Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳) (artist 11/15/1797 – 03/05/1861)
Now on Show at Okuyama, Asakusa: Lifelike Dolls of Foreign Strangers and the Maruyama Courtesans (浅草奥山生人形 - Asakusa Okuyama ikiningyo)
05/1855
10 in x 14.5 in (Overall dimensions) color woodblock print
Signed: Ichiyūsai Kuniyoshi ga
一勇斎国芳画
Publisher: Kamaya Kihei (Marks 201 - seal 11-024)
Censor seal: aratame
Date seal: 5/1855
Muzeum Sztuki i Techniki Japońskiej Manggha, Krakow - a variant diptych
Royal Museums of Art and History, Belgium (via Cultural Japan) - another version
Lyon Collection - another example based on displays at Asakusa
Lyon Collection - another example based on displays at Asakusa "The area around Asakusa was one of the main venues for misemono (sideshows). In February 1855 a life-size display of dolls representing 'people from strange lands' was staged. They had abnormally long arms and legs, and holes in their chests not unlike people visited by the wandering Asahina... Made by Matsumoto Kisaburō from Kumamoto, the figures were essentially high quality papier-mâché on bamboo frames and were said to be astonishingly lifelike. Artists including Kuniyoshi are known to have visited the spectacles and the prints portraying what they had seen were published a few months later - timed. no doubt, to profit from their popularity."
Quoted from: Japanese Popular Prints from Votive Slips to Playing Cards by Rebecca Salter, University of Hawai'i Press, 2006, page 35. (This entry is accompanied by a variant diptych by Kuniyoshi.)
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On the origin of Tenaga and Ashinaga
In an article in Andon 57, September, 1997 Matthi Forrer wrote on page 41: "The popular belief in the Edo Period was that there would somewhere exist a country inhabited by people with either extremely long arms or similar long legs. (It has even been suggested that this was actually quite common with the people of Colombo, although there may also have been some confusion here with kurombō, a more general indication for black people - which will be discussed also later on.) The inconveniences of the long limbs of these creatures were, to some extent, relieved by their collaborative efforts to procure their daily food. Living by the coast, this naturally consisted primarily of fish. Generally, the long-armed creatures, called Tenaga, would be seated on the back of the long-legged Ashinaga and, while these would wade through the water, the long-armed one would try to catch some fish. Probably first introduced properly into Japan through the Sankaikyō, a Japanese translation of a Chinese work first made by Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), their portrayal in netsuke has become a quite popular subject and, indeed, numerous examples of the Tenaga holding fish or grasping an octopus can be encountered. In pictorial form, however, such as in prints and illustrated books, they seem to have been less common, the Hokusai manga vol. 12 (c. 1832) not surprisingly being an exception. And Utagawa Kuniyoshi designed a print of them after an exhibition of life-size dolls, iki ningyō, at Asakusa Okuyama in Edo, probably in 1855."
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The figure with the long arms is Tenaga (てなが) and the one with long legs is Ashinaga (あしなが). Click on the print and then enlarge it. Pay specific attention to the title cartouche with the white elephant in the upper right corner. Next to and behind the elephant is a man with an incredibly long tongue sticking out of his mouth. It hangs half-way down to his waist. At the elephant's long equally long tongue is a small seated or kneeling figure. Odd.
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This print was also published by Izutaya Shokichi. The carver was probably Hori Shōji. His seal shows up in the print that forms a diptych with this one.
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The figures in this print are 'living dolls' or iki-ningyō
Andrew Markus wrote of these automotons in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies in 1985: "An outgrowth of these simple static ningyō 人形, "dolls," or "figures," was the phenomenon of karakuri-ningyō 絡繰人形 "contraption dolls," or more commonly, iki-ningyō 活偶人 "living dolls." From the descriptions I have seen, these were spring-driven automata, capable of a limited range of repetitive motions. The earliest mention of iki-ningyō in Bukō nenpyō appears for the year 1853, although the exhibit of automata is clearly far older. The same source records that in 1813, an old woman made dolls dance and play instruments "without any human agency" by connecting their mechanisms to a water wheel in Asakusa. A figure of the "Laughing Buddha" Hotei 布袋, exhibited in 1822, would rouse himself from slumber when called, take up his fan, dance, and laugh (the same figure was still being exhibited in 1859). An 1833 misemono in Fukagawa 深川, to judge by an ornamental description in Edo hanjōki 江戶繁昌記 (Chronicle of the prosperity of Edo, 1832-1836), displayed lavish tableaux of iki-ningyō in climactic scenes from the Chinese vernacular novel Shui hu chuan 水滸伝, complete with narrator, orchestra lodged in the rafters, special effects of smoke and colored lights, and mechanical scene changes on each of the four stages surrounding the audience."
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Among the living dolls in this print are a man from the Land of the Hollow-chested People and men from the Land of Long-armed and Long-legged People. Not shown are representatives of the people from the Land of the Feathered People, nor ones from the Land of the Crossed Legs, nor from the land of the Long Ears.
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A large selection of these animated dolls can be found at the Kuniyoshi Project.
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Illustrated:
1) in a small black and white reproduction in "L'ukiyo-e come arte «di uso e consumo»" by Manuela Capriati, Il Giappone, Vol. 41 (2001), fig. 8, p. 53.
2) in color in Kuniyoshi 国芳 by Jūzō Suzuki (鈴木重三), Heibonsha Limited, Publishers, 1992, no. 348. This print is shown as the right-hand panel of a diptych.
3) in color in 'The elusive Wasōbei' by Dieuwke Eijer in Andon 106, December, 2018, fig. 6, p. 19.
Kamaya Kihei (釜屋喜兵衛) (publisher)
comic prints (giga - 戯画 / kyōga - 狂画) (genre)
Historical - Social - Ephemera (genre)