art Museums (object 207751).