歌川広重画　梅に鶯|Warbler on a Plum Branch

Utagawa Hiroshige

ca. 1835 · Woodblock print · Asian Art

Poems included on Hiroshige’s bird-and-flower compositions are usually unsigned, but sometimes they are by famous poets, such as this verse by Suganuma Kyokusui (1659–1717), a poet of the samurai class who was a pupil and patron of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694). Here, Kyokusui playfully suggests that the warbler (uguisu) pays its yearly taxes in the spring by generously singing a song on the small grove where it lives. 鶯や 二升五合の 藪年貢 Uguisu ya masumasu hanjō no yabu nengu Oh, the warbler! It pays a generous tithe for such a tiny grove. —Trans. John T. Carpenter

Artist

Utagawa Hiroshige

Date

ca. 1835

Medium

Woodblock print

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

The Howard Mansfield Collection, Purchase, Rogers Fund, 1936