Courtesan Pulling a Young Man's Umbrella (parody of Rashomon)

Courtesan Pulling a Young Man's Umbrella (parody of Rashomon), designed by Isoda Koryusai in 1768, is a witty mitate of one of the most famous episodes in medieval Japanese legend: Watanabe no Tsuna's encounter with the demon at Rashomon gate, immortalised in the Heike monogatari and in noh and kabuki retellings, in which the demon seizes the warrior's helmet and Tsuna severs its arm. Koryusai substitutes a young courtesan, who reaches out to tug at a passing dandy's paper umbrella in driving rain, while the youth turns back in mock-alarm; the gesture replays the demon's grasping arm in a thoroughly Edo bijin-ga register. The print belongs to a moment when Koryusai, working in the orbit of Suzuki Harunobu, was building a reputation for mitate-e that paired classical sources with contemporary fashion, a strategy he would push to its grandest expression a decade later in the Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo courtesan series for the publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi. Here the conceit depends on viewers recognising not only the original tale but the umbrella as a cipher for Tsuna's helmet, an allusive humour central to the early nishiki-e audience's pleasure. The Art Institute of Chicago impression (object 89147) is a chuban colour woodblock with soft greys, indigos and rose, the rain rendered in fine diagonal lines and the figures' patterned robes contrasted against the muted street. As a parody of Rashomon it documents Koryusai's confident handling of the kabuki and gunki-monogatari sources from which Edo townspeople drew much of their visual entertainment. Source: Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/89147.