Story of the Cormorant
About This Series
Story of the Cormorant draws on the long Japanese tradition of ukai, the night fishing performed on the Nagara, Uji, and other inland rivers with trained cormorants whose throats are tied so that they catch but do not swallow ayu sweetfish for their handlers. The subject offered Shiko Munakata a folkloric and theatrical scene of immediate pictorial appeal, the cormorant fisherman in straw cape and fire basket standing in a flat-bottomed boat surrounded by the dark birds and the river at night, and it belongs to the broad family of subjects, Aomori festival, Buddhist legend, Tokaido station, classical narrative, in which the artist applied his ita-e idiom to scenes drawn from the lived and remembered Japan of his time. Each sheet is carved directly into yamazakura cherry block without preparatory drawing and printed in sumi on washi in the manner Munakata had developed by the late 1930s and refined across the postwar decades, the densely worked black ground filled with the swirling calligraphic line and the seal-script characters of his idiosyncratic hand. Several impressions are completed by uragashin verso-coloring, in which mineral pigments brushed onto the back of the translucent paper diffuse forward as soft tints of vermilion, indigo, and ochre behind the saturated ink, registering the firelight and water of the night-fishing scene without the use of separate color blocks. The series belongs to the postwar phase of Munakata's career, the years following his 1955 Sao Paulo and 1956 Venice prizes when his international stature brought commissions for ambitious narrative projects, and impressions are documented in the Munakata Shiko Memorial Hall in Aomori and in postwar Japanese print holdings at the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo and major American museums.
Prints in This Series (1)
Frequently Asked Questions
Story of the Cormorant draws on the long Japanese tradition of ukai, the night fishing performed on the Nagara, Uji, and other inland rivers with trained cormorants whose throats are tied so that they catch but do not swallow ayu sweetfish for their handlers. The subject offered Shiko Munakata a folkloric and theatrical scene of immediate pictorial appeal, the cormorant fisherman in straw cape and fire basket standing in a flat-bottomed boat surrounded by the dark birds and the river at night, and it belongs to the broad family of subjects, Aomori festival, Buddhist legend, Tokaido station, classical narrative, in which the artist applied his ita-e idiom to scenes drawn from the lived and remembered Japan of his time. Each sheet is carved directly into yamazakura cherry block without preparatory drawing and printed in sumi on washi in the manner Munakata had developed by the late 1930s and refined across the postwar decades, the densely worked black ground filled with the swirling calligraphic line and the seal-script characters of his idiosyncratic hand. Several impressions are completed by uragashin verso-coloring, in which mineral pigments brushed onto the back of the translucent paper diffuse forward as soft tints of vermilion, indigo, and ochre behind the saturated ink, registering the firelight and water of the night-fishing scene without the use of separate color blocks. The series belongs to the postwar phase of Munakata's career, the years following his 1955 Sao Paulo and 1956 Venice prizes when his international stature brought commissions for ambitious narrative projects, and impressions are documented in the Munakata Shiko Memorial Hall in Aomori and in postwar Japanese print holdings at the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo and major American museums.
The Story of the Cormorant series contains 1 prints, created by Shiko Munakata.
The Story of the Cormorant series was created by Shiko Munakata (棟方志功).
We currently have 1 of 1 known prints from the Story of the Cormorant series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
Want to rate prints from Story of the Cormorant?
Sign up to start rating