The Shrine Dancers (Miko) Ohatsu and Onami

This Ippitsusai Buncho print in the Art Institute of Chicago departs from the artist's most familiar yakusha-e or kabuki actor prints to depict the shrine dancers miko Ohatsu and Onami. The miko are female ritual attendants associated with Shinto shrines, and their dances belong to a long tradition of ceremonial performance separate from but visually connected to the world of Edo kabuki. Buncho's design treats the two figures in the slim hosoban format he favored, placing them within the same vertical compositional logic he used for actor portraits while clothing them in the white upper robes and red trousers characteristic of miko dress. The print can be read both as a documentary image of a recognizable Edo figure type and as part of the broader Edo ukiyo-e exploration of women's appearance and pose. Buncho was active in the late 1760s and early 1770s and is best known for his hosoban yakusha-e of named kabuki actors at the Edo theaters, but works like this one show his interest in adjacent subjects from popular religious and urban culture. The Art Institute of Chicago catalogues the print without a specific production attribution, placing it within Buncho's wider engagement with figures observed in the streets, shrines, and stages of Edo rather than in any single play.