Inside and Outside the House at Night

This ukiyo-e woodblock print shows the inside and outside of a residence's wall on a spring evening with cherry blossoms in full bloom. Passers-by stand out in front of a black wall, walking the dark night road by the light in their hands. The picture is in mostly ink tones, almost monochrome.

This approach of avoiding showy color is called benigirai, literally despising red. Looking closely, color is used only where the light of the room at the back and the lanterns in the passers-by's hands fall. The familiar experience that colors become hard to tell apart on a dark night is expressed with a convincing sense of reality. The cherry trees on both sides are also drawn as different kinds.

Kubo Shunman was a pupil of Kato Nahiko, a scholar of national learning who was also a painter, and studied painting along with literature. Besides ukiyo-e, he also worked in comic kyoka poems, haiku, and popular fiction. This work is a large-format color woodblock triptych designated an Important Art Object.