Osome and Hisamatsu

Category

Library Item

Item no

355

Title

Osome and Hisamatsu

Description

This print depicts the doomed lovers Osome and Hisamatsu. Osome wears pink bows in her hair and holds a love letter. Hisamatsu grasps the long flowing sleeve of Osome's kimono.
The story of Osome and Hisamatsu was based on real events that took place in Osaka in 1708 and is a tale of mutual love frustrated by social status.

Artist / maker

Eizan

Date

1812

Size

62 x 10 cm.

Type

Wood cut

Location

Art and Design Library

The following information appears on the print:

Signed: Eizan hitsu
Artist: Kikugawa Eizan

This Kabuki play was based on real events that took place in Osaka in 1708, and is a tale of mutual love frustrated by social status. Osome runs away from home when her parent decide to marry her to another suitor having decided that Hisamatsu is not wealthy enough for their daughter. Hisamatsu tries to persuade Osome to return home, but she has decided that she would rather die than agree to marry another man.
The tragedy was first recorded in a popular ballad before being dramatized in Osakan Kabuki in 1710 and Edo Kabuki in 1719. Chikamatsu Monzaemon, a popular playwright who created many plays for the Kabuki and Bunraku puppet theatres inspired by the double suicide theme, produced a version of this story in 1780.
This is one of a set of 50 prints donated to Edinburgh City Libraries by Marie Ferguson Dyer in honour of her father Henry Dyer. Dyer was a Scottish engineer who became the first Principal of the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo in 1872.

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