Takamitsu

Takamitsu refers to Fujiwara no Takamitsu, the tenth-century Heian aristocrat and poet whose biography became the subject of the literary work Takamitsu Nikki, an early example of the historical-romance genre that recounted his renunciation of court life for Buddhist withdrawal at the temple of Yokawa on Mount Hiei. The literary figure of Takamitsu carried particular resonance in Heian and later literary culture as an emblem of aristocratic disillusionment and religious turning. Chobunsai Eishi's print on this subject participates in the broader Edo fashion for literary classics and their elegant pictorial mitate. His Kano-trained ukiyo-e style was particularly suited to figures from the classical court canon, because the literary credentials of the source material rewarded the painterly discipline he brought to print design. Eishi's Edo bijin-ga idiom of elongated limbs and composed faces was readily adapted to subjects drawn from Heian historical romance, where the patrician sensibility of his line carried the air of aristocratic precedent that such subjects demanded. Before turning to commercial print design, Eishi had served as a painter to the shogun under Eisen-in Michinobu, and his unusually deep familiarity with classical literature lent authority to his treatments of figures from the Heian canon. The impression is held by the Honolulu Museum of Art, with documentation aggregated through ukiyo-e.org, and its survival there reflects the scholarly interest in Eishi's literary-classic prints.