The Courtesan Mitsunoto of the Hishiya House, from the series "Sanjurokkasen (Thirty-six Flowers)"

This Ippitsusai Buncho print, in the Art Institute of Chicago, comes from the series Sanjurokkasen, or Thirty-six Flowers, a beauty-print sequence that adapts the classical poetic anthology of the Thirty-six Immortal Poets to depictions of named Yoshiwara courtesans. The sheet shows Mitsunoto of the Hishiya house, identified by the surrounding cartouches and inscriptions characteristic of Edo bijin-ga, or beauty prints. While Buncho is most often discussed in the context of yakusha-e, where his hosoban portraits of named kabuki actors helped reshape Edo ukiyo-e of the late 1760s and early 1770s, his work in beauty subjects shows the same attention to individual features, costume detail, and elegant bearing applied to courtesans rather than performers. The visual conceit of associating particular courtesans with flowers and with classical poetic figures was a recurrent strategy in Edo ukiyo-e for elevating the women of the licensed quarters into figures worthy of literary tradition. Buncho's design treats the courtesan with the same fineness of line and patterned costume that distinguishes his kabuki actor prints, allowing the print to participate at once in commercial branding for the Yoshiwara house, in connoisseurial collecting of beauty prints, and in the wider literary culture of Edo. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves the sheet as part of its collection of mid-Edo ukiyo-e.