Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳) (artist 11/15/1797 – 03/05/1861)

Sugawara no Michizane [菅原道真] seated on a tatami mat in formal court robes before his favorite plum and pine trees - at the Tenmangū Shrine

Print

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Date:ca 1840
Dimensions:9 in x 13 in (Overall dimensions) Medium:Japanese color woodblock print
Inscription:Signed: Ichiyūsai Kuniyoshi ga
一勇斎国芳画
Publisher: Aritaya Seiemon
(Marks 014 - seal 22-064)
Censor's seal: kiwame
Links Kuniyoshi project (two examples toward the bottom of the page)
Shizuoka Prefectural Library - another version of this sub-genre, but with the Tenjin sutra printed at the top
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria - Yoshikazu version Description:The significance of the plum and pine trees seen behind Sugawara no Michizane

David Waterhouse mentioned on page 66 of his Images of Eighteenth-century Japan: Ukiyoe Prints from the Sir Edmund Walker Collection that there were many myths that grew up around Michizane. "One of the most familiar stories about him is first seen in the Gempei seisuiki (late twelfth century), and forms the subject of a famous if slightly over-rated Nō play, Oimatsu. This tells that Michizane, in exile in Kyūshū, was thinking one spring day about his favourite plum tree, which would now be in flower at his palace in the capital. He sadly addressed a poem to it.... The plum tree heard this appeal from afar, lifted itself out by the roots, and flew all the way down to Kyūshū, as an expression of sympathy with the injustice of the punishment meted out to Michizane; and the aged pine tree from the same garden also flew down to join its master, and encourage him to seek fulfilment of his desire to return to the capital. Although Michizane died in exile, his spirit is said to have returned to Kyōto a few years later, to the accompaniment of peals of thunder..." His love of that flowering plum tree also explains the use of plum petals decorating his robe.

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Kakemono-e of Sugawara no Michizane seated on a dais wearing formal Heian Court robes and holding a scepter at Tenmangu Shrine. Below him two palace guards are seated behind a pair of stone Shi-shi lion-dogs [獅子].

ex B. W. Robinson collection S95c.6

[If you click on the image and then enlarge it you will notice that there are differences between the shishi and the two palace guards.]

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In a translation of the Chirizuka Monogatari: Tales of a Dust Mound by Yoshiko K. Dykstra at the University of Hawai'i it says in footnote 8: "Sugawara Michizane 菅原道真 (845-903), a celebrated poet and scholar, was promoted to be the Minister of the Right while serving Emperors Uda and Daigo, but was exiled to Kyushu in 901 through the slander of Fujiwara Tokihira. He missed the court life of the capital Kyoto so much that he composed a famous poem for the emperor. He died on the twenty-fifth day of the second month in exile. After his death, so many strange things, including natural calamities, occurred in the capital that, to appease his disturbed soul, the people enshrined him as a deity in the Tenmangū Shrine 北野天満宮 in Kitano, and he is known as Kitano Tenjin 北野天神, Heavenly Deity of Kitano. Later he was popularly worshipped as the deity of learning and his shrines were built throughout the country. Even today, many students wishing to pass entrance examinations for major universities often visit his shrines. Michizane compiled a historical work, the Sandai Jitsuroku 三代実録."

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Sugiwara no Michizane, aka Kan Shōjō, is wearing a robe decorated with stylized plum blossoms.

In many of the prints showing Sugawara no Michizane in this guise, whether seated or standing, there is a flowering plum tree behind him.

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There are a number of other vertical compositions with basically the same layout. In the Library of Congress are a couple of them by anonymous artists and there is also an Eisen composition with the figure seated regally at the top, two noble figures below that and colorful guardian lions at the bottom.

There is a print by Harunobu from the early 1760s in the Ainsworth Collection in Oberlin, Ohio showing Sugawara no Michizane seated on a dais above two court attendants. However, this one does not have the shi-shi statuettes below.
Related entities warrior prints (musha-e - 武者絵) (genre)
Aritaya Seiemon (有田屋清右衛門) (publisher)
Kakemono-e - 掛物絵 (genre)
Sugawara no Michizane (菅原道真) (role)

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