A Long-Tailed Fowl (Onagadori), from the series Twelve Assorted Birds (Shochō jūnikin)

A Long-Tailed Fowl (Onagadori), from the series Twelve Assorted Birds (Shochō jūnikin), is a rare and luxurious departure from Chobunsai Eishi's usual bijin-ga subjects, devoted instead to a single bird whose tail feathers were prized for their extraordinary length. The Onagadori, a domestic breed selectively bred for its elaborate plumage, exemplified the cultivated taste of Edo connoisseurs who admired natural wonders refined through human attention. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves this impression. The composition places the bird in profile against a clean background, allowing Eishi to indulge in long, calligraphic lines as the tail feathers sweep across the sheet. This linear emphasis aligns naturally with his Kano-trained ukiyo-e background, since the Kano school had long prized expressive brushwork in bird-and-flower painting, and Eishi's apprenticeship under Kano Eisen-in had familiarized him with such subjects in monochrome and color. The Shochō jūnikin series belongs to a fashion among ukiyo-e artists for surimono and luxury prints that paired refined imagery with poetry, often produced for private clubs or wealthy patrons. While the print is not Edo bijin-ga in the strict sense, it shares the same audience and sensibility, offering a different facet of the same refined culture that Eishi's beautiful women inhabited. Chobunsai Eishi here reveals the breadth of his classical training, applying to a long-tailed fowl the same disciplined drawing and quiet, sophisticated palette that distinguish his portraits of courtesans and poetesses.