Poem by Ise: Masaemon's Wife Otani

Poem by Ise: Masaemon's Wife Otani, dated 1845 in the records of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is a print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) belonging to one of his Edo ukiyo-e poem series in which classical verses, here a poem attributed to the female poet Ise, are paired with a figural subject drawn from the dramatic and legendary tradition. The figure of Otani, the wife of Masaemon, attaches the print to the world of heroic narrative, in particular the tales of the loyal vassal Araki Mataemon and the revenge story of Ueno, where Masaemon's wife plays a part familiar to nineteenth-century audiences. By bringing such a figure together with a Hyakunin Isshu-style poem, Kuniyoshi and his publisher could appeal both to readers of classical poetry and to lovers of the warrior prints for which he was best known. The 1845 date places the sheet in Kuniyoshi's mature career, when the visual idiom of late Edo ukiyo-e was at its most polished and his line had achieved the confident, slightly mannered character that distinguishes his work in this period. Trained under Utagawa Toyokuni I, Kuniyoshi had made his name in the late 1820s with the Suikoden warrior series, and prints such as this one show how he continued to apply the heroic vocabulary of warrior prints to female figures and literary subjects across his career. The Victoria and Albert Museum's catalogue records the title, the date, and Kuniyoshi's authorship, and the description here remains within the bounds of that documentation while situating the work in its broader Edo ukiyo-e context.