Narihira, from the series "Six Immortal Poets (Rokkasen)"

Narihira from the series Six Immortal Poets (Rokkasen) is a Chobunsai Eishi design of about 1784 held by the Art Institute of Chicago. Ariwara no Narihira, the ninth-century courtier-poet around whom much of the Tales of Ise crystallised, was the most romantically charged of the six poets named in Ki no Tsurayuki's Kokin wakashu preface. Eishi accordingly invests his figure with an elegant, distinctly aristocratic bearing while still working within the visual idiom of Edo [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga). The poet stands tall and slender in the elongated proportions that define Eishi's mature manner, dressed in carefully described robes that allow the design to function as both a portrait of a classical hero and an exercise in fashionable contemporary drawing. The setting is sparse, with attributes selected to evoke a Heian sensibility without lapsing into antiquarian detail. The drawing of robes and headgear, in particular, betrays Eishi's Kano-trained [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) background. His earlier studies under the Kano academy painter Eisen-in instilled a disciplined, steady contour line and an attentiveness to internal proportion that distinguish his Rokkasen prints from more flamboyant treatments. As one of the male members of the sequence, this Narihira print also helps clarify how Eishi balanced the entire series, alternating between the courtly poise of figures like Narihira and the literary glamour of the lone female poet, Komachi. The Art Institute's impression preserves the design as part of a coherent set in which Chobunsai Eishi reframed canonical Heian poetry through the elegant, vertical figures of late-eighteenth-century Edo bijin-ga.