The Six Immortals of Poetry, Abbreviated

This ōban triptych in the Art Institute of Chicago, dated c. 1795, belongs to the mitate (parody picture) tradition that allowed late-Edo designers to transpose classical subjects into contemporary settings. The Rokkasen, the six immortal poets of the Heian-period Kokin Wakashū preface, were a perennial theme in Japanese painting; here Eishō reimagines them in the persons of six women of the Yoshiwara, distributed across the three sheets of the triptych. The 'abbreviated' (ryaku) tag in the title acknowledges the playful condensation. Such mitate were intellectual jokes that flattered the buyer's literary education while still functioning as fashion prints — a doubled appeal that helps explain the genre's commercial success in the 1790s. Eishō's handling of the format spreads the six figures evenly, with kimono patterning that subtly alludes to each poet's traditional attributes.