Four Seasons in the South - Summer View (Minami shiki natsu no kei)
- Date:
- c. 1789/93
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; center sheet of oban triptych
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Four Seasons in the South - Summer View (Minami shiki natsu no kei), recorded by the Art Institute of Chicago with a date of 1784, is one image from Utagawa Toyokuni's series treating the four seasons in the southern districts of Edo, with the present sheet focused on summer. The Minami, the southern licensed and entertainment quarters around Shinagawa, was famous for its teahouses, riverside views, and the leisure life of summer evenings. Toyokuni stages the composition with figures relaxing or moving through a setting that signals the season through specific cues: lighter fabrics, fans, parasols, and a sense of openness in the architecture. The series format allowed Toyokuni to think across the year, building a small cycle of designs in which costumes and settings shifted while the underlying interest in beautiful figures and ordered groupings remained constant. As Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e), the print participates in a long tradition of seasonal cycles that organized so much of Japanese pictorial culture, from waka poetry to screen painting. Toyokuni's contribution is to give the cycle a sharply urban flavor, anchored in the recognizable geography of the southern quarter. Although his later reputation rests largely on [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e), this print demonstrates his fluency in seasonal genre design as well. The Art Institute of Chicago catalogues the sheet as Toyokuni I, preserving it as a window onto how Edo viewers imagined summer in their own city through the medium of the woodblock print.
early 1830s
Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
1796
Woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper
1769–1825
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper
広隆寺牛祭
Woodblock print
二月 (伏見稲荷大社祭)
second half 20th century
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
七月 (祇園祭山鉾巡行)
second half 20th century
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
八月 (三条大橋より大文字)
second half 20th century
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Four Seasons in the South - Summer View (Minami shiki natsu no kei) was created by Utagawa Toyokuni I (歌川豊国) in c. 1789/93.
Four Seasons in the South - Summer View (Minami shiki natsu no kei) depicts summer.