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Woman Playing a Shamisen while Her Son Clasps Her; “Sekidera Temple” (Sekidera), from the series Fashionable Adaptations of the Seven Komachi Plays (Fūryū nana Komachi)
Kitagawa Utamaro Japanese
Not on view
A woman attempts to strum a shamisen—the three-stringed instrument popular in the pleasure quarters and on the Kabuki stage of the Edo period—while her little son affectionately embraces her. This print belongs to a series showing contemporary women and children likened to Noh plays based on seven legendary episodes in the life of the ninth-century poetess Ono no Komachi. In the play Sekidera Komachi, the elderly Komachi is staying at a hut near Sekidera Temple in Ōtsu City, northeast of Kyoto, and is visited by two monks and a child who want to learn about poetry, and the child dances to gagaku (ancient court music); the artist may have wanted viewers to link this picture to that story. This rare print is better known from early twentieth-century facsimile reproductions.
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