Word: utamaro
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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HARVARD EPWORTH CHURCH, January by James Herbert, Quick Billy by Bruce Baillie, Jan. 24 at 7:30, $1, Watersmith by Will Hindle, Utamaro and his Five Women, by Kenji Mizoguchi...
...study of the print, was obsessed with absolute quality, if so chimerical an idea can be called "absolute." In the case of 18th century Japanese wood blocks, this quality lies in nuances of inking, registration and condition that are barely visible to the amateur. If Ledoux bought, say, a Utamaro, something had to be dropped from his chosen 250 to make room for it. Ledoux was a polisher, not a grabber; and as a result, any print that provably comes from his collection has enormous cachet for collectors of Japanese art today...
...recently either a woman married or retired to maiden aunthood, or she became a prostitute. The prostitutes were often women or great culture and provided men with the only intelligent female conversation around, for wives were generally little more than child-bearers and tea-servers. Kenji Mizoguchi, director of Utamaro and His Five--Women, (1946), is regarded as the women's champion among Japanese film directors, yet even he takes what in another context would be an extremely sexist attitude towards them. "He doesn't love me," says one of Utamaro's five women. "He loves women, all women...
...Utamaro and his Five Women is not, unfortunately, one of Mizoguchi's best films, yet it exemplifies many of his most pressing themes and is certainly well worth seeing. Its greatest flaw is the lack of simple plot: five women is simply too many to keep track of properly. The artist Utamaro, in trouble with the government for offending a traditional school of art by proclaiming that his own work is superior, is handcuffed for sixty days and is unable to draw. He has tattoeed one of the women; when she runs away with a lover one of Utamaro...