Ono no Komachi Washing the Copybook, from the series The Fashionable Seven Komachi (Furyu nana Komachi)

Ono no Komachi Washing the Copybook is a companion design from Chobunsai Eishi's series The Fashionable Seven Komachi (Furyu nana Komachi), dated about 1783 in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The episode it parodies is one of the most famous of the seven Komachi vignettes: confronted with a rival who claimed her winning poem had been copied from an older anthology, Ono no Komachi proved her authorship by washing the disputed page, whereupon the inserted lines dissolved while her own ink held fast. Eishi recasts the legend as a moment of Edo [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) reverie, replacing Heian courtiers with elegantly dressed contemporary women gathered around a basin in which a sheet of paper floats. The narrative pivot is conveyed less through dramatic gesture than through quiet attention, with each figure leaning slightly toward the water in postures that betray Eishi's Kano-trained [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) instinct for restrained pictorial rhythm. He had absorbed the classical tradition under Kano Eisen-in before turning to commercial printmaking, and the discipline shows in the long, even brushwork that defines kimono outlines and the economical handling of facial features. The print depends on viewers recognising the mitate-e device, in which a contemporary scene stands in for a classical one, but it also functions as a self-contained study of female composure. As part of the Furyu nana Komachi set in the Art Institute's holdings, it documents how Eishi reused Heian poetic material across multiple sheets to produce a coherent fashionable cycle aimed at literate Edo townspeople.