Dragon and tiger

Dragon and Tiger is a 1775 woodblock print by Isoda Koryusai that brings the Edo bijin-ga master into one of the oldest and most freighted pairings in East Asian visual culture. The dragon, ryu, ruler of water and the eastern direction, and the tiger, tora, ruler of wind and the western direction, had long stood in painting as cosmic complements, each governing one of the great forces of the natural world. The conjunction was widely treated by Kano-school painters and by ukiyo-e designers seeking to demonstrate their command of classical subject matter, and Koryusai's print engages this tradition directly. He stages the dragon in a swirl of cloud above the tiger crouched in a bamboo grove below, the diagonal exchange between the two creatures organizing the composition. The handling of scales and fur shows the disciplined linework characteristic of his samurai background, and the careful gradation of the cloud passages indicates a printer working at the upper end of mid-1770s capability. Although Koryusai is best remembered for the Yoshiwara courtesan portraits of Hinagata Wakana no Hatsu Moyo, prints like this confirm that he worked across the full range of ukiyo-e subjects, including animal symbolism with both auspicious and decorative resonances. The dragon-and-tiger pairing was also a favored subject for hanging scrolls displayed at New Year, lending the print a calendrical association. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression among its Koryusai holdings.