Autumn Moon of Matsukaze

Two women dressed in the long-sleeved furisode of unmarried women are shown on an undulating shoreline. A pine tree behind them partially screens a full moon. The standing figure, wearing a design of plovers flying over a pine-lined shore and sails, holds the cap (eboshi) and robe of an aristocrat. The other woman kneels on the shore. She wears a dark obi decorated with tie-dyed pine bark lozenges (matsukawabishi) over an autumnal morning glory–patterned furisode.
Despite the distinctly eighteenth-century character of the dress and hairstyles, viewers of Harunobu’s time would have instantly recognized this print as a scene from the classic Noh play Matsukaze (Wind in the Pines), which is associated with Heian-period (794–1185) Japan. The play revolves around two sisters, Matsukaze and Murasame, who work as brine maidens, carrying the seaweed used to make salt in Suma. The play tells us that both sisters had love affairs with courtier and poet Ariwara Yukihira (818–893) during his period of exile to Suma, a reference drawn from a wellknown poem in the anthology Kokin wakashū, as well as from a later reference in The Tale of Genji. In the Noh play, the ghosts of the sisters wait on the beach for Yukihira’s return, with only his hat and cloak as reminders.
This print comes from a series of eight, each of which depicts a scene from a classical Noh play in an eighteenth-century reinterpretation.