Shintokumaru Dancing before Oto Hime, from the illustrated book "Collection of Pictures of Beauties (Bijin e-zukushi)"

From the circa 1683 illustrated book Collection of Pictures of Beauties (Bijin e-zukushi) and held in the Art Institute of Chicago, this hand-colored double-page illustration depicts the legendary Shintokumaru dancing before Oto Hime, a scene drawn from the deep well of medieval Japanese popular legend. Shintokumaru, the leper-prince of folk and otogi-zoshi narrative, is a figure whose story of suffering, devotion, and miraculous redemption was widely circulated in Edo-period popular literature. By including this scene in his Bijin e-zukushi compendium, Moronobu signals the genre-crossing ambition of his bijin books, which reached beyond contemporary courtesan portraiture to draw on classical literature, folk legend, and historical tradition for their female subjects. The double-page composition gave Moronobu room to render the dance with full attention to movement, garment flow, and the responsive posture of the seated Oto Hime. The hand-coloring, added in tan and other mineral pigments after the initial sumizuri-e black-ink printing, animates the scene with the saturated palette characteristic of hand-tinted prints of the period. The sheet helps document the broad cultural literacy that Moronobu's ehon both presupposed and helped reinforce among the Edo reading public.