The practice of writing / Tenarai

This print is number 53 in the series “Comparisons of the Clouds from The Tale of Genji with Scenes from the World.”

The famous kabuki play Sugawara denju tenarai kagami (Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy) includes the word tenarai in its title, meaning “practice of writing” or “calligraphy,” which also lends its name to one of the chapters of The Tale of Genji. This coincidence serves as the pretext Kuniyoshi uses to connect the two works in this print. The kabuki play dramatizes the life of Sugawara no Michizane. In Act IV (“Terakoya”), the enemies of Kan Shōjō (Sugawara no Michizane’s name in the play) have ordered the death of his son, but Matsuōmaru, loyal to him, sacrifices his own son to pass him off as the other. Matsuōmaru carries a sword and wears a kimono with snow-covered pine trees. Genba, with red makeup on his face, a faithful disciple of Kan Shōjō, witnesses the scene. We can imagine the sacrifice Matsuōmaru makes out of loyalty and the mother's great sorrow upon learning of the fatal outcome, which Hanagasa Gaishi summarizes in a brief text. At the top, a poem from this chapter of The Tale of Genji is included:

I had thrown myself
into a river of tears
to drown.

Who closed the sluice gate
that stopped my death?

David Almazán. Exhibition "Prints of Prince Genji", Red Itiner 2023