Cocks Fighting near Bamboo Grove

Cocks Fighting near Bamboo Grove is a circa 1770 woodblock print by Isoda Koryusai, one of several kachoga compositions in which the Edo bijin-ga master turned to combative animal subjects associated with masculine virtue. The print stages two roosters in mid-clash beside a stand of bamboo, the birds rendered with bristling neck feathers, splayed legs, and outstretched wings that convey momentary violence frozen at its peak. Bamboo, valued in Japanese aesthetics for the resilience implied by its flexibility, provides a vertical screen behind the action and lets Koryusai exploit the printmaker's pleasure in regular linear patterning. Cockfighting was both a real urban pastime in Edo and an inherited Chinese pictorial subject, and Koryusai handles it as a study in opposed diagonals: the angled bodies of the birds cross beneath a canopy of leaves that fan outward in symmetrical strokes. The palette is sober, dominated by olive greens, ochres, and the muted reds typical of early 1770s nishiki-e, which lets the linework carry the compositional energy. Koryusai's samurai upbringing surfaces in the disciplined contour drawing of the combatants, where every curve serves both anatomical and decorative ends. Although his international reputation rests largely on Hinagata Wakana no Hatsu Moyo, the celebrated Yoshiwara fashion series he began in 1776, animal subjects like this one circulated widely in the years before that project and helped establish him among Edo collectors. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this impression.