Young Woman Lacing a Hawking Gauntlet
Suzuki Harunobu
Description
Harunobu was a master of the "pillar print," a tall and narrow format that first appeared in the late 1760s to decorate the slender wooden pillars of the typical residential interior. Here he fills the lower half of the frame with a single female figure, engaged enigmatically in the act of lacing a hawking gauntlet to her forearm. (In Japan, hawking was a sport for males of the warrior class, not a game for pampered daughters of urban merchants. This intent young girl is thus crossing lines of both gender and class.) Though the colors have faded, we can still appreciate innovative touches like the way the wood grain of the block is used as part of a textile pattern.
Cross-dressing or gender-bending behavior in Harunobu’s prints is usually the sign of a mitate, a clever allusion to a classical story. Part of the pleasure for contemporary viewers was to decipher the visual pun. Unfortunately, these layers of meaning are often lost to us today.
M. Graybill
"Courtesans, Cross-Dressers, and the Girl Next Door Images of the Feminine in Japanese Popular Prints"
3/9 - 9/1/02
Subject Matter:
The woman is lacing a hawking gauntlet to her forearm. As the Label Copy describes, hawking was a sport for males in the warrior class. Suzuki Harunobu depicted a woman in this role, a form of "mitate" to allude to a classical story. The crest on her robed arm appears to resemble the Tokugawa clan "kamon" or crest with the three leaves. Furthermore, crests in the early edo-era were only associated with samurai clans, suggesting she may be the daughter of a samurai family. That said, In the late edo-era, almost every large family had a family crest, so she could be unrelated to samurai completely as the Label Copy states.
Physical Description:
As the title suggests, this print depicts a young woman lacing a hawking gauntlet. She is situated in the middle left and looks down at her hand engrossed in her work. She wears an ornate kimono with a family coat of arms/seal on her right arm. An inscription on the bottom right appears to be the artist's signature.
Usage Rights:
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