This Ippitsusai Buncho print, held by the Art Institute of Chicago, belongs to the series Sugata Hakkei, or Eight Views of Lovers, in which familiar tropes of the classical Eight Views poetic tradition are reworked around famous love stories from the puppet and kabuki stage. The sheet, titled Chizuka no Fumi no Bosetsu, or The Evening Snow of a Thousand Bundles of Love-Letters, depicts the lovers Ohatsu and Tokubei, whose double-suicide story was made famous in the early eighteenth century by Chikamatsu Monzaemon's puppet play and then transferred to kabuki. Buncho's design plays on the conventional Hakkei imagery of evening snow by replacing literal snowfall with the bundles of accumulated love-letters that come to stand for the lovers' overflowing devotion. While Buncho is best known for [hosoban](/glossary/hosoban) [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) featuring named kabuki actors, this series shows him working across the broader Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) repertoire of literary and amorous subjects. The image preserves the closely observed treatment of figure, costume, and gesture that characterizes his actor prints while allowing the metaphoric content of the title to organize the composition. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression places the print within a coherent set, and the series as a whole demonstrates how Edo ukiyo-e designers of the late 1760s elaborated the visual culture of romantic legend alongside their work in kabuki actor prints.
1769
Color woodblock print; hosoban
c. 1772
Color woodblock print; hosoban
c. 1771
Color woodblock print; hosoban
About 1769
Color woodblock print; hosoban
Chizuka no Fumi no Bosetsu (The Evening Snow of a Thousand Bundles of Love-Letters), the Lovers Ohatsu and Tokubei, from the series "Sugata Hakkei (Eight Views of Lovers)" was created by Ippitsusai Buncho (一筆斎文調) in c. 1772.
Chizuka no Fumi no Bosetsu (The Evening Snow of a Thousand Bundles of Love-Letters), the Lovers Ohatsu and Tokubei, from the series "Sugata Hakkei (Eight Views of Lovers)" depicts winter.
