The Fifth Month

"The Fifth Month" is a calendar-themed print by Ishikawa Toyonobu in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicting the customs and atmosphere associated with the fifth lunar month — the month of the Boys' Festival, of irises hung at doorways for protection, and of seasonal courtship in the Edo pleasure districts. Toyonobu organizes the sheet around a single elegant female figure whose costume and accessories carry the seasonal references that contemporary viewers would have recognized at once. The print belongs to a broader Edo tradition of associating each month of the year with a particular flower, custom, or scene, a structure that allowed ukiyo-e publishers to issue thematic series across the calendar and tied print buying to the rhythms of urban life. Technically the work is a fine example of benizuri-e, the two- and three-color woodblock technique that Ishikawa Toyonobu helped consolidate in the 1740s and 1750s. After the late seventeenth century's hand-colored tan-e and beni-e prints, benizuri-e introduced the discipline of registered color blocks — a technical step toward the full-color nishiki-e that would emerge in the 1760s — and Toyonobu's work in this idiom is particularly admired for the way it preserves the linear elegance of brush painting within a small color palette. The figure's sash, the patterned outer robe, and the carefully drawn hair ornaments all benefit from the restraint of the printing scheme: nothing in the color competes with the keyblock's drawing. Within Toyonobu's oeuvre "The Fifth Month" represents the seasonally minded bijin-ga that helped early Edo ukiyo-e bind itself to the calendar of city life, and confirms his standing as one of the most lyrical figural designers of his generation.