Item ID: 8942 Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry]. Utamaro 喜多川歌麿 Kitagawa, artist.
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].
Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].

The Finale to Utamaro’s Trilogy

Momo chidori kyoka awase 百千鳥狂歌合 [Manifold Birds, A Competition of Kyoka Poetry].

15 double-page woodblock-printed color illustrations. 9.5 folding leaves & colophon page; 8.5 folding leaves & colophon page. Two vols. 8vo (255 x 189 mm.), orig. blue patterned wrappers (gajo jitate-style, somewhat rubbed), with slightly oxidized silver pigment decoration, orig. block-printed labels on both covers (labels a little worn). [From Vols. I & II colophons]: Edo: Tsutaya Juzaburo, [ca. 1791 or 1792].

First edition, of the utmost rarity, the final installment in Utamaro’s trilogy, considered the pinnacle of Japanese book illustration. Following The Insect Book [Ehon mushi erabi] (1788) and The Shell Book [Shiohi no tsuto] (ca. 1789/90), this intricately printed work, devoted to birds through the seasons and paired with kyoka poetry, was published in the early 1790s. In an article posthumously published in 1997, Jack Hillier wrote: “His achievements in yet another sphere, that of the album or picture-book, demonstrate the breadth of Utamaro’s genius. [The three books] form a trilogy in a genre in which no other ukiyo-e artist, except Shigemasa, competes…”–”A Second Look at Utamaro,” Impressions, No. 19 (1997), p. 53.

“For the ‘Bird Book’, Momo Chidori Kyoka Awase, undated but, judging by the publisher’s advertisements contained in it for books by Utamaro and Shigemasa dated 1790 and 1791 respectively, probably published in 1791, a return was made to the ‘Fifteen Verse Pairs’ pattern, the framework for the ‘Insect Book’. The two volumes comprising the work contain a total of fifteen prints of birds with flowers, and on each print there are two kyoka, transcribed by the poets, according to the fanciful preface, from the songs of the birds themselves…

“There is a quieter, more subdued kind of colour-printing in this album than in the ‘Insect Book’ or the ‘Shell Book’, but it is none the less remarkably beautiful. The plumage of the birds is rendered with a downy softness and by the very nature of the subjects, there is a quicker tempo, a greater liveliness, in the compositions. In one instance, a double artifice of the print-makers achieved the sort of subtle effects that can only be appreciated by viewing the original itself. In this print, a cormorant is diving and its half-submerged body and the fish it is chasing are in a shadowy grey tone, whilst the tail-end of the body is in clear-cut line and bright colour; two snowy herons are wading nearby, their forms in white reserve on the pale ground, and their plumage rendered by gauffrage. Other prints lend themselves better to reproduction: the confrontation of a woodpecker on a pine bole and an hawfinch on a branch leads to an electric alertness in the perched birds; the owl and the jay, on the other hand, are back to back on a leafless branch, little colour being used and the ruffled feathers of the owl conveyed with astonishing economy. The ‘Bird Book’ was probably published in 1791.”–Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book (1987), pp. 411 & 422-24 (pictured on pp. 422-23).

Fine copy of a book that we have been looking for over several decades. The plates and text leaves in Vol. II have nearly invisible expert and minor repairs, mostly in blank portions, because of worming. Housed in a chitsu and a contemporary wooden box, with two handwritten labels.

❧ Louise Norton Brown, Block Printing & Book Illustration in Japan (1924), p. 169-70–(she records the two volumes as separate publications due to both having colophons).

For a superlative translation of the poems in this book, see the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s copy, as presented on their “The Met Collection” page.

Price: $150,000.00

Item ID: 8942