Katsushika Hokusai – The Ghost of Oiwa (1832)

Description

This work of art has been digitally enhanced without erasing signs of ageing for the sake of authenticity. Digital paintings are very popular right now as an affordable and stylish way to decorate and personalize your home and office.

Katsushika Hokusai – The Ghost of Oiwa (1832)

“The story was originally a play for kabuki theater called Yotsuya Kaidan, and was written in 1825 by Tsuruya Nanboku IV. Several versions of this story exist. The one most commonly told begins with a young girl named Oume who falls in love with the married samurai Tamiya Iemon. Her friends try to get rid of his wife Oiwa with a gift of a poisonous face cream. This does not kill Oiwa, but it does ruin her face. Iemon eventually abandons his mutilated wife in disgust, which makes her go mad with grief. In her hysteria, she stumbles over and lands upon an open sword. She curses Iemon with her dying breath and then adopts various forms in order to haunt him, including a paper lantern.

In another version, unemployed samurai Iemon marries a daughter from a warrior family, who needs a man to succeed their family name. He poisons and kills his young wife, and she haunts Iemon as a ghost. In another alternative, Iemon wants to kill his wife and to marry into a wealthy family, so he hires an assassin who kills her and dumps her body into a river. One more version states that Oiwa gets smallpox as a child which mutilates her face. Although her husband Iemon doesn’t mind her appearance, his master wants him to divorce her and marry his granddaughter instead. When Iemon concedes and does as his master wishes, Oiwa dies and turns into a ghost, cursing the family. When people build a shrine to abate her resentment, the ghost disappears.

Paper lanterns were used in the Buddhist tradition mukae-bon, the beginning of Obon; people bring them to their family member’s graves to welcome their spirits. In Hokusai’s print ghost of Oiwa possessed a lantern, in accord with a belief of the lantern usage for communication with ancestral spirits. On the lantern there is an inscription: “Praise Amida / The Woman Named O-iwa”. The calligraphy is written in choshin style, which is not typical of that used for paper lanterns. Kassandra Diaz writes that:

The creases of the lantern fold over her exhausted eyes, which point to the Buddhist seed syllable on her forehead. The syllable refers to Gobujo, a form of Yama, the lord of the underworld and judge of the dead. This may be a mark bestowed upon Oiwa by Yama, who punished her by returning her to the world in her “new body”.”

After purchase you will have access to a PDF document with a link to these files available for download: 5×7”, 8×10”, 9×12”, 11×14”, 16×20″, 18×24″, 24×36″ and A1.

All files are in JPG format and at 300 PPI/DPI resolution. Please note that colours on your screen may be slightly different from the actual print.

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