Abe no Nakamaro, seventh poet in the series One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets Explained by the Nurse
Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760-1849)
c. 1835/36
- Medium
- Color woodblock print; yoko oban
- Classification
- Dimensions
- 24.9 × 36.4 cm (9 13/16 × 14 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- Japan
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Asia
- Credit line
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
The eighth-century poet Abe no Nakamaro, accompanied by Chinese attendants, stands on a hill in China and gazes toward his home country Japan, to which he never returned. In the poem inscribed in a cartouche at the upper right, he wonders if the moon is the same as he had seen at Mount Mikasa in Nara. Nakamaro, who was sent to China as a young student and diplomat, spent more than fifty years there. Because of rough storms at sea, his two attempts to return to Japan failed. Hokusai placed only a reflection of the moon on the sea to avoid being too obvious.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
