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Katsushika Hokusai

Abe no Nakamaro, seventh poet in the series One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets Explained by the Nurse

c. 1835/36
Color woodblock print; yoko oban
24.9 × 36.4 cm (9.8 × 14.3 in)

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

The eighth-century poet Abe no Nakamaro, accompanied by Chinese attendants, stands on a hill in China and gazes toward his home country Japan, to which he never returned. In the poem inscribed in a cartouche at the upper right, he wonders if the moon is the same as he had seen at Mount Mikasa in Nara. Nakamaro, who was sent to China as a young student and diplomat, spent more than fifty years there. Because of rough storms at sea, his two attempts to return to Japan failed. Hokusai placed only a reflection of the moon on the sea to avoid being too obvious.

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