Cocks Fighting Under a Tree

Cocks Fighting Under a Tree, designed by Isoda Koryusai in 1770, is a kacho-e devoted to the spectacle of fighting cocks (tori-awase). Two birds, their plumage iridescent with the careful colour separations of Edo nishiki-e, clash beneath the spreading branches of a tree, their wings raised and necks extended in the typical posture of combat. Cockfighting was a popular Edo pastime, drawing audiences across class lines and supplying ukiyo-e artists with both narrative and decorative subject matter; Koryusai joins the bird-and-flower tradition of Kano and Tosa precedents to the more direct, observational mode of the floating-world print. The print sits alongside his many other bird studies — cranes, egrets, sparrows, falcons — in the parallel body of kacho-ga he produced through the late 1760s and into the 1770s, even as his courtesan portraiture in series like Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo grew more elaborate. The Art Institute of Chicago impression (object 21214) is a chuban or oban nishiki-e with characteristic Koryusai colour: warm browns and ochres in the cocks' feathers, embossed karazuri detail in the wing plumes, indigo gradations in the ground beneath the tree, and a deliberate balance of negative space against the diagonal of the trunk. As both an animal study and a snapshot of a popular Edo pastime, Cocks Fighting Under a Tree shows Koryusai using bird subjects to extend the narrative reach of his ukiyo-e production beyond the Edo bijin-ga that dominated his output. The image speaks to a collecting culture that prized animal energy alongside courtesan elegance. Source: Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/21214.