Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) | Abalone, needlefish and peach blossoms | Edo period, 19th century

The first edition of this series was privately issued in the form of a kyoka [mad verse] poetry album in the orihon format, with ten illustrated sheets and four sheets of text only. The blocks were shortly after reused for commercial publication, with the publisher's mark and censor's kiwame seal added, as in the present example. In a few cases, the original poems were interchanged for different ones. One additional design, the trout, was included in the commercial series; and another nine designs were added still later by a different publisher. For a full reproduction and detailed discussion of the first edition, see H. George Mann, Sixty Years with Japanese Prints (Illinois, 2021), pp. 290-311.

The three poems by Kumogaki Fujimi, Miwagaki Amaki and Chiyogaki Sunao respectively, have been translated in Mann, Sixty Years (2021), p. 304:

Securely fastened

to the large boulders offshore,

and washed by the waves,

every abalone

is polishing its own pearl.

Nami ni arai

iso no iwao ni

suritsukete

awabi wa onoga

tama o migakeru

The pair of halfbeaks

on the menu have both had

the stuffing taken

out of them, like robes remade

for the first day of summer.

Kondate no

awase sayori mo

koromogae

wata o nukite zo

koshirae ni keru

He, too, probably

has to be on the small side,

the ocean diver

who retrieves abalone

from the crannies between rocks.

Kore mo mata

chiisate naramu

iwa-ai no

hosoki sukima no

awabi toru ama

For a similar impression of the same print in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), Vienna, inventory number KI 10935-1, go to:

https://sammlung.mak.at/en/collection_online?id=collect-196376