Third month, Go Sekku no uchi

This woodblock print by Utagawa Sadafusa, held by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, belongs to a series titled Go Sekku no uchi (Of the Five Seasonal Festivals), and depicts the third month, traditionally associated with the doll festival (Hina Matsuri or Jōshi no sekku) celebrated on the third day of the third lunar month. The five sekku were the seasonal festivals of the Japanese calendar adopted from Chinese tradition and observed across Edo society: the first month's New Year (Jinjitsu), the third month's Hina Matsuri, the fifth month's Tango no sekku (boys' day), the seventh month's Tanabata (star festival), and the ninth month's Chōyō (chrysanthemum festival). Each was associated with specific seasonal foods, decorations, plants, and observances, and prints commemorating individual sekku were a recurring product of the Edo print market, sold in the weeks leading up to each festival. Sadafusa's contribution to the Go Sekku no uchi tradition represents his engagement with the calendrical-genre print idiom that ran throughout the late-Edo woodblock industry alongside the more familiar [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) and [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) of the Utagawa school. The third-month subject of the doll festival, with its association with girls' households and the elaborate display of inherited dolls representing the imperial court, allowed Sadafusa to develop an elegant bijin-ga composition tied to the seasonal moment. The print is part of the William Sturgis Bigelow collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, one of the most important Western holdings of nineteenth-century Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e), and is representative of the calendrical strand of Sadafusa's mature practice in the 1830s and 1840s.