Youth Carrying a Lantern and an Umbrella

Listed by the Art Institute of Chicago as a hand-colored woodblock print in [hashira-e](/glossary/hashira-e) format and beni-e classification dated to the 1740s, this image of a youth carrying both a lantern and an umbrella places a wakashu, an adolescent male identifiable by the long forelock and shaved pate of his hairstyle, within the narrow vertical confines of a pillar print. The wakashu was one of the central figures of Edo erotic and sartorial culture, occupying an indeterminate gender position between boy and man that Edo audiences invested with considerable allure. Ishikawa Toyonobu, who portrayed wakashu repeatedly throughout his career, gives this youth two of the most graphic of nocturnal accessories: a paper lantern that supplies an implied light source and a folded or open umbrella that doubles his vertical line. The standard hashira-e format, narrower than the wide habahiro hashira-e, forced Toyonobu to elongate the figure into the slightly mannered posture that is one of his signature compositional moves. Beni-e classification identifies the sheet as hand-colored in safflower-derived pink, the warm hue that gave the technique its name. The Art Institute print is an important specimen of Toyonobu's wakashu imagery and of the standard hashira-e in its hand-colored beni-e form.