Japan Tag Feuerwerk

[BIG]

..https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CJPf4qKLY5k

 

Best

[Ken-Hawaii]

Wow! That was a huge display! What was its theme?

[BIG]

Ken, not sure but some years ago "Team Japan" called it: Celebration of Light !

 

Best

[Bernard]

Fireworks in Japan...

Bernard D

[Ken-Hawaii]

Cool image, but no one is looking up! Did they have iPhones back then?

[Baka Gaijin]

Good morning all,

 

Bernard, I think your print may be depicting something called "Kawabiraki", literally the River opening ceremony, which took place in a number of places, most famous being the area of the Ryougoku Bridge in Edo.

 

Do you think it may have originally been a triptych, with another sheet on the left?

 

A number of artists depicted it.

 

Here's Utagawa Kunisada from c.1858, and also, as Ken observed, no one in foreground is looking at the fireworks in this one either.

 

 

[Bernard]

Hello Malcolm,

 

A fine Kunisada triptych ! Thank you for posting.

Is my print a triptych with a missing sheet? I don't know...

According to the short note in my possession, the print is said to be by Shunki and described as a diptych featuring " feux d'artifice au pont Riogokou ,  daté 1807 sur la lanterne".

 

Bernard D

[Baka Gaijin]

Good afternoon Bernard, 

 

I am trying to lock down the name Shunki to a period  around 1807, but the only name that I can come up with is Yasukawa Harusada II  1830 - 1887, who was known as Shunki 春暉.

 

However, if there was a Yasukawa Harusada II, then, there was also a Yasukawa Harusada I, and, presumably the Shunki nickname is from the Haru in Harusada.

 

We do need to go carefully, as one of the Utagawa Family also used Harusada in his art name.

 

However, I came across a misnomer, and for a long while, an artist known as Shunko, was incorrectly referred to as Shunki, in Western textbooks available in the early 20th Century.

 

Here he is, known as Katsukawa Shunko (1743 -1812):

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katsukawa_Shunk%C5%8D_I

 

 

Further work sounds like a job for Piers and Steve M.

 

Great fun however, and thank you for sharing your collection..