Sagi musume (Heron Maiden)

As customary, Bungetsu’s heron maiden wears a white kimono and black obi sash with a white cloth draped over her hair. White-heron patterns delineated in gofun decorate the kimono while the red and blue of the undergarment peek from the opening of the top layer to emphasize the contrasting coolness of her white garment. Snow-laden willow branches in the background reinforce the wintry atmosphere. Bungetsu transforms this familiar sagi musume theme by means of a radical composition and western realism. The maiden stands in the center of the composition with her arms raised. The edges of her sleeves are cut off vertically by the frame creating the illusion that she stands close to the viewer, whom she confronts directly with her mysterious gaze. Bungetsu’s adoption of a realist approach is most evident in his descriptive brush lines on the kimono showing the actual folds and wrinkles of the garment. Furthermore, he applies subtle shading to convey the three-dimensional form of the figure. Although stunningly beautiful in her unworldly appearance, Bungetsu presents the heron maiden as a living person rather than an imaginary being. Her palpable sense of physicality is markedly different from the stylized, ethereal representation most common with this theme. Even the ground beneath her lacquered geta clog heightens a sense of an earthly world with its icy, frozen surface. Bungetsu stylishly signed his name in gold. Although nothing is known about this brilliant artist, he was clearly in tune with the progressive humanist movement that gripped the Taishō art world.

Sagi musume is the subject of a popular Kabuki play based on a folk tale and originally performed in 1762 at the Ichimuraza Theater in Edo. The story begins with a young woodcutter rescuing a wounded heron and setting it free. Later a beautiful woman arrives in his village and marries him. She turns out to be an accomplished weaver who produces exquisite garments that he takes to the market to sell for a substantial profit. Despite her plea not to look into her room while weaving, the woodcutter eventually succumbs to curiosity and discovers his wife in her heron form working at the loom. No longer able to live as a human, the heron flies away. 

The play was revived as a one-act dance in May 1886 by Ichikawa Danjūrō IX, whose performance became the basis of today’s popular Sagi musume dance. At the opening of the dance, the spirit of the heron in white kimono appears on stage carrying an umbrella and this is the image depicted in many paintings. The dancer goes through a series of transformations through quick costume changes. First, she reverts back to a young woman in a colorful kimono dancing to the joy of love. With another costume change, the dance grows darker in mood to express the suffering of a woman in love. The final change brings back the spirit of the heron in its white costume. The dancer begins to whirl with raised arms fluttering, her long white sleeves imitating the movements of the bird, and with increasingly frantic movements expressing the torments of hell she finally collapses. In the role of the spirit of the heron, clearly Bungetsu’s fresh rendition of Sagi musume is based on this dramatic climax.

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