Posted by Noel Chiappa (98.166.150.196) on October 02, 2010 at 00:32:13:
In Reply to: Re: Another obscure Yoshitoshi series posted by Guy Pepermans on October 01, 2010 at 22:29:50:
"I found one print from that series in the Tokyo Metropolitan Library"
Guy, thanks ever so much for turning that up! I'm stunned!
"You got it almost right except for the last but one kanji."
Ah! That was the other possibility I was considering, but I rejected it (even though it had the 'correct' 'do' reading) because the character in Keyes clearly has a group of small strokes beneath it (see the image in my first post).
It's really hard to see that character in that TML image. (I know they give the other character in the database entry, but I really like to confirm it directly from the prints.) Black ink on bright red for some reason always seems to reproduce really poorly in digital images. I have fiddled with the image some (contrast, colour balance, etc) and you can see the _slightly_ more readable result above.
I seem to see two downward angled strokes at the bottom, so I would be somewhat dubious about the character the TML has given. I suspect that the title actually uses some other very rare character: if you look in the Unicode database under the 'riki' (strength) radical, there are a number of possibilities, although the image is too poor to say definitively.
What I think may have happend is that the print has furigana next to the characters in the title cartouche (which I cannot read in this image, alas), and that gives the 'do' reading. Both Keyes and the TML may have relied on the furigana for the reading, and then picked the character that looked closest to the one on the print - but Keyes may have inadvertently picked a character with the wrong reading ('kun').
Anyway, thanks again for finding that!
Noel