Bunya Yasuhide / Furyu Ryaku Rokkasen

Bunya Yasuhide, from the series Furyu Ryaku Rokkasen (Stylish Abridged Six Immortal Poets), is by Chobunsai Eishi (1756-1829) and held in the British Museum (registration AN00521418). The series adapts the celebrated grouping of the Six Immortal Poets, codified by Ki no Tsurayuki in the Heian preface to the Kokinshu, into the format of a fashionable Edo [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga), replacing the male court poets with contemporary women. Bunya no Yasuhide, the ninth-century poet remembered for technically dazzling verse, is here represented by a single bijin standing in Eishi's recognizable elongated style. The figure is built from disciplined, calligraphic lines, with the kimono pattern carrying most of the design's visual interest. Color is restrained, with subtle gradations in the upper margin to suggest sky and a flat lower ground that supports the standing figure. As a Kano-trained [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) artist, Eishi brought to the series a precise sense of pictorial composition; the figure is centered, her stance is quiet, and her face is reduced to the small oval features that have come to define his beauties. The cartouche names Yasuhide and frames the parodic substitution, allowing the educated buyer to enjoy both the poetic allusion and the contemporary portrait. The British Museum's impression preserves the signature and publisher's seal and forms part of a strong corpus of Eishi's work in that institution, where it is regularly consulted alongside related series such as Furyu Yatsushi Genji to illuminate his career as a leading designer of literarily inflected ukiyo-e prints in the 1790s.