Katsushika Oi

• Born: c. 1800
• Died: c. 1866
• Other Names: O-ei
• Japanese: 葛飾応為 (Katsushika Oui)

Katsushika Ôi was the daughter of ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai by his second wife, and an accomplished painter in her own right. She is one of a very few prominent women artists in pre-modern or early modern Japanese history.

Ôi is not known to have designed any single-sheet woodblock prints, but at least two books name her as the illustrator.

Life

Very little is known about her biography, and none of her paintings are inscribed with a date, but Ôi is believed to have been born around 1800. She had one brother, Sakijûrô, and perhaps a sister named Onao, in addition to a half-brother and two half-sisters, Hokusai's children from his first marriage. Ôi married Minamizawa Tômei, the owner of a shop specializing in oils for hair, and the two studied together under the painter Tsutsumi Tôrin III. Following the death of Hokusai's second wife in 1828, after she had been married for less than ten years, Ôi divorced Tômei and moved back in with her father, looking after him and assisting him the remainder of his life.

There are several theories as to the origin or meaning of the name, Ôi, with which she signed her paintings. The name takes a character from Hokusai's art-name Iitsu, which he began using around 1820, with the two characters Ô-i thus meaning "loyal to I[itsu]." Her name has also said to come as a result of her father constantly calling her, shouting "ôi, ôi," a Japanese equivalent to "hey, hey!" Finally, her given name was Ei, with an honorary 'O' tacked on in front as was quite typical for women's names in the Edo period. Thus, she often signed her works "Ôi Ei-jo," jo meaning "woman" or "daughter."

She is the only one of Hokusai's daughters known to have lived into her old age. A painting by Hokusai's pupil Tsuyuki Kôshô, from around 1842 or 1843, depicts her at around age 40, with her father, age 84. She is said to have been the only person by her father's side when he died, roughly five years later, in 1849, at the age of 89, supposedly saying with his last words "let me live just ten more years, just five more years."

Following her father's death, Ôi is said to have become reclusive, severing ties with her family, and her painting students. She reconnected, however, with family shortly afterwards, being taken in by her brother Kase Sakijûrô. By around 1857, she had left her brother's family, and was living on her own in Aoyama (a neighborhood of Edo), eking out a living by selling her paintings. She is known to have done some traveling around this time as well, though it is unclear where she was living, or staying, at the time of her death. Some accounts say she was in Kanazawa (Kaga province), others the Kanazawa in Musashi province, and still others Nagano (Obuse, Shinano province), when she died in or around 1866.

Works

Only two books are known which list Katsushika Ôi as their illustrator. One is an 1847 edition of an earlier encyclopedia edited by Takai Ranzan and entitled E-iri nichiyô onna chôhô-ki ("Illustrated Handbook for Daily Life for Women"). The other, Sencha tebiki no tane ("A Concise Dictionary of Sencha"), published the following year.

"Night Scene in the Yoshiwara" is perhaps the most famous of Ôi's paintings. The small painting, about 40cm wide, depicts the frontage of a Yoshiwara teahouse, identified as the Izumi-ya. Unlike the majority of traditional Japanese paintings, "Night Scene in the Yoshiwara" extensively employs techniques of light and shadow, as light emanates from lanterns, and from within the teahouse, illuminating some elements and leaving the rest in shadow. The artist hides her signature cleverly within the image, writing the characters O, i, and ei on three separate lanterns.

References

• Kobayashi Tadashi, Julie Nelson Davis (trans.). "The Floating World in Light and Shadow: Ukiyo-e Paintings by Hokusai's Daughter Oi." in Carpenter, John et al (eds). Hokusai and his Age. Hotei Publishing, 2005. pp93-103.