Artworks

Pair of word pictures (moji-e)

Artwork · attributed to Iwasa Matabei · 17th century · album leaf · Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation

A beggar and a samurai retainer whose thick black outlines are in fact hiragana — tsu ma ichi (“beggar”) and orei o mōshi sōrō (“I humbly thank you”): moji-e in the witty brushwork identified with Iwasa Matabē (1578–1650), traditionally credited with founding the ukiyo genre. Christine Guth has seen in such images the playfulness (asobi) of Edo art and the growing literacy of its public. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 278–279, fig. 316. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.