Bando Mitsugoro III Pounding New Year Rice Cakes

Artist Shungyosai (Japanese, 1767–1823)

Datecommissioned for New Year 1821

MediumColor woodblock print

Dimensions8 7/16 × 7 5/16 inches (21.4 × 18.6 cm)

ClassificationsPrints

Credit LineGift of Joanna Haab Schoff, Class of 1955

Terms

Surimono
Color woodblock print
Actors
Kabuki
Poetry
Japanese

Object number2011.017.031

Label CopyThe formation of Joanna Haab Schoff’s collection of surimono, privately commissioned poetry prints, had its roots in the 1950s when she and her husband, James Stanley Schoff, then serving in the American military, lived in Japan. After returning to the United States, they collected Toulouse-Lautrec prints and were led by the Japanese influence on late nineteenth-century French art to seek out Japanese woodblock prints. The elegance and technical sophistication of surimono, along with the literary wit conveyed, especially appealed to Joanna. In 2006, the Johnson Museum organized an exhibition of the Schoffs’ collection, with an accompanying catalogue by Daniel McKee, Cornell Library curator of Japanese and Korean collections. In 2011 the Schoffs donated a portion of their collection to the Johnson Museum. ("American Sojourns and the Collecting of Japanese Art," curated by Ellen Avril and presented at the Johnson Museum June 25–December 18, 2016) • Wakamochi no Kine toru furi no Okashisa ni Egao wo misuru Naniwazu no ume At the comic sight of him Taking the young rice cake Pounder We show our smiling faces For this plum of Naniwa Bay —To ¯ho ¯kenTakamado Kine torite Tsuki no usagi mo Tsukurabaya Haru nige nokoru Yuki no wakamochi Taking the pounder— Would that he could Make them like the moon rabbit Those snowy white rice cakes That escaped the spring thaw —Tazuro ¯Takamitsu The pounding of sticky rice into cakes (mochi) for the New Year was an annual practice, associated with the “rabbit in the moon,” perhaps in part through a pun with the phrase mochizuki for a full moon. Here, white rabbits, rounded like the moon, decorate the actor’s robes, beside pampas grass associated with the moon festival. A “moon boat” motif also decorates the mortar, while the actor’s headband has raised ties like rabbit ears. The second poem plays with these connections, emphasizing the whiteness of the round mochi cakes as “snow,” which has lasted despite the warmth of spring, and comparing the comic actor to the quintessential mochi maker, the moon rabbit. The scene of rice cake–pounding derives from a kabuki play, Somemoyo ¯Naniwa miyage (Dyed Patterns: A Souvenir of Osaka), performed at the Kado Theater in Osaka in March 1821, with Bando-Mitsugoro-III (1773-1831) playing the comic role.

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