The Scent of Scarlet Flowers (Shuka funpō)

A young woman in pale red under kimono (nagajuban) with dandelion motifs sits languorously on the floor leaning on a padded lacquer armrest as she twirls long strands of her hair. Her pale complexion is flawless, her cheeks are slightly flushed, and her lipstick brilliant red. She gazes sulkily at a cluster of peonies that have passed their peak of bloom—petals are already falling—in a globular jardiniere with a deep blue drip glaze. Behind her a young girl attendant in a simple red and white tie-dyed (shibori) kimono gently clasps another long lock of the woman’s hair while attempting to scent it with a handheld incense burner. Gold leaf was applied on the reverse side of the silk substrate (urahaku), imparting a soft glow to the painting. The entire ambience of the scene, while gorgeous, projects an air of glorious decadence and anachronism—an impression compounded by this method of scenting hair, which fell out of use in Japan by the eighteenth century. It was most common for a woman to scent hair in early modern Japan using an “incense pillow” (kōmakura).

It is perhaps impossible to discover if there was a direct, early-Edo inspiration for Kiyokata’s painting, though it does recall Ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock prints of the Genroku era, that is, late seventeenth to early eighteenth century depicting this practice of scenting hair. One such example is a painting by Hishikawa Waō (life dates unknown), a pupil of the pioneer Hishikawa Moronobu, which shows a courtesan having her hair scented by a kamuro in a lavish brothel setting (MFA, Boston, acc. no. 11.7631). The practice of scenting hair this way in the early Edo period is documented in Morisada’s Illustrated Miscellany (Morisada mankō 守貞謾稿), an encyclopedic twenty-nine-volume series that chronicles the customs and pastimes of everyday life in three major cities of Japan: Edo (now Tokyo), Nagoya, and Kyoto. The compiler Kitagawa Morisada began compiling this comprehensive work in 1837. Among the passages about the grooming routines of women he observed:

“In recent times, women in Edo wash their hair at least once or twice a month to remove dirt and unpleasant odors. During the summer months they wash their hair more frequently to keep it clean. In recent years, the use of scented oils has fallen out of favor. Furthermore, the practice of infusing hair with burning incense has been long abandoned and is rarely heard of nowadays.”

近代江戸の婦女は毎月一、二度必ず髪を洗ひて、垢を去り臭気を除く、夏月には特に屢々沐して之を除く。蓋近年匂油を用ひることを好まず。又更に髪に香を焚き染ること久しく廃て之を聞かざるなり。

Not only was the practice of scenting hair with burning incense not practiced in the early twentieth century when this painting was created, Morisada suggests it had already stopped being practiced long before he was compiling his miscellany in the early nineteenth century.

The mysteries and multilayered archaism of Kiyokata’s composition are only compounded when we learn the title of the work assigned by the artist: The Scent of Scarlet Flowers (Shuka funpō 朱華芬芳). This title is the most unusual of those the artist gave his works, most of which present modern Japanese women in scenes of daily life, or capture episodes from Kabuki or traditional puppet plays. The four characters, even when pronounced with modern Sino-Japanese readings have a decidedly archaic Chinese sound and sensibility about them. To add to the linguistic complexity and suggestiveness of the title, the first two characters if read with their most common Japanese reading would be pronounced hanezu which is the name of an aromatic pink flower, often translated as “garden plum” (of the genus Rosaceae Prunus), though it blossoms in March and April. The flowers in fact can be used to create a dye that creates a color similar to that of the woman’s pale red robe—so perhaps the artist is intentionally drawing attention to the palette of his painting. The color hanezu was also mentioned in ancient Japanese poetry, and during Heian times was included in the list of “forbidden colors” (kinjiki 禁色), only permitted to be worn by royalty. Since hanezu-dyed garments fade easily, by the conventions of premodern Japanese poetry, the flower and color came to be associated with transient affection. For people living in Kyoto, even to this day, the Hanezu Festival Dance (Hanezu odori), which is performed every March at Zuishin’in temple, not only serves as a celebration of the coming spring season but serves as homage to the famous woman poet Ono no Komachi and her ill-fated relationship with a courtier of the palace. “Hanezu” is also a female given name, and some might imagine that is the subject’s name. While it is impossible to know if the artist wanted to viewers to make any or all of these associations with the color hanezu, he must have been aware of this possibility.

Yet, after considering all these nuances of meaning and researching the historic use of the four characters together in East Asian literature, it became obvious that the artist was borrowing a phrase from a famous Chinese poem of the sixth century, Songs of Lamentation, by Ruan Ji (210–263 C.E.). Poem 13 of the set incorporates the phrase “Red blossoms give off a sweet fragrance,” right after introducing the image of “clouds of dawn,” which refers to a seductive goddess who woos the King of Chu:

Deep-flowing, the Long River’s waters,
above are forests of maple.
Marsh eupatorium blanket the paths,
jet-black steeds go off at a gallop.
Gazing afar makes one sad,
the spring air stirs my heart.

The regions of Chu had many splendid gentlemen,
the “clouds of dawn” introduced depravity.
Red blossoms give off a sweet fragrance,
at Gaocai they went after one another.
But once there was the lament for the brown sparrow,
who could forbid tears from falling?

(Adapted from Stephen Owen)

Although the artist surely would not have expected the average member of the public to be aware of this poetic allusion, and was in all likelihood not trying to make some kind of social commentary likening the decay of society of the Chu Kingdom with the alleged decadence of wealthy Taishō aristocrats, nevertheless using a title with a reference to an ancient Chinese poem adds to the archaistic aura and feeling of world-weariness of its primary subject.

Throughout his early career Kaburaki (also sometimes pronounced Kaburagi) Kiyokata made his living as an illustrator and designed countless frontispiece illustrations (kuchi-e) for popular literature (including four in The Met’s collection: JP3374, JP3189, JP3191, JP3195). Through this work as an illustrator he developed close and lasting ties with numerous young writers, and remained active in literary circles. He also was a major advocate of the Shin-hanga (New Print) movement that revived traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques. Painting, however, was his real passion. In 1929 he became a member of the Imperial Art Academy and in 1938 he was appointed to the Art Committee of the Imperial Household. In 1954 he received the prestigious Order of Cultural Merit.