Kakkyo (Chinese: Guo Ju), from the series "Fashionable Japanese Versions of the Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety (Furyu Yamato nijushiko)"

From Koryusai's series Furyu Yamato nijushiko (Fashionable Japanese Versions of the Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety), held by the Art Institute of Chicago and dated to about 1770 to 1772, this chuban print depicts the paragon Kakkyo (Chinese: Guo Ju), the figure who reportedly chose to bury his own son rather than risk depriving his elderly mother of food. Guo Ju is one of the most famous of the twenty-four paragons compiled in the medieval Chinese anthology, and the Twenty-four Paragons series was one of the canonical bodies of Confucian moral instruction that circulated in Edo through both text and image. Koryusai's series transposes each paragon into a contemporary Edo setting, drawing on the mitate (parody) convention to recast Chinese moral exemplars as elegantly dressed contemporary figures. The result is a parade of slightly knowing references that work simultaneously as moral instruction and as fashionable bijin-ga.