Sachi Yanari-Rizzo, Curator of Prints & Drawings
It’s summertime and Fort Wayne nights are infused with sounds of cicadas, crickets, and katydids. Indiana’s official state insect is the firefly (or lightning bug, hotaru in Japanese). Characterized by the beetle’s bioluminescence, fireflies are most visible in the evening around dark grassy areas as they try to communicate with each other through flickering lights. The museum’s woodblock print by Yōshū Chikanobu shows a familiar, universal activity: catching fireflies.
Yōshū Chikanobu, Japanese, 1838-1912. Fireflies, from Chiyoda Castle (Album of Women) series. Color woodblock print on paper, 1896. Gift of Wray C. McCalester, 2018.54.a-c. Image courtesy of FWMoA.
Born Hashimoto Naoyoshi, he was part of a family associated with the Sakakibara clan. Chikanobu studied with four Japanese print masters: Keisai Eisen; Ichiyūsai Kuniyoshi, taking the name of Yoshitsuru; Utagawa Kunisada (or Toyokuni II) around 1855-56; and Toyohara Kunichika around 1862. From that point on, the artist took the name Ichishunsai Chikanobu and Yōshū.
Chikanobu fought in the Boshin Civil War (1868-69) on the side of the Tokugawa shogunate that had ruled since 1603. The military government was defeated by supporters of the Imperial court who reinstated the emperor as ruler. After years of isolationist practices, and no industrial revolution, the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912) saw the country’s rapid modernization, which took on the form of Westernization. In art, that meant the emulation of Western artistic ideas, themes, and style and a rejection of Japanese art forms that were perceived as outdated.
Fireflies appear in Japanese literature, poetry, and visual arts. Hunting parties and watching for fireflies were popular forms of entertainment and a custom in Japan. Two earlier examples of firefly hunting are woodblock prints by Suzuki Harunobu and Kitagawa Utamaro from the Art Institute of Chicago.
Based on their relatively plain clothing, Harunobu’s couple is probably townspeople. They walk along a stream with a net and a lantern-shaped cage. Utamaro favored an idealized figure type for women that was tall and willowy with elongated necks and narrow shoulders. They use an uchiwa flat fan to catch fireflies in a three-part composition, or triptych. Harunobu pioneered the use of full color in his prints, replacing hand-coloring. The organic colorants used by Harunobu and Utamaro in the 18th century were susceptible to fading, and the prints have a seemingly muted palette.
Chikanobu’s former teacher Kunisada used a rich Prussian blue in the museum’s Chapter 38, Suzumushi in which the subjects are catching crickets. The more light-stable Prussian blue was a synthetic pigment developed in Germany and introduced into Japan in 1820s. His figure type is rather petite in comparison to Utamaro.
Chikanobu’s work is reflective of a country in transition. Some of his prints captured current events and the West’s influence on clothing and artistic technique while others, like Fireflies, published between 1894 and 1896, are nostalgic for the pre-industrial of the Edo period. He used a traditional style to portray court life inside and outside the walls of Chiyoda Palace, home to the shogun and his court before the Meiji Restoration.
Chikanobu approached the subject in two series. He created 32 prints in The Outer Chiyoda Palace, sometimes referred to as the Album of Men, centering on male activities including ceremonies, processions, and sporting events. Fireflies belongs to the 40-plus print series The Inner Chiyoda Palace, or Album of Women, featuring the shogun’s wife, daughters, male heir, ladies-in-waiting, and servants taking part in seasonal and leisure activities and pastimes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has examples from both albums.
Chikanobu’s triptych features three different well-dressed women. On the left, a woman is in pursuit of fireflies with her fan. They are easily recognizable and yet are described so simply with an X for the body and a circular glow of yellow ink. In the right panel, the lady opens her footed mesh cage that already has the glow of three fireflies. Unlike his former teacher, Kunisada, Chikanobu’s figures are more attenuated. The central lady wears the most elaborate kimono. In addition to colorful floral design on the three women’s kimono, there are embossed natural motifs and ribbed designs on the obi and collar to create more luxurious patterns and texture.
Chikanobu’s prints express his reaction to his changing world, not only through his subject matter but also in his materials. Unlike the deep blues and greens of Kunisada, Chikanobu added a light purple. Vibrant red, yellow, and purple inks, made from aniline, synthetic dyes, and cochineal carmine (an insect dye), were common with Chikanobu and his contemporaries. The brighter, perhaps more intentionally modern, colors of the Meiji Restoration prints were criticized as being harsh and garish, contributing to the unfair dismissal of this period.
Chikanobu finely handled the hazy atmosphere of twilight through the subtle gradations of the inking to approximate early evening. The blue gray sky blends into water beyond the riverbank lined with grasses. Willow tree limbs drop down, and leaves are printed in different shades to give a sense of depth.
See more prints from the FWMoA collection in the Print & Drawing Study Center, open 11am-3pm Tuesday-Friday or by appointment.