Good and Evil Influences (Zendama akudama)

The left sheet of an oban triptych in the Art Institute of Chicago, dated c. 1795, this design from Chōki's Good and Evil Influences (Zendama akudama) series belongs to a parody mode in which the moral allegory of good and bad spirits whispering into a person's ears is replayed as a Yoshiwara genre scene. The Zendama-akudama device — small dumpling-shaped sprites perched on the shoulders of an indecisive mortal — was a stock visual joke in late-Edo popular literature, drawing on Buddhist-influenced morality tales that had circulated in Japanese print culture for centuries. Chōki's handling combines its didactic origins with the elegant figure work of his bijin-ga practice, treating the small allegorical sprites with the same refined linework he gave his courtesans. The left sheet preserves one of the three panels of the original composition; the center and right sheets exist as separate accessions in the same museum. The print exemplifies the comic register that Chōki, like his contemporaries, deployed alongside his more serious courtesan portraits, and demonstrates the breadth of his pictorial range.