Children playing the seven gods of good fortune in a New Year's play

Title

Children playing the seven gods of good fortune in a New Year's play
Series

Elegant Children’s Treasure Ship
Artist/maker

Kitagawa Utamaro (c. 1753 - 1806) (designer)
Associated people

Murataya Jirōbei (active c. 1725 - 1844) (publisher)
Associated place

Tōkyō (place of creation)

Tōkyō (place of publication)
Date

1805
Material and technique

nishiki-e (multi-block) woodblock print, printed with water-based vegetable pigments
Material index

paper
Technique index

colour woodcut
Object type

triptych print;

new year-print
Dimensions

mount 55.6 x 34.4 cm (height x width)
print 37.9 x 26 cm (height x width)
No. of items

1
Credit line

Presented by Mrs E. M. Allan and Mr and Mrs H. N. Spalding from the Herbert H. Jennings Collection, 1952.
Museum location

not on display
Museum department

Eastern Art
Accession no.

EAX.4125.c

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Catalogue text

This scene depicts a New Year’s play where children are wearing costumes of the Seven Gods of Fortune who are believed to bring seven happinesses. They are on a Takara-bune (lucky Treasure Ship bringing wealth in the New Year) with the head of a geki (an imaginary bird with white wings) and with the character 'kotobuki' (long life and congratulations) on the sail. Each of the children carries one of the emblems of the Seven Gods, including the youngest child being breast-fed who has the mallet of Daikokuten. The ship is drawn by six women.

The combination of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune and Takara-bune was a popular theme for the New Year. In the Edo period, prints with this motif were sold at the end of the year as well as during the New Year. People hoped to have a good hatsuyume (first dream of the year) and expectations of happiness for the coming year, by putting Takara-bune prints under their pillow. The designs of shō-chiku-bai (pine, bamboo and plum) as the symbols of felicity are on the kimono of a woman on the right (pine) and of two women on the left side of the ship (bamboo and plum respectively). According to the inscriptions by Utamaro next to his signature, the print was made as his first work of the New Year in the Ox Year (1805), the year before his death.